To Love a Man (8 page)

“Carter again?” he ventured after a long, uncomfortable pause.

Ellie busied herself as much as she could getting dressed, trying not to look at him, not really wanting to give him an opportunity to broach the subject, but then he went right ahead and did it himself. “Yes.”

She obviously didn’t want to talk about it, but dammit, he couldn’t just look the other way. He simply
couldn’t
. “He seems to need... a lot of your attention.”

It was a leading question, only she wouldn’t let him lead her anywhere in regards to it, and he didn’t like how tense and stiff she got whenever they discussed him, as if she was hiding something from him.

“He’s unhappy and he needs a shoulder.”

“And it has to be yours?”

When she hazarded a look at him she could see how dark his face was, and that muscle was jumping in his jaw again, as it always did when they discussed his brother. “Look, what Carter tells me is in confidence, between us, between friends. But I don’t know how many times – how many ways – to try to tell you that you have nothing to worry about in regards to your brother. He is not after me romantically, okay?”

Cal reached out and tugged on the front of her shirt, dragging her against him and into his arms. “And if I asked you to stop seeing him?”

He didn’t like the hurt look his question caused to settle onto her delicate features – not at all, and she took a step away from him before he could stop her. “Is that really how you want to play this?”

Cal ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “No, it’s definitely not, but what am I supposed to think when every time we’re together, he calls you?”

“Does it make you feel better to know that he calls me at least once a day, every day, and has since weeks after I met him – I might add,
years
ago? Him, I’ve known for more than three or four years. You, I’ve known for a little over four months.”

His voice, when he spoke, was frightfully low. “And would that be your answer?”

Ellie had a horrible flash of insight, wondering if she was going to lose her virginity and the boyfriend who had taken it in one night, depending on what she said to him at this very moment. “I’m not going to answer your question because it’s an improper one. If Carter was my lover, you’d
know
, now, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t have been putting you through all of this losing my virginity crap – he’d’ve already taken it.”

It was his turn to color, making his usually tan skin look ruddy. “I suppose...” He was extremely reluctant to yield the point to her, regardless of the fact that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one had had her before him.

“Your brother and I are close, but not in that way, Cal. Please. And don’t harass him about it, either.”

His jaw tightened again. “Did he tell you I’d done that?”

“He said you’d interrogated him and warned him away from me, which is a pretty caveman approach. I expected... well... I thought you’d at least hesitate to accuse your brother and your girlfriend of—”

The next thing she knew, his hand had snaked out to grab her wrist and tug her, off balance, against him, and she felt the first frisson of true fear she’d gotten from him. Suddenly, she was all too acutely aware of the differences in their sizes, especially as his mouth crashed down on hers, one hand wrapped in her hair, the other laying bold claim to one breast, his fingers less than gently pinching the tip.

“I would accuse the pope himself if he was constantly calling you. I don’t give a fuck that he’s my brother. I
don’t share
what’s
mine
.”

Ellie pushed her hands against that solid brick wall of his chest, holding eye contact with him the entire time. “Being close to a male friend is no threat to what’s yours, Cal, and if you think it is, then perhaps I’ve chosen the wrong man.”

With that she broke free of his grip – knowing full well that it was only because he’d allowed her to – gathered up her purse and headed for the door.

Cal’s hair was getting a workout this evening with his hand running roughly through it every five minutes. “You can’t leave; we came here in my car.”

She did leave his presence, though – she just waited for him outside, as if she could no longer stand to be in the same room with him.

Cal wondered if he hadn’t just blown it with her, and he realized that it was something he truly couldn’t countenance.

The ride home was glacial, with him unhappy at the compulsion he felt to look at her every five minutes the entire ride, looking for some sign that she didn’t hate him, and Ellie resolutely staring out the window, willing herself not to cry.

When they got to her place he got out to help her out of the car, but she was already halfway down the walkway to her door. He had to sprint to catch up to her before she went inside and locked him out, which he had little doubt that she’d do.

He caught her elbow before he’d mounted any of the steps, just as she opened her screen door. “Ellie, wait.”

