Out of Bounds (15 page)

His hips rocked forward. She pushed against him. Their hands were roaming, busy squeezing and teasing. Now on him, now on her, moving together and driving each other onward.

She was ready for him and more than ready when they wound up on the bed finally. He’d opened a condom and was lying half on her, half off, supporting himself with one arm and using his fingers to drive her higher to an orgasm. She pulled him down, rocking him off balance so he’d have to cover her, press her down, so she could press back against him. It was rough, but so incredibly sexy. Every time she demanded more from Wes, more heat, more strength, more touch, he had it to give and she knew he wouldn’t run out.

She climaxed against his hand and then he slid inside, pumping once into her before pausing.

“Okay.”

“Go, Wes. More.”

* * *

H
E
ALMOST
CAME
when she said that. Posy made him crazy. She was the woman he’d fantasized about but had never been able to find. The one who wasn’t intimidated by him, who didn’t need him because he was bigger and stronger, but needed what he could give her just the same.

Everything about her turned him on and he’d been holding on to his self-control the whole time he stroked her to climax. He wanted this night to be better than good for her and he didn’t trust himself to last long once he was inside her.

He rocked against her, holding her breast, kneading and rolling the nipple and watching Posy climb back to the place he’d taken her just minutes ago. This time they were going together. He increased his speed and she responded by wrapping those gorgeous long legs around his waist and holding him hard against her. He felt her thighs squeeze against his bare skin and he lost it, driving into her one last time and then panting through to the finish.

She kept up her own rhythm for another few seconds and then she shuddered against him.

He couldn’t speak.

That was what he’d felt the first time she’d touched him on the basketball court. He didn’t know what happened earlier, where she went when she shut down the way she did, but when she came back to him, it was the most amazing sex he’d ever had.

He let himself fall forward, burying his face in the soft waves of her hair spread on his pillow.

“Wow. Posy. That was...”

She didn’t answer.

He wondered if she was asleep.

Then she said, “My mom stole the fundraiser money.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

H
IS
ROOM
WAS
DARK
and they were tangled in each other. His heart was still racing enough to think maybe he’d misheard her even though he knew in the pit of his stomach that she’d said exactly what he thought she had.

“I need one minute and then we can go again. Don’t move.”

“Wes? Did you hear me? I’m so sorry. I paid the money back, so I thought I wouldn’t have to tell you, but that was wrong. She was wrong.”

“Okay. So let’s forget you told me for a few more hours and do some more of this.”

“Wes.”

He pulled back. “That was amazing.”

“I know. That’s why I have to tell you this before it gets any further. Wes—she took it all and gave it to a friend of hers who basically stole it.” She pulled away from him but he still held her.

“She gave away our money.” He buried his face in her neck. “The money that Chloe, the barracuda, helped raise?”

“Yes.”

He pulled back reluctantly.

“Why?”

“Why did she do it?”

“No. Why didn’t you tell me?” He’d sat up on the edge of the bed, his back to her. “Why did you lie to me?”

“She does these things and I clean them up. It’s never been this bad before and I just thought if I paid the money back, it would all go away. But that was before I got to know you.”

“Why didn’t she go to the cops when her friend took the money from her?”

“Because my mom gave it to her free and clear. There was no contract, she just trusted her,” Posy said. “The woman declared bankruptcy. Maybe eventually there’d be a way for my mom to make a claim, but it wouldn’t help now.”

“So when Deacon was looking for the check and Chloe kept saying something fishy was going on, your mom was sitting there with a zero balance in the fundraising account? If someone found out, the Hand-to-Hand project would be ruined. It could kill our whole foundation.”

“You’re right.” She moved away from him, sliding backward toward the edge of the bed. “Nobody knows, though. And I looked at the records. You have every penny my mom raised, I promise.”

“It’s not about the money, Posy. That foundation is my brother’s dream. Deacon trusted me to take care of this and I trusted you. I told you that.”

He rolled off the bed, grabbed his jeans and went into the adjoining bathroom, slamming the door behind him. After he was cleaned up, he put his jeans on and went back out. She’d gotten her skirt and tank top back on. The pink blouse hung open from her shoulders. Sitting at the foot of his bed, her hair in messy waves, her clothes undone, she looked beautiful, but off-limits.

“The money isn’t the issue. The foundation is the issue. If the Fallon Foundation loses its reputation because our donations are being embezzled, you know what? Deacon, Julia, me...we’ll all be fine. Deacon’s rich as hell and I’ve got more than enough plus a college degree. But if the Fallon centers have to close or cut back, there’s a whole bunch of communities with real needs that are going to be screwed. Real-live kids and families and neighborhoods that rely on us to bring them programs that make their lives better.”

