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Rourke
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Long after the door closes on Olivia Casey I’m still staring at it. It closed with barely a sound, not the slamming I expected at the sudden flurry of movement from her as she snatched the post-it from me. If I hadn’t heard the soft click for myself, I wouldn’t have known it even happened. But I heard it because I was tuned into every sight and sound of Olivia Casey without my fucking permission.
Closing my eyes, I realize I haven’t blinked since she left. My head goes back against my chair. It’s the crack of the sniper fire, it’s the phone call shattering the soft laughter of Bethany as she whispered all the dirty things we were going to do in celebration of being done with finals, but the phone call interrupted that with the news of my father’s heart attack. The soft click of the door closing behind Olivia is her closing the door on my life before her. At least I recognize this moment, where I hadn’t before.
Simply thinking of her causes my whole body to tense as it had when she first came through the door. One look was all it took for my body to come alive in a way it never had before. Want, desire, need, boiled up hot and thick in my veins with the knowledge that only Olivia, the cause of it, could put out the fire inside me. I shake my head, as confused now as I was at the time.
I see her vividly. She’s small, maybe five five. Long brown hair in a ponytail that matches the soft chocolate brown in her wide, round eyes. Her nose is adorable, there’s no other word for it, small, pert over a wide, full mouth I wanted to taste the moment I laid eyes on it. Her heart-shaped face ends in a small, pointed chin I know would fit my hand as I cupped her face to pull her to me.
My whole body hardens at just how badly I wanted to pull her against me, to get lost in her soft, delectable little body. Lush, sweet, she made my dick so hard that my head swam so badly, if I had been standing I would have been knocked on my ass. A humorless chuckle comes out of me. Speaking of asses, damn, her plump ass had my fingers clenching to find out what it would feel like in my hands.
In the bright pink smock or whatever it’s called with various kittens on it, she should have appeared juvenile. She certainly looks younger than her twenty-eight years. Except I’m pretty sure she didn’t realize the way the top showed off her hourglass figure, revealing she’s no girl. Then there was her smart-ass mouth. Flippant, daring me, ready and willing to argue with me. No woman has argued with me in years.
I wonder if it’s because she’s nothing like my usual. While I don’t prefer blondes to brunettes, I do like them leggy—at six four, I don’t like feeling like I’m working to fit with a woman. I definitely prefer women with more experience than Olivia. It doesn’t matter that she’s been married. There’s an air of innocence to her that screams she isn’t experienced in the type of sex I have, short term without strings. No, getting involved with her would be the biggest mistake I could make, for the both of us. My attraction to her is an aberration and should be treated as such. It will pass; my interest in a woman never lasts for long.
My eyes drift to the file on her. I’m going to be looking for a new security company. They missed the mark badly. How had they not known the debt wasn’t Olivia’s, but her ex-husband’s? The thought of another man being able to call her his has bile rising to the back of my throat. I work to swallow it down. He didn’t deserve her, so he lost her. The bastard took her for so much more than her inheritance.
He took her innocence, not her virginity, but her belief in goodness and kindness and to trust those things existed. Connor Newton showed her people could lie to your face while they whispered words of love; he made her harder, made her fear the world and men and herself. Connor Newton is lucky he’s in jail right now for charges stemming from a robbery—the guy moved on to robbing businesses instead of people.
I imagine her at eighteen, bright-eyed but scared of the future. Without her mother or father or anyone to guide her through the good and the bad, to even be there to hold her hand. I’d been an asshole to judge her harshly. Even though I’d seen her mother’s death certificate, I didn’t really take in the date of death. All I saw was Olivia skipped college and got married. It didn’t make sense when she had worked so hard to earn the partial scholarship to Baylor.
At the time I read it, I thought she was lazy. Preferring marriage and letting her husband worry about paying the bills. I don’t know the whole story, but something tells me she didn’t make the decision not to go to Baylor lightly. Especially when she was enrolled in classes at ACC the very next semester. Whatever the story, I didn’t have the right to judge her. It was none of my business.
