by Kim Law
Their days consisted of him scowling quietly in the early morning darkness until she got up and opened the blinds all over the damned house, then he’d fix her breakfast—he’d insisted the stove remain in the kitchen until the last possible moment—and then she’d get ready and depart for work.
During the days he helped out with the remodel before making sure Julie ate a decent dinner at night, and he finished each evening with a six-pack. A fact Julie must be passing along to their mother, because she still checked in on him every day. And more often than not she asked if he’d been drinking.
But even with the lessened stress in the house, he and Julie still bickered. Often about how she worked too hard or should put her feet up. And he wasn’t so obtuse that he didn’t realize he was the cause of most of the stress. She had tried to nudge him out of his mood, though. He’d give her that. She’d brought up interesting topics of conversation in the evenings. She’d dragged out photo albums, and they’d relived past vacations. They’d even worked together to design the new open-concept floor plan the remodel had grown into.
But all of it had been superficial. He still knew nothing about how she’d gotten into the state she was in, and she knew nothing about what had gone wrong between him and Lisa. And though he didn’t seem to be willing to put any personal effort into changing that, it bothered him. He wanted to be closer to his sister. But he didn’t know how to do that without opening himself up.
Julie rubbed a hand over her stomach and yawned. “If you change your mind . . .”
“When are you going to quit working?”
“What?” She lowered her hand.
“You work too hard,” he said. “You’re exhausted. When are you planning on quitting?”
“I’m not planning on quitting. And I don’t work too hard.” She shot a look at his closed laptop. “Maybe the problem is that you don’t work hard enough. Mom mentioned you haven’t been writing. Don’t you have a book due soon?”
“Mom needs to keep her mouth shut. And we’re talking about you, not me. You’re seven months pregnant with a baby who has no father. You can’t do everything alone. And clearly you can’t work after the baby is born. What are you going to do?”
Yes. He was picking a fight. But honestly, it was all he knew how to do these days.
And he did succeed in picking it.
Julie flipped on the overhead light as she rushed into his room, her finger raised and pointing at his face. “Worry about your own life, you jerk. My lack of a man has nothing to do with how long I work before delivering. And I’ll most definitely return afterward. I don’t need a man to make me happy. I can do this on my own.”
Good thing she realized that so young. “So you’re just going to deliver alone? Raise my niece alone?”
“Unless you want to be there for me,” she taunted. “Want to stick around, big brother?”
He jerked back as if slapped.
“I didn’t think so.” She smirked. “So leave me alone.”
She stomped back out of the room, and for some reason, each step that grew between them seemed like a distance he’d never get back. “I’m just worried about you.” He raised his voice to stop her. “I disappeared from your life for too many years. I wasn’t there to worry. To keep you from . . .”
He waved a hand toward her protruding stomach when she turned back.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” he finished, and with the words, recognition seemed to fill Julie’s face.
“You blame yourself for me being pregnant?” she asked indignantly.
He didn’t blame himself, exactly.
“You do know . . . whether you’d been around or not, that wouldn’t have changed things? I’m a big girl. I do what I want.”
“But I could have been a good influence on you. Kept you from—”
“Having sex?”
He cringed. Whether she was twenty-two or not, he hated the idea of his little sister being old enough to do that.
“You know,” she mused. “I lost my virginity when I was—”
“Stop!” He held a hand up. “I don’t want to hear it. I’m trying to apologize here, and you’re fucking it all up.”
She stepped back into the room. “This is an apology? For what? And my god, Carter. What kind of an apology is it? You’re berating me.”
“I’m out of practice,” he grumbled.
His words seemed to soften her, and her shoulders slumped. Her face took on a sad, poor-Carter look.
“This isn’t about me,” he warned, but that didn’t stop her. She came closer.
“Isn’t it?” she asked. “What happened with you and Lisa? Talk to me, Carter. Clearly that’s why you’re so angry. Let me help.”
“Maybe I’m angry because I’m here. I have a life to get back to, you know?”
She swished a hand in the air. “Then go. Feel free. I told you, I’m fine. Don’t stay on my account.”
“You’re not fine. I caught you crying again last night.” It was a nightly occurrence that ripped him apart each time he heard it. “What’s going on with you? You say you and the baby are fine.”
“We are fine.”
“Then it’s about the father? Why isn’t he around? Why doesn’t he call?”
“What makes you think he doesn’t call?” The question was spoken so softly it took a second for the words to register. When they did, they pulled him from his seat.
“He calls?” He crossed the room to her. “When? Who is he?”
“It’s not important.” She shook her head. “None of that is important. He has called, but it doesn’t matter. He’s out of my life.”
“Why?”
She gave him the kind of disinterested look he knew he’d patented over the years. “That’s none of your business. How about you tell me what happened with you and Lisa? What split you two up?”
