One Last Shot (Cupid's Conquests) (8 page)

“
Sandy
, get me a gin and tonic and get Seth Martin on the phone. I want to know...” His voice trailed off when he glanced to the side and saw
Justin
standing at the end of the
sofa instead
of his girlfriend
.

“What happened to your face?”
Justin
asked.

“That bitch Shelby Stephens, that’s what.”

“You wanna try that again
?
”
Justin
stepped
closer, fingers twitching at his sides.

“She broke my fucking nose. What do you want me to call her? A fair
y
fucking princess?”

“Yeah, well it looks like that bitch kicked your ass. What the fuck happened?”

“I’m the one with a busted face.
Why don’t you ask her what happened?
” Billy crossed the room to a bar in the corner
a
nd poured a gin and tonic and a whisky.
Justin took in the damage—bands
of purple stretched beneath each
of his brother’s
eye
s
, fading into the swollen mess of his nose.

“She walked into the bank, hit you, and walked back out, for no other reason tha
n
to watch you bleed all over your
three hundred
dollar shirt?”

“Jesus,
Justin
, are you still hung up on her
?”
Billy
held the whisky out to
Justin
who made no attempt
to reach
for it. “Suit yourself,” he said, setting the high ball on the granite coffee table then dropping back onto the sofa.
“It’s been, what?
Eight, ten
years? Move on.”

“This isn’t about me.”

“No? Then why are you here? After everything we did to protect you from her, the first thing you do when you get
injured
is com
e
running back home to her. What a fuckin’ waste
,
” Billy mumbled then choked on his drink, coughing as he tried to swallow past a swollen nose. He wiped the fresh trail of blood creeping toward his upper lip.

“Protect me?
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
” The fire in his veins
was
momentarily tempered by curiosity.

“You really don’t know?”

Justin
crossed his arms and gave a slow shake of his head.

“You
were talking about switching schools, staying
local
when you had a full ride to USC, just so you could stay closer to her. I know she was your first and all, but Dad
wasn’t about to let you throw away your career for a piece of ass.
”

“What did he do?”
Justin
already knew the answer. The sick truth of it coiled in his gut, but he needed to hear it out loud.

“Dad paid her to
stay away from you.
Told her h
e’d pay for any school
in the country if she left you the hell alone.
She could never afford a real education on her own.
He was pissed as fuck when she went to
L
.
A
.
,
I’ll tell you that. B
ut from all your
bellyaching and moping that first year, he knew she hadn’t gone back on her word.”

Justin had
spent
a decade
wondering what he’d done wro
ng, why she’d changed her mind, but of all the possible scenarios, h
e’d never imagined
his own family would
stoop to this level.

“Why did
n’t
you tell me?”

“Better to have you mad
at
her th
a
n them I guess.”
Billy
grabbed the icepack, settling it against his face with a wince.
He
stretched for his tumbler, but
Justin
snatched it off the coffee table and flung it across the room.
Shards exploded against the wall and skittered across the tile floor.

“Goddamn it, Billy! You’re my brother! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me!”
Justin
glared, waiting for any excuse to leap across the table and finish what
Shelby
had started.

Billy held his gaze
for a moment
, but finally leaned forward
and
dropped the ice pack
. He
shrugged off his arrogance
and
look
ed
his brother in the eye with
openness and honesty for probably the first time in their lives. “I was in college already. I didn’t have time for your high school crush and
D
ad thought
he was
doing the right thing. I thought they were wasting a fuck-load of my inheritance on a barkeep’s daughter, but nobody gave a shit about my opinion. I figured the second you got to college and had girls throwing themselves at you, you’d forget this town even existed. I went back to school in the fall and didn’t give it another thought.”

“And that’s why you were an asshole today?”

Billy walked to the bar and poured another drink,
Justin
following behind him.
“
I did her a favor.
The last thing this town needs is another bar to keep its doors open. She need
s
to take that
hundred and fifty thousand dollar business degree my inheritance paid for,
and do something worthwhile
.” Billy turned, surprised by how close
Justin
was. “And yet I’m the asshole for turning down her loan.”

“No. You’re just an asshole.”
Justin
swung, burying his fist in his brother’s
gut
. Billy doubled-over, his drink dropped to the floor
with him
follow
ing right
after, knees buckling, gasping for air.

Justin
stalked to his tr
uck,
only half-satisfied. There were a hell of a lot more answers left to find.

