When You Are Mine (21 page)

W
alsh marked the time by her heartbeats against his chest. He knew he should let Kerris go. He
had
to let her go, but couldn’t make himself do it. His body, so weighted with loss and inexpressible grief for the last few days, selfishly burrowed into this bastion of comfort, refusing to relinquish it. She stirred, starting to pull away. His arms clenched around her small frame before he told them they could. He pressed her head to his chest, breathing her in.

“Wait. Just a little longer.”

He looked down at her tear-streaked face, running his thumb along her cheek, following a wet path to her chin. He licked the salty wetness on his fingers. Her tears hit his tongue like a sorrowed liquor, heady and numbing. He clutched her closer to steady himself, not sure he could stand on his own without her as scaffolding.

Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. So lost. So lost.

His father’s howling dirge haunted him, whistling through his deserted soul like an icy wind. The walls he’d erected since the day he’d met Kerris crumbled. Walls constructed of morals and right and convention gave way, collapsing beneath the heaviness of pain and loss. And the words he’d sworn he’d never say stormed past his well-meaning lips.

“Kerris, come with me.”

She stiffened, pulling away as far as the vise of his arms would allow.

“Walsh, I can’t—”

“Just a week. Find a way to come to me for a few days. I can’t do this without you. It’s too much. This hurts—”

“Walsh, I know, but we can’t—”

“We can go somewhere no one knows us.”

He tightened his fingers around her arms.

“There
isn’t
somewhere no one knows you.”

She pulled away altogether, putting at least a few inches between them.

“Hong Kong.” He stepped back into her orbit, but forced himself not to grab her. “My dad has a house in Hong Kong.”

“Walsh, no.” Sadness and regret darkened her eyes, but her mouth straightened into a firm, determined line. “I know you’re hurting, but no.”

“You’d have your own room.” He pulled her close again, meshing his fingers with hers, his voice a persuasion. “I’m not asking you to sleep with me. You know I’m not. I just need you. I just—”

“Walsh, I’m pregnant.”

Her whisper sliced him open with the delicate strength of a scalpel. Flayed him like a frog stretched out for dissection. Her skin burned under his fingers. He stepped away, singed.

“You’re—”

“Pregnant, yes.” Kerris’s hands settled at her midriff. She angled her head, trying to look into the eyes he’d lowered to the ground. “So you see, I really can’t.”

She recaptured his fingers, raising her other hand to cup his jaw like she was afraid it might break. Nudging his chin until he was forced to look at her.

“I’m happy, Walsh. You know this is what I’ve always wanted. This is what it was all about. A family of my own. I want this.”

“Yeah. I know. I guess Cam’s over the moon.”

The words piled up in his mouth like ashes.

“He doesn’t even know yet. I haven’t had the chance to tell him.” She shook her head, dropping her hand to guard her stomach. “I found out the morning your mother passed away, and it just didn’t feel right.”

It still didn’t feel right to Walsh. Kerris carrying another man’s child felt like sunshine at midnight. Like snow on the Fourth of July. Upside down. Everything was so wrong. Kerris should be married to
him
. Carrying
his
child. His mother should be here, not buried and silent forever. He and Cam should be close, the best of friends still.

But nothing was right.

“Right.” He squeezed his hand around her fingers, so slight but strong.

The silence between them thickened with lost possibility. Walsh stroked her hair back from her face, savoring what felt like their last moments. There had never been any going back, not since Kerris’s wedding day. This new life, this baby Kerris had longed for, widened the gulf between them until it was more impassable than it had ever been.

Walsh watched tears streak down from under eyelids she’d pressed together, standing still for a moment more and letting the loss rush over him. Loss not just for his mother, but for the possibility that had been so close. If Kerris had listened to him the night of his mother’s party, she might have been pregnant with his child. He beat the thought back, knowing it was futile. He looked down at her and wondered if she ever thought about it. They both started when the door swung open without warning.

“Kerris, Cam is—” Jo cut the words off, dropping the room temperature with one frosty look. “Cam’s looking for you. Your husband. Remember him?”