“I’m sorry, Wes. I wanted to tell you.”

“But you didn’t. You have the luxury because you grew up here with your mom and your dad and your pretty suburban house. You don’t worry every day about how you’re going to get through the next one.”

“I should have told you the minute I found out, but I kept thinking I could fix it. Things with my mom have always been complicated and I thought...I hoped...that this time, if I could fix this one thing and get her to sell Wonders, she could have a fresh start. I wanted her to have a fresh start.”

She put her hands over her face. He was so furious he couldn’t make himself shut up.

“You want to talk about fresh starts? Deacon didn’t learn to read until he was almost thirty. Did you know that? When he was a little kid, he was so completely stressed out he couldn’t focus in school. The other kids were learning to read and he was exhausted from worrying all the time. His entire life has been impacted by the fact that our family was always on the verge of disaster and he carried too much of the burden practically from the time he could walk. Maybe there’s someone like him coming into a Fallon center. Maybe the kid gets a meal. Has someone responsible to look after his baby brother while he plays some basketball. There’s someone there who notices that he can’t do his homework and gets him some help. So there you go. The Fallon center kid has a life, a
real
life,
and you and your mom never gave a single thought to how her creative bookkeeping would impact those children.” He paused. “You lied to me. Over and over.”

“I was only lying while I got the money to pay you back.”

“We have the money, but this story is out there, Posy. Your mom knows. Her friend knows. You know. Chloe suspects something. Everything Deacon worked for is in jeopardy if someone finds out. Even though you paid the money back, your mom still stole it. It’s still a crime and he could still have your mom arrested.”

She flinched. “Would you really press charges?”

He’d screwed this up. Every time Deacon asked him if the finances were in good shape he’d reassured him. He wasn’t going to get between his brother and Trish Jones again. “It’s Deacon’s call.”

He left the bedroom. In the kitchen, he grabbed his keys because she’d need a ride home, but when she emerged, she said she’d already called a cab. They stood in awkward silence in his too-small kitchen for a few minutes and then she said she would wait downstairs.

“It’s the middle of the night. You can’t stand around on the street by yourself.”

“I can’t stand here with you, Wes.” Her lower lip trembled. She was trying not to cry. For the first time since she’d laid this bombshell on him, he felt for her. The kitchen was tiny and he was still very obviously angry. He imagined she could feel the anger rolling off him. He was making himself uncomfortable and it would be a hundred times worse for her. He didn’t need to punish her when it was really her mom who should have to deal with him.

She waited on the sidewalk behind his apartment while he sat on the top of the steps and watched her. She kept her back turned, but every few seconds she’d lift a hand to her face. He didn’t need to hear her to know she was crying. He was already coming down from his anger. He’d learned way back in those foster care years that getting angry was almost always a losing proposition. It didn’t do much except cut you off from other people. He much preferred to work things out. Except this thing with Posy hit every one of his buttons. Deacon. Family. His own pride. His... God, he hated that he’d started to care about Posy. That just made everything worse.

When the cab came, she looked as if she almost turned to him but changed her mind. The cab door closed and she was gone.

How many times had someone closed the door on him in his life? He’d thought he was getting somewhere in Kirkland. Making connections and finding a place.

He never liked the first few minutes after someone left. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that getting moved all those times when he was young, not being allowed to live with Deacon—who was the only person he counted on—had done a number on him. It didn’t make it hurt any less when the door closed on another person he’d just started to care about.

He couldn’t go to bed. Not in his room where her scent still lingered and every surface held the imprint of her or them together. He didn’t know when he’d be able to sleep in there again, but not that night, for sure.

He went down to Mrs. Meacham’s yard and sat in the Adirondack chair. The stars were out and he stared up at them for a few minutes, but that was all the sitting still he could take.

He went back to his apartment and grabbed his keys and phone. Then he drove over to the Kirkland Community Center. He’d go over the records of donations Posy gave him. He’d check and recheck every detail until he could get in touch with Deacon before he and Julia drove back to Milton later that morning.

He flipped the lid of his laptop open and slid the binder out from the shelf where he’d filed it. He was such an idiot. Deacon had once again given him a handout, offered him this job while he was working out what he wanted to do now that he wasn’t playing anymore. And of course Wes was sitting on the embezzlement of the entire fundraiser and he’d never known a thing.

His phone rang about ten minutes after he sat down. He turned the screen over and saw Posy’s number. He almost let it go, but the building was so quiet and dark. He wondered if it was possible he’d made this whole stupid evening up.

“Hello?”

“Sorry to call you so late. I...I thought you might be sleeping.”

“I can’t.”

“I can’t, either.” She sighed.

Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. He wished this could be a normal conversation. He wished he could go to her house and pick her up and drive off with her and put this disaster behind them.

“Posy?”

“I know I have no right to ask you for any favors, but I just hoped that if Deacon does decide to call the police...could you call me first? We won’t do anything stupid, I promise. I’d want to be with her, that’s all. If they arrested her.”

Wes pressed his hand to his temple and then smoothed it back across his hair. He couldn’t stand this. Why had she lied to him? Her mom was the one in the wrong and he and Posy were the ones paying for her actions. He wanted to tell Posy to let her mom take her chances, but he couldn’t. Deacon had stood by him through some stupid things when he was younger. Sure, he’d been mad, but he’d never have left Wes on his own. Family was family.

“I’ll call you. Promise.”

That little hitch he’d heard in his kitchen was back when she said, “Thanks, Wes.”

He hung up and said quietly, “No problem.”

* * *

D
EACON
DIDN
’
T
GET
MAD
. Wes brought all the paperwork to the suite he and Julia were staying in at the hotel. He expected his brother to blow up, but instead Deacon said, “How’s Posy?”

“Posy? She’s... I don’t know. She went home a while ago.”

Julia paced from the window to the desk and back again. “This is awful. What was her mother thinking?”

“From what Posy said, it sounds as if she wasn’t thinking. She thought she could trust this friend and she has a history of getting herself into sticky situations.”

“So where did the money come from? Who actually paid it?”

Wes shrugged. “I think Posy raised it somehow. She said she’s selling her mom’s house and closing the store, but there’s quite a bit of debt on both and she hasn’t gotten the money from them yet.”

“You didn’t find out where the money came from?” Julia asked. “That’s an awfully big check for someone to write on short notice.”

Posy had said almost that exact thing when she gave it to him. Her hands had been shaking. He’d forgotten that.

He’d been so mad, he hadn’t even thought about how awful this must have been for Posy. He knew better than to get that angry. He usually had much more control.

“We need to call Vic and our lawyer and be sure we’re covered in case the information gets out somehow. If we can provide an accounting of all the donations, we’re probably technically okay. We never authorized the fundraiser, so we can get some distance there, too. We just need to be sure that there isn’t some hidden liability that I can’t see.”

Victor Odenthal was Wes’s agent, but he was also on the board of directors of the Fallon Foundation and Deacon’s business partner in his string of physical-therapy centers. He was almost an honorary Fallon.

Wes put his hands in his pockets. He’d thought about how to say this next piece and had come up with a dozen different options, but in the end he said simply, “I’m sorry I didn’t stay on top of this, Deacon. I know I let you down.”

Julia stuttered in her pacing but picked the rhythm back up again, careful not to look at either him or Deacon.

“You didn’t let me down. Posy’s mom is a nut job, but I don’t blame you for not seeing this. Before they paid us, I thought there was something screwy going on, but I never suspected she’d cleaned the account entirely out. Who does that?”

“I thought something was off, too. I should have followed up more carefully.”

Deacon stood. He put his hand on Wes’s shoulder. “Come on, man. You
were
following up. You haven’t even been here for two weeks yet and we already know the worst, right? It’s all cleanup from here. We’ll get through it.”

“But I—”

“Enough. Nothing here is your fault. We have to get the Hand-to-Hand center set up, and that’s where we need to put our focus.”

“Okay,” Wes said. He still felt like crap, but he didn’t need to whine to Deacon about it anymore. He needed to do better. That was all. “What are you going to do about Trish?”

“I’m not sure. That’s one of the things we need to talk to Vic about.”

“If you’re calling the cops, will you let me know? I promised Posy I’d give her a heads-up. She wants to be there with her mother.”

Deacon shook his head. “I certainly hope to God we don’t have to have anyone arrested. This...” He picked up the stack of donor records. “It’s bad, but I’m going to tell Victor to give us the best option, not the biggest punishment.”

Julia had been quiet, but now she asked, “Is Posy okay? I imagine she didn’t want to come with you this morning, but I don’t want her hurt in all this. I really like her.”

Wes stared at her. “Julia, she lied to us. She lied right to my face and she—”

“She was trying to protect her mother and she paid every penny back, as far as we know.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m with Julia,” Deacon said. “I can understand doing what she did for family.”

“I hope if I embezzle from a charity that you will beat the crap out of me, Deacon, not try to cover it up.”

“Oh, I’d kill you. But that would be between me and you. I wouldn’t want to see you go to jail.”

Wes wasn’t sure what to say. Deacon was in a different place than he was on this issue. Julia stepped in. “Deacon, would you mind getting us some coffee? I want to talk to Wes alone for a minute.”