Foster Siblings 3: Brokedown Hearts (21 page)

Just in looking at Ben, David started to sweat. Sahara Desert levels of dryness took over his mouth, but if he didn’t do this now, he’d only compound his fear of how cowardly he was, to the point he might never recover and have a real life.

So sweating and shaking like a leaf, David looked at Ben, caught his stare, and softly asked, “Will you tell Mikael about what happened here with me tonight?”

Fresh T-shirt in hand, Ben froze next to the table, and all the color slid from his face.

Chapter Nine

David’s question penetrated Ben’s brain—
“Will you tell Mikael about what happened here with me tonight?”
—and a raging sea of black fog rushed through Ben’s system in a tidal wave.

How the fuck did he find out about Mika?
Ben reeled. Barring his short trip to Sweden, he’d tailed David thoroughly since taking this assignment. The guy was an open book; there was no way he could have outsmarted Ben, figured him out, and then had the ability to do the kind of detailed search it would take to find out about Mikael. Only three people knew Ben had a brother: Martin and Adrienne Skye and an investigator colleague in Sweden. And there was no way in hell his bosses or a crafty son of a bitch of an old PI halfway around the world would ever sell him out.

Wait
. Rather than just Mikael’s name sounding like a siren in Ben’s mind, the other words David had used sorted themselves out and fit into place.
He wants to know if I’m going to tell Mika about us
. Ben started to breathe easier.
He doesn’t know anything. He thinks my brother is my boyfriend.

Much looser now, Ben shrugged into his T-shirt. “You don’t have to worry about Mika,” he promised. “He isn’t an issue for us.”

David’s features immediately pinched, and his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively. “Then this was a mistake.” Without another word, David bolted for the door and swung it open. Just as fast, he shook his head and faced Ben. “No. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to run.” His head high, David kicked the door closed behind him. When he met Ben’s stare head-on, his eyes blazed with shades of turquoise in the blue fire. “At the very least, I have a right to know how many men you take to your bed. I have a right to make an educated decision about whether or not I want to continue being one of them.”

Ben snorted, couldn’t keep the burst of laughter in. “Trust me, you’re the only man I’ve had sex with in over a year.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” David spit, visible energy crackling through his entire being. “I know I’m way too eager when I’m with you, and I’ve probably given the impression that you can do whatever you want with me or to me.” David expelled a sharp burst of laughter too, the sound just as dry as Ben’s. “And heck, kiss me again, and maybe you can. But that doesn’t mean you get to lie to me. I saw Mikael’s picture when I found your phone for you. More significant, I saw how you reacted when his call came in. He’s important to you, and you were worried and frantic when you couldn’t pick up his call instantly.” David’s chest heaved, and his voice caught, but he shook himself and went on. “I may not know that many things about you, but my gut tells me you wouldn’t react that way about someone you don’t love.”

Serious irritation picked at Ben inside, like fingernails pulling at a wound not yet fully healed. Still, he did not like being pushed, especially about the most private things in his life. Through clenched teeth, Ben told David again, “Mikael is not my boyfriend.” He lifted his hand and tapped his pointer finger. “He’s also not my husband.” Another tick of his fingers. “And he’s not a lover.” With a final tap to his ring finger, he arched his dark brow. “Okay?”

Arms crossed against his chest, David arched one hell of a brow right back at Ben. “Then who is he?”

As fast as David picked at the scab within Ben, Ben stood firm and forced another layer of skin over the wound. “I’ve told you what you need to know.” Without blinking, employing every subtle tactic of dominance he’d learned in law enforcement, Ben stared David down. “He’s not relevant to what I’m doing with you. End of subject.”

“Not relevant?” David not only didn’t back down, he looked Ben up and down and sneered. “I don’t see how that’s possibly correct, considering we’re standing here fighting about him after we just had sex.” Tsking, David shook his finger at Ben. “You’re good, Evans. One heck of a good liar, that is.” With a spin, David shot Ben the bird over his shoulder and strode to the door. “Good-bye!” This time, he didn’t pause and slammed the door behind him.

Son of a bitch
. “You don’t get to walk out on this!” Fueled by a powerful mix of raw anger and stripped-down survival instincts, Ben chased after David with long, heavy steps, caught him before he’d walked halfway across the motel lot, and jerked him around. “You don’t get to arrogantly assume you’ve figured me out and then walk away.”