“Jo.” Walsh peppered his voice with warning, glancing at Kerris with quick concern. She looked back at Jo without guile or guilt.

“I don’t have anything to hide, Jo.” Kerris sniffed and walked toward the door with sure steps.

“Really? Then why do I seem to always catch you off in some dark corner with my cousin? Cam’s best friend until
you
showed up.”

“Stop it, Jo.” Walsh stepped toward the door, not looking at Kerris again. “Not today.”

“You took the words.” Jo’s eyes on Kerris went subzero. “If the two of you can manage to stay apart at least for today, that would honor Aunt Kristeene’s memory.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what would honor my mother’s memory.” Walsh’s words thundered into the tranquillity of the room. He slammed his fist into his open palm. “Talking with a friend, taking comfort from a friend, is not dishonoring anything, Jo. Now shut the hell up about things you don’t understand.”

He rushed past her into the hall, hating to leave Kerris, but needing to get away from the accusation in his cousin’s eyes. Needing to get away from the promise growing inside of Kerris. He stormed down the stairs, almost barreling into Cam. They faced each other like wary, wounded animals, only a few steps apart.

“You doing okay?” Cam asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Hell no.”

“Me neither.” Cam blinked away tears.

“You wanna get drunk?” Walsh proffered the vodka-filled flask from his pocket.

“Yeah, like you can’t believe, but I’ll pass.” The breath swished from Cam’s chest in a rush. “I was looking for…”

Cam trailed off, obviously not wanting to drop the grenade of Kerris’s name into the middle of their temporary détente.

“For Kerris?” Walsh kept his tone bland and his eyes steady when he looked back at Cam. “I just passed her and Jo in Mom’s sitting room. You could check there.”

“Okay.” Cam frowned, glancing up the stairs and then back to Walsh.

Walsh brushed past him and walked toward Uncle James’s study, hoping to get a much-needed swallow or two of liquid courage in privacy and away from all the consoling eyes.

Hand on the door, he caught a glimpse of a broad back rushing toward the front door in the foyer.

“Martin,” he called, but his father didn’t slow or turn.

Walsh followed, moving more quickly than he had all day. He stopped on the porch landing.

“Dad!”

His father stopped where he stood, but he didn’t turn around. Walsh rushed down the steps, stepping into his path.

“Dad, I—”

“Walsh, could we talk another time?” His father looked down at his shiny Italian shoes.

“Well, I—Okay.” Walsh felt about twelve years old. “I just thought…well, we hadn’t gotten to talk since Mom…”

He cut the words off when he saw his father wince. Pain tweaked his lean features. He looked at Walsh with the most naked pain anyone had ever tried to hide.

“Another time?” His father’s red-rimmed eyes revealed that he was not as unfeeling as his tone would lead one to believe. “I’m headed to New York, and then back to Hong Kong.”

“Already?” Walsh couldn’t believe his remaining parent was abandoning him now of all times. “You can’t postpone the trip?”

“Why would I want to?” Martin’s words started rebuilding a wall between them. “I cut the trip short to…I cut the trip short, and I need to finish what I went there to do.”

If Walsh hadn’t heard his father’s howling grief himself, he’d assume he was being cold and callous, as usual. But Walsh noted the lines etched around his father’s mouth and eyes. Saw his father’s hands tremble. Walsh suspected nothing but pride and sheer will kept Martin’s back straight and his posture rigid. He was fighting absolute collapse, a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions.

“I’ll see you when you get back to New York, Dad.”

His father nodded, opening his mouth to speak and slamming it back shut. Walsh could almost see him stringing together the words before he tried again.

“What you said in your mother’s eulogy was perfect.” His father’s voice husked with suppressed tears. “She was always so proud of you. She loved you so much.”

Walsh offered a dumb nod. He didn’t know what to do with this version of his father. As much as Martin tried to pull the impassive mask in place to cover his grief, it kept slipping. Walsh glanced away from the pain so evident on his father’s face, digging his hands into the pockets of his wool trousers against the unrelenting cold. A flash of red caught his eye.

