He was messed up over her. He knew it. He felt it.
Things had to change. They couldn’t keep going round in circles like this. So yeah, he’d made some promises to himself.
Then he’d gone to the bar and found her feeling up that blond Brad Pitt type, and he’d broken every last one of them. How was he supposed to know the guy was Lexie’s brother? And did that really matter? Seeing her with somebody else had shut down his brain. He’d been acting on gut instinct. Pure, primal instinct.
He swore when water spilled over the countertop and dripped onto his bare foot. Unplugging the coffee pot, he cleaned up the mess. He poured the water down the drain and turned on the light overhead. Seeing the problem, he started pulling open drawers, looking for something he could use to fix it.
Too bad he didn’t have a tool to fix what was wrong with him.
But he did.
He’d figured out what would solve everything—time and space. He’d meant what he’d said. Once he left this time, he wasn’t coming back.
It was the only way to preserve his sanity. It was the only way he’d ever be able to move on.
He stared at the coffee as it began to stream smoothly into the pot.
But did he want to move on? He heard her mumble in her sleep, and his fingers curled around a coffee cup he found in a cupboard. He wanted her so badly, his chest ached.
Was this like the craving his mother fought day in and day out?
He moved to the sofa, away from the bedroom and, hopefully, out of hearing range. As close as he wanted to be to Roxie, she always held him at arm’s length. The sex was great, but being pushed off her afterwards wasn’t. She held him off emotionally, too.
He couldn’t keep fighting against that brick wall.
He took a drink and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He might as well start tying up loose ends.
“Fishing today?” he texted to Charlie.
The answer came back sooner than he expected. For someone who’d worked the night shift for decades, the former barkeep was transitioning well. Billy quickly made plans with his old friend. With the way things were going, he’d probably be heading out of town sooner rather than later. He didn’t want Charlie to get caught up in the middle.
Task done, Billy took another drink of his coffee. He was rubbing at the tension in the back of his neck when he noticed something on the floor, tucked up under the sofa. Something black and dangerous-looking…
Roxie’s boot.
He picked up the leather footwear and its unattached heel. Sitting back, he considered the break.
She’d done it up good.
It had split right along the seam. Dried glue globs had curled, and sharp nails pointed this way and that. He aligned the parts, trying to figure out how to mesh them back up. The two pieces had been made for each other, but now there was so much crap in the way. What had held them together was now keeping them apart.
He was no cobbler. It was going to take special tools and probably a jig of some sort to fix this. It was a shame, because she’d been right.
They were pretty kick-ass.
The sound of padding feet made him lift his head. Roxie stood in the bedroom doorway, rubbing her eyes.
“You fixed my coffeemaker?” she asked, sniffing the air hopefully.
His gaze stuck on her. She was wearing his Harley tee. It draped like a dress over her smaller form and came down to midthigh. The thing covered her completely, but the soft material didn’t hide the shape of her nipples. They were perky and alert.
He cleared his throat. “The nozzle was plugged.”
“Mmm,” she hummed as she stretched her arms overhead.
Billy slowly put the broken boot pieces back on the floor. The T-shirt had lifted high on her legs with the move, and his mouth had gone dry.
She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.
He watched as she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. The damn breakfast bar hid her from the waist down, but he saw the pleasure that crossed her face when she tasted the strong brew. Her hair was wild across her shoulders, and her eyes were still sleepy.
She took another sip before she felt his stare.
Watching him, she leaned forward and braced her elbows on the kitchen island that separated them. “Are we calling a truce today?”
Right now, he’d do about anything she wanted.
He nodded. “I’ll show you how I worked the computer search.”
They’d just get that out of the way and be done with it.
“Is that how you found your mother?”
He shrugged. “I went out and talked to people who knew people.”
“Why can’t we do that?”
“Who do you want to talk to?”
She scowled and her attention dropped back to her coffee.
Right, that’s what he’d thought. “Use the computer to find people who might know something. You can nose around town afterwards. Better yet, let me do that part.”
He didn’t like the thought of her running around confronting strangers. The scenes he’d encountered as he’d followed the trail to that bridge in Minnesota hadn’t been pretty. She was tough, but he didn’t want her to be in danger.
She frowned and set her mug aside. As much as she wanted answers, he could tell she wasn’t looking forward to the process of finding them. Patience had never been one of her virtues.
When she wanted something, she wanted it now.
Pushing her hair over her shoulder, she looked at him again. Her eyes were more alert, and her cheeks were pink. That bird outside had finally gone silent, but Billy could have sworn the sound of a pulse filled the room. He felt her gaze draw slowly down his bare chest to his belly and then his jeans.
Right on cue, he was hard again.
“Where’s your duffel bag?” she asked.
“In the apartment downstairs.”
“Do you want to bring it up here?”
“It’s okay where it is.”
She stretched, arms overhead, and he was straining the zipper.
