CHAPTER 17

Isla

I’ve never seen blood literally drain from someone’s face before.

Ben’s face is white, his jaw slack, and the sight of that scares me more than anything else ever has.

“Jesus,” he finally mutters, shoving the laptop aside and jumping to his feet. “Son of a motherfucking bitch!”

That’s a bit louder and has the dog up, growling low. When it is followed by a fist through the newly painted wall to the hallway, Atsa barks sharply.

“Ben! What the fuck?”

I rush up behind him, and just manage to grab his arm on the backswing, when he reels back to punch another hole in the wall. Jerking his arm free, he swings around, making me jump back with my hands up defensively. Atsa slips between us, the hackles on his back up, and he’s whimpering in confusion. I take another step back for some breathing room. Not that I’m scared of Ben, but I’ve never seen him actually angry before. Even when those drug peddlers threatened to hurt me, he never lost control.

“Christ, Pixie,” he whispers in a pained voice, before looking down at the dog. I follow his gaze to his hand, which is dripping blood on the floor.

“You’re bleeding,” I point out the obvious, just because I don’t really know what else to say. I’m as confused as the dog is. One minutes we’re cuddled up on the couch, watching a movie, on our first night in the new house, all mellow and relaxed, and the next I’ve got a hole in the wall and a man who’s bleeding.

Since my brain can’t quite process it all, I do what seems like the first course of action: stop the bleeding. It’s at least something I can concentrate on while the world resets itself on its axis.

I nudge aside Atsa, grab Ben’s hand, and pull him along into our bathroom, where the first aid kit is shoved under the sink. Ben doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t resist either.

I turn on the tap and hold his hand under the stream of water. He must’ve hit a stud or something, because a nice deep slice runs along the back of his middle finger and hand.

“You’re gonna need some stitches,” I tell him softly, looking up in the mirror to his reflection behind me. Turmoil, that’s what I see on his face. When his eyes focus on mine, I see regret, and that hurts.

“Just tape it up.”

While I clean his cut, I feel his body curve around me from behind, his head dropping in the curve of my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs there.

I’m not sure what it means—what he’s sorry for—but I have a feeling he’s not talking about the hole in the wall, and I’m not about to ask. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, I can’t ignore the possible significance of that image.

He doesn’t say anything else while I bandage his hand the best I can, and neither do I, but it doesn’t help; the elephant in the room only grows as we try to ignore it’s there.

“Go to bed,” Ben finally says, as I clear away the supplies. “I’ve got a few calls to make.”

I open my mouth to protest, but his single finger raised ever so slightly, has me shut it again.

“I’ll clean up,” he adds, as he slips past me out of the bathroom.

I go through my nightly routine, trying not to focus on the fact he didn’t kiss me, or that I didn’t stop him from walking away. By the time I strip off my clothes and pull on my nightshirt, that last thing is bothering me.

I’m not a coward. Just because I might not like what I’m going to hear isn’t reason enough to hide under the covers. Ben may not be ready to talk about why his earlier confidence there’s no chance of him having a child, is suddenly so clearly wavering—but I am.

I can hear his low voice as I walk down the hall behind the great room. I lean against the opening, watching Ben’s back, as he’s outlined against the large picture window.

“She used my fucking last name, Damian. The name she knew me by. The dates on the image match. I’ve sent you the email. There’s a file number on the attachment, see what you can come up with.” I watch as he runs his fingers through his hair before resting his forehead in his hand. “Something tells me this one is not a fake. I want to know, Damian. If I have a kid out there somewhere, I want to fucking know.”

I was right. I don’t like what I’m hearing. In fact, it hurts like a sonofabitch. I slip back into the hallway and down to the bedroom, where I slip between the pretty new sheets that don’t give me any of the pleasure I thought they might.

I don’t sleep. I just lie there, trying to figure out what is more painful; the possibility Ben has a child with someone else, or the fact that he clearly doesn’t trust me enough to talk to me about it.

I’m not sure how long it is before I hear the front door open and close, but it’s what finally triggers my tears.

Ben

That’s fucked up.

I have so many questions but unless I can find that bitch, I won’t have any answers.

