by Skye Jordan
“I didn’t want to hurt you, and I knew telling you I was sorry couldn’t fix it. I didn’t want to reopen a wound that I had no way of healing.”
Footsteps on the stairs drew their attention, and Keaton moved them aside so the man in scrubs could pass. Then he sat on the steps near the wall and pulled her into his lap. “Ellie told me where you were, but she didn’t tell me about the job. Who’s it with?”
“Will and Leslie Crow.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve worked with Will,” Keaton said. “Nice guy. Intense, yeah, but that’s what makes him such a good actor.”
Brooke nodded. “Definitely demanding, but also reasonable and appreciative and generous. They’ve given me the time I need to be with Justin during the procedures, and pay me well enough to make ends meet and still pay the monthly payment for the program. It’s only been a few weeks, but they’ve been straightforward and honest.”
“Refreshing.”
“Right?” She laughed the word, relaxing into their conversation, into the feeling of having someone other than her sister to share her life with. “I’m cautiously optimistic. His wife Leslie is a fashion model, but she’s pregnant with their first baby right now, so she’s limited her jobs to maternity shoots until after the baby’s born. They live here in Tampa, so I don’t have to deal with the tiny airport in the Keys like I did for Jillian.”
He frowned. “Did you move here?”
She nodded.
“That must be hard on Tammy and Justin.”
“They moved too. The Keys are an expensive place to live. Tammy didn’t want to leave the doctors she had established for Justin right after Brian died, and then I came and had the job there with Jillian, but—”
“Now there’s nothing keeping you there.”
“Right. Prices here are so much cheaper which makes everything easier on all of us.”
“What about Tammy’s school?”
“They have a campus here—a bigger, nicer campus, actually. She just transferred.”
He smiled and ran his knuckles over her cheek. “That’s fantastic.”
What was fantastic was the way she felt right this minute—so beautiful and wanted and loved. She covered his hand with hers and turned her head to kiss his palm.
A doctor in a white lab coat passed on his way up the stairs.
When he was gone, Brooke asked, “Did Ellie tell you about the arrangement with Jillian? Because she swore she wouldn’t.”
He wiped at her face a little more and tucked her hair behind her ears. “No. I heard about it on the set.”
Shame burned in her gut, and Brooke’s eyes slid closed. “Oh God.” She shook her head and looked at him again. “I know it’s your career and what you do is awesome, but that industry is not my favorite.”
“I get it. Jillian never could keep her mouth shut, and it’s going to come back to bite her big-time because her new assistant is the worst two-faced brownnoser I’ve come across in a long time. What happened with you was out within days of you leaving. How long do you think it will take for Jillian’s deeper, more damaging secrets to come out?” He shook his head. “You were the best thing that ever happened to her.”
She smiled and kissed him. “Thank you.”
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me too, baby. And I know I may not look real smart, but I’m not as thickheaded as Jillian”—he combed one hand into her hair, caressing her cheek with his thumb—“and I’m ready to do whatever it takes to keep you.”
She sighed and covered his hand with hers. “Realistically, that’s going to be a pretty tough gig.”
“I’m aware. I’m also aware of these frequent-flier miles weighing down my airline account. And these lulls between jobs when Jax forces us to take R&R so we’re sharp and fresh for the next job.”
Brooke searched his eyes.
“Come on, baby, jump,” he murmured, a smile sliding over his handsome face. “You know you wanna.”
She laughed and cupped his cheek. “I really wanna.”
He repeated the gesture she’d made just moments ago, covering her hand with his and turning his head to kiss her palm. “I know it’s scary. And I know what a big jump this is for you.” He curled his hand around hers and held her gaze. “But I know, together, we can make it work. And I can promise you, I’ll never let you fall.”
Her heart pulled, her stomach flipped. “Keaton, I can’t move again. At least not right now. Between Tammy and Justin—”
“I’m not asking you to move. I would never expect you to move. You’ve made enough sacrifices. I think it’s time someone went that extra mile for you for a change.”
She tilted her head, frowning a little. “What do you mean?”
He grinned and ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “I got a hotel room nearby.” His gaze lowered to her mouth, and his own lips tipped up in a hot smile. “I’d love to show you exactly what I mean first. We’ll have plenty of time to talk over the details later.”
A heat wave swept through her body. She lifted her brows. “You got a hotel room?”
“Yep. I was going to stay here as long as it took to convince you to give us another shot.” He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. “But I’ll keep it for as long as we need to negotiate the terms of the agreement.”
Her heart filled. That giddy thrill fluttered in her stomach. “I do believe we have a perfect window of opportunity to start that negotiation right now.”
Keaton’s arm tightened around her waist, and he stood, carrying her with him. Brooke laughed in surprise as he set her on her feet. “You don’t have to make that suggestion twice.”
He took her hand and started down the stairs. Brooke had no idea where these side steps led and thought of her car in the main parking lot. “My car is—”
“My rental’s right downstairs,” he said, jogging the steps and pulling Brooke with him. “And my hotel is a block away. You can text your sister in the car.”
She laughed with a fresh new joy filling her chest. They reached the ground floor in seconds. Keaton hit the landing three steps ahead of her and snatched her into his arms before her feet had a chance to touch the last two.
