The Pleasure's All Mine (42 page)

Pierce said, “Raven.” She looked up at him. “What’s done is done, we can deal with anything.”

Did he say
we
? Her heart soared. Pierce would forgive her. He just had to!

“Can we compromise a little?” Eric asked. “I need you, Mom. Now more than ever. Maybe we could move here with you in Chicago, so you can finish mothering me.”

“And me?” Marie asked, sending a hopeful glance to Raven.

After what seemed an eternity, Raven held her arms out to her daughter-in-law. “Welcome to the family.”

Moments later, Pierce cleared his throat. Raven turned to him and walked into his open arms, beckoning Eric and Marie into the group hug.

“We’re going to have another wedding,” Marie said softly. “A
real
one this time.” She flicked a gaze at Eric when she said it. “This time my father and Pierce can walk me down the aisle.”

Pierce’s grin matched the flash of happiness in his eyes. “I’d be honored. Thank you.”

“And Mom can walk
me
down the aisle.”

“Eric, that’s not how it’s done.”

“It is now.” He frowned at the space widening between Raven and Pierce and said, “And speaking of weddings…”

Eric sat next to Marie on his bed, relieved that the conversation about his marriage and the baby was over. Even if it hadn’t gone so smoothly, at least it was over.

Now if he could only get his mom and Pierce down the aisle, and get Marie to stop pushing him toward having the surgery, life would be as good as it could get.

He walked to the window, braced himself against the ledge. Marie was riding him and it was reaching the point where he didn’t know what to do. He tried to think about having the surgery, he really did, but the old fears came crashing down on him.

“Dr. Taylor called again. Why haven’t you called her back about your latest scans?” she asked.

Oh, man! How to smooth that one over?
“Baby, I just haven’t had time.”

“Why haven’t you rescheduled the trip to Baltimore?”

Eric whipped around to face her, glad that he hadn’t mentioned the fact that the headaches and nosebleeds had gotten worse. “With everything that’s been going on, there hasn’t been time. You know that I have responsibilities to my job.”

“That
bull
doesn’t fly with me.”

Eric winced.

“It’s like the only reason you’re embracing the possibility of death is because it shows that you’re mature or something.” She threw her hands up, storming away. “Hell, I don’t know what’s going through your damn mind.”

Eric’s eyes widened at her use of profanity. “Marie, there are some things in life that are beyond our control.”

“
This
is in your control.”

“Didn’t we have this discussion already?”

“And we need to have it again and again until you get it through your thick head that things are different now.”

“Not for me.” He turned to look out his window.

“Eric!”

Marie fumed, shoulders heaved as she let out a long, slow breath. “You’re giving up before even getting started. Eric, I don’t want you to leave me.” Tears flowed faster than she could wipe them away as she stepped to him, forcing him to face her. “I’m gonna fight like hell to keep you here.” She slapped his chest with her palm. “I’m gonna fight like hell, Eric! You’ve been man enough to do everything else in your life. To marry me and make a baby with me. If you love me, you’ll do what it takes to stay with me. Be man enough to
fight
to stick around so you can be a husband to me and a father to your child.”

❤ ❤ ❤

In the master bedroom, Raven stormed, “He’s my son, Pierce!”

“Raven, you’re not being reasonable.”

Her eyes flashed with anger. “My son got
married!
For something that important you
should
have called me.”

“Should I have left it on your voicemail?” He walked toward her. “You weren’t speaking to me, remember?

She turned her back to him.

“And I’m not the only one who keeps
secrets,
” he said, angered that she would turn away at such a crucial point. “That whole Castle thing. What’s that about? Are you bi-sexual?”

“The woman I slept with last night said no,” she answered, then blinked as that statement echoed around them. “That didn’t come out so well, did it?”

Pierce shook his head, then walked away to lean back on the bed, waiting for something—anything that could clear up a near two-day absence without a call, text—anything!

“It didn’t compare to being with you,” she said softly. “I learned a valuable lesson. It’s not who you sleep with, it’s who you love. If I were in love with a woman, then things would be different. But I’ve never been attracted to a woman. Hell, before you, I had never had much of an attraction toward a man. That’s what worried me. I wasn’t sure what was right for me.” She sat on the edge of the bed.

“And I didn’t…” She swallowed hard, trying to come up with the words to explain things. “I wasn’t able to…” She pointed to her mouth, then did a quick gesture to her nether regions.

Pierce couldn’t hold back the twitch that showed he was holding back a smile.

“She didn’t seem to mind.”

“And I don’t mind either,” he finally said. “My issue, Raven, is that you could have told me all of this. You didn’t trust me enough.”

Raven lowered her gaze to the plush comforter spread out over her king-sized bed. She then told him everything that had transpired with Lady Ann.

Pierce moved forward, lifting her gaze to meet his. “I get that you had to understand if you were bisexual, but my issue here is trust. There has to be trust between us for a relationship to last.”

She nodded and released a long, slow breath. Moving away from him, she went to stand in front of the window.

For a man who was on the traditional side of the swing, he thought he had taken her little “not quite a tryst” pretty well. Would he be enough—just him? Would she constantly remember that “almost” experience at the Castle when they made love? Or, for that matter, would he? That thought alone unsettled him.

“And for some reason, all that time when you weren’t speaking to me, you were waiting for
me
to come to my senses,” he whispered. “When the truth of the matter is, I’m not the one who’d lost them.”

