Risk (It's Complicated Book 2) (11 page)

She listened hard, but...nothing.

And that was probably the end of her sleep for the night.

Sighing, she stood and turned toward the bathroom.

A tortured wail, muffled only slightly by the wall, pierced the quiet.

Maya!

Angela sprinted down the hall, threw open Maya’s door, and checked on the threshold.

Maya lay on her back, eyes closed, with her blankets rumpled around her bare legs and feet.

Angela stood there, frozen with indecision.

Was it normal for a little kid to cry out in her sleep? Was this a nightmare? Should Angela wake her up, or was that a bad idea?

“Maya?” she whispered.

Nothing.

Frowning, Angela turned to go.

That was when Maya shrieked.

“Oh my God!” Angela spun around, hurried to the bed, and shook Maya gently. “Maya. Wake up, sweetie.”

Maya opened her eyes and her little face twisted. “Mommy,” she whimpered. “I want Mommy.”

Angela sat on the side of the bed and gathered Maya into her arms, squeezing her tight. Her braided hair, mussed by the pillow, smelled sweetly of coconut hair oil, and her Barbie nightgown smelled like the fresh dryer sheets Angela used earlier.

“I know, sweetie.” Angela kissed the top of her head. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Maya tried to twist away, catching Angela off guard.

“Maya?”

“I want Mommy,” the girl howled, sobs racking her body. “Mommy! Mooommmy!
Mooommmy!
”

All Angela could do was hang on to her, as useless as a lawn mower on top of Mt. Everest.

And as Maya cried...and cried...and cried...an instinct—something dark, primal, and overwhelming—roared to life in Angela’s gut:

She
must
protect this child.

Protect
her.

No matter what.

“Shhh,” she said, rocking her. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.”

After a while Maya quieted and her sobs tapered off to shuddering whimpers. “I want to go ho-ome.”

Angela took a deep breath and wondered, again, what to do. She’d never intended to spring the news on Maya like this, in the middle of the night, but the time had obviously come. The child needed to know that she was safe. That she was loved.

“You are home, sweetie,” Angela said gently. “You’re going to live with me now.”

Maya pulled away to look up at her. “I am?”

“Yes.”

A wave of calm as soothing as bath water washed over Angela in that moment.

Carolyn wanted this. Angela felt it as surely as she felt Maya’s soft and springy hair under her fingers.

Carolyn wanted this.

Angela wiped the girl’s wet cheeks with the edge of the sheet.

“You and I are going to be a family now. You’re going to live with me and this will be your bedroom.”

Silence. Maya looked dubiously at the desk and treadmill.

“I know it’s not as nice as your bedroom at your old house,” Angela said quickly. “But over the weekend we can move some of my things out. And we can paint the room a new color, maybe pink—”

“I hate pink.”

“Oh, okay—maybe purple, then, and we can get you some new sheets—”

“Jenny has Dora the Explorer sheets.”

Angela had no idea who Jenny was, or Dora the Explorer, for that matter, and she didn’t really care right now.

But she could pretend.

“Cool! We can go to the mall and get you some Dora sheets and—”

“Dora’s for babies,” Maya said flatly, her lids beginning to droop.

Angela laughed. “Okay. Time for you to go back to sleep.”

Maya lay back, found her floppy dog, and sighed deeply as Angela covered them both with the linens.

“So do you think that would be okay, Maya?” Angela asked. “You living here with me?”

Maya nodded, her huge eyes unblinking. “Yeah.”

Angela laughed again, leaning over her. “Can I have an extra goodnight kiss? I need it.”

Maya puckered her lips and planted a sloppy wet kiss on Angela’s cheek.

Angela pressed it in.

Maya grinned sleepily.

Angela gave her a last squeeze, stood up, and went to the door. “Good night, sweetie.”

She turned to go, yawning.

“Aunt Ang-la?”

Angela turned back. “Yes, Maya?”

Maya hesitated. “Can you sleep with me?”

The sight of Maya, a tiny figure alone in an adult’s room without so much as a Dr. Seuss poster on the wall, wrung Angela’s heart. Even so, she was no dummy. She knew very well that sleeping with a child—even once—was a recipe for disaster. She’d heard horror stories of friends who’d foolishly let their child sleep in their bed, only to have the child remain there—hogging the blankets, flailing, snoring, and putting the kibosh on sex between his or her parents—until the age of seven or eight. Sharing a bed with a child was always—
always
—a mistake, and Angela had never knowingly made a mistake in her life.

She opened her mouth to say a firm
no
.

“Sure, sweetie,” came out instead.

Angela stepped back to the bed and climbed in beside Maya, who obligingly slid over for her. Angela stretched out, pulled the cozy covers up over both of them, and wrapped her arm around Maya’s round little belly. Maya scooted back until they lay spooned together, her warm body cranking out BTUs faster than an industrial furnace, and immediately fell asleep.

Angela listened to her even breathing until the sun came up, feeling connected to her niece for the first time since...

Ever.

* * *

“
I
think
the funeral went pretty well, man, don’t you?”

Justus put his empty plate down and turned away from the luncheon buffet table to face Brian. Casa Vincent overflowed with people spilling from the dining room into the adjoining living room, library, and solarium. Several posters of V.J. and Carolyn in happier times—on the beach; at V.J.’s hooding ceremony when he graduated from law school; endless wedding pictures—stood on easels throughout the first floor.

