Krista tucked one foot beneath her, saying, “Thank you. We’ve asked the guys if we can have a Halloween themed engagement party this weekend, and they loved the idea.” She glanced at Alessa with a hopeful expression. “You’ll come, won’t you? You won’t have to do anything, and it’ll be fun.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
Hope took pity on Alessa’s flustered manner, which reminded her of her reaction when the Dom in the Atlanta club had pinned her down for an answer to his invitation. The whole ‘I want to, but don’t want to, deer caught in the headlights’ expression on Alessa’s face mirrored exactly how Hope had felt before giving in to the dare.
“I’m still new to everyone, and have to tell you, Alessa, it is fun just watching.”
Averting her caramel eyes, she replied, “I’ll think about it.”
Krista shook her head. “You always say that, but your answer is always the same.”
In the first show of irritation Hope had ever witnessed from Alessa, the strawberry blonde glared at Krista and bit out, “Then quit asking.”
Sandie intervened before harsher words were spoken and caused a rift between the two long-time friends. “The invitation is always there. Let’s just leave it at that.” Rising, she picked up the empty snack tray. “I’ll add some more cheese and crackers to this and we can finish off the wine before our guys come looking for us.”
“I’ll help you.” Hope followed Sandie across the large room to the spacious, top-of-the-line kitchen, intending to take this opportunity to learn more about Miles. Since Sandie had been hanging around the gang of seven the longest, she wanted to pick her brain about the man she was sleeping with and knew next to nothing about. Maybe she could learn something that would make it easier for her to be more open with him about herself.
Sandie turned and looked point blank at Hope as soon as they reached the wide counter. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
“I’m that obvious, huh?”
“Pretty much. Does this have to do with Miles?”
Leaning on her arms on the counter, Hope watched her friend load the tray, thinking of Miles’ endless appetite. “Yeah. He’s seen me naked, Sandie, and I don’t know a damn thing about him.”
Sandie shrugged with an impish grin. “I pushed Zach into sex with me without knowing anything about him. Turned out to be darn good sex.”
“That’s because you thought you would never see him again after a few days.”
“True. You want more from Miles than a short-term affair?”
Hope straightened and snatched a cheese slice. “I don’t know. I have… trust issues, and a past I’m not sure he would…”
“There’s no way I’ll believe you ever did anything deliberately so wrong that it would drive Miles away, Hope. He—all these guys are honorable and protective, but that’s because of their rough childhoods. They’re very close and know what happened in each of their lives that landed them in that summer camp together. I know about Zach’s mother, and I’ve heard Dax recently mention his twin sister who died young. Jackson just returned from visiting his mother for the first time in over twenty years, but I don’t know anything else about any of the others and won’t pry.”
“No, I wouldn’t ask you to. Thanks anyway.”
Picking up the tray, Sandie said, “Julie spent weeks fretting over whether Jackson, a man she’d known since they were kids, would walk away from her if he found out all the details that led to her friends’ murders. If you really want to make a stab at a relationship with Miles, my only advice is to tell him what he wants to know. It’ll come out eventually anyway. As far as information about him, why don’t you just ask him?”
“Really?” Hope returned in a dry tone. “Has he ever come across as a man who would invite or welcome personal questions?”
“Well, no, now that you put it that way. Of the seven of them, he is the quietest and hardest to get to know.” Sandie came around the counter then paused by Hope. “Look, one thing Zach mentioned in confidence was that Miles’ childhood was the worst out of all of them. I suspect abusive, which would account for his aggression toward those who go after women and kids, but no one’s ever said it.”
A tightness gripped Hope’s chest when she pictured Miles as a little boy with bruises. The image was so different from the strong, take charge man she’d been involved with the past few weeks. “I guess I’d better decide what I want, and what I’m willing to do to get it.”
“The sooner the better. None of these guys like to be kept in the dark once they’ve decided to commit, and I suspect our Miles might be the worst of the group.”
“Wine’s almost gone, you two. Are you going to join us again, or not?” Krista called out.
