Risk (It's Complicated Book 2) (38 page)

She didn’t smile, but her eyes glinted with amusement as she grabbed a framed photo from the edge of her desk, placed it in the center of a large stack of newsprint, and began to carefully wrap it.

“Can I help you with something?”

“You can tell me why you refused to marry my son.”

Angela lowered her head until only her gleaming hair was visible, and continued to wrap the picture with military precision. “We have no business getting married, Vincent, not that it’s any of
your
business.”

Leaning down and over, he tilted his face up to hers so she couldn’t look away.

“Why not? That’s what people do when they’re in love.”

She backed away from him and shoved the photo in the box.

There was a loud crack.

Scowling, she turned to the next photo and began to wrap it. “We’re not in love.”

“Really? You could’ve fooled me.”

“Did he send you here?” she demanded.

Raising both eyebrows, he gave her his most imperious look. “No one sends me anywhere, dear. And my son doesn’t need messengers.”

After a minute, her gaze wavered and fell. She paused. “Justus doesn’t really want to marry me. He just proposed so he could give Maya a good home. I’m sure he felt forced into it.”

The image was so ridiculous he gave a surprised snort, then tipped back his head and roared with laughter. Eventually he had to take off his glasses, help himself to a tissue from the box on her desk, and dab at the tears in his eyes.

Angela presented him with a stony profile that belonged on Mt. Rushmore.

“Angela,” he said when he’d caught his breath, “I’ve been trying most of my adult life to force Justus to do things he didn’t want to do, and I don’t think I’ve succeeded one time. I couldn’t make him wear shoes when he was one. Or eat his veggies. Or practice piano. Or go to Yale.” He tapped the desk with his index finger. “You can bet your last dollar no one’s forcing him to get married if he doesn’t want to get married.”

“He’s doing it for Maya,” she persisted.

“Oh.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the ring box, and put it on Angela’s desk. “If that’s true, I wonder why he came to get
this
from me.”

She gasped and backed up a step, as if he’d laid a lit stick of dynamite on her desk. “What’s
that
?”

“My wife’s ring.” He slid it across the desk to her. “Don’t you want to see it?”

She held her hands up. “
No
.”

Vincent decided the time for fun and games was over. Her attention seemed riveted on the ring box, so he stood, put his hand under her chin, tipped her face up, and stared, unsmiling, at her.

“I’m disappointed in you, Angela. I never thought you were a coward.”

“
Coward?
” she spluttered, jerking her head away. “How dare you—”

“Yes, a
coward
. Too scared to take a chance on Justus and too foolish to realize you’re throwing happiness away with both hands. I feel sorry for you.”

Her lower jaw hit the floor.

He decided to take advantage of the silence. “Maybe you think Justus is a poor risk.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But you should know that I knew another young man just like him once, and when
he
fell in love, he devoted his whole life to his wife. He never thought twice about the dozens of women who came before her, and never looked at another woman after her.”

Angela looked stricken.

“Who?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

“Me, dear.” He paused to let the words sink in. “
Me
.”

After a minute he kissed her astonished face and left her office, retracing his steps down the long hallway.

He left the ring with her.

* * *

A
ngela surveyed
her apartment later that night, stacking and rearranging her meticulously taped and labeled boxes. Moving day was the day after tomorrow.

It was still hard to believe she’d be ensconced in a D.C. hotel by the weekend, five hundred miles from everyone she loved. Starting a new life while trying to let this one go.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Packing Maya’s room had been unbearable. Thinking back on how she’d once thought, with all sincerity, that she’d never be able to love another woman’s child like her own, Angela could only regret that it was physically impossible to kick her own ass. What a foolish woman she’d been back in the day.

And now?

She’d happily give her right arm if Maya would appear and call her “Aunt Ang-la.”

Sinking onto her sofa, she tried not to notice how quiet and empty the apartment was without Maya. Or how hollow she felt without Justus.

Or how conflicted she felt about how they’d ended things.

Was it possible Justus really did love her? She squinted and looked deep inside her heart for answers, but her remaining dollop of self-esteem (thanks again, Ronnie) and cynical mind kept blocking the view.

Justus...loved her?

You can bet your last dollar no one’s forcing him to get married if he doesn’t want to get married.

Leave it to Vincent to further muddy her waters. He always had an agenda, so the question was: why had he shown up out of the blue today? To keep Angela in Maya’s life? Or was it something to do with Justus? Did Vincent want Justus to be happy? Did he think Angela could make Justus happy? And what about his comment—

Knock-knock-knock
.

Startled out of her thoughts, she heaved herself tiredly to her feet and walked to the foyer. With her luck, it’d be Vincent coming to deliver volume two of his speech, she thought as she checked the peephole.

But it wasn’t Vincent.

Gasping, she swung the door open and let Ronnie in.

R
onnie
!

