Safe Love (Love Brothers #4) (2 page)

The dark room pressed against Margot’s skin, filling every
sense she possessed with its gloomy, slightly musty-smelling omnipresence. She
hated it but given the alternative, she’d have to take it. She put both her
hands on the desk’s cool, wood surface in front of her and took long, deep
breaths. It took everything she had not to let the threatening tears spill down
her cheeks. But that would be too close to admitting weakness. And that was
something she couldn’t do, not now.

Not anymore.

She had something she needed to prove today, to a man she
had become unhealthily obsessed with, ever since laying eyes on him sitting
next to his girlfriend—now his fiancée, she corrected herself with a grimace.
Cursing, she balled her hands into fists and then released them with a long
exhale.

The candlelight flickered when her breath hit it, sending
the long shadows thrown by the heavy furniture in her office dancing across the
walls. The smell of wax sent a jolt of longing from her buzzy brain to the tips
of her stiletto-encased toes. Her leg twitched. She forced it to still.

Long, deep, cleansing, yoga breaths, she said to herself as
she tried to take her own advice, only to find herself choking on them as her
pulse raced at the sight of the time on her old fashioned grandfather clock.
After failing in her attempt to drop into a semi meditative state to pray, she
sighed and slumped down into her seat.

“You’re a faker,” her ex-husband had said as he threw his
clothes into one of the just-unpacked suitcases. “You wouldn’t know a real relationship
if it stepped on you. You’re too busy analyzing every damn thing, always
seeking weaknesses you can exploit.”

Bastard
.

She squeezed her eyes shut, making dots shimmer behind her
lids and forcing away memories of him—the man who’d been her willing submissive
for five years—all in the name of research of course until he went and found
some stupid, jock girlfriend and negated their marriage vows with one insertion
of his stupid, cheating dick. She’d told him to his face that he’d been posing
for her for years anyway—that she didn’t give a shit who he fucked or how once
he’d just broken the news that he didn’t need her bonds, her candle wax, her
blindfolds or cuffs to get off anymore.

She
had freed him, he declared.
She
made him
feel like a real man and not a non-stop psycho-sexual science experiment. Not
Margot, his Mistress, his wife, but…

She
.

But Margot did care.

Very much so.

So much so she’d had to dismiss her remaining clients and
check herself into a rehab clinic for a month to dry out. Turns out that a
steady diet of red wine and Xanax did not really lend itself to ‘emotional
healing.’ Something she’d stated more or less verbatim to countless victims.
Because victims were what they had all been. She’d had no business counseling
anyone who’d suffered real loss because she’d never suffered one—until the
moment her tall, handsome, athletic, sexy, submissive spouse had looked her in
the face and said “I don’t love you anymore. And my girlfriend is pregnant.”

“Fucker.” She winced and glanced upwards. “Sorry,” she
muttered as she clasped her now trembling hands in her lap, noting how pale her
knees looked in the candlelight and coming within a split second of grabbing
her phone and canceling her first session with one mysterious, brooding,
suffering and needy Antony Love. The meeting with his daughter AliceLynn had
been, in a word, frustrating. In three: frustrating beyond belief. Margot gave
a brief thought to the fact that she may very well not have it anymore.

But she knew what her problem was, and he was due at her
doorway any second now.

“You are pathetic,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her
aching forehead. She stomped over to the closet and yanked it open, observing
herself in the full-length mirror. In heels she towered at nearly six foot
three, the perfect height for looking Mr. Love straight in his chocolate brown
eyes. She wore her thick, blonde hair down, tumbling around her shoulders. The
simple, cream, silk camisole brought out the light brown hue of her summer-tanned
skin. The black leather skirt hit her at mid-thigh, highlighting the legs she
worked hard to make highlight-able.

“You’re just doing this because he reminds you of Gavin you
know.” She spoke directly into her lightly made-up face. “Oh, God,” she
whispered, still staring in the mirror. “Dear God, give me the strength to help
this man. And to not fall for him like I did for Gavin—that shit-eating,
limp-dicked, useless fucker of an ex-husband. Pardon my language. Amen.”

She whirled from the vision of herself, irrationally furious
at Antony for putting her in this position.

Antony Ian Love
—she wished she’d never crashed her
cart into Lindsay’s at that damn grocery store now. This was crazy. This was a
Bad Plan capital ‘B’
and
‘P.’ She flopped onto the couch near her
bookshelf and kicked her heels off, wishing she had a bottle of wine, or a
dozen beers.