Chapter
F
ive

A toxic fog of the day’s events swirled through
Shelby
’s head. The Mustang rumbled
down
the deserted streets on little more than autopilot. Eyes fixed straight ahead, she willfully ignored the garish sale sign in her front yard as she pulled into the driveway. She didn’t regret her decision
to sell
, she rarely
regretted anything
, but she didn’t h
ave the strength to think
about
the sale
tonight.
Without so much as turning on a light, she dropped onto the couch and into a restless sleep.

The next morning, she
stared across the expanse of lawn
,
building up her nerve. It had been a year and a half since she’d set foot on this ground. Her chest
ached
just knowing what l
ay
out there, fifty yards from her
bumper
. “Chicken shit,” she muttered and forced herself out of the
Mustang
and across the
cemetery
lawn, a bottle of Jack Daniels in hand.

Her throat constricted as she stared down at the two graves. Her
f
ather’s dated eighteen months ago
;
her mother’s nearly
six
teen
years. She dropped to her knees between
them
, jerked the top off the whisky and took a long draw.

“Bottled courage, right, Dad?” Her eyes traced the letters on his marker until they were
nothing but
a meaningless jumble of lines and curves, all that was left of the man who’d dedicated his entire life to her.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come back.”
S
he’d offered
more than once
, but he’d assured
her
everything was under control, like
he always had
. And she’d believed
him.
Eight years on her own
and four states away,
but
she
’d
still needed to be the little girl who believed her dad was invincible
. I
f he said it would work out, it would. Just like it had every other time he’d promised her. Something deep inside
her
had known the truth, that he was sicker than he admitted, but another part of her
said
to let him keep his pride. If it helped him to carry this last burden and keep it from her, she was all too willing to let him have it. She knew it was wrong, but the push and pull inside each of them
always came to
a stalemate of him running the bar in
Texas
and her running the world in
California
.
In the end,
all it bought them was an illusion of comfort and
a
mountain of debts.

“I’ll make it work.” She took one more
swig of
whisky and wiped her eyes. “I’ve got it under control,” she said and tipped the bottle over his grave, letting the amber liquid gurgle out of the bottle and splash on his headstone. “I love you, Dad
dy
.”

She kissed her fingertips and brushed them across the stone then did the same to her mother’s and walked away.

#

She made it through the day, back stiff,
muscles
tense,
looking over her shoulder for
Seth with another arrest warrant or
Justin
wanting
another talk
, but the only unwelcome visitor was a courier from the bank calling the note on
the house due
and payable in thirty days.
She’d inherited the house, but the loan was in a dead man’s name
. If she didn’t pay it off or refinance, the house was theirs
.
She shoved
the notice
in a drawer in her office and poured more drinks
.

At the end of the night, she and John locked up and she made her bleary-eyed way home. Her stomach fluttered the closer she got to her house, heart speeding as she turned onto her street, eyes searching for a familiar figure sitting on her porch, but the spotlight shon
e
empty over her stairs. The only thing waiting was the
sale
sign and an empty house.

Yesterday was a blur, already fading in her mind’s eye.
Justin had found the ticket and had wanted to talk. How he felt about that, she couldn’t tell.
She’d expected
him
to come by the bar today or at least be waiting here tonight, which meant he was probably pissed and she didn’t blame him.

She locked the door
and walked up the st
airs
in the dark
, making her way b
y
memory to the bedroom she’d grown up in.
She shed her clothes and boots in the closet, grabbed a t-shirt from the back, and dropped onto her bed. Any hope she’d had of a deep, dreamless sleep went to hell when she took her first breath
. T
he scent of
J
ay
’s cologne
was still on her pillow. It
snak
ed
its way through her, bringing back every
sensation
from the night they’d shared.

She’d
feared it was the last time they’d ever be together
,
and the next morning
she’d feared it wasn’t.
T
onight she was content to be lost in the memor
y
. Breathing his scent deeper, she let go of the last three days and let herself remember nothing but the feel of his fingertips on the curve of her hip. She mimicked his movements with her own hand, sliding
it
up her side to caress her breast
. N
ipple already constrict
ed
into a tight bud,
she
rolled it between her fingers the way he’d done with his teeth.

Her other hand moved lower, across the plane of her stomach and beneath the top of her panties. His words whispered through her mind—how much he’d missed her, how he’d still wake to the feel of her in his arms, how her name was always on the tip of his tongue.