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Brotherhood was the rule that would never bend.
Hoo-fucking-yah!
* * *
Shark’s palms were sweating when he walked up to a small adobe house in Phoenix. It had looked so much bigger when he’d been a child. Two people were on the porch in the swing he remembered fondly. Sandy had built it for his wife.
He opened the gate, the squeak from the hinges making the man look toward him. For a minute, he stared, then he rose, the perplexed look on his face turning to surprise, then outright shock. “Bale? Is that you?” he said, his voice a low rasp.
Shark moved closer. “Yeah, it’s me, Sandy.”
His foster father rushed down the stairs, and Shark found himself engulfed in a bear hug so tight, all the air was crushed out of him.
“We tried to find you. It’s been years. God, it’s good to see you.”
His foster mom, Sherry, stood at the bottom of the stairs, tears slipping down her cheeks. When he reached the house, she hugged him just as hard. “Oh, God, we’ve missed you so much,” she said, her voice shaky.
When she let him go, he said, “I came back to thank you for being so good to me when I was a kid. I owed you both that much. I know I was a handful.”
Her face contorted, and she looked at her husband, slipping her hand into his, her expression stricken. “We tried to get you back. We even hired a lawyer, but we couldn’t get anywhere with the system.”
Feeling as if he’d just taken a blow to the midsection, he stared at them. Sherry wiped her eyes on a deep shuddering breath. Finally, he found his voice. “What? I thought—they told me you didn’t put up a fight. I thought…I just wasn’t worth it.”
“No!” Sandy said, his eyes fierce. He grabbed Shark’s nape and looked him directly in the eyes, as tears welled. “We love you!” He swore softly. “This is all my fault. It had nothing to do with you!” He swore again. “I was just trying to make extra cash to feed us all. You were such a natural, and I shamelessly exploited you. They kept denying our petitions. There hasn’t been a day that has gone by that I haven’t thought of you and regretted my actions.”
“This was about our pool hustling?” he asked, everything now making sense. Social Services had taken him because his foster father had taught him how to hustle. Fuck, something released in him, something that after all of the mental and emotional stuff he’d been through with Maddy, was still tied up in a hard knot inside him. He’d come here for some closure, but he’d gotten so much more than he’d bargained for. They had loved him…loved him for who he was. It meant everything to him. It meant the world.
“You didn’t know?”
Shark dragged his hand down his unshaven face, his throat cramped up, his eyes smarting. “No, they never told me a thing, no matter how much I pleaded with them to take me back. They finally told me you didn’t put up a fight. It broke me, and I gave up.”
“Oh, God,” Sherry said, her voice sounding crushed. “We wanted you so much. You were such a wonderful, bright, and beautiful boy.” She clasped his arm, her hand tightening. “We would have moved heaven and earth to get you back. We just came up against the system’s brick wall.”
He gathered them up and hugged them hard. “How about we get reacquainted,” Shark said, his voice breaking.
A week later, when Shark got back to his townhouse, he found Maddy standing on the patio looking out to sea. She had a glass of wine in her hand. They’d had a freaking great time in Milan, especially after the conference when he wouldn’t let her get out of bed for two days. What a fuckfest that had been. His dick got hard just thinking about being inside her, fucking her, pumping hard, taking her while she took him. The experience was heightened because he was in love with her, and she was in love with him. He came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. “Was it tougher than you thought?”
She turned around and shook her head, then shrugged. “Maybe at first, initially, but then I saw Max’s cute little house, his studio in the back. His wife is pregnant with his first child. His art has taken off, and he’s making a wonderful living.” She closed her eyes, took a hard breath. “He was so kind and so generous. Just like I remembered him.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “He forgave me and said everyone has their dark moments. He said I broke his heart, but it mended, and he found love again. He said that was all that mattered. That we both found love and were happy.”
She gestured to a breathtaking abstract watercolor in shades of blues and golds. “He gave me that for you when he found out you were in the Navy. The colors work.”
There was another painting next to it, but was turned around, so the back was visible.
“It’s nice,” he said, taking her hand and drawing her inside.
“Take a look at the other one,” she murmured.
He gave her a perplexed look and walked over and lifted the painting to turn it around. His breath caught. It was Maddy, lying in a rumpled bed, her hair mussed, looking so breathtakingly beautiful and completely stark naked.
“Fuck me,” he said, looking at her, his blood heating.
She smiled at the way he was looking at her. A woman knew when a man wanted her.
“It’s worth two K.”
“Wow, really nice.” He chuckled when she shoved his arm. “How about I make dinner, and then we go to bed?” he said as he set the painting down. “No one will ever see it.”
She smiled indulgently, then tilted her head to the side in a gesture he loved so much. She set down her wine, and wrapped her arms loosely around his neck, giving him one of her most sultry looks. “You have no imagination, handsome. How about we go to bed, and we can order in later?”
