Actually, I already knew this considering I could tell by his face (and actions) last night when he first saw it that he liked it.

Suffice it to say we’d broken the seal on having sex with his sons in the house. Last night, it was late, the boys definitely asleep but Brock still took care to muffle my noises with his mouth and his own with mine or my neck.

This morning, the bathroom.

“How many cupcakes you gotta sell to give me this, darlin’?” he asked and my eyes shifted from his hands moving on me to his in the mirror.

“Less than the extravaganza I treated you to that first night at your apartment, more than the cotton candy eyelet one,” I answered.

He grinned at me. “Cotton candy eyelet one?”

“The one I wore our first night together.”

“The pink one?”

He remembered.

Damn.

He remembered.

“Cotton candy,” I corrected softly.

His grin became a smile and for some reason that smile settled in my belly.

He thought I was funny. He thought I was beautiful. He got close anytime I was near. He wanted to stand between me and roaring lions. He wanted to help me battle my ghosts. He had two fantastic sons, a screwy but loving family, a great body, an affectionate manner and he remembered the color of the nightie I wore our first night together in my bed.

I stared into his smiling, warm, quicksilver eyes in the mirror but I wasn’t smiling.

I was searching.

But it was gone.


“It’s gone,” I whispered, his smile faded and his brows drew together as his arms convulsed tight around me in reaction to my tone.

“What’s gone, baby?”

“That poisonous thing in my belly.”

I felt his body still against mine as his eyes locked on mine in the mirror. Then I was turned from the mirror and lifted up. Automatically, my limbs wrapped around him as he walked us out of the bathroom, into the bedroom and then he put a knee to the bed, twisted and I had my head in the pillows and my man on me.

He didn’t say a word but his eyes searched my face and I let them.

My search was going to be multisensory.

So my fingers went to his face and moved over his skin, his stubbled jaw and chin, his lips, his temples, his thick eyebrows then both hands glided down and wrapped around the sides of his neck where it met his shoulders and my eyes went back to his.

“My wild man,” I whispered. “My snake charmer.”

He closed his eyes and shoved his face in my neck, groaning, “Fuck, Tess. ”

I turned my head so my lips were at his ear and no lies, no masks, no bullshit, no games, I kept whispering when I told him, “I love you, Brock.”

He growled against my skin then his head came up, his hands slid up the silk at my sides, over my armpits, forcing up my arms, they kept sliding up, up until his fingers laced with mine and he planted them in the pillow above my head.

Then he asked, “My sweet fuckin’ Tess, what am I gonna do with you?”

“I’m yours so… anything,” I answered.

His fingers clenched mine then his head slanted and he kissed me hard and deep and wet and sweet and, most importantly, un-fucking-believably beautiful.

I bucked my back, he let go of my hands and allowed me to roll him and we kept making out with him on bottom, me on top, his hands at my ass.

And about that time, as was our luck, a loud knock came at the front door.

My head went up and his fingers dug into my ass as he snarled, “This is fuckin’

unbelievable.”

He had that right.

We waited, frozen in position then it came again.

“Fuck,” he clipped, one hand left my ass, drove into my hair and he positioned my face close to his. “Don’t want whoever’s there to get one of the boys or wake ‘em. I’ll be back.”

I nodded, he lifted his head, touched his lips to mine, rolled me off of him then rolled off the bed. Tagging his jeans off the floor, he pulled them on as another knock came at the door.

Then he tagged his tee off the floor and prowled to the door yanking it on, jeans still undone.

Damn but my man was hot.

The door closed and I pulled his pillow to me, hugging it close and smiling.

Then I smelled his hair on the pillow, his hair, not cologne, not aftershave, all Brock.

My smile got bigger.

Then I rolled off the bed, went to the bathroom and cleaned up thinking about our upcoming day.

No, thinking how much I was looking forward to our upcoming day.

It was Saturday after Thanksgiving. Brock got the boys yesterday at three. Why Olivia didn’t let him have them all day Thursday and Friday considering they had both days off school, I did not know and upon asking Brock, his response was to ask back, “Why the fuck does that bitch do anything?” and I had no clue as to the answer to that question but also, at his response, I decided not to prod further.


Since our plans were what they were for that day, I came over last night, made dinner and spent the night. We were going to see how it went with the boys as to whether I spent the night tonight.

And what we were going to do that day was go out and buy Christmas decorations and a tree and decorate Brock’s tree and house and then we were going to go back out and buy another tree and take it to my house and decorate that.

With the boys.

I already had my Christmas decorations out and at the ready.

Double the Christmas.

Double the joy.

I couldn’t fucking wait.

I rinsed out the washcloth and smoothed it around the edge of the basin. Then I stared at it.

Navy blue, like his sheets, both of which I bought.

My eyes went to my own personal toothbrush in the holder on the wall. Then they went to the shower where my shampoo, conditioner and bath wash was. I’d noted Brock’s brand and bought him shampoo so his was in my shower. He also had a toothbrush at my place.

I leaned forward and opened the medicine cabinet.

My face wash. My body lotion. My moisturizer. My contact lens solution. My deodorant next to Brock’s.

I did the same thing with his deodorant, buying his brand and putting it in my medicine cabinet.

