Secrets and Sins: Raphael: A Secrets and Sins novel (Entangled Ignite) (9 page)

“Is it usually as bad as tonight?”

“Pretty much.” She scrunched her face. “Plus throw in the fact that I hate throwing up—always have since I was little. The doctor said it should pass after the first trimester, but as of Friday I’m officially in my second, and it shows no sign of letting up.”

A beat of silence passed. Then he spoke again, almost grudgingly.

“My older sister was sick the entire time.”

She groaned, holding a hand up to him, palm out. “Please don’t tell me that,” she pleaded.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a faint half smile. “Anything you crave or can’t stand the smell of yet? My other sister couldn’t stand the smell of chicken. Fried, baked, boiled—it sent her running to the bathroom. It was hell, because for the duration of her pregnancy our family dinners were confined to pork chops, pot roast, or meat loaf. Which is cool at first, but after six months of the same thing week after week, it gets old real quick. The week after she had my nephew, we all celebrated with a mountain of fried chicken.”

She chuckled softly, entertained and charmed by this unexpected glimpse into his life, especially his family life. His sounded close. She couldn’t imagine her father sacrificing anything, even something as small as a favorite food, for her. Ethan Granger II demanded and received what he wanted, when he wanted, and everyone else—his wife, daughter, son, employees—served him. Not the other way around.

With a subdued sigh, she sipped her tea. What would it be like to have a boisterous family dinner filled with laughter, teasing, and…love? She’d never had it, had never known it. But maybe her baby would. She would make sure she—or he—would.

“I haven’t had an increase in appetite or craving yet. It’s only been two weeks since I realized the drowsiness and queasiness might be something more than the stress of the past few months. I think you could call me oblivious.” Between Gavin’s death, being questioned, accused, and ultimately cleared by the police, and the letters, she’d relegated the lethargy and nausea to stress. Her period had never been regular, so a couple of months had flown by before she realized something might not be right. Two weeks ago, the regular, relentless occurrence of the weariness and vomiting had planted suspicions in her head. And a week later she’d confirmed it—fifteen weeks pregnant. Now seventeen.

“Two weeks?” He straightened, then leaned forward, bracing his arms on his thighs. He studied her for several silent moments. His steady gaze gave away nothing of his thoughts. “Why didn’t you call me or come by the office then? Why wait?”

She inhaled. Held the breath. How to explain that she was afraid? Afraid he wouldn’t want to see her again. Afraid he would reject her. Afraid he would take one look at her in the bright light of day and wonder what the hell he’d been thinking to be with her. Especially since she was bringing news of an unexpected pregnancy along with her.

Well, part of her fear had come to fruition. He hadn’t kicked her to the curb or told her to get the hell out of his office—on the contrary, he’d insisted on protecting her. But he had rejected their child. And though logically, she couldn’t blame him for having doubts, emotionally his disbelief was like a knife slicing thin cuts into her heart every time it came up.

“It took me a week before I came out of denial and visited the doctor. I’d always planned on telling you; I just had to deal with it myself. The car vandalism and the doll just pushed the timetable forward.”

He didn’t say anything, just studied her with an inscrutable regard that she evaded by sipping from the cup of tea. By the time she finished, her stomach muscles were relaxed.

“When is your next doctor’s appointment?”

She glanced at him, and almost as if he waited for her to look at him again, she became ensnared by the navy blue of his gaze. Like tumbling into a dark pool headfirst, but instead of swimming toward the surface, she wanted to sink, to drown. The intensity of the need forced her to jerk her eyes away.

“I was supposed to have one this morning, but I have to call tomorrow and reschedule it,” she murmured.

“Good.” He stood, stretched, and she snapped her attention to the coffee table, the dormant fireplace, the dark wall of glass—anything, anywhere but him. With the wild vibrancy of the tattoos stretching up from his wrists, over his tautly muscled arms and shoulders, he should’ve seemed garish, over-the-top, crude. Instead he was…beautiful. Like a walking, breathing piece of art. Her fingers itched to draw the swirls and geometric shapes, to re-create them on her sketch pad. God, she could stare at him for hours.

So she kept her gaze trained on the wood grain of the table in front of her.

“Let me know the date and time you set the appointment for. If the morning sickness is still bad, we can ask the doctor if he can prescribe something for it since you’re in the second trimester.” He lifted her cup.

