[Steel Brothers 01.0] Craving

by HELEN HARDT

  Talon hesitated for a minute but then walked to the kitchen. A few seconds later, he came back with a plastic bag filled with ice. I held it to Colin’s nose.

  “Does he need an ambulance?” Talon asked.

  Colin coughed. “Of course I don’t need a damned ambulance, you Neanderthal. I can take as much as you can dish out.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Talon’s eyes lit with fire again.

  “You two stop this right now.” I stood and faced Talon, my hands on my hips. “You owe Colin an apology.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “I don’t need a goddamned apology from him.” Colin stood, holding the ice bag to his nose. “I’m staying at the Hotel Coronado in Grand Junction. I want to take you to dinner tonight.”

  “Over my dead body,” Talon said.

  “Talon, I will decide who I have dinner with, got it?” I helped Colin up and over to a chair in the living room. “You sure you don’t want me to call someone?”

  He shook his head. “Just give me a few minutes to collect myself. I’ll be fine. I’ve been in worse shape than this.”

  Back in the foyer, Talon seethed. I looked away from him. What I had just witnessed disgusted me…and unnerved me. I did not want to see him right now.

  After about fifteen minutes, I walked with Colin to his car. “Text me when you get to Grand Junction safely.”

  He nodded. “I still hope you’ll meet me for dinner tonight.”

  I shook my head. “No, Colin. That’s not going to happen. I’m sorry.”

  He drove away.

  I walked back into the house. Talon was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with that goddamned glass of water again. He looked up at me when I walked in.

  “What the hell was that all about?” I said.

  “He was kissing you.”

  “Why is it any of your business who I kiss?”

  “Well…he walked out on your wedding, so he shouldn’t be—”

  I clenched my hands into fists. “For God’s sake, Talon, do you have feelings for me or not? How did it make you feel to see him kissing me?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “You don’t know? You nearly beat him to death. I can’t believe you got so violent.”

  “I…don’t know why either.”

  “Were you jealous?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Just as well”—anger boiled within me—“because whatever this little thing was between us, it’s over. I mean really over. I don’t want anything to do with you. I’m going to talk to Marj about moving out.”

  “Marj is out at the orchard. And she wants you here.”

  “Either I’m leaving or you are, and I don’t think you are.”

  “But what about…?”

  “What about what? We shared a few kisses, a few romps in bed. It was beyond great. But you are so screwed up that I can’t get through to you. I just witnessed you nearly beat the life out of a man. Frankly, Talon, you scare me.”

  I walked back to my bedroom. Leaving was my only alternative. There was no getting around it. Something lived inside Talon, something poisonous, something I might never understand, and as long as he kept himself closed off from me and everyone else, I couldn’t risk being around him.

  I refused to lose my heart to someone who was incapable of giving me his.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Talon

  I wanted to go after her. I wanted to with everything in my body and soul. I wanted to grab her, kiss her, make her forget how angry she was.

  God… When I saw that man with his hands on her, something in me snapped. Green rage boiled through me. I had to get him off of her, off of my woman.

  But she would never be my woman. I had nothing to offer. Nothing but a few midnight kisses and romps, as she called them.

  I would still be beating the guy if she hadn’t stopped me. I’d been crazy, unable to stop. I wasn’t even thinking, and my hands and feet were acting of their own accord. A primordial need to pummel him into soup had consumed me, and all logic had fled.

  I could’ve done serious damage to him. He deserved it, for humiliating Jade the way he had, but I knew better. Knowing better hadn’t stopped me though. It never did.

  Icy chills gripped the back of my neck.

  This couldn’t go on.

  I wasn’t ready to give up. I wanted to live.

  I stood abruptly, grabbed the keys to my truck, went out the back way, and drove over to the ranch office where Jonah would be. I stormed into the office, past the office manager to Joe’s office.

  “Talon”—my older brother looked up from some documents he was reading—“what are you doing out here?”

  “I’m ready, Joe. I’m ready to get some help.”

  Joe had handed me a business card of a psychologist in Grand Junction, Dr. Melanie Carmichael. He didn’t know much about her other than she was supposed to be tops in her field and that she’d had a lot of success treating patients with histories similar to mine. He had even offered to go with me and to get Ryan and have him go as well. But no, this was something I had to do alone.

  I called the number right away, and even though it was a Saturday, Dr. Carmichael agreed to meet me in her office.

  I pulled up into the Heritage Medical Group offices and parked my car. She said she’d leave word with the security guard to let me in, since the doors were locked on weekends.

  I stood at the door, my palms leaving sweat marks on the glass. Had this been a huge mistake? A security guard sat at his desk inside. I knocked on the door. The man looked up and came to the door.

  “Mr. Steel?”

  I nodded.

  He opened the door and let me in. “Dr. C’s up on five, Suite 524. I’ll have to key in the elevator for you. They’re locked on weekends.”

  I nodded again and followed him to the elevator. He keyed in a code.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  Good luck? I warmed all over. Of course, he knew what field Dr. Carmichael was in. This shouldn’t be a surprise to me. But I wanted to disappear.

