The Foster Family (11 page)

“I knew the minute I hired you that you were going to be a lot of work, Kerry Grey.”

“Regrets?” I think I held my breath, but she was laughing softly.

“Not one.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’re not on the schedule tomorrow. Marcus is.”

“Fire that deadbeat and give me more hours.”

“Um, honey, he owns half the business. Oh, and yeah. I married him, remember? You had to wear a suit.”

“Oh that.”

“Yeah. Just that.”

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow anyway, at some point. Just to let you see I still have all my parts intact.”

“Ha!” She snorted. “You haven’t been all there since we met.”

I had to concede that point. “But now, I do have to go.”

“Okay. Just keep that key close. It works in the middle of the night too. I’ll come and get you if you need. Just call.”

“Yes, Mom.”

She threw a raspberry over the phone and hung up.

“Okay?” Malcolm asked. He’d returned and now took the receiver from my hand before I could even hit the End button.

“Sure.”

“You need a ride home?” Charlie asked.

“Only if you’re kicking me out,” I said, knowing how pathetically hopeful I sounded.

Malcolm smiled, indulgent again, and shook his head. “Put on a load of laundry to clean your clothes, then take Charlie outside and show him how hard you worked for him today.”

Charlie glanced between us, curious, but said nothing. I went to the bathroom to gather my things and found my wallet, watch, and keys exactly where I had left them.

Okay, so yes, it was comforting to simply do as I was told without argument, even if part of me wanted to believe it went against my nature. It was nice to see Malcolm relaxed and not scowling and Charlie contentedly droopy with the leftovers of a long day, not worried I was about to step on his Master’s toes. I got the laundry on quickly and hurried back to the kitchen.

Charlie held out a hand to me. “Worked hard for me, huh?”

I grinned. “I guess. Come on.” I took his hand and dragged him out, Malcolm on our heels. I led him around the yard to show him how his newly uncovered shrubs were doing, point out some Jacob’s Ladder coming up in a corner, and ask if he knew how invasive the Star of David was that thrust up around the base of the gazebo between wall and flagstones.

“Oh, I know. The whole lawn was covered with it.” He trailed his fingers through the long, grass-like fronds of its greenery. “But it seems contained here, and the white flowers spilling over the black stones are gorgeous. I have pictures—”

“Lord, does he have pictures,” Malcolm groaned.

“I can show you,” Charlie offered before thrusting a pointed tongue at Malcolm, then grinning excitedly at me.

I nodded. “I would love that.” Spontaneously, I rested my head on his arm. “When you aren’t so tired, maybe.”

“I’m actually not so tired, seeing how much less work I have to worry about this weekend.” He glanced around the yard. “Now there’s just the beds to turn over and weed and plants to buy and old stuff to cut back, and I want to divide the daylilies and take some of the shrubs out of the front. The school down the street is thinking of putting a few beds near the entrance and around the parking lot. I promised to help dig them and donate some easy perennials.” He sighed deeply. “I just don’t know when I’ll have the time.”

Malcolm rubbed his back. “Or the energy.”

“Yeah, that,” Charlie agreed. “I feel like a heel promising them I’d do it. Second year in a row I haven’t been able to find the time.”

“Okay.” I stood up and hauled Charlie after me. “Show me which beds to get ready, and what you want cut back or dug up and divided. Call the school and have whoever your contact is meet me at the nursery. I work Friday through Monday. That gives me two days to get your yard done, and you can enjoy your weekend planting, and I should be able to set something up with the school. Next week I’ll have three days free to divide your plants and get started building them some beds. If we do it during school hours, we might even be able to get some of the kids involved.”

Charlie stared at me.

“What?”

He bent his neck and kissed me, long and heartfelt. Not possessively like Malcolm had, but it left me dizzy just the same.

“Great. Another hard-on,” I muttered. Which of course made them laugh. “Funny for you, maybe.”

Malcolm grinned. “No maybe about it. Come on.” He took my hand and dragged me back inside. “It’s been a day. Finish the laundry and it’s time we all got to bed.”

