Now and Then

by Mira Lyn Kelly

  Which had left her brother, Mickey. Because what if there was an emergency? What if something happened to her mom and she didn’t find out until it was too late?

  She knew Mickey was going to screw her over nine times out of ten. He was as opportunistic as their dad—or nearly. But more than anyone, her brother understood the kind of toxic impact Danny had on their lives. After all, he’d been the one offered up as collateral to a loan shark for three days while their dad had gone to get the money he owed them. The money he’d spent on more bets and wouldn’t have been able to pay back without a last-minute upset in a college football game that ultimately saved her then fifteen-year-old brother from a fate she didn’t want to contemplate, but Mickey must have known. And because of that, she’d thought, in this one thing he could be trusted.

  But once again, she’d been wrong. No one in her family could be counted on.

  And now her dad had finally made the contact she’d hoped would never come.

  “Don’t be so hard on him, baby girl. You had to know I’d get it eventually. He’s just doing what any good son would do. Easing his old father’s mind about the well-being and safety of his daughter.”

  It was all Brynn could do not to laugh into the phone and then take the device into the kitchen and run it through the garbage disposal just to make sure her point got through. But these things cost money, and thanks to her dad, it seemed money was never something she would have enough of.

  Of course, acknowledging his part in her financial strains wasn’t something Danny Ahearne would ever take responsibility for, so what was the sense in bringing it up again? Instead she got straight to what she was sure was the point of his call.

  “What do you want?”

  “To tell you you’re forgiven.”

  She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Waiting for her to say something. Thank him, maybe? She didn’t know—couldn’t begin to think of how to respond to his words.

  Did she need his forgiveness?

  Did she feel guilty over her role in his incarceration?

  Her mind tripped back to the last time he’d come to see her at her old place. To the guys who’d shown up looking for something Danny owed them. They hadn’t believed her when she said she didn’t know anything about it. And while she’d been telling the truth, sadly, they’d been right to come. Even now, a chill ran through her at the memory of huddling against the hall wall while Benny D.—one of O’Shea’s thugs, a guy only a few years older than she was—told her he believed her, but their boss had heard otherwise.

  She’d nearly vomited when they pulled out that old duffle bag. Her dad had been carrying it when he’d visited, just stopping through on his way to an interview in Indiana, he’d said. Another lie, but one she’d been more than eager to believe. She hadn’t even thought about it when he left. But apparently, that bag had been hidden in her bedroom until the guy whose name she didn’t know pushed her dresser over with a crash. Surprise!

  That first flash of devastated heartbreak lasted only seconds before the anger and outrage pushed past, taking the lead. And then ironically, it was Benny D. with his thick arms around her, trying to calm her, telling her he knew what a raw deal she’d gotten. That he’d always liked her and he wished it hadn’t gone the way it had.

  That he was sorry, but their boss had a point to make.

  She watched as his partner either broke or packed up nearly every valuable she’d had. Pocketing the refurbished iPod she’d saved for and smashing the speaker base. Stomping on her laptop computer. Sweeping her dishes from their cabinets to the floor. Dumping the contents of her small jewelry box into his jacket pocket, taking her grandmother’s tiny gold cross necklace and the silver chain bracelet Ford had given her for her birthday, neither of any value beyond sentimental, but in that, both had been priceless.

  Irreplaceable. Spilled into a pocket along with half a dozen meaningless department-store earrings and a tiny pewter bowl she set them in at night. Gone forever.

  Her dad had known O’Shea’s guys would come. He hadn’t even had enough sense or concern for her safety to keep his mouth shut about where he’d been.

  “I’m sorry, my Brynn girl,” he’d sworn, when he called days later. “You have to know, I never meant for my trouble to end up at your door.”

  Yeah, he never meant for the things that happened to happen. But then he never changed his behavior, either. She knew his addiction to gambling was an illness, and there’d been a time when she’d begged and pleaded for him to get help. He’d even gone to meetings for a few months—until he had to stop because the scam he’d started running there got him into even more trouble.

  That was the problem. What was wrong with her father wasn’t just one thing. It wasn’t just an addiction. Or just the company he kept. Or just bad judgment. Or just an overblown sense of entitlement and lack of conscience.

  It was everything combined.

  That was her dad.

  And less than a month later, she got the next call from her brother. He’d barely been able to speak when he handed the phone over to her sobbing mother, who’d just been through a similar visit. That fast, her dad had done it again, betrayed the people he shouldn’t have messed with. Only this time he hadn’t left whatever they were looking for in the place they’d been looking.

  Which meant when there was nothing to find, the point those goons needed to make had been different. Stronger.

  They’d left her mother with a black eye, a sprained wrist, a broken rib, and the promise it would be worse the next time.

  Brynn snapped, demanding her brother get their mom out of there immediately. Only he’d already tried, and she refused to leave the house where she’d raised her children. Apparently Danny had been devastated by what the thugs who’d been after him had done. He’d sworn he’d take care of everything and he’d begged for his wife’s forgiveness—which she’d obviously given, again. But Brynn hadn’t been interested in any of that.