Jabbing Ben in the chest with a pointed finger, David said back, “You’re the one who ended this. Not me.” Frowning at Ben for a hard, long moment, David snorted and rolled his eyes. “I guess I won’t have to lose any more sleep worrying that I’m going to start stalking you. I have plenty of sweet animals in my life right now who need me.” As if brushing a bug off his shoulder, he added, “I don’t want a snake in the grass too. Good night.” Then, with such irritating calm, David turned and walked away.

Bastard. Bastard. Bastard
. With each slow and easy step David took, getting closer and closer to his own room, and farther and farther away from Ben’s bed, a bigger, more combustible bomb grew in Ben’s core.

David had given Ben exactly what he’d wanted—a reprieve from questions—but when David opened his door, the device within Ben detonated, and he roared, “I’m not lying to you!”
Good Christ, he’s really leaving me.

Shrapnel flew into every corner of Ben’s body, shredding straight through the deepest, most protected parts of his life, but he couldn’t make himself shut up. “Mikael is not relevant to what we’re doing because he’s my brother!”

From his door, without looking back, David sighed—Ben swore the depth of which shook the leaves in the trees a mile away. “I saw his picture on your phone.” David sounded like an exhausted man who no longer cared. “I could claim him as my brother more believably than you could.”

With those words of disbelief, with the rejection, the lack of interest in the most breakable part of Ben’s soul, Ben stiffened his spine tighter than an arrow. “I’ve told you the truth. That’s what you asked for. Mikael is my brother. I don’t owe you any further explanation than that.”

Sighing again, David finally turned and replied, “No, you’re right. You don’t.” A shaky smile graced David’s lips, something that kicked Ben in the gut rather than banding around his heart. David’s subsequent shrug made Ben feel even sicker. “I guess I foolishly hoped you’d want to give a greater explanation to me. You say he’s your brother.” David walked back to Ben. After looking up at him for the longest time, to the point where the hairs on the back of Ben’s neck started to stand on end, David said, “Okay, I believe you.”

His throat suddenly much too scratchy, Ben shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.” In the face of Ben shaking his head again, David nodded, somehow with more conviction. “I’m closer to you now. I’m looking in your eyes, and I do believe you. I’m sorry I didn’t before.” David squeezed Ben’s hand, and a new depth of sadness filled his stare. “But if you still can’t make yourself share anything else, I still have to say good night.”

Literally naked minutes ago, Ben only now felt totally exposed. “Why?”

A blush—the rosy color Ben had come to so enjoy—filled David’s cheeks. “I’ve told you I was in prison. You’ve seen me at my clumsiest. Heck, you’ve seen me plead for things I didn’t even understand how to accept I wanted, just because I wanted to please you. I’ve given you a lot, admittedly most of the time not on purpose or because you ask, but because I can’t seem to behave any other way around you.” Maintaining eye contact, David lifted Ben’s hand, pressed a kiss to the palm, and then rubbed his cheek against the back. “Maybe I wouldn’t feel so out on the ledge by myself if you would give me something more of you too, beyond your job and where you were born.”

With that nuzzle against Ben’s hand, some of the coils started unwinding in Ben’s belly. At the same time, though, years of developing a tough skin didn’t scrape off easily. “And it has to be this?” Hell, Ben had Mikael’s privacy to respect too.

Still holding tightly to Ben’s hand, David nodded. “Mikael is the one I saw on your phone. And with your reaction, he seems to be the person who brings out the protector in you. That’s why I want to know more.”

Dozens of knots still twisted within Ben, keeping him tense, but with rust in his throat, he said, “Okay. Let’s go back inside.”

Even though Ben made the suggestion, David was the one who twined his fingers in Ben’s and guided them back to Ben’s room. He put Ben in one chair, took the other for himself, and clasped his hands in a ball on the table. “So, tell me about your brother.”

His pulse returning to a fast rate, Ben chuckled and rubbed his sweaty nape. “You just want to get right into it, huh?”

David pushed upright in his chair. “I can go back to my room if you’d rather that.”

Ben put his hand on David’s arm before the man could fully rise. Once David sat back down, Ben pulled his act together and stated matter-of-factly, “Mikael is my half brother. He’s Swedish. I met him five years ago. I found him at the same time I tracked down and located my biological father.” Ben took pride in the fact that his voice didn’t hitch even a little bit with that additional information. “He’s a Swede too.”

