Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) (13 page)

“We’re not doing that anymore.”

“I bet Mama wouldn’t care,” Neeci said, mumbling around the thumb even as Ressa went to pull her hand down.

Finally succeeding, Ressa cocked a brow. “Maybe she wouldn’t, but she’s not here and she’s not in charge. I am. Besides,” she said, shifting into a no-nonsense tone. “Think about all the stuff you’ll be touching at school. Desks and doors and chairs . . . everything you touch, somebody else touched. So if you touch whatever
they
touched and then stick your thumb in your mouth like that, baby, you’ve got those nasty germs in your mouth.”

“What kinda germs?” Neeci wrinkled her nose.

“Gross kinds. What if somebody picked up used gum from the ground? Or went to the bathroom and didn’t wash their hands? That’s just nasty.”

Neeci’s eyes rounded and she looked down at her hands. As those hands crept back behind her back, Ressa bit back a smile. Neeci had never much liked germs.

With a sigh, Neeci leaned in and rested her head on Ressa’s shoulder. “What if nobody likes me? What if I don’t make friends? I had a couple of friends at preschool, but none of them go here. What if I never make another friend my whole life?”

“Oh, honey.” Now her heart was twisting and turning all over. Pulling her cousin into her lap, she hugged her. There was nothing the girl could have said that would have hit home harder. “Neeci, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t make friends. You’re funny and you’re nice and you like people. All you have to do is be nice and you’ll find people who like you.”

Neeci was quiet for a minute. “But you’re funny, and you’re nice. You like people. But you had all kinds of problems getting people to like you. I heard you talk about how you didn’t have many friends in college and you didn’t have a lot in school either, and the friends you did have was trouble. What if I’m like that?”

“
Were
trouble,” she corrected automatically, even as she thought about little ears. Just what had she been talking about and what had Neeci overheard?

There wasn’t an easy answer to this, was there?

“I didn’t make friends all that well, you’re right,” she said slowly. “We’ve talked about this, Neeci, you and making friends. We’ve talked about it a lot. Yeah, I did some bad things growing up and I hung out with bad kids. I did stupid things that could have gotten me in trouble.”

“And your daddy was an asshole.”

“Neeci!” Ressa glared at her in the mirror.

“I heard Granny Ang say it,” Neeci said defensively.

“What Granny Ang says and what you can say are two different things.” Ressa blew out a breath and shrugged aside the knee-jerk instinct to defend her father. Not only was he past the point of needing defending, he also
had
been an asshole. A terrible father, even if he had loved her in his own twisted way. Bad people can still love. That doesn’t make it healthy—for anybody. “My father wasn’t a good man, no. He did stupid things and made bad choices, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m telling you. I made my own choices, too. And once I started making better choices, sweetie, I made better friends. I found people who liked me.”

“Did they like you even though you did stupid stuff?”

Snapping a band around the last plait, she turned Neeci around and bent over so they could see eye to eye. “When it comes to stupid stuff and your friends, that’s how you know who your real friends are, baby. Your real friends are the ones who are going to love you . . . even after they know all about the stupid stuff and the bad mistakes. They know . . . and they love you anyway.”

Neeci scuffed the toe of her new pink sneaker on the floor. Not looking at Ressa, she said softly, “I was talking to Mama about school and she said since I was so pretty, people were gonna like me. But what if people don’t think I’m pretty? What if other girls are prettier?”

Typical
. Ressa didn’t even bother giving in to the urge to be frustrated. “There’s a lot more to being a friend than being pretty.” She rubbed her hand over Neeci’s neck, turning it over in her head. Then, easing back, she waited until Neeci looked
up. “Hey, you know old Tom? He lives in the place across from Granny?”

“Yeah!” Neeci’s face lit up. “He gives me suckers when Granny isn’t looking and he tells cool stories and he lets me read his comics.”

“I know, right?” Ressa grinned at her. “He’s got a classic set of Marvel Comics that he let me read . . .
if
I didn’t take them out of his sight. Anyway, so he’s nice. Fun to be around, yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s really nice.”