Kerris, coming down the steps, wore a scarlet coat over the black dress he’d seen her in earlier. Walsh couldn’t help but think of that first night when she’d worn a scarlet dress, an orchid nestled behind her ear. They occupied a different world now. A dystopia where his mother, his rock, had died. Where the one woman he wanted had married his best friend and carried their child.

Cam walked Kerris toward the car, his hand at the curve of her back. Walsh hadn’t seen him look so broken since he’d first met him. Walsh realized Cam truly processed this loss like a son, left behind. Finding out about the baby would help him through this. A new life. A fresh start.

A part of Walsh, the part that couldn’t stop loving Cam like a brother, rejoiced for him. For
them
. But his heart—that selfish muscle pumping unrelenting blood to the rest of his body, skipped a beat when his eyes found Kerris. She looked back for a second longer than she should have before dragging her eyes away and looking straight ahead.

She wrapped around his heart like knotted string he couldn’t work loose. She was pregnant. She was Cam’s. And as hot and as deep as this feeling went, it was just that. A feeling from which nothing good could ever come.

Their future was ahead of them and so was his. He couldn’t undo what had been done, but there was still time to make other things right. He turned to his father.

“Dad, want some company?”

Martin turned, hand poised over the door handle to his rented Mercedes.

“Company?” His father snapped his brows together at this foreign concept. “What do you mean?”

“I could go with you to Hong Kong.” Walsh wondered if his father realized what it took for him to speak those words, to make that offer.

Martin’s features contracted then relaxed, and Walsh knew that though they were silent, they both heard the same thing. Kristeene’s plea to make things right between them. Those moments were seared into Walsh’s heart, and he’d never forget that his mother’s last words, her final thoughts, had been of him reconciling with this man. With his father.

“I’d like that.” Martin’s mouth curved into something terribly close to a smile.

“I’ll just be a few minutes.” Only out of habit did Walsh keep the eagerness from his voice. “I’ll grab a few things and we can leave for New York right now.”

“I’ll wait here.” His father slid into the car and turned on the heat.

This trip couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. Besides getting some long overdue time with his father, Walsh needed something to pour himself into. After Cam and Kerris’s wedding, he’d abandoned himself to a debauched lifestyle. Developed destructive habits. Nicked and torn at his moral fiber until right and wrong had amalgamated into some alloy made only of his basest desires. He wanted to be better than that. For his mother. For Jo. Even for Kerris and Cam.

But most of all for himself.

He would leave Cam and Kerris to their future. And as much as it hurt today, right now, he’d find his own.

There were several signs that Kennedy Ryan would be a writer, but making up stories with a mop as her long-haired heroine while the other kids played kick ball may have been the most telling. After graduating with her journalism degree from UNC–Chapel Hill (GO, HEELS!), she found various means of gainful employment having absolutely nothing to do with said degree, but knew she would circle back to writing, in some form or fashion. After years of working and writing for nonprofit organizations, she finally returned to her first love—telling stories.

In an alternative universe and under her government name, Tina Dula, she is wife to Sam, mom to Myles, and a friend to those living with autism. A portion of her royalties will go toward her foundation, Myles-A-Part, serving Georgia families, and to her national charitable partner, Talk About Curing Autism (TACA).

You can learn more at:

KennedyRyanWrites.com

Twitter: @KennedyRWrites

Facebook.com

For updates, teasers, giveaways, and the inside track, subscribe to Kennedy’s mailing list on her website!

Turn the page for a preview of the next book in the Bennett series.

Coming October 2014!

W
alsh Bennett scowled at the teetering tower of paperwork overwhelming his desk.

“Trish, last time I checked we were in the twenty-first century,” he yelled through the open door connecting his office to his assistant’s. “What’s up with all this paper? Nineteen ninety called and wants its dead trees back.”

Trisha snickered before sauntering into his office, a tiny smile playing around her matte red lips. One hand on her scandalously curvy hip, she gestured to the offending paper pile.

“The board expects your John Hancock on all these dead trees, so I hope nineteen ninety sent pens.”