He kissed her long and deep, pulling away to set her on her feet.
Breathless and a little dizzy, Brooke leaned into him. “I’ve never looked more forward to a negotiation in my life.”
Keaton grinned, the grin Brooke knew. The grin Brooke loved. The grin that set her world right and chased all the problems away, making room for hope and joy.
“Get used to it, baby,” he told her “This is your new adventure.”
12
Seven months later
The cool ocean breeze blew gently across Brooke’s face where she sat at a table on the patio of Jax Chamberlin’s home on a Malibu beach in California. The setting should have eased her jitters, but tonight, she doubted there was anything short of a miracle that would make that happen. Watching Keaton and a couple of other Renegades work with Justin on fight moves wasn’t helping.
“I’m not sure if I should be happy or terrified.” She smirked at Ellie, who sat beside her, legs crossed, bare foot swinging, a hard lemonade in her hand. “Are they helping him or creating a monster?”
Ellie’s smile widened. “Mmm, probably a little of both.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She lifted her drink toward Brooke. “One of these would help you relax.”
She smiled. “Not tonight, thanks.”
“You okay?”
Brooke nodded. “Just tired.”
“You’ve been tired a lot lately.”
She shrugged. “Stress.”
“You should get in to a doctor, Brooke. Make sure you’re not anemic or vitamin deficient.”
“Yep.” There would be a lot of that in her future. “I will.”
The summers in Southern California might be absolute perfection, but on the shore, when the sun dropped and the fog crept closer, Brooke found
herself reaching for Keaton’s sweat jacket. The one he’d brought especially for her even when she’d insisted she wouldn’t need it. And tugging the jacket on reminded her it always took her a couple of weeks to acclimate from the East Coast’s humid heat to the West Coast’s dry warmth. Keaton seemed to know her better than she knew herself.
Keaton crouched and extended a hand toward Justin, palm out. “Aim and kick.”
Justin tilted his body backward to balance on one leg and used the other to hammer a quick, hard strike. The slap of flesh against flesh sang on the breeze.
“Nice.” Rich approval in Keaton’s voice made a smile break through the concentration on Justin’s face and warmed Brooke’s heart.
All the guys were good with kids, probably because they were really just big kids themselves. But she’d been both impressed and moved when he’d stepped into a position of male role model for Justin so fluidly, so easily.
“Now pivot and jam Troy with a palm strike,” he told Justin.
Her nephew’s moves were strong and practiced. Moves Brooke had been watching him make for six months now. Ever since he’d recovered from his last procedure, his lung capacity had blossomed and Justin had taken up an intense interest in Keaton’s love of martial arts.
Justin turned, set his bare feet in a solid scissor stance, and drove the heel of his hand up and into the hand Troy held just below his chin. Another slap of flesh sounded in the night, but Troy hammed it up. Performing the perfect stuntman’s impression of a real hit, Troy snapped his head back with a grunt, reeled backward, and fell to the ground, rolling away.
The melodrama started Ellie giggling.
“Oh God,” Lexi said with here-we-go lightheartedness. “Ellie’s giggling.”
“And after a couple of glasses of wine…” Rubi shook her head. “It’s going to last the rest of the night.”
“Come on, he’s funny,” she said in defense, and started laughing again as she pointed at him rolling around on the grass, holding his face and moaning. “Look at him.”
Jax chuckled and wrapped his arm around Lexi’s shoulders. “He’s an idiot.”
“Yeah,” Ellie admitted, “but he’s an adorable idiot.”
Troy went limp in the grass and looked at Ellie upside down. “Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am, babe. I said you were adorable and funny.”
“This is no time to mess around.” Keaton drew Justin’s attention from laughing at Troy. “You’ve still got a guy at your back.”
Before Justin could turn, Wes, who had to be ten times Justin’s size, closed a forearm around his throat with a cartoonish growl.
“What the hell?” Rubi, Wes’s girlfriend, made a face. “Was that supposed to be a pirate?”
Wes turned his head toward Rubi. “Baby, you don’t watch near enough movies. Remember we had a talk about unearthly beings in sci-fi—”
Justin crossed one foot behind Wes’s, ducked from under his arm, and used it to push him backward, tripping the Renegade. Wes landed on his ass. One second Wes was standing, the next he was on the ground. It happened so fast, Brooke’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Keaton howled with laughter. He doubled his arms over his stomach and stumbled back a step, then bent at the waist, barely able to hold himself up.
“Oh my—” Brooke started, sitting forward in her chair.
“You little…” Wes laughed the words, jackknifed into a sitting position, and reached for Justin.
Justin screamed and jumped away, but Wes got ahold of his T-shirt and hauled him back. Justin was already laughing when Wes grabbed his waist, but then the tickling began. Justin squealed and giggled and cried for mercy.
Everyone was laughing—the guys even harder than the women. But Brooke heard a little rasp in Justin’s cries that made alarms ring in her head, and she pushed from her chair. “I think that’s—”
A hand closed on her shoulder. “He’s fine.”
Her sister’s voice jerked her attention to the right. She was in a different pair of scrubs than she’d gone in to work wearing, and she looked tired. “Don’t you hear—?”
