JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security)

by Glenna Sinclair

  It bothered me that I didn’t know these things. I tried to remind myself that it really wasn’t my business. I was here as a courtesy. Once JT was healed and comfortable hanging out with Harrison, my presence would no longer be necessary. Harrison made that kind of clear last night when he escorted me to a guest bedroom instead of his own. Whatever it was going on between us, it wasn’t permanent and it clearly didn’t mean enough to him to continue it here.

  Not that I wanted it to continue. Or maybe I did.

  All I knew was that I wanted to know more about him. And I wanted him to welcome me into his bed here in his home. I hated that I wanted this, that I wanted him, but I did.

  I dressed carefully after a long shower that did nothing to soothe away the tension that had taken up residence in my shoulders. I wanted to make a good impression on Harrison’s family. So I began at the basics, using an expensive, perfumed lotion Susan gave me for Christmas some time back. Then I dug out the makeup kit that I put aside when I came home from New York and rarely touched again. Who needs to wear makeup while slaving over cakes and donuts and cupcakes? Then I piled my hair on top of my head in a simple French knot with small curls framing my face. Another trick I learned in New York for all the dinner parties and charity balls my job had required me to attend.

  I convinced myself that I no longer missed New York. But standing in the bathroom staring at this other person in the mirror reminded me of how much I’d hated the prep but loved the results.

  In the bedroom, I slid the dress I’d chosen from its hanger, my fingers sliding through the silky material with anticipation. I remembered buying this dress, how it’d hurt to part with the money, but how perfect it felt the first time I put it on. That was four years ago. The dress was sadly out of fashion now. But it still looked perfect hanging from my curves. It was red with a sweetheart bodice, a high waist, and a flirty skirt that ended at my knees in the front and a few inches above my ankles in the back. I slid on a pair of black pumps and smiled at the finished product.

  I still cleaned up pretty well.

  I grabbed the black shawl I’d also thought to bring and stepped out into the hallway. I hadn’t realized that Harrison was home. When I came upstairs, he was still at the office. But there he was, stepping out of the double doors at the end of the hallway dressed in a suit that hung just perfectly from those broad shoulders and slender hips. My knees went weak for just an instant as I watched him, unaware of me for the moment, moving with more grace than a man should be allowed.

  And then he looked up and our eyes met. Those words he spoke to me that day in the hotel brushed through my mind…

  You’re the only woman I want.

  …and my belly began to tighten and quiver all at the same time.

  “Hey,” he said, coming toward me as his eyes moved slowly over the length of me. “You look…amazing.”

  “Thanks. You don’t look too bad yourself.”

  I meant it as a little tease, but it came out so breathlessly that I think he could tell exactly where my thoughts were going because he slid his hand over my upper arm and drew me close to him, his other hand snaking around my waist. His lips were on mine in an instant. I moved close to him, sliding my fingers into the hair that barely brushed the collar of his shirt. His mouth was cold and minty, the product of a recent tooth brushing. But it warmed up quickly, the mint an added tingle on the tip of my tongue as I explored just as intently as he did.

  But then he was pulling away, clearing his throat as he did.

  “We should probably go see if JT needs any help.”

  “Oh. Of course,” I mumbled, caught a little off guard by his abrupt movement.

  He pressed his hand to the small of my back and pushed me gently toward the stairs. I moved away from his touch as soon as we headed down, my head spinning with thoughts I didn’t want to entertain floating through my mind. Like, why did he kiss me like that if he didn’t want to be with me? And, why did he keep pulling me close only to push me away?

  JT was already in the living room when we entered, dressed in a suit I didn’t recognize. By some miracle, he’d managed to get the pants on without have to cut a slit in them, which was pretty impressive since he’d need a whole new wardrobe of jeans when the cast came off. His tie was a little askew, but somehow it worked on JT.

  “It’s about time,” he announced as we walked into the sitting room. “I’ve been ready for like hours.”

  “I doubt it’s been hours since you were still playing video games when I went up,” I said, brushing a piece of hair off his forehead. “You look handsome, though.”

  “Thanks,” he said, pushing the hair back down on his forehead.

  Harrison chuckled.

  We left a moment later, Harrison helping JT into the car and stowing his chair in the trunk. It was a fairly short drive. His mother’s house was just a few miles from his, situation lower on the same hill.

  “I grew up here,” he said over his shoulder to JT. “My father bought this house when my brother was ten and I was five, so it’s really the only home I remember.”

  “Cool,” JT said, his go to word for just about every situation.

  “It was originally just a three bedroom colonial, but he added on to it over the years. And my mother had it renovated a few years ago.”

  “Cool,” JT repeated.

  “You’ve lived here all your life?” I asked.

  “Except for the few years I spent at Stanford, yeah.”

  “You never struck me as the small-town kind of guy.”

  “Ashland might seem like a small town, but there’s a lot of culture here.”

