by Stacy Gail
“You would have gotten there eventually.” Dallas sat at her desk in the converted parlor, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. It was midmorning Sunday, yet she felt like she’d already gone through a full day. Maybe having no sleep had something to do with it. “How did Ry take the news?”
“You’d think he was the first man to have ever gotten a woman knocked up,” came the laughing reply. “Honest to God, my man is freaking strutting. This morning he even mentioned taking out a full-page announcement in the paper.”
“Don’t announcements usually happen after a birth, and not at conception?”
“Brody men aren’t known to go the usual route.”
Dallas’s scoff tasted bitter. “Tell me about it.”
There was a beat of silence. “Was that meant to be ominous? Because that sounded ominous to me. Did something happen?”
“You could say that.” Dallas rubbed at her scratchy, sleep-deprived eyes and sighed. “Killian convinced me he’s insane. At three o’clock in the morning, no less.”
“What did he do?”
“He jumped to the totally irrational conclusion that since there was a car parked outside the house, I must be one-night-standing some imaginary dude who gave me a ride home.”
“Holy crap,” Celia murmured, sounding torn between horror and sympathy. “How very Neanderthal of him.”
“That is a perfect description.”
“I swear, there’s just no telling which way these Brodys are going to jump. It’s like they all think they have to be in charge of absolutely everything, every second, in order to feel like they’re in control, and if they’re in control, nothing bad will happen. It’s maddening. If Ry weren’t so damn sexy, I would have strangled him long ago. Well, that, and he knows how to apologize when he realizes he’s acting like a bossy tyrant.”
“So there’s hope? They’re capable of recognizing they’re insane?”
“I don’t know about Killian, but Ry is. Though usually I have to hit him over the head with the fact that he’s stepped over the line with his personal brand of crazy, and I’ve reached my damn limit.”
“What do you do?” Maybe she could pick up some pointers.
“Twice now I’ve locked him out of the house, once before we got married and once after. I’ve also found out that sleeping in the guest bedroom sends a clear message that I’m seriously done with his shit. He’s not a fan of that,” she added on a chuckle. “He just relocates. But the message gets through.”
That certainly wouldn’t work for her situation. “I guess I’ll just have to keep moving the dresser in front of the door.”
“What?”
“It’s not import—” A sudden, melodic chime pealed through the house, stunning her into momentary silence. “Uh, I think I just heard a doorbell.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too. Who would possibly drive all the way up to the main house on a Sunday morning?”
“Whatever they’re selling, I’m not buying.” Quickly saying her farewells, Dallas hung up and padded on bare feet to the front door. Curiously she peered through the bits of stained glass in the front door before opening it to two unfamiliar men dressed like ranch hands. “Yes?”
One of the men swept his battered straw cowboy hat off his head with one hand, and lifted an equally battered toolbox with the other. “’Morning, ma’am. We’re here to install the locks.”
Dallas stared at them. “Locks?”
The other man held up a package. “That’s right. Got the deadbolt and new door handle for your room right here.”
“Uh...”
“Let them in. They’ll install the locks on your door and be out of your hair in twenty minutes.”
At the sound of Killian’s voice, something jolted like a frightened rabbit inside her chest. Hastily she looked past the two ranch hands and found him leaning back against his truck, a low-crowned gambler’s cowboy hat shading his eyes.
Oh, boy.
She invited the two men into the house with a wave of her hand, all the while never taking her eyes off the biggest threat—Killian. She’d known there was no avoiding crossing paths with him again; with the Brody name stamped on everything as far as the eye could see, that was pretty much inevitable. But as long as she kept a certain distance between them—like, for instance, the Grand Canyon—she could find it in her to tolerate him.
“So,” she decided to start off before he could take control of the situation, “on a scale of one to ten, how insane are you right now? If you’re needing clarity on the scale’s limits, you were burying the needle at a hard ten earlier this morning.”
He slid his thumbs into his jeans pockets, but otherwise didn’t move. “I’m probably still up there, all things considered.”
“That’s not good.” For her, anyway.
He seemed to read her mind. “At least this time I’m pissed off at myself instead of you.”
Good. “That makes two of us. What’s with the locks?”
“You’ll scar the floor up if you keep moving the dresser back and forth. Once they get that deadbolt out of its packaging, they’re instructed to give you the keys. There are no duplicates, so you’ll be the only one who has them. That way you can rest easy knowing you’re safe, and that you’ll never have to change in the fucking closet ever again. That reminds me, those guys will also fix the closet door and put the mattress back on right once they’re done installing the locks.”
“You think I left things like that? After you blew through here like Hurricane Killian, I put the door back on its track and the mattress back where it belongs.” She frowned, studying him with bleary eyes, only to realize he looked pretty damn bleary himself. Again, good. “This show of...of whatever this is, doesn’t undo what happened.”
“It’s no show, because undoing a clusterfuck of this magnitude is impossible. It’s not even about me. It’s about you being so damn insecure in this world, you’ve lived a life where the concept of changing your clothes inside a goddamn closet isn’t anything new to you. That anyone would ever be forced into that kind of behavior because they didn’t feel safe is seriously fucked up, Dallas.”
