Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 03 - Of Dark and Bright (9 page)

Evan wasn’t sure how to play this. He probably should have talked it over with Jeff and Dan first, but he didn’t want to lose the opportunity now that it had presented itself. “I think… I mean, I can’t say whether that’s what’s best. But if it’s what you decide to do, I think Dan and I could absolutely give the baby a good home.”

“Not Jeff too?”

“Oh.” Of course Jeff. Jeff went without saying. But he hadn’t known that Krista knew about that aspect of the relationship. “Yeah. Jeff too.”

Krista smiled softly. “I really like that idea. There’d be so much love. Such a great environment to grow up in.” She frowned and looked down at the table, and when she spoke, her voice was softer. “I just… I worry. I’m not as strong as I should be.” Her laugh was bitter. “Obviously. Obviously I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I just worry that I might, you know… when I get out, I might forget all my good intentions. I’ll be so lonely. I’ll be lost, and broke, and… I don’t know. I just worry. The custody stuff—it won’t be totally secure, will it? Not with three dads. Scott—my husband—he’ll be out of the picture. He didn’t want the baby, and if he showed up around here, you could have him thrown in jail forever, probably. But Susan thinks I won’t be in for that long. What if I come out and decide to make things bad for you? If I try to take the baby back?”

Well, Evan had a few suggestions to solve that problem, but he wasn’t sure what the most tactful way to bring them up would be. “You wouldn’t have to be lonely. You’d be the aunt, remember? We could find you somewhere to live, nearby. And a job, maybe.”

“A job? Who the hell is going to want to hire me? No experience, and a felon. Yeah, I’ll be a prize hire.”

“I can find you work. Or, you know. If you’re interested, we could set something up. A sort of trust account, maybe. I could deposit some money, and it would pay you a monthly income. And then, when the baby turned eighteen, you could have it all. You know—assuming that things had gone smoothly with the custody.” Evan held his breath. Had that come out right? Had it been suitably vague, enough to sound like he wasn’t trying to buy her off, while still making it clear that he was willing to throw money at the problem?

She didn’t look offended, at least. She took a sip of her milk and then nodded slowly. “Yeah, maybe that would work. I mean---if I wasn’t short of money, I think it’d be easier for me to be stable, and to build a new, real life for myself. And if there was enough in the pot… you know, enough for me to live off the installments, but still enough to be a reward if I made it to the kid’s eighteenth birthday without doing something stupid… I think that might really work!” Her smile was bright and happy. “Wow, Evan, that’s a great idea. I’m impressed.”

This was happening a bit faster than Evan had planned. “Well, thanks. I’ll need to talk to the lawyers, I guess.” And now for the really tricky part. “And maybe it would be best if Dan didn’t know
all
of the details. I mean, I’m not sure if he’d see it the same way we do.”

“I don’t know, Evan… I don’t want to start lying to my brother.”

“No, not lying! Just… you know. Don’t bring it up, for now. And then once the baby’s born, and he’s seen it, and realizes how perfect it’ll be… he lets me take care of stuff sometimes. You know, he’ll… sometimes, he’ll let me get him what he wants. Like paying for the guards, or putting up the money for your bail.” The more Evan talked, the more convinced he was that he was doing the right thing. He’d need to get lawyers involved, and he’d absolutely need to figure out the best way to convince Dan. But he could do it. He smiled at Krista and raised his glass of milk. “Absolutely. We can figure something out.”

She smiled back at him, and he was a little surprised by just how smoothly that conversation had gone. One more difference between Krista and her brother; nothing ever went that smoothly with Dan. “
L
OWERyour right shoulder, just a little. Yeah, good.” Jeff took a quick photo, then set the camera down and picked up his brush. He was using natural light for this series, and there were only a couple hours a day that really worked for what he was trying to do. Between his schedule and Dan’s, it wasn’t easy to coordinate times, so he absolutely wanted to get some painting done.

But he had a few other goals for the session as well. Dan was always calm when he was posing, and it was a good time to talk to him about difficult topics. Like…. “How are things going with Krista? It’s been almost two weeks, now. You guys getting along?”

Jeff could see Dan making the effort to hold his pose instead of shrugging. He managed, and then said, “We’re okay. I mean… you know. If we weren’t related, I doubt we’d spend a lot of time together. But we
are
related, and she’s a hell of a lot better than any other family member I’ve ever had.”

Fair enough. Jeff mixed a bit more orange into his paint. “How’s she feeling about going away? Susan hasn’t got a deal sorted out yet, does she?”

“No, not yet.” Dan kept his body still, but his eyes were moving around the room. Not quite frantic yet, but not entirely comfortable, either. Jeff needed to be careful about pushing him too much further. “And I can’t really tell how she feels about prison. She sounds like she doesn’t care, but that can’t be right. I mean, she was on the run for ten years. You don’t run that hard from something you’re not worried about, right?”

“Maybe it wasn’t
her
running. Maybe she was just following the men.”

 

“Maybe. But she’s not crazy. Jail
must
be scary for her. Even just having to leave the baby behind….”

And that was Jeff’s opportunity. He felt manipulative, almost sleazy, but he needed to handle this situation. Evan had told him about the deal with Krista, and Jeff hadn’t been impressed. He was pretty sure the whole thing was illegal, but he was confident Evan’s lawyers could find a way around that. He wasn’t sure whether it was immoral or not; it didn’t really feel right, but it didn’t feel totally wrong, either. The only part that he was sure about was that it was a terrible, terrible idea to go any further without getting Dan’s agreement. If Evan had found some stranger’s baby to adopt, that would be one thing. But this was Dan’s sister’s kid. He absolutely could not be left in the dark. And Evan had agreed with that, eventually. So Jeff had been assigned to figure out a way to bring Dan into the loop without making him explode. It wasn’t an easy task.

“Has she talked to you about that, yet? About the baby? Gotten any closer to asking you to help take care of it?” Jeff tried to sound casual, but he really wasn’t sure he succeeded. Luckily, Dan tended to be fairly clueless about reading people’s emotions.

“Yeah, she talked to me.” Dan didn’t look happy. “She said I needed a baby in order to make a family, and I needed to make a family in order to keep my sugar-daddy sweet. It was a real brothersister bonding conversation, for sure.”

“Jesus.” Jeff had wondered why Krista had approached Evan instead of Dan. He was beginning to get an unsettled feeling in his stomach, wondering whether Evan had actually been her second target. “So what did you say?”

“I said we could talk about me taking care of her kid, if she wanted, but I didn’t need to have it presented to me like she was doing me a favor. And then she said she wasn’t looking to
give
the kid away.”

“And what did you say?” Jeff was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“I told her to forget it. There’s no way I’m going to buy a human being.” Dan broke his pose long enough to shake his head in disgust. “I mean—if Evan gets tired of me, then fuck him. I’m not going to try to trap him with some baby I don’t even want.” Dan glanced over at Jeff with a quick grin. “Same goes for you, Stevens. Anytime you want to go, there’s the door.”

“That’d leave you in my house, with me on the street, Tex. I don’t see the need to figure out the details of either of us leaving the other, but if it comes down to it, you’re the one going out the door.” Jeff had a quick flash of the doctor’s appointment he’d canceled, the one he’d forgotten about the week before, the re-scheduling calls he’d been avoiding, and he wondered whether his will was up to date, and where it was; he wondered how having a baby would be affected by that. But he kept his voice light; his job here was to deal with Dan. “You’re not getting my house, buddy.”

“
Palimony
,” Dan spat out. “That was another of her sales points. If Evan dumped me after we’d been raising her baby together, I could sue for palimony. She’s….” He trailed off and looked at Jeff guiltily. “She’s practically me. Who I used to be. I mean, she’s a bit more aggressive about it, but….”

“So there’s hope, then,” Jeff said quickly. “You’ve changed, so she can too.” And, really, Dan’s estimation of his sister’s moral strength wasn’t the most worrying part of this conversation. “Did you mean it, when you said you didn’t even want the baby? We talked about that, and it sounded like you were thinking about it.”

Dan frowned. It was a good thing Jeff wasn’t trying to paint his face. But really, Jeff was no longer doing any real painting. He was just standing there with a brush in his hand, waiting to hear how much trouble he was about to deal with.

“I don’t know,” Dan finally said. “I mean, it’s not something I ever really
wanted
. I never really thought about it, really, not until all this. Evan’s all crazy about the idea, but I don’t know. It would be hard. Evan thinks you can solve every damn problem with money, but if I
did
have a kid, I wouldn’t want it raised by a nanny. And what if the baby has something wrong with it? I mean… what’s the right word? What are we supposed to say? Not ‘handicapped’ anymore, right?”

