“No,” Bree said more strongly. “I really do need to get home. My mother isn’t feeling well.”
“But . . .” Keira trailed off. Obviously Bree’s mother had been well enough for her to come in the first place, so good old mom was just an excuse.
Bree stood there, her face whiter than normal, drained of color, the bruise stark.
Okay, she didn’t want to meet his daughter. It wasn’t great timing. She wasn’t wearing underwear, which was definitely an uncomfortable feeling in front of Keira. “I’ll take you home, Bree.”
“You don’t have to rush, Dad. We can talk about Stephie when you get back. Or in the morning.”
Stephie. Intervention. He remembered what Keira had said when she opened the door. He could also hear the urgency in her voice, if not in her words.
“I won’t keep him,” Bree said, her voice breathy and rushed. “In fact, I can take a cab.”
“You’re not taking a cab.” He felt rough inside. “I’ll be back,” he told Keira. Then he took Bree’s hand in his and headed back to the car.
She tried to pull away. They didn’t generally hold hands except as a show of ownership at a club.
Maybe that’s what it was in front of his daughter. A show, a statement. I’m your father, but I’m a man, too, and this woman is mine. You’ll have to accept it.
Bree would have to accept it, too.
29
BREE CURLED IN ON HERSELF IN THE FRONT SEAT AS LUKE DROVE, and they sat in silence most of the way back to her mother’s house. His daughter. She knew both his kids were at college, so she thought she’d never have to meet them. How utterly, horribly embarrassing. The girl probably heard them talking about sex, for God’s sake.
She was so young, fresh, and innocent, so pretty. So normal. Bree didn’t think the girl had ever been afraid of anything in her life. And the way she’d examined Bree, as if she was looking at gum—or worse—on the bottom of her father’s shoe.
“I’m good with you meeting Keira,” Luke finally said, as if they hadn’t been sitting there without saying a word for such a long time. “We didn’t have to rush off.”
“I don’t do father-daughter meet-and-greets.” She sounded bitchy and mean.
Luke’s lips stretched in a thin line at her comment.
Why did it bother her anyway? She could have faked courtesy. She faked it at work all the time. She faked everything.
“What I meant,” she said, trying to appease him, “was that you just don’t introduce the woman you’re fucking to your daughter.”
His jaw rippled and tensed. “I’m not just fucking you.”
“I saw that look on your face, Luke. You wanted to crawl away into a hole when she saw us.”
“I was surprised. I couldn’t remember if I’d cleaned up after last night. It wasn’t about you.”
“That’s exactly what it was about. You were thinking ‘holy shit, I have to introduce my daughter to my fuck buddy.’ ” Not that she’d ever thought of him that way. He was . . . her master. “And I’m not even wearing panties.”
He winced, and she knew he’d had the same thought, but he didn’t allow anything into his voice. “Whether you admit it or not, we have a relationship.”
“Yes, we do,” she said rationally. “I’m the slave and you’re the master. And masters don’t introduce their submissives to their daughters.”
He shot her a glare. “You always remember you’re my slave when it’s a convenient tool. I should have ordered you to go into the fucking house and make nice.”
She might have felt better if he had. He was a good father. She knew that with the way he talked about his daughters, his tone softening, his eyes lighting, a gentle smile creasing his lips. And the way Keira had addressed him. Dad, I need your help.
He’d called her honey. Bree’s father used to call her honey when he told her to go play in the dollhouse.
Dammit, Luke was nothing like her father. She wondered how it would have been to have a father like Luke.
Please don’t make me, Daddy.
She never would have had to say those words.
She swallowed hard, painfully. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, though she didn’t know exactly which thing she was apologizing for. Or even if it was to Luke.
Just as moments before she could feel the tension squeezing her into the corner of the car, something gentled in the air around him. “The timing wasn’t right, but I’ll arrange for you to meet both my daughters. I want you to meet them.” He reached for her hand. “Don’t make me order you to do it.”
He let go to turn the corner onto her mother’s street. The house was on the left, and the lights were on. Her mother was going to wonder why she was back so soon.
“Bree, look at me.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been staring at the house.
“Kiss me goodnight,” he said.
“What?” The words seemed totally foreign.
“Kiss me. And don’t make me order you to do that either.”
“I kiss you all the time.”
“I want one now.”
“Okay. Sure.” She didn’t understand the disquieting light in his eyes. But she thought about his kiss in the car after they’d been bowling, how good it had been. How she’d wanted to be the kind of woman who deserved a kiss like that.
Putting a hand to his cheek, she leaned in slowly. She started with just a caress of her lips against his. Then her tongue along the seam. He parted for her, and she tasted him, minty, his breath sweet. She leaned harder against his chest, opened her mouth, and took him with a long, deep sweep of her tongue. Her breath ratcheted up. His heart beat solidly against her. She wrapped her arms around him, plastered her chest to his, and kissed him with everything she had. Like the night after bowling. Like in her fantasies. Like she’d never kissed before. Not with anyone. Men didn’t want kisses from a woman like her. They wanted other things.
“Christ,” he said, finally coming up for air. “I needed that. Jesus.”
