What Happens After Dark (29 page)

“Bree?”

Shit.
“Yes, Mom?” She stepped into the shadows of her room and didn’t turn on the light.

Instead her mom turned it on for her as she followed Bree inside. “Oh my God, Brianna, what happened?”

Okay, no, she wouldn’t say that. “Stupid me, it was raining and I yanked open the car door and hit myself on the corner of it.” It hadn’t rained all night, and the car door would have hit her body, not her forehead, but whatever.

“You silly girl.” Her mom put out a hand, but stopped short of touching Bree. “You should be more careful.”

Her mother believed. Her mother had always believed what-ever she was told when Bree was growing up. She was too old to start seeing the truth now.

“I’ll get you some frozen peas. They’ll help stop the bruising.”

Bree didn’t tell her mother it was already too late. The wounds she had would never heal.

Later, as she lay in her bed, her mother in hers, Bree held the peas to her forehead until they started to melt, and ice water trickled into her hair, down her throat, and soaked the pillow.

Or maybe that was just her foolish tears.

LUKE WAS CALLING HER PHONE. SHE KNEW IF SHE DIDN’T ANSWER it, he’d never call again. He would be lost to her forever. Yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t speak. As if she were still knotted to the hook in his ceiling.

“Bree, wake up.”

Someone was shaking her. But she couldn’t see. Where was Luke?

“Bree, your cell phone’s ringing. Wake up.”

Bree cracked one eyelid. The sun streaming across the bed was so bright it hurt. It wasn’t Tuesday night anymore, but Wednesday morning. Her cell phone rang shrilly in her mother’s hand. Bree had never used musical tones, just that annoyingly incessant ring.

“It’s the second time she’s called, Bree. Your boss.”

“Oh.” Bree grabbed the phone, her head swimming with the sudden movement. “Sorry. Thanks.” She pushed the button. “Hello?”

“Hi, Bree, it’s Erin. I just wanted to check how you’re doing today.”

Bree gingerly touched her forehead. It throbbed. “I’m fine.” Then she remembered to add, “Thanks.”

Her mother still stood in the doorway, but as Bree finally sat up in the bed, she disappeared down the hall toward the front of the house.

“Did you need me to come in to work?” She hadn’t set the alarm, and she figured Erin and Dominic would think it was weird if she came to work the day after she’d said her father died.

“No, no, we don’t need you. It was just that Dominic told me about your dad, and I wanted to say how sorry I am.”

“Thanks. He isn’t suffering anymore.” At least not on earth, though maybe somewhere down below, where it was very, very hot.

“Dominic and I would like to attend the service.”

Shit. This was it. “We’re not having a service.”

“Oh,” was all Erin said.

“We don’t have any relatives in the area, and Mom didn’t want to put herself through all that. We’re having him cremated.” And his urn was the ass-end of Dumbo the elephant.
Really
couldn’t have a memorial service with Dumbo on the altar.

“Of course, I understand.” Erin’s tone said she didn’t understand at all, but she was too gracious to say anything. “Perhaps we can send flowers.”

“Thanks, but that’s really not necessary.” She felt her face heating with embarrassment.

“Oh. Well.” Erin was used to the niceties of normal families, not a dysfunctional one like Bree’s. “If there’s anything we can do . . .”

“Thanks a lot. My mom will appreciate your concern.”

“You take all the time you need to help your mother through.”

Bree grimaced and was glad Erin couldn’t see it. “I’ll be in tomorrow for that meeting with Mr. Marbury.”

Erin gasped. “Oh, Bree, that can wait. I’ll call him and cancel.”

“No,” she said too sharply, then backed off a bit. “He’s just got a few questions so he can get ready for the audit. I don’t want to hold that up.”

“For that matter, I’m sure we can move the audit out, too, to give you more time to prepare.”

“No.” This time she managed not to sound as harsh.
She
was prepared. It was Marbury who wasn’t. She didn’t want him coming back at her and saying any issues were her fault because she hadn’t explained it properly to him. “I need to get this done, Erin. I’m fine, I can handle it.”

“Bree, I really feel you’re rushing things. You need time.”

Time for what? Almost all evidence of her father’s existence had been wiped clean from the house. Her mother had sold his car a couple of months ago because they knew he’d never be driving again. There was only one thing left. Out at the back of the garden. The dollhouse.

“Please, Erin, let me do this. I’ll take time afterward.” She felt her voice rising, her pulse gathering speed. “Please don’t call Marbury.”

“All right. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I know you need to do it your way.” Just like Erin had to do it her way after Jay died. “What time is the meeting?”

“Nine. But I don’t need you to be there with me.” She wanted to handle this herself, and she didn’t want Erin to see Marbury in action. Although with the meeting being at DKG, he probably would be better than his usual asshole self.

“Whatever you need to do, Bree.”

“Was everything fine with the check run?”

“Yes. Between Rachel and I, we got it all loaded, approved, and printed.”

With Rachel doing AP and AR input, now the check run, maybe they didn’t need Bree at all. It was another reason she needed to get back there. To prove her worth.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Erin said. “Unless you change your mind later and want me to cancel Marbury.”

“I won’t.”

After she said good-bye, she realized her hands were shaking.

“You’re still wearing the same clothes you went out in last night.” Her mother was in the doorway again, as if she’d been just outside listening.

God. She wasn’t even wearing her bra. It was in the backseat of Luke’s car. Still in bed, she tugged the blanket up. “I was tired.”

“That bruise is bad.”

Damn. What would everyone say at work? She’d have to come up with something better than saying she’d whacked herself with a car door.

“I guess the peas didn’t work.” Her mother stared at the package puddled on the carpet.

