Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) (21 page)

Trey was tired. Crazy tired. But if Travis was in a mood to have a chat, that suited him just fine. He had more than a few things he wanted to say, too.

*   *   *

Trey was irritated with him.

He’d have to be an idiot not to notice that. While Travis might be many things, he wasn’t an idiot. It hadn’t taken even fifteen minutes to run Amy home and make the return trip. Travis stayed where he was, legs sprawled out, eyes closed.

Once he had felt eyes on him and he had slowly lifted his lashes. From his angle, he could see the side of the house a few yards down—and how the curtains swayed in one window, only to fall back down.

He’d caught sight of the woman there once or twice. Whoever she was, she was nosy. He thought maybe it was Nadine. Nadine Armstrong. Yeah, that was right. She drove Trey a little nuts. Apparently she had a thing for spying, too.

As Trey pulled his truck back into the driveway, the light in the window next door went black and Travis rolled his head on the back of the chair, listening to the solid sound of Trey’s shoes striking the sidewalk.

It had him blowing out a breath. This wasn’t going to be one of their peaceful chats. “I think I might grab a beer. You want one?”

“I’ll get it.” Trey paused and then added, “You still look like you’re going to fall flat on your face anyway.”

As the door shut behind him, Travis dragged a hand down his face. No, he wasn’t going to fall flat on his face. He wasn’t even close to falling flat on his face. But he sure as hell felt like shit. Barely a couple of minutes passed before the door opened again and Trey came striding back out.

“You know, judging by the look in your eye, I’d almost say you must have had one lousy-ass date. What did you do, spill food in her lap?” Travis asked.

“Funny.” He passed over a bottle of brew and dropped down into the other chair, stretching out his legs in a mirror of Travis’s sprawl. “The date went fine.”

Now Trey was smiling. A faint smile, but the smile was there and his eyes had that same goofy look that Zach’s tended to get when he was thinking about Abby. “Another one bites the dust,” Travis muttered under his breath.

“What?”

“Nothing. So, what’s her name?”

“Ressa.” Trey slid him a look.

“Ressa . . .” Travis studied. “Well. I’ll be damned. How are things going with your sexy librarian? Hey, wait a second—I thought you never got around to getting her number?”

“You could say fate intervened,” Trey said, lifting a shoulder.

“Fate.” Travis studied him. “Do tell.”

“We bumped into each other at that conference.”

Something in Trey’s voice had Travis biting back a smile. He mentally blocked everything else—some things a man just didn’t need to know about his twin, no matter how close they were. And there were vibes coming from Trey that fell into that
didn’t need to know
category.

“I’m not going to ask you to define
bumped
there, brother.” Travis snorted.

“Yeah. Don’t.” Trey threw a beer cap at him.

Travis had to fight to instinct to grab it out of the air and lob it back. It sailed past his shoulder to hit the window as he smiled. “So. Then what?”

Trey just shrugged. “We hit it off. But it was just the weekend. When I asked for her number, she seemed to think it was better to just let it ride. That should have been it.” He rose, still holding the beer he had yet to drink. “Then I take Clayton to school and there she was.”

Travis just waited.

“She’s got a cousin. She was dropping her off. I . . . I kinda get the idea that the mom isn’t in the picture much—if at all. Ressa takes care of the little girl. Anyway, she’s coming over tomorrow. Her and her cousin.”

It was tossed out, so casual like, and Trey stood there, taking a drink while Travis all but had to pick his jaw up off the floor. Practically six years of being by himself—just him and Clayton, and now . . . “Just how many times have you two gone out?”

“Technically speaking?” Trey shrugged as he put the bottle down. “Once.”

“Not including tonight?”

“No. Tonight was the first date. Jersey, well . . . we didn’t really do anything we could call dating.”

It might have been Travis’s imagination, but he was almost positive that Trey was blushing. Yeah. He was pretty sure he wasn’t imagining it.

“Let me get this straight,” Travis said slowly, feeling uneasy. It was probably all in his head, but he couldn’t help it. After the hell his twin had been through the past few years, Travis automatically defaulted to protective.

