The Good Father (22 page)

Brett was damaged goods. He’d never convince Ella he was as damaged as he believed he was, but that wasn’t the point. He believed it. And so, in any way that it counted, that made it true.

It didn’t change the fact that just being near him made her want to be connected to him in every way possible. She drove. He watched. So close if she leaned her head back, it would rest against his thigh...

Eventually he took the seat next to her, his unfinished beer left behind in the back of the boat as he looked out into the night.

Tears sprang to Ella’s eyes, seeing him there. Farther away from her.

He was such a good man. Deserving of love. Needing love.

And alone.

No. She swiped an arm across her face, getting hair out of her way—and tears—at the same time. She couldn’t help loving him, but she could control where she let her thoughts take her.

She could control the choices she made.

For his sake, as well as hers, she had to let him go. To block any empathy she might feel. Any desire to help.

All hope.

Hurting her hurt him. She understood that now.

And somewhere in that knowledge, she’d have to find some peace.

* * *

B
RETT TOLD HIMSELF
the boat ride was doing the trick. He was relaxing. Having a seat, he wanted to think he could just fall asleep out there.

Anything was better than going up to the cabin.

Where his best friend was having sex with his wife. And then sleeping cuddled up naked beside her.

Where his own wife—ex-wife—was lying in bed just feet away from him. They had never, not once, spent the night in the same place without spending it in the same bed together.

He’d barely slept the night before, and he’d been shut in a room with Jeff. But tonight? With Ella sleeping all alone? He was supposed to just curl up on the couch and relax? He couldn’t do it.

The boat had stopped.

He sat up. Glanced around. They were in the middle of the lagoon.

“I’m sorry.” Ella was standing by the crank that would lower the anchor. “I thought you were asleep and was just going to let you rest.”

She stood there, her hands raised as though she didn’t know what to do with them. Lower the crank. Drive.

Touch him?

God help him, he’d been reliving the touch of her fingers on his skin since they’d arrived at the cabin last night.

Hell, who was he kidding? He’d never stopped having fantasies about the woman.

He’d known he couldn’t be married to her. Had no doubts on that one. Even now his resolve didn’t waver.

But making love had never even come close to bringing out violence in him...

“I’ll just get us going again and head to shore,” she said, leaving the anchor. She turned, and the light of the moon gave him a bounteous gift.

A clear view of two things. Ella’s lips. And her nipples showing against her sweater where her wrap had dropped open.

She was chewing on her lower lip. All the sign he really needed.

But the hard points of her nipples were added fuel for his raging fire.

“Don’t do that with your lips. It makes me want to kiss you.” She’d wanted openness.

“Brett.” She chewed again, staring at him. Ella never had played coy with him. She knew he knew she wanted him.

Just as he knew she now knew about him, too.

“Would it be so awful, El?” He heard the craziness come out of his mouth. She was still standing closer to the crank than the steering wheel. She hadn’t made up her mind to go back, or she’d have walked away from that crank.

“It would just make it that much harder to get over you a second time.”

“Unless you don’t have to.” He was known for his instant solutions. But why in the hell hadn’t he thought of this one before?

With a stumble, Ella fell into one of the back seats. “What do you mean by that?”

He heard the hope in her voice. And rushed to quell it before this got out of hand, and everything was ruined.

“We don’t have to be married, or live together, to have sex.”

She didn’t say anything for so long, he wasn’t sure what to think.

She’d changed. In some ways he didn’t like.

For instance, this ability she’d developed to close herself off from him. He wanted that for her. Understood that it was necessary. Didn’t mean he had to like it.

“You think you could be satisfied with that? Sex without commitment?”

He couldn’t tell a damn thing about what she was thinking.

“I think that sleeping with you would be better than not sleeping with you.”

His penis was hard. His heart pounding. “I’m not seeing anyone,” he continued when she remained silent. “Jeff tells me you aren’t, either. It’s not unheard of, you know. Two people who can’t live together, but still care about each other, being attracted to each other, seeking each other out for physical company now and then.”

