Hold Me (Fool's Gold #16)(86)

“I don’t care about helping.”

“But you do care about Carter.”

Gideon stared at Kipling. “You had no right to yell at my son.”

“I told him to get out. If Starr was your daughter, what would you have done?”

“Stop it! Just stop it!”

The voice came from behind them. Destiny turned and saw Starr standing on the front porch. Tears filled her eyes.

“You don’t have to fight over this. It was just a kiss.”

Destiny hurried to her sister. “We’re worried about you.”

“It was just a kiss,” Starr whispered again. “Stop fighting like this. Stop yelling. What’s so bad about what we did? Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“You can’t be in love,” Gideon said flatly. “You’re too young.”

Felicia touched his arm. “Actually there are studies that suggest age isn’t—” She pressed her lips together. “Perhaps this isn’t the time for that kind of information.”

Love? Destiny had trouble inhaling.

Starr turned to Kipling. “You’re in love, right? So you know what I mean.”

He stared blankly. Starr frowned.

“You have to be in love,” she said. “With Destiny. You married her.”

Destiny had never heard such a loud silence. It grew and expanded until it was all that existed. It was like standing onstage and not remembering the words to a song. No, it was much worse than that. Humiliation burned hot, becoming shame. She wanted to run away but couldn’t move. It was one thing for her to know that her marriage to Kipling had been a practical decision, but another to have that very unromantic fact shared with the world. While she’d never said they were in love, people had assumed, and she’d let them.

Gideon and Felicia glanced at both of them then at each other. Starr’s breath caught.

“You got her pregnant, and you don’t even love her?” Starr surged toward Destiny. “Did you know?”

“We can talk about this later,” she murmured.

Starr stepped back. “Sure. I’ll be in my room.”

She went inside. Felicia cleared her throat.

“We’ll talk to Carter about kissing Starr. That perhaps they’re both too young.”

Kipling nodded. “I’m sorry I yelled at him. It was a knee-jerk reaction.”

“You have the jerk part right,” Gideon told him. “See that it doesn’t happen again. And I’m out of The Man Cave. Find another partner.”

They got in their truck and drove away.

Alone once again, Destiny found she couldn’t look at Kipling.

“I need to take care of Starr,” she said. “Why don’t you give us some time to work through this?”

She thought he might fight her, but instead he nodded and left. She went into the house.

Starr was waiting for her in the living room. She had Destiny’s guitar in her hand. Without saying anything, she handed it over then retreated to her room and closed the door.

Destiny sat on the sofa, her guitar next to her. She stared at the instrument, the implication clear. She would need the music because the only way to process her emotions was through a song. Only she was fine. Completely and totally fine.

Kipling didn’t love her. That wasn’t news. They got along. They were friends, and when she’d gotten pregnant, they’d made a sensible decision about their future. Everything was fine. Technically, it was what she’d always said she wanted.

He was a man who liked to fix things. She was his current project. There were worse fates.

She picked up the guitar and strummed the strings. Soft music filled the room. Love was a complication she’d never wanted or needed. To be the center of someone’s life—who needed that? Obviously, Kipling wasn’t in love with her. If he was, he would have said something. Or even hinted. But he hadn’t. He’d looked shocked. Maybe even horrified.

So he didn’t love her. That was fine, right? It wasn’t as if she loved him, either. Loving Kipling meant caring about him more than she cared about herself. It meant imagining life with him for years and years and being happy that of all the men she could have gotten pregnant with, she’d chosen him. Loving him meant being grateful he was in her life and trusting him to help her with Starr. Loving him meant that she knew for certain that forty years from now her heart would still beat faster when he walked into the room.

She realized the room had gotten a little blurry and blinked. Tears rolled onto her cheeks. She brushed them away, but more replaced them. Her throat tightened, and she fought against a sob. Because the truth had been there all along. She’d just never noticed. Somewhere along the way, she’d fallen in love with Kipling and as far as she could tell, he had no intention of loving her back.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KIPLING KNEW THAT his week was about to get a whole lot worse. He sat at one of the tables by the bar and watched the rest of his partners take their seats. They were all there. Josh Golden, Raoul Moreno, Kenny Scott, Jack McGarry and Sam Ridge. The Stryker brothers: Rafe, Shane and Clay. Only Gideon was missing. Probably because he had already pulled out of the partnership.

Rafe, Josh and Kenny exchanged a look, as if they’d talked things over ahead of time, then Kenny turned to Kipling.

“We understand what happened with Carter,” he said. “If it was one of our daughters, we’d feel the same way. But the problem is bigger than you and Gideon going at it.”