“Hey, I don’t have to drive, so save that for me,” Sandie demanded, returning the tray to the coffee table.
Hope listened with only half an ear to the rest of the conversations, wishing she could just blurt out what had occurred at her and Craig’s apartment that night six years ago. A part of her was tempted to just get it out in the open and suffer the consequences, if there were any. None of them judged or condemned Julie when she told them how she’d stood by and didn’t interfere when her friends taunted a disabled, misshapen young man who then later took his rage out on them with a knife. Why should she worry they would turn against her when she’d only been acting in self-defense?
Driving home, Hope was forced to come to terms with a harsh truth. The crux of the matter wasn’t fear of losing her new friends, although that was a factor, but that she hadn’t loved Craig, not the way a woman should love a man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. She hadn’t missed him when they weren’t together, or ached to hear his voice, or craved to feel his hard body thrusting inside hers, night after night. Not like she did… Miles.
She’d grown up going along with her parents’ plans for her: the prep high school, Ivy League college followed by the high-profile job. Whenever their demands became too constrictive, she rebelled by accepting a dare from her friends and rocking the boat with an antic sure to piss them off. When they’d introduced her to Craig Fallon, from the Fallon family, and spouted his family’s prestigious background and financial influence, she’d gone along with the match they’d deemed best for her.
Guilt could be an insidious emotion to live with, forcing her to struggle with self-blame, constantly wondering if she’d crossed a moral line by going to that club and allowing that Dom to touch her when she’d been engaged. Had she been rebelling against a match she really didn’t want and parents who couldn’t see that? She had only returned to Atlanta twice since leaving, and neither her family nor her friends had visited her here in Miami. To this day, Hope didn’t know how Craig had known where she’d been the night of her bachelorette party, or how he’d heard about her first spanking. His scathing, cold rebuke of her actions had dimmed the lingering glow of her first full-fledged, off-the-charts orgasm, and left her to question whether her response to that man’s control and hard hand had been as explosive as she remembered.
Until she met Miles.
Hope parked behind the shelter, made sure she took a good look around before getting out of her car then made her way upstairs to her small apartment, waving to Bobby who sat reading a book in the hall.
“G’night, Hope,” he called out.
“See you tomorrow, Bobby.”
There was family, then there was family, she mused as she stripped on her way to the bedroom. She felt a fondness toward the older man she had never felt toward her father, and trusted, relied on and leaned on him and Martha and Traci to keep the shelter running smoothly. After pulling on a tee shirt she’d bought at Jackson’s fundraiser for his animal shelter, she sank down on her bed and picked up Craig’s picture.
He’d been nice looking, in a blond-haired, surfer boy way, and he’d had an ego to match his good looks. His only family, aside from his parents, had been a much younger half-brother from his father’s third marri
age, and she wondered if they all still harbored the same vitriolic hatred for her they had exhibited during the months following Craig’s death. Christian, his brother, had only been twelve or thirteen at the time, and the pain reflected on his young face still haunted her. If she had never accepted a proposal from Craig or had broken it off with him when she should have, he would still be alive today, and that was a burden she would always carry.
Opening the drawer in her bedside table, she placed his picture face down and vowed to throw it away tomorrow. Regrets or not, it was time for her to move on.
Miles took his time walking from the gym down to Hope’s Crossing, working to get his irritation under control before he confronted Hope. He’d been annoyed when she didn’t show for class, then, after he’d questioned the girls and learned she’d had more vandalism at the shelter this week, his attitude only worsened. The problem was, he couldn’t say who he was upset with more, himself for not insisting she share her problems with him, or her for continuing to withhold everything except her body from him. Not that he didn’t love her body, and her submissive responses, but he was coming to grips with the fact he wanted more from a woman for the first time. Traci’s explanation Hope had gotten tied up counseling a resident of the shelter did little to appease not only his desire to see her again, but to insist she put her safety above anyone else’s needs.
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” he muttered under his breath as he let himself into the shelter, which stayed open until close to 10:00 p.m. For all her willing submissiveness, Hope possessed an independent streak when it came to her work and those in her care.