Why start off with sending a fake picture? Why send anything at all after eleven fucking years? What does she want? Money? Fuck, all she had to do was let me know I had a kid. This, though? This is messed up.

What’s most messed up is the fact that a small part of me was excited at the implications of that ultrasound. A kid. My kid. And that made me feel guilty.

Isla...Jesus...

You think everything is falling into place, and the road is clear ahead, when a fucking bomb goes off and suddenly you don’t know where you are anymore.

I saw her, reflected in the window, when I was talking to Damian earlier. She looked so fucking lost. I wanted to go to her, rescue her, but what if I’m not a life preserver? What if I’m an anchor instead, just pulling her under?

“Come, Atsa,” I call out for the dog, who’s been a little leery of me since I put my fist through the damn wall. I’ll have to fix that tomorrow.

Once inside, he heads straight for the bedroom, where I know he’s checking up on Isla. I lock up, flick off the lights, and grab the dog bed along, so he can sleep with us—but on the floor.

She’s on her side, her back to the middle of the bed and her body curled tight. Protective. Like she needs protection from me. I forfeit any bedtime routines and instead strip down to my skin, dumping my clothes in a pile and crawl in behind her, carefully molding myself against her back.

“Ben?” Her sleepy voice cracks, as she rolls onto her back and looks at me with eyes that no longer dance like they used to. That’s on me. “I thought you left.”

“I did. Took the dog out.”

“No,” she sighs, her eyes swollen with sleep, and the remnant of tears, and puts her small hand in the middle of my chest. “I thought you left...me.”

Christ, she’s killing me.

“Never,” I grunt, cupping her face and pressing my forehead to hers. “Never gonna happen.”

“Good,” she mumbles, wrapping her arm around my waist and hitching her leg up on my hip, pinning me to the bed.

Everything I wanted to say dries up on my tongue when I hear the small, satisfied sigh from her lips before her breathing evens out with sleep. My thoughts keep me up until at some point, exhaustion wins.

-

The smell of coffee and soft voices wakes me up.

Before I have a chance to fling back the covers, the familiar soft padding of feet comes down the hallway. Isla’s smile is tentative when she walks in carrying a mug, and I hate that I’m the cause of it.

“Morning,” she says, too brightly. “It’s actually almost afternoon. Guess you needed your sleep. Damian is here,” she rambles. “He had a meeting in Cortez this morning and thought he’d drop in.”

The moment she puts down the mug on the bedside table, I snag her wrist and pull her down on top of me, trapping her body with my arms.

“Love you, Pixie.” I watch her eyes well up and before they have a chance to spill anything, I lift my mouth to hers and kiss her hard. “We’re gonna talk later,” I promise her when I pull back and release my hold on her. “But first I’ve gotta whiz and have a quick shower.”

I smile at her dramatic eye roll. It’s a fuckuvalot better than tears. I lift her off me and swing my legs from the bed. “Tell Damian I’ll be right there.”

“Ben,” she hisses, when I slap her butt on the way to the bathroom.

Feeling better with some decent sleep under my belt, an empty bladder, and freshly showered, I walk into the kitchen ten minutes later.

“About bloody time,” Damian ribs me.

“Miss me?” I smack the back of his head on my way to the Keurig. I need more coffee for this.

“Fuck no. Missed your girl’s cooking though,” he smiles, pointing at the empty plate in front of him.

“Yours is staying warm in the oven,” Isla says. She’s perched on a stool next to Damian, with her laptop open between them.

“I was just telling Isla that my IT specialist is tied up with a case that is heating up, as we speak, but he sent his files to GFI, Gus Flemming’s outfit? Neil James is their techie and he’s going to have a look at it.”

“Is this your way to force my hand with Flemming?” I only half-joke.

“It’s not,” Damian responds with a serious look on his face. “But GFI isn’t bound by the rules and regulations my office is limited by. I can’t ask my guy to hack into a healthcare network without a warrant. It’s one thing if he bends the rules to get some answers on one of our cases, but for something like this, he and I both could lose our jobs.”

“Fuck, man. I’m sorry,” I mumble around my first bite of Isla’s spicy scrambled eggs and ham, which I just fished from the oven. “I’m so used to working without rules or guidelines, I didn’t stop to think.” Damian just shakes his head dismissively.