Her cheeks burned. “It’s not my fault I had to act that way.”
“I know that. Some sick fuck made you feel that vulnerable in the past, and I did that to you in the here and now. Because of that, I’ve got to take the responsibility of finding a way to make you feel safe again. The locks are a start.”
“Well.” She mulled that over a while. “That’s fair.”
“Thought I’d try it out, being fair.”
“How does it feel?”
“A hell of a lot better than what I was feeling last night. Last night was fucking insane.”
He’d get no argument on that. “What exactly did happen last night? Or I should say, earlier this morning?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Saw your car, thought you’d brought home some guy.”
She’d already figured out that much. “So what if I had? Oh wait, let me guess,” she interrupted herself, and there was no stopping the tsunami of bitterness that poured into her tone. “You thought I was just as easy as my mother obviously was, right? You thought I just had to fuck around with some rando guy the moment the opportunity presented itself, is that it? My so-called whoreness that I apparently inherited from my mother offended you, because I was practicing my whoreness in the Brody homestead.”
“You like making up words, don’t you?”
She ignored him. “I’m right about this, aren’t I? You look at me, and all you see is my mother.”
“You’re nothing like your mother,” he sighed, shaking his head. “But come to find out, I’m exactly like mine.”
She blinked. Okay, she hadn’t seen that one coming. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the reason why I flipped out. I never thought I’d be capable of it, you know?” he went on while she just stared at him. “I mean, when you spend all your formative years living with someone who�
�d been driven right out of her damn mind with it, you promise yourself that you’re never going to be that way. You’ll never get that emotionally jacked up. But it happened to me, and I still can’t fucking believe it.”
“Okay, I give up,” she said, raising her hands. “I can’t figure out what you’re saying without some sort of clue. Who was driven out of their mind by what, and you promised yourself you’d never be what way?”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “Jealous. My mother was driven out of her mind by jealousy, and I swore I’d never be the jealous type. But,” he spread his hands wide, “here I am.”
Holy crap. She was so sleep-deprived her ears were now playing soap opera-style tricks on her. “I think I must be dreaming with my eyes open. Could you repeat that?”
“Yeah, no.” The huff of laughter that escaped him had nothing to do with humor. “I’ve never gone into a lot of detail about how batshit-crazy my mother went when Desmond got dropped on our doorstep, have I?”
Danger, sore spot ahead. “We both know I went through the flipside of that same train wreck, so I never felt like you had to.”
“Just because we experienced that same blow-up of family life doesn’t mean we know what the other went through, though I can promise you I’m going to get to the bottom of your story in due time. But at the moment, you’re the one who’s entitled to a few solid answers so you know what you’re dealing with when it comes to me.”
He waited a beat, and she knew instinctively that he’d stop if she asked him to. “I’m listening.”
He tilted his head as if in thanks. “When Des got landed with us, I watched my mother—a sweet woman who’d always had a hug or a smile at the ready—turn into a screaming maniac. Eventually she came to threaten every single one of her children with murder, because she seemed to revel in the prospect of destroying my father’s ultimate legacy—his children. In her mind, we were no longer seen as her children. In the end, I don’t think we were even human to her. We were just potential tools that could be used to hurt our dad.”
“Wow,” Dallas whispered, horrified. “Then again, my father said he’d kill either Des or my mom if she didn’t get Des out of his sight, but that was the night the blood tests came back. It didn’t go on for years.” Not that it could have, she thought with a silent shudder. Her mother had died by her own hand about a month or so after they’d left Bitterthorn. “That craziness with your mom went on for years, didn’t it?”
Killian’s nod was grim. “I don’t know if my brothers are aware that she was that far gone right from the beginning, because my old man wanted to spare the younger ones. He didn’t spare me, though. I was the oldest, so whenever he was away on business, I’d be all that was left to defend my brothers. I lost count of how many nights I stayed up all night guarding the bedrooms of my brothers so she wouldn’t kill them in their sleep.”
That was so wrong she couldn’t even put a voice to it. “And...your father just left you all in the same house with that woman? Where the hell did he have to go that was so frigging important?”
“Like I said, business.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
“That’s how it was. And as the years went on, he was home less and less. Truth be told, that bastard didn’t have the guts to own his shit and take charge of his woman, his family. Whenever he was gone, he’d put me in charge of keeping everyone safe from her.” Another humorless scoff escaped him. “Like safe can ever be a thing when you live with the human equivalent of a ticking time bomb.”
“There are no words.” Anger on his behalf began to seethe in her blood. “He put the pressure of keeping your younger brothers alive on your shoulders, when it was his responsibility to ensure your safety, and theirs. I can’t even imagine what that would do to someone. How old were you?”
“From the age of twelve until I left for college at eighteen, when I handed that pressure off to Ry, this was how I lived my life in this nightmare of a house.”
“My God,” she whispered. As furious as she was with him, she couldn’t help but pity the boy he’d once been. “That is just so wrong.”
