by Lexi Blake
He wasn’t even sure why he was around.
He stopped. He couldn’t walk away, because Aidan and Lexi might not need him anymore, but Jack and Daphne sure as hell did.
“Lucas.” Aidan stormed up the steps. “You are not going anywhere.”
Once again, he’d done exactly the wrong thing and made an ass of himself. “Of course not. I apologize. I’m going to go and spend some time with Jack and Daphne.”
He would hold his kids and maybe they would remind him that he had something to offer.
“They’re not here,” Lexi said. “What’s going on? Why are you two fighting?”
“What do you care?” Lucas was feeling mean. She only paid attention to him when he was fucking up. Come to think of it, Aidan only paid attention when either Lucas was screwing up or Aidan was horny. “And where are my kids?”
“Momma took them,” Lexi explained.
So now she was sending his kids away without talking to him about it. “Tell her to bring them back.”
Aidan got in between them. “Lucas, you need to take a time-out.”
So he got treated like a child? “You know what? You don’t get to order me around.”
Aidan seemed to grow two inches. “I don’t? Because maybe I don’t understand the nature of our agreed-upon relationship.”
“You should both stop fighting,” Lexi said, her voice soft.
But he wasn’t about to listen to her either. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe we have different versions of what a Master should do. You don’t get to let her run wild while controlling everything I do.”
“I do not control everything you do.”
“No, you’re far too busy running your ranch and Lexi is too busy becoming a best-selling author to be actual functioning members of a marriage.”
“Lucas, you misunderstood me. Calm the fuck down.” Aidan stepped up, using his height and bulky body to crowd Lucas.
“Please don’t fight,” Lexi said, putting a hand on both of them.
“You can’t step in after months of ignoring us and expect that we’ll fall in line, Alexis. Go inside. This is between me and Lucas,” Aidan said.
“Lots of things are between you and Lucas.” Lexi sounded vulnerable.
“Don’t you blame me for that,” Lucas shot back, well aware that they were out in the open where anyone could be listening in, but it didn’t matter. If Aidan didn’t value him and Lexi didn’t need him, nothing much mattered.
“I don’t, babe.” She hadn’t called him babe like that in months, not in the soft sweet way she used to.
“Are you challenging me, Lucas?” Aidan seemed to not notice that something was different about Lexi.
“I haven’t challenged you enough.” He said the words, but now he was looking at Lexi, seeing the tired look in her eyes, the way her mouth turned down. He’d spent so much time being angry with her that he hadn’t truly looked at her in months. He hadn’t taken the time to study her. Lexi wore her worries on her face. She’d always been unable to hide from him. She could shut down, but then he would know something was wrong.
Lexi hadn’t been the only one who had shut down. Lucas had stopped trying somewhere along the way. He’d allowed his own private hurts to become his world.
Marriage didn’t end at the “I dos.” It didn’t stop being hard simply because they had decided to be together. He’d thought they would magically get along once it was all settled, but that wasn’t true.
Marriages could end. Marriages could crumble. People could grow apart. They could become invested in their own worlds, believing that the people they loved would always be there because they had said some words and signed some documents.
Words didn’t keep lovers together. Documents didn’t make a marriage.
People grew. They changed, and he suddenly realized that they could change together or grow apart, and it was all their decision.
“Stop.”
“We’re not stopping anything, Lucas.”
His Master was on edge, and Lucas had done nothing to help the matter. He’d broken their contract by not communicating with him. “I’m very angry with you right now, Master.”
Now that he was saying the words, there was no real heat behind them. Emotion, for sure, but speaking them out loud, the simple act of being heard, lessened his anger.
And his Master’s, it seemed. Aidan’s angry look softened. “I know you are.”
“And I’m mad at you, Lexi.”
She nodded. “You should be.”
“We have to be more important than your career.”
Her skin had paled to a waxy color and he reached out for her, but she stepped away, shaking her head. “No. Don’t. Not until you’ve heard what I have to say.”
“And me.” Aidan didn’t pull away. He took Lucas’s hand. “You misunderstood me, Lucas. I might have made some mistakes, but you have to hear me out.”
Because that was what people who wanted to stay in love did. They listened. They talked. They forgave. “All right. It hurt when you told me that I shouldn’t feel like I had a claim to the ranch because it belongs to you.”
Aidan shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I have never said that and never once felt that way.”
Lexi’s eyes were on the ground. “But the land has been in your family for years. You love that land.”
“Yes, I do,” Aidan agreed. “It’s O’Malley land, and you two are missing out on the fact that you’re both O’Malleys and so are our children. That’s not why I’ve kept you out of the business. I’ve kept you out because it hasn’t been much of a business up to this point. It’s been a money pit and you know it. Both you and Lucas brought money into this marriage and all I brought was a place to throw it the last couple of years.”
Lucas shook his head. “That’s not true.”
“Who paid for the house?” Aidan asked.
Lucas sighed. “I wanted to buy the house for us. The ranch house was getting too small.”