Twining one of Neeci’s plaits around her finger, Ressa lifted a brow. “But what about those burns on him? They twist his face all up, and when he smiles or talks . . . Doesn’t that make him scary?”

“No!” Neeci looked outraged, her eyes flashing and her small face folding into mutinous lines. “How can you . . . Oh.”

She pulled away and wagged a finger at her cousin. “Ress, that wasn’t nice. Mr. Tom is awesome.”

Ressa rolled her eyes. “Mr. Tom is
beyond
awesome. But those burns did mess up his face—and he’ll be the first to tell you he’ll never win any beauty pageants. Not having a pretty face doesn’t make him less of a friend, does it?”

“No.” Moving back to the sink, Neeci stood there and waited. “I’ll make friends . . . right?” Her face was hopeful, her eyes so sad.

Moving back up behind her, Ressa took the brush. “I think you will. And don’t go telling me that you don’t have any friends around here. You’ve got a bunch of friends. The Logston girls love playing with you and so does Jacob down the street. Should be a piece of cake to make more.”

Neeci smiled, but with her solemn eyes, that smile did more to tug at Ressa’s heart than anything else.

Sometimes, she thought, she could just shake Kiara.

Ressa had been Neeci’s guardian for years and
still
Kiara managed to sink all these hooks of doubt into her daughter.

*   *   *

Ardmore Elementary was in a pretty, borderline exclusive neighborhood. At times, she felt as out of place there as she had when Mama Ang had practically dragged her,
kicking and screaming, into the household she shared with Bruce MacAllister.

She’d been fifteen and had lived on her own for nearly four months, using up her precious cash and paying the bills, working under the table for more cash and doing just fine.

But then Mama Ang tracked her down.

Mama Ang had been doing a search for her brother, Darnell—she did them once a month, and this time, she’d found his obituary. She’d spent weeks trying to track Ressa down, first in the foster care system—where Ressa
should
have been, and then she’d just started checking out all the places her brother would have lived.

Sometimes Ressa wondered, if they’d left her alone, maybe Kiara would have turned out okay. Who knows what Ressa would have been doing, but maybe . . .

Maybe . . .

Maybe
 . . . maybe if she’d talked to a certain someone a few weeks back, she could—

Maybe. The most useless word in the English language.

Stop. I’m done with this. There was never any maybe there. It was just a fantasy. A fling. Nothing would ever happen—
could
ever happen there.

You know how he’d react if he knew the truth about you
?

She squared her shoulders. Yeah, he’d react pretty much the same way just about every other guy in her life had. Screw the maybes.

“Ressa, you’re squeezing my hand really hard.”

Grimacing, Ressa let go and looked down to see Neeci wiggling her fingers. They’d parked in the lot the e-mail had directed them to—most days, parents weren’t allowed in, but they made a few allowances for the first day of school and kindergarteners. Which was good, because Ressa had two heavy totes loaded down with supplies—crayons, folders, tissues, wet wipes, paper towels.

She sure as hell didn’t remember having to lug all this stuff to school when
she
had been Neeci’s age. Nodding to the doors she’d been looking for, she said, “That’s where we go in.”

Neeci shoved her hand back into Ressa’s. “I’m scared.”

“Aw, now. Don’t be scared. It’s going to be fun. Just give it a chance.” Ressa hoped she wasn’t lying.

The scents of crayons and books and children hit her as she walked in. It was something unique to a school, Ressa decided, and it tugged on memories long forgotten—a few of them were even pleasant. When she
had
gone to school, she’d enjoyed it, and for the most, she’d attended fairly regularly. She’d only graduated a year behind, thanks to the determination of Mama Ang.

Well, that, and the love for books Ressa had discovered.

Hopefully Neeci would find herself as addicted to learning as Ressa had been, even if Ressa had discovered her love for it a little later in the game.

Moving with the flow, she pointed toward some of the signs on the walls, watching as Neeci giggled at a handmade shark that towered over one door—
Fourth graders are friends—not food
.

“That’s silly,” Neeci said, a smile slowly replacing the nerves.

“Yeah. But funny. I hope sharks can read.”

Neeci rolled her eyes, an expression that was so patently like her mother that Ressa could only shake her head.