“Makeup will cover it,” Bree said confidently. “Could you hand me my robe, please?” Despite being in her clothes, she covered up, but once she’d sidled by her mother and closed the bathroom door to shower, the mirror told a totally different story. Her forehead was several shades of purple in a four-inch circle above her eyebrow, with a crimson slash in the center where she’d connected with the edge of the sideboard.

Uh, no. Makeup wasn’t going to cover that.

 

 

“JESUS H. CHRIST.” THAT EVENING, LUKE WAS DISGUSTED. EVEN IN the relative darkness of his car, he could see the bruise on her forehead, a deep purple and already turning color. He’d done that to her. “You told your mother you ran into a door?”

“She accosted me the moment I walked in last night. I couldn’t come up with anything else on the spur of the moment.”

He literally felt sickened. The explanation sounded like something an abused wife told her friends and coworkers. But Mrs. Mason hadn’t batted an eyelash, even calling Bree a silly girl, and let the man responsible for the injury leave with her daughter on his arm.

Yeah, he was sick to the pit of his fucking stomach. There was something wrong. Because the mother displayed signs of being totally oblivious to warning signals. She could have ignored them when Bree was too young to take care of herself.

“Where are we going?” Bree said as if she sensed they needed an immediate topic change.

“My place. I’m going to make you dinner.” He’d never thought of it before, but he needed something that didn’t require their usual roles. He stabbed a very ungentle finger in her direction. “And we’re not fucking later. If we do anything, we’ll make love.” He couldn’t take the chance of hurting her again.

“Yes, Master.”

With the title, she put them squarely back in the dom–sub standing. It was where she was comfortable despite what had happened last night. Curling her legs beneath her, she turned against the seat belt and leaned into him, her breath sweet, her heat arcing across the console between them. “But you do need to fuck me, Master. You know I get all uppity and obstreperous and you have to put me in my place.”

“I am not hurting you tonight,” he insisted.

“You never hurt me, Master.” She stroked his arm. “Punishment isn’t hurting, because I deserve it.” Then she lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “I want it that way. I need it that way. And you love giving it to me that way.”

Fuck. Last night was too good. Until she’d lost her balance. He’d lost his equilibrium, too. He wanted it back. He wanted the woman she was the night they went bowling. But that woman wasn’t Bree Mason; she was only a figment. He almost wished he’d never started wanting more intimacy from her, when what they did was just hot sex, when it was uncomplicated, when he knew her next phone call would lead to a deliciously kinky encounter the memory of which he could whack off to in his morning shower. He believed she’d been happier then.

The lights were blazing in his house when he pulled into his driveway. He hadn’t remembered leaving them on when he left this morning, that’s how dazed and fucked-up he’d been.

Bree was out of the car and clinging to his arm before he could get to her door to open it. “Take me out tonight, Master. I’m not wearing panties. You can fuck me anywhere you want.”

His blood heated in his veins with images of pushing her down on a table in front of fifteen men, lifting her skirt, and claiming her with a hot fuck while they watched.

That’s what she did to him. Made him want crazy things until he couldn’t see straight and he just did them. And loved them. She was right about that. Yet there was an edge of desperation in her words, her voice.
That’s
what was wrong with all this now. She wasn’t supposed to be desperate. It was supposed to fun, but she was using kinky sex to mask the bad things in her life.

“I’m not fucking you tonight,” he repeated sternly as they climbed the front steps. “Making love is all you get.” But would that make a fucking bit of difference now? He fit the key in the lock, but the deadbolt was already open. What the hell?

The door burst inward. “Dad, I need to talk to you about Stephie and doing some sort of intervention.” Keira clapped her mouth shut the moment her eyes lighted on Bree. She wore a letter jacket in the green and gold school colors, and her hair, as dark as his, was pulled back in a ponytail high on her head. Her lips parted and stayed that way as she stared at Bree. More specifically, at the bruise on Bree’s forehead.

Fuck. He closed his eyes a moment. Had he hung the plant back on the hook, thrown out the ruined scarves, and put the blindfold back in his bedroom? Fuck, fuck. He couldn’t remember. “You didn’t tell me you were coming home, honey.”

Keira didn’t make a snide rejoinder. “Sorry. I should have. But I was just so pissed about Stephie.”

“Let’s go inside and you can tell me.” He still had hold of Bree’s arm, but she was cemented like a block of stone to the front stoop. “Bree, I want to introduce you to my daughter. This is Keira.”

It would have happened sometime, but he’d have preferred the first meeting to come without the bruise. Now, after the initial shock, he remembered getting rid of the scarves and blindfold, though the plant was still on the floor. Whatever.

“It’s nice to meet you I should go home,” Bree said, her voice a thin whisper, the two sentences running together without a pause, as if they were one.

“Don’t be silly. I’m the one butting into my dad’s party.” Keira had never been one to begrudge him a new life after the divorce. She wasn’t clingy, resenting the women he dated. He just hadn’t brought many home for her to meet.

“No,” Bree said more strongly. “I really do need to get home. My mother isn’t feeling well.”

“But . . .” Keira trailed off. Obviously Bree’s mother had been well enough for her to come in the first place, so good old mom was just an excuse.

Bree stood there, her face whiter than normal, drained of color, the bruise stark.

Okay, she didn’t want to meet his daughter. It wasn’t great timing. She wasn’t wearing underwear, which was definitely an uncomfortable feeling in front of Keira. “I’ll take you home, Bree.”

“You don’t have to rush, Dad. We can talk about Stephie when you get back. Or in the morning.”

Stephie. Intervention. He remembered what Keira had said when she opened the door. He could also hear the urgency in her voice, if not in her words.