He looked the same as ever—brown leather jacket, navy sweater, and jeans, his curly black hair a little on the long side, his brown eyes wide and nervous behind his glasses—but her first nonsensical thought was how dull and washed out he seemed compared to Justus. Not because he was fair-skinned and Justus dark, but because of their personalities. Justus was vivid and intense, as stunning and bright as a rainbow, but Ronnie was muted grays and blacks.

Justus was as layered and complex as Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
.

Ronnie, she now realized, was a stick figure.

“What are you doing here, Ronnie?”

Dropping his head, he rubbed his hand across the back of his neck as a deep flush colored his face. “I want to talk to you.”

She stepped aside by way of answer, closing the door after him and following him inside. When he saw all the boxes, he froze like he’d hit some invisible force field and couldn’t take another step without risking electrocution.

His head whipped around and he stared at her in utter disbelief. “What’s going on?”

“I’m moving to the D.C. office of my firm.”

“You’re leaving? Just like that?”

“Why the drama?” Frowning, she leaned her hip on the back of the chair, crossed her arms, and watched him closely. “What do you care where I live?”

He floundered.

Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he studied his shoes for several beats. When he looked up again, a strange new light shone in his eyes. She had the ridiculous idea he was going to tell her he wanted her back, and alarm tightened her chest.

She couldn’t deal with this—whatever it was—right now. Not tonight.

“Ronnie—”

“I want you back.” Now that he’d found his tongue, the words rushed out in an unstoppable stream, like water from a broken sewer line. “I keep thinking about how beautiful you looked the last couple of times I saw you. I must have been out of my mind to break up with you. I miss you. I made the worst mistake of my life when I cheated on you. I want to see if we can work things out.”

Events switched to slow motion as he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a tiny jeweler’s box in Tiffany robin’s egg blue, and sank to his knees.

Her mouth and the box hinged open simultaneously.

“Will you marry me, Angela?”

Stupefied, she stared into the box and saw a classic diamond solitaire—her dream ring.

Oh. My. God.

Lightheadedness made the world swim in and out of focus. Perching on the edge of the chair suddenly required too much effort, so she slid down into its seat, pressed her hand to her forehead, and focused on breathing so she wouldn’t be forced into the humiliation of putting her head between her legs.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

He sat beside her, his face lit with a passion she hadn’t seen in years, if ever. “Nothing’s the same without you. I miss you. I want you to forgive me.”

“What about your little girlfriend?”

He waved a hand as if he wanted to dismiss all that past foolishness, reminding her of a teenager who didn’t like to remember he’d once been a bed-wetter. “That’s over. Been over. It was a sex thing. That’s all.”

Angela couldn’t believe her ears. Was it supposed to matter that he’d broken her heart over something that turned out to be nothing?

“Oh, I see,” she said tonelessly. “And what about the next time?”

“There won’t be a next time. Can you give us another chance, Angela? We can have a June wedding and start trying to have kids right away—”

Angela’s body jerked with surprise. Deep in his heart, beneath the Ralph Lauren clothes and plain white cotton briefs, Ronnie was, it turned out, a street fighter. She’d had no idea.

“—and you could be pregnant by the end of the year.” He pressed the box into her hand, as if he knew a thirty-four- year-old unmarried woman couldn’t possibly resist a proposal from a man with a diamond from Tiffany. “Please, Angela.”

Angela raised the box, stared incredulously at the amazing ring, and tried to gather her thoughts.

* * *

J
ustus finished
the last of the dinner dishes, dried his hands on the towel, flicked out the kitchen light, and walked down the hall to his bedroom. Maya, in her pink nightgown with floppy dog in hand, lay in the enormous bed.

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Whatcha watching, little girl?”

“
Arthur
," she said, not looking away from the TV.

“
Arthur
? What about
SpongeBob SquarePants
?”

“SpongeBob has no educational value whatsoever.”

Justus snorted. The child, clearly, had been brainwashed by someone with a twisted and evil mind.

“Well, it’s almost eight o’clock, but you can stay up another few minutes—”

She looked directly at him for the first time and shook her head.

“I need eleven hours of sleep so I won’t be cranky.”

Wow.

Justus wondered morosely why he missed Angela so much when Maya channeled her for him every time she opened her little mouth.

Still, he could not, in good conscience, let this child go to bed uncorrupted in some small way. “How about some juice before you go to bed?”

She glowered as if he’d tried to sell her a vial of crack. “No more sugar. I already brushed my teeth. See?” Opening her mouth in a wide grimace, she showed him what looked like ninety-six sparkling teeth.

“Okay, then.”

Defeated, Justus scooped her and her puppy up and walked down the hall to the guest bedroom. The place was still a mess, with golf clubs, a treadmill, and various free weights shoved against the wall to make room for her twin bed.

“Sorry about the room, little girl.” He put her in the bed. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day we can go to the store and you can pick out some sheets and stuff you like.”

Her mouth tightened.

Frustrated, he started to press the issue and try to get some sort of reaction from her—something that told him she was still a child who could take childish delight in small things like going to the mall—but something stopped him.

