Page 23 of Hold You Close
He stands and takes Ruby by the hand, leading her over to one of the stools at the kitchen island. “Wait right here, baby. Uncle Ian is going to get you some milk.”
“I don’t know how, unless you’ve got a cow in your garage.”
He barely looks at me as he elbows me aside and opens the fridge wider, leaning down so he can see inside. “Hmm. Maybe I don’t have any milk.”
“Then why would you offer it to her?” I toss a hand in the air.
“I thought there might be some in here, okay?” He shuts the fridge and glares at me as he makes excuses. “My housekeeper does the shopping for me. I don’t even eat dairy, so I wasn’t sure if she’d bought milk this week or not.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, maybe you should put it on your housekeeper’s list, now that you are a responsible parent and all.” I use little air quotes around the words just to get deeper under his skin.
He looks like he wants to spit nails at me, but he goes over to the counter where a little pad of paper and pen sit next to two open boxes of pizza. Both pies are half-eaten and need to be put away.
Ian grabs the pen. “Milk,” he says, shooting me a dirty look as he writes it down. Then he looks over at Ruby and softens his tone. “What else would you like from the grocery store, sweetheart? I’ll run out right now.”
“I can go to the store,” I offer.
Another dirty look. “You’ve been drinking. You’re not going anywhere.” He turns back to Ruby. “You didn’t eat any pizza, honey. Would you like something else for dinner?”
Ruby shakes her head and starts to weep again, her little shoulders trembling.
Immediately I go embrace her, tucking her head beneath my chin, rocking her gently. “You know what? I have milk at my house, sweetie. I’ll go get it for you. I even have the chocolate syrup you like.”
“I’ll go get the milk from your house.” Ian practically vaults over the kitchen counter in an attempt to beat me to the back door, and I quicken my pace. We reach it at the same time and he stands with his back to it, blocking me from getting out. “You stay here with them.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I snarl between clenched teeth, trying to push him aside. “And get out of my way, you big bully.”
“No.” He doesn’t budge an inch. In the hours since the service, he’s changed from his dark suit into jeans and a T-shirt so fitted I can see his six-pack rippling beneath it.
Show-off.
“This is something I can do, so I’m going to do it,” he declares, glancing at Ruby and lowering his voice. “She won’t even talk to me.”
“Maybe if she didn’t see you being such a jerk to me, she wouldn’t be scared of you,” I whisper fiercely. “You want her to trust you, you have to show her you’re not going to hurt her.”
He’s insulted. “These kids know I would never hurt them.”
“No, they don’t. Everything they thought they knew, every reason they had to feel safe, is gone. They’re lost and sad and scared, even if they don’t show it.” I look at Chris and Morgan on the couch. “Or show it in different ways. Now move.”
“No.” He turns around, putting his back to me and his hand on the door handle, keeping it shut.
I wrap my hands around his waist and try to move him, but it’s like trying to budge a Giant Sequoia. Next, I grab his muscular forearm, trying to pry his hand off the door handle. His skin is warm beneath my palms, and hell if it doesn’t turn me on to touch him. What is wrong with me? “Damn you, Ian,” I say quietly. “You came to me, remember?’
Our eyes meet over his shoulder, and the line between desire and contempt grows even thinner. He looks at my lips and then down at my hands on him. “I remember a lot of things. Now I’m going to your house to get the milk, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay here with the kids. Understand?”
I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or his words that have my head spinning and my blood rushing to all manner of inappropriate places. What does he mean by a lot of things? Surprise makes me loosen my grip, and he takes advantage of it, shrugging me off, opening the door, and stomping into the yard. For a second, I just stand there watching him disappear into the dark, my heart pumping hard inside my chest. Let him go, I tell myself. He needs to cool off. You need to cool off. I slide the door closed.
But a split-second later, I find myself turning toward the kids. “Christopher, I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Okay.”
Because I’m too wound up—and wined up—to let this go. He can’t play with me like this. Not after what he did back then. And not after kissing me like that today.
He has a good enough head start that he’s already letting himself into my kitchen through the sliding door off my deck by the time I catch up. “Hey,” I say breathlessly, ramming the door shut behind me. “I didn’t say you could come into my house.”
“I didn’t ask your permission.” He marches over to the fridge and opens it, the interior light spilling onto him like a spotlight on a darkened stage. From where I stand, I see him in profile, and my stomach flips at the cut of his jaw, the stubborn set of his mouth, the tightness of the sleeve around his bicep. I’m sixteen again, watching him and wishing he would look at me differently. Then I’m seventeen, working up the courage to flirt with him, ecstatic when he steals a kiss at a party. Then I’m eighteen, all my dreams coming true in one perfect night, and I offer him the one gift I can never get back.
And he took it. He made promises. He made me believe we were going to be together. I was ready to give up everything I had worked so hard for to be with him. Turns out, I was just another notch on his bedpost.
