Chapter 12
Twelve
Henry
My mother’s pretty face lights up when she sees me. She has that same look whenever she sees one of her kids. She’s always treated me as if I’m her full-blooded son. And I feel like she’s my mother. My birth mother could never take her place.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she says. “Join us. Anya’s frittata is almost ready.”
“Coffee, Mr. Henry?” Anya asks.
“Yes, please. Thanks, Anya.”
Anya pours me a mug of steaming black coffee and hands it to me. I inhale, letting the robust fragrance drift into my body. I love coffee. Always have. The stronger the better, and always black.
Anya pulls out a hot frittata from the oven. She’s a great cook, though not as good as my mom. But Mom lets Anya handle breakfast. She says she doesn’t have time for such trivial meals.
“Smells wonderful,” Mom says. “Garlic, onion, bacon, and cheese…” She inhales. “I think it’s a smoked Gouda.”
Anya smiles. “No one has a better nose than you, Miss Marjorie.”
“Aren’t you going to sit down?” Mom asks me.
I look at the table. “Where are the girls?”
“Sage and Dad had to go into work early to get some stuff done so they can take the rest of the weekend off for the wedding festivities,” Mom says. “And Angie’s not up yet.”
“Yes, I am.” Angie enters the kitchen with a yawn. She has a short bathrobe pulled over her tank and boxers.
Tabitha, though, looks amazing. Freshly showered, her hair done and bouncing along her shoulders. She’s wearing a miniskirt and a green T-shirt, and her nipples are poking against her clearly unlined bra.
Fuck, her nipples tasted good. So hard against my tongue, yet the texture was like silk.
And her pussy…
Sweetest I’ve ever fucked.
God, here comes the guilt…
Angie takes the steaming cup of coffee from Anya, inhales, her eyes closed, and then takes a cautious sip. She plunks down in a chair across from Tabitha. “You sleep okay, Tabs?”
“Yeah, great, thanks,” Tabitha replies. Her cheeks are slightly flushed. They have been since I walked into the room.
And her lips… I don’t know if she has anything on them, but they’re so perfectly pink and full.
Sweetest lips I’ve ever kissed.
God, I fucked up. Royally. But guilt aside, I can’t bring myself to regret it.
Angie yawns again. “Are you sitting down, Henry?”
I frown. “No, I just got back from a ride, so I need a shower. Then I should go to the office.”
“My wedding is tomorrow,” Angie whines. “And the rehearsal’s tonight.”
“Yeah, but that’s tonight,” I say.
She leans toward me. “Are you doing anything with Jason this afternoon?”
“We don’t have any plans.”
“He should be here by noonish,” Angie says. “I talked to him last night, and he was going to get an early start this morning after his rounds.”
Damn. Am I expected to show Jason around the ranch or whatever? It’s not like Angie hasn’t shown him everything already.
I take a long sip of coffee before responding. “We didn’t make any plans. And I’ve already been shoving off so much crap on Bradley lately because of…”
I don’t need to complete the response. They know what I’m talking about.
And when my mother looks at me with sympathy in her eyes, I kind of want to fall into a hole.
“I’m sure Bradley understands,” Mom says.
“Why should he understand, Mom? His dad is going through hell right now.”
“And you were covering for him when that started last year,” Mom says. “He doesn’t mind covering for you now when you’re going through something.”
Going through something…
It’s not like I want her to say it in front of Tabitha.
But what the hell? Tabitha knows. She was there.
So was Angie.
And the rest of them? They all know.
I fucking killed a man.
Yeah, he deserved it, but I took a life.
And that’s fucked up.
I sigh.
“You’ve got to eat something,” Mom says. “I know how much you love Anya’s frittata.”
“Okay, fine.” I sit down next to my mother, as far away from Tabitha as I can get.
Anya dishes up the frittata and adds a generous portion of hash browns to each plate. She distributes the plates and then refills our coffee and juice.
I take a bite, let the egg mixture slide over my tongue. It is delicious. I like tasting food again. For a while, after the shooting, everything tasted like cardboard.
Finally I’m enjoying food—when I actually feel hungry, which is seldom.
But this morning I am feeling hungry. Probably from the workout I got last night in the barn.
When was the last time I was with a woman?
Damn. It was the night I was in Westminster at that conference Bradley was supposed to go to. The second night I took Angie to dinner, and afterward, after she drove back to Boulder, I stopped in the hotel bar for a drink.
Met a woman.
Went to her room.
Fucked her silly for two hours.
Then returned to my own room.
That was the last time. And it was only days before I took a man’s life.