Accidental Lovers (The Accidental Series, Book 3) (2 page)

“All right, Tee,” Carter told him. He
pressed the call-end button and laid on the bed, exhausted, clicked
off the lamp on the nightstand and closed his eyes, tight, trying
to force himself to go to sleep, though his body ignited with heat
at the very thought of making love to Shayla between these sheets.
But he couldn’t have her tonight and the thought he may never have
her again angered him. Why did she have to be so freakin’ stubborn?
All he wanted to do was confess, come clean and love her and she
was doing everything in her power to avoid him, leaving him alone
again tonight with no solace, and in heavy frustration.

Chapter 3

Shayla helped Rebecca out around the shop as
a favor for a couple days here and there. She would pluck dead
leaves from some of the plants, make a few orders of flowers, water
them and assist wherever she could help out. It was something to
keep her occupied, to kill time and take her mind off of her
personal life. Besides, the late fall season going into winter was
a slow time of the year and Rebecca didn’t need much help, which is
why she took the ‘help wanted’ sign from the front window. She
decided to wait to hire someone right before spring.

So using the time to separate herself from
Carter, having just learned he was Jacob’s brother, she tried to
wrap her head around his admission. Carter didn’t look a thing like
Jacob. Jacob’s skin tone was noticeably darker than Carter’s. They
didn’t resemble each other in the least bit and if they were
standing side-by-side, no one would even think they were brothers.
But they were, by Carter’s admission, and Shayla felt used and
stupid. How could Carter know this all along and not tell her,
especially after she’d told him so much about herself.

He was her confidant even before they were
married. She cried on his shoulder many a nights, telling him about
how she missed Jacob and laying out details of the day she found
him unresponsive on the bathroom floor with empty pill bottles next
to his body. She talked about her brief engagement to Jacob and the
wedding that never happened. And at any point in the discussion,
Carter could’ve come out and said that Jacob was his brother, but
he did not. And she wanted to know why.

“So what exactly happened between you and
Carter? You’re being real hush-hush about it.” Rebecca probed.

Shayla frowned as she sat down on a stool,
interlocked her fingers and sighed. She had been tight-lipped about
the incident for weeks and she knew Rebecca was going to want to
know what went down sooner or later. There were no customers in the
place so the two of them could talk freely. Openly.

“Um…” Shayla started. Some things were okay
to discuss with friends. Some were off limits. Still she couldn’t
deny her need to talk to someone about it. So after taking a deep
breath, she said, “Well, um, I don’t remember if I mentioned this
to you or not, but before I met Carter, I was engaged to a guy
named Jacob Dempsey. He committed suicide.”

Rebecca snapped her head back. “Oh my gosh.
No, I would’ve remembered that.”

“Yeah. So after he died, I lost our
condo…well, I pretty much lost everything and was homeless for a
while and Carter found me on the street…dirty and…” she said, her
voice cracking with tears forming in her eyes. “Well, Carter
confessed to me two weeks ago, that Jacob was his brother.”

“Wait,” Rebecca said, and shook her head
quickly as if physically tossing this around in her brain.
“What?”

“Jacob is his brother.”

“So the guy you were engaged to, who killed
himself is Carter’s brother?”

“Yeah.” Shayla dabbed her eyes. “I guess I’m
so upset about it because I didn’t know. All this time I’ve been
with Carter and he kept this from me. I feel so stupid.”

“But how
would
you have known,
Shayla, unless he told you?”

“When we were together, maybe Jacob
mentioned Carter’s name before and I hadn’t paid attention. I don’t
know. I
do
know that Carter told me, when we first met, he
didn’t have any siblings, and it wasn’t until he ran into an old
co-worker of his that I found out he had a brother. And I didn’t
even think to ask what his brother’s name was. I’m so stupid.”
Shayla shook her head. “All this time, he has listened to me talk
so much about my past, about Jacob and not once did he tell me they
were brothers. There’s just something wrong with that.”

“Maybe he didn’t tell you because he was
afraid of what your reaction might be. Carter’s a very outspoken,
articulate guy. He usually holds nothing back.”