The day Gavin Hamilton had walked his hot self into the
psychology grad office, clutching the flier she’d posted that morning asking
for ‘study participants’ for her doctoral thesis, she’d looked up and nearly
choked on her own spit at the sight of his masculine perfection. He’d filled
out her first level of privacy forms, then the second, and then, when she’d
handed him the Level Three Clearance form, he’d brushed her hand with his
fingers, nearly making her fall to the floor.

“Uh, I don’t think this is a good fit for you,” she’d said,
jumping away from him.

“Oh, I think it’s a perfect fit actually,” he’d claimed with
a grin.

Three years later she had her PhD and had explored pretty
much every aspect of the BDSM lifestyle with Gavin, while observing six other
couples in varying degrees of Dom and sub, Master and slave. The day of her
graduation Gavin had gone down on one knee at the foot of the stage she was
exiting with her degree and had asked her to marry him, to the delight of the
huge crowd.

She should have gone with her gut and said ‘No, thanks.’ But
she’d been caught up, believing herself above it all. Then somewhere along the
way she’d fallen deeply for him. Probably right about the same time he’d
started fucking Kelly, the stupid soccer coach.

She got up and flipped on both lamps, dispelling the gloom
and the atmosphere she’d thought to create. It wasn’t a good idea coming at
Antony full bore. What did she honestly hope to accomplish, other than to
entertain a sick fantasy of reclaiming her ‘power’ over a man like him?

No. He didn’t deserve to be manipulated.

She grabbed the shoes she’d kicked off and tossed them into
the closet, sticking her bare arms into a sweater as she blew the candles out
and waved her hands, hoping to dispel the obvious scent. The last thing either
of them needed was unnecessary tension.

Antony’s mother had hired her to help him transition into a
more mature relationship with his teenage daughter. Not to cure him of all his
issues via the sort of fetish that she sensed he required—since at that first
meeting it had been as if he’d worn a sign that flashed neon ‘Please top me
Margot!’

She groaned and dropped into her desk chair, buttoning the
sweater and sliding her feet into the practical, clunky but comfortable shoes
she kept under the desk. By the time the light knock on the door sounded, she
was ready.

“Come on in,” she called a little too loudly, trying to
decide if she should stand, sit, or what. She went with
sit
. Clearing
her throat, she said, “Antony? That you?”

The familiar creak of the door’s hinges made her heart race.
Even as she met Antony’s gaze she knew she’d never be able to carry through
with it. He was too tempting, and the raw need that fairly shimmered in the air
over his head caused sweat to pool in her armpits and her knees to shimmy under
the desk. He stood, looking pissed off with his tucked in his jeans pockets,
glaring at her.

“Well, I’m here. Now what?”

She gulped and got to her feet, noting the way he blinked
and how his nostrils flared. He lifted his chin and squared his impossibly
broad shoulders as if realizing that the
something
between them demanded
that he ignore it.

Good for you, she thought. At least one of us is going to be
strong in the face of this thing.

“Have a seat,” she said in her softest therapy voice. “Now,
we talk.”

“I don’t wanna talk, least of all with you.”

“Well, your mother paid me in advance for four sessions and
I am not cheap. So I suggest you park the stubborn at the door and join me in
here, at least for a bit. I won’t…” she paused, mentally smacking herself,
“bite.”

A smile teased the corners of his full lips, and then
retreated into a scowl. “Whatever,” he grunted then flopped into one of the
large leather chairs on the other side of her desk. “Waste of my parents’
money, I assure you.” He crossed his arms, looking for all the world like a
recalcitrant three-year-old.

She smiled, and then as she realized she was still standing
and gawking at him, sat down fast. After fiddling with a few papers, she leaned
forward, her fingers threaded together on the desk in front of her. “So, tell
me about Crystal.”

Antony snorted and looked up at the office ceiling. “No. I
don’t want to talk about her.”

“Okay, tell me about AliceLynn.”

“No.”

“Well then, tell me about your business.”

“My…what?”

“Your business. The garage. How did you get that started?”

“You aren’t gonna trick me into talking about my dead wife
or my teenaged daughter.”

