Secret Twins For My Ex’s SEAL Best Friend (Billionaire Silver Foxes’ Club)

15. Delia

fifteen

Delia

The light turned green, and I looked in my rearview mirror at Robert, in his car behind me, staring me down.

What does he think he’s doing? Why is he following me?

I knew he wanted to drive me home, but this seemed kind of extreme, even for him. I kept it up for a few more blocks, waiting to see if he would eventually turn a different way and leave, but he didn’t.

At one point, he waved at me, and I rolled my eyes. He was relentless. First, he calls me reckless, and then he follows me.

What does he want from me?

I thought he was going to stay with the creep and make sure he got arrested tonight.

Eventually, I gave up and pulled over at a gas station. I parked and watched him pull up next to me.

From his car, Robert smiled sheepishly, and I laid my head against the headrest in my car. He was right. I was emotional. And I shouldn’t drive. Sighing, I parked the car and stepped out.

I heard him unlock his doors, and I got into the passenger side, saying, “Look, if you’re just going to follow me the whole time, then fine, you can drive me.”

I buckled my seatbelt and looked over at Robert. He was suppressing a grin, I could tell. “Don’t look so happy about it, please.”

“Okay, sorry. So which direction are we going? I just want to get you there safely. I couldn’t let you leave and not know that you got home safely; it didn’t feel right.”

“But following me home is just fine in your book?”

“I realize the lapse in logic now, but at the time, yes, it seemed to make sense.”

I looked at him curiously. He seemed like he was being honest. He really didn’t see anything wrong with it.

“Okay. Well, my house is pretty far away. And it’s almost morning already. How about you just take me to your place?” I asked. “Is that okay? Do you have a guest room I could sleep in for a couple of hours? I’m really just so exhausted.”

“Of course, that’s perfectly fine,” he said, the last words I heard as I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up in the passenger seat of Robert’s car to his hand on my forehead, pushing my bangs back. I opened my eyes slowly, exhaustion like a weighted blanket over my body, and he quickly pulled his hand away. “Um,” he cleared his throat and gestured with his chin at the windshield, “we’re here.”

“Oh, sorry, I guess I fell asleep. I had a long day.”

“That’s okay, I understand,” he said, as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

When I stepped out of the car, my mouth dropped open, and I snapped my head to Robert, squealing, “ This is your place?”

He smiled a thin smile at me and nodded as he led me down the cobblestone pathway to his mansion. It really was a mansion, an enormous home with two balconies, a porch that spanned the front of it, and white bricks and red shutters. It was idealistic, a home out of the movies.

When we stepped in, a small alarm beeped, and he typed a set of numbers into the home screen. Walking in, I was confronted by the endless hardwood floors, shiny and waxy. “This is gorgeous,” I breathed.

How did Robert make this much money? What did he do?

“Thanks,” he said glibly, gesturing for me to follow him. I walked into a kitchen with a giant butcher block island in the middle of the room and dark brown shelves with bowls and cups across them. It was homey and expensive looking, all at once, somehow.

“Can I make you some tea? That’s what I do when I’m stressed.”

Taken a little aback by his telling me what he did for stress, I said, “Um, sure,” and scooted into a chair at the island.

“What kind?”

“I don’t really drink tea, I don’t know.”

“I’ll make you chamomile. It’s a safe choice,” he said, with a boyish smile. I’d seen him smile twice already now. It was more than I’d seen him smile the entire time I’d known him. “Thanks for letting me drive you.”

I shrugged. “Are you going to tell Jeremy?”

He turned toward the kettle and said quietly, “Probably not.”

He sounded regretful, and I thought, not for the first time, about our kiss. It was so passionate, but it seemed like so long ago. And it seemed like he regretted it.

But then why was he here with me?

A moment of silence passed between us; it coursed through like it was alive.

The kiss swirled in my mind, his hands in my hair, on my face, the pressure of his lips… “Does Jeremy know?” I asked, from the counter, fidgeting with my hair. I wasn’t sure if he knew what I meant, what I was asking. Does Jeremy know that you kissed me? That I kissed you back?

“No,” he said, pouring hot water from the kettle into a mug and pulling down a metal box of tea bags.

“Are you going to tell him?” I pressed.

“No,” he said simply, opening the box and pulling out a tea bag.

I chewed on my lip as I watched him steep my tea. I could tell this line of questioning was upsetting him. “Robert—”

“I won’t talk to Jeremy about you anymore if that really bothers you,” he blurted out, closing the tin and replacing it on the shelf it came from.

I sighed, partially from relief and partially because I felt like we were never going to talk about the kiss. “It does.”

“Why?”

“The last time you and Jeremy talked, it didn’t…end well for me.”

“Ah. The breakup.” The way he said it was almost sarcastic, and it seemed to stab at my ribs.

