He let out an ironic laugh. "So now you know what wasn't mentioned on the back cover of my book. Brad Meecham's a pathetic shell of a man who needs his mother's breast." He shoved a cigarette between his lips and struck a match. He hated the things, but they took away some of the anxiety, and he could suck like a man. He took a long draw and exhaled. "I couldn't even screw you," he said. "Too pathetic to get it up."
"I didn't come here for that," she replied, looking at him, not with disgust but with understanding. No, not understanding. Pity. A pathetic man needing pity.
He took another long draw, and exhaled. "Then why did you come?"
"You needed someone," she said, her hands clutching her forearms.
"Do you always give men everything they need?" Harsh, and she didn't deserve it. But he hated the useless man he was when it happened. Hated that she knew. Normally he slammed his fist into something to get back to reality, but she came to him in the throes of it, and in his distorted mind he saw Yvette with her gentleness and her warm body and her breasts, and he took what she offered. Only once before had he done that with Yvette. She made it seem right then. But looking at the woman staring at him, knowing it had been her, it seemed perverted. A forty-year-old man needing his mother's breast. He also hated that he wanted the woman sitting on the bed and could have her right now. She was sitting there, waiting for him to take her...
...the daughter needs to get away from men... all her life she's been used and dumped...
The woman shrugged as if the hurt in her eyes didn't matter, and said, "I can't be Yvette, but I don't regret what I did. And I don't fault you for what you did. You needed to get through it. I was here so just leave it be."
He took another long draw on his cigarette. "Can you leave it be?" he asked, pride motivating him to ask, humiliation wishing he hadn't.
She stood. "If you mean, will I say anything about what happened. No." They both knew that what happened was a pathetic man needing his mother's breast. "Have you talked about what you saw to anyone besides Yvette?" she asked, making no move to leave.
He looked at her, standing over him and peering down at him, and said, "I wrote about it. It didn't help." He flicked his ashes into a dirty coffee mug to give him a reason to look away. The woman knew too much about him. She'd peeled away years of armor in an instant... took him back to infancy and exposed him. And he didn't even know her name.
"Talking's different from writing," she said. "Readers don't care who you are. All they care about are your fictitious characters. They matter to readers. Readers cry over them. But no one's crying over you and you're hurting."
"I'm fine," he said. "It was the hook in the stables. It won't happen again."
"Because you don't intend to go in the stables again," she said, peeling back another layer. "But you could see a hook at a butcher shop, or on the end of a crane at a building site, or holding up a car behind a tow truck. You have to confront your demons and get rid of them. You need to go back and look at that hook, and you need to talk. I'll listen."
"Who are you?" he asked. "I know you've been shafted by a man, many men, and you want my fictitious hero to lose his balls, but why are you at this ranch?"
"I had nowhere else to go," she said. "I'm pathetic too, showing up on my little sister's doorstep because... Well you know the rest."
"The woman who owns this place?" Brad asked, surprised. He never would have guessed this woman could be related to the sweet, pretty wife of Jack Hansen. He'd told Jack why he was there, but not the particulars. Writer's block and some war correspondent memories getting in the way, he'd told him. Jack talked some about dealing with the past, and the man had insight. A little too much he thought at the time, which was why he'd cut the conversation short when Jack was about to hone in on the real reason. The man had come to terms with his demons—his ex-wife killing his infant son—leaving things open to talk things out later, if he wanted...
"Yes, Grace is my sister." The woman shrugged. Then she let out a little ironic chuckle, and said, "She always made the right choices. I wish I could be more like her."
Brad was curious. It was an odd statement coming from this woman. Odd, because the woman was stunning, and witty, and smart. But men took from her what they wanted and messed with her mind and she let them do it. He was doing it now, reasoning why it would be okay for him to grab her wrist and pull her down on top of him. He'd already felt the length of her body against him, but for a very different reason. Now he wanted what she was trying to stop herself from doing. "If you try to be like your sister you'll lose your soul," he said.
