Undisclosed Desire (The Complete Box Set

by Falon Gold

  I hesitate to take his fingers reddened at the fingertips, for just plain and simple get back.

  “Please, Lisa Poo! I won’t put you on the no-fly list again,” he whines, suddenly pissy.

  I giggle and take his hand, which swallows mine. “Quit crying, Blake, and leave some for the baby. Who in the hell gave you that kind of power anyway, Sheriff Powers?”

  “The city of Arrow, like damn fools, after my parents threatened to stop donating to its various fundraisers.” he admits. “At least they’re good for a cushy job.” Then he laughs before stiffening, as if someone dropped an ice cube down his sweater.

  “Lisa Poo, are you…” his voice fades.

  I understand, immediately, where his mind had gone. “God no, I’m not pregnant.” But Apollo and I hadn’t used protection either time we were together. “At least, I don’t think...” And then, my words quit coming altogether.

  I know a few moments of superb sex can have far-reaching consequences. At least, that’s what the Sex Ed teacher, Mrs. Scion, preached in middle school. Apparently, I wasn’t listening when she said protect yourself.

  Blake tugs on my hand. “Inside, Malisa. We’ll finish this in the kitchen, and I’ll start in on your boyfriend tomorrow.”

  I tug back. “Don’t say anything to anyone about this.”

  “As much as you like to believe that you can handle anything alone, Malisa, you can’t. Not this, anyway.”

  “Blake, I don’t know if I am pregnant. It’s too early to tell, and Apollo should know before everyone else.”

  The front door opens suddenly. I peer up at Blake, pleadingly. He nods, reluctantly. He’ll hate keeping my parents in the dark, but he has to respect my wishes. It’s my secret. Maybe, there isn’t a baby to keep secret.

  Oh God, I hope not. Apollo and I can barely keep us together.

  My mother steps out onto the porch, hugging herself. “Everything okay? You two have been out for a few minutes and it’s too cold for even that.” Blake and I start toward her.

  He looks up at my mother. “Nothing to be worried about, Mama O. Well… nothing life doesn’t throw everybody’s way eventually.”

  She sniffs. “So, it was love then?”

  Blake nods.

  Oh my damn, they’d been discussing me behind my back anyway.

  She grins. “Told you that you’re nothing but a worrywart, Blake. Malisa, do you know he planned to take your poor boss to the woods and pull his gun on him, just to make Apollo tell what he’d done to you?”

  I stop in my tracks. Blake gets tugged backwards before he knows to stop. Then he looks back at me, grinning.

  “You didn’t?” I ask, but I don’t know why I bothered.

  This is right up Blake’s alley.

  He grins roguishly. “I did and I will.”

  I shake my head and close my eyes. “Blake, you’re destined to end up in your own handcuffs.”

  He tugs on my hand and pulls me toward the steps. “For breaking my sister’s heart, I’d do a hell of a lot worse.”

  “Watch your mouth, Blake,” Lydia warns.

  “Lisa Poo cussed earlier and you didn’t say that to her,” he whines, while taking the first stair.

  She glares at Blake, with her eyes narrowed. “You’d already ticked her off by putting her on the no-fly list. Of course, I didn’t say anything.”

  Then she turns to me with the same glare, which she’s been giving us since I could remember. It’s like you’re peering into a black abyss that will swallow you whole if you don’t give it what it wants. It’s still scary as hell, and just makes it easier to give her what she wants.

  “So, are you still leaving?” she asks.

  If I was, I wouldn’t be after that look.

  “No, we’re staying for a few days.”

  “Why didn’t you just give her the black stare yesterday, Mama O?” Blake asks then exhales heavily, faking frustration. “We could’ve avoided me putting her on the no-fly list.”

  “Because you’d forced her behind her bedroom door, Blake. If I’d went in, then she’d have just walked around me, got in her Jeep, and left.”

  Frank walks out behind Lydia. “So Blake got out of Malisa whatever she didn’t want to tell us, huh?”

  Lydia nods.

