Written with Regret (The Regret Duet #1)(46)

Beautiful relief sifted through him, all the way down through his tall, muscular frame. “Thank you.”

I didn’t want his thanks.

I hadn’t earned his gratitude.

But I would eventually.

Until then, all I could do was try to make this adjustment easier on everyone involved. A little levity went a long way in the middle of a raging storm.

Slapping a hand over my chest, I swung my gaze around the empty kitchen, talking to no one as I asked, “Did he just thank me? Me. Hadley the Terrible?” I replied for no one too. “I think he did.”

He glowered as he slid the paper back into the envelope and sealed it with the brass clip. This particular glower though was packed with only slightly more heat than Rosalee’s.

Meaning he did it with a sly curl to his lips.

Also meaning it stole my breath.

He shoved the envelope back in the drawer. “Maybe. But I also locked up my computer, tablet, and wallet in the safe, so I’m not sure we’re out of the woods yet.”

It wasn’t funny. It was actually sad. But it gave me hope that we were making progress.

“And he made a joke?” I told my invisible friends.

He tipped his head to the side, still smiling, thus still wreaking havoc on my heart. “Oh, that was no joke.” He stopped just on the wrong side of close—the right side being pressed against me—and dipped his head so his lips were painfully close to my ear. “I hope you’re serious about this, because if you break her heart, I will ruin you.”

As his breath drifted across my neck like a feather, drawing a chill from my skin, it wasn’t Rosalee’s heart that I was worried about.

But that was my problem.

He didn’t know how often I’d thought about him since the shooting or dreamed of him every night for the majority of my adolescence.

Or how, in the middle of a raging storm, it was his eyes that would flash on the backs of my lids.

And if I was careful, he never would.

“We were both ruined a long time ago, Caven. Maybe it’s time for us to clear the wreckage and rebuild. Starting with her.”





CAVEN


“Oh my—”

“Don’t say God,” I corrected Rosalee from my spot at the end of the dining room table, where she and Hadley had set up art station central. I had my laptop open and was going through some of the data Ian had sent over from the Lance Goodman deal. The man had been blowing up my phone wondering where his money was, and while legal was still going through all the contract and bank statements, something just didn’t feel right.

“Why not?” Rosalee argued. “Molly says ‘oh my God’ all the time.”

“I’m not Molly’s dad.”

“I know. Her dad lets her eat donuts for breakfast when it’s not even her birthday.”

“Her dad is also essentially sending her dentist’s son through Yale. So there’s that.”

“What?”

I waved her off. “Nothing. Why don’t we just stick with ‘oh my goodness’ for a while?”

“Can I say oh em gee?”

I lifted my gaze to her. “What? No.”

“Is it a bad word?”

“No. But it makes you sound like you’re thirteen and I’m thirteen years away from being ready for that. Stay four until you are at least twenty-one. Okay?”

I glanced at Hadley, who had her head down, a pencil in hand. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

Rosalee’s second “art class” was well underway, and as if the melted-crayon crap wasn’t enough, Hadley had brought glitter this time. It didn’t matter that she’d laid a drop cloth down on the floor beneath them. If I so much as stepped foot at that end of the table for the next month, I was going to look like a platinum member at the strip club. Glitter was only one step above the plague in my house. But I had a little girl. So, as long as she wasn’t using it as body lotion to work at the aforementioned strip club, then I was going to have to get over it.

What I couldn’t get over, though, was how much she loved Hadley.

From Wednesday to Saturday, all I’d heard from Rosalee was Hadley, Hadley, Hadley.

And it fucking sucked because my brain was already stuck on Hadley too.

How the whole damn room lit up when she smiled.

How she always managed to find a way to touch me.

And, worse, how I always managed to find a reason to let her.

The last two times I’d seen her, she’d been in jeans and a T-shirt. But there was no hiding that body. She couldn’t have been over five-five, but her legs were long and her ass was round—not that I’d been looking or anything. That would have been fucked up on epic levels, considering how I felt about her.

Or how I was supposed to feel about her.

And let’s not forget how goddamn cute she looked in those ridiculous overalls. They should not have been sexy.

Then again, she should not have been sexy in my mind, either.

Though I guess there had been a reason she and I had made a baby together. Attraction had never been our problem. I could still remember seeing her from across the bar.

I’d spent years avoiding redheads.

They all reminded me of that shattered little girl the day of the shooting.

But Hadley had been different. Come to find out that was probably because she had been on a mission to steal my computer, but whatever. It’d happened and it had given me the greatest gift of my entire life, who was currently covered in what had to be a gallon of glitter while decorating a unicorn she and that same gorgeous redhead had drawn together.