by Liz Crowe
Safe Love
Love Brothers Series
Companion Novella
By
Liz Crowe
Safe Love
Love Brothers Companion Novella
Copyright © 2015 by Liz Crowe
Cover Art and Design by Fiona Jayde
All rights reserved.
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www.lizcrowe.com
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
About The Author
Read More Liz Books
Chapter One
Antony Love watched his large family hustle and bustle around, preparing for the inevitable conversation—the one where they all had to face the fact of their mother’s illness. His anger simmered slowly between his ears, heating his skin and causing an annoying tremble in his hands as he sipped a beer. Everything felt somehow muted—sounds were fuzzy, his hands and arms moved as if they were mired in mud. It was a sickeningly familiar sensation. One he’d only just managed to shed in the past three years or so, and that had been in pretty miniscule steps.
Of course, finally having sex again, and with the woman who’d guided him down the healing path all those years had helped shove him along nicely.
He sighed and tried to keep his cool, willing himself not to start howling and throwing things, like the bottle he had gripped in his fist so hard he figured he was about a millisecond from shattering the damn thing. His friend—no, his girlfriend—Rosie shot him a quick smile as she passed by with plates and napkins, as if sensing his sudden surge of willpower. He blinked, at a total loss in the face of her charming beauty that he’d admired for so many years—including up close and personal for the past few. She tilted her head, and several wild corkscrew tendrils of her hair bobbed around her flushed face.
“Hey babe,” she said. “You all right? You look a little…”
“I’m fine,” he interrupted her, putting the beer to his lips to keep from having to expound on his fine-ness.
She shrugged, turned from him and began setting the large outdoor table, humming under her breath. Antony took a few moments to admire her petite slimness under the batik swimsuit cover dress. The light dusting of freckles on her shoulders shone after spending an hour or so in the direct sunlight while poolside at his boyhood home. Unable to stop himself, he licked his lips, recalling how those freckles had tasted the night before…the freckles, the dark, pert nipples, the flesh covering her ribs, her belly, and lower…
As he leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, he groaned, realizing that he’d probably done himself a bit of a disservice going so many years without female company. Getting laid a couple of nights in a row after such a drought had turned him into a raging teenager, hormonally speaking.
“Yo, bro,” a voice called out, making him jump. “Could use some help over here.”
He rose, relishing the mild soreness in his hips, thighs and stomach from the various acrobatics and exertions with Rosie. She blew a lock of hair out her eyes, studying the table. Antony came up behind her and kissed her neck, loving the sweaty, sunscreen-y odors suffusing her skin. His body, which had hardened as he sat at the table and recalled the sex they’d had a few hours before, stayed that way. She sighed and reached back to grip his neck in a way that made him dizzier than a grown man of nearly forty years old ought to feel.
“Cut the groping Ian and get your ass over here for a sec,” Kieran, his closest in age brother hollered at him again, using their family habit of calling each other by their middle names.
Antony ignored him in favor of burying his fingers in Rosie’s thick hair, then sliding his palms across her shoulders, down her arms and up to cup her breasts. She shivered and pressed against his stupid, teenager-ish erection. For a guy usually averse to this sort of PDA, he didn’t give a shit who saw them.
“I…I love you,” he muttered into her bare shoulder as he rubbed against her like some horny dog in the yard.
She froze just long enough to make him pause. His head was spinning with all that had gone down in the past week. The energy to process it didn’t seem within his reach at the moment so he willed it away—all of it—the stupid prodigal brother’s return to the family fold, the terminally ill mother, the wretchedly miserable father, not to mention the re-emergence of his never-shabby libido with the sort of brute force that left him breathless, waiting for the next moment he could…just…fuck something.
Releasing her with a low groan, he flipped Rosie around and gripped her arms. “I’m not kidding. I love you.”
She blinked and bit her full lower lip, forcing him to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from blowing in his swim trunks.
Dear Lord, I’ve gotta get a grip on myself.
But “a grip” is what he’d maintained for far too long.
No, no, stop it. Keep that firm grip. My family needs me to be the brother in control.
Taking a long, deep breath, he crushed Rosie to his chest, resisting the urge to grind his rock-hard erection against her belly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and went up on her tiptoes, kissing him, gently, softly calming him in that way she had.
“Relax,” she whispered, brushing the hair off his forehead. “It’s all right. It will be all right.”
He shook her off and took a step away, inexplicably furious. He could not be this horny dumbass again. He’d been a horny dumbass his whole young adult life and it had netted him a marriage to a woman he adored with every fiber of his being, when he wasn’t wishing he could shove her out of a window thanks to her incessant bitching. It had also netted him his beautiful, feisty, redheaded daughter who, as a teenager had turned on him so viciously. She scared him more times than he cared to admit.
