The Foster Family (5 page)

The rumbling male voice crawled up my spine and I shivered as I turned around.

“Malcolm.”

He smiled. Oh boy, did he smile, right at me, and the hairs on the back of my neck lifted. “Hi, Kerry.”

“Wha-what are you doing here?”

Rather than responding, he reached over and rubbed my cheek where the blot of earth had landed. “You do get into your work, don’t you?” His gaze traveled down my front, and I was hyperaware of the spots of soil trickling down my white T-shirt.

I couldn’t stop myself from shooting a damning look at Lissa.

She grinned at me over her shoulder as she walked away, disappearing toward the smaller, weatherproof enclosure where the cash register was.

“It’s been a busy day, I guess,” I said, plucking at the shirt and leaving behind only more black smudges from my gloves.

“You’re not sure?” He lifted both eyebrows and peered at me over his sunglasses.

“It’s been a day from hell, okay? Did you come to bother me, or are you here to buy something?”

He placed a bag on the counter between us and smiled. “I came to bring you your things.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he stood back, and I felt like one of the bugs Lissa and I might find and begin to pick apart to figure out what it was. He didn’t need tweezers. He had that glare.

“Thank you.” I pulled the bag a few inches closer and dropped my
gaze.

“Better,” he said softly, and dammit if that gentle mixture of praise and admonishment didn’t twist everything inside me into unexpected knots. “Here. We found these in a tidal pool this morning on our jog. I think they’re pretty much finished.”

He placed my ruined phone and salt-encrusted wallet next to the bag.

It was all I could do not to grab at the scraps of cowhide and pry the stiff leather open to see if there was any cash left inside.

As if reading my mind, he shook his head. “Nothing in the wallet. We checked.”

I shrugged and wrapped my arms around my middle. Not much protection from the hollowed-out space already inside. “There wasn’t much in it in the first place,” I muttered.

He had one more item for me, though. My driver’s license snapped against the counter as he set it down. It had been defaced, my image obviously very deliberately scratched over. One more thing to add to the list of things I couldn’t afford to replace.

“Is everything okay?” he asked. His tone hadn’t changed from that warm, low baritone, and I glanced up.

“Fine.” I touched a finger to the ID and twirled it around a bit, wondering who hated me that much.

Silence settled between us for a few minutes.

“Okay,” he said at last. “No reason you should tell me. You don’t know me.”

I glanced up into his gentle smile. “Thanks for my things.”

“Well, I am here to shop too. Do you have time?”

“Of course!” I hurried out from behind the counter. “What are you looking for, exactly?” Because helping people shop for their gardens I could do and do well.

“Actually, I’m looking for something for the beds at the front of the house.”

“Oh.” I glanced around, but he seemed to be alone. “I thought Charles was the gardener.”

“He is. But his boss has been on a tear all week, and it’s tough for him to find time to plant, so I thought I would at least see if I could take care of the purchases for him.”

“It’s almost past time for spring planting, actually,” I told him. “Depending when you want blooms, anyway. What are the light levels like? And the soil acidity and drainage?”

I got a blank look as Miss Claire jumped up on the counter between us and proceeded to shamelessly rub herself all over his big, square hands. He petted her as he gazed at me.

Right. He wasn’t the gardener. “Is it sunny?” I tried to remember the front of the house, but I hadn’t taken much time to really look. I vaguely remembered a large overarching tree on the lawn. Maybe a maple, which would offer a fair amount of shade in summer. There had been bushes along the wall, but I couldn’t remember which way the house faced or how large the beds were.

“It’s nice in the shade, but it can get hot in summer out there,” Malcolm offered. “I think Charlie has some sort of leaky hose affair hooked up.”

I couldn’t help a bit of a grin. “Soaker hose,” I told him “You really aren’t a gardener.”

“Really not.”

“Maybe you need to bring Charles in—”

“I want to do this without him. He’s too busy. He shops and organizes things all day for his bitch of a boss, and I just want him to have the plants there, ready to go so all he has to do is play in the dirt for an afternoon or two.”