Getting to his feet
hurt,
and he hoped like hell he didn’t give any sign as to how much. Once he was upright, he took another drink. He just might end up puking it out on Trey’s feet, but if he tried to talk then, Trey would hear the pain in his voice so he needed the minute. Now, then. About as steady as he was going to get. He crossed over to study his twin’s face, just a few inches away. “You see this woman you’ve been moon-eyed over for . . . what, six months? You run into each other at a conference. You’re not spelling it out, so I’ll just take a stab at it—it sounds like you two spent half the time fucking, am I right?”

Trey’s eyes narrowed, but Travis steamrolled right over him. “Then, you two up and part ways. Now you find out your son and her cousin share a class. Doesn’t that sound kinda . . . coincidental to you?”

“Anybody ever tell you that you’re a paranoid son of a bitch?” Trey said, his voice almost pleasant.

Travis just crossed his arms over his chest. “This doesn’t sound kind of . . . weird to you? This woman you’ve been drooling over shows up in not one, but two places for you to trip over her? First the conference, and now, out of the entire city, she ends up having a kid in the same class as Clayton and you don’t think any of it sounds a little too pat for you? Come on, Trey.”

“You think she up and somehow managed to get her cousin into Clayton’s class, that she manipulated Max into asking her to handle the panels?” Trey snorted. “Let me guess, I bet you think she moved here, just so she could set all of that up. You know what, Trav? Fuck you.”

He edged around him and headed for the front door.

“Aw, man. Come on, I didn’t mean . . .”

“You didn’t mean what?” Trey spun around and glared at him. “You think I’m not capable of making a decision about the woman I’m dating? Fuck off, man.”

“Trey, look . . . I just . . .” Uncertain how to proceed or what to say, Travis stumbled for the words. “I’m just worried. You’ve spent the past few years alone and now . . .”

“I’ve spent the past few years alone.” Trey snorted. “
Alone
. You think that touches it? Yeah, I’ve been
alone
. I’ve been
empty
—and I
wanted
it that way. It was easier—safer. Up until I saw her, I didn’t realize just how empty and hollow I was.”

He turned away then, staring out into the night. “People talk to me and they try to help and they say all these nice things that don’t mean
shit
and I’m still empty. I still feel like . . .”

He stopped, shaking his head.

“For six years, I’ve just felt
alone
. The few times I’ve even tried to talk to another woman, I barely even
saw
them as women—I can’t remember the last time I wanted to kiss a woman—spend any amount of time with somebody who wasn’t family, and sometimes even that’s hell.”

Trey looked away.

Travis closed his eyes.

“You got any idea how fucking
lonely
it gets?” Trey asked, his voice barely more than a whisper. Now he turned, their gazes locking.

Feeling like blinders had been ripped off, Travis stared at his twin, suddenly aware of the fact that he wasn’t the only one capable of holding back. There was a giant void inside Trey, one he’d never even been aware of.

Swallowing the bile that suddenly rose inside him, Travis closed a hand into a fist and focused on a point somewhere in the middle of Trey’s chest. How had it become so hard to look at his brother’s face?

“You all try,” Trey said gently. “I know you do. It was hard enough to get through those first few months, that first year . . . grieving for Aliesha, worrying about Clayton, thinking I might lose him. But I didn’t even know who I was—I didn’t feel like anybody, not the man I thought I knew. By the time I realized how messed up I was, I was so far down in a pit, I couldn’t see the top. Daylight wasn’t even a memory for me. I’ve been pulling myself up and things started to get better. Maybe I feel alive again. But I still . . .”

Trey’s voice faded away.

Travis finally dragged his eyes up but saw that Trey was more focused on the bottle he held than anything else.

“I quit drinking after that night. Tried once—cracked open a bottle of bourbon you’d given me one year. It was about a year after Aliesha died. The smell of it made me sick and it was like I was reliving that night all over again, like I’d lost her, all over again. Even now, the smell of alcohol turns my stomach.” He closed his eyes and took a slow sip of the beer he held. He sat there in silence, waited for what seemed like forever before he sighed. “It’s all in my head. I shut myself down . . . and I know it. I’m going to finish the fucking beer. I’m going to see Ressa tomorrow and I’m going to stop hiding.”

