Нора Робертс - The Last Boyfriend

“Don’t you even think about—”

The rest of the words came out in a whooshing grunt as he dumped her on the bed, laid on top of her, and clamped her arms down.

“Just calm down,” he suggested.

“My ass!”

She could be quick as a snake and sneaky as a shark, so he kept all his body parts out of range of her teeth. “Calm the hell down and we’ll talk. I’m not letting you up until you promise not to hit or bite or kick—or throw anything.”

The light of battle escalated to an explosion of full-out war. “What gives you the right? Do you think you can come into my place, give orders, tell me what to do and how to do it? In front of my crew?”

“No, I don’t, and I’m sorry. But you didn’t give me much choice.”

“I’ll give you a choice. Get the hell out, now.”

“Do you think you’re the only one who’s pissed? I can stay like this all night, or you can pull yourself together and we’ll straighten this out like normal people.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“No, I’m not.”

Her chin wobbled. “My burn . . .”

“Shit.” Instinctively he loosened his hold.

It was all she needed.

Quick as a snake, sneaky as a shark. She sank teeth in the back of his hand.

He cursed, hissed in air as he wrestled her down again. “Jesus, you drew blood.”

“I’ll draw more in a minute.”

“Fine.” His hand ached like a bad tooth, infuriating him. “This is the way you want it. I’ll just hold you down while I do the talking. I want to know what’s wrong with you.”

“What’s wrong with me ? You drag me out of my place of business, you manhandle me, shove me around—”

“I didn’t shove you. Yet. And I mean what’s been wrong with you, before this?”

Turning her head away, she stared daggers at the wall. “I’m not talking to you.”

“Exactly, and you haven’t been, essentially, for the better part of a week. If I screwed up I need to know it. If you don’t want to be with me the way we’ve been, or move forward on it, I deserve to know that, too. I deserve a goddamn conversation with you, Avery, one way or the other.”

“It’s not about you, or us, or that.”

But wasn’t it? she realized. On some level, wasn’t it—because she’d let it be.

She closed her eyes. She was sick of it. Sick of herself.

She’d hurt him. She could see that clearly enough now that she looked beyond her own bruises. And he’d done nothing to earn it.

“Something’s wrong. You have to tell me.”

“Let me up, Owen. I can’t talk like this.”

He eased back, cautious, but she only shifted, sat up. Then dropped her head in her hands.

“Is it the pizza shop?” He couldn’t think of anything else. “If you’ve got some cash flow problems, or—”

“No. No. I’m doing all right.” She rose to pull off her coat and the rest of her outdoor gear. “You know my grandmother set up that trust for me after my mother left. I guess part of it was guilt, though she didn’t have anything to be guilty about. Still, I’m next in line, so . . .” She shrugged. “It meant I could open Vesta, and it means I can have the new place. I just have to make them work.”

“Is your grandmother sick?”

“No. Why . . .” He asked, she realized, because she stalled telling him the reasons. “No one’s sick. You didn’t screw up.”

“Then what?”

“My mother came to see me.”

“Your mother? When?”

“She was waiting for me, on the stairs, the night I got home from shopping with Clare and Hope. It really didn’t go well.”

She came back, sat on the bed beside him, linked her fingers in her lap to keep them steady. “I didn’t even recognize her. I didn’t know who she was until she told me.”

“It’s been a long time.”

“I don’t know, maybe I’d blocked her face out of my head. Once I really looked, she hadn’t changed that much. She said she wanted to see me, she was sorry. I wasn’t having it. She cried a lot. It didn’t touch me.”

“Why should it?”

“She was pregnant when they got married. I knew that—I’d done the math. And I talked to my father about it a long time ago. They loved each other, he said, and from his side it must’ve been true. Maybe she thought she loved him. She pushed how young she was, just nineteen, but Dad was barely twenty-one. He was young, but he handled it.”

In comfort, Owen rubbed a hand on her thigh. “Willy B’s a hell of a guy.”

“Yeah, okay, yeah.” She swiped at a tear, hating it. “I was a fussy baby, she had too much to do, she wasn’t happy. Blah, blah, fucking blah. Then she drops the bombshell of how she’d had an abortion when I was around three.”

Now Owen laid a hand over hers. “That’s a hard thing to hear.”

“Yeah, I bet it was a lot harder for my father to hear—after the fact. She went, had an abortion, had her tubes tied, and never discussed those decisions with him. Never told him she was pregnant. Who does that?” she demanded, turning drenched eyes to him. “Who treats someone that way? She knew he wanted more kids, but she ended that possibility without telling him. It’s another, horrible kind of cheating.”

He said nothing, but got up, found a box of tissues in the bathroom and brought them to her.

“Thanks. Crying about it doesn’t help, but I can’t get a handle on it yet.”

“Then maybe crying about it does help.”

“According to her, what she’d done came out when they were fighting, and gee, he was upset and mad. What are the odds? She agreed to marriage counseling, but hey, she felt trapped and unhappy. So she had an affair. And another. She admitted to two, but there were more than two, Owen, before she left. Even I figured that out.”

She looked at him now. “You knew. Pretty much everyone knew she was fooling around.”

He considered a moment, looking into those devastated eyes. She didn’t want soothing evasions. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“My mother, the town slut. It was easier, really, when she left.”

This time he took her hand, brought it to his lips. “It’s never easy.”

“Maybe not, but at least it wasn’t in my father’s face, in mine, anymore. She stayed with the guy she left us for. That’s what she said, and it felt true. Steve. That was his name. I got all the how unhappy she’d been, how she’d needed more. How she loved this Steve guy.”

“She can justify what she did with that, to herself. You don’t have to accept it. You feel what you feel.”

“I felt hard. I didn’t like feeling it, but I did. I got lots of sorrys, lots of how pretty I am, how proud she is of what I’ve done with my life. Like she had something to do with it. Then it came out this Steve died, a few months ago.”

“So she’s alone,” Owen murmured.

“Yeah, and broke. That came out, too, when she asked if she could borrow a few thousand.”

He pushed up, walked to her window, stared out at the thickening snow. He couldn’t imagine, just couldn’t imagine a parent using a child for gain.

But he could imagine just how deep a wound it would score, especially in someone like Avery. “What did you do?”

“I said a lot of pretty harsh things. She cried more, Jesus, and begged. She wanted to stay here, with me. A couple weeks, she said, then just for the night. It made me sick, all of it, just sick. I gave her what I had in my wallet and kicked her out.”

“You did what you had to do, and that’s more than a lot of people would have.” He turned back. “Why didn’t you tell me, Avery? Why did you push me away instead of letting me help?”

“I didn’t tell anyone at first. I just couldn’t.”

He walked back, stood in front of her. “I’m not anyone.”