  As the elevator moved up five floors, I kept thinking of an excuse not to go and see Dr. Carmichael. I could go home and tell Jonah I’d gone. I could make up some kind of psychobabble jargon. He wouldn’t know the difference.

  But this woman had been kind enough to come and open her office for me on a Saturday. Standing her up would be rude as hell. If I was truly going to try to change, this was the first step.

  When the elevator dinged at the fifth floor, my feet became leaden. I felt like I was walking through sludge as I trudged to room 524. I walked in, but of course, there was no receptionist. It was Saturday. Where was the doctor? As I was looking around, thumbing through the magazines on the coffee table, a tall woman with strikingly light-blond hair and green eyes walked out from an adjacent room.

  “You must be Mr. Steel,” she said.

  I cleared my throat, my cheeks warming. “Yes, I’m Talon Steel.”

  She smiled and held out her hand. “Dr. Melanie Carmichael. So nice to meet you. Would you like to come on back?”

  I swallowed. In for a dozen… I followed her into her office. Her desk was in a corner, and the requisite couch sat against one wall. I was so not lying on the couch. A couple of recliners in forest-green leather sat around a marble coffee table. She sat down in one of them and motioned for me to take the other. Moving slowly, I did.

  “So what can I help you with today, Mr. Steel?” She crossed her legs and smiled.

  I sighed. Where did I begin? I didn’t have enough hours left in my lifetime to explain what had brought me in here, and most therapy sessions only lasted an hour. So I figured I’d start with what had prompted me to call.

  “I beat the shit out of a guy today.”

  She nodded. “I see. Why do you think you did that?”

  Wasn’t she supposed to tell me why? “He was kissing my sister’s friend.”

  “All right. And that kiss bothered you?”
/>   I nodded.

  “Why did it bother you so much? Is your sister’s friend your girlfriend?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t have girlfriends.”

  “You don’t? Handsome man like you? Why not?”

  “I’m just not wired that way, Doctor.”

  “Wired that way? Do you mean you’re gay?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m not gay.” The whole gay line of questioning gave me a chill. I had never been attracted to men, yet…my history… I couldn’t go there. Not yet.

  “Then why don’t you have girlfriends?”

  “I just…don’t.”

  “Okay. What types of relationships do you have with women, then?”

  “Well, the only woman in my life right now is my sister, who lives with me. Other than that, the only kind of relationships I have with women are sexual.”

  “So you’re a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. At least the leave ’em part.”

  “You use women, then. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. No, I don’t use them. They offer something to me, and I take it. What the hell is wrong with that? They’re getting what they want, and I’m getting what I want.”

  “I’m not here to judge you, Mr. Steel.”

  “Mr. Steel sounds ridiculous to me. Call me Talon.”

  “All right, if you prefer. Talon. As I said, I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help you. So let’s go back to why you beat up the man today. That appears to be the catalyst for bringing you in here, am I right?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you seen a therapist before?”

  I shook my head. God knew Ryan and Jonah had been after me for a decade to see one. Instead, I went off to Iraq, hoping to get my brains blown out. No such luck.

  “Do you have a history of violence, Talon?”

  I shook my head again. “Not really. I was in the Marines, stationed in Iraq for several years. I saw a lot of shit go down there, and I did things I would prefer not to think about, but it was all in the line of duty.”

  “Did you kill a man there?”

  More things I didn’t like to think about.

  Before I could answer, Dr. Carmichael spoke again.

  “Let’s not go there quite yet,” she said.

  Thank God.

  “Let’s go back to today. Who was this girl that the guy was kissing? Your sister’s friend. Tell me about her.”

  How could I tell her? How could I make her understand the ache inside me? I could talk for hours about Jade. I could talk for thirty minutes on those steely blue eyes of hers alone. They gripped me, tore at me, drew me to her. Emotions were rising to my surface—emotions I thought I was incapable of having.

  “She’s my sister’s best friend, and she moved out here to our ranch after she got left at the altar on her wedding day.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Dr. Carmichael said. “That’s terrible.”

  “She seems to be handling it okay. The guy kissing her was her ex. He showed up this morning.”

  “Are they reconciling?”

  “Doesn’t look that way. I mean, he totally humiliated her.”

  “But they probably still have some feelings there.”

  I tensed up in my chair, gripping the arm, my knuckles whitening.

  “So you have feelings for this Jade.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, first, the fact that you beat up her ex. Second, because you’ve got the arm of that chair in the devil’s clinch.”

  I let out a breath and consciously relaxed my hand. Yeah, she was good.

  “Tell me what you were feeling while you were beating him.”

  “It was like I wasn’t myself. Almost like my arms and legs were acting on their own. The rage was so real. It took me over so that I wasn’t even there—just the rage was.”

  “Why did you stop beating him?”

  “Jade asked me to.”

  “So Jade got through to you, through the fog.”