He slanted a look at Travis. “I know what I feel when I look at her. I know what I see when she looks at me. I don’t know what it is about her, but she cut right through me and I’ll be damned if I let you breathe your paranoia down my neck and make me question that.”

“Trey, look.” Travis didn’t know if the word guilt touched on what he suddenly felt. He didn’t know if confusion did. Panic crowded around him and he could hardly breathe. There were few in this world who mattered to him and the one who mattered the most stood right in front of him. And he’d managed to hurt him
.
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just . . . look, I’m worried about you.”

“Some advice,” Trey offered. “Worry about yourself, because for once, I’m doing fine. You, on the other hand, look like you’ll keel over, and don’t think I didn’t notice that you felt like you were going to puke up your guts a minute ago. Now leave me the hell alone.”

He turned and headed for the door. But before he went inside, he paused, waited. “And Travis, you better listen to me . . . she’s coming over tomorrow and if you do one thing to make her uncomfortable, I promise you, I will beat you senseless. You hear me?”

Trey didn’t wait for a response. He went inside, closing the door with a quiet snick.

Travis stood there, staring at the door, something a little sick moving through him. “Well,” he muttered into the silence of the night. “I went and fucked that up good and proper, didn’t I?”

“Day-yum,” Ressa murmured under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing, baby,” she said, putting the Mustang into park as she took one more moment to admire the sprawling Colonial in front of her.

She’d thought Bruce’s place—
no, it’s my place now . . . mine
—but she’d thought that place was nice.

This was . . . beyond.

She couldn’t quite call it a mansion, but the house on the double lot was amazing. The lawn was lush and green, flowers flooded in a brilliant rainbow of color, and the brick and glass somehow managed to reflect both old-world charm and modern comfort.

She hadn’t been sitting there thirty seconds when one of the house’s double doors opened and a blond tornado came spilling out.

Neeci was already tearing at her seat belt. “Hey, hey, hey! Slow down, baby.”

Neeci rolled her eyes.

“Now, listen. You need to remember—”

The door opened and Neeci was gone, tearing up the
sidewalk to meet Clayton. With a weak laugh, Ressa finished. “Remember your manners and no running in the house.”

Movement caught her eye and she looked past the kids to see Trey. Her heart made a weird little lurch inside her chest and gripped the steering wheel convulsively. “And you need to remember
your
manners. No drooling on the host. No grabbing him in the hallway. Behave.”

She wondered if she’d be able to do that.

A few minutes later, she met him on the sidewalk and had the delightful pleasure of him leaning in and closing his mouth over hers. It was a soft, sweet kiss, even more chaste than the one he’d given her last night, but it still made her muscles feel hot and loose, while her heart skittered and jumped like crazy.

“Ewww!”

Against her lips, she felt him smile and then he pulled back. “I don’t think it was ewww,” he mused, glancing over at Clayton and Neeci. Then he slid her a sly look. “But maybe I should try it once more, just to make sure.”

She slapped a hand against his chest when he would have leaned in. Lifting a brow, she said, “Nice try.”

“Can’t blame a man for trying,” he said, covering her hand with his. “Why don’t we take them inside? I’ll show you around and . . .”

He stiffened beside her. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but she was becoming adept at picking up those minute changes in him. From the corner of her eye, she saw where his gaze had shifted and she followed it, saw the man who somehow managed to slide quietly onto the porch. For a second, she could only stare.

It was like seeing double.

But then her brain kicked into action and she saw the differences. They were slight, but they were there. Trey was observant, something she’d already noticed.

His twin left him in the dust.

In the seconds it took her to sum up the man on the porch, he’d already taken her measure and was probably already at work forming an opinion. She wondered what it would be. Those eyes—they were the same lovely blue as Trey’s, but so different. They held a hardness.

“My brother,” Trey said. “Travis.”

“Thanks for telling me. I wouldn’t have figured it out on my own,” she said dryly as he led her up to the porch.

“Yeah, well. He’s the ugly one,” Travis said, moving forward with slow, easy grace, those eyes still resting on her face. It was like he wore a mask, though. He watched her with good humor and curiosity and maybe that wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t altogether real, either. There was somebody else below that expression—that mask.