  My father trains his stare on Blake. “Well… how bad is it? Do we still take Apollo to the woods and actually bury him or just threaten?”

  I stare at them slack-jawed. My father was in on Blake’s plot to scare the hell out Apollo, and it is going to happen if my father condones it.

  “Daddy!” I cry. “What are you two thinking? You can’t just drive people to the woods and threaten them.”

  Blake and Frank share a look of conspirators.

  Lydia closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Malisa, they’ve been doing it since you started dating at sixteen.”

  I develop the early stages of shock. Every boy I’d been interested in at school would always suddenly become interested in someone else. Even though the girls that picked up my latest crush would become pregnant or the talk of Arrow for one reason or another, I’d started to think I was a leper, until I went off to college and met Mark Davidson. We became good friends and secret lovers until we graduated. I never brought him home to meet my family, and now I know why I had to wait to lose my virginity.

  My head swivels between the first male loves of my life. “Did you two do this every time I liked someone?”

  “Yep,” they chant together, proudly.

  Blake chuckles quietly beside me. “We invited them over for a surprise dinner for you behind your back and offered to pick them up from their houses. They got in the car every time, but they never made it here.”

  “Oh my God!” I shriek. “I thought I was the reason I never had a boyfriend longer than five seconds.”

  Frank drops a hand on Lydia’s shoulder. “If their intentions toward you were pure, you would’ve had one, baby girl. We gave them all the choice to be a real boyfriend, leave you alone, or visit their final resting place in the woods permanently. They wisely chose to leave you alone, so you could find someone who didn’t want to run through you, and they could live to select the next girl on their hit list.”

  I sigh and mumble, “Most of those girls have an eight-year old or a STD on their medical record. So thanks, guys.”

  Blake shakes his head hard enough to knock at least one of his senses loose. “What you say, Lisa Poo?”

  “I said thank you! Dammit!”

  He taps his cheek. “Right here, Lisa Poo.”

  My parents snigger. I refuse Blake’s demand with a swipe of my hand through the air.

  “I’m not kissing you for ruining my love life when I was already an ugly duckling.” Then I realize my bad choice of words with my mother in the vicinity.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Malisa Owens,” she starts, “You are not and you never were an ugly anything. I didn’t encourage you to get rid of your glasses or let your hair down, which you have done. Now, you brought two men to my house. So there, you can blame me too for your stunted… love… life.” She turns to my father. “Oh God! Just saying those words makes me cold all over, Frank.”

  He frowns and pulls her face first into his chest and wraps his arms around her.

  “You all just picked up where you left off when I showed up yesterday,” I accuse, with a grin.

  How did I miss what they were doing all those years? Apollo was in for a bad time if he got in the car with either one of them, and I better warn him before he does.

  “Oh, you will not be warning, Apollo,” Blake says out of nowhere. “He missed the whole ‘if you hurt my sister, this is where you’ll lay for eternity’ in the woods speech. I aim to fix that, and I’ll confiscate your phone on suspicious terrorist activity, convince Mr. Lindsey to say he thinks Apollo broke into his hotel in the pretense of hauling Apollo’s ass off to jail, and get him to the woods anyway.”

  My parents find that extremely funny, my
father most of all. “Good one, son. I couldn’t have pulled that off as a pediatrician.”

  I shake my head. “Is there any length you two won’t go to?”

  “Nope,” they chant together.

  Blake bursts out laughing. “We haven’t had this much fun together in years, Pop.”

  “No, we haven’t son, but Malisa is here now and the games can begin.”

  Lydia giggles harder into my father’s chest. “You two are sick. When she leaves, she probably won’t come back.”

  Frank’s mouth drops open. “Oh, you’re denying that you’re the mastermind behind Blake’s and my criminal activities, Lydia. Shame on you.”

  She flushes a beet red. I turn to her. She shrugs.

  “Sorry, baby girl, but you’re my only daughter and no one ever hurts you or wants to hurt you and gets away with it. I’d planned to be the leg breaker myself. But Frank and Blake said actual violence wasn’t necessary to get my point across.”