"But men would treat me differently," she replied. "You wouldn't talk to Grace the way you talk to me. You wouldn't have asked her to come to your cabin."
Brad took another draw on the cigarette, not because he needed it now, but to keep from reaching out and grabbing the woman. He'd have her out of those clothes in an instant. And she'd have him out of his just as fast. Two wounded animals screwing the hell out of each other to clear their minds of everything else. But that wasn't going to happen. "Your sister wouldn't have told me before she'd even said hello that she wouldn't go to bed with me," he said.
"I wanted to make sure you understood." She wasn't being flippant, just explaining, in simple terms, who she was. A woman who was too beautiful for her own good, who'd been told from infancy that she was beautiful, and who'd found early on that her beauty would open doors for her. Mostly doors to men's bedrooms. But she didn't learn that until Elliot, whoever the hell he was. But she got to keep the Jag. He'd noticed the car the day the woman arrived. Silver and showy. A different kind of fish out of water. But now the woman needed some clarification. "What I understood when you told me you wouldn't go to bed with me was that you were thinking about it. Why else would you bring it up?"
She shrugged. "Because that's what you were thinking."
"Maybe, but you were too. And you are now," he said, knowing he was right. The woman was no longer an enigma, but he still couldn't seem to cut her loose.
She thrust out her chin. "I just told you I want to be more like my sister," she said, a little glint of defiance returning to her eyes. She was wounded but she had spirit. He liked that. He also wanted her, and she was primed to let him use her like other men had. But he'd never be able to live with that. "If you want to be more like your sister, you have to stop giving men what they want. And you have to stop the sex talk."
She shrugged into her jacket and zipped it closed. "It's what men expect, and I've been doing it so long I don't know how to stop."
"Then I'll give you your first lesson." He ground out his cigarette, stood and walked up to her. Tugging her zipper open again, he unsnapped her shirt with one swift movement, kissed her on the neck, and said to her, "Raise your knee and shove it into my balls."
"What!?
He kissed just above her breast. "You heard me. Knee the hell out of my balls. Stop what I'm about to do." He trailed his tongue over her chest, avoiding her breasts.
"I can't," she said, "I'll hurt you."
He could feel her breath heavy against the side of his face as he made patterns against her chest with the tip of his tongue. "I'm a man," he said. He trailed his tongue over the top swell of her breast and wondered why she didn't stop him. He could feel her apprehension, yet she did nothing. And he was beginning to feel like shit with what he was doing. But the woman was reaching out, and he intended to get his point across. "I don't care if I hurt you," he said. "I don't even care what your name is. I just want to get inside you. Now raise your knee." He dragged his tongue over her nipple and she let out a little sharp gasp. Still she did nothing, just let him have his way with her, years of giving men what they wanted before dumping her.
"I can't do what you want," she said.
"If you don't, I'll strip you of whatever's left of your self-respect and pin you to the bed and take what I want."
"I don't believe you'll do what you're threatening," she said, her voice shaky, yet not m
aking any attempt to shove him away. "I trust you."
He stopped what he was doing, looked at her, and said, "Why in hell would you?"
She held his gaze. "Because I know you. I got into your head in your book. I was here when you saw your mind demons and couldn't fight them off because you were paralyzed by them. And I feel good because I was able to help get you through it. I'd do it again, and give you more if that's what you needed."
"Hell," he said, refastening her shirt, one snap at a time, covering what he wanted, knowing he could never touch her again. Not that way. "Who made you like this?"
"No one. It's just the way I am."
"You're not a whore."
"I got to keep the Jaguar."
"Severance pay. You earned it." After he'd zipped her jacket, he asked, "So, what’s your name?"
"Justine," she replied. "Justine Page."
"Okay, Justine Page," he said. "If you won't double me over with your knee then turn and walk away from me. You have that power."
Which she did, without saying goodbye, and without looking back.