She spread her hands out, thinking that perhaps this was
going to be more difficult than what she’d bargained for, and smiled at him.
His matching grin lit up the room, making her grit her teeth to keep from
leaping across the desk and pinning him to the couch, blindfolding him and
doing exactly the thing that he probably had no idea he needed.

He was a hot mess.

Problem was: She had a weakness for hot mess men. Frankly,
they were catnip to her.

And look how that turned out for you, Margot. Stop it.
Talk to him, listen, nod your head, take his mother’s money, and send him on
his grumpy, emotionally constipated way.

He sighed again, dropped his gaze to hers and his jaw
softened ever so softly.

“This is…kinda weird.” His low, gravelly voice went straight
to her heart.

“You have no idea how much,” she said, standing again and
moving around the large desk while he watched, as if he’d expected her to do
that very thing.

Antony stared into the depths of his third, or maybe fourth,
cup of coffee. The early tendrils of dawn light had only just reached the edges
of the woods bordering his property but his brain had forced him up and out of
bed hours before. He sipped, cursing his life for the millionth time that
morning. It was his usual wake-up routine but today it seemed tinged with
something fresh and new—something he didn’t want, but that held an edge of
promise his lizard brain had latched onto and held tight.

He sighed and pondered a quick trip back to his bedroom,
figuring that jacking off for the third time in a twelve-hour period might
work.

But then again, it might not.

Damn woman. Damn stupid too-short skirt and too-long legs.
Damn blue eyes and full lipped smile and her hands…and voice.

He shuddered, glaring down at the fresh tent in his shorts.

It wasn’t as if anything actually happened. She’d moseyed
around to the side of her desk and leaned there, giving him a full view of her
perfectly long legs ending in those frigging frumpy, stupid, clunky shoes and
he’d relaxed for the first time in what felt like years. The realization of
that had left him teetering on the edge of something familiar.

“Tell me about your mama,” she’d said.

He’d gotten to his feet, fury and a scary rush of lust
pinging his nerve endings. “I’m not tellin’ you anything. I’m leaving. Thanks
anyway.”

He’d stood there a solid minute, listening to his heart beat
and contemplating his options. The woman threw the sort of sexual vibe he’d
once loved—the sort that had drawn him to Crystal. But something about Margot
Hamilton was so very, very different from Crystal that he’d had no answer for
it so he’d turned around, walked out the door, gotten into his car and driven
straight to Rosie’s house.

Rosie, the woman he’d been with for all intents and purposes
since her Marine husband, and Antony’s best friend Paul had been obliterated by
a bomb in some God-forsaken desert. He’d helped when her son Jeffrey was born,
and ever since had propped her up in all the ways he knew how. They hadn’t been
physically intimate however, until recently. And that had sent him over the
edge, or brought him back from one, he wasn’t quite sure which it was.

Once in her driveway he hadn’t gone inside. Instead, he’d
jammed the truck into reverse and headed home, his head a muddled mess and his
body so revved it actually hurt. Throwing himself into mucking out the horse’s
stalls, he’d avoided thinking about anything for an hour or so. By the time
he’d done everything possible in the barn and the yard, he’d had no choice but
to sit, sweaty and filthy, sipping a beer and wishing he could just get drunk
enough to pass out.

The arrival of his youngest brother, Aiden, at the house
meant he had an excuse to take out some of his frustration by being a dickhead
for a while. To his credit, Aiden had taken it for a few minutes, and then had
stomped out, declaring he needed to do some “apartment hunting.”

“No, don’t … go,” Antony had whispered, but Aiden was
already gone, squealing out onto the street behind the wheel of Antony’s truck.
And honestly, he didn’t blame the kid. He’d run off from his own self, if that
had been possible.

Antony returned to his present reality, staring down at the
empty cup, and then out into the yard his dead wife had maintained so lovingly
and carefully for the few brief years they’d been allowed by fate or the
Almighty to have together. He’d let her many flower gardens get overgrown years
ago, leaving them that way as if in a big old ‘up yours’ to the universe.

Lame, he thought as he got slowly to his feet and stretched,
noting that for the first time in as long as he could remember he didn’t feel
antsy or irritated. Getting laid must be helping. His phone buzzed across the
table and he grinned at the sight of a text message from Rosie:

Hey. You ok? Thought I saw your truck in the drive last
night but Jeff was being a pain and when I looked again, it was gone.