  Not anymore.

  So she’d told her mom she wanted to come home and see for herself that she was okay. She needed to talk to her dad. When she’d disconnected the call, she didn’t even set the phone down before dialing the Milwaukee Police Department.

  Sunday at five thirty-seven, her dad was picked up in the driveway of their house on an outstanding warrant.

  It was the only thing she’d thought she could do to protect them.

  But now Danny was back. And already she could feel him threatening a life and future that had been close enough she’d swear her fingertips had almost grazed it.

  “I don’t need your forgiveness,” she stated. “And it’s not why you’re calling, either. So what do you want?”

  Danny’s deep sigh sounded through the line, and she could practically see the wheels turning as he sized up his chances for whatever he was after.

  “Back before I did my time, I made some mistakes. The stash at your place was only part of it.” He coughed off to the side, deep and rattling, before taking several slow breaths. Looking for pity, or was there actually something wrong? Was he sick, or just sick enough to use his health to manipulate her?

  “I went to jail with an outstanding debt. I knew I was going to have to pay it back. Only now that I’m out, I don’t have the money.”

  Oh God. “What did you do?”

  “I had an opportunity. An investment with a guaranteed payoff…if I could just land some capital to get in.”

  “You borrowed.” And the “investment” tanked. And now he owed even more.

  “I lost the money. It’s gone, honey. I put my faith in the wrong people…”

  Her father was still talking, telling her what he owed. What was going to happen if he didn’t find a way to pay. How he’d thought he’d finally found the means to get free of all this. How he’d been trying to do the right thing. For all of them.

  The room rocked around her, the walls tumbling in until there was nothing but her single point of focus. The door
Ford would be walking through within the hour.

  She couldn’t let him become a part of this.

  Because it was never going to end.

  Chapter 14

  God damn it.

  He’d been halfway out the door when Brynn called, the too quiet quality of her voice putting him on alert even before she’d dropped the four most loaded words in history.

  “We need to talk.”

  Every muscle in his body had gone tense. He’d swallowed. Forced himself to take a breath. “What’s going on?”

  “Some things have come up and—I don’t—we’re not—” She’d broke off and then said, “Look, neither of us expected this to last, right?”

  He’d already been out the door. “Wrong.”

  Now he was standing in front of Brynn’s apartment, his arm braced against the frame as he glared at his shoes and told himself to get his shit together.

  She couldn’t be doing this.

  Two barely controlled breaths later, he was as good as he was going to get. He knocked. The seconds ticked past, and when the door opened and he saw her eyes rimmed with red he wanted to put a fist through the wall.

  “Before you say a word, I need to know one thing.”

  Confusion pinched her brows. “What?”

  “This.” He reached for her. Her lips parted on a sharp intake of breath as he caught her by the back of the neck and pulled her hard against him. Taking her mouth, he slid past her lips with his tongue, tasting the sweetness of her as she opened wider to him. As she moaned around one thrust and melted into the next. Her hands balled in his shirt, clinging tight as she devoured him the way he was devouring her. More.

  Breaking away with a growl, he met those gorgeous Irish eyes. “That’s what I thought. You don’t kiss me like a woman who wants to say goodbye, so what the hell is going on, Brynn?”

  A single tear tracked down her cheek, ripping a hole in his heart with each new bit of creamy skin it covered. She darted a look past him toward the empty stairwell, and then wiped her cheek. Drawing him into her apartment, Brynn closed the door, locked it, and checked the peephole.

  “I didn’t say it’s what I wanted,” she began, walking over to the window, where she stood, holding her hands at her heart. Then, casting a look that he could only describe as longing, she gave him the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “If things were different, I think I might never let you go.”

  Baffled, he crossed to her, but she was urging him back to the couch, casting another quick look toward the street below before asking him to sit. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he wondered if she was trying to keep him away from the window. If there was someone out there.

  Only that was nuts.

  But so was the rest of this. Christ, she’d practically been purring in his ear when he talked to her after the game the night before.

  “Brynn, you aren’t making sense. I’m losing it here, and I need you to talk to me. So just tell me what’s going on, because whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

  Another tear tracked down her cheek as she looked at him with apology-filled eyes. “I knew better than to get involved with you. I shouldn’t have thought I’d be able—”

  “What, is this about things getting too serious? Brynn, I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but serious is good. You and me, we’re good.”

  “It’s not about us being serious.” She drew a hiccup of a breath, then shook her head. “Joe, the producer I told you about who’s moving to Boston—I’m accepting his offer to go along.”

  The floor rocked beneath him and he tensed against the upheaval. “No.”

  “I think it’s important for us to put some distance between us.”

  She was telling him about a job, but the shadows in her eyes promised that wasn’t what this was about.