She stared at him. “We?” she asked. Her heart thumped in her chest. “You want to go to the doctor’s office with me even though you’re not…”

He slowly straightened. His face could’ve been carved from the granite that paved his sidewalk. “I meant what I said about protecting you and the baby. That includes escorting you to the doctor’s or wherever you need to go until we catch this bastard.”

“Of course,” she murmured.
Stupid. Stupid to hope
. Loneliness yawned wide and empty under her feet, and she plummeted into the black chasm. For a few brief moments in the bathroom, he’d beaten the darkness back. But she should’ve known better than to cling to the momentary display of gentleness and affection. He’d made it clear he didn’t believe her—didn’t want her or the baby. He was a protector; defending people was his business, and she was a client. Better she keep that reminder and the image of his inscrutable, distant expression uppermost in her mind.

Then when the time arrived for her to walk away, she wouldn’t leave shards of her heart behind.

Chapter Ten

Raphael stared at the computer monitor, not seeing the report regarding the deficiencies in a client’s security system that needed to be emailed to Chay in a few hours in time for a meeting. Instead, he kept envisioning Greer’s hurt, shut-down expression from the evening before. Kept hearing her subdued “of course.” He drummed his fingers on top of his desk.

“Shit,” he grumbled and wheeled his office chair around. Even the sight of the small woods that surrounded his house couldn’t alleviate the dark mood plaguing him and making work an impossibility. Maybe bringing her home and installing her so close hadn’t been such a bright idea. He’d like to blame his dick—all this trouble could be traced back to it anyway. But it hadn’t been his johnson insisting on guarding her 24-7. If the deal had included fucking, then yeah. But this purely platonic setup? Nope, the decision had been him and the damn side of him he’d believed permanently eradicated by a lying bitch seven years earlier.

He’d been twenty-seven, high off the success of his and Chay’s first-year earnings with their new business, and totally unprepared for the fist in the gut that was Yolanda Tinsdale. One evening, he, Chay, and Gabe had attended Mal’s mother’s birthday party, celebrating as well as providing a buffer between Mal and his asshole-ish father, Christopher. Even the baleful glares Christopher Jerrod shot in their direction couldn’t taint Rafe’s good mood. Then Mal’s mom, Pam, had introduced them to Yolanda, the daughter of one of Christopher’s business associates. The beautiful, petite brunette had stolen his voice and his sense—a first. He’d fallen. Hard. And when she’d discreetly passed him her number later in the night, he could’ve beat Superman’s ass in leaping tall buildings.

They’d begun to see each other on the DL; he’d understood her precaution. She was moneyed Back Bay, he was lower middle-class North End. Her family’s reputation was beyond reproach, while in some less than savory circles, the last name Marcel was associated with bookmaking in the Patriarca crime family. Along with being a mean, alcoholic son of a bitch, his father had been a criminal who’d spent more years behind bars than with his family—including the last sixteen after he was handed a thirty-year sentence for racketeering and bookmaking. She was twenty-four and had never been out on her own, pampered by her protective parents. He was a seasoned twenty-seven-year-old who had experienced things she saw on crime shows, been living on his own since eighteen, and been raised by a hardworking mother and absentee father. Another thing that Gabe, Mal, Chay, and he had in common—fucked-up or absent men as fathers.

None of that—his poor background, notorious father, lack of social connections—had seemed to matter to her, though, and it damn sure hadn’t to him. Though he’d been in relationships before—albeit short-lived—for the first time, he’d lowered his guard, had permitted her in the real estate of his heart only previously leased by family and his three best friends.

When she’d announced she was pregnant, he’d been overjoyed. And a year later had been crushed when a paternity test had revealed the truth: he wasn’t the father of the boy he’d believed his. She’d lied to him, especially when she’d told him she loved him. The entire time she had been with him, she’d also been sleeping with an “acceptable” man her parents approved of. Rafe had been “fun” but not good enough to marry or raise a child with. No way could her son wear the last name Marcel.

Greer and Yolanda were so similar: wealthy background, genteel manner…surprise pregnancy. When Greer had entered his office with her announcement, she’d torn open the veil to the past. All the pain, grief, and rage had returned as if he’d stared into Yolanda’s pale face yesterday as she admitted her deceit instead of years ago.

