Covered In Paint: Book Five of the Art Of Love Series (12 page)

“Stop being a smart-ass about this before I try to kill you for giving me shit this morning. Brooke might have slept with me last night, but I was passed out cold and didn’t know she was there. I don’t even remember what we talked about really…it was something about poetry…no wait, I think I remember asking her questions. Now I don’t even remember what they were. God…what she must think of me today. I can’t believe I did that to her.”

Brandon chuckled at his father’s true remorse. “Well, Brooke definitely knows you’re a liquor lightweight now…and that you snore.”

Drake removed his fingers and pried his eyes open so he could glare at his tormentor. “I do not snore.”

“Dad, I love you…but dude, you snore…
loudly
,” Brandon declared. “She was very cool about it.”

“Damn it. Now I’ll never be able to look at her again,” Drake grumbled, picking up his coffee.

“This regretful morning-after crap is the reason I restrict myself to one beer when I party.”

“What do you mean one beer? You’re nineteen, Brandon. You’re not supposed to be drinking at all.”

Brandon grinned. “I always heard parents taught by example. I guess that even works with bad ones. Hope the next kid you have is as smart as I am. I won’t be around much to give him or her any pointers about you.”

Drake lifted his head and stared. “What in hell are you talking about? What next kid?”

“Dad…Brooke is a lot younger than you. She’s going to want babies. I can’t believe you’re not obsessively thinking about it already. I’m being more grown-up than the grown-ups in my life.”

“Brandon…I’ll be lucky if Brooke ever speaks to me after last night. I doubt she’ll grace my mattress again after listening to me snore. Besides, the woman makes me insane with her prudishness. We are obviously not well suited. I’m sure all future dates are out of the question.”

Brandon sighed and walked the freshly filled coffee pot to his father’s cup. “Dad, she makes you alive. You’re just having trouble adjusting. Anxiety is normal when you’re dating. You’ve seen how stupid Sedrick is with girls.”

“I don’t believe I had any anxiety dating your mother.”

Brandon frowned as he walked the coffee pot back to the maker stand. He slowly turned back to face his father. He let the twinge of sadness he felt fade away before he spoke.

“I know we don’t talk about Mom as much as we used to, but maybe we should talk about her more. You seem to remember nothing of the bad and only the good about her. I can understand that because I did that too…for a while. But eventually I realized Mom was just a normal person like the rest of us, Dad. I’ve let her go…and you should too. You don’t want to blow this chance. Brooke is already worried enough about your booty-call woman.”

“Lacy? Why would Brooke be jealous of Lacy? Who told her about her anyway?”

“Hey, don’t yell at me. I’m just repeating what Brooke called her. I liked Lacy. I don’t know why you never married her. You guys saw each other for years.”

“Marriage was never on the table. I liked her, but I didn’t love her. And she didn’t love me. We were just friends.”

“
With benefits
…I’m not a kid anymore,” Brandon inserted sternly, liking how grown-up he felt around all the adults in his life today.

“Our relationship suited us both…that’s what’s important. Now she’s happily married to Jason. Did Brooke actually bring Lacy up to you?”

Drake shook his head wondering how a woman who wouldn’t admit to wanting sex with him could care about the other women in his life.

“Some of your students told her about Lacy. Don’t worry…I kept to the code.”

“What code? The Pirates’ Code?”

Brandon bent over laughing. “Pirates, Dad? Where did that come from? I’m talking about the
man code
. I didn’t tell her about Lacy because of the man code. She totally understood my vow of silence. Brooke is cool that way. I can see why you like her.”

Drake snorted, rubbed his face, and lifted his coffee. “You took a vow of silence? Since when?”

Brandon grinned. “Since my dad started sleeping with the sexiest teacher at UK. Now I won’t be able to take her class next semester. I can only brag about the fact she’s sleeping with my father. You better make an honest woman of her before somebody like me ruins her reputation.”

Even though it physically hurt, Drake shook his head at his son’s teasing. “When I feel better, we are going to discuss this again. If I hear any rumors about the two of us, you’ll be the first person who suffers my wrath.”

