Trouble (38 page)

She sighed thoughtfully. “I told you months ago. She taught you that nothing is the way it seems, that you can't trust women, and that you can't have faith in the future. She taught you that relationships hurt. Why wouldn't you have run away from Dara?”

“I didn't
run away
,” Mike muttered.

Mama tactfully ignored this blatant lie. “Look here. I want you to go talk to your brother right now. I'll send him in. He deserves to know what's coming because he cares for that girl, too. And we both know he's having a hard time.”

Mike watched Mama get up and smooth her slacks.

“I know. I will.”

Mama headed toward the kitchen. “And I expect my first grandchild by this time next year,” she said without breaking stride. “None of us is getting any younger.”

“She needs to finish law school!” Mike called after her.

Sean turned up a few minutes later, looking sweaty and glassy-eyed. He watched Mike warily, brows raised.

“We need to talk, man,” Mike told him, standing. “I've got something to tell you.”

Sean tensed.

There was no good way to say it, so Mike just plunged ahead.

“I've … been seeing Dara.” He cleared his throat. “It's … serious. I'm sorry.”

Sean gasped, looked wildly around as though he wanted to make sure this wasn't a terrible joke and erupted with rage.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted, jabbing two fingers in Mike's face. “You wanted her! This whole time! And now you've been fucking her, haven't you?”

Mike locked down his cold fury before he swung for his brother's face.

“Careful, Sean,” he warned.

“You could have anyone!” Sean roared, spittle flying from his mouth. “
Anyone!
Why did you have to go after the one woman I want?”

“Because I can't breathe without her,” Mike said simply.

“Bullshit!”

Tonight's emotion was all, suddenly, too much for Mike to manage. A tsunami of it hit him right between the eyes: seeing Dara again. Realizing both how badly he'd hurt her and how much he loved her. Breaking Sean's heart and knowing that, while he may get Dara back, if he was lucky, it was at the expense of any relationship he might forge with his brother.

To his absolute embarrassment, his face contorted into a sob he couldn't choke back. The corresponding sound was raw and humiliating, as broken as he'd been without Dara these last weeks.

“I
can't live,”
he said, swiping the back of his hand across his mouth and working hard to master his features. Pausing, he took a shuddering breath and tried to wrestle his raspy voice into submission. “Not. Without.
Dara
.”

Sean's eyes widened with shock.

“I'm sorry.” Mike shrugged helplessly and ran his sleeve over his eyes. “I'd never hurt you like this if I didn't have to. You're my baby brother. I'd do anything I could for you. But I can't stop loving her. I've tried.”

He waited for Sean's reaction, which took an eternity to come.

“You never cry,” Sean finally said. “Even at Dad's funeral, I didn't see you cry.”

“I've never been this lost before,” Mike admitted.

Sean nodded and looked away, his brow furrowed.

Mike watched him process this information as the silence between them passed awkward and became painful. At least Sean wasn't trying to strangle him. That was something, he supposed.

Mike coughed to clear his throat. Sniffed. Sean studied the tips of his shoes.

More silence. Longer silence. Endless silence.

At last, when his emotions were solidly under control again and Mike couldn't take it any more, he asked Sean the only thing that mattered:

“Can we get past this, man?”

Sean's gaze, still stormy, met his. “I don't know. I wish you didn't make it so hard for me to want to kick your face in.”

“I want the best for you, Sean. No matter how you feel about me, I want you to be happy.”

Sean flashed him a bleak half smile. “Well, all right, then. This has been one of the worst weeks of my life, but your good wishes make everything better. Appreciate it.”

Mike snorted. At least Sean's sense of humor was still intact. “I do what I can.”

Sean stared at him. “You know what you need to be happy. Guess it's time for me to figure out what I need.”

“You can do it,” Mike told him.

Sean, once again looking like that lost little boy who liked to hide in Mike's room when the nights got too scary, shook his head. “That's the problem, Mike. You believe in me. You see potential.” Wry smile. “I don't.”

“You should,” Mike said fervently.

“I'm going to work on it.”

With that, Sean shoved his hands in his pockets and, head down, slowly walked back to the kitchen.

Two
days later, Dara trotted down the snow-dusted steps outside her apartment building, pulling on her leather gloves and hanging on to her yoga mat as she went. The weak early morning light matched her gloomy mood, which was one of the reasons she was going to exercise. She needed something to lift her spirits and keep them off Mike and the fact that she wouldn't see him again anytime soon—if ever.

It was time to think about packing to go home to Chicago for Christmas, she thought as she crossed the parking lot to her car. It'd be good to see her parents and other relatives, but she just didn't feel like—oh, who was that?

A tall man moved in front of the driver's side door of her car, startling her out of her thoughts and causing her knees to lock in place.

Mike. Oh, God. It was
Mike
.

As powerful and unmoving as a mountain, he wore a black wool topcoat over a dark suit, with black leather gloves and a black and red plaid scarf crossed at his neck.

