Shopping for an Heir (8 page)

“And you generally can take a lot.”

“I can. But not this. Especially if it drags out. There is no way I can let Gerald Wright back into my life.”

“He already is,” Kari pointed out, gently.

He already is.

I
t was hot
, the kind of heat that permeates every cell, flowing through you like your bones conduct it. He was a conduit and she was a live wire, the rough press of skin against lips a ritual they’d performed so many times before, a ceremony that should have been routine but that inspired new revelations. Her breast was heavy in his hand, ripe and full, the perfect size for his mouth. Her gasp made him smile against the hollow of her throat as he kissed her, inhaling deeply.

Days.

It had been days since they’d been together, and the desperation clung to their skin like a unique scent. He smelled her need. She tasted him, licking the fine groove between his ribs, her mouth making his abs quiver, his sharp intake of air curling his belly inward. Away.

Sweat rolled off them like water, pure and evoked by the desert heat but vanquished by their mutual need. Her face was flushed by this connection, the way his hand found her between her legs, how his tongue played with her nipple, how she moved to wrap her palm around his shaft and stroked once, twice—just enough before he stopped her, needing more heat.

Wet, wild heat.

Her breath on his hip chilled him, cooler than the ambient temperature, the rise and fall of her chest as the air tickled his slick skin making his body tingle.

As she sank lower, her mouth a fortress, a temple, an asylum, he groaned and pulled her up. Straddling him, she sank home, her hands sliding up from his navel to his shoulders, her long, blonde hair free and spilling behind her back as she arched.

The tent felt like nirvana, her body heaven, their union complete as they both—

G
erald awoke with a start
, gasping into the strange box of reality, the room dark with shadows and filled with the scent of deeply anticipated horror.

“Oh, God,” he grunted, breathing erratic, heart in flames in the center of his chest.

That dream.

That fucking dream.

He hadn’t had that dream about Suzanne in eight years.

Drawing on every tool in his psychological coping toolbox, Gerald started with deep breaths. Inhale for eight, exhale for four. Something like that. His hands fisted the sheets, which were damp in sections. Sweating profusely, Gerald stood, throwing the sheet off him, stomping through his bedroom naked, headed to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Instead, he found himself five minutes later, standing in front of the open freezer door.

Just...standing there.

A glance at the stovetop clock told him it was 4:56 a.m. Sunrise soon. The day would begin.

Hell, the day had clearly begun
already
. No way was he going back to bed.

His nose was cold. His back was covered with sweat. One drop trickled down his spine and into his ass crack. And yet, still he stood there, stupidly staring at a half-empty freezer.

Enlightenment would not come from a frozen pad Thai dinner.

Today was his day off. He had a wide-open schedule. Nothing planned.

Which made today dangerous.

Think, man. Think
, he urged himself, recalling what his psychologist at the Veterans Affairs center had told him, all those years ago. Use the tools. Don’t define yourself by the intrusive thoughts.

He froze.

And realized that the dream had been different this time.

Blinking, he felt his corneas stick against the backs of his eyelids, the rapid eye movement necessary to return his body to the well-oiled machine it needed to be.

The dream was
different
.

Ten years ago, when the invasive dreams had started, they’d ended with him reaching up to her beautiful neck, trying to choke Suzanne. Trying to hurt her. He’d always woken up in the middle of the violence. He’d never actually killed her in the dream.

He’d also never told her about the dreams.

Not a single damn one.

And that’s why he broke it off.

Because he never, ever wanted to take the chance that the violence might move from his subconscious to reality.

Four psychologists and two psychiatrists had tried to convince him he never would—in real life—but he knew PTSD could play tricks with your mind. It was a nasty bugger, a second self that took up real estate in the body, a lurker in the shadows that waited to torment you when least expected.

No, he didn’t think he’d ever actually hurt Suzanne.

Leaving her made it ironclad. A guarantee.

Until last night, he’d been certain that his decision was the only choice.

Until last night, he hadn’t allowed himself to play the regret game.

Until last night, he hadn’t let himself hope.

And until last night, he hadn’t had that damn dream for eight years.

Bzzz.

He checked his phone. A text from his friend, Vince.

