COWBOY ROMANCE: Justin (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 1) (72 page)

Chapter One

Anita cruised through the streets as soon as dawn broke. The protests seemed to have travelled over the course of the night. The asphalt was a carpet of broken glass. Only walls stood where the shops had been, reduced to tombs of the ash and ruin. Her heart dropped, like a useless dead thing, right into the pit of her stomach, her gut churning at the sight of it all.

The crimson sunrise bathed everything in red as the odd cop or two patrolled the streets. As she drove at a crawling speed, she caught sight of paramedic vans and protesters and rioters all mixed in together, trying to catch their bearings and attend to their wounds.

Even through the vent of her car, she could smell the funk of smoke and blood. The thick, rancid scent was so much to bear that she cut off her heater, more willing to deal with the cold than with the smell of a profound social failure. She finally turned off the main road and onto a narrower, much quieter one on her journey to Bruce’s house. When she had woken from her short catnap at the break of dawn, the first thing she had thought of was Bruce. Her gut had been flooded with a strange apprehension, as if whatever was going on between them would reach its tragic, natural end far too soon.

With the sound of his roar replaying over and over again in her head, she realized that she needed to see him. The last time they had talked, he had finally opened up a little. He said that he trusted her, counted on her silence. Now, she was impatient to test that trust.

As she pulled into his short driveway and cut the engine, she couldn’t help but to notice that his house looked far different in the daylight. She could see the fading, chipping paint, the aged wood that seemed to be falling right into itself, the unkempt yard, and the unhappy looking pots of dead flowers lining his walkway. “Strange,” she murmured to herself as she climbed out of her midsized sedan and walked up to the door, all the while wondering why someone who made as much as Bruce did, had the background that he did, and presented himself as totally put together could let his house go like this.

She knocked on the door, part of her expecting to be ignored. But much to her surprise, she immediately heard footsteps traipsing toward the front door.

In the next moment, the door yanked open, but Anita’s face fell at the sight of a woman in a tank top and panties, her hair ruffled and her eyes full of sleep.

“What the fuck?” It slipped out of her mouth before she could gain her composure enough to stop it.

“Who the hell are you?” the woman asked, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and running her hands through her dark hair.

“Where’s Bruce?” Anita demanded, her stomach rolling as she glanced over the woman’s shoulder, hoping with everything in her that he would materialize and clear the situation up.

The woman scoffed, stepping aside. “You must be Anita.”

“How do you know my name?” she asked.

The woman shrugged. “You’re more popular than you think.”

Anita was trying to think of the right question to ask, the right thing to say or do… Anything to stop standing there in Bruce’s doorway looking extremely stupid. The woman impatiently gestured for Anita to enter. “So, are you coming in or what?”

Anita could think of nothing better to do than to step into Bruce’s house. Oddly enough, the inside of it reminded her a lot of the inside of Boris’s house. It looked half-unpacked and completely disheveled, as if he were either in the process of moving in, or of moving out. Either way, the inside matched the outside in the fact that it was so unkempt, and in how old and neglected it seemed. “Where is Bruce?”

“He had to run an errand,” the woman said as she walked past her, taking a seat on the couch and clutching the pillow in her lap.

Anita stood awkwardly in front of her. “So, what are you? To Bruce, I mean.”

The woman shrugged. “An old lover.”

Anita could feel the butterflies dying in her stomach, one by one.

The woman’s eyes swept over her. “What are you doing here? He couldn’t have invited you.”

Anita sucked in a breath. “I just had a couple of questions.” As soon as she started talking, she realized she really didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to be doing in Bruce’s house. “We need to talk.”

The woman let out a short, humorless laugh. “You want answers, don’t you?”

Anita narrowed her eyes. “So, you know about Bruce?”

She chuckled, gesturing around her. “Does it look like I know about Bruce? I live with him.”

Anita could feel her skin crawling with anticipation as she took a step towards this complete stranger. “Will you tell me then? Will you tell me what he is? What he’s hiding?”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “And betray him?”

Anita felt ashamed of herself for even asking. She took a step back.

“Look, human, the fact of the matter is, you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

Human? “What is there not to believe?”

The woman sat back on the couch, shaking her head. “Your curiosity will kill you one day.”

Anita huffed out a breath, annoyed with the fact that this complete stranger was being so condescending. “Look, I’m not leaving until I speak to him.”

The woman smiled, as if amused by her, then pointed at the grandfather chair across the room. “Fine. Sit. Wait.”

Unable to think of anything else to do, Anita begrudgingly complied.

Chapter Two

Anita waited for almost an hour, watching the sun rise to its perch high in the sky and the crimson dawn turn into an ironically sunny morning. She smacked her lips, her craving for caffeine steadily becoming overwhelming. She tapped her foot, wringing her hands and slowly growing more and more impatient.

