Risk (It's Complicated Book 2) (23 page)

No.

In the dark hours of the night, only one thing came to her mind.

Justus.

What was he doing right now? Who was he with? Did he have a good day? What did he have for dinner? Did he ever think of her late at night?

And there were more insidious thoughts.

He’d looked so freaking sexy in the gym earlier, with his blue polo shirt and track pants. A walking ad for his training services and gym, he had the size, lean but muscular build, and testosterone overload for which the porn industry would pay bug bucks. None of the female clients (and several of the men, come to think of it) had been able to keep their eyes off Justus, and Angela was no better.

Hell.

She was probably the very worst offender there.

The crazy part was that his eyes and smile did more for her than his body did.

His kindness. His humor. His
heart
.

Seeing the way he loved Maya. Not just tolerated her or enjoyed her for a few minutes here and there.
Loved
her.

There was so much more to Justus than Angela had ever suspected. She couldn’t get past the terrible feeling that she’d barely scratched the surface of all his fascinating qualities.

But, as he’d reminded her, and as she knew in her heart anyway, she wasn’t his type.

The joke was on her, wasn’t it? Because he sure was becoming
her
type.

Was he really over his attraction to her? Did he consider her a sister now? Had he already found someone else to replace Janet? Someone who was younger, prettier, taller, slimmer, more voluptuous, and/or more uninhibited than Angela?

Someone who could handle him in bed?

Someone who, even now, could touch him to her heart’s content? Someone who could rub his gleaming skin, squeeze his powerful arms, and grip his hard, round butt?

Who could press her lips to his—

Angela groaned, sank onto the sofa, and clenched every muscle in her over sensitized body, trying to relieve some of the sexual tension that’d set up permanent residence inside her. But when she relaxed again, her flesh still felt too tight inside her skin, and her blood, God knew, was running hotter than ever.

After a furtive glance toward the hallway to make sure Maya wasn’t about to make a surprise appearance, she stretched out, slid her hand beneath the waistbands of her pajama bottoms and panties, and began to touch herself.

* * *

T
he next morning
at the club, Justus hurried down the steps and headed for the café, trying to get a quick cup of coffee before settling down to do some paperwork at his desk.

“Justus?” asked the receptionist as he passed her counter. “Someone’s here to see you.”

She pointed to a man standing in the alcove near the bay window.

Justus realized, to his utter astonishment, that it was his father.

Justus’s steps slowed involuntarily. Some distant corner of his mind warned him he was in danger of stepping on his own chin if he didn’t shut his gaping mouth, but he couldn’t quite manage his surprise.

The old man looked just as uncomfortable. He had his hands shoved deep into the pants pockets of his navy tracksuit—what the
fuck
? Vincent had a
tracksuit
?

Justus kept staring. He’d have been less surprised to see a unicorn show up wearing a space suit.

Vincent cleared his throat. “Hello, Justus.”

Justus stiffened and braced for the inevitable unpleasantness. His shoulders were familiar with the drill and bunched into automatic knots.

The man really should not be allowed to move freely among the general public, Justus thought bitterly. At the very least, he should be fitted with some sort of alarm so Justus could have ten minutes warning before he appeared. The extra time would allow Justus to get his thoughts together and prepare for a dose of his father’s venom.

“What are you doing here?” Justus asked, dimly aware of the receptionist’s disapproving hiss from behind the counter. “I’m pretty busy today.”

Vincent’s jaw tightened. “I just paid for a two-year membership to your club. I...thought maybe you could show me around.”

More dizzying astonishment ensued.

Justus would have been less surprised if that unicorn in a space suit said, in the Queen’s English, that he’d come to feed the dinosaurs.

Justus decided he hadn’t heard correctly. Cocking his head so his ear was better positioned to hear Vincent, he said, “
What
did you say?”

“I’d like a tour,” Vincent said, his voice firm now. “Of your club.”

“Why?” Justus snapped. He really didn’t have time for his father’s little mind games and manipulations. Didn’t the old man have anything better to do today than come all the way down here to bother him on the Sabbath, which should be a day off from harassment as well as from work? “Don’t you have any ambulances to chase today?”

The corners of Vincent’s lips turned up in what could almost pass for a smile, but of course it had been so long since Vincent smiled in Justus’s presence that he couldn’t tell for sure.

“I don’t start chasing ambulances until after lunch on Sundays,” Vincent said.

Justus snorted, at a complete loss for words.

Vincent strolled to the archway leading to the crowded cafe, where he lovingly stroked the highly polished oak woodwork. “You don’t see workmanship like this anymore.”

Okay
, Justus decided.
Enough
.

“What do you want, Vincent?”

Vincent answered patiently, without a hint of disapproval, disappointment, or any hidden agenda: “I want to see what my son’s built. Please.”

