Seducing Simon (24 page)

“You are messed up,” A.J. said quietly. “She’s your sister, and she’s my friend. Simon isn’t blameless in all this. I’m worried about her even if you aren’t.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Matt said. “Give her time to cool off. She’s always been like that.” A.J. shook his head but didn’t respond. He had a bad feeling about this, and he’d feel a hell of a lot better if he knew where Toni was.

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Maya Banks

By noon, Toni was either too tired to know better or she’d decided she stood to lose nothing by calling Simon. Maybe today he was calmer.

Maybe they could talk things out. And maybe she was nuts.

On the way back from Galveston, she stopped by the same gas station as before and nervously picked up the phone to call the house.

She stood in the booth holding the receiver, her fingers poised over the numbers. Coward. This is what got you into this mess to begin with.

Before she lost her nerve, she punched in the phone number and waited with growing dread for someone to pick up. She shook from the cold, her face like a block of ice from the wind blowing over her tear stained cheeks. To her extreme relief, Simon picked up on the second ring.

“Simon?” she asked tentatively.

“What do you want,” he cut in before she could say anything further.

“I—I thought we could talk. Can we meet somewhere?” Her voice shook, and her grip tightened on the receiver in an attempt to bolster her waning courage.

“We have nothing to talk about.”

He hung up before she could respond, leaving her standing with the phone still to her ear. Slowly she cradled it back and stepped from the booth. Something in side her broke. She could literally feel it snap. Her mind seemed to break apart from her body and float free above her. She ceased to feel the biting wind, even as it began to spit tiny ice crystals.

Numbly, she returned to her Jeep, unsure of exactly what to do next.

The thought of driving an hour and fifteen minutes home was

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unbearable. She wasn’t sure she was in any shape to drive anyway. She hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.

Making a quick decision, she spun her Jeep around and drove to the only hotel on the peninsula, a run down cheap sleep a few miles from the ferry.

After securing her key, she let herself into the dark room, not bothering to turn on the lights or open the curtains. She crawled into the threadbare bed and cried herself to sleep.

“I still don’t like this,” A.J. said grimly as the guys stowed their gear in their lockers.

“What don’t you like?” Simon asked, though he pretended interest.

All his thoughts centered on a petite, brown haired, brown-eyed temptress. His emotions had calmed from deep anger to extreme disappointment and sadness. He loved her. There was no doubt about that. But what she had done had stunned him. He wasn’t sure where to go from here. He hurt. She hurt him.

“Toni hasn’t been home since your little argument,” he said derisively. “If you’d quit feeling so sorry for yourself you might have noticed that fact.”

Simon glared at his friend. But a twinge of concern tightened his chest. He swore softly. He didn’t want to feel concern. She was a big girl.

She could take care of herself.

He didn’t want to think about the phone call and how much courage it had taken for her to call him. He’d shoved it back in her face.

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Maya Banks

Matt looked up from his perch on the bench in front of the lockers.

“She’s still not home?”

A.J. all but snarled, surprising Simon with his ferocity. “I can’t believe you, Matt. What’s Toni done to you? This has nothing to do with you. Don’t you give a crap that she’s been gone for two days?”

“I’m a little pissed at her,” Matt muttered.

“Well, get over it,” A.J. growled. “Right now I’d say it’s more important to find out where the hell she is. A freaking ice storm is supposed to hit, and we don’t know if she’s out on the road somewhere or what.” Simon’s stomach clenched. Despite his anger, the thought of Toni out alone somewhere, hurt or scared, frightened the hell out of him. And their child. Christ. His child.

“You’ll excuse my interruption, but you guys are complete dumbasses,” Mike said as he rounded the corner. His eyes glittered angrily as he stared them down.

“Back off, Sanders,” Simon said menacingly. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? Let’s see. You’re
not
sulking because Toni didn’t tell you she was pregnant with your child, and you’re not sulking because your little pride is hurt,” he said sarcastically.

“What do you know about the situation?” Matt demanded, standing to his full height.