“You can bet growing up like that set some hardcore beliefs in me. I saw firsthand what jealousy can do, so I swore to myself that I’d never become like that. I’d never care enough about another human being to the point where I’d lose my mind, and I’d never slip into some lunatic need to punish the world because I felt slighted by that person. But I did. And it was because of you.”
Dallas absorbed this piece by piece, and tried to figure out if she was insane for feeling just the faintest sliver of pride that she’d ignited such profound feelings in a man who was as wild and untamed as the world around him. “Are you telling me this because you blame me for how you feel?”
“God, no. I’m telling you what happened as straight-up as I know how. I think it’s important you know where I stand.”
She frowned. “Where you stand?”
“I was jealous because I wanted to be the man you took to bed, Dallas. I wanted to be the man who watched you strip. I wanted to be the man you wanted so much you had to have him inside you. That’s where I’m standing, right here and now.”
A wave of heat rolled through her, and though she told herself it was embarrassment, she knew that the surging dampness at the juncture of her thighs was something else. “You already told me you wanted to be fuck buddies. This isn’t new, and it doesn’t excuse your behavior.”
“I’m not looking to make excuses, and this is totally new for me. I’ve never been jealous in my life, because no one’s meant anything to me. You do. That’s why I’m here this morning. I don’t want you to be afraid of me, so that explains the locks. You should also know that from now on, during non-business hours I promise to use the front doorbell so you can choose whether or not you want to let me in. You set the boundaries, and I’ll respect them. Just tell me what you need from me to feel secure, and I’ll do it, no questions asked. The only thing that matters to me is making you feel safe in this world.”
“You’re right,” she said shakily while his words worked on her anger until it was almost impossible to hold onto. But damn it, she wasn’t about to just shrug off his crappy behavior like it was nothing. “You are still insane.”
“Probably.” He lifted a shoulder like he wasn’t that interested in the state of his mental health. “But my bout of jealous insanity cleared my mind when it came to one fact. Since I realized that I want to be the man in your bed, there’s nothing on this earth that’s going to stop me from trying to convince you that you want me there, too. Because of that, I’ve decided the only logical solution to this mess is to seduce the fuck out of you.”
Something like alarm sprinted through her so fast, her whole body threatened to go up in flames. “Don’t I get a say in this?”
He seemed to give it some thought. “I suppose you can do your best not to enjoy being pampered and having your every whim catered to. Personally though, I don’t like your chances. I have a feeling I’m going to be really, really good at seducing you.”
Eek.
“I should just leave,” she announced with more fire than she felt. She didn’t want him to know the mere thought of leaving made her stomach lurch, like she’d missed a stair step and was about to plunge to her death. “I should just go home. If and when Des needs me—well, needs my liver, I’ve given up on the idea that he could ever need me in his life—you’ll know where to find me.”
“If I can get Des to see you, you’d have every reason to stay, right?” he said, surprising her. “Or are you just going to cut and run after all the time you’ve already put in here? Up to now your dedication to Des has been admirable. But if you leave—which is your right, of course—why would he ever put any faith in you if he really did have need of you?”
Arrgh. “Des doesn’t have any faith in me anyway, Brody. He obviously doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants. You’re g
oing to hold the confusion and pain he’s obviously still feeling against him? Those feelings come from when he was five years old, Dallas. Give the guy a break.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing, but I can’t put my life on hold forever. I mean, if you could find a way to open that door for me, sure, but—”
“That’s all I needed to hear.” He gave a decisive nod and shot her a smile that would have made Lucifer jealous. “You stay put while I work on getting that door open for you, yeah? Just leave it to me.”
Chapter Ten
Des lived in the back of beyond.
Like all the latest generation of Brodys, Killian’s youngest half-brother had jettisoned himself from the hell that was the Brody main house just as soon as he could legally do so. He then built a dream home of his own design two miles south of any other structure on the property. The area he’d chosen as his own had some of the most inhospitable—and breathtaking—terrain on the ranch, complete with impassible stands of cacti, groves of mesquite, the mighty Lone Sentinel Butte and other sandstone formations, and jagged outcroppings of azurite and malachite, the stone that gave the ranch its name. The green ribbon of the Nueces River wound throughout the property, as well as the verdant pasturelands that had fed the Brody family’s famous Black Angus cattle since the mid-1800s.
The house Des had designed was built on a ridge overlooking all that wild Southwestern splendor, and it seemed more like an outgrowth of its surroundings than an actual building. Its lines were an elegant mishmash of glass and rock, falling somewhere between craftsman style and contemporary. Killian had always thought Des would have made a fine architect if the world of cattle hadn’t been landed on him along with the name of Brody at the age of five.
It didn’t surprise him that Des was already out on the front step when he pulled his truck into the circular drive. He might have chosen to drop his house out in the middle of nowhere and out of the reach of most people, but Des’s tendency toward paranoia—a trait he shared with his closet-dressing half-sister—had no doubt compelled him to plant security cameras all over the place.