  “I’m sure there is. But you seem more like a worldly kind of guy, the guy who likes to travel and see as much of the world as possible.”

  “That I’ve also done. The company requires me to travel quite often.”

  “And you’ve never wanted to live anywhere else?”

  He’d pulled to a stop in front of his mother’s house. He stared forward for a moment, his hands wringing the steering wheel like he wanted to rip it off the car, or something. Then he looked at me and began to speak, but JT interrupted.

  “Can we go inside? I’m starving.”

  Harrison studied me for a moment longer, then nodded.

  “Yeah, I’m hungry too.”

  I waited as Harrison put JT back in his chair, then the three of us walked to the front door together. It was opened by a tall, distinguished man Harrison called Edward. It took me a minute, but I figured out he was the butler when he took our jackets and directed us quite stiffly to the sitting room.

  “Harrison!”

  Libby rushed up to her brother, high color on her cheeks. But before she could speak, another man, this one tall and dark with green eyes that were so much like Harrison’s that he could only be his brother. He was just an inch or so shorter, but his shoulders were just as wide. His jaw was thinner, accenting his high cheekbones. And he had a little bit of a sparkle in his eye when he came over to introduce himself.

  “You,” he said, taking my hand before I could react, “are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.”

  I blushed even as I watched him bend low over my hand and brush dry lips against my knuckles.

  Wow, what a charmer!

  “Randy,” Harrison said, his voice so cold that I could almost imagine seeing frost slip from between his lips.

  The charmer turned to Harrison, a bit of bashfulness overcoming his handsome features.

  “Hello, Harrison,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Come to visit mother. Imagine my surprise when she told me you had a son.”

  Harrison’s eyes narrowed, and there was so much tension in his expression that his face might shatter if he moved. It made me wonder what had happened between these two that had caused such bad blood.

  “And this must be the son in question,” Randy said, turning to JT. “Hey, I’m your uncle.”

  �
�Hi!”

  JT took his hand, the smile on his face so wide I knew exactly what he was thinking. Our parents were only children, so we didn’t have aunts and uncles. JT was suddenly being given family like he’d never had before, and he was loving every moment of it.

  Randy leaned close to JT and said, “So, when you get out of that chair, we’ll have to go do some uncle and nephew things, like hitting a few bars, picking up a few chicks.”

  “Awesome,” JT said. “Can’t wait.”

  Randy laughed as he straightened, but the laughter died as he glanced at Harrison.

  “Don’t look so stressed, bro. I was just joking. I would never take a minor to a bar.”

  But then he dropped a wink in JT’s direction.

  This family was definitely more complex than I ever imagined. I was suddenly looking forward to this little get-together if only to see how the tension between Harrison and Randy worked itself out.

  Chapter 24

  Harrison

  I hadn’t wanted to come to this dinner in the first place. The only reason I agreed was because Libby insisted. Libby said that it was the best way to ease JT into the family, to let him get to know everyone. But I was still trying to find a way to forgive my mother for what she’d done all those years ago. And now Randy showed up.

  No one had seen Randy or heard from him in five years. And he chose now to show up. The only thing I could figure was that he needed money.

  But, again, he always needed money.

  I sat across from Penelope and Randy, watching him fall all over himself to impress her. And she seemed to be eating it all up. I wanted to pull her aside and warn her about him, tell her what a fuck-up he really was. Couldn’t she see how his hands were shaking or the holes in the soles of his shoes? I don’t know where he got that suit—probably from my mother—but it clearly wasn’t his. It didn’t fit right. The sleeves were too short and the pants too long.

  “Harry,” Libby said.

  I glanced at her and realized it probably wasn’t the first time she’d said my name.

  “Stop staring at your girlfriend and talk to mom.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  Libby snorted. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you look at a woman that way. If she’s not your girlfriend now, she will be soon.”

  My eyes jumped back to Penelope, the memory of her kiss burning through my body. I’d so wanted to take her back into the bedroom the moment I laid eyes on her in that dress. It took more willpower than I ever knew I had to just kiss her and stop at that. But now I kind of wished I had taken her to the bedroom. Then we wouldn’t be here and Randy wouldn’t be falling all over her.

  “Talk to mom,” Libby repeated.

  I shook my head. “I’m not ready.”

  “Yeah, well, if you wait too long you’ll never do it. But your son is falling in love with her, so if you want them to have a relationship that includes you, you need to do it.”

  I looked over at JT where he was sitting beside my mother. His face was more animated than I think I’d ever seen it. Mother was saying something to him I couldn’t hear across the wide table, but it was obvious he was eating it all up.

  Libby was right. As usual.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said. “But you need to keep Randy occupied.”

  Libby’s normally easy going expression tightened. She looked over at Randy, something like anger snapping in her eyes.

  “What’s he doing here, anyway?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He was here when I arrived. Mother said something about him just passing through town.”

  “Yeah, passing through town to beg for money.”

  “Probably. Last I heard, he was in Seattle living in an abandoned apartment building with a bunch of other addicts.”

