CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As soon as she was dressed, Shannon returned to the kitchen. Michael rose, and hugged her.

“I’m sorry, Shannon bean. I didn’t mean to get mad at you.”

She rested her cheek against his chest. “It’s okay. I just want you to respect my choices.”

“I know,” he said softly.

“Even if you don’t agree with them,” she added.

He chuckled. “You know me too well.”

“I do.”

She pulled apart. “I need to put on my makeup and dry my hair. Is the video done?”

He nodded. “It’s just compressing. I’ll be out of here in a few minutes.”

“Thanks for doing that.”

“You know I’d do anything for you,” he said, tucking a finger under her chin so she looked him in the eyes.

“Duh,” she said, playfully. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

A faint trace of a smile appeared on his lips. Rare for Michael. He was usually so intense, so serious. But the smile was a rueful one. He looked her up and down. “Could you wear a sack instead of that dress? Maybe a paper bag?”

She scoffed. “No such luck.”

He sighed heavily. “What time should I pick you up? You only need an hour with him, right? Tell me where to come get you.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Nice try, buddy.”

He parked his hands on her shoulders. “Be careful. I don’t want anyone hurting you.”

“I know,” she said softly. She didn’t want that either. Not one bit. Seeing Brent again was like tearing off the protective coating she’d worn for the last decade. Like peeling it off, leaving it in a heap on the floor, and whispering please don’t hurt me.

“Are you going to tell him? About what happened in London?”

“How do I even say it?” she asked, sinking down to a kitchen chair. “I haven’t talked to anyone but you and grandma about it in years.”

He took her hands in his, and his touch was comforting, as it always had been. “You just say it. You say there’s something I need to tell you. And then you get the words out.”

Her shoulders rose and fell as she took a big breath. Michael always made things sound so... doable. Surely this was one of those things. She swallowed and parted her lips to speak. Brent, you were going to be a dad.

That was as far as she made it in her head before the tears welled up. Michael wrapped his arms around her and comforted her. “It’s too hard,” she said.

“It is hard. But it’s important.”

She nodded into his chest. She’d have to find a way. She hadn’t expected she’d be at this point so quickly. She hadn’t entertained the idea that she’d be facing this hurdle so soon. A dinner here, a few lunches there, and she’d already reached this crossroad, this terrible truth that she had to serve up. But she needed to spend more time with the words. With the right order to say them in. Maybe tonight she could manage it.

She returned to the bathroom, drying her hair as she practiced.

I was pregnant with your baby.

I wanted to tell you. I tried to find you. I didn’t know what to do.

Then my body failed me again.

The words were awful, like jagged glass in her mouth. They hurt so much. Too much. The reminders of her failures were overwhelming—her body failed her as a dancer, her body failed her as a mother.

She wanted a night that didn’t fucking hurt.

Tomorrow. She’d deal with it tomorrow. Truths like this were best delivered in the morning, right? She could have this evening with him, spend the night together, and then in the morning she’d discover the right words.

In the morning she’d be ready.

As she applied blush and mascara, she focused on locking up the memories so they wouldn’t ruin her present for the next few hours. Memories had a way of sneaking up on you, and knocking you down. They could grab you by the throat and throttle you. Images of her father’s blood in the driveway, of her mother’s screams that night and then again when the detectives came to arrest her, of her own arms wrapped around a tiny person who wouldn’t live. Memories could be cruel in their ambushes.

Heartless things.

Reaching for her phone, she opened her picture gallery and found the shot from yesterday. Brent kissing her in the photo booth. Blurry, yet so clear. He was the pain, and he was the protection from it.

* * *

After Michael left, she closed her eyes and practiced one of her yoga techniques. As she raised her arms high above her head in the mountain pose, she imagined clearing her mind of all that hurt, freeing her body from the harshness of all that had gone wrong with it, and returning to the woman she had been before. The woman she used to be with Brent, and still could be. Physical, sexual, connected with him in that way. She felt connected to him in so many ways already, and maybe it was selfish, or maybe it was necessary, but tonight she wanted to be one with her body, not warring with it. Because her heart, mind and body wanted that man again.

As she opened her eyes, she spotted the framed photo of the sunflowers on the kitchen counter. Her way to remember what she’d lost in London. She brushed her fingertips to her lips, then pressed them against the image.

A kiss for the boy who wouldn’t be.

* * *

Cool white lobby. Etched glass on the double doors. Sleek blond wood floors and stairs that matched. The kind of stairs that were see-through, that almost seemed to be floating because you could look down and see the floor below. He drank it all in. Her building. Her home. She’d buzzed him in, and he still couldn’t believe he was there. It was as if he’d gained entry to a secret castle, to the tower at the top of it. Follow this path, take the fork in the road, and climb all the way up. At the top, there she will be.

The woman he wanted.

The only woman for him.

The soles of his shoes echoed on the steps as he walked up the three flights to her home, staring left then looking right, inhaling everything. For so long, he’d searched for her. He’d tried to picture her, to imagine her life, her home, and her place in the world.

Right here. He was in it now. Mere feet away from where Shannon Paige-Prince had lived for the last few years. Only a handful of miles away from his home. So damn close, and so incredibly far away. He turned the corner on the next landing, and lifted his foot on the step, then he froze.

He didn’t move. He was stuck in a sliver of stalled time.

Michael walked down the stairs. His eyes were razors. His jaw twitched. The sound of the other man’s shoes clanged loudly in Brent’s ears, snapping him back to attention.

He unfroze.

“Hey, Michael,” he said, doing his very best to keep it casual, keep it chill. “Good to see you again.”