“Here we go— Oof!”

She almost toppled as a boy-shaped tornado tried to run her down. His face was pale, his eyes huge . . . and filled with tears. Instinctively, she went down to one knee.

“Oh, hey now . . .” She reached up and brushed a hand across his hair. Golden blond curls tumbled right back into his face and brilliant, blue green eyes stared up at hers.

Her heart wrenched.

“Clayton?”

Half-wild, he shook his head, his eyes wheeling all around.

“Clayton!”

A shiver raced down her spine.

She squeezed her eyes closed.

Oh, no
 . . .

“Ressa, what’s wrong?” Neeci asked in a tiny whisper.

Oh, just about everything . . .

The rush of emotion that slammed into him was too intense to define.

Especially in that moment.

Ressa Bliss was kneeling in the doorway, one arm draped around his son, and the sight of the two of them was like a punch straight to the solar plexus.

As he stood there, Clayton blinked and seemed to focus on Ressa. “Miss Ressa?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong, sugar?” she asked.

He just shook his head, and threw his arms around her neck, clinging to her.

“Clayton.”

Clayton wordlessly shook his head.

The image of his son, clinging to Ressa, imprinted itself on his memory, an afterimage that lingered even when he paused and closed his eyes for a span of a few seconds to make sure he was actually
seeing
what he thought he was seeing.

When he opened his eyes, she was still there and she’d shifted her attention from Clayton to him. She lowered her lashes and then looked back at him, and when she did, the
surprise was replaced by the sort of pleasant blankness he’d expect from a stranger.

Okay, not liking that
, he decided.

But he’d deal with it later.

People were trying to squeeze in around them as they huddled in the doorway.

Ressa noticed as well, and she stood, boosting Clayton up. Then she held out a hand to the child with her and eased back out into the hall.

The little girl watched it all with wide, pale gold eyes that took in everything around her.

He tried to puzzle that one out—was the girl her daughter? Some vague memory of Ressa mentioning a little girl worked free and the puzzle was solved a minute later as the girl leaned her head against Ressa’s hip—he envied her for a minute there. She asked, “Ress, what’s wrong with him?” She went to poke her thumb in her mouth.

Deftly, Ressa caught her wrist. “Remember that talk about germs, Neeci,” she said, her voice absent.

She met Trey’s gaze steadily, but she wasn’t as steady as she pretended to be.

“Here,” he said, his voice gruff.

She passed Clayton over, although the boy clung tight to her neck. Once he had Clayton in his arms, the boy did the same thing to Trey that he’d been doing to Ressa, clutching tight in a child’s version of a stranglehold, his face in Trey’s neck.

Trey blew out a sigh, bringing his hand up to cup the back of the boy’s head. Turning away, he asked quietly, “What’s up there, man?”

Off to the side, he could hear Ressa talking in a low voice, while the girl started on an endless tirade of questions.

Tuning them out, he rubbed his cheek against Clayton’s head, still waiting. “Come on, Clay. Talk to me.”

“They have their moms. Everybody.” His voice was watery now and when he spoke again, he was louder, his response perilously close to a sob. “They all have their mommy with them, but I don’t!”

Trey felt his heart crack, right down the middle.

But before he could find any way to answer, a soft voice said, “I don’t.”

Clayton stopped in mid-sniff. Head now tucked against Trey’s chest, he shifted around until he could see the girl. From the corner of his eye, he watched Ressa rise, resting a protective hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“You don’t have your mommy here?” Clayton asked, his voice just above a whisper.

The girl had old eyes, Trey thought. And when she spoke, her voice held the edge of an anger that didn’t suit that delicate face or her youth. The girl slid Ressa a look, caught between defiance and a child’s hurt. He found himself wanting to hug her close, stroke away some of the hurt he sensed behind the anger.

“No. She’s . . .” She stopped, her words trailing off.

“Gone.” The hand Ressa had placed on the girl’s shoulder tightened gently. Ressa looked at Trey for a quiet moment before shifting her attention to the boy. “Neeci doesn’t have her mama here either, sweetheart. She knows how hard it can be. Maybe the two of you can hang out. It’s easier, I bet, with a friend.”