  That didn’t surprise me. Randy had spent the last twenty years in and out of drug rehab. Father fought with him for years, trying to clean him up. But his tactics only sent Randy deeper into the drugs. When Father died, Randy managed to clean himself up long enough to see what he got out of the will. But then he took what little Father left him and burned through it in less than a few months. After that, he disappeared off and on, only showing up when he had nowhere else to go. I tried, the first few times, to get him cleaned up. I put him in program after program, but he always fell off the wagon. When I gave up, Libby tried until she came home one day, nine months pregnant with her first child, and found Randy ransacking her house.

  Once an addict, always an addict.

  He looked okay now. He wasn’t as thin as he was the last time I saw him. He looked rested. Clean. But that could just be our mother’s generosity. It didn’t necessarily mean anything had changed. And I learned long ago not to trust Randy.

  But Penelope didn’t know that.

  As if on some sort of cue, she laughed.

  The sound was like music. But at this moment, because I knew she was laughing at something Randy had said, it grated on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  Suddenly my appetite disappeared.

  I grabbed my glass of wine and walked out of the room, stepping out onto the lamay that overlooked the back garden. I was only there a moment when my mother spoke behind me.

  “He’s got quite the personality. Reminds me a little of you at that age.”

  I took a deep swallow of my wine, willing it to take the edge off of this night.

  “I’m glad you were able to find him.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  She moved up beside me and lay a hand on my arm. “I know it’s difficult for you to understand why I did what I did.”

  “You hid the fact that I had a child for sixteen years. You took my choices away from me.”

  “I protected you from making a choice that would have sent you on a path that would not have made you happy.”

  “And you think the path I ended up on was the one I wanted?”

  “No. But I think it’s made you the man you are. The man who was able to locate his child and bring him home after all these years.”

  “You don’t get it.” I pulled away from her, turning to confront her. “It was my life. My choice.”

  “Then tell me this: if some girl came to you and told you that JT had gotten her pregnant, would you tell him? Would you allow it to alter the course of his life?”

  “That’s different. JT’s fifteen.”

  “It’s not different. He’s your son, just as you are mine.”

  “But I was twenty years old.”

  “You were still my child. And I’d do the same thing today.”

  I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, to shake some sense into her. She was never going to see things from my point of view. And I was never going to see it from hers. I simply couldn’t understand how she could keep something as important as a child from me.

  “I just wanted to protect you, Harrison. If your father had learned the truth, he would have cut you out of the family in a heartbeat and I never would have seen you again. I’d rather have you angry with me than to see that happen.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “Maybe. But it’s all worked out for the best. You have your son now, and you’ve met that charming young woman.” She smiled softly as she moved closer to me. She touched my cheek like she used to do when I was younger, stroking it lightly with the back of her fingers. “I want you to find happiness, Harrison. And I think maybe you’re on the right track now.”

  I looked at her and felt like I was suddenly a teenager again, needing my mother’s love and acceptance. I don’t think men ever outgrow their desire to please their mothers. And, as angry as I was with her, I still wanted to know that she was pleased with the way I was living my life, that she approved of the person I was becoming.

  “I guess we can agree to disagree,” I said softly.

  She smiled. “I do love you, Harrison. You gave up so much for this family, for me and Libby. It’s your turn now.”


  I kissed her forehead lightly.

  “Thank you.”

  Penelope and Libby were deep in conversation when my mother and I walked back into the house. Randy was nowhere to be seen, but JT was wheeling his chair slowly around the room, checking everything out as he had done when he first entered my house. I could see him scrutinizing a group of family photos that were displayed on a low table, pictures that ranged in time from my kindergarten class photo to the results of a photo shoot last year for corporate photos. I moved up behind him, amused to see he was cradling a photo of my father in his hands.

  “That was taken about two years before he died.”

  “This is my grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look like him.”

  “So do you.”

  JT’s eyes lit up. “I always wondered where I got some of my features. My adoptive parents…” He glanced over at Penelope as though afraid she’d hear what he was saying. “I didn’t look like them.”

  I found myself studying Penelope for a moment, too, my eyes moving slowly over her mahogany hair and pale skin. No, I didn’t imagine JT’s dark looks would have fit in well with a family of redheads.

  “I don’t know much about your adoptive parents,” I said in a low tone that wouldn’t carry, “but I can guess by how amazing you and Penelope are, they must have been very good people.”

  JT nodded. “They were.”

  “You know, it’s okay for you to talk about them around me. It doesn’t bother me.”

  JT’s eyes fell to the picture he was still holding. “I just…they were always my parents. But now there’s you and I don’t even know how to think of you.”

  “I’m just Harrison. I’m just a guy who wants to be a part of your life.” I knelt beside the chair so we were on eye level. “The people who raised you are your parents. Nothing will change that.”

  “I always felt guilty, wondering where I came from. It felt disloyal.”