Safe Love (Love Brothers #4) (4 page)

“When that happened, I was feeling pretty stupid over my
inability to remember to use protection, especially since I knew damn good and
well Crystal’s parents were too conservative to get her on the pill. And you
know, junior year of high school is all about gettin’ into college too,
stressful and all with tests and shit.” He shook his head. “I hated school.
Thought I might play ball somewhere but wasn’t as good as Kieran. And something
about Crystal…well…she was a bitch, you can ask anybody.” He chuckled, and
something in Margot seemed to give way.

Ridiculous
, she said to herself.
Get a grip
.
She smiled and nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“We were together after that, sorta off and on because I was
a horn dog idiot, letting my dick do the thinking half the time. But she, well,
she was always there. My mama hated her, I promise you that. That’s ‘cause they
were the same in a lot of ways—bossy, know-it-all, my-way-or-the-highway kinds
of ladies.” He took a step towards her but Margot moved to the side. “Anyway,”
he went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’d done it. “When she came
to me and said she was pregnant again, even after my mama finagled a way to get
her on birth control during my sophomore year up at UK, she claimed she was
gonna ‘take care of it’ but we would be breaking up. I lost it, I swear. I went
out on a bender, got so drunk I honestly thought I would die of alcohol
poisoning. I woke up in the bed of my damn truck with her sitting next to me,
cross-legged, cryin’ and cursin’ my name and telling me she loved me and that
she was keeping my baby and she didn’t care what I thought about it.” He sighed
and held out both hands. “‘Take me or leave me, Antony Ian Love,’ she said to
me that day. ‘But do it now so I can figure out if I’m gonna stay in college or
what.’”

Margot swallowed past the lump in her throat at the thought
of them, both kids, barely into their twenties, making that decision between
them.

“I dropped out of school, reopened my uncle’s garage, lived
through two sets of parents fit to kill us both and took Crystal’s father’s
gift—the house I live in now. She finished up her year down at Tennessee, had
the baby and our parents took care of AliceLynn between them for a year while
she finished her associate’s degree in Lexington while I worked my ass off to
make the garage a going concern again. She was aces at running the books and
stuff at the garage for a while. And she was…” He blinked fast. “She…was…” He
sucked in a breath, looked up at her office ceiling, then straight at her. A
tear slid down his face. Without thinking, Margot touched her finger to it. “She
was a great mother, and we had a good life. Guess I shoulda known better than
to think it would stay that way.”

He turned away from her and headed for the door. Margot was
unable to speak in the face of his outpouring, shocked by it on one level but
on another, not. She’d broken the ice in a way she knew damn good and well he’d
respond to, and he had. It took every ounce of willpower in her not to leap
across the room, take him in her arms and finish what she’d started the way
they both wanted.

Facing away from her, he said, “I had so much on my
shoulders. So many people expecting me to fail. My brothers were in various
stages of fuckin’ up their lives, my mother and sister fought non-stop. My
father…well, he and Crystal’s daddy were in general agreement about me at that
point I think. She…Crystal met me at the door one Friday after I’d just spent
two hours at the bank, begging them to extend my line of credit for the fourth
time that year, and after having to fire one of my best mechanics for getting his
second DUI in a month, wearing a robe and smile. The baby was still at her
parents’ house. She took me to the bedroom and…well…she… I don’t know. But it
changed us in ways that we never expected.”

“She topped you,” Margot said, her voice perfectly calm, belying
the roiling turmoil in her head and chest. “She took all the control you had to
keep over yourself and everyone around you out of your hands completely and let
you be the one controlled for a while. And it worked, right?”

He shook his head and when he turned and met her gaze, his
eyes were dark with something she recognized. She knew that if she were to see
her own face right then, it would reflect the same expression—full of longing
and regret. “Yes, Margot,” he said, caressing her name in a way that made her
have to bite the inside of her cheek. All her inner alarms were clanging,
telling her to act, to move, to dominate, to give this man the one thing he
required of her, right now.

But she couldn’t, not anymore.

Antony’s heart pounded. His pulse raced. Sweat rolled down
his back and his knees shook so hard he nearly dropped to the floor. He kept
his gaze on hers, on Margot’s, willing her to just fucking do it. But he knew
she wouldn’t. Margot had met Rosie and he could tell she wasn’t “that sort of
woman.”

And you? Are you that sort of a man?

No.

“Sorry,” he said, his throat clogged and croaky. He fumbled
for the door knob, yanked it open and threw himself out into the small foyer of
the strip mall office where he’d just ripped his heart out his chest and nearly
handed it over to a complete stranger.