Leaving her in the morning was a given. He had full confidence on that score. Had proved his resolve to himself—and to her—enough to know that it was rock solid. It was the next hour he was concerned about.

“I’m asking seriously, Brett. Can we really have sex and walk away without scalding ourselves?”

She wanted it as badly as he did. The fact that she wasn’t driving them the hell out of there was proof of that. That peculiar little tremor in her voice said so more quietly. It was that tremor that called him to his feet, to cross the carpeted expanse between them. Keeping his hands to his sides, he leaned over and placed his lips against hers. The choice was hers. She could grab hold. Or step back.

Ella opened her mouth. The boat lurched.

And Brett didn’t think of anything but getting them naked.

* * *

T
HE SPLASHING SOUND
woke Ella from her doze. She hadn’t been deeply enough asleep to lose awareness of the fact that she only had a few hours left in Brett’s arms.

But the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

There it was again. That splash. She blinked against the darkness.

And that was when she remembered... “The crank!”

Jumping up from the bed of clothes on the floor of the boat, tripping over them, she rushed to lower the anchor. And saw that they’d docked against the edge of the lagoon that led into the ocean. A few feet more to the right and they’d have floated out to sea.

“I’d say fate was smiling on us tonight.” Brett’s low tones, soft and sexy and relaxed behind her, had her instantly wanting him all over again.

“Or you could say that we were just incredibly stupid,” she whispered, holding on to the crank for dear life.

She no longer felt like the Ella Ackerman she’d been before meeting Brett again. She was hot and desperate and willing to do anything to keep him with her.

In the dark.

As long as it stayed dark.

Which would only be another couple hours based on the moon’s position in the sky.

“Can you go again? Or are you too sore?” He was rubbing his penis between her legs from behind.

She couldn’t answer him. Because her mind was screaming no. So she nodded. Felt Brett nudge against her. His kisses on the back of her neck.

And when he offered himself to her, she took him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

M
ORNING CAME.
I
T
always did.

Brett hoped the weekend hangover didn’t kill them all. No one had even come close to getting drunk. It was the emotions that had flowed too freely that might do them all in.

He and Ella had made sure to return to their respective sleeping places by dawn.

Chloe got up first and made breakfast while Ella and Brett got up separately, avoiding each other.

Ella cleaned up the cabin. And then showered.

Brett packed the cars. He’d shower later. After a long, hard swim in his pool.

As planned, Chloe said goodbye to Jeff—with a long hug and trembling lips—then buckled her son into the car seat in the back of Ella’s vehicle, before climbing aboard herself.

Ella pulled away. She didn’t glance back.

He couldn’t tell if she was crying.

“Let’s go get drunk.” Jeff had made the suggestion before. In another lifetime. They’d been kids then.

“Can you stay over at my place?”

“Yeah.”

So Sunday was taken care of, then.

Monday he would go back to being a man.

* * *

A
WEEK PASSED
with no word from Jeff. As promised.

And no word from Brett, either. He hadn’t come right out and said he was serious about them sleeping together on anything more than a one-time basis. But Ella knew he was.

She’d certainly known what she was doing.

And like a masochist, she’d hurt herself again.

At least this time, she knew she’d survive. She hadn’t lost her heart to Brett all over again.

How could she have? He’d never given it back the first time.

By Saturday, she was able to smile again without feeling as if she was going to cry. She’d finally accepted a dinner date with Jason Everly, the pediatric pulmonary specialist on her ward. Chloe wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but Ella figured it might help take her mind off Brett.

Turned out that Jason was the type of guy who wasn’t opposed to going to bed on the first date.

He tried his damnedest to get Ella to go home with him. And she was tempted. Just to get Brett out of her system.

But in the end, she turned him down.

Maybe the next time.

Jason asked her out again for the following weekend, accepting a chaste kiss good-night, so she figured there really would be a next time.