If he were honest with himself—and he made a point to always be—at some point between yesterday and this morning, he’d accepted that Greer wasn’t lying to him. That six-month period of abstinence story was outlandish enough to probably be true. Maybe it’d been her strength in the face of weariness. Maybe it’d been the open love, affection, and protectiveness Ethan and Noah had displayed toward her. Maybe it’d been the vulnerability he’d witnessed last night. One or all of them had convinced him of her honesty. Greer believed he was the father of her child.

Not that it mattered.

Once this stalker was caught and she no longer needed him, she would hit the bricks. She would bail, cut him out of her and the baby’s life. The truth of the matter was, all that had occurred in the past months—being accused of Gavin’s death, the media coverage, the notoriety—was just a blip in her life. Hell, yeah, a big-ass blip, but it would eventually pass. The furor was already on its way to dying down, and soon she would resume her Back Bay lifestyle. Complete with the expensive brownstone, society friends, and obscene wealth. Which meant no room for the working-class, tattooed baby daddy from the North End.

Remembering what lay in store for him months from now would keep him grounded in reality. Keep him from being foolish enough to make the same stupid, humiliating—heart-wrenching—mistake.

Twice.

He’d fallen once. Never again.

Though Greer was stashed in his house, he would keep his distance from her and the baby. That path only led to destruction. And last time he checked, he wasn’t a masochist.

Rafe rose from his chair and stalked toward the floor-to-ceiling window that encompassed one wall of his home office. He braced a hand against the glass, studying the peaceful scenery outside as if it could somehow still the turmoil roiling inside him. In the past, the silent woods that boasted gold and red leaves in autumn, stark, nude branches in winter, and bold, bright-green foliage in the spring eased something in him. It’d been why he’d bought the house in the first place. His friends had been stunned at his purchase of the five-bedroom, three-level home with its ornate balconies and turret-style roof. But growing up in Boston’s “Little Italy” in his family’s crowded, boisterous apartment had created a yearning for his own sanctuary where he could just shut out the noise. And that’s what his home was to him—a haven. A haven that had been infiltrated by the disturbing presence of Greer Addison at his request. Or order.

Damn, they had medicine for the kind of craziness he’d exhibited in the last twenty-four hours.

With a sigh, he turned away from the window, scrubbing a hand over his nape. Work. He needed work. The one thing he had control over. But one glance at the computer where the report waited, and he growled in frustration. The odds of work getting done at this moment was nil to nada damn chance. Coffee. And—he tilted his head, peered down at the clock on the monitor—a sandwich. It was past twelve. He needed a break. A break from himself, damn it.

He left the office and jogged up the steps that led to the first floor and out of the man cave/home office. As he headed for the kitchen, his ears automatically tuned in to Greer FM, listening for any sound from the back of the house.
Ridiculous
, his common sense sneered. Still, he paused at the kitchen entrance, strained for the slightest noise. Nothing. Curiosity roused, he switched direction and strode on bare feet toward her room.

A sliver of wall and a bedside dresser peeped at him through her cracked door. She could be getting dressed or in the middle of the feminine rituals his mother and sisters practiced. She might want privacy…

He slapped his palm to the door and pushed it open.

“What the hell is this?” Rafe blinked, frozen in the open doorway. Greer whipped around with a startled cry, her long brown ponytail tumbling over the shoulder of a smudged white man’s shirt. Her eyes were wide with shock, her pretty lips parted. She clutched a slender paintbrush between her fingers, and behind her…behind her stood a small easel.

“The door was closed,” she pointed out in a strained voice, turning around and setting the brush on the palette that rested on a bedside dresser-turned-table.

“No, it wasn’t,” he replied, still not able to process what his eyes perceived. Small green squares of tarp covered the dresser and floor under her feet and the table. An assortment of brushes and paints joined the palette on the makeshift table, and on the easel…

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed as he shuffled several more steps into the room. A canvas sat on the easel. Though the painting was a little over half finished, he recognized the image brought to vivid, fantastical life by watercolor and what appeared to be ink. He flickered a glance past the easel to the window behind it and the woods that bordered his property. Her painting. The trees outside the paned glass…but not. The same dense, dark trunks and branches with bright-green leaves and newly budding flowers that reached for the sky. But no smoky, ethereal fog wrapped around those branches as they did on the canvas. No regal spire with a red-and-blue flag snapping in the wind. No tiny pixies—or elves?—peeked from behind the proud trunks surrounding his home.