She spun around so fast her hair hit her in the eye. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, Raven Ripley, that you don’t know when it’s okay to trust people. You don’t know when to let go. You fight about
everything
that’s not within your control. You don’t know when to relax and flow with life. Even in court, you didn’t realize you were fighting a battle the children didn’t want you to win.”

She glared at him. “You just don’t want anyone else in my life right now.”

“I resent that!” Anger radiated from him like heat from a fire. “The difference is that I can be objective.”

“That’s right! That’s because it’s not
your
family. You don’t know what it’s like to have these issues. You don’t have a family.” As silence hung heavy in the room, Raven closed her eyes. Her hands balled into fists as she let them fall by her sides.

Pierce glared at her, fury ripping through him.

“Pierce, I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” he growled, still trying to get his bearings. “I know you’re in shock right now, but there’s only so much abuse I will take. You push me away at every opportunity.” He sighed hard, closing his eyes against his own pain. “I get it, Raven. I get it. I’ll
never
be enough for you. You only think of yourself—
your
needs. How everything affects
you.
” Pierce’s gaze swept the room. “Even that whole Castle…adventure. Not once did you consider that I might understand your need to at least try being intimate with a woman. Especially with how you’d been raised. I can understand and deal with anything that’s presented to me. This secrecy shit…there’s no place for it in our relationship. Not when we’ve gotten past the majority of our issues.”

She gasped, her eyes filling with tears.

“But
this
, Raven? This bitterness, this mean-spiritedness, I won’t take it.”

She moved toward him, only for him to step back.

“Anytime I say or do something that contradicts you, you go on the attack. You get mean. I don’t know what part of your soul that comes from, but it’s ugly. I’m going to leave before you say something else you can’t take back, or I respond with something that I’ll regret. I’m not that type of man. I’m a real man, Raven, one who loves you with all of my being.”

She moved toward him again, but he held out his hands to stop her.

“And you don’t want me to be a part of this family? Fine! You don’t want to compromise? I got that. It’s your way or no way.” Fury flashed in his eyes. “But I don’t work that way, Raven. I don’t want some half-ass relationship with a woman who’s hell-bent on pushing around everything and everyone in her life. I want a woman who trusts me and one I can trust. When you’re ready to include me in
every
aspect of your life, give me a call.” He whipped on his jacket and went to the door. “Until then, I’m going back to New York!”

Three weeks later

As he sat in his office, Pierce replayed his trip to Chicago again. How could a woman proclaim love out of the same mouth she used to cut him so deep he didn’t know he was bleeding? He didn’t need her to remind him that he didn’t have a family. He was on the cusp of having a family, Ava, Eric, her niece and nephew—a real family—and she snatched it back every chance she could.

Maybe he had moved too fast with Raven, but if they had kept treading lightly, they would never get anywhere.

He pressed the intercom. “Steve, get in here!”

“Why the gruff tone?”

“We’ve got work to do.”

“Okay, first off,” Steve began, hovering near the door, “if you’re going to be a grizzly all day, then you need to take your ass right back home.”

“I’m not growling.”

“Yes, you are. And I can only assume it has something to do with Raven, so I won’t ask.”

Pierce glared. “Good, because it’s none of your business any damn way!”

“All right. On that note, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Steve answered as he backed away from the doorway.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah! I’m not staying here for you to push me around.”

After a moment, Pierce sighed and took a deep breath. “All right.”

“So what happened this time?”

“There is no
this time
; it’s the same. It didn’t work out, it looks like it will
never
work out, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

“Oookay. So put that anger into something productive, something that has a future—like our new company.”

Pierce sighed, steepling his fingers under his chin. “All right, I’m game.”

“DeMarco and SOTE have signed on.”

“That’s good.”

“Sancita and Ehryck are in. Grace said she’s gonna stick it out with Simeon.”

“Damn! I was counting on putting her with DeMarco.”

“Got anybody else in mind?” Steve perched on the edge of his desk.

“I thought of Araceli, but her voice isn’t strong enough to stand up to Ehryck’s. He’d trample right over her; a duet would be laughable. What about Tamara?”

“No go. She’s breaking contract and going with Clive.”

“Shit!” Pierce paced his office. “What about the last round of screamers?”

“Netted us a few hopefuls in the voice department.”

Pierce perked up a little.

“But some of them can’t dance a lick.” Steve shook his head in amazement. “And the few that could make the cut don’t have any personality.”

“And the bad news is…?”

Steve moved and slipped into the chair across from Pierce. “Personality can’t be learned.”

“Exactly. So what are we going to do?”

“Take the time, groom what we have and launch big.”

“But that won’t happen by my deadline.” Pierce thought about his promise to his former employees. He couldn’t just hire people back and have them sit around and wait while he got his act together. He had to have the machine in place so they could become the oil that made the engine run smoothly. Pierce closed his eyes, racking his brain for something, anything that could help.

Steve remained silent.

Then something that Eric had said flashed across Pierce’s mind: “She saw you on that reality show. She admired you.”
Reality show. Some of the contestants had already gone through basic training
. His eyes flew open. “Did you keep the files on everyone from
Popular
?”

Steve nodded. “Why?”

“Let’s take a look at the contestants who didn’t make it. They should be hungry for a deal. Even if it starts with being on a soundtrack.”