I’d learned what I needed to: she isn’t financially irresponsible or likely to try and steal from my mother. She’s trustworthy, she knows her stuff, she’ll make an excellent employee. An employee who’s off-limits. That she’s an employee and off-limits is a given cast in stone, but factor in she’ll be living with my mother. My mother, who wants me married and with a half a dozen grandkids because it’s the perfect number, made Olivia Casey not just someone I kept my hands off, but my eyes off too.
****
Olivia
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I’m still in my car, waiting for my heart to stop thumping in my entire body so strongly it hurts for me to wrap my hands around the steering wheel. My head goes back against the headrest. What the fuck was that? Why did I say yes? I look down at the address slashed across the pale yellow paper in a bold black cursive. Just because I said yes doesn’t mean I have to go meet Cheryl Vega and seal my fate. The smile spreads across my face without humor and without thought; who the hell was I kidding? The minute I opened the door to Rourke Vega’s office, I had stepped into it. It didn’t matter if I walked away, even if I never saw him again, he’d haunt me until my last breath.
My head falls on my steering wheel with a thump. Ow. Go, just go, you’re becoming senile in your old age. Why in the heck would Rourke Vega want anything to do with you when he’s straight up fucked Oscar winners and princesses and socialites who spend their whole day devoted to being beautiful? Okay, yeah, the idea is absurd. So it’s just me, just me feeling all goopy inside, just me wanting something I can’t have. Well then, that changes everything. It’s just my fat, round ass lusting after a guy who would laugh so hard he might break a rib at the idea of us getting together. Eh, it’s highly unlikely he’ll laugh even then.
Come on, don’t be a baby. I need a job and sixty grand, I definitely need that. Okay, I don’t need it, but to make it for doing six months of what I already enjoy doing, not doing it is crazy stupid. With the money I could stop working and go to school full time, maybe at least get my physicians assistant accreditation. So I might end the six months a little bruised and achy after spending those months lusting after a man I can’t have, there were women who spent their whole lives like that. Six months is nothing.
I start my car and back out of the parking lot, careful not get too close to the gorgeous white Bugatti Veyron I know belongs to Rourke Vega. There was a write-up on it in the newspaper when it first appeared in Austin and people wondered who owned it. Now there are twelve others in the city, but it was Rourke who owned the first one. He bought the Chiron last year, but he prefers his Veyron. A hysterical bubble of laughter escapes me; the man has his pick of million-dollar cars, and I have a ten-year-old Corolla I love dearly. The differences between us couldn’t be any clearer than that.
Checking the street, I pull out into the heavy traffic on Lamar. I know South Austin enough to be familiar with the general area of the address he gave me, but I key it into my navigation app on my phone because the roads get a little twisty in Austin.
Even in heavy traffic it only takes fifteen minutes to get to the house. It’s a pretty house, a mid-century modern in white limestone on the bottom half and dark green siding on the top. The lot it’s on is huge with plenty of space between the neighbors. I ring the bell and hear it echoing throughout the house. Since I’m aware Cheryl Vega is alone and using a walker to get around, I wait patiently for her to answer the door.
The door opens on a woman who was once probably taller than my own five foot six by a few inches, but now we are eye to eye, and it makes her sad. Not because she wants to be able to look down on me, but because she misses who she used to be.
My patients and their families accuse me of being psychic. I’m not. I’m really good at reading people, and after a while you recognize it because you’ve seen it so often. Cheryl is wearing a plain purple shirt in a fine jersey knit and white leggings that are sagging on her, telling me she’s lost weight recently. Her light brown hair is in a pixie cut that suits her. Bright brown eyes shimmer with gold flecks.
“Mrs. Vega, I’m Olivia Casey. Your son has put me through his trial by fire. I made it through, barely scorched, now it’s time for you take your turn.”
Cheryl Vega throws back her head and laughs. For a moment I see her as she was before the stroke, I’ll get her there again—well, between me and Patricia. Her hand is pressed against her chest as the other clings to a black rolling walker. “Isn’t he the most arrogant, charming pain in the ass you’ve ever met?