Hey, sleepyhead. Slacker. Get up and come lift with me. I could use a wimp to wipe my brow and fetch towels.

Gerald snorted, running a hand over his shaved head. He’d met Vince years ago. Helped him get an in at Anterdec, where Gerald worked. The guy was hard core.

And a bit of a jerk.

I’m up, asshole. You need a real man to show you how it’s done?
he typed back. Something in his chest loosened. His shoulders dropped. His stomach growled. The parasympathetic nervous system slowly resumed functioning.

He would be okay today.

He had to be.

If you’re the real man, then I fear for humanity’s future
, Vince typed back.
Bring coconut oil. I ran out.

What’s the coconut oil for? Your blow-up doll?
Gerald replied.

Your sister
, was Vince’s reply.

Gerald barked out an outraged guffaw.

My sister would kick your ass if she read that
, Gerald tapped out.

She single? Got pics?

Give me twenty minutes, and don’t you ever touch my sister.

But your mother’s fair game,
Vince typed back.

If you’re into necrophilia, pervert. My mom’s been dead for five years,
Gerald answered.

She single? Got pics?

You’re a sick motherfucker, Vince.

Not yet...get your ass here. We got a preener. Need to put him in his place.

Twenty
, Gerald typed one-handed as he walked into the bedroom, fishing around in a laundry basket of clean clothes he hadn’t put away, finding workout clothes.

Five minutes later, he was on his motorcycle, zooming toward the gym, relieved to have something to do.

Even if it meant hearing Vince talk about dating his lesbian sister.

Especially
if it meant hearing Vince talk about dating his sister, not knowing she was gay.

Early morning in Watertown meant uncrowded streets and the near-daylight glow of bluish skies that gave the town the feel of a straight-to-video movie set. He lived three blocks down from where the Boston Marathon bomber had been caught in a boat, bleeding under the cover, ensconced during a fugitive search that Gerald had spent in Boston, shuttling James McCormick everywhere that day.

Like everyone else in the neighborhood, he simultaneously felt deep reverence for the event and an underlying horror at how it had touched his life so closely.

The gym where he and Vince worked out didn’t even have a sign. It barely had a ceiling, but the brick warehouse had space. Lots of space, two bathrooms, two locker rooms, and plenty of muscle.

Who needed more than that?

Vince was already in the open gym area, lifting two-hundred-pound sandbags. Three old semi truck tires littered the ground around him. Add in two long, thick ropes and a few kettlebells, and the guy was in his element.

Give him a twelve-foot wall to scale and he would have been giddy.

If Vince did giddy.

“Wimp!” he shouted, drawing a few curious sets of eyes. Vince stood at about six foot four and weighed three hundred pounds, all muscle, bone and sinew. His body was an inverted triangle on top of two thick tree-trunk legs. Covered in tattoos with a long, thick, black braid that hung down the middle of his back like a rope you climbed to get to him, Vince was a mountain.

“Wuss!” Vince called back, working on finding a way to shoulder a sandbag on each shoulder. He hadn’t broken a sweat.

Gerald felt the love.

“Get your ass on the rowing machine and warm up. Then get in here and push shit around from one spot to the other.” Vince paused and glared. “Bring my coconut oil?”

“I brought you KY jelly. Tastes better.”

“Quit talking about sex. That’s like dangling a piece of yarn in front of a kitten and never letting them play with it.”

“Since when did you start comparing yourself to a kitten, Vince?”

“Since I started dreaming about pussy nonstop.”

The comment caught Gerald off guard, his stone face rippling briefly as his heart sped up with the misplaced notion that Vince somehow knew why he was already awake when the text had come in.

“You, too? Man, we’re fucking monks, aren’t we?”

“You may be fucking monks, Vince, but I don’t swing that way.”

The guy grunted. “Warm up. Quit talking about your pecker.” He frowned. “You got a new woman?”

“An old one.” He regretted the words instantly.

“You’re sleeping with elderly women now?”

“Ha ha.”

“What do you mean, ‘an old one’?”

“Nothing.”

Vince had a way of stopping and staring at you until it wasn’t so much that he pried the truth out of you. Those eyes made the truth cry Uncle and flee.