“Yeah…then there’s the matter of the suicide
note…”

Rebecca shook her head.

“Jacob wrote a suicide note and mailed it to
Carter the day before he died. The day of his death, the detectives
searched the condo inside and out, looking for a suicide note and
didn’t find a thing. So as a part of his confession, Carter let me
read Jacob’s note.”

“Wow.”

“I can’t tell you how painful it was to
relive that. Just to see Jacob’s handwriting on that paper was
enough to destroy me, Rebecca. The memories of him are so hard to
deal and I thought I was doing a good job of moving on with my
life.”

Rebecca, at a lost for words, could only
shake her head.

Shayla went on to say, “And in the letter,
Jacob asked Carter to take care of me. And I feel like that’s the
only reason why Carter married me…he’s fulfilling his brother’s
wishes.”

“But he didn’t have to marry you to take
care of you. He could’ve very well put you up in an apartment, paid
your bills until you got a job, but instead, he fell in love with
you.” Rebecca watched tears roll down Shayla’s face. Shayla
attempted to dry her eyes with her hands while Rebecca reached for
a box of Kleenex under the counter. “Shayla, I know this is hard. I
won’t even pretend I know what you’re going through, but I do know
you love Carter. And I don’t think Carter would marry you just
because of something his brother wrote. That doesn’t make any sense
to me.”

“I’m just telling you how I feel.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Rebecca said,
throwing an arm around her friend. “You just need to talk to
him.”

“I know. You’re right. I just feel so
betrayed.”

“Well my advice to you is, talk to him.”

Shayla dismissed herself for a bathroom
break to get herself together. She analyzed her face in the mirror,
thinking about Jacob. The empty pill bottle. His lifeless body. And
learning about the note he’d written Carter made her realize that
Jacob did love her. He wanted her taken care of. He wanted her to
have a better life, and he wanted Carter to be the one who’d see to
it that she did. Still it angered her to think about Jacob getting
to the point where he decided to take his own life. And was it her
fault? Did she put too much pressure on him about the wedding?

On top of that, she had to determine what
she wanted with Carter. How could she dread a one-on-one
conversation with her own husband? Had he not bent over backwards
to accommodate her? Changed his life for her? Had he not loved her
harder and more feverishly than any man could ever love a woman?
Still, he came with secrets and the man she thought she knew now
seemed more like a stranger than a spouse. Than a lover.

Chapter 4

Carter sat at his desk again, eyes barely
open. Days were rough. Mornings were rougher. He sent Julie to get
him a strong cup of Starbucks coffee because he hadn’t slept much
last night. Instead, he laid there, on the bed in his hotel room,
staring up at the ceiling, longing to be with the woman he loved.
He could smell her skin, the smell of her hair and imagine sucking
on her lips, kissing them. He missed her greatly and wanted nothing
more than to end this distance between them. His life would not get
back to normal with the both of them carrying on this way.

Before he checked an email, the newspaper or
his voicemail, he took Jacob’s notebook from his briefcase, set it
on his desktop calendar and began reading silently:

I have a feeling Shayla suspects the wedding
isn’t going to happen. She stares at me a lot lately and constantly
asks me what’s wrong. I always tell her I’m fine, that everything’s
okay, but she’s not buying any of it. I’m not good at hiding my
emotions, especially from her.

On another note, I was out to day searching
for a job and four staffing agencies later, I have no prospects. I
feel like I’m being punished for some reason, like God has
forgotten about me but my brother is doing so well while I’m
struggling. It’s bad enough that I can’t take care of my soon-to-be
wife, but I can’t even take care of myself. And it’s getting harder
and harder to pretend everything is fine while Shayla is around,
when I know we’re struggling. She doesn’t…

* ~ *

Carter frowned, flipped the page over
looking for the rest of the note but Jacob had ended it that way.
He rubbed his hand across his head, confused, then took his cell
from the desk, finding Jacqueline’s number.

“Have you had a chance to talk to Shayla
yet?” That’s how Jacqueline answered the phone. Carter had told her
about the fight between himself and Shayla a few days after it
happened. Jacqueline had been on edge since finding out, wanting to
talk to Shayla herself because she knew there wasn’t a better woman
for her nephew. But Shayla didn’t answer her calls the same way she
hadn’t answered Carter’s.