A complete stranger he wanted so badly he could already
taste her on his tongue, feel the hard metal cuffs she’d clasp on his wrists
and smell the leather straps she’d use on his body. Cursing, he shoved open the
glass door and was blinded by the bright, early fall sunlight. He sat in the
boiling hot cab of his truck, letting his pulse calm for a few minutes before
starting it up and heading home, his mind blank in a way that he didn’t understand,
but kind of liked.

When he walked in from the garage he saw AliceLynn sitting
in front of the TV, her phone in her hand and a bowl of melting ice cream on
the coffee table in front of her. Some kind of long unused muscle inside him
flexed. It hurt, but felt great because he knew it for what it was. “Hey, wanna
go get a pizza?”

She looked up at him and he got such an overwhelming urge to
pick her up and hug her it made his teeth ache. “You look more like your mama
every single day,” he managed before grabbing a glass, filling it with water
and drinking a few gulps. He felt so…weird. Hollowed out, like he had after
that bizarre day of yard work and picnic with his family.

She got up and stretched without ever actually responding to
him. Antony gripped the kitchen counter, trying to come to terms with all the
emotions whirling around in his head. “I’m going out with Jason,” she said,
flouncing away and down the hall.

“With who?” he asked, anger rising, but slower than usual he
noted as he followed her, holding open her room door when she attempted to slam
in it his face. “This place is a wreck.” He took in the unmade mattress,
cardboard boxes and laundry baskets overflowing with clothes and other crap.

“Since when do you care?” She dropped into a beanbag chair,
sending a puff of the tiny little beads into the air.

Antony stopped, pondering the question un-rhetorically.
“Since right about now,” he declared stepping into the room his daughter had
been reoccupying for the first time in over a decade. “Come on AliceLynn. Let’s
make something out of this.” He grabbed the headboard his father had brought
over from her room at their place and shoved the mattress and box springs off
the metal frame. “Help me out, willya? Bring my toolbox.” He kept his tone
matter of fact, not watching her while she stood slowly, gawking at him. “Hurry
up now, we’ve got a lot to do.”

“Um, where’s…?”

“Get the small one. It’s in the kitchen utility closet.” He
allowed himself a brief glimpse of her—of his daughter—standing there looking
like a waif with her dumbfounded face and her way too skimpy clothes. He
smiled, then lest she think she’d actually get her way and go out with some
tool of a boy and not spend time with him tonight, he frowned. “Go on, git.”

An hour and a half later, the bed was assembled and moved to
a better spot in the large room for “fung shway” or some shit she kept babbling
about. Her dirty clothes were in the laundry room and her clean ones were out
of boxes and tucked into drawers or hung on hangers. They had ceremoniously
tossed the leaky beanbag chair and he’d promised to take her shopping for
something to replace it but she’d balked at getting rid of a couple of the
rattier stuffed animals she insisted reside on top of her newly made bed.

It had made for a pleasant interlude, but the second he
suggested she ditch her plans with ‘Jason’ and go out for pizza with him, it
went sour. Unsurprising, he thought. Can’t erase thirteen years of ignoring her
out of pure spite at God or karma or whatever with an hour or so of attention.

“Who is this boy anyway,” he asked, sipping a beer and
watching as she flitted around the house getting ready. His temper was rising
at the very thought of some kid putting his hands, or anything else, on her.
Odd, since he’d never had this kind of intense feeling about her dating before.

God I am lame. This is my daughter and I’m just now
figuring this all out? No wonder my own father doesn’t respect me.

“Are you on the pill,” he asked, already wincing in advance
of her answer.

“Of course,” she said, patting his cheek on her way to the
front door.

“Hold up a second,” he said, rising to his feet. “Where are
you going? Why are you driving? What happened to getting picked up for a date?
How did you … get the prescription anyway?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound by anyone’s
measure. “I’m going to Jason’s house. I’m driving because I want to and he
can’t drive right now. Grammie got it for me. Bye-bye Daddy.” She wiggled her
fingers at him. “See ya later.”

“But…hey, hold up,” he spluttered, following her to the
door. “Just a god damn minute young lady.” He grabbed her arm, noting that
she’d exchanged one too-tight, too-small tank top for one about the same size,
but slinkier, loose, and way too easy-access.

Her brows knitted as her blue eyes clouded over in a way so
very much like his dead wife it made Antony’s head pound. Steeling for the
emotional tsunami about to roll over him, he let go of her arm and sidestepped
so he stood between the girl and the door. AliceLynn’s face got even stormier
but he held his ground.

As he watched her get worked up into a Crystal level snit
fit, Antony sensed the tension in his neck ease. He smiled. She took a step
away from him, rubbing her bare arms, the anger in her seeming to release like
air from a popped balloon. At that moment, she was just a confused-looking
little girl and he hated his own guts for being so unbelievably selfish all
these years, it lodged in his chest as actual pain.

“You can’t do this,” she said in a small voice.