Oh I can go on and blame my own damn self for that, lame ass excuse maker that I am.
At the time that he’d lost her, his wife Crystal had been the best obsession he’d ever owned up to and acted on like an adult—even at the tender age of twenty-three. Despite all familial belief to the contrary, they would have been fine. By now they would have had at least one more, preferably two more kids, and she would’ve been handling them, their household and their small farm so he could manage his garage.
Everything would have been good. Not perfect. They were pretty volatile when they both got their tempers up—but damn good.
Except for that fucking trip to Knoxville she’d just had to take.
“Jesus, Ian you deaf or what?”
His brother Kieran stood poolside glaring at him, holding the entire pool fil
tration mechanism in his hands and looking helpless, as usual. Rosie still faced him, her color high and her firm breasts, tipped with those amazing nipples, poking through the thin fabric of her cover dress. Her wary expression made him do a double take.
He smiled, hoping to put her at ease. “Sorry. You’ve gone and turned me into a horn dog. What can I say?”
“Antony,” she began, moving closer to put her hand on his face. He closed his eyes for a split second and gripped her hand as if it were the last life jacket on the Titanic. “I’ve had such a great time…a really great time with you these past couple of nights. But don’t think you have to—”
“I know, it’s fine. I’m just…” He caught himself interrupting her again. But when more words simply would not materialize for him, he stopped.
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Your Mama will be okay. Just you watch. Go on, go and help him.” She pointed towards Kieran and the pool. “I’ve gotta keep setting the table.”
Antony watched her head inside, mesmerized in a down and dirty way by the sway of her hips under her dress, the sight of her tanned, bare calves flashing as she ran up the steps. He did love her. And he loved his return to the sort of relationship he craved—the physical kind he had forgotten he required—but had denied himself for so long after Crystal’s accident. But even that wasn’t enough for some reason, and he had no idea why not.
The sight of his youngest brother Aiden dashing by clutching Rosie’s four-year-old son Jeffrey, distracted him for a moment. His brother always did identify with the little kids better than any of them. Which figured since he’d really never grown up at all, his recent return after dropping out of some fancy writing school out west was living proof of that.
“Don’t let him corrupt you, Jeffrey,” Antony said as he strode past the two of them rolling around on the grass like a couple of puppies. The long nurtured, older brother irritation at the very sight of the young man rose, making his face hot. He fought a valiant inner battle to tamp it down. He lost.
“What’s corrupt mean,” the boy asked between giggles.
“It means I’m the coolest guy ever and you should want to be just like me,” Aiden said, glaring over at Antony.
“Huh, yeah. You should really do that Jeffrey. Especially when it’s time to take your girlfriend out for a—”
“Enough already, bro,” Aiden muttered under his breath.
Antony shot him a jaunty salute, chuckling at the memory of catching Mr. Wonderful Writer Man, drunk and naked as a jaybird with a woman out by the pond on his property a few nights before. As he headed up to see what Kieran had managed to fuck up with the pool filter that he, the oldest and the fixer, would have to set right, Antony had no way of knowing what lay around the corner, figuratively and literally, for his life. All he knew was that for the first time in years, his scalp was tingling in a way he used to know—used to own—but had set aside in favor of the self-flagellation of deep mourning.
Chapter Two
Margot Hamilton made her careful way from the car. She’d parked on the side of the road since the Love family’s drive was chock full already and she figured she might need to make a fast, unobtrusive exit later. The sun burned hot, making her neck prickle with sweat. She stumbled on the gravel, cursing and hoping that no one was watching her stagger around like an idiot.
Her clumsiness seemed more pronounced than usual lately, which pissed her off. She’d hit five foot nine at seventeen years and had been overcompensating for it ever since. Finding her stride in college and grad school, she’d got in the best shape of her life, making sure her blonde hair was always perfectly cut, highlighted and styled, the works. Since getting dumped by her husband rather unceremoniously for the full out female jock who coached the women’s soccer team at the university, she’d backslid, figuring it for a lost cause.
The sounds of happy, childish laughter and splashing water hit her ears. She took a breath, steadied the giant container of cookies she’d brought and picked her way more slowly up the long drive toward the front door. She was still unsure how she’d gotten roped into coming here, to a house full of total strangers, at the gentle behest of the matriarch who was about to break it to everyone that she had maybe six months to live.
Memories of Lindsay Love’s special brand of southern, unobtrusive pushiness made her smile. As a more up front and not terribly nice bossiness type, Margot figured she could take a lesson or two from the woman. It must be the Midwestern girl in her. Something her ex-husband had pointed out, especially toward the end of their brief but volatile marriage. She shook her head firmly, driving out all thoughts of how he’d crushed her spirit so effectively, and then she heard Lindsay’s voice telling her to come around the side and meet her at the patio.
