Because of His Past

Because
of His Past (For His Pleasure, Book 24)

By Kelly Favor

© 2015 All Rights Reserved

Grace walked back into the hospital
waiting room.

She’d only just left the room a few
minutes ago, after Anne Houston had unceremoniously told her that she wasn’t
needed or wanted there anymore.

And yet here she was, walking into what
amounted to a pit of vipers, her stomach in knots, palms sweaty, mouth
dry—as all heads turned to look her way.

Liam’s brother and sister were sitting
near the door, talking, and their voices fell silent.

But the one with the most priceless
expression on her face, had to be Liam’s mother, Anne.
 
She looked as if someone had just
informed her that
her precious castle had been stormed by
barbarians
.

“Grace,” Anne said, surprised, as if she
hadn’t seen her in years.
 
“Did you
forget something?”

“Yes, I did,”
Grace
replied, noticing Red Jameson out of the corner of her eye.
 
He was watching her with an enigmatic
look, as if he was cautiously assessing her performance in this crucial moment.

“Well, why don’t you tell me what you
lost and I’ll make every effort to locate it and let you know if and when we
find it?”
 
Anne smiled frostily.

“I lost my balls,” Grace said, smiling a
little.

Anne Houston frowned.
 
“Your
balls
.”
 
She said the
word as if it was like eating hot garbage.
 
“Is that a joke?
 
Because if
so, it’s in very poor taste.”

Grace took a deep breath and didn’t back
down, although a big part of her wanted to.
 
Anne’s eyes were hauntingly vicious and
cold, and if looks could have killed, Grace knew she’d be stone cold dead on
the floor that very moment.

“It’s not a joke,” she replied,
finally.
 
“I let you talk me into leaving
because I was embarrassed and I didn’t want to upset you with my presence
here.”

“And yet here you are,” Anne said,
raising one eyebrow.

“I realized after I left that I don’t
want to be the kind of person who backs down from doing what they think is
right just because someone else tries to bully them into it.”

Liam’s mother crossed her legs as her
lips tightened until they were almost white.
 
“What an interesting choice of
words.
 
So now I’m a bully, I
suppose.”

Grace wanted her to know the truth.
 
“Liam was spending time with me for a
reason,” she said, even as her heart beat so rapidly she felt faint.
 
“I think he’d want me to be here,
waiting for him.”

The room was silent, and as Anne sat
there, unresponsive for a bit, in became clear to Grace that the woman was
deliberating.
 
She was trying to
decide whether it was worth having an ugly public confrontation with
Grace—especially with Red Jameson there watching.

She must have decided it wasn’t in the
end.

“I certainly didn’t intend to give you
the impression that you’re not welcome here,” Anne said, her expression
changing, her features softening.
 
“Please, come sit down, Grace.
 
Don’t feel badly, you don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

“Thank you,” Grace said, her body
relaxing a little as she realized that she wasn’t going to have to endure
screaming threats from Liam’s mother in front of his brother and sister (not to
mention Red Jameson) in the hospital waiting room.
 
As she sat down across from Anne, Grace
tried to hold her head high.

I
did it
, she thought.
 
Regardless
of the fact that these people despise me, I still stood up for myself.
 
Even though they’re rich and powerful, I
didn’t let them push me around.

She felt proud of herself, and her spine
straightened as she sat in the chair, waiting as though she belonged.

Exley and his sister Vera whispered for a
moment and then Exley turned to her with a good-natured smile.
 
“I can’t remember the last time I
thought that a friend of Liam’s was worth a damn.”
 
And now he tilted his head toward her in
a very slight nod.
 
“But you’ve just
become that one friend,” he said.

“Thank you,” she whispered back.

Vera’s lips curled into a smile.
 
“You’ll find that we can be a bit
cliquish in the beginning, but once you’ve earned our respect, we’re not so
bad.
 
Right, Mother?”

Anne nodded, pulling a magazine off the
table and glancing at it, yawning.
 
“That’s right, love.
 
That’s
absolutely right.”

Grace sat
back,
feeling like she’d truly just won the first battle.
 
Surprisingly, she now looked around and
felt a strange sense of affection for Liam’s kooky, rich family.
 
Maybe they were just protective, drawn
closer together because of their wealth and the sense that people always wanted
things from them.

Perhaps they didn’t truly mean to be
malicious with their attitudes.
 
Like Liam, they were eccentric and that could come off as arrogant or mean-spirited
sometimes.
 
But Grace decided that
maybe they were sweeter and softer than first impressions would dictate.

After a few more minutes, Red stood
up.
 
“Anne,” he said, “I have to go,
I’m afraid.”
 
He took her hand and
smiled warmly.
 
“I’m really certain
Liam’s going to pull through just fine,” he told her.

“Oh, thank you for saying that,” Anne
said, her voice sounding surprisingly fragile and desperate.
 
“I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Red said, and then he
walked across to where Grace was sitting.

“Sorry for dragging you into all of
this,” Grace said, as he approached.

Red shook his head.
 
“Don’t worry about it.
 
Would you do me a favor, though?”

“Sure.”
 
She looked up at him expectantly.

“Give me a call or a text and let me know
how it’s going.”
 
And then he
lowered his voice.
 
“Bravo, by the
way, for sticking to your guns.”
 
Red gave her a wink and then turned and left the waiting room.

The moment he was gone, it felt as though
all the air had been sucked out of the room.

The waiting room had gone silent, and
Anne was sitting with the magazine on her lap, blue Hermes Birkin bag on the
seat beside her.
 
She was looking
straight ahead, her eyes glassy.

Grace pulled out her phone and texted her
brother, Scott, to let him know where she was and the current status of the
situation.

Glancing to her left, she saw Exley
staring at her with his arms crossed, while Vera also texted away on her
phone.
 

“So how did my brother do, anyway?” Exley
said, his voice loud in the room.
 
 

“Excuse me?” Grace asked, looking up from
her phone.

Exley shifted in his seat.
 
Those eyes of his were relentless.
 
Grace couldn’t tell if he was messing
with her or not.

“I’m just wondering what my brother was
like as a fighter,” Exley drawled in his upper class voice.
 
“I can’t quite picture it, to tell you
the truth.
 
We’ve never been allowed
to so much as slap one another in our household.
 
All forms of violence are strictly
frowned upon as being low-class and dishonorable.”

Grace was uncomfortable.
 
“I don’t know that anyone wants me
talking about it right now—especially when Liam’s hurt and we’re not sure
what’s happening.”

“Well I want to hear,” Exley said.
 
He turned to his sister.
 
“Don’t you, Vera?”

Vera shrugged, still texting.
 
“Yeah, why not?” she said.

“See?” Exley grinned.
 
“We want to hear about big brother’s
fisticuffs.”

Grace glanced toward Anne, who was still
staring straight ahead, looking more and more like some kind of wax statue.

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to fight at
first,” Grace admitted.

“No?” Exley said, laughing.
 
“Then why on earth did he?”

“He was managing a fighter who got
injured at the last minute, so rather than cancelling the fight, Liam decided
he would step in as a substitute.”

Grace thought she saw Anne suck in her
cheeks, but then perhaps it was just her imagination.
 
She tried not to look at the woman,
anyhow.
 
It was too intimidating and
distracting.
 
Focusing on Liam’s
brother, she waited for his droll response.

“He stepped in, you say.” Exley shook his
head in disbelief.
 
“That was
certainly a mistake.
 
But Liam’s
never made the smartest decisions, and I suppose this time he paid a high price
for that.”

“Actually,” Grace said, “he was really
brave.
 
And he won the fight.”

“Did he?” Vera said, looking up with
raised eyebrows.
 
She looked at her
brother and nudged him with an elbow.
 
“Liam won his big brawl.
 
Jealous?”

Exley smirked.
 
“Given the fact that we’re now in the
hospital because he might have brain trauma, I suppose he might not have been
as big a winner as his lovely companion might have us believe.”

Grace felt acid in her throat.
 
“He did win.
 
But I never said it was easy.”

“Clearly it wasn’t easy.”
 
Exley chuckled.
 
“Us Houston’s are not made of very
sturdy stuff.
 
Our family is
descended from aristocrats, layabouts, academics,
philosophers
.
 
Our bloodline is not the kind of stock
from which warriors are typically bred.”

Vera laughed along with him.
 
“Of course, Liam’s never liked his
heritage.
 
He’s always seemed to
chafe at the idea that his past defines his present.
 
And this is just another example of him
attempting to prove some point to the world.”

“And what point do you think he was
trying to prove?” Exley asked his gorgeous, pompous sister.

Vera seemed to think on it for a moment
before answering.
 
“I think he was
trying to prove that he’s just like anyone else.
 
But we all know it’s not true.”

The younger brother nodded his agreement
and then turned toward Grace.
 
“He’s
one of us,” Exley said, smiling.
 
“Whether he likes it or not.”

***

It was perhaps half an hour later that
the doctor emerged into the waiting room with a serious and unreadable
expression on his face.
 
“Are you
all waiting for news about Liam Houston?”

Anne stood up, and her bearing was more
austere and full of power than the doctor himself.
 
“I’m his mother,” she announced, and
coming from her lips it seemed as important as saying,
I’m the President of the United States of America
.
 

The doctor nodded.
 
“You’ll be happy to hear that the news
is pretty good right now,” he said.
 
“All of the scans have come back negative for major brain trauma such as
bleeding, fractures, and the like.”
 
The corners of his lips turned down a bit as he continued.
 
“However, he did sustain a broken
nose.
 
And we do suspect that he’s
sustained a mild to moderate concussion based on his behavior and symptoms, so
our recommendation is to have him stay overnight for observation.
 
Just to be on the safe side.”

Anne nodded her head, and for a moment,
Grace thought the dignified woman was going to collapse in a puddle of tears
and wailing.
 
But seconds later, her
expression was as impassive and reserved as it had ever been.
 
“Can I see him?” she asked.

“Certainly.
 
All family members are welcome to visit,
though we suggest you keep it short and low-stress for now.”

Grace’s heart sank as she heard the
phrase
,
family members are welcome
.
 
In other words, she was not welcome.

Exley stood up and crossed to shake the
doctor’s hand.
 
“Thank you so much
for all of your help with my brother,” he said, his voice earnest.