She didn’t glare down at him as he expected. It was worse. Her face was carefully blank instead, except for the way her eyes shone unnaturally bright in the moonlight and he knew she was on the verge of crying.

His hair took it on the chin again as he growled, “Jesus Christ, can you forgive me for being a jealous idiot?” He had been placed in the unusual position, for him, of having to look up at her.

Cal had expected, having – to his own mind – confessed his sin and humbly asked for her forgiveness, that she would throw her arms around him enthusiastically and say, “Of course.”

But she was much more reserved than that, and he didn’t end up feeling all that forgiven.

“Yes, I forgive you – but don’t let it happen again. And I need to ask you to do something, but you can’t tell Carter I asked.”

Cal sighed heavily. Just what he wanted – to continue to talk to her about Carter. “What?”

“Talk to your brother, please.”

He was taken aback by her puzzling request. “Talk to him? I just did when I warned him away from you.”

Ellie’s hand landed on his forearm. “No, this time don’t do all the talking. Listen to him. Please. I’m not asking for too much, am I?”

She wasn’t asking for anything at all. It wasn’t a hardship to talk to Carter. It might be a little awkward at first when he told the younger man that he’d lost her, but Cal was sure there would be no hard feelings. There were tons of fish in the sea.

“No, you never do, and I’ll call and set up a time to go out to dinner with him. I’ve always meant to close the gap between us.”

Ellie stepped down so that she was on the same level as he was – one of the rare times she got to look him straight in the eye – and kissed him tenderly. “Please just remember what I said about listening to him.”

His eyebrow rose. “I will.”

He was as good as his word, and she’d heard it from both sides – he’d gotten together with Carter, who had done his level best, too, to reassure Cal that he didn’t have designs on Ellie, although neither one of them really thought that Cal had heard what Carter had been saying.

But Carter had never been the best at confrontation, and what he desperately needed to say to his older brother somehow always ended up on the cutting room floor, edited entirely out of any conversation they had – or any conversation with his father, also – so that he didn’t have to deal with all of the uncomfortable feelings it was going to stir up in all three of them.

Despite the relatively small bump in the road that was Carter, Ellie and Cal’s relationship grew stronger every day, and he had to admit that she seemed to revel in his attentions, which threatened to border on the obsessive. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her – not fucking her or spanking her. They were both equally arousing to him, and to her, if the number of times he’d made her scream in ecstasy was any judge.

Everything seemed to be smooth sailing until one night, quite late, when Cal had been away on a business trip for a few days and he decided to stop by Ellie’s and surprise her.

He rapped on her door, expecting at this late hour that she would answer the door in her nightie and a robe, but instead she nearly crowded him down the stairs, apparently going out at this late hour, and she appeared both distracted and troubled.

She stopped and hugged him, but seemed preoccupied by something, not really even paying him any attention as she hurried to her car.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

He knew as soon as she hesitated to answer him exactly where she was headed.

“You’re going to see Carter, aren’t you? At this hour? I
forbid
it.” But she was already in her car, revving it up as he hunched over the window.

“I’m sorry, Cal, but his needs will trump your orders every time.”

With that she sped off, and he was left standing there, his hands balled into fists at his side as he fumed and tried to decide whether or not to go after her.

He decided not to, but it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life. Part of the reason that he’d driven at breakneck speed to get home instead of to Carter’s was that he couldn’t bear the idea that he might find them in each other’s arms, and then he’d have to fight his brother.

Carter – who was a relatively slight man, especially in comparison to him – would lose, and lose badly.

Later that evening, after he’d put back most of a fifth of Johnny Walker, was when he’d gotten the call, the one that had nearly killed their mother and sent his father’s health into a tailspin from which he would never recover.

“Mr. Jennings, sir, I’m sorry to have to call you this late. This is Police Chief Grabowski. I need you to come down to the hospital, please, sir. There’s been an accident involving your brother.”

What he hadn’t said was that he didn’t need to get down there to donate blood or to hold Carter’s hand, and Cal knew instantly exactly what this phone call was about. He’d been called down there to identify his baby brother’s body.

Apparently Carter had lost control of his car and had driven off a cliff. However, it was a dry night and there were no skid marks.