Delight. Joy. Wonder. The emotions swirled in his chest, squeezed his heart like a fist. The innocence of the art reached inside him and nudged a place he’d thought abolished with age and the grime of real life. He was transported back to a time when his biggest worry had been how to con his mother into reading another story out of the battered book of fairy tales that had been passed down to him from his sisters.

With immense effort, he dragged his gaze away from the canvas to focus on the woman—the artist. Who inspired the same awe as her work did.
God
. He hadn’t known…could’ve never fathomed she could create something so—so wonderful. Christ, that sounded so lame. Damn inadequate to describe the beauty she’d brought to life with mere paint.

“It’s not finished yet,” she murmured, her fingers plucking at the hem of the shirt. She wouldn’t meet his eyes; instead she studied the floor, turned back to the easel. “I couldn’t sleep, and since I was up pretty early I decided to work. It’s a lovely view…”

Her chatter finally penetrated the dumbfounded fog surrounding his brain. She was nervous. The prattle, fidgeting—she was jumpy about his reaction. To what? Catching her painting? Her being an artist? The art itself? Or D, all of the above?

“It’s beautiful.” He moved forward until his bare toes lined up with the edge of the tarp. Up close the vivid dreaminess was even more startling and breathtaking. “It’s fucking beautiful.” He stretched an arm out, his finger hovering just above the line where the trees met the sky. “It’s like dreaming with my eyes wide open.”

Her smile was slow, hesitant, uncertain as if no one had ever told her how talented she was. One half-finished piece and he immediately recognized her gift. It exceeded being able to mix colors and render a pretty picture. She made him
feel
.

Anger sneaked in under the awe, staining the shock. Why the hell was she so surprised? She should know how good she was. Which led to his next question. Which fuck-tard had neglected to encourage and support her? Her parents? Her brother? Whatever new idea, hobby, or activity he and his sisters had decided to undertake or join when they were kids, his mother had always been fully on board. Even when it’d been obvious they weren’t going to be savants in that area. When she was ten, his older sister had decided she wanted to be the next Mary Lou Retton. Jackie couldn’t tumble worth a damn—not even a somersault. But his mother had religiously taken her to practices for a year before Jackie decided gymnastics wasn’t her calling, ballet was. During his sober and paroled moments, even his father had supported Rafe in his karate phase. That’s what family did. So why the hell did Greer seem as if she
wanted
to believe his praise but wasn’t completely sold?

“I didn’t know you were an artist.” He tried to bury the anger, but his voice bore the cost of the effort.

She shrugged. Another round of the finger-plucking and refusal to look at him. “I wouldn’t call myself an artist. At least not yet. I’m trying to get there.”

“I look at that”—he flipped a hand in the direction of the canvas—“and an artist painted it, not a wannabe. Just because no one is plunking down money for it doesn’t make you any less of one. Although,” he said, contemplating the canvas again, “when you are finished, I’d put down money for it.”

She stared at him. Snorted. “You don’t have to take it that far. Now you’re just being kind.”

He gaped at her as if she’d sprouted wings and pointed ears to match the mythical creatures in her painting. “Since when do you know me to be
kind
?”

“You’ve been nicer to me than most.” A wistfulness softened her tone, and she ducked her head.

“What do you mean by that? Who hasn’t been nice to you?” almost burst past his lips, but at the last moment, he swallowed the question. Getting deeper into her business would be a colossal mistake. It led to urges to pound something or someone simply because she appeared uncertain about her talent. Or the need to reassure her. It led to attachment. And attachment to the kind of woman she was inevitably veered to pain, loss, and bitterness. He didn’t want to hear the “whys” or discover the “whats.” Not. His. Business.

“Anyway, I’m applying to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Illustration program. That’s what this piece is for. My portfolio.”

Damn.

Who the hell is Greer Addison?

The question ricocheted off the walls of his skull. A picture of the first time they met waved in front of his eyes like a mirage. Sitting next to Gavin, quiet, back straight, hair drawn back from her stunning face in a neat bun, understated but lovely makeup, a fashion model in a wine-colored dress that fit her to perfection. A trophy. A society princess. Then he envisioned the woman from the bar. Newly un-engaged, relaxed from a couple drinks, vulnerable but passionate and wild in his arms. Flash-forward to yesterday. Thinner, weary, scared but strong and determined. And today. Shy, uncertain, talented. An undercover artist.

Who was the real Greer? The one he originally met in his office? Was the woman who rode him with such sweet abandon an aberration? Or was this paint-spattered waif the true person?