29
BREE CURLED IN ON HERSELF IN THE FRONT SEAT AS
LUKE DROVE, and they sat in silence most of the way back to her
mother’s house. His daughter. She knew both his kids were at
college, so she thought she’d never have to meet them. How utterly,
horribly embarrassing. The girl probably heard them talking about
sex, for God’s sake.
She was so young, fresh, and innocent, so
pretty. So normal. Bree didn’t think the girl had ever been afraid
of anything in her life. And the way she’d examined Bree, as if she
was looking at gum—or worse—on the bottom of her father’s
shoe.
“I’m good with you meeting Keira,” Luke finally
said, as if they hadn’t been sitting there without saying a word
for such a long time. “We didn’t have to rush off.”
“I don’t do father-daughter meet-and-greets.”
She sounded bitchy and mean.
Luke’s lips stretched in a thin line at her
comment.
Why did it bother her anyway? She could have
faked courtesy. She faked it at work all the time. She faked
everything.
“What I meant,” she said, trying to appease him,
“was that you just don’t introduce the woman you’re fucking to your
daughter.”
His jaw rippled and tensed. “I’m not just fucking you.”
“I saw that look on your face, Luke. You wanted
to crawl away into a hole when she saw us.”
“I was surprised. I couldn’t remember if I’d
cleaned up after last night. It wasn’t about you.”
“That’s exactly what it was about. You were
thinking ‘holy shit, I have to introduce my daughter to my fuck
buddy.’ ” Not that she’d ever thought of him that way. He was . . .
her master. “And I’m not even wearing panties.”
He winced, and she knew he’d had the same
thought, but he didn’t allow anything into his voice. “Whether you
admit it or not, we have a relationship.”
“Yes, we do,” she said rationally. “I’m the
slave and you’re the master. And masters don’t introduce their
submissives to their daughters.”
He shot her a glare. “You always remember you’re
my slave when it’s a convenient tool. I should have ordered you to
go into the fucking house and make nice.”
She might have felt better if he had. He was a
good father. She knew that with the way he talked about his
daughters, his tone softening, his eyes lighting, a gentle smile
creasing his lips. And the way Keira had addressed him. Dad, I need your help.
He’d called her honey.
Bree’s father used to call her honey when
he told her to go play in the dollhouse.
Dammit, Luke was nothing like her father. She
wondered how it would have been to have a father like Luke.
Please don’t make me,
Daddy.
She never would have had to say those
words.
She swallowed hard, painfully. “I’m sorry,” she
whispered, though she didn’t know exactly which thing she was
apologizing for. Or even if it was to Luke.
Just as moments before she could feel the
tension squeezing her into the corner of the car, something gentled
in the air around him. “The timing wasn’t right, but I’ll arrange
for you to meet both my daughters. I want
you to meet them.” He reached for her hand. “Don’t make me order
you to do it.”
He let go to turn the corner onto her mother’s
street. The house was on the left, and the lights were on. Her
mother was going to wonder why she was back so soon.
“Bree, look at me.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been staring at the
house.
“Kiss me goodnight,” he said.
“What?” The words seemed totally foreign.
“Kiss me. And don’t make me order you to do that
either.”
“I kiss you all the time.”
“I want one now.”
“Okay. Sure.” She didn’t understand the
disquieting light in his eyes. But she thought about his kiss in
the car after they’d been bowling, how good it had been. How she’d
wanted to be the kind of woman who deserved a kiss like that.
Putting a hand to his cheek, she leaned in
slowly. She started with just a caress of her lips against his.
Then her tongue along the seam. He parted for her, and she tasted
him, minty, his breath sweet. She leaned harder against his chest,
opened her mouth, and took him with a long, deep sweep of her
tongue. Her breath ratcheted up. His heart beat solidly against
her. She wrapped her arms around him, plastered her chest to his,
and kissed him with everything she had. Like the night after
bowling. Like in her fantasies. Like she’d never kissed before. Not
with anyone. Men didn’t want kisses from a woman like her. They
wanted other things.
“Christ,” he said, finally coming up for air. “I
needed that. Jesus.”
She’d needed it, too. She’d never realized how
badly she needed it.
She needed him. Oh God.
She really did.
AS LUKE PULLED HIS CAR INTO THE GARAGE, BREE’S
TASTE WAS still on his lips and her scent continued to cloud his
mind. That kiss. It was electric. So much more than he’d expected
from her. If only he hadn’t had to leave.
“I’m home,” he called as he entered the kitchen
through the garage door.
Keira swept in blanketed by a fog of lavender.
In fact, the whole house smelled like lavender. She’d taken a bath
while he was gone.
He’d missed the perfume of women in the house.
He thought of Bree, of having her sleep over, of watching her
luxuriate in the tub in a haze of sweetly scented steam.
“She was very pretty.” Keira opened the fridge.
“But really, you shouldn’t hit her where people can see the
bruises.”
Something welled up inside him. Guilt.
Hard-edged. He lashed out against it. “I would never hit a woman. You should know me better than
that.”
Keira closed the fridge without retrieving
anything, her gaze stricken. “I’m sorry, Dad. I was joking. I know
you’d never do anything like that.”
He immediately felt like crap. He’d lashed out
at Keira because the truth was he did a lot of things to Bree most
people wouldn’t approve of. He’d liked it all. If he could just
believe that what they did together wasn’t bad for her. “Sorry I
went off on you. It’s just not something you should laugh
about.”
“You’re right.” Keira pressed her lips together.
“Especially with what I came home to talk to you about.”
“You could have called, honey.”
“No. This needs one-on-one.” She smiled,
forgetting his harshness of moments before. “We need a chai for
this.”
“Guess it’s going to be a long talk then.”
They’d often gone to the local coffeehouse for a chai and a talk,
he and Keira and Kyla. Beth had been jealous of those
father–daughter chats, yet she’d never made her own kind of
tradition with the girls.
Ten minutes later, they were ensconced in the
coffee bar with large steaming cups. The place was packed, students
with notebooks and laptops, couples, teenagers, everyone with coats
and umbrellas just in case. The scent of freshly ground coffee had
seeped into the wooden surfaces, the floor by the counter was shiny
with a million scuffmarks, and the roar of the steam valve was like
music amid the voices and laughter.
“Okay, what gives with Stephie?” he asked, then
sipped the spicy brew.
“Her boyfriend beats her, he’s got her hooked on
drugs, and he makes her have sex with other guys to pay for his
habit.” That was Keira. She didn’t pull any punches.
And it was a punch right to his gut. “Jesus.”
Okay, that wasn’t him; that was Derek. But it was still too close
to home.
“You see why I had to drive home for a
face-to-face?”
Yeah, he did. “Have you talked to her
parents?”
“I left messages. But they never called
back.”
“Did you leave that on a
message?”
She clucked her tongue. “Right. Even I wouldn’t leave that to a message. I drove by their
house, but there weren’t any lights on.” Then she touched his hand.
“Dad, I don’t think I can do this one on my own.”
“That’s really why you came home.” He softened
inside.
“Yeah.” She gave him a pleading look. Kids, they
always got to you at the strangest times, suddenly making you feel
needed and important and big. “You know how to handle this kind of
stuff, Dad.”
Right. With Bree, he’d almost broken Derek’s
nose. He’d do the same for Keira or Kyla. He’d do it for Stephie.
“Of course I’ll go with you, honey. Where is she now?”
“I tried to get her to come here, but she’s with
that freak”—her lips twisted as she said
the word—“and it’s like he’s got some insane hold over her. I just
want to get her parents to come down and take her home or
something, anything.”
He’d raised a kind, caring woman, and he was
proud of her.
Then she grimaced, plucking at the letter
jacket. “You know what I’m most afraid of, Dad?” she said in an
almost childlike voice.
“What?”
“That her parents won’t do anything.”
He covered her hand. He’d met Stephie’s parents,
and they were indeed a disinterested lot. He’d wondered why they’d
bothered to have a child. Once she’d turned thirteen, they’d
thought nothing of leaving Stephie alone while they went on
vacation. Keira usually brought Stephie over to stay.
It made him think of Bree. Her mom seemed normal
enough on the face of it, maybe a little manic, perhaps, but
normal. Until you looked beneath the facade, like when she hadn’t
said a thing about that bruise. Something had happened in that
house, something had gone wrong, something that made Bree the woman
she was, a woman who needed punishment for some imagined crime
she’d committed long ago.
“Let’s deal with her parents flaking out when
the time comes, honey, if it comes, okay.
They might surprise you so don’t start thinking with a negative
attitude yet.” He picked up his chai. “Let’s do it.”
She squeezed his hand. “Thanks, Dad. You’re the
best.”
For her, maybe he was. He was no longer sure if
he was the best for Bree.
AS A CHILD, WHENEVER HER PARENTS TOOK HER TO A
RESTAURANT, Bree whispered her order. As if her voice wouldn’t
work. She couldn’t remember what she’d been afraid of, why she
could only whisper. Maybe she’d been scared she’d order something
too expensive and her father would get mad. Or that she’d spill her
milk or break a glass. Whatever it was, she’d been so frightened,
she couldn’t manage more than a whisper. The waitress would ask her
to repeat herself, and, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, her father
would get mad. The angrier he became, the harder it was for Bree to
talk, like a merry-go-round she couldn’t get off. In the end, her
mother started ordering for her. But then there were other things
she had to be afraid of.
Marbury was one of those things. She couldn’t
sleep on Wednesday night after Luke dropped her off. Thursday
morning, her skin had the pallor of porridge that had been warmed
up in the microwave too many times, and the smudges beneath her
eyes were so dark, she looked like a football player.
On the way to work, she almost hit a car at a
stoplight. When she walked into her office, she couldn’t breathe,
as if all the air had been sucked out of the room and the walls had
closed in on her.
When Rachel ran over to offer her condolences,
Bree put a finger to her lips and shook her head. That was the cool
thing about Rachel, she knew exactly when to back off.
I can do this. I’ll be
fine.
Denton Marbury would have to behave himself with
other people around. She knew her numbers inside and out. She was
thirty-five years old, not eight, and this was her office, not a
dollhouse. She could do this.
Erin stuck her head around the doorjamb, leaning
out of her office next door. “You okay?”
Bree gave her the thumbs up. If she tried to
speak, she was afraid it might be nothing more than a
whisper.
Erin stared at her harder. “What did you do to
your head?”
Damn, she’d forgotten. Bree put her fingertips
to the bruise. Obviously makeup did not
work. It was a wonder Rachel hadn’t said something. “I was rushing
and my mom opened the kitchen door. And I ran right into it.” Thank
God it didn’t come out as an embarrassing whisper. And blaming the
bruise on an accident with her mom sounded better than saying she
ran into a door on her own.
“Oh Jesus.” Erin puffed out a breath. “That’s
all you two need right now.”
“I’m fine,” Bree said. “I had an X-ray.” Lies
upon lies.
“You sure you’re good to go with Marbury
today?”
“Piece of cake.” Yeah right.
“Okay.” Erin backed up a couple of steps as if
she was still unsure. “Call me if you need me. I’ll be right next
door.”
Bree smiled widely, then toned it down, afraid
her face would crack, and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Five to nine. She could hear every tick of the
wall clock in her office. The wait was interminable.
When her computer finished booting up, Bree
opened the files she’d need on the desktop and angled the monitor
so it could also be viewed from the chair she’d placed on the other
side of her desk, just in case Marbury wanted to see the actual
calculations. She spread the hard copies in their folders out on
the desk, too, all neatly organized, everything at her
fingertips.
Then Denton Marbury opened the lobby door.