“Trey tells me you’re a librarian,” Travis said as he shook her head.

“Yes.” She smiled. She could almost bet what he did. The look in his eyes was a dead giveaway. She’d never seen anything about him mentioned—he was the only Barnes sibling who had absolutely no public persona at all.

Trey had a good-humored sneer on his face. “If we didn’t look so much alike, I’d swear he was a changeling or something. He went and ended up in the most boring job imaginable.”

Yeah, she mused, remembering now. Trey had already told her that. But . . .
an accountant
?

Ressa looked back at Travis, listened as he exchanged what sounded like well-used jibes and insults. That shrewd look he’d given her suddenly made her feel more than a little nervous, though.

She had to fight the urge not to look over at Neeci, not to place herself protectively between her and her cousin.

It was practice that let her smile at him, practice that let her keep herself from tensing up under that all-too-keen gaze.

An accountant? Like hell. The only place she’d ever seen anybody with eyes that watchful was when she’d been forced to talk to cops.

If he was an accountant, then she was Marilyn Monroe.

*   *   *

“I like her.”

Trey hefted a bucket filled with ice from the counter and headed for the door. He didn’t look back at his brother. “You just met her.”

“Talked to her for a while already. That’s enough,” Travis said. His voice was carefully neutral, but the message was
there. An apology underscored every word. “I like her. And I was an ass. You going to stay mad at me all day?”

Trey shrugged. “Who says I’m mad?”

“Well, since we’ve kinda known each other for . . . I dunno, our whole lives, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading the signs.” Travis closed his hand around the door handle, but instead of opening it, he stood there, keeping Trey from moving outside.

Now Trey had to look at him.

Once their eyes locked, Travis said, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I can’t help but worry . . .”

“That’s a fucking joke, coming from you,” Trey snapped. “You have more secrets than the CIA, don’t think I can’t tell. But
you
worry? Give me a break. Look, I’m not mad. I’m just . . .”

He stopped, eyed Travis. “What?”

There was a faint echo of surprise in the back of Trey’s mind, there for a blink, then gone. Travis hadn’t expected Trey to pick up on so much.

Trey almost snarled.

“Look . . . it’s . . .” Travis was staring off into empty air. “I . . . son of a bitch. Look, yeah. I hold stuff back. I guess I never realized how easy it would be for you to pick up on it. But you don’t have to worry, and I’m sorry about last night.”

His twin meant it. Trey could tell that much. He was sorry, and . . . yeah. He didn’t think Trey should worry. There was a sincerity there that Trey could feel. But what did any of that mean? Trey had no idea.

Blowing out a breath, Trey said, “Open the door, would ya?”

“Should I go?” Travis continued to stand there, watching him. “I can crash at a hotel.”

“Like hell. Just stop being such a dick, okay?”

The door opened and he cut past his brother. Some of the tension that seemed to wrap around them both dissolved, like sticky threads of cotton candy caught in a rainstorm. But it wasn’t gone. Sooner or later, they’d have to have this out. He was tired of Travis hiding away like he was.

But all that could wait.

*   *   *

Both of them swam like fish.

Ressa smiled to herself as Clayton and Neeci chased each other around in the shallower end of the big pool. So far, Ressa had managed to stay out of the water, and even mostly dry, although every few minutes, a giant splash would come her way. She didn’t know how long she would be able to evade them. But she had every intention of doing so for as long as she could.

“I like your suit.” Trey’s voice was soft and low and he laid a hand on her hip, the warmth of it almost shocking even in the heat of the day. Because he was there, because it was too tempting not to, she let herself lean back against him, and the solid wall of his chest against her back was a delight that she’d remember for a long, long time.

Even if—

If
—

Broodingly, she made herself silence that
if
. For some reason, that
if
had been whispering through her brain a
lot
today. Ever since she’d met the too intense gaze of Trey’s twin.

Maybe those thoughts weren’t fair—hell, she knew they weren’t. Not to her, not to Trey. Maybe not even to Travis, even if he did have cop’s eyes.

As his thumb stroked over the ruby red retro suit she’d pulled on, she forced herself to focus on Trey and not the worries that had chased her over the past hour. “The suit? This old thing?”

