Chapter Twenty-Nine
“R eady.” Q uiet, more reserved than before I’d gone to get my bag, his voice brushed across my heart.
Without another word, he led us to the heavy door between his garage space and his living space, but he didn’t immediately unarm the alarm.
He picked Nash up and pointed to the alarm, then slowly spoke to him. “Would you like to help?”
Nash nodded.
“Press one, seven, one, seven, then enter.”
Nash carefully followed his directions and the alarm turned off.
“Good job.” Preston smiled at Nash as he set him down.
Nash rushed through the door, eager to get on with it.
I glanced at Preston. “You gave a six-year-old your alarm code.”
Without making eye contact, Preston nodded. “I also gave it to his mother.” He stepped in to the garage and held the door.
For two seconds I stood there, dumbfounded, as Nash crawled into the back seat of my car.
Preston glanced at me. “Other than your and your son’s safety, there is nothing I would prioritize over you.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m repeating it.”
“Why?”
“Because you questioned it.”
A half laugh with no humor escaped as I stepped into the garage. “I question a lot of things.”
He closed the door behind me. Then he threw me. “Why are you still single?”
“I…” I crossed my arms. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“But you didn’t.” He set the alarm for the area of the warehouse we’d just vacated.
“Why are you single?” I boldly asked.
“I choose to be.”
My heart sank. I was an idiot for asking. “Because?”
His eyes, a color that was never one color but all colors combined, met mine. “Because I thought I was waiting for something.”
My heart on a pendulum swung in the opposite direction. “And now you’re not?”
Perfectly still, direct, and so intense I felt it in my very soul, he stared at me. “No, I’m not waiting anymore.”
“For better or worse.” The obnoxious words left my mouth before I could stop them, and I regretted every one of them.
He dropped his gaze and moved toward my car. “Yes.”
Shit. “I’m sorry.”
He opened the passenger door for me, but he didn’t look up. “No need to apologize.” He scanned the garage as if there was more to see than three walls, a giant garage door, a motorcycle covered with a cloth tarp and a side door without a window.
I glanced at my piece-of-shit old Jeep that’d seen way more miles than car washes. “You’re driving my car? Without the keys?”
“Yes. No.”
Jesus. “Where are the keys?” I’d forgotten to grab them when I’d been shuffled out of my house last night.
“Above the driver-side visor.”
Glad he knew. Trying to remember if I’d ever ridden shotgun in my own damn car, I got in the passenger seat and glanced at the tarp. “What kind of bike?”
“A Hayabusa.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“A Suzuki racing bike.” He shut my door.
I’d never seen him drive anything other than SUVs. His demeanor, his mannerisms, they were so controlled, I both could and couldn’t picture him on a racing bike.
Preston got behind the wheel, lowered the visor, caught the keys, and started my car all in one quick and sure continuous movement. Pulling his phone out, he swept his finger across it and the garage door opened.
“Fancy,” I muttered.
“Convenient,” he countered.
Nash leaned forward and tapped Preston on the shoulder.
I turned in my seat. Buckle up, sweet boy. You can talk to Nash later when he’s not driving.
Nash looked from Preston to me. Turn around, Mommy. I need to ask Preston something.
“Oh my God.” I faced forward. “I have a four-foot-nothing mini-me. He’s asking where we’re going, isn’t he?”
With the almost smile on his face, he turned to look at Nash.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him give Nash both his undivided attention and his eyes and my heart melted. He nodded once, then a few seconds later nodded again before facing forward and putting my car in reverse.
“Was I right?”
Preston glanced at me before backing out of his garage. “He is as impatient as his mother.”
I fought a smile. “Well, he does live with me. Some things are bound to rub off.”
His muscles straining the short sleeves of his shirt, Preston paused to use his cell phone to close the garage door, then pulled onto the street. “A lot has rubbed off. All of it good.”
My heart swung higher on the pendulum. “Preston Vos, are you complimenting me?”
“Your son is well behaved, well adjusted, intelligent, spirited, and fun to be around. You are his sole care provider. I’m stating fact.”
The pendulum swung so high, I was terrified of it coming back down. “Well, Ty is a big part of his life, and I have babysitters. I can’t take all the credit.”
“I stand by my assessment.”
I looked out my window as we drove through an industrial part of Miami I never knew existed before last night. “You assess a lot of things, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
With no intonation in his voice, I couldn’t tell if I was treading on thin ice. “Have you always?”
He was silent for a long moment.
I backtracked. “Never mind.”
He answered the question. “As long as I can remember. Yes.”
“How far back?”
“Six.”
Nash’s age. My heart took a hit. And then my mind was reeling, thinking of all the things that would make a child resort to that kind of behavior. But then I remembered seven years ago. “When I first met you, you didn’t seem to. At least, not as much, or not that I noticed.”
“Circumstances mold a person.”
Yes, they did. Before I could respond, he changed the subject.
“Are you going to consider Luna’s offer?”
Not expecting the question, anxiety flared. My house had been my mother’s, and she’d raised me and Ty there. Admittedly, it was a dump, but it was her dump and her greatest pride, and she’d passed it down to me thinking I’d keep it.