This all came about naturally, no words, no discussion. He came to my place and found the stuff then didn’t say a word but didn’t bother packing it again, he only brought over clothes and when he did, he brought enough to last awhile. I went to his place and saw a new toothbrush in its wrapping on the vanity. A statement. The next time I went over, I stocked his bathroom. He didn’t say a word. Nor did he say a word when I brought a big workout bag filled with fashion selections and, as he did in my house, deposited it in a corner and that was where it stayed unless it was scheduled for rotation.

I smiled again.

Yeah, it was gone. That thing in my belly was long gone.

This different kind of wild was a good, safe place to be.

I closed the medicine cabinet, spied my undies on the floor, nabbed them and slid them on.

Then I walked into the bedroom thinking Brock had been gone awhile. Maybe he was making coffee. Maybe one of the boys was up.

I considered this dilemma. Then I walked to the nightstand, slid my glasses on my nose and walked to Brock’s closet and selected one of his flannels. Soft, oft-worn, burgundy. I slipped it on and it engulfed me.

Okay, it wasn’t a robe but it hid more than most robes and if I saw one of the boys, I could hightail it back to the bedroom and put on clothes.

I rolled back the cuffs then I walked out to the landing.

Then I stopped dead when I heard Brock’s clipped, “Jesus, she’s in the next fuckin’ room, brother.”

To that I heard the whispered, but still loud angry words, “So?” Then, “Fuck, Slim, this is the same damned shit as with Bree.”

Levi.

But who was Bree?

“Leave it,” Brock growled.

“Honest to God you think I’m gonna leave it? You think I’m gonna stand aside, keep my fuckin’ mouth shut and watch you slide over the edge again, tied to another woman with a mountain of problems you think you can fix?”


I sucked in a silent breath and put my hand to the wall.

“Levi –”

“No, Slim, fuckin’ no. You need me to spell it out? I will. Bree got raped, that was tough man, you know I know it. It was ugly, it was brutal, fuck, Slim, it was me who went with you to visit her in the hospital and I saw her, Slim, I fuckin’ saw her messed up, jaw wired, teeth gone, eyes swollen shut, bones broken, same as you. Then you go gung ho, nearly losin’ your job, I might add, pullin’ out all the stops to take that motherfucker down. I get that too. Then she finds her way to deal and she does it usin’ a needle. She checks way the fuck out before she injected too much of that poison and finally checks out. What do you do when your ex-fuckin’-girlfriend overdoses? You leave The Force and take a job with the fucking Drug Enforcement Agency and no one fuckin’ sees you. You’re undercover, livin’ with the scum of the earth on some wild ass crusade to turn back time and bring Bree back. Well, man, you can’t do that. It isn’t Bree’s ass hangin’ out there ‘cause she’s dead. It’s yours. Mom, Jill and Laura, and I’ll admit, me, we all lost sleep with you doin’ that job, wonderin’ when the call would come.”

“Well, now you don’t have to lose sleep, Levi,” Brock said low.

“No, now we don’t. ‘Cause sweet Tess and her cakes are in your life now.”

I moved closer to the wall of the landing and tried not to hyperventilate.

“Careful,” Brock snarled.

“Careful?” Levi asked. “Not even for your own fuckin’ wife, and I will give it to you, I wouldn’t do shit for that bitch either, but not for your own fuckin’ boys did you leave that job but Tessa O’Hara with her haunted eyes walks into your life and what do you do?” A pause then, “No, your answer will be bullshit so don’t even say it because I know because you told Laurie and Laurie told me that you knew before you even approached her to see if she’d accept you back in her life that you looked for a way out of the DEA so you could concentrate on her and give her what you didn’t give Olivia and you couldn’t give Bree seein’ as the bitch essentially killed herself and took her time doin’ it.”

My heart started thumping and me legs started trembling.

Levi kept talking. “And not only that, you lived in your goddamned place since Olivia took your ass to the cleaners but all of a sudden,” another pause where I visualized him throwing out an arm, “here you are in a sweet condo that sweet Tessa of Tessa’s Cakes would find more agreeable. So now you’re a homicide detective with a middleclass condo and five months ago you were an agent for the DEA with a death wish but at least you had a fuckin’

mission and all that is for her. Fuck, I’m lookin’ at my brother in his fuckin’ kitchen with new fuckin’ dishtowels and I don’t even know who the fuck he is because he’s losin’ all that he is, again, for another, lost, haunted soul with a great pair of tits.”

And that was when I moved because it came over me. I didn’t know what it was because I’d never felt it before, nothing like it. But it was there and I had no control of my actions.

I just moved.

And I did it quickly.

So I forged through the abrasive atmosphere of the Lucas brothers’ mood and in the middle of Brock growling something low in response, I ran down the stairs, took three long strides and then ran up the steps to the kitchen.

Brock’s eyes came to me, his mouth snapped shut and Levi turned in the direction of his brother’s stare.

I ignored Levi and launched right in.

“I don’t believe you,” I hissed at Brock.

“Tess –”


I shook my head and made it to him, planting both hands in his chest, I gave him a shove; he went back on a foot, his head jerking in surprise as his hands came up and clamped on my wrists.

I got close and went up on my toes to get in his face and snap, “I told you I didn’t want you to change for me.”

His face went soft and he whispered, “Baby –”

“No,” I shook my head again, tried to yank my wrists out of his hold, failed and gave up.

“I don’t need you to be anything but what you are. Hell, when I fell in love with you I didn’t even know your…” I got closer to his face, “Fucking…” I got even closer, “Name. ”