This old thing
—she’d spent about thirty minutes debating on the right swimsuit and had ended up going with the red because it highlighted her breasts, her hips and her butt and she liked how it showed off her ink, too.

“Yeah.” Trey stroked a finger down one of the tattoos on her arm, smiling. “This old thing. Although you could be wearing sackcloth and I’d still be intrigued. I think I’d like nothing best, but . . . not a good idea right now.”

“No.” She turned her head up and met his eyes. “Probably not.” She glanced across the pool where Travis lounged on a chair, gaze shielded by a pair of dark sunglasses, his face supposedly relaxed. But he was watching every damn thing. She could feel it. And there was a weird tension between the
brothers. “Seems like there’s something going on between you and your twin. Everything okay?”

“It’s fine.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You got family, right? You know how it is. We just bumped heads last night. The jerk has a hard one.”

“Oh, I got family. I doubt we’re as close as y’all are, though.” She covered his hand with hers and looked back at the pool. “The way those two play, you’d think they were born joined at the hip.”

Trey chuckled. “When I told him you two were coming over, he all but bolted out the door looking for you. Then I had to tell him it wasn’t until this afternoon. You’d have thought I told him the world’s candy supply had disappeared overnight.”

“Likes his candy, huh?” She slid him a look.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” His lips brushed against her shoulder.

That light touch sent a shiver through her. “Trey . . .”

“Sorry.” His hands tightened around her waist and then he stepped back. “Damn if you don’t go to my head, Ressa.”

Slanting a look at him, she said, “Now it wasn’t like I told you to
stop
.” She already missed the feel of him standing there so near she could feel his body heat.

“Standing that close makes it hard for me to think.” He shook his head and instead of moving back to where he’d been, he moved around and cut behind her, settling onto a tall stool sitting at the nearby bar. His gaze settled on the pool where Neeci and Clayton had decided to play an enthusiastic, but slow, game of water tag. “Do you realize I don’t even know all that much about you?”

She stiffened, then forced herself to relax. “What do you want to know, honey?” Then, mentally, she wanted to kick herself. She had secrets, so many that she didn’t ever want to share. Some of them weren’t even hers, and some of the ones that were still made her look back at the years behind her and wonder what she’d been thinking.

He must have read something on her face and she gave him a wide, easy smile. “I’m an open book,” she said, the lie falling too easily from her lips.

A smile lit his face. “An open book. No woman is. That’s why you drive men crazy . . . and why we love you.”

She pursed her lips as she considered that. “I think I like that.” Then she shrugged. “There’s no reason for you to know that much about me. Or for me to know that much about you. We just met not that long ago.”

“True.” His voice was soft. “And yet I find myself thinking about you all too often. In the morning. Halfway through the day. At night. And that was before we met back up because of those two. I never was able to stop thinking about you, even when I told myself there wasn’t going to be anything more for us.”

“Did you want more?”

She looked away from the pool to meet his gaze.

He was staring at her and the intensity of his gaze sent her heart into overdrive.

“I wanted more pretty much from the first moment I laid eyes on you.” Then he shrugged and looked back at the kids. “But life kept getting in the way.”

“It’s got a way of doing that.”

*   *   *

Trey didn’t know if he’d ever noticed a woman’s eyelashes until he’d met Ressa Bliss.

He’d certainly never had quite this fascination with a woman’s mouth. She had this way of sucking her lower lip in, biting it ever so lightly and then letting it go . . . it made him think about biting her lip, her neck, her . . . lots of things.

But then her words connected, and he lowered his head, staring down at the polished wood of the bar top. He rubbed his thumb against the surface and wondered if he was ready for all the emotion already surging inside him.

What do you want to know . . . I’m an open book
.

No, she wasn’t. Trey was pretty good at picking up on stories and he’d seen the story in her eyes before she gave him that wide, easy smile.

“You know, we’ve all got shadows, Ressa,” he said softly. “We all have secrets behind us.”

A squeal, cut short, had them both looking at the pool and then Trey swore, moving off the stool with a muttered apology.

“Clayton, watch the roughhousing in the pool,” he said as he strode past her. “Neeci isn’t me or one of your uncles.”