I winced. “Yes, the breakup. ”

“Look, I just, I need you to know that it wasn’t about you.”

“Really? Because it sounds like you thought I was using him to get ahead.”

“Okay, it was a little about you,” he chuckled a little, and I smiled despite myself. “But it was mostly about him. I thought he was throwing away his life. You have to understand. You were making a choice. He was making a mistake.”

“How?”

“Delia, a guy in his position can’t date his…mentees. His job is to guide you professionally. He could have been fired.” He set the mug in front of me and looked at me grimly.

“I really loved him.”

“I know. Now, I know. But still, it—”

“I get it.”

“No, I don’t think you do. Maybe you will when you’re older.”

I grimaced a little. When I’m older. Jeremy used to love saying that, too. When he would tell me he couldn’t come to my birthday dinner or kiss me goodbye at the car, I’d understand when I was older.

Well, I was a year older, and all I understood was that he wanted sex without the relationship. Sure, he wouldn’t say it like that, but that’s how it felt in the end.

Changing the subject, I said, “Sorry I couldn’t stay to file the police report. I just—” I shook my head “—I was afraid to see that guy awake again.”

“I understand,” he said quietly, leaning against the counter in front of me, his elbows on the marble. “I shouldn’t have asked that of you.”

“Why did you?”

“I don’t have a good excuse. I just—” he broke off, looking down, before his eyes met mine, and continued, “My late wife, Quinn, was murdered after work one day at a bar. I guess this situation is…bringing up feelings.” He winced at the word ‘feelings’ like it was a dirty word, and I would have smiled if it weren’t for the serious subject.

He tugged at my heartstrings with his serious expression, the yearning in his green eyes. It was the look of someone who longed to be understood. He looked drained but needy at the same time.

“I’m sorry, Robert. That’s…awful.”

I felt so bad for feeling like he was judging me. Of course he thought what I did was dangerous. Of course he wanted to protect me. He probably felt like if he could save me, it would be worth it.

“It was, yeah. Sometimes, though, it feels like it will never be over, like I’ll be forced to relive it over and over.”

He closed his eyes, and I wondered if he was reliving it right then, if his mind replayed the image of when he found out over and over.

I wanted to take that pain from him.

I wanted to reach out and touch his cheek.

Embarrassed by how badly I wanted to touch him, I twisted my lip into my cheek and sipped my hot tea, feeling the herby water coat my throat. He was right. It was surprisingly soothing.

And talking to him was soothing, too. It was hard to think about everything that had happened tonight when I was focused on Robert. “Who did it, if I can ask?”

“A regular at her work, someone she thought was a nice guy. I was deployed at the time. I thought—I think everyone thought it would have been me that…died early. No one was expecting that. I was going through something horrible every day overseas, and then to get that news was impossible to process. I had to come back to take care of everything and my daughter. I didn’t even realize how real it was for months. I was in a haze, taking care of funeral preparations and a new baby. Nothing made sense. But we made it through. She’s eleven now and so…normal. I can hardly believe it.”

“That’s more than my father ever would have done,” I said, raising my eyebrows over the mug as I took another sip. “He would have pretended he never got the message.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. You don’t really know what kind of man you’ll be until you’re faced with a tough situation.”

“No, my dad was a shell of a man after a few deployments. He was never there for us. He started coming back more and more infrequently, and then when he and my mom divorced, he stopped altogether. Just a card a couple of times a year. I don’t even know who he was outside of the Army. I wonder sometimes if he ever loved us or if the Army was an excuse.”

I chewed on my bottom lip and looked up at him, hoping he couldn’t see on my face the despair I felt internally. It was embarrassing talking about my daddy issues when his wife had been murdered. It was like bringing a knife to a gunfight in terms of trauma.

He shook his head. “I want to say something to fix that. The truth is, I knew plenty of men just like that in the Navy. Some people join just to run from who they really are. They want a stamp that tells the world they’re a good person without doing anything good. We were all so close that it was hard to begrudge them their choices, but I know it was hard on their families. Being good to your country doesn’t…” He trailed off for a moment, then reached out for one of my hands. He touched my fingertip with his fingertip, the briefest and smallest of touches, but it lit me up. “It doesn’t make someone a good father.”

I swallowed the rising lump in my throat. It was healing having someone who had been through the same situation as my father tell me that it wasn’t right, that he wasn’t good just because he served his country. He could still be a bad father.

“Anyway,” I cleared my throat and shook my head, smiling weakly, “I feel silly for bringing that up. You went through so much. My problems seem so small in comparison.”

“No, don’t say that,” Robert said, and he sounded so sincere that it choked me up all over again. The hand that was touching mine stretched out and linked fingers with mine, stroking my palm with his thumb. “Your problems are just as important as mine.”

It was such a small thing, but it made me feel so important. His touch made me feel so important, too, and I felt a stirring in my stomach.