She’d needed it, too. She’d never realized how badly she needed it.
She needed him. Oh God. She really did.
AS LUKE PULLED HIS CAR INTO THE GARAGE, BREE’S TASTE WAS still on his lips and her scent continued to cloud his mind. That kiss. It was electric. So much more than he’d expected from her. If only he hadn’t had to leave.
“I’m home,” he called as he entered the kitchen through the garage door.
Keira swept in blanketed by a fog of lavender. In fact, the whole house smelled like lavender. She’d taken a bath while he was gone.
He’d missed the perfume of women in the house. He thought of Bree, of having her sleep over, of watching her luxuriate in the tub in a haze of sweetly scented steam.
“She was very pretty.” Keira opened the fridge. “But really, you shouldn’t hit her where people can see the bruises.”
Something welled up inside him. Guilt. Hard-edged. He lashed out against it. “I would never hit a woman. You should know me better than that.”
Keira closed the fridge without retrieving anything, her gaze stricken. “I’m sorry, Dad. I was joking. I know you’d never do anything like that.”
He immediately felt like crap. He’d lashed out at Keira because the truth was he did a lot of things to Bree most people wouldn’t approve of. He’d liked it all. If he could just believe that what they did together wasn’t bad for her. “Sorry I went off on you. It’s just not something you should laugh about.”
“You’re right.” Keira pressed her lips together. “Especially with what I came home to talk to you about.”
“You could have called, honey.”
“No. This needs one-on-one.” She smiled, forgetting his harshness of moments before. “We need a chai for this.”
“Guess it’s going to be a long talk then.” They’d often gone to the local coffeehouse for a chai and a talk, he and Keira and Kyla. Beth had been jealous of those father–daughter chats, yet she’d never made her own
kind of tradition with the girls.
Ten minutes later, they were ensconced in the coffee bar with large steaming cups. The place was packed, students with notebooks and laptops, couples, teenagers, everyone with coats and umbrellas just in case. The scent of freshly ground coffee had seeped into the wooden surfaces, the floor by the counter was shiny with a million scuffmarks, and the roar of the steam valve was like music amid the voices and laughter.
“Okay, what gives with Stephie?” he asked, then sipped the spicy brew.
“Her boyfriend beats her, he’s got her hooked on drugs, and he makes her have sex with other guys to pay for his habit.” That was Keira. She didn’t pull any punches.
And it was a punch right to his gut. “Jesus.” Okay, that wasn’t him; that was Derek. But it was still too close to home.
“You see why I had to drive home for a face-to-face?”
Yeah, he did. “Have you talked to her parents?”
“I left messages. But they never called back.”
“Did you leave that on a message?”
She clucked her tongue. “Right. Even I wouldn’t leave that to a message. I drove by their house, but there weren’t any lights on.” Then she touched his hand. “Dad, I don’t think I can do this one on my own.”
“That’s really why you came home.” He softened inside.
“Yeah.” She gave him a pleading look. Kids, they always got to you at the strangest times, suddenly making you feel needed and important and big. “You know how to handle this kind of stuff, Dad.”
Right. With Bree, he’d almost broken Derek’s nose. He’d do the same for Keira or Kyla. He’d do it for Stephie. “Of course I’ll go with you, honey. Where is she now?”
“I tried to get her to come here, but she’s with that freak”—her lips twisted as she said the word—“and it’s like he’s got some insane hold over her. I just want to get her parents to come down and take her home or something, anything.”
He’d raised a kind, caring woman, and he was proud of her.
Then she grimaced, plucking at the letter jacket. “You know what I’m most afraid of, Dad?” she said in an almost childlike voice.
“What?”
“That her parents won’t do anything.”
He covered her hand. He’d met Stephie’s parents, and they were indeed a disinterested lot. He’d wondered why they’d bothered to have a child. Once she’d turned thirteen, they’d thought nothing of leaving Stephie alone while they went on vacation. Keira usually brought Stephie over to stay.
It made him think of Bree. Her mom seemed normal enough on the face of it, maybe a little manic, perhaps, but normal. Until you looked beneath the facade, like when she hadn’t said a thing about that bruise. Something had happened in that house, something had gone wrong, something that made Bree the woman she was, a woman who needed punishment for some imagined crime she’d committed long ago.
“Let’s deal with her parents flaking out when the time comes, honey, if it comes, okay. They might surprise you so don’t start thinking with a negative attitude yet.” He picked up his chai. “Let’s do it.”
She squeezed his hand. “Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.”
For her, maybe he was. He was no longer sure if he was the best for Bree.
AS A CHILD, WHENEVER HER PARENTS TOOK HER TO A RESTAURANT, Bree whispered her order. As if her voice wouldn’t work. She couldn’t remember what she’d been afraid of, why she could only whisper. Maybe she’d been scared she’d order something too expensive and her father would get mad. Or that she’d spill her milk or break a glass. Whatever it was, she’d been so frightened, she couldn’t manage more than a whisper. The waitress would ask her to repeat herself, and, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, her father would get mad. The angrier he became, the harder it was for Bree to talk, like a merry-go-round she couldn’t get off. In the end, her mother started ordering for her. But then there were other things she had to be afraid of.