Brent hadn’t spoken to the guy since Michael had helped him get the ring. He hadn’t seen Michael since Christmas that same year, when he’d met him, along with Ryan, Colin, and Shannon’s grandparents. Brent and Shannon had flown back to Vegas together for the holiday break. He’d met her family and she’d met his. A few months later, he’d proposed. Her brothers had all liked him.

Didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know the opposite was true now.

Michael’s dark eyes raged as he stared at Brent. He raised his left hand, clapped it on Brent’s arm. But it wasn’t a friendly pat. It didn’t speak of years missed. It didn’t say good to see you too, man. His hand sent another message. Do not fuck with my family.

Michael spoke, low, but powerful. Like a hiss. “My sister is one of the most important people in the world to me. I swear,” he said, letting his voice trail off like the smoke from a fired gun. Brent parted his lips to say something, anything, but Michael left him no room. This was not a conversation. It was a speech. “If it were up to me, you’d never get close enough to hurt her again. You have no idea what you did to her. You fucking broke her heart—”

He held up a hand. “I know, man. And I am sorry. And I have told her that—”

Michael didn’t even acknowledge the words. “And if you do it again, you will know a new kind of hell.” Michael’s hand moved to Brent’s collar. He smoothed it out. Brent’s collar didn’t need smoothing. “I will not hurt you with fists, because I am not that kind of a man, but I will make sure you are fucked in this town. Is that clear?”

Brent shrugged off Michael’s hand. As much as he understood where Michael was coming from, he wasn’t going to let himself be manhandled.

He raised his chin. “Message is loud and clear, Michael. But I want you to know I’m not the same guy I was ten years ago, and I will do whatever I have to do to prove that to your sister,” he said, then paused, because as much as he didn’t intend to get pushed around, he also knew he had to show some respect to a man who looked out for his own. “And to you.”

Michael didn’t answer. He simply stared at him and breathed out hard. He lifted his chin slightly, a nearly imperceptible nod.

“You better,” Michael said, then resumed his pace, walking down the stairs, the confrontation over. Each man had said his piece.

Brent cleared the moment from his head and made his way to Shannon’s door, knocking twice. When she answered, there was no real estate in his brain for anything but her. He forgot about everything else in the world—schedules, plans, flights? Gone.

“Wow.”

He’d never been short of words. Never.

But as he repeated himself, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to speak again. She knocked the breath from his lungs and stole the words from his tongue. “Wow.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she jutted out her hip. The dress she wore had been painted on. The color of champagne, and with some kind of shimmer to the fabric, it hugged her hips, her thighs, her flat belly, and her beautiful breasts. He wished he had been there to watch her slip it on and zip it up. More than that, he hoped he’d be taking it off tonight. Feeling everything underneath. Tasting every inch of her skin. Watching her arch beneath him.

“You like?”

He shook his head. “I love.”

He loved everything about her. The dress that was caressing her body. The bare legs boldly on display. The red leather shoes that he’d bought for her.

Most of all, what she’d said about those shoes the other day. And is this your way of trying to fuck me again?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Right now.

Skip the show. Spin her around. Fuck her against the wall.

Wait. No. Spread her on the table. Get those legs of hers where he wanted—up on his shoulders.

She stepped closer to him, ran her hands down the front of his dark blue button-down shirt. Her touch was electric. It torched his blood. It was a bolt of lust slammed through his body. She trailed her fingernails down the buttons on his shirt, and he was sure she was reading his mind, seeing straight through him.

“You look so handsome tonight,” she said, and there was softness in her voice, an affection that surprised him, maybe because his mind was so damn focused on the rest of her. On having her body.

But this side, this sweet side…it worked its way through him like a good drug. He wanted this side of her, too. All of her.

“Thank you,” he said, once again robbed of quips and wit.

She raised a hand and cupped his cheek. “So damn handsome,” she repeated, and that tenderness turned him speechless. There was vulnerability in her voice tonight and he wanted to handle her with care. To shove all this lust and desire aside and give her whatever she wanted, whatever she needed.

He threaded his hands up the back of her hair, letting the soft strands spill all over his fingers. She closed her eyes and sighed contentedly. Oh hell, he stood no chance. He didn’t want to stand a chance of fighting anything he was feeling for her.

Because he felt everything.

He whispered her name.

She whispered something better. “Kiss me.”

He ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. She murmured and melted into his arms. She fit him so perfectly, sliding against him, their bodies like magnets, seeking their opposite, finding their way home.

He kissed her, soft and tender, and he could have gone on all night. Could have kissed her forever. But he wanted to take her to the theater, too. To prove he’d changed. That he could put her first. Ahead of himself.

When he pulled away, he spotted a picture on her kitchen counter, a close-up of sunflowers, lit from the sun with a bright, golden glow around the petals.

He tipped his chin to the image. “Did you take that?”

“I did,” she answered without looking at him, as she gathered her purse from the table.

“Didn’t know you were into photography.”

“I’m not,” she said.

In the corner of the photo, he could barely make out the edge of a stone. He was about to ask where she’d taken the picture, but when he turned around she was on the other side of the door, ready and eager to go.

He clasped her hand and walked her down the stairs, leaving her home far behind them.

* * *

It worked. It always worked with Brent. His touch erased the bad. His mere presence made her start to feel good again. To feel happy. To feel hope. She loved who she could be with him. And she wanted to be that woman tonight. Not the woman who’d lost so many pieces of her family, young and old, leaving her with just memories in frames.

Memories she’d have to share soon enough.

For now though, for this second in time, as she slid into the town car with him, she was the woman she wanted to be.

There would be time to say all those things.