Walsh grinned, shaking his head before obediently plowing through the documents requiring his signature.

“Do we still have coffee around here?” He tried to keep a straight face while he growled, but it hadn’t taken Trish long to figure out he wasn’t the slave driver everyone expected Martin Bennett’s son to be.

“Would you like coffee, Walsh?” Voice saccharine sweet, Trish arched her brows at him, one of the little tricks she used to remind him that he might be the boss, but she wasn’t his lackey.

“Why, yes, Trish. Now that you mention it, a cup of coffee would be delightful.”

“Make him fetch it himself.”

Walsh and Trish both looked to the open door, where Jo Walsh stood like a queen paying a royal visit. Her chestnut hair waved in an angled bob around her shoulders, a studied, tousled mess someone had probably spent hours on. The black leather and tweed panel dress may as well have been poured over his cousin’s long, elegant body, its lines liquid against every firm curve. She strode deeper into the office, tossing her clutch onto his desk and lowering herself inch by inch into the comfortable seat facing him.

“Jo, to what do I owe this pleasure?” He looked away long enough to catch Trish’s eye and send her on her way. “Coffee.”

“I’m here for Fashion Week.” She pointed to the dress. “Zac Posen show this afternoon. Donna Karan later.”

“Ah, I’d forgotten that was this week. Moneyed fashionistas descending on the city. One of your favorite times of the year.”

When she remained silent, he looked up from the paper he was reading over before signing.

“Right? Don’t you usually waste obscene amounts of money and spend the week hobnobbing with all the other beautiful, wealthy women who must have this season’s whatever? You and Mom always…”

Walsh let his words peter out, dropping the pen to give his cousin his full attention. He looked past the glistening surface, looked at her eyes beneath the smoky eye shadow and mascaraed lashes and saw grief, a twin to his own.

It had been only a month since his mother’s funeral. He and his father had spent the last three weeks in Hong Kong conducting business. It had distracted him from the yawning hole in his heart, but every time he stopped for even a minute, the wailing monster inside reminded him his mother was gone and wouldn’t return.

“It’s my first Fashion Week without her.” Jo straightened out the wobble in her voice before continuing, fixing her eyes on the large hourglass his father had given him, in its place of pride on his desk. “I know it seems flighty to you, but fashion was our thing. One of our many things. Doing this without her feels hollow and empty and foolish, but not doing it—”

“She’d want you to.” Walsh stood and crossed around his desk, settling on the edge and reaching for Jo’s slim hand. “Enjoy it as much as you can. We’ve gotta find joy wherever possible. Dad and I have used work to survive the last month. Use fashion.”

Jo ran the tips of her dark, square nails over a leather patch on her dress before looking back up at him.

“I miss you, cuz.”

Add asshole to whatever titles his father and the board of directors wanted to bestow on him. How could he have neglected Jo? Sure, things had been strained between them before his mother had passed. All the drama with Kerris and Cam had managed to slither into his relationship with Jo, but she had needed him. Hell, he had needed her, and neither of them had reached for the other. Until now. He’d castigate himself as a self-centered so-and-so later. Right now he needed to fix this.

“Jo, I’m sorry we’ve barely talked. I didn’t mean to abandon you. There was too much in Rivermont I needed to get away from. Mom’s funeral and…”

Walsh didn’t need to finish that sentence. Jo had stood witness to the Pompeii-like destruction of the scene with Kerris and Cam at their cottage. One kiss. It had leveled his friendship with Cam like a city, standing strong one minute, and nothing but rubble and ash the next.

Too many emotions tangled in his chest, a toxic helix of grief, regret, and frustration. He missed his mother. He missed Jo. He missed Cam.

He missed Kerris.

In a matter of months, his closest relationships had disintegrated. If it hadn’t been for his father, irony acknowledged, he would probably have been drowning in one-night stands, vodka, and his own vomit. In the past, tough times had coaxed out his darkest side like a serpent from a basket, snake-charming him into a mire of bad decisions. Not this time. The last two years had changed him. How could they not have? Meeting Kerris. Falling in love with her. Alienating Cam. And to some degree, Jo. Losing his mother. Building a relationship with his father. And he’d experienced most of it without the close friendship that had always anchored him.