It was then that she heard a noise.

The woman, who had refrained from speaking to her the entire time, instead occupied herself with a copy of the yesterday’s newspaper, looked up at the sound, a smile stretching across her face. “There he goes,” she said just as the front door opened and closed and footsteps followed.

Anita gasped when she caught her first glimpse of Bruce. His eyes were barely opened, and he moved around with an odd, ghostly manner. His right arm was pressed to his torso as he bent slightly over himself.

He stopped short, his eyes darting from woman to woman. Anita watched his gaze harden for a short second before he nodded at the other woman. “Can I speak to you?”

She shrugged. “I’m all ears.”

He glowered at her, his lips barely moving as he said, “Outside.”

Although Anita was not the subject of his apparent frustration, she couldn’t help but to feel at least slightly worried for this unknown woman, and for herself.

However, the woman didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned. She let out a groan as she stood up and followed him back down the front hallway.

“What the fuck, Lexus!”

It was all Anita heard before the front door slammed behind them. She sat, not-so-patiently waiting for them to come back inside for almost two minutes before she started to pick out the sounds. They were yelling so loud that she could hear them through the exterior walls and down the hallway. She listened to their incoherent voices for a few seconds before she decided she couldn’t take it anymore.

She stood up and tiptoed down the hallway, driven by a reckless curiosity and a complete disregard for what might happen to her if they found her listening.

“… to sit here and wait for me until I came back!” Anita caught the last bits of Bruce’s words.

“Do you have any idea how boring it is just sitting around?” the woman yelled back.

“Lower your voice.”

Anita’s eyes went wide at the severity of his tone.

But, nevertheless, Lexus seemed unfazed. “You think you can just do whatever you want, don’t you? Even fall in love with a human.”

There it was again: human. It was odd the way Lexus said that, as if she herself wasn’t human… and neither was Bruce. The thought made her stomach churn.

“She’s not just a human. And I’m not in love with her.”

“You entertain her curiosity. You let her in—”

“
You
let her in!”

“She wouldn’t have come here if you hadn’t done something to make her believe that you would even listen to her questions.”

There was a pause, a brief silence on the other side of the wall.

“What did you do, Bruce?”

“My mistake was not trusting Anita, nor was it even beginning to feel anything for a human. My mistake was letting you into my house. You could have turned her away. You could have lied to her, anything to cover me, but you refused. You don’t want to cover me. You don’t want to protect me. You want me reduced to nothing so that you can swoop in and manipulate me.”

“Ha! What are you, a child? It is not my job to protect you.”

“Then why are you here, you useless piece of shit?”

“Useless piece of shit? I detest the habits you have picked up, especially Anita.”

“She’s not a habit. She’s a person.”

“Exactly.”

There was a shuffling of feet as Anita heard someone go for the door. She scurried into a small room just off the main hallway, which she quickly learned was a guest bathroom, and shut the door behind her.

“Get out of my house. I don’t care where you go. I don’t care if you ever return to Hugo. I just don’t ever want to see you again.”

As she dropped onto the toilet, Anita’s jaw fell open. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what Lexus was feeling right then. There was more shuffling of feet, then a “Fuck you Bruce!” right before the front door opened and closed for the last time.

Anita tiptoed out of the bathroom to find Bruce standing in his small kitchen, his hands resting on the counter, his head bowed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“If you were, you wouldn’t have come,” he said without even looking at her.

Anita came to stand next to him. She couldn’t help but notice how hurt, how lonely, he looked, with his tired eyes, his tense muscles, his set jaw… His empty house. “I suppose now is not the time—”

“Why can’t you just let it be?” He stepped away from the counter, turning his gaze on her.

Anita didn’t have an answer to that question. It was like asking why the sun came up. “Because I can’t.”

Bruce grasped both of her shoulders. “But you have to. You are putting yourself and everyone around you in danger. Do you realize that?”

“So you can’t tell me a thing?”

“It’s not my secret to tell.”

Anita nodded, placing a hand on his cheek. She figured if she was soft with him, if she could make him feel comfortable, then he just might open up to her. As ridiculous as it sounded, she felt the need to open up to him.

He flinched at first, but then seemed to melt into her touch.

“You’re hurt.”

He nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“In more ways than one.”

“In more ways than one.” He nodded, placing his hand on top of Anita’s. They were both tired of fighting: the world and each other.

She sighed, glancing around her at his disheveled house when a thought came to mind. “Are you going to be alone tomorrow? For Thanksgiving?”

He glowered at her, as if he didn’t understand what she had said before his face softened and he nodded. “Never mind that.”

“No… You shouldn’t. Come with me.” the phrase sounded foreign once it was out of her mouth, but she couldn’t deny that thought of not having to spend Thanksgiving alone with her father lifted her spirits.

“I couldn’t possible—”Bruce tried to dismiss her.

“Yes, you can.” Anita clutched at his jacket with both of her hands. “Look, my father is a Supreme Court justice. You should meet him.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m meeting your father?”

Anita giggled. “It’s not like that,” she said, even though she hoped her words weren’t true.

Chapter Three

Anita rang the doorbell of her childhood home as she stood on the porch of a house much farther outside of D.C. than she would have liked with Bruce, their relationship status listed as complicated, standing next to her. As she waited for her father to make his way to the door, she had to physically restrain herself, holding her hands together, to refrain from reaching out and grabbing his. Somehow, just having him standing there next to her wasn’t enough.

Before she had time to cave into her more base desires, the door swung open and before her stood her father, Richard Rhodes, his tall frame towering over her, the gaze of his dark eyes diluted by the readers he wore to cover his face. He glanced at Bruce, his eyes narrowing as he examined him. “You’re the new ambassador, correct?” he asked as he extended a hand.

Anita tried let the fact that he hadn’t so much as looked at her since he opened the door bother her.

“Yes. Bruce Harrington, sir.” He shook Richard’s hand.

Richard nodded, glancing at Anita, before turning and stepping back into his house.

The two of them followed him inside and, as Anita turned to shut the door behind her, she took note of the scent of turkey baking, vegetables steaming, and sauces boiling. “Is Gabi hard at work?” she asked as she continued into the house.

Richard just nodded at her. “You can go greet the woman if you want.”

Anita set her jaw; his dismissive manner only made her want to disobey. So, instead of following his directions and breaking off into the kitchen, she said, “I don’t want to bother her. I can just join you in the study, if you want.” She could feel Bruce’s eyes on her.

Richard narrowed his eyes at her. “I was going over some case files. You can’t look at any of them.”

“I know,” she said in a strong voice.

“So, what could you possibly want with my study?”

“I don’t know, to spend time with you?” She had all but forgotten about Bruce’s presence for the time being.

Richard released a sharp breath. “I invited you to dinner. I didn’t expect you to be early.”

“Well, I’m sorry if my existence is an inconvenience.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

At that, Bruce cut in, placing a hand on Anita’s arm. “It’s perfectly okay if he wants to get some work done. We could just sit in the living room until dinner is ready.”

Anita scowled. Having her father completely mistreat her was agitating enough without having to listen to Bruce’s attempt at peacemaking. “You know what? That’s just fine,” she said as she stalked past the both of them and into her old living room. She stood on the center rug fuming with her hands curled into fists, biting her lips. She hated how her father constantly tried to reach out to her, making her feel guilty for staying away as much as she did. But as soon as she showed up at his doorstep, he treated her like he was doing her a favor for tolerating her company in the first place.

The man had no one except for her, but unfortunately that alone wasn’t enough motivation for him to treat her decently.

“I’m sensing a bit of agitation.” Bruce placed a hand on her shoulder as he came to stand next to her.

Anita scoffed. “I was so surprised that you accepted my invitation that I didn’t even think for one second of how embarrassing it would be to have you around my father.”

Bruce stepped in front of her. “There is nothing embarrassing about your successful father.” He glanced around at the well-kept sitting room, taking in everything from the expensive mahogany coffee table to the framed photos that covered the golden walls. “Or your obviously comfortable childhood.”

Anita let out a dark chuckle. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“You invited me into your home. I can’t really be an asshole from a position of weakness.”

“Accepting my invitation was not weakness.”

Bruce opened his mouth as if to say something, but then, thinking better of it, closed it again. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, staring at the walls. “I’m not going to argue with you about this.”

Anita laughed at the fact that no matter what they were doing or where they were, an argument was practically a given. “I suppose it would be wise to at least pretend to agree with each other as long as we’re here,” she said as she went for the remote.

“Television? Really?” Bruce raised an eyebrow.

“I just have to see what’s happening on CNN.”

“It’s Thanksgiving.”

“I know.” Anita nodded. “But I’m going to pull my hair out if I have to sit here doing absolutely nothing while my father is in the other room working.”

Bruce shrugged, taking a seat on the couch. “I suppose we could check the news.”

“Just the news,” Anita muttered as she joined him on the couch. But when she had finally managed to find the right channel, CNN wasn’t flooded with Thanksgiving-related news as she would have thought, nor were images of the protests of the days before covering the screen.

As a woman spoke furiously quickly, Anita’s eye fell to the headline at the bottom of the screen.

Breaking: Palestinian troops have invaded Israel
.