I glanced up hopefully, but he shook his head. “I have a room for you.”

“Guest room,” I sighed.

He kissed my knuckles. “We don’t call it that. The guest room is where our guests sleep when they visit. Your room is… not.”

My room was small but nicely appointed. It had a soft bed on a sturdy metal frame, a dresser and bookshelf sagging with photo albums, and a locked cabinet. When I fiddled with the lock, Malcolm slapped my fingers away. “Not yet, boy.” But he was smiling that self-satisfied smile at me, and if that didn’t tip me off as to what was in that cabinet, being called “boy” in that tone did.

I pushed my glasses up my nose. “When?”

Malcolm cupped my face and turned it up so I had no choice but to look him in the eye. “If and when you realize it isn’t all about sex, maybe we’ll talk. If you ever understand it isn’t something you just throw yourself into because we offered, maybe.” He caressed his thumbs over my face and I sighed and closed my eyes. “When you figure out how precious you are and don’t go throwing yourself at strangers.”

“You won’t be strangers anymore by then,” I muttered, knowing the things he was requiring of me to get them into bed were things I might never accomplish.

“Charlie, our new boy might be a genius.”

I opened my eyes. There was something so soft and open about his expression. I couldn’t look away from him, but I didn’t understand him. Not at all.

“So which is it?” I asked, frustration leaking around the edges of the question. “Am I yours or am I not yours? Because you keep calling me your boy, but then when I offer, you turn me down. I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t.” Malcolm kissed my forehead and let me go. “Pick a few of Charlie’s photo albums and bring them out to the coffee table. You can look while you wait for the laundry to finish. We don’t leave wet clothes in the washer or anything in the dryer to wrinkle. Good night, Kerry.”

My gut clenched hard around disappointment that dragged it down like an anchor. “Night.”

I followed him out of “my” room like a puppy, though, and smiled at Charlie, who got up from the couch when we emerged, said goodnight to me, and preceded Malcolm down the hall to their room. I followed as far as the bathroom doorway but stopped as they continued. Malcolm looked back from the bedroom doorway, shook his head, and closed the door.

I listened for the snick of the lock, heard it, and fought the spiked lump that closed off my throat. Tricky bastard. He’d timed the whole thing so I couldn’t just leave. My clothes were in the middle of the wash cycle. I couldn’t go anywhere until the washer was done, at least. If I wanted to make a clean break, have no clothes to return or retrieve, I would have to wait until they dried too.

With a sigh, I wandered into the bathroom, found a new toothbrush still in its package sitting on the vanity next to my things, and used it. Back in the kitchen, a small gathering of coffee mugs and wine and water glasses had accumulated. I washed, dried, and put them away, and finally, the washer was finished, so I transferred the clothes.

The house was that same sort of listening quiet as it had been when I’d first walked in that afternoon, and I tiptoed down the hall to the door at the end.

Unsurprisingly, there were soft voices—I couldn’t hear what was being said—and then the unmistakable sound of something hard hitting flesh with a sharp smack. Charlie’s voice followed with a breathy moan.

“Shit.” I backed up a step, two, turned, and fled to the living room. What went on behind that locked door was none of my business. Sinking to the couch under the weight of confusion, I stared into space for a while, then mustered my wits enough to choose a few albums to thumb through. For the first few pages, I didn’t really look, didn’t see what it held.

After those first pages, I was enthralled. Charlie was wasted as a personal assistant of any kind, even if he was the best one on the planet. His photography was incredible.

I was still paging through stacks of albums when the bedroom door opened and Charlie wandered through to the kitchen. “You’re still here,” he said sleepily.

“Seems so.”

“Kind of thought the locked door would send you running.”

I glanced down to the laundry room then over at him. “Almost did. Why doesn’t Malcolm want me?”

Charlie brought his glass of water to the couch and sat beside me. “What makes you think that?”

I stared at him.

“Okay. From your perspective, I can see you might think that. From knowing Mal, I know if he didn’t want you around, he would have fucked you already. Probably this afternoon before I got home. He’d have had you tied, fucked, and lubed waiting for me.” He took a long drink from his glass. “It’s what he usually does with them.”