“Well, I’m taking a shower,” she said, her voice still morning husky.
She rounded the breakfast bar, heading for the bathroom, and his gaze was on her like a heat-seeking missile. There was something about seeing her in his clothes. That T-shirt should look like a sack on her, but it was touching her bare skin. Sliding against firm thighs, kissing her curved bottom, and cupping those gorgeous breasts…
She didn’t throw him another look. She didn’t even lend him a smile.
But the T-shirt was lifting as she closed the bathroom door behind her…
Billy glided to his feet like a panther to follow her. He was unzipping his jeans before he was halfway across the room.
They might be bad for each other. He intended to leave all this dysfunctionality behind him, but he wasn’t a saint. He was here now, and he wanted her.
He was going to take as much as he could before time ran out.
Because it was going to have to last him forever.
* * * * *
The shower took longer than expected, because things had turned hot in there, too. Billy’s knees still weren’t feeling all that steady as he lowered himself onto the sofa beside Roxie.
She’d gone down on him.
Sexily and confidently.
It messed with his head even more, but he hadn’t complained.
He passed her another cup of coffee.
“Stop procrastinating,” he ordered as he jabbed the power button on the computer in her lap.
They were going to get serious about this search today. He’d promised her sisters and neither of them could go on in limbo much longer.
He watched as she navigated to the website she’d been on the other day. She was adept, but he couldn’t see her ever spending much time hunched over the thing. She had way too much energy and was way too impatient for that.
Stretching out, he planted his feet on the coffee table. The red sofa lo
oked trendy, but it wasn’t all that comfortable.
“What is it you’re hoping to find?” he asked.
“I told you,” she muttered, her head bent. “Answers.”
“What would be the best case scenario?”
Her head came up at that. “I don’t think there is one,” she admitted. “Either they’re bad people or they gave up their kids.”
“There are always extenuating circumstances,” he said softly. “Maybe they thought they were giving you a chance at a better life.”
Her teeth caught at her lower lip. “Or maybe they’re dead. Maxie’s adoptive parents died in a car accident when she was seven.”
Aw, hell. Draping his arm along the back of the couch, Billy massaged the tight muscles in Roxie’s neck. She didn’t like that idea at all, he could tell. She might say all she wanted was answers, but he knew better. She wanted to look her parents in the eye.
He had.
She toyed with the wireless mouse. “Maxie has a drawing our mother did. I don’t have anything like that.”
His heart squeezed just a little. “You have a memory of your mother. You told me about it.”
“But it’s vague and fuzzy. Impressions more than anything.”
“Maxie and Lexie must have forgotten her, though.”
She went still. “How do you know that?”
It was an obvious deduction. They’d both moved on to new lives with new families. At that young of an age, how could they have remembered where they’d started?
“That’s what you have,” he whispered. She’d had two years with her mother and nobody had really stepped in to replace her. The memory had taken. He knew how that worked. He’d been separated from his mom when he’d been nine. He had more memories than Roxie did.
He frowned. Not all of them were bad.
“What are you going to do if you get your answers?” he asked. Knowing her, she hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she needed to. He didn’t want her to go into this unprepared. Unarmed. They weren’t just pecking around on websites. There was a goal here. “What if your parents are alive?”
Her eyes turned stormy. “Do you keep in touch with your mom? Are you all buddy-buddy?”
“No,” he confessed. He shifted on the cushions, feeling unfamiliar guilt. He’d gotten his mother into a facility, but then he’d pretty much walked away.
Like she had when he was a kid.
A muscle in his jaw worked. Roxie was the only person who’d asked him how things had gone with his mother. Everyone at the shop had automatically assumed the reunion had gone down like a fairy tale. It hadn’t.
But thinking back, he remembered the joy in his mom’s eyes when he’d told her his name. It had gotten through the haze of drugs that had clouded her mind.
He cleared his throat. “Are you going to rip into them? Is that what you need? To vent your anger?”
“It’s not anger,” she said under her breath.
Not all of it, anyway.
She hooked her hair behind her ear, her hand shaking almost imperceptibly.
Whatever the results, she didn’t want to let them close. That much Billy knew. If she showed her anger, they’d know how much they’d hurt her.
That had been his crucial error.
Once Roxie was hurt, she barricaded herself against the person who’d caused the pain. He’d seen her do it time and again. There was the foster mother who’d told her to stop whining because she’d had a nightmare. A clergyman who’d visited the group home had told her she needed to pray for forgiveness. Then there was the teacher who’d done nothing to stop the bullying when other kids had found out that Roxie didn’t have parents—and then had sent her to the principal for fighting when she’d kicked their butts.
Life had been tough on her. She never forgot, and she never forgave. Her parents, the system… him.
“Lexie and Maxie want to meet them, if they can,” she said. “I just want to know why.”
She wanted a hell of a lot more than that.
He just didn’t think she knew it yet.
“Okay,” he said, putting his coffee cup on a coaster. “Let’s see what we can do.”
They worked for over an hour, testing Roxie’s ability to focus. The deeper they dug, the more confused Billy got. They didn’t have much to go on. She had the records she’d been given when she left the foster care system. They contained school and medical reports, but not much from her youngest years. More helpful were Maxie’s adoption papers and the letter she’d found from her grandmother, but they didn’t give away any information on birth parents.
Even the info they had was questionable. Roxie’s surname had been Jones before they’d gotten married, but they had no way of knowing if that had been her true last name or something somebody had slapped on some paperwork. With as common a name as it was, it wasn’t all that helpful.
Billy even took over the keyboard for a while. The search he’d conducted had been difficult, but nothing like this. They were coming up with jack squat.
There were no birth announcements or news articles that they could find. Identical triplets were rare. There should have been something. Businesses generally like to donate products to generate good will. Charities like to help out. Volunteers want to babysit.
But there was no mention of people flocking to help a family of three identical little girls.
They widened their search outside of Cobalt City, even though Lexie and Maxie had both been adopted there. Every time Billy thought about that story, his teeth gritted a little tighter.
“Okay, let’s call it a day,” he finally declared. “We’ve redone your profile and put out some more generic feelers. The best thing to do now is to wait to see who responds.”
Roxie couldn’t sit still any longer. It wasn’t just the computer work that was bothering her. This search was more important to her than she wanted to admit and getting nowhere was frustrating her.
He stood up and felt his back pop. He squeezed his bare toes into the carpet and finally felt the need to put on some socks. Clouds had moved in, covering the sun outside. While cozy, the living room wasn’t as warm as her bed. He glanced at the clock.
“I need to get going. Charlie and I are going fishing.”
A pout crossed Roxie’s face before she could hide it, and Billy bit the side of his cheek. They hadn’t meant to leave her out. “Did you want to come?”
“Fishing? Really?” She pushed her hair over her shoulder. “I have some things I need to get done.”
Billy’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like that tone—flat and distant. They’d been working together well, but he was suddenly at arm’s length again?
To hell with that. Now that he’d made up his mind that this would be their last hurrah, he didn’t want to sleep in the abandoned apartment downstairs.
He’d been alone too much of his life.
“See you tonight?” he pressed.
“Okay.”
Her attention was on the computer when he caught her by the back of the neck. He gave her a hot, solid kiss and kept at it until she relaxed back against the sofa cushions. “Bye.”
“Bye,” she whispered, her voice husky.
That was more like it. Gathering up his things, he headed for the door.
He meant to head out straight to his truck. He really did.
When he made it down one flight of stairs, though, he found himself turning towards that abandoned second floor apartment. He stared at the door for a long moment, lost in thought. Finally, he let himself in.
He took his cell phone out of his back pocket and opened the address book. It wasn’t a number he knew by heart. Every other time he’d called, it had been for updates or billing questions. This time when a pleasant voice came on the line, he sat down on a chair.
“Can I talk with Marley Cannon, please?” He fiddled with the zipper on the duffel bag on the table in front of him. “This is her son, Billy.”
* * * * *
The digital age w
as for the birds. Roxie tucked the laptop into its place on a shelf and walked away. She’d been too angry and stubborn to try to find answers about her childhood before. Now that she and her sisters had joined forces, though, she wanted details ASAP. So far the Internet had been a bust.
And boring.
She’d rather be flipping through microfiche or combing through documents down at the city courthouse like they did in the old movies. At least then she’d feel like she was making progress. All this pointing and clicking was giving her a headache.
The Internet provided too much anonymity, anyway. She wanted to look into people’s eyes as she asked them questions. She wanted to read their twitches and tells. That’s how Billy had eventually tracked down his mother.
Look how well that had turned out.
She let out a huff and combed her fingers through her hair. He’d left and the bar didn’t open for hours and hours. What was she supposed to do until then?
She let out a groan. Um, probably clean up the mess from yesterday?
Slipping her phone out of her pocket, she hit speed dial for the number that had become her most-dialed in recent months.
“Replay,” came a pleasant, professional voice.
Roxie smiled. That voice had sounded different yesterday when it had been screaming “Run!” at her. “Have you had lunch?” she asked.
It was late notice, but she thought she’d give it a shot.
“I could eat,” Lexie said, her smile showing through her voice.
The knot in Roxie’s stomach eased a bit. Lexie didn’t sound upset with her.
“Want to come over here?” her sister asked. “There’s a new place in the Boutique Village I’ve been wanting to try.”
“Sounds good.” The Boutique Village was in East Cobalt. It was a little coven of artists and tradesmen trying to make their way. It wasn’t as snobby as some of the higher end places on that side of the river, and Roxie felt comfortable there. “I’ll meet you.”
The coffee shop was comfortable and quaint. It was busy, but not so much that they felt rushed. Best of all, the food was to die for.
Roxie Page 11