“You had to find your father?” David’s eyes rounded with ridiculous wideness. “Your mother didn’t just tell you who he was?”

It continued to fascinate Ben that for all David’s separation from his family, for how completely they’d abandoned him in his time of need, his ingrained thoughts of family were still very grounded in traditional views and values.

“I didn’t know my mother,” Ben explained. Back on ground he’d walked steadily his whole adult life, he gave his history by rote. “I was a foster kid for the most part, but I spent some years when I was very young in a children’s home. Other than my first year, which I’m told I lived with my mother, I spent my entire childhood in the system.”

Worrying his lower lip, David asked, “Did your mother die?”

“Yes.” Records had given Ben the facts; tracking down someone who’d actually known his mother had given him the details. “From what I understand, she had a cold, didn’t have the money to go to a doctor to treat it, and it became pneumonia. It killed her. After that, I went into HRS—CFS now—and stayed there until I was eighteen and it kicked me out.”

David’s face fell. “I’m so sorry.” Moisture brimmed in his eyes.

“Oh, honey, don’t be sorry.” His heart cracking—for David’s emotional state rather than his own—Ben reached across the table and wiped David’s eyes before tears could start falling. “I’m not.”

Bucking up straighter, David sniffled and offered a tremulous smile. “I apologize if this is ignorant and off topic, but you don’t look even a little bit Swedish to me.”

“No, that’s all right.” Ben waved off the question; it was a valid one. “My coloring is from my biological mother. I don’t remember her or have a picture of her face in my mind, but through records in the system, I learned she was half Cuban and half Seminole Indian. Five years ago”—this time, Ben couldn’t keep his jaw from clenching—“I discovered I get my eyes, my height, and my build from the paternal half of my DNA.”

Frown lines marred David’s brow. “You say that very clinically.”

Ben shrugged. “Sometimes the only connection is the DNA.”

Wetness spilled over and trickled down David’s cheeks. “I’m sorry.” He dipped his head and pressed another kiss to Ben’s hand. “So, so sorry.”

Oh, baby
. Ben’s heart squeezed with beautiful tightness. “You keep saying that, but you don’t have to be.” Ben cupped his hand under David’s chin and brought him back up to eye contact. “I’ve accepted my parentage and moved forward. It’s just facts for me now.”

Wiping his eyes, David pushed out a wobbly smile. “So you didn’t get a father, but you gained a brother?”

With thoughts of Mikael, a cottony swirl of airiness encompassed Ben and made him feel like he could float on air. “Mika was thirteen at the time. When I tracked down my biological father—Goran Enquist is his name—I went to Sweden to meet him. It wasn’t much; it didn’t go well—a couple of meetings in a few coffeehouses. During the last talk I had with Goran, Mika was in town with friends, and he saw and overheard enough to know what was going on. Rather than tell his father, he followed me to my motel.” Like it had happened yesterday, Ben could still see that scrawny kid with the defiant stare and crazy tufts of blond hair filling his motel room doorway. “Mika spoke English—pretty common to have it in your back pocket as a second language overseas—and he insisted that since we were brothers, especially since he was an only child and always wished he had a brother or sister, we should become friends.”

“That’s sweet.” Finally, new twinkles of light entered David’s gaze. “So you did.”

“Privately,” Ben clarified. “Long distance mostly. I debated before I agreed, just because in saying yes I knew I’d be playing a part in telling him it was okay to deceive his parents. I knew that wouldn’t be the best example to set for a kid.”

With a contagious smile, David nudged his foot against Ben’s under the table. “But you really liked the idea of having a brother, and that won out. See? I knew you loved the guy on the other end of that phone line. I just couldn’t fathom that he was related to you.”

Easy warmth burgeoned in Ben. “Yeah, as much as he’s responsible for some of these gray hairs”—Ben tugged at the strands around his temples—“I love the kid. I felt a connection to him right from the beginning. Plus, Mika was pretty adamant that he get to know me. Back then I was worried he might confront his father about me and cause a blowup between them if I said no. I didn’t want to be responsible for that. I try to go visit him in Sweden once a year or so.” Thoughts of Goran entered the picture, and some of the bubbles in Ben turned into lead balloons. “Any more than that, and we risk his father finding out.”