I wasn’t sure if that was sweet or if Charles would miss getting the chance to wander the greenhouse. That was one of my favorite parts of the whole gardening adventure.

“You’ll come to the house and have a look,” Malcolm decided. “When do you get off work?”

“What?”

“When do you get off work?”

“Why?”

“I’ll pick you up and bring you by to have a look at the grounds,” he said, like he was explaining to a child. “Then you’ll know what kind of plants we need to get for Charlie.”

“
We
need to get.” I stared at him. “What’s going on? When did this become a
we
venture? I’m just the nursery worker.”

Malcolm smiled a wide, confident smile that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end again. Or stand higher. They’d never quite lain down in the first place. “I need your advice, Kerry. I want to buy plants for my lover and I need expert advice. You’re the expert.”

I was the expert. That was… I blinked as he smiled again, and I nodded faintly, letting go of the weirdness of that idea so I could get at the practicalities of selling the guy a few flowers. “I’ll see if Lissa will let me borrow the delivery truck after my shift, then, and come by.”

“Nonsense. A delivery truck is a monster to drive around town if you don’t have to. I’ll be at this end of the city until dinnertime. I have a few properties to look at. I will adjust my errands to suit your schedule, save her the gas, and you the headache.”

“You’re very used to getting your way,” Lissa said, rounding the end of the counter and wrapping an arm around my waist.

I hadn’t realized she’d come back or that she’d overheard. Maybe she’d recognized my stunned look. I had no idea how to react to Malcolm telling me how things would be.

Malcolm gave her a cool look, right down the bridge of his very fine nose. “Perhaps.”

She smiled up at him, completely not intimidated and in that moment, my absolute hero. “No perhaps about it. You’re used to getting your way. Kerry can use the pickup. He’ll be by your place after his shift, which ends at four. I’ll send you a bill for the consult, Mister…?”

He broke into a grin that flipped my stomach over and gave my heart a tight squeeze. “Malcolm Holmes.” Hand held out to Lissa, he turned the full wattage of that smile on me. “I look forward to your visit, Kerry. I’ll expect you at four thirty.”

I nodded and he gave me a pleased look as he left.

“Kerry.”

I watched Malcolm’s tight ass sway out of the shop.

“Kerry!” Lissa snapped her fingers in my face. “Close your mouth, there, boy.”

I snapped around to look at her. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why?”

“I’m twenty years old. I’m not a kid.”

Her grin was luminescent. “I didn’t say ‘kid.’ I said ‘boy.’ And if you are not that man’s boy by the end of the weekend, I’ll give you a hundred-dollar bonus just for managing to stay out of his bed.”

“I’m not like that,” I muttered.

But she was clearly laughing at me. “You might not have thought you were ten minutes ago, but you so are now. There is no possible way he didn’t see ‘take me’ written all over you just now.”

I glared at her, but she ignored the look.

“Where did you meet him again? Is he one of the beach gods?”

I let out a snort, which brought her laughter bubbling up to the surface. “Yes,” I muttered at last, picking up the tray of transplanted flowers and heading inside one of the greenhouses.

My boss followed with a second tray, and for a few minutes, we rearranged the plants in silence. There was something on her mother-hen mind, but it was no use my asking. She’d only speak up once she’d sorted out the right way to say whatever it was she wanted to say. She was thoughtful that way.

“You’ll be careful, right, Kerry?” she asked at last.

“Careful?” I glanced under the tray I was moving and quickly around the bench I was about to place it on, looking for some hidden danger to the plants. “What?”

“That Malcolm guy. He seems… I don’t even know. Like ‘no’ isn’t in his lexicon.”

“Oh. That.” I set the plants down. “Relax. He’s just a guy.”

More silence.

“What, Lissa?” I asked finally, turning from the plants to her and addressing the loaded silence of her glare.

She studiously did not look at me but turned over plant leaves, looking for pests that weren’t there.

“Just… what?” I asked again, skin prickling with the anticipation of hearing the oncoming lecture.

“Just….” She scowled at a pot of innocent petunias, then shook her head. “Nothing. You’re a big boy.”

“You mean a grown man,” I snapped.