I nod as I can’t hold back my own laughter, even though I know it’s dangerous. “I’ve never met anyone like him, and I’m hoping I never do again.”
“Oh, there’s just one Rourke.” Her eyes wander over me piercingly. Interesting, she might not be his biological mother, but they have the same unsettling ability to make me feel they can read my mind. While her eyes are a light golden brown to his black, they still miss nothing. “Come in, dear.”
She backs away from the door, and my eyes wander around the huge open space. There is a thick, dark hardwood on the floor. The walls of the living room are a baby blue. The bright yellow in the kitchen and a large open dining room clash with the blue, and my eyes go down to the pretty soft velvet couches in sea blue. “You hate it.”
“I—it’s.... I don’t hate it, but it’s not easy on the eyes. You like blue, but there are varying shades that would have softened the room better.” I shrug. “It also doesn’t matter if I like it. All that matters is you do.”
With a sigh, she sits on a dark blue wingback chair. “Rourke said the exact same thing. Now he won’t help me fix it because he doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t like it.”
“We can change it if you like. I’ve watched thousands of hours of HGTV and love the idea of decorating with someone else’s money.”
Cheryl laughs. “I love the idea of redoing it. When Rourke knocked down the walls, the colors were so old they did kind of match. They were just barely annoying, so I lived with it for years. Until I had to redo the kitchen when I had a small grease fire. I moved on to the living room and it looks like this. It’s depressing.”
“A little, yes, but we can make it a fun project. I see you have a beautiful patio and pool. I love to swim. Can we go sit outside while it’s nice and warm without burning our skin?”
“Sounds delightful. What would you like to drink? I have these lovely sparkling waters, and some sweet tea.”
I love the water she offers me. “I’d love a sparkling blueberry water, thanks.” I take the fizzy can and follow her out to the patio. Okay, so she thinks the living room is depressing; that will have to be changed or she’ll keep to her room. “It’s so nice out today. Austin in February.” I smile with a shake of my head. “Although it does feel a bit humid already.”
“Hmm...I used to love spending time out here. Do you see the spray fans? Rourke had them installed for me when I mentioned a café I went to had them. I’m aware he’s a bit overwhelming for some, but I couldn’t ask for a better son. He spoils me rotten.”
The love she has for her son is in every line of her face. “I’m going to guess it was well-earned in his book.”
She waves me away as she rolls her eyes. “I did what a mother should have done is all. I’m actually a petty thief, I should have done more to get his biological mother involved in his life. It wasn’t exactly fair to him the way I refused to even consider her as being a part of his life. I was so happy to call him my own, but now, looking back, I can’t help wondering if one day he’ll resent me for my greed.”
“So you kept his biological mom away from him? Made it impossible for her to see him?” My eyebrows go up.
Her eyes widen. “No, I never. She just walked out of his and his father’s life. Left some piddly little note and never called or came by again. Even when we tried for years to get her to allow me to adopt Rourke, she wouldn’t respond to our requests.”
“Then you didn’t have anything to do with his biological mother not being a part of his life, and it’s time to move on from those thoughts because they do no one any good. If the woman had wanted to be there for her son, nothing could have stopped her. You’re his mom; let him take care of you. Just always remember to say thank you.”
She laughs. “Patricia was right about you. I’m glad you made it through Rourke’s trial by fire. You like him.”
Holy crap, I go so red my head swims. I’m a fish out of water again—my mouth keeps opening but nothing comes out. I struggle for air. “I—no, it’s...he’s. No. No.”
Her laughter is really starting to get on my nerves. She wipes her eyes as she laughs so hard she can’t catch her breath. I’m eying the fence and considering jumping it to escape. “Oh goodness, I’m sorry for laughing.” Well stop, I want to plead but bite my lip so hard it’s bleeding. She shakes her head as she wipes her eyes again. “It was the expression on your face. You would have thought I was asking you if you were willing to run nude down the street. I’m well aware Rourke is a catch, he’s made those stupid most eligible bachelors lists a few times. Most women would be pleading with me to set them up with him, but you look as though it would be torture.”