Cal didn’t really want to consider the implication of those key pieces of information any too carefully.

“Was your brother depressed that you know of, Mr. Jennings?”

Cal could barely think enough to answer the chief’s questions. “I don’t believe so. We weren’t very close. I’d tried to reestablish a friendship with him recently, but it was in its infancy, and there was a point of contention between us.”

“A point of contention?”

“Yes,” Cal’s head snapped up from where it had been buried in his hands, his eyes blazing with anger. “A woman.”

He and the chief of police as well as two plainclothes officers who were investigating Carter’s death all arrived on her doorstep not long after she’d gotten the news herself, and she was understandably distraught.

Ellie had begun to walk towards Cal, her arms out for a hug, seeking comfort, but she had reconsidered when she saw the way he looked at her – accusingly, as if she had killed his brother herself.

And then he’d all but confirmed his suspicion of her to the police.

“Miss Blanchard, where were you earlier this evening?”

“I was home until about ten or so.”

“Alone?”

Ellie’s eyes flitted to Cal’s then down to the floor again. “I was with McCallum Jennings.”

Everyone’s – except for Ellie’s – gaze shifted to Cal.

“And what happened that made you leave?”

“I received a call from Carter Jennings, asking me to come to see him.”

“Did he invite you by that late at night for any specific reason?”

Ellie shrugged. “He needed to talk.”

“Were you and he involved in a relationship?”

“They were,” Cal supplied, his voice dripping venom, and it felt as if he’d driven a stake through her heart, “as we were.”

The operative word in that sentence being “were”
, Ellie thought with surprising detachment.

“Can you confirm that, ma’am?”

“No, although the older Mr. Jennings and I
were
involved,” she gave it the same amount of inflection as he had, “the younger Mr. Jennings and I were just friends. He would often come to see me or call me just to talk or have me come over to see him.”

“Was he depressed at all about anything, do you know?”

Cal answered, “No,” and she answered, “Yes,” at the same time, then Cal glared at her although Ellie missed it because she was staring at the floor.

Ellie smiled uneasily. “I believe he was. I mean, I’m no psychiatrist, but I think he was very unhappy, although some in his immediate family refused to see it.”

The office opened his mouth to ask another question and Ellie put her hand to her mouth. “If you don’t mind, officer, I’m perfectly willing to answer your questions, but could we do it tomorrow? I’ve just learned that a dear friend of mine has passed away, and I could really use some time to try to come to grips with it.”

She heard Cal snort behind her, and wondered how she could ever have thought that her heart – and her body – would be safe with him.

As the officers made to leave, Cal walked up to her, his finger pointed directly at her. “You might not have been in the car with him when he died, but I put the blame for his death squarely at
your
feet, Elise Blanchard. You were the last person to see him alive. If you thought he was so depressed, then why didn’t you get him to
see
someone – to seek help?”

Coming out of her trance, Ellie went toe to toe with him. “Oh yeah, that would have been perfect. His macho father and his even more macho brother would have never let him live it down if he’d sought help for a mental issue.” Cal didn’t say anything, but he looked stricken, and she knew she’d struck home. “He had such an inferiority complex about the both of you – but you in particular – already, without adding
that
in, that it was a wonder he could drag himself out of bed every day. He lived in your shadow, and he never felt that he measured up to the golden child.”

Cal had never heard this before. Carter certainly hadn’t said anything like this to him, but then, Carter would have gone to the ends of the Earth to avoid confrontation. And it seemed as if, in the end, that was exactly what he’d done.

But that didn’t speak to the fact that Carter was obviously distraught that he and Ellie had made love and had gone off the deep end because of it.

“I told you to stop seeing him, didn’t I?”

Her bravo deserting her quickly, Ellie actually backed up at his tone of voice and the threatening way he was hovering over her. Finally, one of the cops stepped in between them, backing Cal down and shepherding him out the door, not that it stopped him from talking at Ellie, who simply stood there and took it.

“I told you to cut him loose. Instead you kept him on the line, you strung him along, and he couldn’t take it when he realized that you’d chosen me instead of him.”