“That’s none of your—”
“Okay.” She held up both hands. “Tit for tat, I get it. Don’t tell me what happened. We all do things we don’t want to share with the world. But I do have another question. One I hope you’ll actually listen to. Your marriage didn’t last, and that sucks. Big-time. I get that. But how long are you going to blame the world and everyone in it?”
The words stopped him. He didn’t blame the world, he blamed Lisa.
Ten seconds passed before he spoke again. He counted off each moment of time in his head as he forced himself to pull in a deep breath and let it out again. It was a stress-reducing technique he’d read about a couple of months ago, but so far he hadn’t noticed it actually reducing any stress.
It did help him to admit to a truth today, though. He was a jerk.
“I’ll try to quit being an ass to you,” he grunted out. She was right. He was taking it out on everyone, and that was undeserved.
The corners of her mouth twitched. “That would be nice.”
“And maybe you could try . . .” he prompted, thinking if he gave a little, then she could, too. She could try taking it easy since she was due to give birth soon.
“Not telling Mom that you’re still not writing?” she teased.
Damn. He smiled.
Just like that, his lips curled. And the strangest thing happened with that small lift of his lips. It was as if a chunk of his hurt got lopped off, and he sucked in air all the way to the base of his lungs.
“You’re a twerp,” he told Julie as she grinned smugly up at him. He reached out and tugged on the ends of her hair. “But yes. Please. Don’t tell Mom that I’m still not writing.”
Julie laughed and left his room, and he returned to his desk. He was glad he’d come home. Whether Julie needed him or not right now, he’d come to realize that he needed her. She’d made him smile.
He glanced out his window once again, saw that the sky was lightening, and he thought about Ginger. She’d almost made him smile. The other morning at her house. He’d wanted to. Simply because she’d smiled at him. Similar to how he’d wanted to lift her T-shirt
over her head the day before in her kitchen for the sole sake of seeing what her hardened nipples looked like naked.
He thought about walking into her house and catching her talking about him on the phone. About “jumping his bones.”
She’d once had a crush on him, and he’d had no idea. What would he have done if he’d known? Anything? She’d been his friend. And he’d depended on her. That friendship had been the backbone of his life at the time. The same way, he realized, that he could come to depend on her today if he let himself. As it was with his sister, he felt better merely being around Ginger.
But did he want to go there? Open himself up in that way?
It was all too much thinking, he decided. What mattered at the moment was writing. Or the fact that he should be writing. He opened his laptop and realized that he’d written quite a bit of his impromptu scene while watching Ginger. He quickly scanned the page, jumping over the words until he landed on a particularly interesting phrase.
She straddled his legs, the vee of her crotch shadowed in the dim light, and paused before sliding over him.
Carter caught his breath. Damn.
Her green eyes lit with the desire that both of them felt, and burnished copper hair trailed over her shoulders, hiding the light coating of freckles. And then she nodded. Slowly. And his body tensed in preparation for what was to come.
Her heat touched him, sucking the breath out of his body as surely as it swallowed the head of his dick. His chest vibrated from the groan that he held inside. He couldn’t let her think he was weak. He wouldn’t give her that kind of power.
But she was tight and hot, and she pushed down, covering him to the hilt. And she drained his fucking senses as surely as if she’d opened his head and removed his brain.
And all the time, through every move she made, she looked at him. Watched him with the kind of intensity that not only said that this was what she’d been waiting for all her life, but that she was keenly aware that it was what he’d been waiting on, too. And she finally got the groan he’d been trying so desperately to hold in.
Carter licked his lips. He wrote sex scenes in his books on occasion. That was nothing new. But he was pretty sure the scene in front of him was of him and Ginger. And that wasn’t his norm.
He kept reading.
Naked from the waist down—save for her green rubber boots—she rode him, her breasts bouncing under the loose cotton shirt, her nipples hard and reaching for him. So he reached back. He pulled both hands from their grip on her hips, and in a single move he had her shirt open, buttons flying. She wore no bra, and his dick surged inside her.
A moan slid from her parted lips, but he wanted more than an unintelligible sound. He wanted her calling his name. Knowing that it was he she was with. He she would return to.
That he was the man who would soon make her come.
He closed his mouth over a pink nipple, and he rose from his sitting position. He needed to be in control. Not her. And he needed to make sure she never looked at another man again.
With almost too much power, he slammed her against the wall.
“Carter!” Her voice rang out in heated passion.
He pumped harder, and she bit into his neck.
Her nails clawed at his back, begging for more. Faster. Now. So he gave her what she wanted.
He filled her, over and over, while her legs clamped tight around his body, her heels digging into his ass, spurring him on. She called his name. He called hers. Sweat slicked their bodies together with each powerful thrust.
And then they were at the precipice, and he didn’t give her a chance to catch her breath. He pushed harder, insisting she be right there with him. Shoving her over the edge. He savored her screams and thrilled at the feel of her nails slicing through his skin.