“I know you people are pathetic,” he sneered. “Did I hear you right, A.J.? Is Toni missing?”

A.J. shrugged. “I wish I knew. She’s not answering her phone, and this is the second day she’s missed work.”

“How is it you know so much about Toni’s situation?” Simon asked, his voice deceptively soft. He was working to keep a tight rein on his anger, and Sander’s smug expression was wearing his patience thin.

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“You’re an idiot, Simon. She is so in love with you it isn’t even funny.

She’s agonized for months over how to tell you. Wondering if you’d hate her. Worried that if she told you, she’d never know if you really loved her or hooked up with her just for the baby.”

“That’s no excuse,” he began, though his argument sounded hollow even to his own ears.

“I see, and what was she supposed to tell you, Simon? That on the night you broke up with your girlfriend, you stumbled home to Toni and took comfort in her arms? That after you took her virginity you humiliated her by calling her Starla? Somehow I don’t see her lining up to admit what happened.”

Simon felt the color drain from his face then close behind, a dull flush worked its way over his cheeks. “How do you know this? Did she tell you this?” Christ, had he really called her Starla?

“Uh, no, Simon. I was in the bedroom while you two made it.” His heavy sarcasm was enough.

Simon bolted over and grabbed Mike by the collar, slamming him against the locker. “Shut the hell up, Sanders. I don’t know why Toni confided in you, but shut your filthy mouth up.”

“Could it be she had no one else?” Mike asked pointedly, not at all intimidated by Simon’s strangle hold on him.

Simon slowly released him and he slid down the locker.

“You’re a damn fool, Simon. I bet you’ve spent the last few months secretly wishing the baby was yours so you and Toni could be one big happy family. And now that your wish has been granted, you’re doing your best to screw it up. Makes a hell of a lot of sense.”

“As much as I hate to agree with pretty boy Sanders, he has a very good point,” A.J. spoke up.

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Simon turned to glare at A.J. who was leaning casually against the locker, anger still written on his face.

“Really, Simon. What’s your problem? Don’t you have everything you ever wanted? Didn’t you say the other night that things would be such much simpler if it were your baby she carried?” A.J. asked.

“She should have told me,” Simon whispered. “I had the right to know.”

“Yeah well I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that with you. But it’s a moot point. So are you going to hold it against her forever, or are you going to take care of the girl who loves you and raise your child together?” Mike stood defiantly a few inches from Simon’s face as he laid down the challenge. “Personally, I don’t think you deserve her, but for whatever reason, she chose you. She’s never betrayed you, never even looked at another guy. How many women can you say that about?

Certainly no one in your past,” he said derisively.

“Enough already,” Matt said, holding up a hand and inserting himself between Simon and Mike. “We’ve got work to do. Toni’s a smart girl.

She’s probably off working this out on her own like Simon’s doing. Back off and leave them to it.”

“You screw this up, Simon, and I’ll make damn sure you don’t get another chance with her,” Mike said as he stalked off.

Simon pounded his fist into the locker. “Damn it!” he swore. He turned to A.J. “You think I’m a jerk don’t you?”

“Well…not in so many words. I have a feeling you were pretty harsh on her though. Maybe said some things you shouldn’t have.”

“Tell me about it,” he muttered, thinking back to her earlier phone call.
We have nothing to talk about
rang in his ears. He looked back up at A.J. “She hasn’t been home in two days?”

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A.J. shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen. I’ve called several times and I’ve driven by a few times.”

“She called me earlier today,” he said in a low voice.

“She did? What did she say? Where was she?” He flushed again, his guilt in major overdrive. “I don’t know,” he said lamely.

“You don’t know?” Matt asked, finally speaking up.

“I hung up on her…after I told her we had nothing to talk about.”

“Damn,” A.J. said with a shake of his head. “You sure know how to put the screws to a person.”

“Let’s not haul me over the rack yet. I need to find out where she is.

I’ll call her from inside.”

“If she’ll talk to you now,” A.J. said, raising one eyebrow.