That was when V.J.’s voice, angry and frustrated, filled Justus’s head as clearly as if he’d popped down from heaven for a minute to whisper in his ear.

How long are you gonna keep up this wounded son routine? No one lives forever! How many chances do you think you’re gonna get?

Completely undone, Justus shoved his fists in his pockets, thinking hard.

When had his father ever asked him nicely for anything?

Was this really happening?

Was Vincent trying to...
change
?

If so, maybe Justus should give him a chance.

Shooting Vincent one last suspicious look, Justus sucked it up and tried to meet him halfway, no matter how strange it felt. Then he pointed. “This is the, ah, cafe. And smoothie bar.”

“
Smoothies
,” Vincent said with open delight. “Do you have raspberry?”

Justus hesitated. “Raspberry was V.J.’s favorite.”

“Oh.” Vincent’s expression fell. “I miss him.”

Something in Justus’s heart softened. Watching Vincent, he saw the stooped shoulders, the drawn face, and the head that was now entirely gray. For once Justus looked past the frustrated dictator who’d tried to run his life for as long as he could remember and saw instead the tired old man who’d just lost a son.

“I know, Pops.”

Vincent nodded brusquely, then slid onto a stool at the bar.

Justus sat next to him and signaled to the server.

“Had an interesting talk with Angela yesterday,” Vincent said, studying a laminated menu.

Suddenly, Justus was all ears. He waited for the rest of the story, but Vincent was completely absorbed in his menu.

“Raspberry, strawberry...ooh, blueberry,” he murmured.

“What did she say?” Justus barked when he couldn’t take the suspense any longer.

Vincent chuckled, still looking at the menu. “That I’m the worst father who ever walked the face of the earth and she doesn’t like me.” He shot Justus a bemused sidelong glance. “She’s passionate, that one. She believes in you. I think she’d defend you to the death if she needed to.” Vincent rubbed his neck. “I’m lucky my head’s still attached to my shoulders.”

Justus shook his head and rubbed the back of his own neck, battling the sweet ache in his chest as he listened to this story.

Angela.

If only she knew how tightly she had Justus wrapped around her little finger, he thought, she’d laugh her ass off.

The thing was, she seriously had his mind twisted. He couldn’t stop thinking about her for one second of one minute, let alone for an entire day.

If he weren’t careful, he’d look up and realize he’d fallen in love with that woman.

Or maybe he’d look up and realize he’d always been in love with that woman.

“She’s a hell of a woman,” Vincent continued, his expression softening at some distant memory. “She reminds me of your mother.”

The ache in Justus’s chest worsened until he could barely breathe, much less speak.

“If I could get my hands on a woman like that again,” Vincent said pointedly, “I wouldn’t let her go.”

“Oh, I have no intentions of letting her go,” Justus said.

A
ngela
, dressed in a tailored black wool dress, hurried around the corner and down the hall to Maya’s room, pausing only to slip her remaining pump on her foot and glance at her watch: seven fifteen. They’d never make it if they didn’t leave soon. She had a pretrial conference in federal court for the Golden Valley case at eight, and she had to drop Maya at preschool before that. They’d eaten breakfast already, so they’d be out the door in no time—

Oh, dear God,
no
.

Angela stumbled to a halt outside Maya’s door, aghast.

So many things were wrong with this picture she hardly knew where to look.

Maya sat on the floor playing with her Barbies, dressed not in the lovely pink velour warmup suit Angela had laid out for her, but in her red-and-green plaid Christmas sweater and pink-striped jeans.

She looked like a clown in training.

Her socks were not on. Her shoes were not on. Her toys were not picked up.

She’d done
none
of the things Angela asked her to do fifteen minutes ago.

The one thing Maya
had
decided to do was to undo her waist-length hair, which Angela had painstakingly braided last night. The wavy mass hung wild and free like a lion’s mane gone haywire.

Oh, but it got worse.

The worst of it was that Maya, maybe bored with styling only her dolls’ hair, had decided to do her own—starting with a haircut. A telltale clump of gleaming black hair lay on the flower rug, as if someone had divested a panther of its tail. The corresponding bare patch on Maya’s head was, naturally, right above her right eyebrow.

Where the whole world could—and
would
—see it.

The instrument of this destruction, Angela’s orange-handled office scissors, lay off to one side. Huge globs of pink conditioning cream dotted Maya’s hair, which explained the cloying scent of coconuts saturating the room. If Angela started washing Maya’s hair this very second, she was sure it would take a week to get the stuff completely out.

Angela cried out in horror. “What did you
do
?”

Maya smiled proudly. “I cut my hair. Like you did.”

Angela stifled a curse. What had possessed her to leave the bathroom door open the other day when she’d trimmed her bangs? She hurried in and tried to scoop some of the product out of Maya’s hair without getting it on her wool dress.