But after she shut the door behind herself, Brad realized she was the one woman he wanted and would never have, because he wouldn't screw her over unless he put a ring on her finger. Which he wouldn't do. He didn't care that she'd used other men, or let them use her. He could push all that aside. But the one time he put his faith in for better or for worse, he returned home from the horrors of war, with his demons tormenting him, to find his wife, the only person who could help drive them away, in bed with another man. He wouldn't be that fool again.
***
Justine glanced out the window in the back wall of the lodge and saw Brad's cabin, now covered with fresh snow from the night before. The snow was undisturbed and her tracks from two days before when she’d left his cabin were gone, with no new tracks leading from the cabin to the lodge, so she knew Brad hadn't left the cabin during those two days. Nor had he come for meals at the lodge during that time, which she found troubling. She wanted to know he was okay, that he didn't need her, at least not for the reason he had before. But she didn’t want to play the corporate game anymore. Sean Elliot cured her of that. She'd hit her head so hard on the glass ceiling she'd had enough. Still, she couldn't explain her response to what Brad Meecham had done just before she left his cabin. Absolutely nothing. Yet, he'd acted as if he cared what happened to her. Cared about her. She'd never felt that from a man before. It was always about what he wanted. Granted, she had her reasons for being with a particular man at a particular time. A step up the corporate ladder. But men had been using women over the ages and turnaround was fair play. But with Brad, it wasn't the same. He wasn't the same as the others, though she hadn't known him long enough to know why. Only that she'd gotten into his head in the book, and he was different. He'd empathized so profoundly with strangers hanging on hooks that he was tormented by what he saw, years after it happened.
She turned to Grace, who was zipping up her three-year-old son Adam's jacket, and said, "Why did you put someone in the cabin across the way? There are vacant rooms in the lodge."
Grace positioned a wool cap on the toddler's head, and replied, "The man who's staying in the cabin is the author, Brad Meecham. He didn't want to be in the lodge so he gave us double the rate to open the cabin."
Justine moved in front of the window, wishing she'd see Brad. Wishing he'd see her and motion for her to come. She wasn't sure what she'd do then, because she refused to allow herself to be just another woman for him to get it on with between writing chapters. She was through using men, or being used by them. And this time she'd stand firm...
Unless Brad needed her again to ward off dark memories. For that, she'd give him whatever he needed. It was a strange feeling, wanting to give a man everything she had without wanting anything in return. Always there had been a goal, another step upward, toward the glass ceiling. It had taken years, and many men, but she'd almost made it. But she had no goal with Brad. She'd gotten into his mind and she understood him. "How long will he be here?" she asked.
Grace let the boy scamper off and grabbed his brother, Marc. "He took the cabin for two months," she said, shoving a little arm into a jacket sleeve. "He's got about six more weeks to go. We don't see much of him though. He stays to himself. I suppose he's writing. It's quiet out there... no one to disturb him."
"Then he's never talked much to you and Jack?" Justine asked, wanting to know more. The man had a grip on her. His mind had a grip on hers. Yet, she knew nothing about his everyday life. How he slept, whether in pajamas or sweats, or maybe nothing. What he looked like when he stepped out of the shower, chest wet, water running down it. How he looked in the morning when he first opened his eyes, hair rumpled, overnight stubble on his jaw...
Unless he awakened troubled by night terrors. She knew little about post-traumatic stress except that people became exhausted to the point of having hallucinations at times because they had flashbacks during the day, and lay awake at night while trying to suppress memories that gripped them, only to relive the traumatic episode in dreams if they happened to drift off. So they paced, and tried to make time pass until the soul-gripping images faded away.
She studied the cabin and saw no movement inside, but it was daylight and there were reflections on the window. She wished she could see inside. Maybe she'd see him writing. When she was in the cabin she'd seen his laptop open on a table, and manuscript pages on the floor around the printer, and an ashtray chock-full of cigarette butts, and coffee mugs with sludge in the bottoms. She'd seen it all when she was there, but it was only after she left that it registered. While there, all she'd been aware of was the breadth of Brad's bare chest, and the cords in his well-muscled arms, and the pulse throbbing in his throat, and the disturbed look on his face.
