That fear resolved in her mind, she vowed to spend the rest of her life as the person Alex needed. As his mother. Someone he could always count on. She’d be the family he deserved and she never had.
She opened her eyes and stared across the room at Ben working in her kitchen. Alex sat strapped in his bouncy seat on the kitchen table. Ben walked over, tickled his belly, making Alex smile and shake his puppy and kick his feet with excitement. The smell of coffee and eggs filled the room. Her stomach grumbled. She’d missed dinner last night when she decided to go and check on Donald and Margo. She’d been too upset to eat last night when she got home.
Alex squealed with delight at Ben, who smiled down at him. Did Ben know how much she liked him? He made her nervous every time they met. Those brief encounters always set something off in her system that charged her nerves, made the butterflies in her stomach flutter to life, and her heart beat faster. She tried to hide it even now and wondered why. Something inside of her told her to reach out to him. Try for something more than colleagues or casual dating with no strings attached. She’d never relied on a man, never given herself permission to trust that she wouldn’t end up like her mother—devoted to a man who only wanted to use that love against her and break her down until no matter what he did she’d never leave him.
The rational part of her knew that she had more strength and conviction than that, but she’d never been in love, or experienced feelings and emotions like that for a man.
Except that one time with Ben. The kiss she shared with him rocked her. He’d tilted her world off balance, and she ran, afraid she didn’t have anything to offer an amazing man like him.
She loved Margo and Alex. But that was very different than loving a man. Did she have that kind of love in her? A kind of love that wouldn’t destroy her but fill her life with happiness?
The few times she felt even a glimmer of attraction for a man, she’d walked the other way. She enjoyed dating. She liked sex. On her terms.
Maybe she truly was ready for something more. She certainly didn’t feel like running now—unless it was into Ben’s arms.
The intense attraction she felt toward Ben eclipsed all the other times her hormones made her tingle with lust. Ben sent her body into overdrive. The ache deep inside her made her squeeze her thighs tight and imagine what it would feel like to have him cover her body with his and make love to her right here on the couch.
She needed Ben to help her with Donald’s estate. He was a lawyer. A damn good one. He promised to help her. For free. Who would pass up free legal services and advice? She couldn’t afford to turn him down just to avoid complications. Like the fact she wished he was still next to her, holding her close and making her feel safe. There had been too few times in her life she’d felt that way.
Her gaze swept up his lean legs, over his flat belly to his wide chest and shoulders, and up to his gorgeous face with that square jaw, perfect mouth, and intense brown eyes staring back at her. One side of his mouth quirked up in a slight grin.
“Breakfast is ready.”
Great. Not only had she been caught ogling the guy, but did he have to look that damn perfect in the morning when she probably looked like a rag doll dragged through the yard?
His deep voice resonated through her like an echo of something long forgotten but still cherished. The tingling that swept over her skin settled in her chest and made her breasts heavy and her nipples harden. She tried not to squirm or press her arms to her aching breasts. In fact, she avoided eye contact, rolled up to sitting, and raked her hand through her messy hair, dislodging the band that most of the mass had fallen from as she slept. She shook out the strands. Ben’s gaze narrowed on her. She swore he inhaled and leaned forward like he meant to come to her. A trick of the mind? Wishful thinking? Either way, she couldn’t deny the effect he had on her. Judging by the way his eyes strayed to her breasts, she couldn’t hide it either.
Ben’s gaze met hers again. “Is there something you want, Kate?”
Avoiding the awkward answer that she wanted him to hold her, kiss her, make everything that happened yesterday disappear for a little while longer, she went with the practical. She was always practical. “Coffee.”
His smile spread. “Sure. Anything you want.”
So many naughty things flashed through her mind. Her fingers gripped in his dark hair as his mouth latched on and sucked her aching breast. His mouth kissing and hands caressing every inch of her naked body. His body, every sculpted muscle on display, pressed down on hers as he filled her, rocked against her, and made her pant out his name.
God, how she wanted to do all those things and more and avoid reality.
It had been far too long since she let a man that close to her. Way before she got pregnant with Alex. But this went deeper than the physical. Ben called to something deep inside of her. Something that answered only to him.
What was she going to do about it? What did she want?
She wanted her sister to still be alive. She wanted this to all be a dream. She wanted Alex to still have his father and Margo. She wanted to be the perfect mother to Alex. She wanted to know he’d always be happy and healthy. She wanted someone else to carry the load she faced.
She wanted life to finally be simple and not so complicated.
When Ben came toward her with a cup of steaming coffee, she admitted she wanted him to be the man she’d wished for as a little girl, scared and lonely locked in a dark closet, hoping that one day she’d find the one man who would love her and never hurt her. She’d long forgotten that hopeful girl existed. Life taught her some hard lessons. You had to work hard to get the things you wanted. You could never count on someone else to give you what you really needed.
You had to love yourself.