No word from Jeff meant there was no need to be in touch with Brett. There’d been a case brought forward to the High Risk team earlier that week, but it hadn’t involved Ella. She’d read the report. Assumed Brett had, too. Wondered what he thought about the date rape, death threat and ultimate arrest of the victim’s boyfriend.

And then tried not to think about him at all.

The task was made a little more difficult by the fact that Chloe was at the Stand six days a week now. In counseling. And setting up a permanent menu and kitchen-duty schedule. Ella could see that Chloe was getting stronger every day.

Enough that Ella believed her when she said she wasn’t in contact with Jeff at all. On Friday night, two weeks after their weekend getaway, they went to Uncle Bob’s for dinner with Cody.

Chloe looked over at Ella with her burger poised halfway to her mouth. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Dink!” Cody squealed and kicked his legs, reaching forward, and Ella reached for his sippy cup without breaking focus.

“For bringing me here. I’ll never forget everything you’ve done for me.”

Ella shrugged. “You and Jeff, you’re my life. I couldn’t sit by and watch as Jeff slowly unraveled.”

“He still might, you know.” Chloe’s eyes took on a sheen of tears. “We have no way of knowing if he’s getting help. He could just be sitting there, waiting for me to call and say I’m coming home.”

“Didn’t you two talk at all when we were at the cabin?”

It was the first time she’d asked her the question. Some things weren’t her business. Unless Chloe needed to talk about them.

“Yeah, we talked. I told him what I thought. He told me what he thought...”

“Which was?”

“That while he’d been out of line, I was overreacting. He wants us to go to marital counseling together. I told him I’d think about it. That first I had to have this time to myself to figure out what’s going on inside of me with all of this.”

“And have you found any clarity?”

She asked only because she’d been noticing the difference in her sister-in-law.

“Yes.” Chloe gave up pretending to eat. “I know that Jeff pushed me into that doorjamb on purpose. And that’s all I need to know to be certain that I can’t go back there, can’t take Cody back there, until he’s able to admit what he did and get some help.”

“Are you going to tell him that?”

Cody stuffed his last piece of hot dog into his mouth. Chloe watched her son and then leaned on the table, looking at Ella. “I told Sara that I’m going to tell him. I’m just not sure I’m ready yet. I need to do it in person. And I need to be certain that when I see him, I can stand strong.”

“You left him two Sundays ago.”

With a sad smile Chloe nodded. “I know. That was the turning point for me,” she said. “I knew in my heart that I couldn’t go home. And I found out that I was strong enough to do what had to be done.”

Chloe was going to be all right.

Ella smiled. Squeezed her sister-in-law’s hand. Told her she could stay as long as she liked, that she’d always be there for her, no matter what, and prayed that her brother would get his shit together.

* * *

J
EFF CALLED
B
RETT
four times over those same two weeks. In Boston. In Atlanta. And twice at home. They didn’t talk long. Only long enough for Brett to know that Jeff was slowly losing hope. He was drinking more.

And had mentioned a woman in his office on a couple occasions.

He’d somehow convinced himself, in spite of Brett’s warnings, that once he and Chloe slept together, she would come home.

With another two weeks of their lives gone, with no word from her, Jeff was running out of explanations for his wife’s behavior.

Brett was a bit surprised himself. He’d expected Chloe to leave with Ella that day from the cabin. But he’d also thought she’d be back home in Palm Desert within the week.

He hadn’t called Ella. Because he was pretty much obsessed with thoughts of her. He thought about her on the plane. In the airport. On the road. And even at the boardroom table, when a gesture, a sound, a smell or some other woman’s hair reminded him of her. He couldn’t trust himself to hold on to his resolve feeling that way. And to do anything else would be opening them both up to the nightmare of the past.

His mother seemed to be more absent than usual, as well. Used to getting a text or email at least once a day, he’d gone three in a row with no communication.

But when he’d finally called her, leaving a message insisting that she let him know she was okay, he received an immediate reply. Reminding him that she’d been in his house to see to the cleaners the day before.