“You’re going to need a couple pots of coffee before you take me on, old man. Face it. You can’t handle your cognac anymore.”

Having had enough of his son’s smart-mouthed scolding, Drake raised his middle finger before sliding off the stool to take his sulking elsewhere.

Chapter 10

“You can sit up now, Brooke.”

Brooke rose to a seated position, refastened her bra, and pulled her shirt back down. The doctor waited patiently and then smiled kindly before launching into the explanation she had come to get.

“After palpitating the area, I don’t think the lump has grown much in two weeks, but the results of the mammogram were inconclusive. I’m seeing some things that still concern me, so I’d like to do a biopsy of the lump. As small as it is, let’s remove it altogether so we can exam the whole thing. At the very least, this might tell us what is contained in these lumps you keep getting.”

Brooke nodded numbly. Surgery. It was a scary word. Someone cutting open her body was a scary concept…and one that had never been applied to her until today.

“Will I have to be put under for the surgery?”

Brooke frowned as she watched the doctor nod and look even more solemn.

“Yes, but the lumpectomy is outpatient and done completely in one day. You’ll come in early in the morning and be sent home that evening. We’ll have a local lab take a look at part of the lump, but we’ll also send it off to be examined as well. That way we have two results to compare. It will help us make the best decision. We’ll have the findings about two weeks afterward.”

Brooke nodded again. “How soon do you want to do the surgery?”

“Since the lump doesn’t appear to be growing rapidly, it can probably be delayed a short while, but I wouldn’t put it off too long. If it isn’t benign, it could suddenly take off growing. We don’t want to let that happen since you’ve caught it so early.”

Brooke nodded yet again. It seemed like all she could do was move her head. “My classes end in two weeks. Can we wait that long?”

“We can schedule it after that time. Keep checking the lump each day to be sure it’s not changing. Choose a tentative date before you leave. That way you’ll be on my list and the staff can start working you into my surgery schedule. We’ll confirm the exact date with you a week before it’s due to happen.”

“Is there anything I need to do…or not do…in the meantime?”

“Just live your life and enjoy it. There’s no need to worry until I say so. The lack of growth is a positive you can focus on for now. Removing the lump is the next best step for us to take to obtain the information we need.”

Brooke nodded one final time, and then the doctor left her alone with her thoughts.

Once she let out what was going on, her mother would start to worry along with her. God only knew what the rest of the Larson clan would do or say. She wasn’t quite ready for that much attention to be put on her problem yet, but like the surgery, she knew it was something she couldn’t put off much longer.

***

Brooke sighed when the doorbell rang and set down her pen. After the bad news from her doctor earlier that day, she couldn’t handle much more drama. If the interruption was someone selling something, she might be tempted to kick their ass out of the building. If she didn’t get more focused on her work and soon, her grades were going to be late, and her chair was going to give her bloody hell about it. He was not the most understanding of males and likely wouldn’t care how hard it was to think about students and papers when her mind had bigger things to worry over. Finding out she needed surgery made her recent self-discovery about having poor taste in men seem petty.

Brooke looked through the door’s view portal and saw a huge bouquet of flowers. Looked like the guy behind her epiphanies about men had sent a peace offering after forgetting about her—again—for yet another two weeks.

“Who is it?” she yelled.

“I have a delivery for Brooke Daniels.”

Sighing and rolling her eyes about being right, she reluctantly opened the door. Behind the massive bouquet was a man she didn’t have the time or energy to deal with today.

Brooke fisted a hand on her hip and glared. “Well, look who’s here. The grumpy bear has finally exited his man cave again. It’s been two weeks, Drake.”

Drake sighed, nodded, and held out the flowers in his hand. “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t come see you sooner. Here—these are will last longer than the roses did. They’re an apology for the way I acted last time I saw you.”

Brooke looked away and back before dropping her hand and reaching out to take the flowers from him. She could smell his cologne. It reminded her of the last time he’d shown up at her door. It reminded her of sleeping curled against his back. She sighed at the memories and her weakness for the man staring at her.