Relieved for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint, other than the distinct sensation of being watched from the house, Margot grinned at the sight of a small boy barreling out of the pool area toward the house squalling, “Gotta pee Mommy!” She sidestepped him and squinted into the sunlight, settling her sunglasses on her head once she ducked under the large canopy.
“Margot,” Lindsay called out, emerging from the gloom wearing a yellow sundress and a big smile. “Come on over here, honey. You didn’t have to bring anything.” She took the container of still-warm cookies and set it on the table before guiding Margot to a nearby chair. “Take a seat. What are you drinking? We’ve got a little of everything you know—beer, gin and tonic, lemonade, root beer.”
“I think this lovely woman should let me pick her drink,” a gravelly, masculine voice intoned from the darkened doorway to the house. Lindsay rolled her eyes but Margot saw the shining light of pride in them at the same time.
“You must be –”
“Dominic Sean Love, at your service.” The man stepped into Margot’s line of vision, making her do a double take. While Lindsay had given her a fairly lengthy rundown of all the boys and their relative issues, she realized she had no idea what they all looked like. Dominic’s extreme attractiveness actually startled her, with his long blond hair, model-worthy chiseled cheekbones, deep chin dimple and deep brown, flashing eyes. All wrapped up in a body that would give any woman pause, even with a torso a bit too inked and pierced for her taste. He’d be anyone’s handful, she decided.
“Get your sorry tail in the house and put a shirt on, young man,” Dominic’s mother scolded. “We have company.”
He raised a single eyebrow at Margot, giving her a tiny, illicit tingle. She sighed, determined to resist his obviously well-practiced seduction skills.
But… damn.
She cleared her throat and smiled at Lindsay, the woman she’d met in the frozen food aisle of the local grocery, who’d invited her to a book club and, without realizing it, saved Margot from running home to Michigan with her tail between her legs.
“So that’s my wild child, as I told you.” She nodded in the direction Dom had disappeared. She snagged the hand of a very tall, very redheaded man bearing a chin dimple identical to Dominic’s an patted his arm. He smiled and bent over to peck her cheek. “This is Kieran, my sweet boy. Kieran, say hello to my new friend, Margot Hamilton.”
“Mama, please,” the man said, his voice a lighter timbre with less growl and more soft Southern than his blond brother’s. “Pleased to meet you. This is my fiancée, Melinda.” The man stood and draped a long arm around a woman who looked as if she’d just eaten a lemon.
“Hello, Melinda,” Margot said, using her best calm-the-crazed-patient-in-the-corner voice. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“And you,” the woman said, swinging her long ebony hair and managing to smack Kieran in the face with it before she pulled a thin mobile phone from her pocket. “Excuse me. I must take this.”
Margot glanced at Lindsay and noted her pursed lips as she gazed after her future daughter-in-law. She recalled something about Kieran being engaged to a “lawyer lady” but nothing more and certainly nothing negative. By the time Kieran had tu
cked his hands into his pockets and was headed inside without making any more conversation Dom had come bounding out wearing a thin, tight, gray T-shirt with the ‘Love Brewing’ logo emblazoned across it. He picked up a chair and plunked it down so close to Margot’s he might as well have been in her lap. She kept a straight face when he went into full-frontal flirt mode, getting more amused by the second.
He certainly has his appeal, she thought, as she sized him up in a more clinical fashion, but definitely not her type.
She accepted the beer he offered and turned to meet Lindsay’s husband, Anton, the patriarch of the house. Angelique, Lindsay’s only daughter, appeared, looking the way Margot had imagined her—a tall, willowy, classic beauty with long black hair and a dancer’s natural grace. Margot knew she’d just arrived, having driven in from New York where she attended a performing arts college. Margot observed her a minute, recalling how little Lindsay had been willing to divulge about the girl, even after giving Margot an earful about each of her boys.
The young woman plunked some food down on the table, pecked her mother on the cheek and held out her hand, as polite as any of her brothers, but seeming to operate on autopilot. That is until her father re-emerged from the lower level, hollering for one of his sons to go and light the grill. Then the girl’s face lit up as she gave him a huge hug and offered to get him a beer, a chair, anything he might need.
Margot filed that away for later, still waiting for her newest patient to make his appearance. Antony Ian Love was the oldest of the siblings, and had apparently been estranged from his daughter for nearly thirteen years, ever since his wife’s death when he’d retreated so far into depression his parents had to take over with the three-year old little girl.
A sad story. But the world was full of them.
She should know.
Hers wasn’t so hot either.