Claiming Kara [Fate Harbor 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  “No, Kara. I know you’re hurting, but we need to hear it all now, while you’re actually talking.” Ben still didn’t lift his head.

  “You just want me to talk? You’re not going to say anything?”

  “Why should I start now?” Ben asked in a defeated tone. “I fucked up a year and a half ago, didn’t I, Kara? I followed Quinn’s lead. I went against my instincts. Say what you have to say to Quinn, argue it out with him, but I’ll always know the real fault is mine for not having followed you. It’s my fault for not having told Quinn to piss up a rope and brought you back, because you were meant to be ours and you could have handled it. You trusted me to know you, to know your soul, and I failed you. Explain it to him, but I already know, Kara. I already know.” He turned his head and she saw the silver trails on his face. He was exactly right. She looked at Quinn, who was staring at both of them in confusion.

  “Kara, I know you’re mad about it taking so long for us to get it worked out so we could be together. But you understood why we had to do it this way. We talked about it.” She was getting such a bad headache from crying, and now this stupid conversation. It had to end so she could take some aspirin and go to bed.

  “We didn’t talk. Words were exchanged, Quinn. Big difference. You told me what you thought you needed to do and why. I vehemently disagreed, and I told you why. You thought you’d won the argument, but you hadn’t. I just got tired. I threw in the towel. I never really agreed with you.” She turned away from his stunned expression and faced Ben.

  “You’re right, Ben. I think I’m madder at you. He didn’t see it, you did. Get out, both of you get out, now.” She watched as Ben got up off the floor and turned to his brother.

  “Quinn, it’s time to leave.”

  “But—”

  “Let’s go, brother. Look at her, she’s exhausted.” They both turned and looked at Kara.

  “Do you promise to go to bed?” Quinn asked as he trailed his knuckles down her cheek. She shut her eyes, unable to stop from savoring the caress.

  “I promise.” He got up from the sofa and stood by his brother.

  “I never threw you away. How could I throw away the other half of my soul?” Quinn asked, right before he turned to leave.

  “Kara, you’ll never know how sorry I am for letting you down, for letting all three of us down. But I’m not walking away this time. I know you think it’s too late, but I’m listening to my instincts this time, and they’re telling me it’s not too late.” Ben bent down and brushed a kiss across her forehead. He followed his brother out the front door.

  She sighed in relief as she watched them walk out the door.

  * * * *

  Quinn drove blindly with no real destination in mind. Ben sat silently beside him. After an hour, Ben pointed to a road and said to turn onto it. Quinn continued to follow his brother’s instructions until they were parked on a deserted strip near the beach. Both men got out of the car and headed down toward the waves.

  Quinn took what comfort he could from looking at the waters that had sustained his family for generations. These were the waters that he had lived on most of his life, even if they were a thousand miles from home. He turned to Ben. “So, you knew this was going to happen?”

  “I didn’t know what to expect, Quinn. But this was my fault, because I knew we were ripping out her heart a year and a half ago.”

  Quinn couldn’t see Ben’s face because of the wind blowing his hair, and it was frustrating him, so he yanked his arm to turn him.

  “What the fuck?” Ben shouted.

  “I can’t see your face.” Quinn relaxed infinitesimally as Ben used a leather string to tie his jet black hair back, while staring darkly at him.

  “Quinn, you need to hold your shit together. If you don’t, there is no way we are going fix this.”

  “But that’s the thing, Ben. I don’t understand why we have to fix this. We—I explained to her why we had to wait. She knew. Ben, she knew we loved her. There is no way she didn’t know that, and she loved us. Didn’t she?” Quinn hated that he was unsure, that everything was now so confused.

  “Never doubt that, brother. She loved us.”

  “What about now?”

  “Quinn, I’m really not sure. I think we might have killed that love. She truly felt like we threw her away.”

  “But we didn’t! We did the best thing for her. The worry she would have gone through, day in and day out, while we were out on the boat would have aged her before her time. Look what it did to Mama.”