She’d been alone a long time. Since she was ten and spent some time in juvy before she got dumped in the foster care system and met Margo. It would be nice to have someone to help her. Someone to count on. Someone she trusted as much as she’d trusted her sister.
Tears shimmered in her eyes. She’d let her mind go there. The images of Margo lying dead on the floor, her head blown open, the blood everywhere.
“Kate, honey, breathe.”
She responded to that sweet term with ridiculously too much longing to hear him call her that again.
She tried to suck in a breath, but only ended up hyperventilating. Not one to lose her shit, she shook her head and tried to erase the images in her mind, or at least change them back to her and Ben setting their bodies ablaze in passion. It didn’t work.
“They’re dead. The blood. She’s gone. She’s not coming back. I’m all alone.” She admitted her worst fear. That for all her bravado and thinking she didn’t need anyone, she’d always known Margo had her back. Someone cared. Someone loved her.
“You’re not alone. I’m here. I’ll see you through this. I’m not going anywhere.”
She sucked in a ragged breath and let it out. Ben kneeled in front of her. He reached out and touched the side of her face, sweeping his fingers through her hair and holding the side of her head. She leaned into his touch, sucking in his warmth and kindness. She needed it right now, because the cold reality of all she’d lost when Margo died hit her hard.
“Why are you doing this?”
Ben looked her right in the eye. “Aside from the reasons I gave you last night, the same reason you haven’t told me to go. I want to be here with you. You want me to stay. Let’s at least admit that.”
“I barely know you.”
“We’ll work on that while we set things right for Alex. Let’s start with having breakfast together.”
He made it seem so simple and easy. Why did she think it had to be complicated? Why couldn’t she just have breakfast with him? Every friendship had to start somewhere. They’d start here, because he was right—she didn’t want him to go.
“I’ve never had a man make me breakfast.” She cocked her head and thought back over her “relationships.” “I’ve never had a man stay overnight.”
“See, something we have in common.”
“You’ve never had a man stay over and make you breakfast either?” she teased.
“No.” Ben laughed. “And I’ve never been the guy who does that either.”
“But you did it for me,” Kate pointed out, not letting him off the hook so easily. She wanted to know that he did it for her because it meant something, not because he felt bad about her sister and her circumstances.
“I wanted to.”
Those words conveyed so much more than his simple truth. She appreciated his honesty.
“Let’s eat before it gets cold,” he coaxed.
Kate caught the nerves in his rushed words. He avoided looking at her, turned, and went back into her kitchen to plate up the eggs he’d left warming on the stove. She left him to rummage through her drawers to come up with forks and went to the table. She smiled down at Alex, picked up the puppy he’d dropped on the table, and pounced it up his belly to his nose all the while saying, “Ruff. Ruff. Ruff.” Alex smiled up at her and just like that all the fun and joy disappeared, replaced with the overwhelming sadness that ebbed and flowed since last night.
Tears spilled down her face. Ben set the two plates on the table beside Alex’s bouncy seat. His big hands pressed on her shoulders. He squeezed her tight and aching muscles. That and the warmth of his body at her back eased and reassured her.
“It’s going to be okay, Kate. You’ll get through this.”
“I know. It’s hard. I look at him and it hits me all at once.”
“You need time to grieve. The shock will wear off and you’ll settle into your new reality. You’ll adjust to being a mother. In fact, I came up with a few things you need to do right away.”
Ben pulled out her chair. She sat. He handed her a fork and stared down at her, waiting for her to eat. The man didn’t just scramble up some eggs. He’d added cheese and some green onion. She didn’t think she was hungry until the food touched her tongue. The taste, the yummy melted cheese, brought her stomach back to life.
Ben took the seat across from her. “You need to call work and take family leave. Time to sort out day care or a babysitter for Alex when you work, to figure out this mess with Margo’s and Donald’s estates and how that plays with his divorce. I’ll help you with funeral arrangements for your sister and Donald. You’ll want to go get her stuff before the Faradays swoop in and take over the property.”
“They can’t. It’s in my sister’s name. Donald gave it to her.”
“Wow. That’s quite a gift.”
“To prove how much he loved her. To give her a sense of security. You know, she may lose him, but she’d get to keep her home.”
“I bet that’s important to the two of you after living in the foster care system.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Do you want to live in your sister’s house, or stay here?”
She looked around her tiny place and sighed. She liked it here. The place belonged to her. It’s the first real home she’d ever had that no one could take away. Still, she didn’t have a yard for Alex to play in, or a room to make his.
“Even if I wanted to live in that mansion, I can’t afford the utilities, taxes, and upkeep.”
“Are you sure about that? What else did your sister leave you? We have no idea what Donald set up for Alex.”
“If anything, right? He might not have done anything for Alex.”
“He was a smart businessman. He didn’t rush into asking his wife for a divorce even after he and Margo had Alex. He waited. Why? My guess is so that he could plan and make sure Christina and Evan didn’t take more than he wanted them to have. He’d have protected Margo and Alex if anything happened to him. You said it yourself—he gave her the house to make her feel safe. To protect her.”