I’m so agitated I pull my ponytail out then put it back in, disbelieving it’s not as tangled and knotted as I’m feeling. “Your son will be my employer. I’m expressly not allowed to get involved with the people I’m a companion for or their loved ones. Things could get very m—complicated. I don’t do complicated. I’m not saying your son isn’t attractive, a blind person would find him attractive. I just, I’m not looking for a relationship, any kind of relationship, and there’s the fact your son doesn’t really do relationships so...no, Mrs. Vega. No.”
Her sigh is deep and heavy. She is a crappy actress. “You are right about Rourke and his non-relationships. I’m sure, though, once he’s found that special person he’ll be as loyal and true as his father. I never once doubted Emilio kept our vows, and if you think Rourke is handsome, my dear, you should have seen his father. Emilio was so very handsome he often stole my breath clean away.”
“How did you meet Emilio?” I make sure to use his name.
“I was Rourke’s kindergarten teacher. Rourke blew me away by all he already knew. His father worked with him to make sure he wasn’t seen as some worthless immigrant—his words, never mine. Emilio had only been in the country for seven years, from Guadalajara, Mexico. He was adamant Rourke shouldn’t feel like an outcast; he didn’t even want him to learn Spanish, but of course Rourke learned it along with several different languages on his own.
“Emilio met and married Rourke’s mother, a debutante sowing her wild oats who wasn’t expecting any of those oats to bear fruit. Her family was so angry he was a Mexican immigrant that they disowned her. She married Emilio, thinking her family would come around to accepting her husband and child, but they didn’t so when Rourke was three she went crawling back to her family.
“Rourke was speaking full sentences when he was only two years old and reading by the time he was three. It was mainly due to the babysitter his mother left him with—the babysitter was working on her teaching degree and using Rourke to practice on. By the time Rourke made it into my class he was grades ahead of the kids in the same room. He was reading at a fifth-grade level and doing sixth-grade math. I met with Emilio to urge him to move Rourke to a gifted school.
“And...well, the moment I met Emilio I fell hard for the man. Emilio told me that Rourke already said he hated the limits of the school system and would rather work from home alone. He asked me if I had any ideas, and invited me to discuss them over dinner.” She blushes as she shrugs. “Emilio offered to cook me dinner. I went and never left. We got married two weeks later. I quit teaching to homeschool Rourke.”
I can’t imagine throwing my whole life away on the strength of one night with one man. Even before my fucked-up, failed marriage. “That must have been some dinner.”
Her smile is deep; she’s glowing. “It was. Once he knew he was going to marry me he quit the construction job and got on at the post office, from sheer will I think. I did warn him we would want to make sure we put plenty of money away for Rourke to go to college, and he listened. They are very alike that way, they both listened, were considerate, the way they took care of me and each other. Emilio was a proud husband and father. He worked very hard to give us the life he believed we should have.”
“How long ago did he die?”
“Almost fifteen years now. It was stress, we had just gotten word about Rourke being injured. Although he was hurt badly, he would survive. Even though it was good news, it was Emilio’s second heart attack. His heart didn’t know the difference and gave out on him.”
“I’m so sorry. I read previously Rourke went to school at Stanford. It was only the other day I found out he served in the Army. What made him go into the Service?”
“That Atlas complex of his. I’m proud of him and he makes me crazy at the same time. He won a full ride scholarship to Stanford and left at only sixteen, except it didn’t cover room and board which was a huge amount of money. While we had been saving money for years for college, I’ll admit when we found out about the full ride we never took room and board into consideration. We thought full ride meant full ride, since it even covered his books.
“So we gave a part of the money we’d saved to Rourke so he could travel around Europe and see the world after he graduated high school. For half the summer I went, and for the other half his father went. We weren’t extravagant, we knew we would still want to set money aside for Rourke to have spending money and to come back to Austin for summer and the holidays. But it wasn’t nearly enough when room and board were factored in.