“No. She’s still not talking to me.”

“It’s been two weeks now, Carter,” she said
as if he wasn’t aware.

He was painfully aware of how long it had
been, of how much he ached for her.

“I wish you guys would just work it
out.”

“Jackie, she’ll talk to me sooner or
later.”

Jacqueline sighed. “You do realize the more
you let this thing drag out, the easier it’s going to be for the
devil to ease in and attempt to destroy your marriage.”

Carter nodded. “I’m not going to let that
happen,” he told her. “Listen, the reason for my call is, I got my
hands on some of Jacob’s notes…things that were on his mind right
before he died. And…ah, he wrote something insinuating he and I
weren’t brothers…said we didn’t have the same Mother. Do you know
why he would think that? I mean, I know we don’t have the same
father, but we did have the same Mother, right?”

“Um…uh…Carter, there’s a lot that Lenora
kept to herself. We didn’t talk much and she didn’t tell me a lot
of things.”

“So you wouldn’t know if I, or Jacob was
adopted. You would know that, right?”

“Carter, you boys were not adopted.”

“So why would Jacob make a comment like
that?” Carter asked, while reading an email Julie had sent to his
inbox.

Jacqueline sighed. “He was probably just
using it to get back at you, knowing that you would find the
notebook.”

“No…because I’m not supposed to have this
notebook. No one is.”

“Well, Carter, the important thing now is
that you work things out with Shayla.”

Carter frowned. Was she really diverting
from discussing the family issues he brought up? That only made him
think she was hiding something. “I agree wholeheartedly, and I
will, but I also think it’s important for me to know what happened
to my family, Jackie, and it’s my belief that you know some things
and I think you’re intentionally withholding information from
me.”

“Carter, like I said, Lenora didn’t tell me
everything.”

Carter frowned, had good mind to throw his
phone at one of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that encased his
office. He took a breath and said, “Jackie, my life is falling
apart. If you know anything, please just tell me.”

Jacqueline sucked in a breath. “Carter, I’m
sorry about Lenora, okay. She was my sister, my family and so was
Jacob. I grieve just like you do,” she said, her voice unsteady and
trembling. “I wish there was something I could do to help you, but
I don’t know what more you want from me.”

Disappointed, Carter sighed and closed his
eyes tight. “I’m gonna go.”

“Carter—”

“I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

Carter leaned back in his chair and blew a
breath. He stared at the wedding photo on his desk, touching
Shayla’s face in the picture with his index finger. And he wondered
what she was doing at this precise moment. Was she home? Still
sleep, in the middle of their bed with her long curly hair spread
about his pillow? Was she in the kitchen, having breakfast? Was she
missing him? Was her body aching with a feverish, agonizing pain
for him the way his ached for her?

His thoughts were interrupted by taps at the
door.

“Yes?” he said, loud enough for whoever it
was on the opposite side of it could hear him.

He watched Julie open the door, a coffee cup
in her hand. She walked towards his desk, set the cup in front of
him and said, “Here you are, Sir.”

“Thank you, Julie.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, then looked at
him as he stared at his wedding photo, his mind seemed to be taken
away by it. “Is everything all right?”

“What makes you think something is
wrong?”

“Well, you’ve missed the eight-thirty
conference with Rock Hill, the team meeting at nine and,” Julie
said, looking at her watch. “It’s ten minutes to ten now and you
don’t look like you’re ready for the staff meeting just yet.”

“I’m ready for it,” Carter said, knowing he
wasn’t, but he was the type of person who could get ready upon the
start of the meeting and be as contributing as those who’d came
fully prepared.

“Okay. Still, I haven’t seen you eat a thing
in the last week, and you look stressed out.”

“Yeah, it’s been a stressful past few weeks
for me…having some personal issues I’m trying to deal with.”

“Oh,” Julie said with raised brows.

“It’s not something I want to discuss, but
I’m working through them. Thank you for your concern, though.”