“Fine. I’ll accept the flowers…and hell, I guess the apology too. Now I guess we’re even. I’ve apologized. You’ve apologized. You can go home now and stop feeling guilty.”

Drake put his hands into his pockets. “I don’t want to go home. Can I come in…so we can talk?”

“I really don’t have the time. I’m grading final papers,” Brooke said, not really wanting to go back to them. She’d been at it for hours with few results.

“What if I promise not to stay long?”

Brooke sighed heavily and stepped to the side. “Fine. But I have to get back to work soon. I don’t want to be late turning in grades for my first semester of teaching.”

Drake nodded as he walked past her. His gaze instantly landed all the final portfolio folders strewn across a tiny dining table. “My timing is as poor as ever, I see.”

Brooke shrugged as she headed to the kitchen area. She filled the giant vase she’d begged from her mother and opened the flowers. After making sure they would live, she turned back and saw Drake seated in the single chair across from the worn-out sofa Shane had left behind for her to use. Soon she was hoping to inherit the red leather one her mother and Will had deemed too much color for their cool palette living room, whatever that meant. She just figured the red couch would be way more comfortable.

She walked slowly to the sofa and took a seat. “We really don’t have to have this postmortem. I’m not angry with you.”

Drake snorted. “This is not a postmortem. This is an apology. I’m sorry I was drunk when you came to see me. I wish I hadn’t drank that third glass of cognac because I don’t remember anything we talked about and I really want to. And God, I hope my snoring didn’t put you off me completely. It was partly embarrassment that kept me away so long.”

Brooke laughed at his self-effacing explanation, even though it wasn’t really funny. “You snore? I didn’t notice. I thought that was a bear lying next to me.”

“It was the alcohol. However, you’ll be happy to hear my son has talked about nothing else but my snoring since you were there.”

Despite her decision to boot him out, Brooke laughed at the idea of Brandon torturing Drake about snoring. “I really like your son. He makes a mean chocolate chip pancake.”

“Yes. He says he puts love in them,” Drake recited. “A Larson secret ingredient, I hear.”

Charmed by the father’s recitation as much as she had been by the son’s, Brooke lowered her head and giggled.

“God, I love when you do that. I wish I could figure out what triggers it more often.”

Her chin came up to find blazing eyes on her face. “Drake…what are really doing here with me?”

“The obvious. I still want you…but I also want to get to know you. I just suck at showing it. I haven’t had any game with women since I was in my thirties, and it wasn’t all that much even back then. When I met my wife, she asked me out, not the other way around. I just don’t connect easily to women I genuinely like.”

Brooke snorted over this statement and shook her head as her gaze sought the ceiling. “What a story from a man who paints nudes. You have students panting after you...not to mention me. You have a booty call in Louisville.”

“
Had
…and Lacy was not a booty call. She was a friend.”

“
With benefits
…don’t lie to me, Barrymore. I’m not that young…nor am I stupid about men. I’ve already been with you—remember?”

Drake snorted. “Well, I’ve only been a monk for brief periods of my life, if that’s the truth you want to hear. But then I’m not the one juggling possible bed partners among all the men showing up at the door either. There’s been no one for me for a long time. How about you?”

Brooke crossed her arms. “Look, I said I was sorry for those comments I made after we were together. I didn’t mean the statements the way you took them, and I never once implied that just any man would do. I simply explained why I was angry with myself for letting it happen so easily, which I believe was logical under the circumstances. I gave in to you without first settling things between us like two grown adults. Your ego inferred something negative from what I said during my emotional turmoil. I’m more conservative…and picky…than you seem to want to think I am. Not that I give a rat’s ass anymore about your opinion. I stopped caring over the last two weeks when you didn’t bother to call me after I came to apologize.”

Drake had suspected he’d screwed up leaving anger between them so long. His lack of courage was not going to help fix their misunderstandings, but he’d just not known what to say. In fact, he still didn’t.

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, snagging his fingers on the band restraining it. He pulled the band free and raked the strands down, pulling out tangles as he did. When he went to pull it back again, Brooke’s snapped out order of “don’t” stopped him.