  “But Kara isn’t Mama. She’s a strong woman who knew exactly what she wanted and what she was asking for. She literally begged us to let her stay. Do you remember that? I do.” Quinn heard the anguish in his brother’s voice and longed to soothe him. That was his job. His job was to make it better for all his younger siblings. His job was to make it better for Kara, to protect her, even from herself.

  “I remember that day, but she understood. She said she understood, Ben. Don’t you remember? Sure, we’d been arguing for two days, but finally the night before she left, we were out grilling steaks, and we talked. I told her our plan. Okay, it was my plan, you really didn’t have much to say that night. I told her one last time how I didn’t want her to have to go through the waiting and worrying like Mama and the other women in Sitka. You remember that, don’t you?” Quinn waited for his brother to agree, and when he nodded he continued.

  “So, I told her it would be less than two years. Not only would we be able to start the charter business, but we’d be able to do it down here, so she could be close to her family and her business, and she said she understood what I was saying.”

  “You’re right, she said that,” Ben agreed. “Her exact words were, I understand what you’ve said, but you haven’t heard what I’ve said.”

  “You can’t possibly remember that exactly,” Quinn argued.

  “Yes, I can. Because I watched and listened as my entire life went right down the toilet. You then asked her if she understood, and she said she understood the situation perfectly.”

  Quinn smiled broadly. “You’re right, I remember now! She did say that. She said she understood the situation perfectly. So if she understood, why is she so upset now?”

  “Quinn, you’re not even listening now,” Ben said in the saddest tone he had ever heard. “Please, repeat the words again.”

  “I asked her if she understood,” Quinn said very slowly, listening to what he was saying, perhaps for the very first time. He watched his brother give him an encouraging nod. “And she said she understood the situation perfectly. She said ‘the situation,’ didn’t she, Ben? She didn’t mean she agreed, did she?”

  “No, she never said that she agreed.”

  “But I thought she did when she said she understood,” Quinn quelled the urge to stomp his foot like a child. Oh, God, that’s how he had been behaving, pushing Kara into just agreeing with him, and never once listening to her. How many times had she said that they had been talking, but not communicating? How many times had he just waited for his turn to talk? He had been so intent on just getting that phrase to come out of her mouth. Just getting her to say, I understand, and then he knew everything would be all right.

  “You tried to get me to listen, too,” Quinn realized. Ben nodded sadly. “Why didn’t you hit me? Why didn’t you take me out back and just beat the shit out of me?” He looked at his younger brother and saw another ugly truth. He had been a bully, and he said so.

  “Quinn, you are not now, nor have you ever been a bully,” Ben denied vehemently. “You have only ever done things that you thought were right. You’ve been the big brother to us all. You just think you’re right, and unfortunately, I developed a bad habit of following your lead.” Quinn could hear the self-disgust in his little brother’s voice. “What I can tell you is that this won’t happen again. If we want this to work, we have to be equal partners. I was as much to blame as you were.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

&n
bsp; “Jesus, listen to yourself. Once again, you’re not listening!”

  “But you weren’t to blame, it was me. I’m the one who pushed her away.”

  “Quinn, I’m a grown man. I was a grown man eighteen months ago. Just like you weren’t giving Kara credit, now you’re not giving me credit. I was a dumbass, I knew better and didn’t speak up. I was equally to blame.” Fuck, he was doing it again, Quinn thought with disgust. Learning how not to take responsibility for everything in his world was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done.

  “You’re right, you did fuck up. So you better not just let me take the lead like that again.” Quinn watched as his brother grinned.

  Quinn reached out and pulled Ben in for a hug. Remembering all those times growing up when he had hugged his younger brother, when he had been there for him. Never had anything more important been on Quinn’s shoulders, and he had screwed it up.

