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“What are you saying?” she whispered in horror. “You had family? And they left you alone?”
“Family. ” The bitter curve of his lips was anything but amused. “Family sticks together. These people were related by blood. My father’s brother. My mother’s mother. They signed the papers that turned a five-year-old still covered in his parents’ blood over to the state. I attended my parents’ funeral with my social worker, while those exalted family members wept over my parents’ caskets. ”
Jethro pulled his hand back from her, raking it through his hair as he turned away from her. Hell, he wasn’t a kid anymore. Those years were long behind him. But the moment he saw Keiley more than three years ago they had risen inside him again with a force that had terrified him.
As a child he had forced himself to disassociate from his emotions. To watch and analyze others’. To understand what drove them rather than to participate in their emotions or their lives.
When he met Mac, the other man had forced him to view life with a bit more participation. He pushed, he manipulated, and he bribed Jethro with the tender emotions of the lovers they shared. But not until Keiley had he actually been forced to love.
“What happened, Jethro?” He stiffened as he felt her behind him, felt her arms wrap around his waist as she laid her head against his back.
“My father had a brain tumor. It was affecting his emotions, his perceptions of reality. No one knew how bad it was until the day he killed his wife and then himself. ” He frowned, remembering his parents with a clarity that often raged inside him.
His mother, Lucia, had been gorgeous. Long black hair, laughing blue eyes, and a smile that lit up the world. His father had been tall, strong, invincible, until the day he turned a gun on both his wife and himself.
He heard himself talking, whispering the words to Keiley, but the memories held him.
He had been secure. Happy. He had lived in the big brick home on a hill and his father had been building him a tree house when his world collapsed around him.
“And when they were gone, everything was gone. ” He was finished, frowning at the lack of emotion he detected in his own voice. It should have been raging with emotion. It should have been an animal’s snarl of rage for all he felt as he let himself remember. “My parents had discussed what would happen if anything happened to them. Their will gave my uncle care and custody of me and anything they had. The state took the house for taxes and debts. But everyone I shared blood with washed their hands of me and let the state take me as well. ”
“Everyone?” She heard the pain in his voice. “There was no one?”
“No one. ” He turned, easing from her hold as he breathed in heavily. “I survived, though. I stopped caring. ” He stared back at her then. “I made myself stop caring. I couldn’t afford to hate, to hope, or to love. I wiped them out of my mind and I set about surviving from one foster home to another. Until I graduated and went to college. ” His lips edged into a grin then. “Then I met Mac. Mac doesn’t do anything by half measures, and I think the fact that I refused to feel just irked the hell out of him. ”
He sat down, feeling an edge of weariness creeping over him. Then he reached out, amazed at how easily Keiley moved to his lap, allowing him to hold her, holding him in return.
“Mac can be like that,” she said gently, her head at his shoulder as he buried his hand in her hair and held her to him.
The soft weight of her, the warmth of her, it speared into his soul like sunlight.
“Then came Keiley,” he whispered. “I took one look at you and felt the last of my defenses melting away. I couldn’t speak to you. I couldn’t go near you. You terrified the hell out of me, so I guided Mac to you. ”
Because he had known Mac would complete her more than he ever could. She had the shadows of lost dreams in her eyes, and a wariness he knew he would only make worse. A wariness Mac could heal.
“I thought he would call me within a few weeks. A few months. ‘Hey Jethro,’ he’d say, ‘come on over and play’” He felt his expression twist at the memory of the loss he had felt when that call hadn’t come. “Instead, he called and told me he was marrying you. ”
“And you just accepted it?”
“Yeah. I did. ” He nodded, heavily. “Because I love you both, Kei. Mac is my only true family, and you were my heart. You two suited each other. ”
“You were too scared. ”
Trust Keiley to get to the heart of the matter.
“The big tough agent was too scared of a girl to even speak to her. ” Her voice resonated with the beginning heat of anger.
“Yeah, he was. ” He could grin now, though it hurt. “You scared the hell out of me. Because you made me feel. With those big hazel eyes and that wary smile. Mac though, he knew how to fix what hurt you, whereas I would have pushed and hurt you worse. A part of me knew I just had to wait. Mac and I—we balance each other out. We’re both scarred, Keiley, but you heal us. I always knew you would heal us. ”
“I’m possessive, Jethro,” she said then. “I’m so scared you’re going to realize this isn’t what you really want. That you need your own woman, one you don’t have to share. Your own family. ”
“I have my family. ” His arms tightened around her. “You and
Mac are my family, Kei. You made me feel things I swore I would never feel. You made me dream of warmth and forever. Don’t take it away now, not if it’s in you to love me. ”
Keiley heard the reservation in his voice then, the automatic defense against rejection and wanted to weep. God help her, what she was going to do with him and Mac? They were breaking every rule ever created for a relationship and making her think it could work.
“Come on, you have to shower. ” He lifted her to her feet, rising behind her as he pushed her toward the bathroom. “Get in there. Or you’ll be late.