He replied quickly, already formulating how he would spend
his day—reviving Crystal’s flower gardens.
Yeah. Sorry. Had to do some
thinking after the first therapy session. Thought some quality time with you
would help but decided I wouldn’t subject you to me.

You’re allowed to subject you to me anytime.

Thanks. Gonna do some work outside. Dinner tonight?

Yes. Aiden working in the garage today?

Antony stopped, confused for a split second by her question.
His face heated up and a strange sort of irrational jealousy spiked in his
brain. He shook his head to clear it. He and Rosie were engaged now. There was
no more reason to stress over his brother muscling in on the woman—if there
ever had been.

Yeah
. He replied finally.
He’s the man in charge
over there today. Hope I don’t regret it.

He waited, but she never responded to that so he shoved
aside the lingering, illogical anxiety over her question about his youngest
brother, cooked and ate some eggs without really tasting them and then headed
outdoors, determined to dispel a bit of his near-constant list of things to
worry about with a few hours of honest yard work. It took exactly three and a
half hours to clear all the various flower beds and Crystal’s vegetable garden.
That brought him up to noon, sweat-soaked and filled with the kind of pride in
accomplishment he hadn’t experienced in years.

After he’d tossed the last of the weedy debris from the
former garden nearest the now barely-used patio across the fence, he stopped to
admire the impressive pile of green and brown he’d accumulated. He jumped and
cursed when someone touched his shoulder

“Calm down bro,” Dominic said. He had a pair of work gloves
and a six pack of Antony’s favorite of their brews—the crisp, delicious Kolsch
style ale Dom had named ‘Eros’, which had offended their mother ever so
slightly. “I heard you were out here slavin’ away, risking old man heart attack
so…” He held up the sixer. Antony took it.

“Thanks,” he said, using his utility knife to pop one open
and draining half in one gulp.

“All righty then,” Dom muttered under his breath before
pulling on his gloves and jumping into the cleanup fray.

Another hour or so went by as the two men worked side by
side mostly in silence, years of doing similar work for their father standing
them in good stead for the task. By two o’clock Antony’s stomach was rumbling
and he felt light-headed. He leaned on the trowel he’d been using to scrape the
last of the nearly twelve years worth of neglect out of the beds lining the
long gravel drive, smiling at the sight of his other two brothers, Kieran and
Aiden, hauling huge wheelbarrow loads of dead plants and old leaves towards the
woods. He barely remembered them showing up. Something in his chest loosened at
that moment, noting how they kept trying to dump each other’s barrow loads of
stuff like a couple of little kids.

Dom appeared at the front door, brandishing a pitcher of
water and some cups. Antony nodded at him and trudged up the front lawn. This
had been long overdue, and he was proud of himself for finally tackling it—but
at the same time ashamed for letting it get into such a poor state. The same
way he’d let his relationship with his own daughter decline.

Thoughts of AliceLynn and how ornery she’d been lately made
his brain shut down. He squared his shoulders and was opening his mouth to
thank Dominic for his help when a loud horn beeped from behind him.

The brewery van pulled up behind the cars already arrayed in
the drive. The doors opened and Rosie emerged, bearing a picnic basket and a
huge smile. His heart raced as the ‘you’re a lucky bastard’ mantra rolled
through his head. He changed direction and headed for the van to help his
mother out, and then took the basket from his fiancée.

“Heard you’d finally gotten off your sorry lazy butt and
were doing something about this yard,” Lindsay said, patting Dominic’s cheek
and accepting a glass of ice water from him.

“Yeah, well…” he said. His throat closed up when he saw the
next two vehicles pull in behind the van. His daughter’s little car stopped and
she climbed out, sunglasses on and ball cap pulled down low. Behind that, the
stupid goddamned Audi that had shoved Margot firmly into his universe the first
day they’d met, stopped, and she unfolded herself from behind the wheel.

He entertained a brief moment of memory of the day she’d
shown up at his parents’ house as the Lindsay-declared ‘family therapist.’ Her
Audi—and he hated Audi’s for the over grown, pretentious VW’s that they
were—had stalled out on her so he’d tinkered and fixed it while she’d watched
making him comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.