“Watch me,” he said, keeping his voice neutral, knowing it
was for the right thing. “This is my house—no, I mean our house. But in it, I’m
the boss,
capice
?”

She tossed the thick, auburn hair she’d inherited straight
from her paternal grandmother over one too-bare shoulder. “Yeah, well, I’m not
your prisoner and you sound like some kinda goombah in a bad mafia movie when
you talk that way.”

He grinned and relaxed which was an error he’d realize
later. AliceLynn knew how to play him—she had when she’d been three years old
and their time apart, thanks to his lameness, had not lessened that knowledge.
She went up on her tiptoes, pecked his cheek, squeezed his arm and said, “Pizza
sounds super. I’ll drive.”

She did, and a few ghost-braking, dashboard grabbing minutes
later, they were installed in a booth at the Love Pub, pizza ordered, and
staring at each other in awkward silence. Antony sipped his beer, not really
tasting it. AliceLynn fiddled with her napkin and her phone.

Several servers and guests stopped to chat with them and
finally the food arrived. Antony knew the girl could out-stubborn him and
wouldn’t talk until he did. After inhaling a slice and watching her type yet
another text, likely to the mysterious ‘Jason who required her to be on birth
control,’ Antony took a deep breath and leaned his elbows on the table.

“So, how do you feel about the thing with, ah…um, the
therapist lady?”

AliceLynn shot him an odd, searching and somehow knowing
look. He swallowed past the urge to deflect and change the subject. “She’s all
right, I guess.” After a few minutes spent watching her chew, swallow and text
before she finally looked up at him, he knew had to get control of the temper
rising in his gut and heating his face.

“I don’t care for it,” he admitted, grabbing another slice.
“Much.”

She frowned down at her screen.

“I’m up here, AliceLynn. Can you put that damn thing away
for half a second?”

She heaved a sigh, set it face down on the table top and
glared at him. “Why not? I think she likes…you.”

He blinked, sucked in a breath and spent the next few
seconds trying not to choke to death on a pepperoni, while his daughter pinned
him with a look that was too old for her years. He sipped some water and tried
to formulate an answer. “Don’t be stupid,” he managed. “I’m engaged to Rosie.
She’s just…I’m…it’s…oh, hell.”

To his alarm, AliceLynn’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t
call me stupid,” she whispered. “I’m going to the ladies’.” She slid out of the
booth and stomped away.

Antony sat, holding the half-eaten slice of pizza that had
damn near killed him just now, wondering not for the first time what in the
hell he’d said to upset her so much. A sudden, unwelcome vision of Crystal’s
face floated around in his brain. He ground his teeth and tried not to curse
her for having the nerve to get in the car and fucking die on the interstate,
leaving him to navigate the female teenage waters alone. What a colossal mess
this was. And of course, he had no one but himself to blame.

He stretched his long legs out under the table and tried to
relax only to feel a strong, familiar slap on his shoulder. “Oh, hey Daddy,” he
said when Anton Love took the seat AliceLynn had vacated. “What’s up?”

“Your mama wanted some of Pat’s barbecue for supper,” he
said, dropping a bag full of eco-friendly, bio-degradable and, Antony knew,
expensive takeaway boxes onto the table. ‘Pat’ was the longtime chef in the
Love Pub kitchen whose barbecue and beer dinners drew visitors from as far away
as Cincinnati. “On a date?” His father indicated the large pizza.

“No. It’s AliceLynn.”

Anton Love raised a dark eyebrow. “So that therapy crap is
working?”

“I don’t know about all that,” Antony said, unwilling to
admit that maybe it was, if for no other reason than something about his one
full session today had compelled him to come home and be a father for a change.
After a few minutes when it became clear that his daughter had skipped out on
him, he slumped down into the booth and put his hands on the table. “Like I
said, since it would appear that she’s bailed on me because I called her
‘stupid…’”

Anton chuckled and got up slowly, making Antony realize that
his father was not wearing his sixty-some years very well lately. “Son, don’t
ever call a girl anything she might even slightly consider an insult. It’s not
the same as it is with your knucklehead brothers. Thought I raised you better
than that.”

“Great. Thanks for the tip. Now I don’t have a way home
since I assume she took her car and went over to that damn boy’s house.”

“Jason?” Anton asked, sending a spike of something
resembling jealousy through Antony’s head.

“I guess,” he muttered, waving down the waitress so he could
get a box, pay the check and get the hell out of here. Anton headed to the
door, leaving Antony to fume at the girl’s nerve, just bolting on him.

Yeah. She got you with that one, dad. Best just go on
home.

Once he’d paid, tipped and snagged his leftovers he
shouldered his way out the door. His father stood at the door of the brewery
van. “Get in, you big dumbass. I’ll run ya home.”