He'd been humiliated by what happened. A man's man, international author, standing in a flight jacket in the photo on his book, regressing to infancy. But she'd also witnessed the horrors that haunted him. She'd slipped into his mind in his book and seen it through his eyes, and she'd felt her own heart racing as she'd read his description, and trembled some too, not like Brad had—the images he'd seen were not permanently stamped on her memory—but she'd still been affected...
"He's talked to Jack some," Grace said, "but not to me. He stays to himself. Takes his meals with the other guests sometimes but always brings something to read when he does, manuscript pages I guess. Then he either sets them on the table beside him or takes his plate and sits in the great room. Obviously he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Maybe that's the way writers are."
"Do the guests know who he is?" Justine asked. She'd had no idea herself when she first saw him looking at her from across the great room. She'd seen his books on racks in stores though, but when she took his book off the shelf at the lodge and glanced at his photo on the back cover she hadn't connected the two. Not even when he toyed with her about rewriting the ending. She wondered now what she might have revealed about herself. But there was nothing he didn't know about her character. He'd pegged her from the start. A woman who'd slept with men and let them use her because she was using them...
"Some of the guests know who he is," Grace said, "but whenever anyone tries to start up a conversation he gives them a clipped response and goes back to reading. Most people give up pretty quickly." Grace looked over the top of the toddler's head, and said, "He's a troubled man, Justine, and you're here to get your life back in order. Don't make another mistake. The man will use you and dump you. And I can tell you right now, all he'd want with a woman while staying here is for her to warm his bed. You don't need that. You need to rebuild your self-respect so the next time you get involved with someone, which should not be for a very long time, he will love you for who you are, not for how you make him feel in bed. Any woman can do that."
"What does Jack know about him?" Justine pressed, thinking she'd seen movement inside the cabin. Maybe Brad's face at the window for an instant.
Grace gave a long sigh and Justine knew she was becoming aggravated, but Grace didn't understand the situation and there was no way to explain it. "I don't know what Jack knows," she said, irritated. "The man talked to Jack in confidence when he approached him about renting the cabin, and I didn't press Jack to tell me what he said. But the man is troubled and you absolutely cannot get involved with him. Don't even think about it."
Justine continued staring out the window. "I read his book," she said.
Grace glanced over the top of her son's head. "Why his book? We have others."
Justine shrugged. "No reason. I just pulled it off the shelf."
Grace slipped a mitten over a little hand. "Jack mentioned he's a good writer," she commented while maneuvering a tiny thumb into the mitten's thumb.
"Is that all Jack said?" Justine asked, wondering if Jack had also been drawn into Brad's head. Or if she was the only one.
"Jack said the story was riveting."
Justine glanced at Grace. "Just riveting, nothing more?"
"I don't know what else there is," Grace said, "but I wouldn't think it would be your kind of book. Did you read it so you could get to know the man?" Grace eyed her with suspicion and waited. A mother catching her child with her hand in the cookie jar.
"No. Like I said, I just took the book off the shelf," Justine replied. "I'd seen his name on books on racks in stores and knew he was a best-selling author, but I don't read those kinds of books. I didn't even know who he was when—" she stopped short. Grace didn't need to know she didn't even know his name when she lay half naked with him and held him in her arms until the trembling stopped. Or afterwards, when he tongued her breast to prove a point...
Grace pinned her with knowing eyes. "When what, Justine?"
Justine tried to act indifferent. "When we talked. It was when everyone was off sleighing. I was in here reading and he came in. That's all. We talked a little, and he saw what I was reading, but I didn't know he was the author, and he knew that, but he didn't say anything, I guess because he'd rather people not know who he is."
Righteous Lies (Book 1: Dancing Moon Ranch Series) Page 22