“I’ll call work, then go down to the bank. I’ll see what Margo left in the safe deposit box for her go-bag.”
“Excuse me, what?”
“Margo and I only shared two foster homes together. The other three were close by each other. We always kept a stash of what we’d need if we had to run.”
“Damn, five different homes. In how many years?”
“About eight.”
Ben shook his head, his eyes filled with sorrow. “Tough life.”
“I got by. Margo and I got by together.”
“Why’d you have to run?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Ben pressed his forearms on the table and leaned forward, intent on her. “Actually, I do.”
“You like hearing about abusive fucks who get their kicks hitting kids, or worse, using them for their sick and twisted sexual fantasies? Or teenagers who prey on younger kids because they’re so angry someone preyed on them they want to make someone else feel just as bad? There are some good foster homes with people who give a shit, but those can be few and far between when you’re a kid and all you want is someone to pay attention to you. You get stuck in a cycle of making poor choices and even worse mistakes just so someone will notice you. You get labeled bad and difficult and no one wants you, so they pass you from one foster home to the next until you never know when that social worker will show up and take you to the next place until they dump you out of the system on your eighteenth birthday.”
“It’s a shitty way to grow up,” Ben agreed. “Do you have any other family?”
“None that wanted me after I shot my father.”
“Why’d you do that?” His voice didn’t hold a lick of censure or disgust. He genuinely wanted to know how a ten-year-old kid ended up with a gun in her hand and a dead man at her feet. Kate often wondered how it all came down to that sad but inevitable fact.
“He stabbed my mother two dozen times because she refused to bathe me and get me ready for bed. After years of putting up with his ugly mouth, foul behavior, and punishments for whatever slight he perceived, real or imagined, she put her foot down and stood up for me. So many times she’d turned her back, ignored the things he said or did, but that night she refused to back down.” Lost in the past, she said, “I remember her crying and screaming. All the blood. On the floor, the walls, him.” Her mother’s image and Margo’s lay separate in her mind, shifted, transposed, then vanished under all that red blood.
Ben settled his hand over hers. The warmth of his touch brought her back. She blinked the nightmares away and shook off the icy shiver racing up her spine.
“I don’t even remember getting the gun. I just had it in my hand. My father sat on his knees on the floor beside my mother’s dead body. He held the knife in both his bloody hands. His head was down and his chest heaved up and down as he breathed heavy from the exertion of killing her. He sat quiet after he’d jabbed that knife into her all those times. I stood in front of him, my mother dead on the scuffed linoleum. His head came up and his empty gaze met mine. I told him, ‘I hate you,’ and fired right into his chest. I kept firing even when the bullets were gone.” The click, click, click of the hammer rang in her head and made her squint and jerk her head just like she did that long ago night.
“A neighbor heard the shots, called the cops, and they found me hiding in the closet my father used to lock me in when I was bad. I must have been really bad because I spent a lot of time in that dark hole.
“I spent some time in juvy, until the prosecutor had no choice but to render the case self-defense. I stuck to my story that he’d raised that knife to kill me after he killed my mother. But he didn’t. Doesn’t mean he didn’t need to be dead.”
“My mother killed my father. Shot him.” Ben’s deep voice came out flat and matter-of-fact, but she heard the underlying hurt and pain. “He liked to beat us. One day, she’d finally had enough. Like yo
u, she knew he needed to be dead or he’d keep coming back to hurt us.”
He’d used her words to show her that what she’d done didn’t repulse him. A man of the law, he didn’t judge her. He understood that what she’d done she had to do, because he understood what his mother had to do for him.
Kate found the courage to finish her tale. “My father had been prepping me for weeks. Hugs that lasted too long when he’d barely hugged me my whole life. He’d touch me, sweep his hand down my cheek and neck and across my chest. He’d pull me out of my seat at the dinner table, wrap his arm around my waist and put his other hand on my chest and ask me about school without caring one bit what I said. The way he looked at me creeped me out. I knew something was coming. The fear in my mother’s eyes when she looked at me said all I needed to know. I tried to avoid him, but he went out of his way to find me all the time.
“I’ve never told anyone but Margo the truth about that night.”
“I’m glad you trusted me with what happened. I understand how you felt about him. Scared, always looking over your shoulder, anticipating the next bad thing he’d do because you knew it was coming. I felt the same way about my father.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“A very good lawyer got her off. She lives not too far from here. She works at a nonprofit animal rescue. She loves being with the dogs and cats. She married an accountant. He’s a total nerd and loves her to death. They take a cruise once a year and barbecue in the backyard during the spring and summer. She’s happy.”
“So, you like the new guy.”
“Anyone is better than my dad, but Tom is exactly what my mother needs. He’s kind and thoughtful. He makes her feel special. Hell, the man worships her. That’s all I ever wanted for her.”
Everything She Wanted Page 9