Simon walked back inside and went straight to the phone. He dialed Toni’s number and let it ring twenty some odd times. In frustration he hung up. Was A.J. right? Had she not been home in two days? It wasn’t like her to miss so much work.

He picked up the phone and called the vet’s office. After speaking to Marnie for a few minutes, he hung up, worry beginning to crawl up his spine.

“That was Marnie,” he said as A.J. walked up behind him. “She’s worried about Toni too. Said she called yesterday and it sounded like she was at a payphone somewhere. This morning she called and the connection was clearer but she didn’t say anything other than she was sick and not coming in.”

A.J. frowned. “Doesn’t sound good, man.” The radio went off and the crew launched into action. Simon swore and pulled his gear on. According to the scanner, the ice was already

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starting to build on the secondary roads. It was only a matter of time before the main roads started to freeze as well.

Leave it to Mother Nature to pull a freak ice storm in southeast Texas in December. He’d be lucky if he had time to call Toni again. Traffic accidents would mount as the ice formed. People in these parts had no idea how to drive in this kind of weather.

“Let’s go,” the chief shouted.

Simon pulled on his helmet and climbed into the truck. It was going to be a long day. His worry over Toni wasn’t going to make it any easier.

His own nagging guilt was merely another nail in his coffin.

As Toni drove the lonely stretch of highway between Beaumont and Cypress, she thought, not for the first time, that she would have been better off remaining in her hotel room on the coast. While the sleet was coming down along the coastal rode, it wasn’t sticking. But here, just miles north, the roads were quickly icing over.

“Whoever heard of an ice storm in December?” she grumbled. She slowed to a crawl as she crossed the bridge over Cypress creek. Only ten more miles and she’d be home. At an absurd hour of the night. Or morning, she thought as she checked her watch. It was almost two a.m.

She’d slept most of the day, her exhaustion extreme after a night up and the emotional turmoil she’d suffered before. She rubbed her belly as she slowed for another corner. “It’s just you and me, kid. But I love you,” she whispered. “And I don’t regret anything.”

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Tears welled in her eyes again, stinging her eyelids. How much could she cry in a twenty-four hour period? She scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand.

When she pulled her hand away, she was suddenly blinded by a set of headlights. They were coming right for her. Too late, she realized the other vehicle was skidding out of control.

She gripped the steering wheel and yanked it over, trying desperately to avoid the oncoming car. With a sickening crunch, the car hit her broadside on the passenger side. The Jeep spun and lurched off the road. Her world turned upside down as the Jeep rolled. Pain exploded in her consciousness just before she registered a blast of cold air.

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Maya Banks

“Where are you, Toni?” Simon murmured as he dropped the phone beside the bed. He leaned back on the small cot and stared up at the ceiling. He’d done a lot of thinking today. Rational thinking. And he’d gained a unique perspective.

After he’d calmed down and separated through his feelings of hurt and betrayal, he’d immediately wanted to kick himself in the ass. Yeah, Toni had done the wrong thing in keeping the truth about her pregnancy from him, but if that was the worst thing she ever did he was one lucky guy.

And A.J. was right. He should be jumping for joy. He had gotten precisely what he’d spent the last month wishing for. The baby was his.

Toni was his. There was no other guy in the picture.

He’d been her first. An inexplicable wave of satisfaction gripped him.

But then he’d turned around and called her Starla. He could only imagine how that had made her feel.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. It all made sense to him now. What he’d thought were vivid fantasies about her were actually snippets of memory from the night they had made love. Even now if he thought hard about the night in question, he could form hasty images of her. Naked beneath him. How good she’d felt. And he could remember kissing her. That much he knew wasn’t a fantasy.

“Still can’t sleep?” A.J. asked from across the room.

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“Nah. Too busy kicking my ass. And I’m worried about Toni,” he admitted.

A.J. got up and ambled over. He parked it in a chair next to Simon’s cot. “She’ll come around. She’s probably just upset and taking a break.”