“Maya,” she muttered, “why’d you have to pick
today
to do your own hair?”

Maya scrunched up her face and resumed brushing the stupid doll’s hair.

“Now is not the time for that,” Angela snapped, snatching the Barbie away and tossing it in the bin. “I asked you to put on the outfit I chose for you and put your toys away, didn’t I?”

“I’m playing with that!” Maya cried.

“Playtime is over. I want you to march over to the bed, right now, and put on the outfit I picked out for you so I can do your hair.”

“I want to wear
this
!”

“I don’t have time for this!” Angela checked her watch again and saw they’d already lost five minutes. She reached for Maya’s shirt and tried to jerk it off over her head. “Take this off!”

Maya locked her arms by her sides. “Nooo,” she wailed. “
Nooo-ooo!
”

Angela kept trying and wondered what the hell she should do now. Things had never gotten this bad during any of their other power struggles.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.

Angela paused. Hang on. Was that the front door?

Great. Now, on top of everything else, the neighbors were pissed off.

All but choking on her impatience, she turned Maya loose and hurried to the door, where she saw an attractive twenty-something blonde on the other side of the peephole.

Angela snatched the door open before the woman could pound on the door again. “Can I help you?” she snapped, uncomfortably aware of the screeching racket Maya continued to make down the hall and how it must sound to this stranger. With her luck, the woman would whip out her phone and call 241-KIDS on her.

The woman frowned. “Angela Dennis?”

“Yes...” Angela said suspiciously. “And you are...?”

The woman’s lips thinned. “Olivia Warren. I’m here for the home study.”

Angela blinked and tried to process this unwelcome nugget of information.

This...this...this
child
, who seemed barely out of diapers herself, was here to inspect
Angela’s
home to see if she was fit to raise Maya? Right
now
?

“Ms. Warren.” Angela raised her voice in the vain hopes of drowning out Maya, who had lapsed into loud, though fake, sobs. “Obviously I’m very anxious to meet with you, but this really isn’t a very good—”

Ms. Warren shouldered her way inside, leaving Angela no choice but to shut the door and follow her.

“You see,” Angela babbled, “I’ve got court soon and I—”

Ms. Warren did a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, surveying the apartment like a U.N. weapons inspector in Baghdad. Seeing the place through this stranger’s eyes made Angela’s heart sink even further.

Maya’s little toys—Barbies and accessories, Lego, miscellaneous picture books, coloring books and markers—lay strewn about Angela’s once pristine apartment as if someone had detonated a toy store. A huge stack of old newspapers and law journals Angela hadn’t had time to read lay over in one corner. Dirty breakfast dishes sat on the counter, plainly visible.

A snarky little voice reminded Angela how she’d told Justus that Carolyn never knew how to keep a house clean.

Oh, the bitter irony.

Ms. Warren raised her eyebrows. “You knew we’d make an unannounced visit...?”

“Yes, but I—”

“Just ignore me,” Ms. Warren said. “Where’s Maya?”

All Angela could do was pray for the best as she trudged down the hall to Maya’s bedroom with Ms. Warren trailing behind.

Maya’s wailing had stopped, which might or might not be an ominous sign.

If Angela was lucky, Maya had calmed down and resumed playing with her dolls. If not, the sky was pretty much the limit in terms of mischief. In the last couple of weeks, Maya had sketched her masterpiece in green Magic Marker on her freshly painted bedroom wall, forcing Angela to repaint the entire room. Maya had also, on separate occasions, made a potion consisting entirely of Angela’s expensive face creams, perfumes, and lotions, and pulled all of her neatly folded clothes out of the dresser, then shoved them under the bed so Angela wouldn’t see what she’d done.

Holding her breath, Angela peeked in the room and saw, to her profound relief, Maya sitting on the floor pulling on—oh, for crying out loud!—orange socks.

“Maya,” she called sweetly, “this is Ms. Warren. She’s come to talk to us and see your room.”

Ms. Warren went in, stooped down to Maya’s level, and held out her hand. “Hello, Maya,” she said, smiling with obvious delight. Maya smiled shyly back and shook the woman’s hand. “What a colorful outfit you’re wearing! Who picked it out?”

Maya’s chest puffed out like a marching penguin’s. “I did!”

“And who cut your hair?”

Maya’s smile wavered. She shot a cautious glance at Angela. “I did.”

“I see,” Ms. Warren said gravely.

Although the woman hadn’t opened her briefcase or taken any notes thus far, Angela imagined her making mental slashes through the portions of Angela’s file that dealt with her supervisory capabilities.