Clayton eased back from Trey’s chest, stared at the girl curiously. “You’re a girl.”

Neeci blinked. “And
you
are a boy.” Then she folded her arms over her chest. “I run fast.”

“I bet I run faster.” Tears momentarily forgotten, Clayton wiggled until Trey put him down. Standing in front of Neeci, he rocked back and forth on his heels. “I don’t like dolls and stuff.”

“Neither do I.” Neeci rolled her eyes, a look that was far too grown up considering how young she had to be. Then she smiled. “I’m Neeci.”

A few moments later, the two of them were inside the classroom and Trey breathed out a sigh of relief as the band around his chest loosened. None of the kids had seemed to notice.

Painfully aware of the woman who was taking great pains to avoid him, he spoke with Clayton’s kindergarten teacher—Mr. Boyd Franklin. Round cheeked and a little thick around the middle, he looked to be in his late twenties, and he’d
already introduced himself to most of the parents and most of the kids, taking care to chat, even if it was only for a moment.

He noticed things, something Trey could appreciate.

He’d definitely noticed Clayton’s momentary panic.

“How long ago did his mother die?”

Trey folded his arms over his chest, watching as Clayton and Neeci giggled over one of the books he’d found on a bookshelf. “It’s . . . complicated,” he finally said. “But Clayton never had the chance to know her. Being around the other kids, their moms . . . it’s going to be hard for him, I think.”

“That’s rough.” Boyd didn’t offer any empty sympathy, just stood there in silence and then, after a moment, he smiled. “It looks like he’s made a friend already.”

It did, indeed.

Trey gave it a few more moments and then broke away, cutting through the sea of backpacks, desks and small bodies to crouch by his son. Better to leave now while there was still chaos, he figured. Clayton would be so busy he would barely notice anything else.

“I’m going to head on home, big guy,” he murmured when there was a break in the conversation. One that involved bugs . . . and bug guts, he noted with some revolted amusement.

Clayton whirled around. “But . . .” His mouth opened, closed. Then, small shoulders drooping, he reached out and touched his father’s cheek. “What are you going to do all day? Aren’t you going to be lonely without me?”

“Very.” He caught Clayton’s nose and pinched it lightly. “But I’ll be okay. You have to do this kindergarten thing so you can go to college next week and be an astronaut by Christmas.”

Clayton grinned. “It takes longer than that, Dad.”

“Oh. Well, you still have to get started.” Leaning in, he pressed a quick kiss to Clayton’s brow. His heart squeezed and memories from six years raced through his mind.

Slowly, he pushed to his feet and forced himself to smile. “Do me a favor,” he said. He sounded steady—how about that? As Clayton flashed him a curious smile, he ruffled the boy’s hair. “Now I know you want to know everything under the sun, but don’t come home and be smarter than me already. Wait until tomorrow before you do that.”

Clayton laughed and turned back to Neeci. “It will take a lot longer than that, Dad. I don’t know if I’ll ever be
that
smart.”

He managed to make it out the door.

And that was when he saw that Ressa was loitering there . . . as if she’d been waiting for him.

Half-blind, he kept on walking. He needed to breathe. For just a minute.

*   *   *

Trey left the school like a man possessed and he didn’t even seem aware that she’d followed him, not until he heard the sound of her heels clicking on the pavement.

Slowly, he turned and looked at her.

“Rough day?” she asked softly.

He jerked his head away, one shoulder rising and falling in a shrug. “Always heard the first day is harder on the parent than the kid.”

“If that’s the truth, I kinda feel like giving both of you a cookie and a teddy bear.”

Frowning, he swung his gaze back to her.

Because he seemed to need the company, she moved in closer and leaned against the truck next to him. Not close enough to feel his heat, but close enough to wish she could.

“You know, you are the last person I thought I’d see here,” she said quietly.

He slid her a look from the corner of his eye, and she didn’t think it was her imagination that the shadows seemed to lessen from his gaze. A faint smile kicked up the corner of his mouth and then he tipped his head back to the sky. “I have to say the same.”