  Frank nods. “So yes, we took her directions and then executed them with finesse, before Lydia got herself locked up.”

  “You three had better tell me what all you’ve done and who you did it to,” I demand. “For all I know, there’s a bunch of dead bodies in the woods and I’ll have to use Apollo’s clout to keep you all out of jail.”

  “I knew I liked Apollo for a reason,” Frank says unconcernedly.

  “In the house,” Lydia dictates. “I have some stew on the stove that should warm everyone right back up.”

  She leads the way inside. Blake, the last one to come in, shivers as the heat mixes with the chill in his bones. I need to be warmed back up myself, which makes me think of Apollo immediately. Since I don’t want to disturb him while he’s working, I follow my family to the dining room.

  The past weekend begins to ride my mind like a backwards cowboy. I wonder just how much I hurt Apollo, and if I can actually do something about it. Ill feelings stick with people, and they usually regurgitate them back at the one that caused them, eventually.

  Everyone takes the same seats at the empty table that they occupied earlier except Lydia. She begins dishing out the bowls of stew that she promised, placing them in the center of a saucer with crackers, along with iced tea. My food sits in front of me untouched, my mind with Apollo. My mother takes her seat in father’s lap at the head of the table, cupping her hand under his spoon when he tows it to his mouth.

  I’ve never known them to not work together on anything. Apparently, they work together on everything, including my love life. My mother claims the only way to tolerate the same person for twenty plus years is to truly become one, or a split is inevitable. She also says to keep those with clumsy fingers, like my father, away from the dishes, and those with the potential to burn the house down, like Blake, away from the kitchen.

  “What’s on your mind, Lisa Poo?” Blake asks, before spooning the steaming soup in his mouth.

  I scratch my head. “Well, I’m wondering how I made Apollo feel when I told him that I could take care of myself. Watching mama and daddy together makes me wonder if I made him feel… used… you know… in the—”

  Frank starts to choke on his soup. Lydia taps him in the back gently with an opened palm.

  “Say no more, Lisa Poo!” Blake yells. “You’re about to kill Pop!”

  Blake puts his spoon down in his bowl, and puts his hands up a praying fashion over it. “I promised to tell you about men, didn’t I?”

  I nod, needing his advice.

  “When you told Apollo that you’d rather be independent, you actually said that you only needed him for…” he trails off, looks at my father, and then back at me. “…one thing. Yes, Apollo felt used and he’s probably not used to that. Being independent is a good thing, but a real man needs to feel needed. No, he won’t mind you working or paying for your own things. When he offers to do it, it’s because he wants to feel like he plays a part in your life, mostly as a provider and a protector. Every time you said you could do it, he felt like he had no chance to make you happy, so he left, but I’m sure he knew every move you made.”

  “I didn’t make any until Tuesday.”

  He frowns. “That was worse. He really felt unnecessary in your world, but he loves you. When you didn’t chase him to Utah, he called. When you didn’t answer, I’m sure his business came to a grinding halt.”

  “I thought everything was business as usual after he left.”

  “Not a chance.” He serves himself another mouth full of stew. “He was giving you space to find space for him in your life… and miss him.”

  “That’s what Derek said.”

  “Where is Derek by the way?” my mother asks then glances around.

  Blake snickers. “Probably up Chrys’…”

  “Blake Powers!” she warns, shooting him a glance meant to maim.

  “Chrys took him to the airport. The rest of the crew is in my den, Lydia,” my father supplies the answer, then spoons more stew into his mouth. “So, baby girl’s backup has pulled out to chase my sister?”

  “Yep,” Blake says breezily. “It’s just the primary now.”

  “Derek is not a backup,” I say huffily. “He’s my friend and I needed one after I pushed Apollo with my independency that apparently, I don’t know how to turn off.”