Although she’d gone dutifully down to the station to answer their questions the next day – and other, multiple times because Lord knew the Jennings family wasn’t going to let one of their own go peacefully – Ellie didn’t go out of her house much for the rest of that summer. Cal had seen to it that she was an object of ridicule and scorn. She almost lost her job, but they needed the warm body that was she to teach, although she would have been surprised if she were asked back the next year – when she would have been eligible for tenure.

She had wanted to go to Carter’s funeral, but she figured it would cause too much of a ruckus if she did, so she had stayed at home and mourned his gentle spirit in her own way, knowing that he would have approved more of her choices for his memorial than theirs. She did visit his grave several times, as covertly as she could, leaving nothing but a stone on the top of his memorial.

Even though Jennings power and money had many tendrils, and Cal didn’t make things easy for her, she never considered moving away. This was her hometown, too, and she intended to stay right there. She wanted to be around for when Cal Jennings got his comeuppance.

Now, eight years later, after that fiasco of a BBQ and then the fiasco that was her falling back into bed with a man who flat out hated her and thought terrible, untrue things about her, she was out that next Friday night with someone new – someone she was interested in, finally, and who seemed to be just as into her.

Cruz was every bit the gentleman than Cal had pretended to be. He had practically carried her to his car, had stayed on her left side in order to keep a protective arm around her waist so that she had support if her ankle – which was still a bit weak but a heck of a lot better than it had been – decided to give way, had held doors for her and pulled chairs out. He had even commandeered a spare chair for her to put her foot up on so that she didn’t have to hang it down and it didn’t start to swell or throb.

“You are too good to be true! Your momma raised you right!”

He nodded, smiling. “I have to agree with that. My mother is a saint.”

“You two are close?”

Even broader smile. “Hell yes. I call her every Sunday night at nine no matter what’s going on with my life.”

“Big points there, I have to say. A man who loves his mother is the new sexy – it’s right up there with smart and nerdy.”

He laughed. “Well, I think I qualify on everything but the nerdy.”

“Nerdy is optional, believe me. Then you won’t be dragging me to comic cons or some such other shit.”

“Definitely not. Sports, perhaps—” He saw her roll her eyes.

“What sports?”

“I like tennis and football, probably the most. I could get into most of them, but I just don’t have the time – but those two I keep to.”

“Well, at least it’s not golf. I like football, if you don’t mind me screaming at the screen. My dad and I used to watch it. He was always the loudest screamer in the room.”

“I didn’t really know my dad at all.”

Ellie leaned across the table to take his hand. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”

Cruz shrugged. “I don’t really know what I missed, so it’s not that bad, I guess.” He brought the back of her hand to his lips, his eyes intent on her face.

“Let go of her hand.”

The order came from behind her, but she already knew who had issued it. There was no mistaking that voice.

Cruz did no such thing, and Ellie was glad of it. Who did Cal think he was, trying to bully people in a public restaurant?

“Cal, I’m surprised to see you here.” The big man rose and came to stand between Ellie and his employer, intent on protecting her from whatever went down.

But he was still holding onto her hand, and they could both see how that made Cal positively seethe.

“I’m not going to say it again, Cruz,” he warned, taking another step towards the younger man. “She’s mine. Or didn’t she tell you that the same night I threw her out of my house, we made love at her place?”

Cruz turned around and looked at Ellie. “Is that true?”

Blushing, Ellie nodded, and Cruz let go of her hand in disbelief. “After what he did to you? Said to you?”

There was no response from Ellie. She just stared at her water glass and wished for the floor to swallow her up as the entirety of the town – or the part of it that was in that popular restaurant – was treated to an intimate glimpse into her sex life – as if they hadn’t already gotten one eight years ago.

Suddenly she grabbed her purse and darted away, out the door of the restaurant. The two men each leaned towards going after her, but neither was willing to stand down. Finally, disgusted, Cruz threw down some bills to cover what they hadn’t even eaten yet and stormed out.

Cal’s body relaxed, but his mind didn’t. Ellie was out there somewhere, and he didn’t think Cruz was going to look for her to take her home. He glared at every patron and employee he saw on his way out, his phone to his ear, dialing her number.