“Them?”

He smiled, but there was no warmth or humor. “The guys.” He clasped the glass between his knees and stared into the clear liquid. “It’s a very long story, Kerry, and lots of it is not mine to tell—”

“Didn’t stop him telling you my private business,” I interrupted.

“He’s responsible for me. He decided I needed to know everything he knows about you.”

“Fine, but it’s rude to talk about me like that when I’m not there.”

Charlie nodded. “I told him that. He forgets sometimes. I don’t question him much, Kerry. There’s no need. I’ve been with him a very long time, and he’s never given me reason to question him. So sometimes he forgets everyone doesn’t know him as well as I do. Everyone hasn’t given him the same….”

“Compliance?”

He studied me a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, okay. Sure. Compliance.”

“So. You guys do this a lot? There have been guys before me?”

He nodded.

“What makes me not fuckable?”

“You say that like you think it’s a defect.”

“Isn’t it?”

A crooked smile flitted across Charlie’s face and disappeared. “I’m tired of boys to play with, like disposable toys.”

“Boys.”

“Understand I mean that in the submissive, master-boy way, not boys, boys. In fact, your age might be part of his issue.”

“I’m twenty.”

“I know.”

“So I’m not a kid.”

“I know.”

“But you’re tired of all the younger ass.”

He shook his head. “They haven’t all been younger. Most aren’t, in fact. But they’ve all been temporary, and that gets old.”

I stared at him. “And you’re tired of it.”

His only response was a deep sigh before he drained the rest of his water and stared at the empty glass. “He’s afraid if he gets attached to one of the boys he brings home for me, things will change between us.”

“But you don’t think they will?”

“Of course things will change. He’ll be happier. He’ll have something I can’t give him.”

“What?”

He smirked at me. “A house boy.”

“Charlie.”

“I’m serious. He’ll have you here, all day long, doing his bidding, keeping his domain spotless”— he glanced to the cleaned kitchen—“and giving him—and don’t take this the wrong way—a pet.”

“I am not—”

“I knew you’d take it the wrong way.”

“A
pet
?”

“Someone to take care of. To pamper. The cat is cute and furry, but pretty useless and too independent for his tastes.”

“But he has you.”

Charlie lifted an eyebrow at me. “Do I seem like the type who wants to be pampered?”

He had a point.

“But I love him. And he loves me. We just know there are things we both need that the other doesn’t have. Sometimes, love isn’t about bending yourself into a pretzel to give your lover what they want or need, it’s about giving them the freedom to find it. And it isn’t about abdicating who you are to make the world approve of you.” He slung an arm over my shoulders and pulled me against him. “It’s about embracing who you are and accepting that there’s someone out there who can complement it and make it shine.” He got up. “Kind of like how my kitchen shines right now.”

“Your kitchen?” I looked over at the clean counters and tidy shelves. When I looked back to him, he was halfway down the hall again.

“Go to bed, Kerry. Lots to do tomorrow.”

Later, when I lay on my back in “my” bed and stared up at the ceiling, I saw the hook. It was a big hook, and, curious, I climbed up to balance on the footboard to tug on it. Very sturdy. I lay back down and contemplated it. Yes, I had another hard-on. No, I did not relieve it. Doing so seemed disrespectful somehow, but I was still imaging what that hook could be used for as I fell asleep. I cannot be held accountable for what happened in my dreams. For the soiled sheets, maybe, but not for the gyrations of my unconscious mind.

Both men gave me huge smiles watching me bundle them into the washer the next morning.

“Quick study,” Charlie observed before gulping a last sip of his coffee and placing the mug in the pile beside the sink. “Cleans up after himself nice.”

My cheeks burned and I pretended to ignore them.

“Mmmhmmm.” Malcolm glanced up from his paper long enough for a kiss from Charlie.

I got a peck on the cheek too, and Charlie scurried out the door. I beamed after him for a minute before sighing and turning to the stack of dirty dishes.