  My father grins into his empty bowl. “Baby girl, I taught you to be independent until you found the man that earned the right to take care of you. When you did, you rest your weary independent cap. It gets lonely going at it alone all the time, and I don’t want you to lose a good man because you’re rigid and sticking to the lessons I taught as guidelines to use throughout your life. They’re just that… guidelines to have should you need something to fall back on. It’s okay to receive, baby girl.”

  “Now you tell me, daddy,” I gripe.

  Rumbling laughter erupts from his chest. “Your mother and I never wanted you to meet anyone to take care of you in the first place, Malisa. You are my baby girl and you’ll always be that. But since you’ve obviously met someone that you love and Apollo is proving to be a good man who loves you back, the rest of the lesson is paramount, since he’s not leaving here without you. I know I wouldn’t.”

  “You didn’t, Frank,” Lydia snipes.

  He grins up at her. “Damn straight, my love.”

  She stands up, and starts gathering the empty bowls on the table.

  “I got it, mama,” I offer, before I stand up, too.

  “I got it, Malisa. Go see if Apollo wants something to eat, and take your bowl of stew before it gets cold.”

  I scoop up the saucer and glass of iced tea, and walk quickly to Apollo’s room. I tap on the door with my foot. It opens immediately.

  He smiles. “Hey, love.”

  I get a damn head rush. “I came to see if you wanted something to eat and talk to you a little bit, if you’re not busy.”

  He steps to the side then takes the dishes from my hand. “I’m never too busy for you. Come in, and then I want you show you some things I’m looking at on my laptop.”

  I walk in, nervous as if I’ve showed up at his door unannounced, oddly, when this is my parents’ home. His nearness is clogging up every sense that I have. The guest bedroom is plain when I consider what Apollo is used to, but I wouldn’t change the simple oak furnishings for anything in the world. The queen-sized bed, with short stubby, round posts, thick cream comforter with palm trees and Apollo’s laptop, sits in full view of the door. I have to pass through the tiny extensions of wall on each side of the doorway to get an unobstructed view of the room. A flat screen television and its short stand sits behind me, pressed against the wall facing the bed. I can remember every tiny nick, which Blake and I put there, in the tall chest of drawers with lamp positioned on one side of the bed.

  Apollo’s shaving kit sits on the nightstand on the other side. I sit down on the end of the bed so he can have access to the nightstand, while I watch my reflection in the mirror belonging to the dresser. He shuts
the door back with the heel of his shoe. When he sits down beside me and places his food on the nightstand, I turn to him.

  “I just had a short talk with my father and Blake, and I need to ask you something.”

  He sips from his glass, his eyes watching me over the rim. “Okay.”

  “Did I make you feel used sexually before we split in Vegas?”

  Apollo sets his glass down beside his food on the nightstand then gives me his undivided attention. “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that, but you need to get over it because I plan to use your body as much as I can, and my independent streak isn’t weakening fast enough. We’re still stuck with the good and the bad, which brings me to our next piece of business.”

  He snorts and shakes his head. “What’s that?”

  “I need another job. We won’t get any work done at your office. Your body will be too close to mine, and I’ll want it. Four years is a long time to want someone and I’ll be doing my damndest to make up for that, so I still need to quit.”

  “No,” he answers simply.

  My shoulders slump. “Apollo—”

  “My Lisa, we’ll just schedule making love sessions for you, and I’ll have a bedroom added to my office with a full bathroom.”

  “Jesus, Apollo, everyone will know what it’s for as soon as the workmen show up. I don’t like everyone up in my business, which is why I didn’t want to stay here with you and my family.

  “Everyone will know anyway, when we start to go out on dates from the office, and that’s why construction companies don’t mind the extra money they make for their discretion and working at night when everyone else has gone home.”

  “Sweetheart, I appreciate everything you do for me, but I told you that you don’t have to go out of your way for me.”

  “My Lisa, I do. If it’s my body that you want in between meetings and working at the office, then it’s my body that you’ll get. You’re not the only one that wishes they could make up for the time we lost while sitting across from each other every day.”

  “I thought waiting to make love made it greater, baby,” I mock.

  “It does… until it doesn’t work.”