“That’s because he’s screaming,” Tammy said, her smile relaxed and happy. Which helped Brooke relax.
Until Justin’s “No, no, no!” shivered over her spine. And she turned to find all three giant Renegades carrying a tiny Justin toward the pool.
All of Brooke’s muscles tightened. She pulled in a breath to tell them to stop and took a step that direction, but again Tammy stopped her. “Brooke. He’s fine. You’ve been so overprotective lately.”
And just like that, her emotions went completely haywire and a push of irrational tears burned her eyes.
Shit.
The splash made her head swivel again, and Brooke piled her hands over her heart, caught between angst over the unknown happening in her body and more angst over Justin’s ability to breathe. After so many years of watching Justin struggle for every breath, she still had a hard time embracing the fact that he could now act like a normal kid.
But all three men stood at the pool’s edge, their humor now faded into intensity as their gazes homed in on the boy beneath the water, ready to pull him out on a second’s notice. And a wave of deep, moving emotion rolled beneath her hands, rocking her foundation.
These men, really nothing more than acquaintances to Brooke, Tammy, and Justin, had taken the three of them in as if they had always been part of this ever-growing Renegades family. Brooke had experienced a sliver of this, just one way they showed their all-encompassing loyalty to each other, when she’d lived briefly with Ellie and Troy after Ellie had quit the road. But the way they’d taken Justin in like their own nephew and treated Brooke and Tammy like sisters for no other reason than because they were important to Keaton humbled Brooke.
And she was pretty damn sure this emotional roller coaster was going to kill her long before she ever found the courage to tell Keaton…
Justin’s head broke the surface, his lungs filled with air, and the first thing he did was burst out laughing. The second thing he did was splash all three of the men standing there. Brooke released her own breath—air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding—and her body sagged with relief.
Ellie walked to the pool edge with a towel and waited while the guys dragged Justin out of the water by the arms, then she wrapped the fluffy terry around him. Justin’s face glowed with vibrancy and life and joy.
And tears swelled in Brooke’s eyes out of nowhere.
“You’re tired.” Tammy rubbed her back and walked her a few steps toward the pool, frowning with concern.
“Me? You’re the one who’s been on your feet all day.” She worked up a smile for her sister. “So? How was the first day at the big, fancy teaching hospital? What’s with the different scrubs?”
Tammy’s smile beamed, and she rolled her eyes. “It was amazing. All except the part where my last patient threw up all over me—hence the replacement scrubs.”
The mention of vomit made Brooke’s stomach roll toward her throat. She curved her lips over her teeth and focused on controlling the wash of nausea.
“But I’ll tell you all about it later,” Tammy said as they approached the guys and she thanked Ellie for the towel. She rubbed her son’s wet head. “Time for this one to get to bed.”
“Did you see me, Mom?” Justin chattered with excitement. “The guys taught me…”
Tammy walked back to the table with Justin, Troy, and Wes. Keaton stepped up to Brooke and reached for the zipper of the jacket, tugging it into place. “Cold?”
She snuggled close to him with the first real fear of driving a wedge between them since they’d gotten back together. “A little.”
He turned her toward the house and wrapped an arm around her. “You don’t feel good, do you?”
He didn’t sound particularly alarmed, and Brooke felt guilty. This had suddenly become her new normal, which she neither liked nor could control. They stopped at the t
able where everyone except Tammy was comfortably seated again, opening another round of drinks.
“I’m fine,” she told him, forcing a smile that seemed to drain her strength. “Just tired.”
“I think we all need some good sleep.” Tammy pulled a Renegades logo sweatshirt over Justin’s head and smiled at Brooke. “Ready?”
Brooke hesitated. She hoped she would find a moment to talk with Keaton alone tonight. Between the move, Justin’s school, and Brooke’s, Tammy’s, and Keaton’s schedules, they hadn’t gotten much more than a few stolen moments together.
He’d just returned from a shoot in the Mojave Desert this afternoon and had a new shoot starting tomorrow on the other side of the LA basin. That meant he’d be working sixteen-hour days, six days a week.
Which left Brooke holding this secret time bomb until she saw him again.
That led her to fear and doubt and anxiety of how they would ever make this work. Spiraling into panic that she might have moved her sister and nephew to California only to have her relationship with Keaton fall apart when he found out—
Keaton gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll take her home.”
It took a second for her to untwist her mind only to get confused again. “I live the opposite direction—”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that.”
He used his foot to angle a chair and eased into it, pulling her onto his lap. Brooke couldn’t look away from his face, from the intensity in his eyes. He was focused in a way that told Brooke this conversation had a very specific purpose. The fact that everyone else was also listening should have been weird. Brooke should have told him they’d talk about it privately, but instead of the others’ presence feeling invasive, it felt supportive. Nurturing. And Brooke realized this was probably a lot like what it felt like to have a big, close family always butting into your business.
God, she understood why Ellie loved it so much. Brooke did too.
He pulled out his wallet, opened the fold, and drew out a key. “I think it’s about time you gave your sister and your nephew some space.” He grinned. “And come crowd me instead.”