Common sense told Trey to get his ass in the truck and leave.

She didn’t want anything from him. That had been made almost painfully clear.

We had a nice night, but that’s probably all it’s ever going to be.

A nice night? Yeah. He equated a
nice
night to one that didn’t involve a temper tantrum or him forgetting that he had something in the oven or that he’d left a load of clothes in the
washer for two days. If he got through a day without some sort of minor disaster and could relax at the end and maybe not have a headache?
That
was a nice night.

What they’d had, for him at least, had shot up past
nice
into the realm of
blow the top of my head off
. Or maybe his cock. He couldn’t go more than a few nights without dreaming about her, although after years of what had felt like an almost sexless existence, he wasn’t entirely bothered by the dreams.

He was just bothered by the fact that a night that had all but shaken his world had just been . . .
nice
.

He was still craving a whole lot of everything from her and she wanted nothing from him.

Just his luck.

*   *   *

Ressa bit her lip as she pushed off the truck, moving to stand in front of him. She had to fight the urge to smooth that misery from his brow, hold him until it all eased away.

“So why do you want to give me a cookie and a teddy bear?” he asked, his gruff voice cutting through the fog of thoughts tangling in her head.

“Hmm.” Unable to keep her hands to herself, she let herself lift one up, intending to brush his hair back. But he caught her wrist, held her hand there, trapped in mid-air.

Their gazes locked.

She forced a smile.

“I’m past the age where a teddy bear will help, Ressa.” His thumb stroked over her wrist and then slowly, he let go of her hand.

She let it fall to her side, stung by that blunt rejection, although she supposed she shouldn’t be. She was the one who’d pushed him away. “I can’t help it. You look like you need it,” she said, smiling to cover the emptiness she felt.

“We’ll save it for Clayton.” He glanced toward the school. “He needs it more than I do.”

“Yeah. I guess he does.” Sighing, she followed his gaze, her heart aching for the boy they’d left inside. “Guess maybe the teddy bear idea is a little much for you.”

She looked back at him, watched as a faint smile crooked his lips. “Yeah. Well, I never say no to cookies. But I don’t need
somebody to hold my hand over the fact that my son is starting school. I just need to . . . deal.”

Starting school?
“This isn’t just about him starting school, is it?”

Through his lashes, he studied her. “Why are you asking?”

“I . . .” Frowning, she looked away.

“That weekend we had is over, Ressa. You made it clear that was all you wanted, so what does it matter if I need a cookie or whatever?”

It stung. And if she wouldn’t have hated herself for taking the easy way out, she would have just told him to forget it.

But as she stood there struggling for some sort of answer, he took a step toward her. His mouth grazed her ear, sending a shiver through her. “I still wake up smelling you on my skin. A cookie, a teddy bear, a friendly chat isn’t what I want from you. Since you already decided you didn’t want anything more than beyond what we had in that hotel room, I’d just as soon not try to do . . . whatever it is you’re doing.”

He went to cut around her.

Insanity struck.

There was no other explanation, but
logic
had nothing to do with what she did next. She caught his arm in her hand. “Almost every night, I find myself dreaming about you. It’s not a matter of not
wanting
more.”

Under her hand, the muscles in his arm went tense.

He was watching her. She didn’t want to meet his eyes, but she couldn’t avoid it forever. Mouth dry, she slowly lifted her gaze to his and found that blue green gaze cutting into her, stripping her bare, and all she wanted to do was erase the past five weeks. No. Not the past five weeks—there was another period of her life she’d love to undo, but that just wasn’t possible.

“It’s just that this is too complicated,” she said.

“Complicated.” He shifted around.

Ressa found herself caged between him and the truck. His arms bracketed her shoulders and his mouth was only a whisper away now.

“Sometimes we make things out to be more complicated than they really are,” Trey said, and his voice was imminently reasonable. So reasonable and logical, it caught her off guard
when he slid his knee between her thighs. She wore a full-cut skirt, but the material was thin, very little barrier, and she gasped at the feel of him rubbing against her inner thighs. “Let’s simplify. I want you. I want to know more about you and I want to spend time with you. Either you want the same or you don’t.”