Marbury was one of those things. She couldn’t sleep on Wednesday night after Luke dropped her off. Thursday morning, her skin had the pallor of porridge that had been warmed up in the microwave too many times, and the smudges beneath her eyes were so dark, she looked like a football player.
On the way to work, she almost hit a car at a stoplight. When she walked into her office, she couldn’t breathe, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room and the walls had closed in on her.
When Rachel ran over to offer her condolences, Bree put a finger to her lips and shook her head. That was the cool thing about Rachel, she knew exactly when to back off.
I can do this. I’ll be fine.
Denton Marbury would have to behave himself with other people around. She knew her numbers inside and out. She was thirty-five years old, not eight, and this was her office, not a dollhouse. She could do this.
Erin stuck her head around the doorjamb, leaning out of her office next door. “You okay?”
Bree gave her the thumbs up. If she tried to speak, she was afraid it might be nothing more than a whisper.
Erin stared at her harder. “What did you do to your head?”
Damn, she’d forgotten. Bree put her fingertips to the bruise. Obviously makeup did not work. It was a wonder Rachel hadn’t said something. “I was rushing and my mom opened the kitchen door. And I ran right into it.” Thank God it didn’t come out as an embarrassing whisper. And blaming the bruise on an accident with her mom sounded better than saying she ran into a door on her own.
“Oh Jesus.” Erin puffed out a breath. “That’s all you two need right now.”
“I’m fine,” Bree said. “I had an X-ray.” Lies upon lies.
“You sure you’re good to go with Marbury today?”
“Piece of cake.” Yeah right.
“Okay.” Erin backed up a couple of steps as if she was still unsure. “Call me if you need me. I’ll be right next door.”
Bree smiled widely, then toned it down, afraid her face would crack, and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Five to nine. She could hear every tick of the wall clock in her office. The wait was interminable.
When her computer finished booting up, Bree opened the files she’d need on the desktop and angled the monitor so it could also be viewed from the chair she’d placed on the other side of her desk, just in case Marbury wanted to see the actual calculations. She spread the hard copies in their folders out on the desk, too, all neatly organized, everything at her fingertips.
Then Denton Marbury opened the lobby door.
30
DENTON MARBURY LUMBERED THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR, HIS feet angled out like a duck’s. Her heart raced. He was just a man, Bree told herself. He wasn’t even all that smart. She was faster at understanding things than he was.
He stopped outside Erin’s office first, his voice thunderous as if he were talking to a stadium crowd. “Erin, so good to see you.”
“You, too, Denton,” Erin’s voice carried around the doorjamb separating her office from Bree’s. “Thanks for coming over here. It makes everything easier for Bree.”
“Yes, yes,” he boomed. “We want to make everything easy for Bree.” But he slid Bree a narrowed look.
“I’ll be right next door if you and Bree need me.”
He fluttered pudgy fingers at her, then turned to Bree in her office.
“Good morning,” she said. “I’ve got everything ready.” She was proud of the fact that she didn’t speak in a whisper and her voice didn’t shake. In college, she’d had to take a speech class, and her legs had wobbled so badly, she could actually hear a resulting quaver in her words. But not so today.
“You’re so efficient, Bree.”
She was sure he wanted Erin to hear how polite he was.
Then he shut the office door. She suddenly felt sick.
Please don’t make me do it.
“You don’t mind if I close the door, do you, Bree?” He smiled at her with fleshy lips. “We don’t want to be disturbed or disturb
anyone else with our discussions.”
“That’s fine.” But she couldn’t help licking her dry lips.
He looked at her forehead, but didn’t mention the bruise as if he didn’t want to be drawn into her drama. Then he pulled the chair around from the front of the desk and sat beside her. “There, that’s much better. I can’t crane over the desk like that to see your monitor.”
He was a big man, and he overflowed the seat like a soufflé rising over the sides of the pan as it baked in the oven. His rumpled brown suit smelled of onions, and his breath was sickly sweet with cherry throat lozenges.
But she could do this. “What would you like to go over first?” she said, once again pleased with how steady her voice sounded.
He didn’t have a briefcase, hadn’t brought a notepad, not even the IRS audit notification. Still, he said, “There are some questionable items in the expense category.”
She breathed deeply. There was nothing questionable. But he’d make her prove it. She opened the file folder rather than reference the spreadsheet on the computer because she didn’t want him to lean over her to see the monitor. “Which items in particular?” she asked.
“Let’s start with the laptop. It should be depreciated rather than expensed.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s a Section 179 asset. Which means we can choose to expense it rather than depreciate it.” Which he should know. “With the way technology changes and how often we have to update our computers, it makes more sense to expense.”
He smiled without any nicety to it. “Just checking that you know these things, Bree.”
He was the tax accountant. She didn’t have to know. It was his job. But she was such a good little girl, she didn’t say anything. “Next issue.”
They spent half an hour going through the expenses, and her head was starting to ache with the roar of his voice next to her ear. He had a comment and an argument for everything.
In the end, though, she didn’t change a single line item.
What Happens After Dark Page 23