“‘Special needs’, I think.” Jeff set his brush down and walked over to stand next to Dan.

“Yeah, okay. What if the kid has special needs? Like, more special than every other damn kid, ’cause it’s not like any of them are exactly normal. Look at Taylor and Owen.
Technically
, Owen’s a regular kid, but does the little bastard
ever
sit still?”

“Owen’s four, Dan. He’ll calm down.” Jeff tried to sound certain, but he remembered the last time Dan’s old friend had brought his son over to the house. It had been a good thing Tat had been around to babysit, because the little guy’d had all the men hopping, trying to keep him out of trouble. “And we’d have a baby-proofed house, I guess. If it was our baby.” But that was another issue to be dealt with. “Or your baby. I don’t know how it would work, legally. Have you talked to Chris? I expect Evan’s got a team of lawyers looking at the issue from every angle?”

“I have absolutely stopped talking to Chris about any of Evan’s shit. He doesn’t just say ‘Sorry, client confidentiality, can’t talk about it.’ That would be—well, it’d be annoying, but I could handle it. But the fucker just rubs my nose in it. ‘Oh, sorry, Danny, I don’t think you’re trusted with this information. It was wrong of me to even mention it.’” Dan leaned his head into Jeff’s neck. “He’s an asshole.”

“Well, maybe we should talk to Evan about it. See where everyone’s at.”

 

“That’s always your answer.” Dan kissed gently in just the right spot to make Jeff’s toes curl inside his shoes.

“Is it ever a bad idea? I mean, you’re busy, Evan’s busy, I’m… well, I’m more flexible than you guys, right now, but I do have stuff to do. I don’t think the three of us have been in the same room for more than a quick meal or a quick fuck in, what, a week or two?” Jeff tried to ignore Dan’s gentle kisses, tried to think back, and was appalled to realize that it had been at least that long. “We always do this. We’re really good about communication when we have nothing important to talk about, but when something comes up, we get busy and lose track of each other. When we should be talking the most, we talk the least.”

“We are deeply flawed,” Dan agreed, and he slid off his stool and shuffled around to stand in front of Jeff. His shirt was already off, for the posing, and his eyes were bright green in the sunlight. He was absolutely beautiful, and when he leaned in and found Jeff’s lips, there was no thought of resistance. Painting could wait, and so could the rest of the conversation.

Dan’s fingers were warm as he slid his hands underneath Jeff’s ragged T-shirt. Jeff raised his arms and let Dan pull the shirt off, then brought his hands back down to rest on Dan’s waist while they kissed, deep and wet. This was where their modeling sessions ended up, nine times out of ten, and even if Jeff’s portraits of Dan hadn’t become his signature paintings, he’d have kept painting them just for this. Dan was sweeter in the studio, less concerned about control. It was like he’d bend himself to Jeff’s will while he posed, and then didn’t shake the attitude off for a while.

Jeff forced himself away from Dan’s lips and hands, and Dan reluctantly let him go. “Undress for me,” Jeff said, and he undid the button of his own jeans before sitting down on the couch to watch. “Go slow.”

Dan did as he was told, and it was as perfect as Jeff had anticipated. He wished Dan had been wearing more clothes, really, because he only had jeans and underwear to strip out of. Not even a pair of socks. But Dan did the best he could with what he had, a slow, sexy shimmy to edge the jeans off his hips, running his hands over the fabric of his underwear and then dipping inside to wrap around his hardening cock, staring at Jeff the whole time, his face calm, his eyes bright and wide. This wasn’t the first time Jeff had asked Dan to strip for him, and every time, Jeff thought maybe he should give up the painting and become a filmmaker. It seemed wasteful, almost sacrilegious to hoard all this beauty for himself. Then he thought about letting anyone else see the film and realized that he would never be able to stand it. He could barely manage to let go of his portraits of Dan.

They were both fully hard by the time Dan’s underwear hit the floor, and Jeff smiled lazily as he said, “Come over here.” He nodded down at his straining fly. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”

“Just a hand?”

 

Damn it, Dan’s voice was just as seductive as the rest of him. “Your call. What do you think I’d like best?”

Dan dropped to his knees between Jeff’s wide-spread legs. “You like my mouth.” He reached for Jeff’s fly, but just ran his fingers thoughtfully over the metal teeth. “And you like my ass.” He raised a playful eyebrow. “As I recall, you’ve liked my armpit on occasion… and between my thighs….”