“Hey,” she called. “Thanks for inviting me.” She spoke to
Lindsay but when her gaze met Antony’s he nearly dropped the basket and ran for
the woods. This was not good. He didn’t understand it, couldn’t get his head
around it and did not care for it one bit. The woman strode over to AliceLynn
and gave her a quick squeeze, said something Antony couldn’t hear and then
turned with a smile. Antony tried to speak but found he could not. Rosie
elbowed him aside and pulled AliceLynn by the hand towards the house, leaving
Margot and Antony to stare at each other.

“You left sort of suddenly yesterday,” she said, her soft
voice making his entire body go on high alert. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“You…you….you didn’t,” he managed.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she said, letting her gaze flicker
down his dirty, sweaty frame then over to the small house. “But AliceLynn asked
me to come. So…” She shrugged. “You guys are making me break a lot of rules.”

Antony tried to reply. He felt frozen; mesmerized in a way
he’d never been by a woman. Finally, Dom broke the tension by snagging the
basket Antony still had clutched to his chest.

“Come on around back, sexy lady shrink,” he said, winking at
Margot and making Antony’s hackles rise in an outrageously inappropriate
proportion to the situation. “Glad you could join us.”

His brother disappeared around the house. Antony could hear
his brothers’ and mother’s voices combining in a way that gave him a modicum of
peace.

“Boy,” his father’s gravelly voice barked from behind him.

“Sir,” he said, turning to face the man who was for all
intents and purposes his mirror image except for about five inches of height
and twenty-some years.

“Stop gawping and take this.” Anton held out a case of the
Eros. “Nice to see you again, m’dear.”

Margot smiled, her face flushing prettily when Anton took
her hand and kissed it. Antony put his arm around his father’s shoulders.
“Thanks for coming out, Daddy.”

“Well, your mama made me,” he muttered, unwilling to admit
anything resembling goodwill, at least on the surface.

“I’m sure she did.” Antony turned to Margot who seemed to be
stuck in place. “C’mon around therapy-lady. I’m willing to bet there’s a feast
set up.”

There was indeed and Antony allowed his brothers to take
over the conversation as they ate the combined catered food from Brantley’s and
his mother’s additions, and consumed the Love Brewing beers. He sat, content,
his arm draped around Rosie’s chair, realizing that he truly had missed this
sort of gathering at his own house for a lot of years. He looked up at the deep
blue of the late summer sky, willing away the dark mood he sensed lurking
around the edges of his consciousness.

Rosie leaned into him and he pulled her close, burying his
nose in her hair. Her palm was warm against the inside of his thigh, making him
feel settled and normal, and all sorts of things he hadn’t felt for so long
that he marveled at them now. The chatter went on around him for a bit longer
until Dom got up and stretched, claiming he wanted to get this ‘stupid project’
done in the next few hours because he had a ‘hot date.’

Lindsay regarded him as she sipped her water. “I don’t
suppose it’s with who I hope.”

“Diana Brantley’s married, last I heard,” Dom said, his gaze
flickering to the horizon for a moment.

“Divorced,” Rosie chirped as she got up to clear the glass
topped outdoor table that hadn’t been used in the better part of a decade.
Antony rose to help her but she shoved him down. “Relax. Have another beer then
get on back to work. I’ve gotta pick Jeffrey up in a few. I promised him a
movie.” She blew a lock of her dark, curly hair off her forehead. “I can help,
you know…with this…later.” She lifted her chin to indicate the yard and its
many, now cleared out, gardens. Antony smiled and yanked her down onto his lap
so he could kiss her, setting off a cacophony of wolf-whistles from the peanut
gallery.

When she got up, Rosie looked at Aiden. Antony frowned but
berated himself for imagining things. He sat with a beer in hand and his legs
propped up on the table, alone but for Margot who had said very little during
the impromptu picnic meal. She was at the far end of the table from him, her
head tilted slightly, regarding him as if he were something under a microscope.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he said before
finishing off his beer and settling the bottle on the table. She blinked and
Antony cursed himself for being a jerk for no reason.

“Yes, well, I guess you’re right about that.” She got up,
and he would swear that his mouth watered at the sight of her. All sorts of
unwelcome, wholly erotic visions shot across his consciousness. Images of her,
of him, of them, in situations and positions he’d long ago given up imagining
or wanting.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said under her breath, shaking
her head and sending tendrils of honey blond hair bouncing around her flushed
face. As she passed by him on her way into the house, something made him reach
out and grab her hand. It was something he thanked himself for later, but at
that moment it made him cringe.