“Yes.”

I heard her sigh, though, and it made my blood boil.

“I
am
a grown man, Lissa. I can go off and look at a guy’s lawn to figure out what kind of plants he needs without tripping and falling into his bed. Promise.”

She smiled, but that expression reminded me of one of my foster mothers. That woman had had a special kind of look she’d get whenever I’d done something that pained her to her core, like let her see the gay all over me. Lissa, it turned out, had the very same pinch-lipped look. I shoved my glasses up my nose. I knew Lissa didn’t care about me being gay, so her look came from some other place. She just didn’t want to tell me where.

“For God’s sake, Lissa, w
hat
?”

“It’s not my business.”

“You think?” I rearranged pots and plants with vigor. “First accurate thing you’ve said so far,” I grumbled under my breath.

Her lips tightened more, and she started slamming pots around too, stacking one plastic container inside the next with sharp movements and not looking at me.

It wasn’t her business. But then again, I was sleeping on her couch and she was keeping me off the streets. In a way, my life had been dumped into her lap, and I was her business.

“You’re right,” I said quietly. “He’s… I don’t know. Powerful?”

“You like that about him?”

A tendril of uncertainty climbed up my spine, but I nodded. “I like it about guys in general,” I admitted.

Being pinned down had always done it for me. Andrew had figured that out in about six seconds the first time he backed me up against a wall. I shivered at that memory and the host of others that clamored on its heels. Sometimes with him, the pinning and the inevitable pounding left bruises.

Suddenly hyperaware of those marks still left on various parts of me, I shifted my shoulders, glad I was wearing a T-shirt and not a tank top that would have left my scraped and battered shoulders open to scrutiny.

Lissa touched one finger to my upper arm, just at the hem of my shirtsleeve, and I knew there must be something showing, because she let out a sad breath. I resisted the urge to yank away or tug the shirtsleeve down.

“Malcolm seems more… in control of it than most,” I allowed. It was as close as I was going to get to anything about Andrew or his roughness, and she could take the nonadmission however the hell she wanted.

“You don’t think that makes him dangerous?”

“I think that much power without the control would be a lot more dangerous.” I thought about Andrew, and the apprehension solidified to a lump of sick in the pit of my stomach. He had that power over me, and look what he did with it. “He’s nothing like Andy, okay?”

“I hope, Kerry. I really do, because that asshole treats you like complete shit. I don’t know why—”

“You should stop talking because a few more words and you’ll basically be telling me you think I’m a complete dingbat with no ability to tell when a guy is legitimately interested in me.”

She shot me a significant look.

“Oh shut the fuck up!”

“You said it.”

“You thought it.”

“But if it wasn’t true, Kerry, you wouldn’t have been able to voice what I was thinking.”

I sulked for a little while and she let me, but ultimately, she was right. “For the record,” I said at last, “if this is a tell-all, then I guess I never really thought he gave a shit about me. It seemed important at the time, thinking everything he’d degraded me for all through high school turned out to be true about him too. And I was the one he came to to get out of his skin for a while. I was what he needed.”

“You were the one who couldn’t say anything about him being gay.”

“I would never out someone, Liss. Not even him….”

And he knew that. Because he could deny it and everyone would believe him, not me, no matter what I said. So he could fuck me, even though I was also what he hated, and ultimately, what he couldn’t face about himself. His fucking me had nothing at all to do with desire for me. It was all about how much he hated himself and what we were doing. Just another way to deliver the message to his brain that what I was was despicable and worth only a good pounding. That I couldn’t actually say out loud, because it meant admitting I’d known all along he hated me even while he was in bed with me.

She shook her head. “Please tell me you see how fucked-up that is. He beat you up and humiliated you for years. He made your life miserable, then comes back and you reward him for it by letting him have that much more.”

“When you put it like that, I sound like a jerk.”

“He’s the jerk. He used you.”

“I let him, Liss. I’m hardly a victim.”

There was more headshaking and a sad look in her eyes. “I would be less worried if he
had
fooled you into thinking it was real. That you knew from the beginning that he’s jerking you around, and you let him…. Why?”