Even now, Justus couldn’t make himself believe his brother was gone forever.

“Justus?”

“Yeah. I guess so,” Justus said, shrugging.

They moved to the French double doors leading to the walled courtyard and watched the crowd in silence for a moment.

Harsh sigh from Brian. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. Remember that time he kicked my ass when I knocked over those model cars in his room? I didn’t think I was going to come out of that alive.”

They both laughed. Justus hadn’t thought about that incident in years.

But then Brian’s chin trembled and he dropped his head.

“I still owe him thirty dollars he loaned me when I was fifteen,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Yeah. Veej always talked about how he could have retired early and moved to the Riviera but for that thirty bucks you shorted him,” Justus said.

“Fuck you, man,” Brian said, laughing again.

“I keep thinking he’s going to come in and ask what the hell’s going on.”

“Yeah.” Brian hesitated. “How’s your dad holding up?”

They both looked to Vincent, who was about ten feet away, talking to some woman Justus didn’t know.

“He doesn’t look so good to me,” Brian added.

It was true. Deep hollows had sprung up around Vincent’s eyes, and his cheeks had a thin, gaunt look Justus didn’t remember from the other day.

“He always holds up,” Justus told Brian, watching his father disappear back into the crowd. “But I don’t think his heart’s too good.”

Brian scowled. “You don’t
think
? Why don’t you
ask
and find out? He’s your father, man. About the only family you’ve got left.”

Justus bristled. “Yeah, and he’s not Ward Cleaver like your father, so drop it.”

Brian muttered something indistinct but clearly derogatory.

Justus ignored him and scanned the room for Angela instead...

There she was. Over on one of the sofas with some woman from her office. She had her hair in that sleek ponytail he hated, her widow’s peak emphasizing her heart-shaped face and the dark circles under her eyes, but the sight of her was like an infusion of light into his veins, especially in this sea of black.

He hoped she was making good on her promise to stop crying, because he didn’t think he could take the pain of seeing any more of her tears fall. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her cry today, even during the service when the choir sang “How Great Thou Art,” so that was progress.

Brian followed the path of his gaze. “She taking good care of Maya?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re going to take Maya, aren’t you?” Brian continued. “She belongs with you.”

“Yeah.”

It’d taken Justus two seconds to decide he wanted Maya, even though he was a twenty-seven-year-old single man. He’d concluded that his demographics were irrelevant. He loved that little girl and had spent more time with her than anyone else, other than her parents. Ever since she could toddle, he’d taken her one weekend day every week. They’d gone to every park and mall in the city, and to the zoo and children’s museum more times than he could count. He’d given Maya her first basketball and her first tricycle. He’d taken her to her first movie, some Disney cartoon they’d had to leave after about five minutes because she’d been freaked out by the overwhelming sound.

Maya had a lot more firsts coming—first soccer game, first date, first day of college—and Justus planned to be there for all of them.

“You told anyone yet?” Brian asked.

“No.”

“Does Angela want her?”

“I doubt it,” Justus said.

Angela had had very little to do with Maya up until now. He couldn’t think of
one
time in three and a half years that he’d heard of Angela taking Maya for an afternoon, or a play date, or even popping by to visit her.

“She might make a few noises in that direction just to make it look good,” he said, “but I don’t think she really wants her.”

Brian hit him with a narrowed, speculative gaze. “What’s up with you two, anyway? And don’t say
nothing
, because I’ve seen you checking her out.”

Justus thought about denying it, but what was the point?

“I want her,” he said.

Brian snorted. “You want everybody.”

“Not like this.”

Brian stared at Angela for a long and thoughtful moment.

“Women like that tend to go for professional types,” Brian warned.

“I—we—
are
professionals. We own our own gym.”

“Yeah, but you’re not a doctor or lawyer, bruh.”

True, that
, Justus privately conceded.

Goddammit
.

Besides the age issue—Angela was still seven years older than he was, even though he was an adult now—there was the very real possibility that she’d never give him the time of day because he didn’t have a white collar.

“Your whole ‘supportive best friend’ routine needs some work,” Justus muttered.

Brian grinned. “My job’s to tell you the uncomfortable truth, so here it is: I’d bet my last dollar Angela wants Maya too. And if you try to take her little niece away, Angela’s not going to have
an-y-thing
to do with you.”

Justus looked back at Angela and remembered his oldest and most powerful desire: to fuck her. Repeatedly and well.

Nothing about that had changed.

Actually...that was a lie.

He wanted her now more than ever.

“We’ll see about that,” he told Brian.

* * *

“
T
his is probably
the last thing on your mind right now, but the partners are meeting today,” Carmen told Angela.

Angela settled more deeply into the sofa and shifted her gaze away from Justus, where it seemed determined to wander every chance it got.

They’d developed a strange but comforting system where they glanced across rooms at each other, just to connect and make sure the other person was okay. Today, though, if she were honest with herself—a practice she avoided whenever possible—she’d admit she kept staring at him because he looked amazing in his pinstriped suit with white shirt and red tie. Every time she saw him, in fact, she felt a jolt of appreciative surprise: