Maude, furious and fearful too, immediately got off of him and began getting out of bed.
“What’s the matter now?” he asked her.
But she didn’t say another word. She couldn’t. She went into the bathroom, closed the door, and then slid down to the floor in tears. She’d never been enough for anybody. Not even her own family. And now him too?
To his credit, he said the quiet part out loud. To his credit he didn’t lie to her. But that didn’t make it any easier. It may have even made it worse. She quietly sobbed.
But then she heard his phone ring. And then she heard him speaking on that phone. Was it one of his other women? Was it that beautiful black lady that fled his house that night?
But then he was calling her name. “Maude? Maude?”
She began wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “What?” she yelled out.
“Get dressed. Natasha has been released.”
Maude stopped wiping tears and just sat there. Because if Natasha was released, that meant she could give them real information, rather than the jail-monitored version, that could prove out Maude’s theory that Ross Hampton and his goons were destroying Dillon with their bullying of other companies, and their rancid corruption. Not to mention his double homicides. She got up and opened the bathroom door.
Edmund was seated on the edge of the bed putting on his shirt. But as soon as he saw her sad, tear-stained eyes, his heart dropped. What was he going to do with her? “Come here, Maude,” he said to her in a way that wasn’t that arrogant, dominant style of his she didn’t like. But it was more nurturing like she needed.
She went to him.
He opened his legs, pulled her into his arms, and laid back holding her. She expected him to tell her he was sorry and that he didn’t mean to imply that she wasn’t enough for him. But he didn’t say a word. He just held her.
He held her until she stopped sobbing. And then he pushed her soft hair away from her face and looked at her. “You’re okay?”
She nodded. She was resilient and tough because all her life she had to be. But now she realized there would be no easy bed for her to lie in with him either. She had to be resilient and tough and prove her worth to him too.
But the risk was greatest with him. She could prove everything there was to prove to him only to have him break her heart anyway the way all those other men did. She was never enough for any of them either. She wasn’t going through that again.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said with more determination this time, as she got off of him and began picking up her clothes. She knew he was watching her ass as she bent down because when she looked back up his penis was getting hard again even as he continued buttoning his shirt. But until he was willing to fully commit himself to her with no exceptions or wait-and-sees, he could forget that. He could look all he wanted, but she was going to do everything in her power for him to never touch her again.
It was kind of late for that, she knew, but better late than never. At least this time she was waking upbeforeher heart broke. Because there was nothing romantic about a broken heart. Becauseunbreak my heartsounded cute, and even plausible. But it wasn’t plausible at all. It was nothing but a song.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The ride from Atlanta to Dillon was so quiet and tense-filled that Wyatt, while driving, kept taking peeps at the boss and Maude through the rearview mirror as they sat on the middle row. Doc, in his pristine suit, was on one side of the row, and Maude, in her slacks and sleeveless blouse, was all the way on the other side. They were usually sitting so close they looked melded together, as if there was no daylight between them. But as he watched them now, there was so much daylight between them that they seemed worlds apart.
He had assumed they patched up their differences when she arrived at his hotel suite that morning. But apparently not.
He glanced over at Don. They’d been working together for so long that they considered each other brothers from another mother. They had a way of communicating nonverbally and even telepathically. And when Wyatt glanced over and lifted his eyebrows, Don responded with a knowing nod of the head. He had it right. Boss and Maude were pissed with each other.
Edmund knew their tension was all his fault, but he also knew he was never going to pretend he could be this one-woman-man she needed him to be. All his life he’d had the pick of the litter. Variety was always the spice of his life. How could she expect him to give that up so easily? That, to him, was absurd.
But as he glanced over at her, and he could just feel the pain all over her, it made him reconsider. Was it all that absurd? Why was he reconsidering it then, if it was so off the wall? And here his arrogant ass had her believing she wasn’t enough forhim. Why would he let that stand when he knew better than that? Why didn’t he just shoot it down when it came up?
Because he was an asshole, that was why, he decided. An asshole of the first order. But also, maybe, because he couldn’t bear breaking her heart the way so many of the ladies he’d been with claimed he had done to them. All because they didn’t believe him when he said he was not going to commit to them. But Maude was so different. She wasn’t going to allow him in her life without a commitment.
But what if he committed to Maude and another woman came along that he wanted to try out? What would he do then? Would his love for Maude be enough to keep his dick in his pants? He had no idea. He couldn’t even fathom what a one-woman-man monogamous relationship was like because he’d never had it. Never wanted it. It had never entered his mind.
Until he met Maude, he thought, as he looked at her again. The very idea that she wouldn’t be his woman scared the shit out of him. For some twilight zone reason, he felt she was already his woman! But what if he punted on committing to her and she went off and found herself another man? What if after that his ass woke up and he wanted her back? Maude would never leave her new man to run backwards to him. It wasn’t in her DNA. It would be too late for him.
The love of a woman never was a thing for Edmund. But could it become a thing with Maude?
He was a forty-two-year-old man who felt as lost as a little boy trying to play grown-folks’ games. And it was eating him alive. He leaned his head back against the headrest, and closed his eyes.
When they finally made it to Dillon, they had to travel all the way to the other side of town just to get to Natasha’s house. And Maude immediately saw the difference in lifestyles between the two siblings.
Unlike her apparently far-wealthier brother, Natasha Keating lived in a blue-and white mid-century modern home with a low, angular-roof, huge windows all across the front, and brick to the bottom with rustic wood up top that wrapped around the sides of the house. It reminded Maude of those movie star homes she used to see in those hip magazines when she was a kid. But it looked kind of old-fashioned to her now.