“I don’t have a simple answer for that.” I was sentimental. “Who is that Christensen guy? Why would he want to buy my house and give me another one?”
“He’s a developer. High-rise luxury condos mostly, but he has the means to fix up and flip your property.”
I sighed. “I wish he could fix up my house and I could stay in it.”
“That could be arranged.”
I let out a half snort, half laugh. “I don’t have the money for that.”
“Your brother wouldn’t let you pay for it. Neither would I,” he said quietly.
Affronted, I scowled at him. “I’m not taking Ty’s money any more than I’m taking charity from you, André or that Christensen guy.” I wasn’t going to be indebted to any of them.
“The land your house sits on is worth quite a bit. A deal with Christensen wouldn’t be charity.”
“And flipping my family home isn’t going to happen.” No way.
Preston was quiet a minute as he drove northeast away from the industrial area. “So you wouldn’t consider moving?”
“No.” I stubbornly crossed my arms, knowing I was probably shooting myself in the foot, but I suddenly felt overwhelmed.
By everything.
I’d seen all sorts of shit come into the ER. I’d helped patch up Ty more times than I could count, and I’d done some sketchy shit for him, including helping some woman right after she’d given birth because Ty’s old boss wouldn’t take the woman to the hospital, or she didn’t want to go. Either way, I’d been involved in more shit than I cared to admit to. But stitching up a bullet wound in the back of a rented SUV for some barely legal girl Preston may or may not have been involved with right before a shootout happened in front of my house was suddenly hitting me. Hard.
And I wanted answers. “That girl last night, who was she to you?” I didn’t buy that he didn’t know who she was. I didn’t care that it was hypocritical of me to judge when I didn’t recognize her either. But once Talon had said it, it was obvious. The girl and her partying were tabloid fodder. And if I was being honest, knowing he’d either carried her young-ass bikini self to safety or at least helped her made me jealous on a level I didn’t want to think about.
As if reading my sudden change in mood, Preston glanced at me. “I did not sleep with her.”
“I didn’t ask that,” I snapped.
Turning onto a bridge that took us from the mainland to the barrier island, he frowned. “If circumstances were different, I still would not have slept with her.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I whisper yelled. “I didn’t ask if you fucked her.”
His eyes, more green than any other color today, reflected gold specks in the early morning sun. “You’re jealous.”
I turned back to the window. “I’m not your keeper. I don’t care who you fuck.” Lie.
“I care.”
“Bullshit,” I scoffed. “I know what you do. Ty told me.” The second I said the words, I regretted them. Fucking Ty. I loved my brother, but in that moment, I hated him for the shit he’d planted in my head about Preston all those years ago. I knew he’d done it on purpose to keep me away from him, and I’d never believed it. But now I was questioning every damn thing in my life, and nothing was sacred.
Preston’s voice turned dangerously quiet. “What did he tell you?”
“All sorts of shit.” My mother was right. Once you lied, they kept piling on like a second skin you couldn’t shed even if you wanted to.
“If that’s true, then why did you undress in front of me last night?”
Belatedly, I glanced over my shoulder.
“He’s asleep. What did Ty tell you?”
Sure enough, my son, the one thing I’d done right in life, was sound asleep with his head against the window. Ever since he was a baby, car rides knocked him out. And ever since the first time I’d held him in my arms, a single look at him grounded me.
He was what was important.
Not this conversation.
Inhaling, I tried to take it down a notch. “Forget it.”
“Tell me,” he demanded.
Fuck. Fuck. “He didn’t give me details,” I admitted.
“ What did he say?”
Startled, I turned to look at him.
I’d never seen Preston angry. I’d never even heard him swear. Ty said he did, all the time, but around me, he never had. And right now, his fists gripping the steering wheel, his jaw set, his glare lethal, I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever see Preston Vos mad.
“He said to stay away from you, that he’d seen the shit you did with women.” I did air quotes around the word seen . “He said you made women cry, but I never believed it.” I still didn’t.
“When was this?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know why I lied.
“When we were active duty?”
I wanted out of this conversation. “Yeah.”
“Your brother’s never seen me with a woman.”
“I….” Shock stilled me, and I stared at him. “Never?”
“Not someone I slept with.”
I didn’t have a response for that. But thinking about him sleeping with other women was a blow to my heart. Not that I was na?ve enough to think he hadn’t been with other women or that he’d been celibate for seven damn years. No way. He had experience. A lot. He knew exactly how to touch me last night to make me fall the fuck apart. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
Apparently he did.
“Before I was in your brother’s unit, he saw me on two separate nights escort two different women out of the barracks, both upset, both for the same reason.”
Ty never mention that part. “What was that reason?”
“Not what, who. It was a long time ago. I did nothing to those women.”
I tried to take my foot out of my mouth. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply.
He tipped his chin and turned off the MacArthur Causeway onto one of Miami Beach’s private islands in Biscayne Bay. Punching a code in, he waited until the gate for the community opened, then he drove through. At the end of the street, he pulled in front of another gate and entered the same code as his warehouse.
My nerves went into overdrive. “Where are we?”
“My house,” he clipped.