As depressed as he was himself, he had no business trying to cheer someone else up.

Talk about the blind leading the blind.

“Well, let’s say your prayers.”

He waited for her to put her hands together and close her eyes, but she snubbed him by rolling over to face the wall.

“No,” she said flatly. “God doesn’t listen.”

Another piece of his brittle heart crumbled and turned to dust.

He wanted to defend God to her, but he couldn’t think of a single example to prove her wrong. Finally he just dropped his head, murmured a quick prayer over her, kissed her cheek, and slipped out, shutting her door behind him.

He roamed aimlessly around the living room, straightening books and newspapers on the coffee table. A beer sounded good, but not good enough to make the walk to the kitchen and get one. But he couldn’t sit down, either.

Angela
had done this to him. He was so fucking agitated he couldn’t sit, stand, or sleep, and so detached from life he couldn’t eat, drink, or care.

He hated her for it.

But not as much as he missed her.

The knot that’d taken up permanent residence in his chest throbbed painfully.

Just get your ass in the shower, Justus. Get in bed. Watch
NYPD Blue
.

Yeah. Good idea.

With a plan in place, he headed for the—

Knock-knock-knock.

His heart stopped, but his feet were already on the move, hurrying him to the door because he
knew
it was Angela.

Without bothering to check the peephole, he swung the door open.

* * *

A
ngela struggled
to breathe through a throat that had evidently forgotten how the procedure worked. She also struggled not to stare too hungrily at him, but that was similarly impossible.

Now that she was here, she had no idea what to say.

She’d only known she’d had to come.

“Hi,” she said faintly.

“Hi.”

Well, he hadn’t slammed the door in her face or threatened to call the police to get rid of her, so she considered herself way ahead of the game. Still, he didn’t look any too happy to see her. He looked tired, with dark smudges under his eyes. His cheekbones seemed more prominent, his jaw harder. His mouth was set in an unyielding line, as though he planned to take some names and kick some asses.

Mostly he looked...wary.

She cleared her throat and prayed for a little more courage even though fear had turned her hands to ice.

“Can I come in?”

He blinked once, his gaze still riveted to her face. “Sure.”

But he stayed where he was for a couple seconds, blocking the door until it seemed to belatedly dawn on him that he’d need to move. Then he hastily stepped back, swinging the door wide for her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” she said.

He grunted.

“It couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”

Another grunt.

By tacit agreement, their only communication for the last several days had been through texts, and they’d agreed she’d come by tomorrow to say goodbye to Maya before heading to D.C.

They went to the living room and sat on opposite ends of the sofa. She put her bag and coat on the chair. Justus rested his elbows on his knees and stared at his clasped hands. She fidgeted, trying to think where to start.

Finally, she took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you what happened to me a little while ago.”

He nodded.

Licking her dry lips, she said, “Ronnie showed up at my apartment with a ring—”

Justus made a quiet, strangled sound.

“—and asked me to marry him.”

She stared intently, willing him to say something—to
react
—but he just raised his head and stared back with hard, gleaming eyes.

The only other signs of emotion she could detect were the insistent throbbing of his jaw and two patches of color that appeared over his cheeks.

Until a crooked smile twisted his mouth. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“I told him
no
.”

His eyes narrowed with open suspicion. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Silence mushroomed between them.

He rubbed his knees, and she noticed how tight his arm muscles were. How the tendons stood out on the backs of his hands.

“Say something,” she softly pleaded.

“Why’d you say no?” he demanded, his voice harsh enough to strip the skin off her flesh. “Isn’t this your whole little dream come true? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting your entire life for? A proposal from your golden boy?”

She flinched but told him the truth. “Yes.”

“Then
why
?”

Staring into all his unvarnished fury, Angela searched for a hopeful sign to cling to.

This was good, wasn’t it?

Justus wouldn’t be so angry if he felt nothing for her, would he?

“Because I don’t love Ronnie,” she said quietly. “I realized today I never did.”

Whoa. Wrong thing to stay.

Cords began to thrum in his neck, and a single vein grooved down the middle of his forehead. Then he barked out a bitter laugh.

“The sidewalks are just littered with men you don’t love, aren’t they—”

“No—”

“
Aren’t they?
” he roared.

“No,” she said evenly, even though she felt like a sapling bent double by the wind’s force. “Just
Ronnie
.”

He snorted and, still resting his elbows on his knees, put his face in his hands and rubbed it as though he wanted to obliterate his features. She longed to squeeze his shoulder, but didn’t want to lose any limbs.

Waiting for him to finally raise his head again was one of the hardest things she ever did, but she managed it. He was calmer now, she realized. Dry-eyed, even though he kept his gaze shuttered from her prying eyes.

“Well,” he said quietly. “You’d better tell me what you mean, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Pressing a hand to her belly, she tried to calm her roiling nerves and harness her thoughts. “When I saw Ronnie today—when he proposed—I kept thinking I didn’t know what I’d ever seen in him. I didn’t know why I ever thought I loved him.”