“Don’t mind me,” Ms. Warren said when she scooped Maya’s books off the rocking chair, put them on the unmade bed, and sat down. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

Angela managed a sickly smile. She found the basket with Maya’s hair accessories, pulled out the heavy plastic comb with three-inch tines—the only comb she’d found capable of piercing Maya’s mane—and motioned to Maya.

“Come on, sweetie. We need to go. We’re going to be late.”

Maya obligingly knelt in front of Angela, who sat on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, and raised the comb in the general direction of Maya’s head.

But before comb and hair connected, Maya jerked away and shrieked like a pig being slaughtered with a dull ax. “Stop it!
Stop it!
You’re hurting me!”

She continued screeching while Angela died a thousand embarrassed deaths and Ms. Warren, meanwhile, pulled out her tablet and began to take notes.

* * *

A
ngela would arrive
any second for her first training session.

Justus double-checked his third-floor gym to make sure everything was ready.

The exercise mat lay unfolded across the hardwood floor. Weight bench and free weights? Check. He’d pulled out the BOSU, Swiss balls, and jump rope, just in case. Water bottles? Check. Towels? Check. Everything was perf—

Hard footsteps sounded outside the room. Angela banged in like a pissed-off tornado, slammed the door shut again, and dropped her gym bag to the floor with a thump. Then she tightened her ponytail, put her hands on her hips, and surveyed the room like a drill sergeant who was about to make his recruits do a shitload of pushups.

“Hi,” she said sourly when she saw him.

He watched her warily, giving her a quick once-over. Yoga pants and a T-shirt topped by a zipped hoodie, bad attitude, and open hostility.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Let’s get started. I have to pick Maya up soon.”

Like he was buying that bullshit.

“Something’s obviously wrong, Angela.”

Her jaw tightened as she squatted to retie her shoe. “Yeah, well, I told you last night I don’t really have time to be trained today.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve already canceled on me three times.” Staring down at the top of her head, he infused his voice with a challenge, probably because the ongoing gamesmanship between them was making him surly. If he had to pretend he didn’t want her for one more day, he’d probably start punching walls and throwing chairs across rooms. “I’m beginning to think you’re avoiding me for some reason.”

Her head whipped up and she stared at him with a flashing anger that made him wonder if she wouldn’t spring out of her crouch to tackle him to the floor.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” he asked.

She straightened but took great care not to look at him. “Let’s get started.”

“Fine. You can leave your jacket right here,” he said, pointing to a folding chair.

She balked and clutched the edges of her jacket together as if he’d told her to prepare for the strip search. “
Why?
”

“I don’t want you to get too hot,” he said silkily.

At that, she
did
look at him, and they stared each other down in a moment of mutual animosity. He had no idea why she was so pissed, but he was furious with her for tying his guts up in all these emotional knots. He wasn’t an actor. Why did he have to pretend with her?

He wanted her, goddammit. She wanted him. No, he didn’t have all the answers about how something between them could work, but why did she have to make things so complicated?

“I’ll let you know if I get too hot,” she said.

“I look forward to it.”

More glaring until she snapped her fingers. “Let’s go.”

Irritated, he spun away and reached for the Swiss ball. “You warmed up on the treadmill, right? Good. I thought we’d work on some core strength first. We’ll do some lateral rolls.”

Sitting on the big ball, he simultaneously leaned back and slid forward, so the ball was between his shoulder blades. “See?” Tightening his abs and butt, he held his arms straight out to the sides, palms up, and rolled slowly across the ball, so the ball moved from one wrist to the other. “The main thing is to keep your abs and butt tight. Form is important. And you don’t want to go too fast. It’s harder than it looks.”

He’d been staring up at the fluorescent lights, but now he turned to look at her. To his enormous satisfaction, her fixed gaze was leveled at his flexed bare thighs and calves.

His breath caught.

As he watched, her gaze traveled up over his body, lingering briefly on his face-up crotch in black shorts, then slid over his bare arms, which were still out to the sides.

A vivid red flush crept up her neck and across her face.

Justus wanted her and hated her a little bit more in that second.

And she had the nerve to claim she wasn’t too hot?

Bullshit.

If she got any hotter, she’d spontaneously combust, probably taking him out with her.

“Angela?”

She jumped and got her eyes back in her head. “I can do that. No problem.”

“Great.” Standing and trying to ignore the new fullness in his groin, he rolled the ball to her.

She sat cautiously and assumed the starting position.

“Good,” he said.

She held her arms out, palms down.

“Palms up.” He leaned down and grabbed her wrists to flip them over. For one thrilling moment they were face to face, her wide eyes riveted on him, but she immediately jerked back, only to slide off the ball and hit her ass with a thump. The ball rolled away.

She leapt up and tugged the bottom of her jacket down. “I’m okay.”

“I told you it was harder than it looks,” he said, unable to keep the glee from his voice.