  “Never again, you understand that now? Right?” Ben said fiercely. Rather than feeling threatened, Quinn felt a sense of relief. He had a true partner. For the first time since Kara told them to leave, Quinn gave a heartfelt smile.

  “Ben, I need you. There are a lot of things I’m good at, but relationships aren’t one of them.” Quinn watched as his brother threw back his head and laughed.

  “Jesus, you are good at understatement, I’ll give you that,” Ben chuckled. “You’re problem is you dictate, you don’t listen. You think you listen. You think you’ve gotten people to see things your way, but you’ve really just steamrolled them into it. Well, that’s never going to happen again, because there will be two of us now who will push back.” Quinn felt the first faint stirrings of hope.

  “Do you think so? I know you said she loved us, but you didn’t say she still did.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure she does,” Ben admitted. “But if she did once, and if she hasn’t managed to fall in love since, I’m saying we can make her fall in love again.”

  “Fuck, I hadn’t even considered that option.” Quinn took a bit of time to consider this. “I’m all in. Let’s move forward, let’s make the offer to Kuba Charters. Let’s get an apartment. I don’t want to look for anywhere permanent to live until we figure out what Kara wants, but I want to start as I mean to go on. We’ll need a base of operations, and Kara will need to see that we’re serious.” Quinn was relieved to see his brother’s nod of agreement. He had just realized he had been dictating again, but apparently his brother agreed with him. “I guess I should have asked.”

  “Nah, I’m used to you barking orders. If there’s anything I disagree with, you’ll know,” Ben said as they turned back toward the car.

  * * * *

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Shotbrook?” Eric demanded as he strode down the dock toward the boat that Ben was prepping. Ben carefully laid down the orbital sander he was using and took off his safety glasses. By the time he was done, Eric was nose to nose with him. “Answer me, Kara told you to leave.”

  “Kara told us she didn’t want us. We haven’t bothered her since then. We’ve respected her wishes, Eric,” Ben said as calmly as he could, knowing one day this man could very well be his brother-in- law.

  “Bullshit, Ben, if you had any kind of feelings left for her, you would have gone back to Alaska!” Eric’s roar was reminiscent of his Viking heritage.

  “Eric, does she even know we’re still here?” Ben asked in a reasonable tone of voice. He watched as Eric’s face got even redder and he realized that logic was just making the man madder, so he decided to try a different approach. “Dammit, Eric, you and Dane were all for us coming down here in the first place, remember? Well, we’re here to stay. We love Kara. We’re not giving up without a goddamn fight. If you’d fucked up with your woman, you wouldn’t roll over and stop trying, you’d just come up with another plan. You can’t expect Quinn and me to be any different.” Ben was relieved to see that Eric was listening instead of yelling.

  “We aren’t harassing her, we know she needs time. We bought Kuba Charters, we need some time to get this operation up and running. We intend to stay. We’re going to make a life here in Fate Harbor, and Kara needs to see that.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Eric rubbed his hand through his short white-blond hair, clearly agitated. “I didn’t even realize that she had gone up to see you that second time. She was pretty torn up by that. I just want to protect her, you know?”

  “That’s exactly what got us into this predicament. We wanted to protect her, too. We thought we were.” Ben paused, trying to get his thoughts in order so he could explain things exactly right to this man he considered a friend. “If we honestly thought that Kara was living a happy and fulfilled life without us, we would walk away. We love her and want what’s best for her. But you have to see she’s hurting. Kara deserves and wants so much more than we’ve been able to give her in the past. I believe we can give it to her now, and I think deep down she knows it, too. We all need to give her a chance to come to that realization on her own.”

  “I think you’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions.”

  “It’s possible. If we are, we’ll back off, because our number-one priority is her happiness. Above all, she deserves to be happy.”

  “Goddammit, Shotbrook!” Both men turned to see Dane stomping down the walkway where they were standing. He pushed past his brother and grabbed Ben by his shirt, and snarled into his face, “Leave town, before I make you leave.” Instinct took over and he shoved him back, pushing him into Eric, whose upper back slammed into the side of the boat, leaving him hovering over the water.