“I asked Neil to meet me here. He’ll be putting some tracing software on the laptop and on your phones. He had to pick up a few things.”

Atsa, who’d been lying beside Isla’s stool suddenly lifted his head and let out a soft woof. More like a humpf. The dog clearly takes his cues from us. As agitated as he was last night when I lost it, he’s alert, but almost casually so, now. He stretches his big body and walks to stand by the front door.

I have it open before the young guy standing on the other side can even knock.

“Nice place,” the guy, who looks like a big kid, waves his arm at the view.

“Thanks,” I grumble. “You must be Neil?”

“Neil James,” he says, sticking his hand out and when I take it, his grip is sure.

“Ben Gustafson.”

“So I hear,” he says easily. His eyes, much older than the rest of him, slip over my shoulder.

“And you must be Isla.”

I step aside when I feel a hand in my back, and she steps up beside me, her hand out.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, smiling hesitantly. “Please come on in.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” the guy says, a big grin on his face as he watches her turn to go in before following behind her.

I just want to rip out his balls, through his throat.

Isla

“Do you have a desktop unit?”

The hunky, blond surfer boy, who is far too pretty to be hiding out behind computer screens and motherboards, also has a voice like silk. Sexy. Not quite the same caliber as Ben’s deep rasp, but sexy nonetheless.

“Nope, just the laptop,” I answer, only vaguely aware of Ben, who is watching our interaction closely.

“I suggest you get a desktop to run your edits in Photoshop on. It takes up a lot of your disk space on the laptop, which causes it to get sluggish. If you want, I can hook you up with a decent refurbished unit that has enough RAM to support your needs.” Neil’s smile is shameless as he wiggles an eyebrow at his own blatant innuendo.

I almost laugh out loud when I hear Ben growl, before shooting from his seat, and stepping up behind my stool. His arm slips possessively around the front of my chest, his hand cupping around my opposite shoulder, as he pulls me into his body.

“Almost done?” Ben snarls at the young pup, who seems to be having a great time rattling the older man’s cage.

“I don’t like to rush things,” Neil drawls, winking at me and effectively taking his life in his own hands. I quickly grab Ben’s arm, crossed in front of me. “I’m always thorough,” he can’t seem to resist adding.

I can’t help it; I burst out laughing when I feel Ben go rigid behind me.

“You are incorrigible.” I wag my finger at Neil. “And you,” I direct at Ben, tilting my head back so I can see the flare of his nostrils. “You need to stand down. Or did you not hear the part where Neil was telling me about his lovely wife?”

“Not to worry,” Neil interjects, aiming a grin at Ben. “All done. I’ll get out of your hair.”

Damian was already gone; he’d left, right after Neil got here, with the promise he’d be in touch. I like Damian. He looks all polished and proper, but underneath there’s this whole smoldering Latino passion. The complete opposite of Neil, who could’ve stepped right out of the movie Point Break, looking like Patrick Swayze’s younger brother, and is mischievous. A blatant flirt.

“Call me if you need me,” he says suggestively, peering around Ben’s broad shoulders when he’s being ushered out the door.

I’m still chuckling when Ben slams the door and prowls toward me, bracketing me in with his hips between my legs and my back against the counter. The angry scowl on his face just makes me laugh harder. It’s a welcome release after a tense day.

Apparently Ben’s had enough of my hilarity, because he bends down, lifts me off the stool, and tosses me over his shoulder.

“Hey!” I protest, knowing exactly where he’s taking me and what follows. “I thought we were going to talk?”

“Gonna fuck you first—then we can talk,” he says, making clear there will be no argument on that.

I’m flipped, rather unceremoniously, on the mattress and Ben doesn’t hesitate divesting me of my clothes. Every last thread.

Then he pauses, with his shirt halfway up his torso and his eyes on my body. He pulls the shirt over his head, slowly, much slower than the frantic pace he set earlier.

By the time he steps out of his jeans, I’m squirming on the bed, heated by just the touch of his eyes.

“Correction,” he rumbles, sinking down on his knees and pulling my hips toward him.

“First, I’m going to worship you—then I’m going to fuck you. Then we’ll talk—much, much later.”