“By Rourke’s junior year we had to take a loan out on the house. But only months later Emilio’s diabetes got bad, and he couldn’t work. I had gone back to teaching but my teacher’s salary wasn’t making a dent. Then Emilio had a heart attack, and it scared the living daylights out of us. Rourke came back and found out everything. He made the decision not to finish his last year at Stanford. Rourke broke both our hearts and signed up for the Army. He sat us down and explained it was the way he had to go. A forty thousand signing bonus would give him more than the last year of Stanford.
“He gave us the first ten thousand to settle things, bills for the house, then he was gone. Neither Emilio nor I was surprised to find out within a year Rourke moved beyond infantry and into Ranger school. We didn’t see him again for two years. He sent money home for us to invest on his behalf in things we never would have picked, and of course it made him a fortune by the time he was out. Then he invested with his former Army buddy, who was flipping houses and hiring former vets to do the work.
“When his father died the payout was substantial, and I still had to argue for him to take back the fifteen thousand he had given us over the years. It was the first time Rourke and I ever raised our voices with each other.”
“Are you going to tell me about how he’s nice to puppies and kittens too?”
Cheryl laughs. “I don’t need to hard sell Rourke, it’s a mother’s prerogative to brag about her son. I’m quite confused how you can be attracted to my son yet seem to not like him as a person. It’s so rare to find I admit I’m not handling it well.”
“I will admit I resented him, before I knew more about him.” Her head tilts. “It seems like all these changes in Austin that make it harder to afford to live here, that turned it into this mecca for people intent on changing it from the quirky, weird place it is, were kind of his fault. There was all the expanding he did, building, and helping fund the festivals and car racing here. Then some people reminded me, he’s just one guy and he couldn’t have done all of this by himself. I don’t know it was more about what he represented. And then I met him and he’s really bossy and arrogant.”
Nodding, she chuckles. “Bossy is the tip of his iceberg. Tell me about yourself. How did you come to do this sort of thing?”
I shrug. “After a bad divorce I had no money and not a whole lot of options. I had my CNA license and a friend knew of someone who needed a live-in CNA. It solved my problems in one go: decent money and allowed me to move out from my brother’s place and give him his bed back.”
“What does your family think of you moving about?”
“My parents are dead, my dad was in the Army and didn’t make it back from deployment, my mother died in a car accident when I was eighteen. My brother and sister don’t think much of anything.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh my. That must have been difficult to be eighteen and supposedly an adult, but without the benefit of a guiding hand. Or were your brother and sister there for you?”
Another shrug, after so many years it’s gotten easier to talk about. “My brother was in the Army, stationed overseas, and my little sister was only fourteen. I raised her. I somehow ended up married, and we became a family unit for her.”
“Somehow?” Her confusion is genuine, same as mine was all those years ago.
Shaking my head, I shrug. “I’ve thought about it often. One day he was there checking up on us the way he had been since my mom died, the next after a night of too much wine, I woke up with an engagement ring on my finger and him in my bed. He never left. I liked him but I never loved him. At the time I thought I needed him, needed the way he wanted to take care of me and my sister. It’s embarrassing to admit I thought he was the white knight, when instead he robbed and pillaged my life.”
Her eyes are kind as she pats my hand. “There’s no shame in doing what hundreds of women have done before. I was married at sixteen for the very same reason. My father had just died. My mother was adamant I needed a man to take care of me. The man who was supposed to take care of me beat me nearly every day for two years until I managed to get away. Sometimes we learn the hard way. He did more than rob you of money.”
I swallow against the tears. “They were just words.”
“Sometimes words hurt more than fists. Never doubt the things he said were about control, and manipulation, and I have no doubt they were untrue.”
I want to believe that, I really do. Sometimes I even do. Breathing deeply, I can’t believe everything I’ve told her. She could work for the CIA, her ability to interrogate subtly with a smile should be studied. I finally manage to bring up dinner. I didn’t think I would be so relieved when Rourke came home.