“I saw an ex of mine.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Not Suzanne?” He’d mentioned her over the years.

“Yep.”

“How in the hell did that happen?”

“She lives here. In Boston.”

“And you just happened to run into her in a city full of hundreds of thousands of people? You’re a walking coincidence. Buy a lottery ticket today, man.”

“She delivered inheritance papers to me.”

Shocking Vince wasn’t easy. His face was damn near comical with surprise. “You? Inherit what?”

“Long story.”

“I got all day, man.”

“Don’t want to talk about what I’m inheriting.”

“You about to be rich?”

He snorted.

“Then let’s talk about Suzanne,” Vince continued. “You back together?”

“No.”

“You want to be?”

The short inhale, then hitched breath, that took over his body was unscripted.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Vince said dryly. “You gonna tell her the truth this time?”

“Fuck off.”

“Gerald, man, you gotta tell her.”

“We’re done.” Before Vince could respond, Gerald shoved earbuds in and jumped on the old rowing machine. Within two minutes, he was in the zone.

The zone where he couldn’t hear Vince.

Old Jorgen, the guy who owned the place, limped between two truck tires and said something to Vince, who paused and turned to give Jorgen his complete attention. Vince would eat a mountain for the guy. Old Jorg was about ninety, with the kind of near-perfect posture in old men that made them pigeon-chested. His hips couldn’t hide his age, and he walked a little bowlegged, but otherwise had the stature of a twenty year old.

Jorg had let Vince live in the office when his step-dad kicked him out at fifteen. Gerald hadn’t known Vince then. Just knew the tale. Vince had become a personal trainer the old-fashioned way: by being a towel boy for the crazy boxers who came in here. Step by step, he’d fought his way up.

That was literally all Gerald knew about Vince’s past.

And Vince seemed to like it that way.

Fine. Gerald wasn’t exactly the spill-your-guts type, either. They bonded over torn muscle fibers.

The more, the better.

As Gerald raced through his warm-up, he tore his eyes away from the old man and the beast, listening to the heavy metal pounding through his earbuds. If he closed his eyes, he could recall the image of Suzanne’s gloriously nude body.

Hey, there.

Bad idea. The rowing machine suddenly became unbearably uncomfortable.

He looked at Old Jorg and imagined the locker room toilet.

Better.

Understanding why he’d had that dream wasn’t exactly rocket science. Stimulus, response.

See Suzanne, dream about her.

But truly grasping why he kissed her—and why she let him—was a puzzle.

He hadn’t even opened those damn inheritance papers. Tucked away in his gym bag, he’d thrown them in on a lark. Vince had a keen way of cutting through bullshit to get to the down-and-dirty heart of an issue.

He’d ask him after they moved the equivalent of a skyscraper in weight.

A pinch at his ear and the muted bliss of death metal was interrupted by Vince’s hot breath.

“Gotta go. Emergency.”

“What’s wrong?”

But Vince was gone, the front door swinging, Old Jorg watching with blinking eyes, like an old wrinkled owl.

Shit.

Gerald tucked his worry away, knowing Vince would have told him if he’d wanted to. Instead, he jumped off the rowing machine and made a beeline for Vince’s tires.

Might as well flip rubber if he wasn’t going to wear any.

Bracing his legs as he lunged down, he lifted the huge, stinking black mass of petroleum, end over end, three times. Glutes screaming, he ignored them. Bodies in motion don’t sound like people screaming, thank God.

Self-torture he could handle.

By the time every muscle in his body shook, he was dripping with sweat and no more enlightened, but at least he wasn’t plagued by a racing mind with nothing better to do.

Vince came jogging back in just as Gerald sat on a boxer’s chair, drinking water.

“Wimped out already?”

“Where’d you go? Tea party?”

“Emergency,” Vince said tersely.

“Sorry. Everything okay?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Fine. Don’t talk. Lift.”

“Too edgy. Spar with me.”

Gerald snorted. “I might be a masochist, but I’m not suicidal. I can tell you’re stoked. Too much anger. Too much energy. Pick some naive kid in here and beat him. I’m not going in the ring with you.”