“You’re mine,” he ground out as the first spurt left him.
She nodded. Made an animalistic growl. Then she lost all ability to speak.
Carter beat her to the rock the next morning.
The sun was still fifteen minutes from coming up, but instead of sitting in his room, watching to see if Ginger would head out of the house again, he’d slipped out his own back door and walked over himself. It was either that or reread the sex scene he’d written about her. Again. Which had about driven him out of his mind the day before.
Of course, it would have helped if he hadn’t gone back to it time and again, editing and polishing the words. He’d told himself it was a writing exercise. He’d written for the first time in months. It was a positive thing. He was only helping himself by tweaking it.
Only, he’d gone to bed hard, and woken up the same way. For Ginger.
Which was better than waking up angry, he freely admitted. But it had also pulled him from the house this morning. He’d arrived in time to finish a cigarette before she caught him, and now he waited. And he hoped like hell that she showed up.
A bird squawked as it passed by, and he lifted his face to watch it. The morning was damp and slightly cool, and the briskness made him feel alive. It was as if something had awoken inside him.
The day before had been a turning point. He’d smiled in the morning, had dirty nasty thoughts about his friend and neighbor all day long, and he’d watched that very neighbor read on her deck late at night, once again pantless.
All in all, it had been a good twenty-four hours.
The remodel was coming along nicely, as well, and he and Gene had spent a couple of hours working through plans for Ginger’s house. Carter was anxious for the team to really get started out there. He wanted to see her home come alive.
He wanted to see her.
As if his wants could materialize, she was suddenly there. He hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them, his face still tilted toward the sky, she was by his side, peering down at him, and he wondered if he’d ever told her how pretty she was.
Her hair was twisted to the top of her head, her face scrubbed clean, and a solemnness was painted across her features. It mixed in with the sprinkling of freckles dotting her nose.
She stared at him as if unsure why he was there. If she should stay or go.
And she took his breath away.
She didn’t need makeup and dresses. She just needed to be herself.
“I’m divorced,” he blurted out. Pressure immediately eased from his chest. Maybe she’d been right. Talking about it could help. “It was final three weeks ago.”
She blinked, swallowed, then nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Divorce sucks.”
Her head angled slightly, as if asking if she could sit down, and he nodded. She lowered to sit beside him, and they both turned to face the ocean. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
He considered it. Truly considered whether he wanted to talk about what had happened. It was a question he’d never allowed before. But, no. Not today. Not yet.
“No,” he said.
She nodded once again. “Then we’ll just watch the sunrise.”
They sat side by side, silent for the next ten minutes as the bright globe inched its way into the sky. The morning wasn’t as colorful as some he’d seen, and there were no clouds. The day seemed to simply appear. One moment it was gray, with daylight hovering just beyond the edge of the water, and the next, an explosion of sunlight was everywhere. And as he’d done the day before, he pulled in a deep breath.
“I have countertop samples for you,” he told her after he blew out the lungful of air. “They’re in my car.”
“I’ll come over before I go to work and take a look.”
The oddest pinch tightened inside him as he thought about her coming over, with Gregg and Ian—and the rest of the guys—being there. They were fascinated with her; he’d heard them talking. And she seemed as taken with them. He’d watched from a distance as she chatted one or another up on her multiple trips home during the days, and he’d wondered if she always came home that much during a workday. Or was she doing it simply
to flirt?
Not that it was any of his business. He’d warned her about them. He’d done his part.
Maybe I do just want to get laid.
The words irritated him more today than they had two mornings ago. She deserved more than just getting laid.
“Another bad date last night?” he asked now. He’d seen a car drop her off before she’d gone in the front door fully dressed in a skirt, heels, and a shirt, and come out the back in only the shirt.
“Not a date.” She propped her hands behind her on the rock and dropped her head back. “Though not from a lack of trying. One of the local bars has a monthly speed-dating thing. I went with a friend. We both left empty-handed.”
“Too bad for them.”
She turned her head to look at him, her gaze quietly studying, and he hoped like hell she couldn’t see his thoughts. Which revolved fifty percent around the words he’d written the day before. And the other half still wondering about the color of her nipples.
“Do you remember that we used to sit out here and share our dreams?” she asked.
Relief filled him. She had no clue that she was being coveted by her neighbor. “I do. You wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “You remember that?”
He nodded. He remembered a lot about her. And about their time spent out here. Like the fact that they used to sketch out the dream homes they’d each planned to build. Their ideas had been very similar. So much so that they’d eventually tossed their separate plans and worked from one sketch. He wondered how many of those same ideas had made it into her house.
Then again, he wondered how many had made it into his own. Was that why so much of hers was similar to his? It was interesting that they’d both hit that point of their lives at the same time.
“You wanted to be an author,” she said.
Her words surprised him. “I did.” He’d never talked about that a lot. It was one of those dreams that had been more personal than the rest. The kind people would doubt.