Aidan took a deep breath and seemed to calm a bit. “I’m the Master. I should be the one to provide. At the very least, I should be able to pull my own damn weight. This year we should finally see a profit. Don’t think I don’t know that I wouldn’t have made it to this year without Lexi’s dad. I wouldn’t have made it without you, Lucas and Lexi. So I try to keep you out of it because you’ve already done your part.”
This was what made him crazy. “There is no part to this. I can call you Master all you like, but at the end of the day this is our life and our home and I don’t have some part that you can stick me in and say this is what I’ll give or let you give back to me. I want to help with the ranch because it’s yours and mine and our babies’. Can’t you see it doesn’t mean as much if I don’t help? You said Sam was in on the ground floor. Yes, he was. They didn’t have a damn thing before. Well, I don’t care that the ranch has been in your family. It’s our family now, and if you won’t rely on me, then I’m not worth much.”
Aidan put a hand on his shoulder. “I know. And I’m sorry. You have to understand. I wasn’t trying to cut you out. I was trying to offer you something. I wanted to turn the ranch into something that was worthy of you.”
He needed to make his Master understand. “Everything you do, everything you have, is worthy. Let me help you build it. I should be the first person you call when we have trouble, not the last.”
“Oh, god.” Tears were pouring down Lexi’s face. “Oh, god. I cost us the ranch. We’re going to lose the ranch because of me.”
Lucas had to catch her before she fell.
* * * *
Lexi shook her head as she started to wake up. Had she actually fainted? She seemed to be on a bed. Someone had taken off her shoes, and she could feel a hard body pressed behind her.
“The doctor is apparently dealing with a situation.” Lucas’s deep voice penetrated her brain. Everything was foggy.
“Well, I have a situation right here. We need to call an ambulance,” Aidan said. His arms
tightened around her as though he was afraid to let go.
She forced her eyes open. If she let him, Aidan would have three ambulances, the police force, and a fire truck in the front yard before she could take a breath. “I’m fine.”
“You fainted,” he pointed out.
She shook it off. “Because I haven’t eaten in a couple of days.”
Aidan’s eyebrows came together in a frustrated V. “What? I fixed you a plate.”
She shrugged. “And I couldn’t eat it.”
The thought of food turned her stomach. Ever since she’d gotten the last e-mail from Karen, she hadn’t been able to think about anything but maximizing her career.
“Lucas?” Aidan asked.
“I’m on it.” Lucas had a glass of orange juice in his hand. “I brought this with me. Drink it. I’ll go and grab a protein bar.”
“This has to stop, Lexi. You can’t treat yourself like this. You’re making yourself crazy. Drink.” Aidan held the glass up to her lips.
She was forced to drink. Cool, sweet juice filled her mouth. She swallowed it down before pushing his hand away. “We need to talk. I’ve done something terrible.”
He frowned. “What was all that shit about you costing us the ranch?”
If only it was a joke. “The city council is going to take our ranch.”
“Baby, that’s not going to happen.” He smoothed back her hair. God, it felt so good to be in his arms. How long had it been since she’d relaxed in their arms, lazing away the hours while they talked and made love?
She was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to hold her after she told him what she’d done. “You have to listen to me. I’ve got a plan to save us.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s only gossip. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
She had to make him listen. She turned to him, staring into his eyes, willing him to believe her. “The city council is planning on rezoning key parts of the county.”
He nodded. “Yes, I know, sweetheart. It’s already been taken care of.”
“You don’t understand. I pissed Karen off.”
“Karen Wilcox?”
“She’s Karen Carter now. You know, like Mayor Carter.”
His eyes rolled slightly. “Yes, baby. I know she managed to get the mayor to marry her. I don’t know what she has to do with this.”
Because he wasn’t thinking. “Right after Daphne was born, I went to a brunch at the Deer Run Women’s Committee. I was going to head up the auction to raise funds for the new school. Well, Karen had me kicked off because she said there was no place for whores in her town.”
“She said what?” Aidan’s voice had gone dangerously low.
There was a reason she’d tried to take care of it herself in the first place. “She always calls me a whore, Aidan. But she usually does it behind my back. I got a little mad.”
His eyes narrowed. “What exactly did you do?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I might have dumped a punch bowl over her head and told her to take her fake boobs and get out of my house. We own the building the meeting was taking place in. Needless to say, they moved their meetings to somewhere else. But Karen was mad. Everyone laughed at her. She deserved it. But then she walked up to me at Patty Cakes and we had a discussion.”
Aidan’s eyes had narrowed. “You should have had a discussion with me.”
“You shouldn’t have to deal with mean-girl name calling. But she took it further.” Tears threatened, but she bit them back. “She’s going to have her husband take a thousand acres in the east field. He’s going to take our water access and he’s going to use eminent domain to do it. He claims he’s going to build an outlet mall.”
Aidan’s eyes closed, and he took a long breath. “Oh, baby. That wasn’t about a shopping mall. That was a land grab plain and simple. The east pasture is sitting on what might be a ton of natural gas. I turned down a contract with the gas company to drill because I don’t trust them. The mayor wants that money so he came up with the idea of taking the land.”
“You knew about it?” All this time she’d worried sick and he’d known?