  “Dammit, Dane, if I fall in, I’m taking you with me!”

  “It’s his fault!” he shouted as he hauled his brother up from his precarious position.

  “If you would just talk before immediately starting a fight, you might learn something,” Eric told his brother disgustedly as he slapped him on the back of his head.

  “I hate it when you do that.”

  “Well, I’m not real fond of almost being shoved into the Puget Sound, asshole.”

  It was nice to see some things hadn’t changed. Ben grinned. He had missed the camaraderie of the Johansen brothers. They were so much more outgoing than the Shotbrooks.

  “So, why is he in one piece?” Dane asked his brother as he jerked his thumb in Ben’s direction.

  “Because, unlike you, he was making sense. Bottom line, Kara’s unhappy, and it’s likely that he and Quinn still have a shot of making her happy. They know they fucked up, and they want to fix it. Also, he promises to back off if that’s truly what she wants.”

  * * * *

  Dammit, one of these days she was going to arrive earlier. However, this time she had a whole seven minutes to spare, but there was no parking to be had in the Hart’s diner parking lot. She had to find parking in the street and hoof it down the block. Her work boots weren’t great for running. She felt a definite feeling of déjà vu when she saw the clock was just turning to 11:28 a.m., and Jace Hart stood behind the open window of the kitchen.

  “We’re now serving lunch, Kara,” he hollered across the restaurant.

  “I have two more minutes according to the clock above your head,” Kara said, pointing.

  “Fine,” he grumbled. “I suppose you want the lumberjack and a cinnamon roll?”

  “Jace…”

  “Two cinnamon rolls,” the big man said, and Kara smiled. It was turning out to be a great day after all. She turned around to locate Karen. She figured she could get her milk, coffee, and OJ, and maybe shoot the breeze before breakfast and make it back to her studio by one o’clock.

  “Hey, Karen, do you mind if I grab the table near the window? I—” She looked past Karen at the two men seated at the booth, who were staring at her. Karen continued to rush toward her, but Kara couldn’t focus on anything but Quinn and Ben. What the hell were they doing here? Quinn stood up, but before he could make a move toward her, Ben grabbed his arm and forced him bac
k down into his seat.

  Karen reached her and tugged her toward a table near the back of the restaurant. She pushed Kara down into the chair and poured her a cup of coffee.

  “Drink,” she said, indicating the mug in front of her. Kara stared at it blankly, and Karen repeated herself. Then Kara grabbed it and started to drink, realizing that caffeine would definitely help the situation. When she was finished, she looked up.

  “More.” Karen refilled the mug, and then sat down opposite her friend.

  “I take it you didn’t know?” Karen said, a question in her voice.

  “No, I didn’t know. Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Kara wailed.

  “This is the first time you’ve been out of your house since the show. Josie’s been dropping cinnamon rolls a dozen at a time at your house on her way home so you could hide and heal. I honestly thought you knew, and that was part of the reason for the hiding.”

  “Order up,” Jace yelled. “It’s Kara’s, in case you feel like working.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Make it to go,” Karen yelled back.

  “What are they doing here? I thought they had gone home!” Kara felt like she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. Nothing was making any sense. She appreciated that Karen had seated her so that her back was to the restaurant, but now she felt like everyone was staring at her. She watched Karen carefully, noting how her gaze flitted around the big room.

  “What? Is everyone staring at us?”

  Karen refocused on Kara. “Honey, I was just making sure that the tables were being handled. I really don’t want Jace and Dale cranky. Kev was up half the night, and we’re all running on empty.” Usually, Kara would have told her friend to go back to waiting on customers, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She needed her here.

  “Karen, why are they still here?” Kara demanded to know.

  “I don’t know. The first time they showed up was three days ago. I haven’t had time to find out the scoopage.” Kara dropped her head down onto the table, uncaring that it landed with a thud.