“How’s Cam?”

Walsh stroked his Hermès Pele Mele tie between two fingers, training his eyes on the subdued blue pattern instead of looking at Jo. She let him stew in that silence until he finally looked at her. A wile she’d learned from his mother.

“He’s okay.” Jo crossed one long leg over the other, leaning an elbow on the back of the seat. “Like you. Like me. Managing the pain, I guess. The baby—”

Walsh narrowed his eyes against the glare of horror in Jo’s gaze when she realized what she had let slip. Caution, too late, tightened Jo’s lips and slowed her words.

“Ah, that awkward moment when you realize the woman I love is pregnant with my best friend’s baby.”

“You know about…”

“That Kerris is pregnant? Yeah, I know.”

“And you’re okay?”

A bitter imitation of a laugh spilled across Walsh’s lips. His heartbeat quickened. Probably because of the hot poker slicing through it when he considered Kerris having Cam’s baby.

“Do I have a choice?” He pulled himself out of his own ass long enough to note the sadness filling Jo’s eyes. Separate from grief. Personal. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” Jo jerked a shade down over her pretty face, cording off her emotions beyond his reach.

“You still love Cam, Jo?”

He was a son of a bitch for asking her that, but they hadn’t discussed her feelings for Cam since the eve of his wedding to Kerris. Inquiring minds wanted to know.

Jo raised her brows and sat up in her seat, scooting to the edge. She rested her elbows on the armrests and impaled him with a blaze of her silvery eyes.

“I don’t poach.”

Just a few words, but a recrimination. A condemnation. A judgment he deserved. He clenched his jaw around shame and guilt and the defiant words that still, after everything he’d promised himself he’d forget about Kerris, lay on the tip of his tongue. Their eyes and wills dueled across the small space separating them until Jo eased the haughty lines of her face into something softer. A distant cousin of sympathy.

“What do you want me to say, Walsh? Do I have feelings for Cam? Probably for the rest of my life, if the last fifteen years are anything to go by. Would I ever do anything about them?” She shook her head, but held his eyes steady. “No.”

How he missed those absolutes. Those black and white certainties that didn’t account for tornadic emotion sweeping through and ripping at your convictions until they were negotiable with the promise of the thing you wanted more than air. He didn’t say that. He barely breathed, lest he reveal how shaky his foundations were even now when it came to Kerris. Having her. Taking her. Keeping her for himself.

One thing he’d realized while spending time with his father for the last month was that he was more like him than he had even suspected. A predator lay in wait inside of him, relishing the hunt and capture. That beast would possess, careless of the consequences. He wasn’t sure he could ever be around Kerris and Cam again.

Jo stood up and settled beside him on the desk, pushing her shoulder into his.

“They’re happy. I want you to be happy.”

Walsh leaned his head against hers, reaching for her hand. Letting himself be soothed by the familiarity of the closeness they had always shared.

“Besides,” Jo continued, looking up at him with her smart-aleck grin. “This is much too
Dawson’s Creek
for me. Do you
want
to be Pacey in this scenario?”

Walsh laughed outright, slipping his arm around her slim shoulders. How had he forgotten how much she made him laugh?

The laughter melted from her voice and her eyes.

“Don’t be Pacey. Joey’s not worth it.”

“What do you have against Joey?”

“She could never make up her mind and jerked those poor guys around for years. I hate indecisive women.”

“Don’t hate her, Jo. Kerris, I mean. It’s not her fault.”

“Who should I blame?” Jo glanced at the rose gold ALOR strapped around her delicate wrist and picked up her clutch. “We were fine before she showed up.”

“No, they were fine before I showed up.”

Even after Jo had gathered her things and headed off for her front-row runway seat, Walsh echoed that statement back to himself.

They were fine before he showed up. And they were fine without him.

“How ya feeling?” Kerris settled on the bench at the kitchen table beside her husband.

