LaceysGame (7 page)
Authors: Shiloh Walker
“That better be the last…” Lacey threw open the door and
stopped, the words dying on her tongue as she stared at the woman in front of
her.
“Oh sorry.” She smiled, a little puzzled. “I thought you
were my…boyfriend.”
She could actually call Brogan her boyfriend. How fricking
weird was that?
“I’m sorry.” The brunette somehow managed to pull off
elegant and cute in the same breath. She toyed with the strap of her purse and
looked around. “I’m trying to find Brogan Grainger.”
The elevator behind her dinged. Lacey smiled and said,
“Well, you’re in luck.”
The woman whirled around. “Brogan.”
He’d been smiling but the smile on his face faded. “Leslie.
What are you doing here?”
“I need to give you a few things.” Her voice wobbled a
little but firmed as she reached into her bag. “Dad doesn’t want you to have
this stuff, but Sierra gave it to me and I figure that makes these mine to do
with as I choose. And…”
Sierra?
Lacey started to move forward but stopped as
the woman reached into her bag and pulled out a little wooden photo box. Brogan
frowned, eying it as if it were radioactive. “Dad lied to you, Brogan,” Leslie
said, her voice soft. “A lot. Sierra fell in love with you. She’d gone to talk
to Brad that last time to tell him that she wanted to stay with you and she was
going to tell you the truth, come clean and everything.
I
know, because
she told me the night before.”
Lacey thought Brogan looked as if he’d been hit across the
head. And Leslie continued to stand there, the little photo box in hand, Lacey
reached out and took it. “I’ll take it for now,” she said softly. “He’ll look
through it when he has time, okay?”
Leslie paused and then nodded.
She headed to the elevator, but before she could push the
button, Lacey called out, “Wait… It’s been ten years. Why did you wait so
long?”
Leslie stood there, staring at her feet for a long, long
moment. Then finally, she turned back around, but she gave her answer to
Brogan, not Lacey. “I blamed you. For a long time. Not like Dad did, but
because she didn’t think you’d be there for her and support her when everything
was falling apart. And then…” She shrugged and looked down. “A few years ago, I
was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dad got sick while I was going through chemo.
Everything fell apart and I didn’t have anybody. My husband started cheating on
me and I got to thinking… You would have been there for Sierra. I don’t know
what was going through her head, but you would have been there. Your mind takes
you on weird trips when you’re sick. I got better, but Dad…well, he never did.
We buried him two months ago. And I decided it was time.” Her eyes flicked to
Lacey. “Time for me to start living again. Time for Brogan to start living…but
I had to let go of some things. I figured maybe he did too.”
Lacey put the box on the mantel and, by the way Brogan was
acting, he’d have been happy to just let it stay there.
That wasn’t an option, though.
For their first night
together
, and she meant
really
together, she’d ordered pizza and cracked open a bottle of wine. Now she was
going to crack open Brogan.
With the pie steaming in front of them and two glasses of
wine waiting, she grabbed the photo box and sat down beside him. He saw it and
she watched his face tighten, ever so slightly.
“You asked me what I wanted from you,” she said, reminding
him of the conversation a few weeks earlier. She put it down in front of him.
“I want this. I want all of you…forever. And it involves you letting her go.
But you can’t, until you see what’s inside.”
“Lacey…”
“No. Open it. You hid from me, from yourself, from
everything, long enough.”
The picture on top was from their first anniversary. One of
the happiest times of his life, he’d thought. Just months before things went to
hell. “She started getting depressed a few months after this was taken. We went
to Scotland.” He showed the picture to Lacey, then put it aside. Found a
picture of them in Destin. Another from Gatlinburg. Pictures of the two of
them. Most of them were of the two of them, but a few were pictures Sierra had
taken of him.
“Those are the kind of pictures a woman takes when she’s in
love,” Lacey said, taking one of them and studying it. Then she slid him a
look. “Trust me, I know.”
His throat knotted. “I’ve been pissed off, shut down for a
long time.”
“You’ve been pissed off, shut down because you were
confused…and because her dad was fucked up,” Lacey pointed out. She gathered up
the pictures. “You should keep these. Maybe not on the mantel, but somewhere.
She meant something to you. I think she probably had something else going on
for her to choose to end her life like she did.”
“She had issues with depression when she was younger,”
Brogan said gruffly. “I always thought I…well, what we did…”
Lacey took his hand. “It wasn’t you. She was happy with you.
You can see it in her eyes. I think she was torn up over her lies, over how her
father used to manipulate her, and then the bastard she used to be with
couldn’t take being pushed aside. If anybody is to blame, it’s her father and
that bastard ex. They used her, Brogan. They didn’t care about what they were
doing to her, they just wanted to use her. If anybody is to blame, it’s them.”
She moved then, coming to straddle him, bringing the wine with her. “Let her
go, baby. You loved her…she loved you, but that’s over and gone. It never
should have ended like it did, but it’s done. Don’t lose any more of your life
over it.”
“I won’t.” He took the wine and curved his other arm around
her. “I wasted too much of the time I want to spend with you anyway.”
She dipped her head. “Good line of thinking. There’s no time
to waste, right? We waste time that’s meant for games, right?”
He was chuckling as she covered his mouth with hers. “Good
way to look at it.”
“I do love my games.”
Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell
in love with vampires with the book
Bunnicula
and has worked her way up
to the more…ah…
serious
vampire stories. She loves reading and writing
anything paranormal, anything fantasy, but most of all anything romantic. Once
upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with
her family in the Midwest.
Shiloh welcomes comments from readers. You can find her
website and email address on her
author
bio page
at
www.ellorascave.com
.
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Shiloh
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Ellora’s
Cavemen: Legendary Tails II
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Cavemen: Tales from the Temple IV
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than Magick
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Lacey’s Game
ISBN 9781419920165
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Lacey’s Game Copyright © 2012 Shiloh Walker
Edited by Pamela Campbell
Cover design by Kelly Martin
Cover photography by shutterstock/Daniel Dash
Electronic book publication April 2012
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