  She had. Through the fog… The words Dr. Carmichael used resonated with me. It had been like a fog. A thick hazy fog. A red sickness that simmered within me.

  “So is the man okay?”

  “Yeah. I was pretty hard on him, broke his nose. He’ll have a few bruises, but he’ll live.”

  Dr. Carmichael nodded. For the first time, I noticed that no notepad sat on her lap. No pen. I was one patient of many.

  “Why aren’t you taking any notes?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I like to focus on the patient during the session. I’ll make notes afterward.”

  “What if you forget something?”

  She laughed. “I’ve been using this system for the ten years I’ve been in practice. Trust me, it works for me and for my patients.”

  I nodded.

  “So how are you and Jade now?”

  “She’s pretty pissed.” Pissed enough to leave the ranch. A dagger jabbed me in the stomach.

  “I can understand that.”

  “After what he did to her, I don’t know why she didn’t want me to beat him to a pulp.”

  “Part of her probably did. But she was being rational, Talon.”

  Rational. The word hung in the air, ridiculing me. In other words, I had not been rational. Couldn’t really argue there.

  “So how did you leave things with Jade?”

  And again, the dagger. “She doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. She says she’s moving out of the ranch house.”

  “And how does that make you feel?”

  How could I answer that? I hardly knew Jade Roberts, but I had been more intimate with her in these last weeks that I had ever been with anyone in my life. I had a constant need for her, a constant ache…

  A craving.

  “Talon”—she leaned forward, her eyes serious—“this is only going to work if you open up and are honest with me.”

  I nodded. She was right. Rationally, I knew she spoke the truth. I cleared my throat and looked down at my lap.

  “Do you think you might be more comfortable with a male therapist? I have several colleagues who are excellent.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with any therapist. But my brother Jonah says you come highly recommended.”

  “That’s kind of him.”

  I nodded. I was nodding a lot.

  Her gaze turned serious again. “Talon, I know you didn’t drive all the way here into Grand Junction on a Saturday to not talk to me. Obviously, Jade and your feelings for her are what caused the issue this morning. Are you in love with her?”

  My whole body tensed, and I stood and walked over to the desk and back. “How could I be in love with her? I’ve only known her a couple of weeks.”

  “Then how do you feel about her leaving? Will you miss her?”

  Miss her? Those words didn’t even begin to encompass how I would feel if she left. Not having Jade around would be like a Colorado summer without the sun, a meadow without columbine, the Rocky Mountains without Ponderosa Pines and Aspens.

  “I will miss her.”

  Dr. Carmichael nodded. “Why do you think it was so hard for you to voice that?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that your job? To figure me out?”

  “Talon, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think things inside you run a heck of a lot deeper than you’re letting on. These feelings for Jade that are troubling you—there’s a reason why you can’t admit them. Tell me, were you close to your mother?”

  Christ, my mother. Time for a Freudian analysis. “My mother died when I was twelve.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that. Were you close to her before then?”

  “When I was really little, yeah. But then she changed.”

  “How did she change?”

  “She got very depressed. My sister was born prematurely when I was ten, and she almost died. Maybe my mother had postpartum depressio
n. I don’t know.”

  “That’s quite possible. Are you saying she took her own life?”

  I nodded. She might very well have had postpartum depression, but that wasn’t why she took her own life.

  “How about your father? Were you and he close?”

  I was surprised she didn’t ask me anything further about my mother’s suicide. Wasn’t that a shrink’s wet dream? “No, not really. He was closest to my older brother, Jonah. Come to think of it, he was pretty close to my younger brother, too, and of course to Marjorie, the only girl. She was Daddy’s little girl if there ever was one.”

  “I see. Tell me about your family dynamic. You say you have an older and younger brother.”

  “Yeah. Jonah is thirty-eight, I’m thirty-five, and Ryan is thirty-two. Marjorie didn’t come along until a lot later. She’s twenty-five.”

  “So she doesn’t even remember her mother.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So back to your father. How old is he now?”

  “He died seven years ago, right after Marjorie left for college. Heart attack.”

  “I’m very sorry about that.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “Well, like I said, we weren’t all that close.”

  “Let’s talk a little bit about your childhood, then. Were you and your brothers close growing up?”

  “Yeah, when we were little.”

  “What do you mean by that—when we were little?”

  “I guess I mean up until about the time I was ten.”

  “So what happened when you were ten?”

  I stood up, my heart pounding out of my chest. The walls—dank concrete walls—surrounded me. Closed in on me…

  I drew in a deep breath. “I have to leave now.”

  “We still have a lot of time. I’m happy to stay and help you as much as I can today.”

  “No. Don’t worry. I’ll see that you’re paid for your time. Double for coming in on the weekend.”

  “Talon, that’s not nec—”

  I walked out the door quickly, beads of perspiration emerging on my forehead, my heart beating a rapid staccato.

  Before I had gotten to the door, my legs turned to gelatin and gave out from under me, and I fell.

  Dr. Carmichael came running out of her office. “What happened? Are you all right?”