The month since the funeral had been just as hard as she had imagined it would be. Cam missed Kristeene terribly, and Kerris had done everything she could think of to soothe him and take his mind off the dull pain. Cam had been shocked and incredibly moved by Kristeene’s generosity in her will, as Kerris had been. She had left Cam a small fortune in stocks, along with the Land Rover he’d always loved so much. She’d left a significant portion of her wardrobe to Kerris for Déjà Vu.

“How do I feel? Like the king of the world.” Cam touched her stomach, his hand a warm weight through the silk of the kimono she wore after her shower.

“I mean about Kristeene.” Kerris smiled at how gentle and considerate Cam had been since she’d told him about the baby.

“It’s like having the worst day and the best day of your life…on the same day.” Cam pulled his brows together even as the corners of his mouth turned up. “Ms. Kris would be so happy for us. You’re happy, right?”

“Of course.” She leaned her shoulder into his. “This is what we’ve talked about since the beginning. A family of our own.”

“And you don’t…you don’t regret anything?” Cam’s eyes remained fixed on the hand resting on her stomach.

Kerris knew, of course, what he was asking; the image he couldn’t shake. There were moments when her mind would, of its own volition, revisit that moment, when her guard would slip, and she would be in Walsh’s arms again. Feel his touch. Smell him. Taste him.

“I don’t regret anything.” She placed her hand over his on her still-flat stomach. “I’m just as excited about this baby as you are.”

He finally looked at her, his eyes plumbing hers for the truth. She hoped what he saw satisfied him. He laid his mouth over hers briefly, but heavily, more a claim than a kiss, before standing to his feet.

“I’ll be late for work if I don’t get outta here. Not that I’ll be working there much longer.”

“Cam, you have to be careful with that money Kristeene left you.”

“I’m not staying in that shitty graphic design job when I have stock worth millions, baby.”

“I get that, but you don’t have it yet.” She walked over, grabbing his hands between hers. “It’s a huge estate that’s incredibly complex, and it’s still being settled—papers have to be executed. I think it’s good. It gives you some time to really think about the best thing to do with the money.”

“You know what I’ve always wanted to do.” He leaned down to kiss her nose. “I want to paint. Sebastian—you remember Sebastian, right? You met him at Kristeene’s birthday party the night we got engaged.”

“I remember him.” Kerris walked over to clear their breakfast dishes from the table. “Every time I’ve swung by his gallery, he’s never there.”

“He’s been in Paris.” Cam threw his voice over his shoulder as he moved toward the office to grab his backpack and laptop. “He’s back. He thinks I should take a year to study in Paris. He says I have a lot of raw talent, but I need it refined. I need to train and study.”

“A year?” Kerris’s hands froze over the sink she was about to place their breakfast dishes in. “What would we—you mean
live
in Paris for a year?”

“Yeah, babe. Think about it.” Cam came up behind her at the sink to wrap his arms around her. “The three of us in Paris, where some of the greatest artists did their best work. I could study at the Sorbonne. If I apply now, I could be accepted in the next six months.”

“Six months.” Kerris turned to face him, her back against the sink. “I’m only six weeks pregnant. Déjà Vu is just getting off the ground. I want to have our baby here in the States with a doctor I trust. Our life is here.”

“Working in that shitty graphic design office isn’t much of a life.” Cam’s smile dissolved into a straight line. “This money from Kristeene is a godsend. Can’t you see that? It’ll give me the freedom to pursue my dream.”

“I’ve always been your biggest cheerleader, you know that.” Kerris evened her tone and placed a calming palm against his chest. “I’m just saying the timing may be a little off. Maybe in another eighteen months or so?”

“Eighteen months.” Cam stepped back and stalked over to lean against the granite countertop, facing her with his arms folded across his chest. “You expect me to stay in Rivermont for eighteen months when I’ll have money in the bank to pursue my dreams?”

“And my dreams?” she asked quietly. “The things I want to do? The business I
just
started? The family we’re
just
starting? Are you considering any of that?”