  “Ford, there are things I haven’t told you. Reasons why I’ve been as resistant about us as I have.” Her shoulders straightened and she drew a slow breath. “I wasn’t honest with you when things ended with us before.”

  Before? He pulled back, frustrated and confused. What did that have to do with anything? “We were kids. What happened ten years ago is ancient history, Brynn. All I care about is what’s happening now. Today. The past doesn’t matter.”

  The look on her face was breaking his heart.

  “It does. Because it’s all tied together. Then. Now. It’s all the same.”

  The world ground to a halt around him as her words hit him square in the chest, followed by the gut-wrenching echoes of that last call.

  “There’s someone else.”

  No. No way. She hadn’t.

  There wasn’t anyone else. There couldn’t be. He knew it.

  Only the steady way she was meeting his eyes said she was telling him something it pained her to admit.

  But still, he couldn’t believe it. Hell, he hadn’t been able to believe it ten years ago. Okay, she traveled extensively for work and people got lonely on the road. They sought out connections and contact, but, fuck—

  Maybe this was the solid sock to the jaw he needed to wake up and put Brynn behind him. Turn off the feelings he didn’t seem to have any control over when she walked through his life. Maybe this time it wouldn’t take him a fucking year to get over her.

  Except one look into those soft, earthy eyes and he realized no matter what she told him, nothing was going to make this better. He loved her.

  When he saw her that first night, when they laughed together and talked like they used to, and then when he got that taste of her mouth. Of her soft sighs and needy pleas—he should have known then. He was done.

  He’d never stopped.

  “I lied to you, Ford,” she began quietly.

  “I know that. You told me ten years ago.”

  “No.” She shook her head and muttered a gold-standard obscenity, then swapped it out for its wholesome cousin.

  That conflicted mouth of hers. He wanted to roar at the thought of another man having a taste of it. He couldn’t listen to this. He couldn’t handle hearing the details of another man touching her. And yet, somehow, he remained locked in his seat.

  “I lied when I told you there was someone else.”

  He coughed in shock. Felt the walls pulse around him as Brynn quietly continued.

  “I shouldn’t have done it, but I was a coward. I was embarrassed about the truth, and at the time I thought it would be easier for both of us if I came up with something else.”

  Ford’s ears had started to ring, but by sheer force of will, somehow he managed to hang on to the words spilling from Brynn’s mouth. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes now, instead staring at the floor between them.

  He didn’t know what to think, what the hell kind of game she was playing.

  Only then that thick fan of russet lashes lifted, and those eyes. The heartbreak and pain in them. The hopelessness. And most of all, the truth.

  Now it was his hands on her arms, his head ducking down to catch her gaze. “What are you talking about, Brynn?”

  “I loved you, Ford.”

  Those words. Christ, hearing them again.

  They cut at his soul.

  “I was planning to come back after break. Everything I told you was the truth—almost everything.” She shook her head, then closed her eyes. “Everything about us and how I felt about you. Up until that last phone call, all of what I told you was true.”

  “Jesus, Brynn, I don’t understand.” None of it made sense. “What happened between the day you left and that phone call?”

  Chapter 15

  It had been ten years. Ten years and still she found the words hard to say. The shame and humiliation burned as hot and fresh as they had that first day.

  “I wasn’t honest with you about my family when we first met. You told me about yours and they sounded so perfect. Like everything I wished mine could be. And then when you asked me about my parents, and joked about how you imagined they would be—the doting dad and mother everyone wishe
d was theirs…” She swallowed hard and met his eyes. “I know it was stupid. I know it was immature and when I look back it doesn’t make any sense, but there is a part of me that wanted to live in that kind of fantasy. Pretend I had a perfect family like yours…and so I did.”

  Ford shook his head, the frustration evident on his face. “You’re embarrassed because your family wasn’t perfect? You were afraid I’d find out and that’s why you didn’t come back?”

  “No. God, no. I mean, yes, I was embarrassed, but there was more to it. My father doesn’t own a hardware store. The longest job he’s held could probably be counted in weeks rather than years. He’s a criminal. A compulsive gambler, a con artist, and the most manipulative, untrustworthy man I’ve ever met. He’s also the most charismatic and charming, which is what makes him dangerous.”

  She could see Ford still didn’t understand, but at least he was listening.

  “I’m sorry, Brynn. That must have been difficult to grow up with.”

  The memory of the grocery store parking lot where she’d been waiting in the car for her father to come back out with the ice cream blinded her a moment. The minutes ticking past. One squad car with flashing lights skidding to a stop by the front entrance and then another.

  Her dad walking out with his hands behind his back and an officer pushing him into the back of the cruiser.

  “It was.” She cleared her throat, determined to go on. “Money was an ongoing issue for us. Not just because my father couldn’t hold a job, but because he was constantly trying to score or scam his next quick buck to gamble away. And if he couldn’t, then he’d borrow. But there was only one kind of person willing to lend a guy like my dad cash. And that was the kind of guy you paid back with interest or risked him taking something a hell of a lot more valuable than money.”