He looked amazing.

Seeing him stirred up all the emotions she'd been trying to repress. Despair. Anger. A black hole of yearning that sucked all her lighter feelings into it and kept them there.

It was one thing to see him at his mother's party, where she'd had time to brace herself, but this was different. This was way out of bounds.

Worst of all, his sudden appearance kicked up a surge of hope for things she kept telling herself could never be.

Stepping closer, he watched her with all the usual overwhelming intensity. Her instinct was to drop the yoga mat and sprint back to the apartment, where he couldn't follow her, but she couldn't move. As if he sensed her surging flight instinct, he stopped at arm's length.

At this distance, she could see the lines of strain on his unsmiling face and the hollows under his eyes. His glittering amber eyes were very dark with turbulence, almost black.

She waited, watching him warily.

“Hi,” he said.

His husky voice generated white puffs of steam and prickling nerve endings on her nape.

“Hi.”

He took a deep breath. “There were some things I should have told you the other night, but it wasn't the time. So I took a chance.”

She said nothing.

“I thought maybe you couldn't sleep either. And maybe you'd be up early to go somewhere and keep busy so you wouldn't think about us. Just like I've been doing.”

The sight of such questioning vulnerability in his eyes was unbearable. A white-hot razor slice through her chest. Dropping her gaze, she studied the frosty grass in front of her car.

“Last night I worked until two thirty, then fell asleep on the sofa in my office because I couldn't stand the thought of going home without you. I went home a little while ago for a shower.” He shrugged one shoulder, his lips working at a self-deprecating smile that never took hold. “I'm wrecked, Dara.”

His face blurred behind the sudden hot tears welling in her eyes. She pressed her lips together, determined not to cry or to think about where this all might be leading.

“I can't go on like this,” he continued softly. “These have been the worst three weeks of my life.”

It turned out that no amount of willpower would stop her tears for this man. No amount of previous heartbreaks over him would stop new cracks and fissures from opening up.

He wasn't the only one who was wrecked, she thought bitterly, swiping her wet cheeks with the back of her hand.

“I want you back,” he said, edging closer. “I was stupid to let you get away in the first place. I don't deserve a woman like you, but I'm going to try, anyway.”

His gaze didn't waver, not even when it overflowed with steely determination.

And suddenly she felt absolute terror, which was what hope did for you. When you hoped for things, you had so much more to lose, so much more pain to endure.

Blinking, she turned her face away, no longer bothering to wipe those embarrassing tears. There was no point. If she wiped one, a million more appeared to take its place.

“Can you look at me, Dara? Please?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Sighing harshly, he shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “Okay.”

She waited.

“I have something to tell you. I know you don't want to hear it right now, but … I do love you. I need you in my life. I need your smile.”

Moving slowly, he touched her face with his gloved hand. She stiffened and closed her eyes, but couldn't bring herself to move away.

“I need to know how you are, sweetheart. I need to know how your Thanksgiving was and what you had for breakfast. I need to know what you want for Christmas. There's a new Indian restaurant downtown, and I want to take you there because I know you'll love it.” His velvety voice dropped, sparking a helpless curl of desire low in her belly. “I need to make love to you.”

“Don't
.”

Jerking free, hating him in that moment but hating her weak body's response to him even more, she wanted to snarl like a lioness. “It's not that easy. You hurt me. You were cruel to me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I don't care,” she lied.

Nodding, he screwed up his face, closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger just as she glimpsed the shimmer of tears.

Oh, God. She hesitated, arrested, her anger leaching away.

Was he—?

Was Mike
crying
?

He dropped his hand. Opened his wet eyes. Let her see his emotions, raw as they were.

“I don't expect you to forgive me right now. But I'll love you whether you do or not.”

He reached for his throat, fishing around for something. Then he hooked his gloved thumb through a gold necklace and held it up for her to see the strange pendant dangling at the end. It looked like a—

Doing a double-take, Dara gasped.

It was a ring.

A glorious oval diamond engagement ring set in white gold.

“Oh, my God,” she cried, clapping her hand over her mouth.

“I'm going to wear this. For now. I know it's the closest to you I'm going to get. I know you need to think about whether you want to take another chance with me.”

She stared at the ring, hypnotized by his words and by the dazzling rainbow shimmer of sunlight on the diamond.

“But this is
your
ring, Dara.”

“Mike—”

“And I intend to do whatever it takes to put it on your finger.” There was a flash of that determination again, startling her with its ferocity. “Fair warning: I want your love back. I want your trust. I'm going to get them. I don't care how long it takes.”

Holding her gaze, he lifted the ring and kissed it before tucking it back inside his collar.

“Anyway,” he concluded. “I thought you should know.”

With that, he turned and walked off across the parking lot, his feet crunching on the snow, leaving Dara to stare helplessly after him.