“The mayor doesn’t want the land anymore.” Lucas was standing in the doorway, a plate in his hand. “I explained that I could keep him tied up in court for a very long time.”
That didn’t sound like Lucas. “Is that all you did?”
“I might also have had Chase dig up dirt on the bastard’s tax practices. He might owe the IRS a ton of money and he has undocumented workers working in his family’s estate. I might have presented him with evidence, and he might have crapped his pants and backed down. But the official reason is we’re being completely unreasonable and threatening to tie the county up in court. I think he told everyone Aidan was an environmentalist.”
“Yeah, they think that’s worse than being gay, which is the other thing they call me.” He took her hands in his. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to fight about the gas rights. Baby, the company that’s offering is known for being sloppy and, honestly, I don’t want to take the chance that we could make a quick million but lose the land in the end. Ranching is our future.”
She felt numb. “But all this time I thought I was going to cost us the land.”
Aidan ran a hand over her hair. “Baby, the mayor might enjoy screwing Karen, but he’s not about to let her make decisions like that. He didn’t marry her for her brain. He married her because she’s thirty years younger than him. She was always a mean bitch. She probably heard what he was planning and decided to make herself look like she had some power. How long has this been going on?”
“That bitch.” She felt stupid. “Months.”
“Months? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Why didn’t you talk to me?” she threw back at him.
“Because you’re both impossibly stubborn and obnoxious.” Lucas sat the plate in front of her. “And you’re both going to change or we’re going to fall apart. Lexi, what was your plan to save the ranch and how did it involve being on the phone twenty-four seven?”
He knew her really well. “I was going to up my writing schedule so we would have the money to fight this or I could buy us new land.”
Aidan shook his head. “Do you know how much new land would cost? I know you make a lot of money, but you don’t make millions and that’s what it would take. Lexi, I don’t know what you were thinking.”
She sniffled. “I was thinking I didn’t want you to know how stupid I was. I was thinking I would try to save us. But you and Lucas had already done it and not even bothered to tell me something was wrong.”
“That sounds a whole lot like the pot calling the kettle black,” Aidan shot back. “You’ve kept us at arm’s length for months because you weren’t willing to talk about what had happened. I might not have been totally truthful with you, but I didn’t push you away.”
“Really?” Lucas asked, passing the plate to her. “Eat, Lexi. If you don’t, I’ll pull you over my knee. I haven’t topped you in almost a year. Between the pregnancy and this episode, I haven’t gotten what I needed in a very long time. I wouldn’t test me now.”
Her heart ached. She’d known that Lucas was hurting and she’d still held him away. She took the sandwich he’d made her and had a bite.
Lucas wasn’t through. “As to you, Aidan, you can’t say you haven’t held yourself apart from me. How long did it take you to ask me for advice? How many weeks went by?”
Lexi looked back at Aidan. “You didn’t talk to Lucas?”
They always talked. She couldn’t stand the thought of Aidan feeling alone—the way she’d felt for months.
“I thought I could handle it.” Aidan took a long breath.
The same way she had thought she could handle it.
“I’m tired of both of you,” Lucas said. “I’m tired of being ignored. When I have a problem, I come to you. I’ve asked your opinion on everything from what car to buy to how to handle the human reso
urces problems at the Dallas office. I didn’t do that because I thought the two of you knew everything. I did it because I trust you and love you and I need you to know what’s happening in my life. Neither one of you feels the same about me.”
“Or we’re just very stupid,” Lexi tried.
Lucas shrugged. “Either way, it has to change. I’m not saying I’ll leave. I can’t. We have two children who depend on me. But I will change my expectations of what our relationship means. I’ll hold myself apart. I don’t want that. I want what was promised to me. I want my family. Make your decisions. I’m going to go and think for a while.”
“Lucas,” Aidan called out as he turned to go.
Lucas didn’t turn around. “No. If you want me, you’ll know where to find me. Don’t come looking if you can’t be my Master.”
He walked out the door, his boots ringing against the hardwood floors.
“He doesn’t mean that.” She couldn’t let Aidan get mad at Lucas.
Aidan sat back against the bed. “Yes, he does. He has every right to be mad. We failed him.”
The “we” gave her hope. Something had settled deep in her chest. Something that had been tight and nasty had loosened up. “I didn’t fuck everything up?”
Aidan chuckled. “Oh, I think we fucked up plenty. Why didn’t you talk to me?”
He pulled her back into his arms. Those big biceps surrounded her, and for a moment, she felt safe. He’d heard the truth and he wasn’t pushing her away. “She has power over us. She can make life difficult for us and I still got pissed off.”
“You should have clocked her,” Aidan replied.
She shook her head. “I can’t get us kicked out.”
Oh, god. She’d never thought about it that way. She’d had her daughter and then she’d done something that could have cost them the ranch and her whole childhood had played out in some weird place in the back of her brain.
She’d always felt it. She’d felt the fact that she was the reason her mother had lost her home. She’d been the reason they had struggled and her mother had to fight for their existence. She’d been the reason her mother had married a man she’d liked but didn’t love.
