Worn Me Down (Playing With Fire, #3) Page 3

  “Darlin’, you can tell me to leave until you’re blue in the face. I’m not going anywhere until Brady comes home, so get that stick out of your ass and get used to it,” I tell her, flopping down on the chair at Brady’s desk and clasping my hands behind my head.

  With a frustrated growl, she turns and stomps off to the back room.

  As I stare at her ass in those tight jeans until she disappears from sight, I can’t help but wonder what the fuck her deal is. How can someone so small be full of so much piss and vinegar? At least one good thing will come of her being such a bitch – I won’t be tempted to sleep with her anytime soon. I prefer a woman to use her tongue on me for pleasure, not making me miserable with her verbal lashes.

  Brady is going to owe me big time for this shit.

  Chapter 4

  Gwen

  “Come on, asshole, give me the money shot.”

  I stare through the zoom lens of my camera at Mr. Bradford, standing in the parking lot of a Harley Davidson dealership. Mr. Bradford, a fifty-two-year old foreman at a local car manufacturing plant, “slipped and fell” at work and has been collecting workman’s comp for the last four weeks. Supposedly, the spill he took at work slipped two disks in his back that have been causing him extreme pain. Strange how someone who is supposedly in so much agony that he can no longer work, is thinking about purchasing a motorcycle.

  Under normal circumstances, just buying a motorcycle wouldn’t be cause for alarm, but if this idiot gets on the bike and drives away, he’s toast. While I wait for Mr. Bradford to negotiate with a salesman, I can’t help but think about the previous day at the office. I can’t believe Brady had the nerve to send Austin to keep an eye on me without letting me know. I’m going to kill him. I get where he’s coming from – he’s been on edge ever since I told him I was filing for divorce, but this really wasn’t the way to go about calming his nerves. If William hasn’t tried to contact me by now, I doubt he ever will. Having Austin under foot every day until Brady gets back is just going to make things worse. I don’t know what it is about him that puts me so on edge and I don’t like it. I don’t like how I want to punch the smug look off of his face one minute and kiss him the next. He’s hot – there’s no denying that fact. His body looks like it was carved out of stone and my fingers itch to touch the muscles on his chest. These conflicting feelings just piss me off and I can’t help but be a total bitch around him so he’ll just go away and I won’t have to worry about the things I’m feeling. I have no business wanting any man, especially a friend of my brother.

  I couldn’t help but be a little hurt that Austin had no idea I have a child. I just can’t believe that Brady never mentioned it to him. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, since Brady didn’t even know I had a child until I showed up at his apartment a few months ago. Turning my back on him all those years ago when he left for the Navy had hurt him deeply, but I was the one left behind to deal with our parents day in and day out. I was the one they transferred every single expectation onto in Brady’s absence. I wasn’t able to run away like he did, not until I had a child of my own and knew I would do whatever it took to keep her safe.

  I really wasn’t surprised by the look on Austin’s face when Emma ran into the office. Men like him are a dime a dozen. They’re all over you until they find out you’re a single mother and then they head for the hills. And yet, Austin took the time to talk to Emma. I’m sure it was just a ploy to butter me up so I’d agree to let him hang around the office.

  Emma had a million questions for me after we left Austin, and those questions led to questions about her father. Why doesn’t he call or come to visit, does he miss her, can she write him a letter… Ever since I left William, I’ve done nothing but second-guess my decision. Even though he did everything he could to break me, he was always a decent father to Emma. He never laid a hand on her and up until the night I left, he always made sure she was never around when his anger got out of control.

  Maybe enough time has passed… maybe the fact that he isn’t contesting the divorce is proof enough that he’s okay with me leaving him and he can be a part of Emma’s life again. I never wanted to take her away from him, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t survive one more day with him. I knew if I spent even one more hour in the same house as him, there would be nothing left of me.

  My cell phone rings and without pulling the camera away from my face, I reach blindly into the center console and answer it.

  “Hello, Gwendolyn.”

  The sound of my mother’s smooth, cultured voice makes me sit up straighter so I’m not slouching. Even after months of being out of her presence, my automatic response to her voice is still the same.

  “Mother, this is a surprise. I didn’t expect to hear from you until next week,” I tell her.

  Even though I skipped town without a word to anyone, and never told my parents where I was going, over the last month or so I reached out to my mother. To say Brady was pissed is an understatement. He didn’t trust them at all. When they found out he wanted to go into the military instead of following in our father’s footsteps of becoming a lawyer, they pretty much disowned him and he hasn’t spoken to them since. As angry as I am with them for pushing me towards William and for never believing my accusations of abuse, they’re still my parents. I needed to at least let them know that Emma and I were alive, even if I couldn’t tell them where we were.

  “I know, but I had some news I wanted to tell you,” my mother answers. “I really think it’s time for you to put an end to this foolishness and come home. There are things happening here that you need to fix.”

  There’s a reason why my mother and I only speak on the phone every two weeks. I can only handle so much of her guilt and refusal to understand the life I left behind.

  I ignore her demand to come home. “What’s going on?”

  She sighs into the phone and if I was in the same room with her, I’m sure she would be sitting at the island in the kitchen with her fingers against her temples, like what she has to tell me is causing her a great deal of stress.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but William is seeing someone.”

  She pauses dramatically and I’m sure she’s expecting me to burst into tears or rage at the unfairness of it all. Hearing this news, I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m definitely not sad. If anything, I’m relived. The fact that he’s left me alone all this time makes more sense now.

  “Did you hear me, Gwendolyn? I said, William is dating someone else,” she reiterates.

  “I heard you mother. I’m not really sure what you expect me to say. I’ve filed for divorce. He’s free to date anyone he likes,” I remind her, pulling the camera away from my face and resting my head on the seat back.

  “You’ve made your point. The two of you had a few problems and you left. Obviously he’s hurting so badly that he needed comfort. It’s time for you to come home and work things out. You need to stop thinking about yourself for once and put your family back together,” she tells me.

  I take a few deep breaths to calm myself before replying. Screaming at my mother will accomplish nothing. No matter how many times I try to explain things to her, she never listens; she never hears me. She’s so in love with the idea of me being married to one of the top surgeons in New York and the prestige that comes with it, she doesn’t even care that her only daughter spent year after year in her own private hell.

  “If this is how our conversations are going to go each time we speak, then I really don’t see the need to continue putting up with this every other week. You know why I left; you just don’t want to accept it. I’m not coming home, mother. And if you want to continue being in your granddaughter’s life, you’ll respect my wishes and stop trying to make me feel guilty.”

  I hate using Emma against her, but at this point, it’s the only way to make her see reason.

  “There’s no need to be that way, Gwendolyn. Of course I want to be in Emma’s li
fe and yours as well. I just don’t understand all of this nonsense,” she replies with a sigh.

  “And herein lies our problem. Having your husband put you down with his words and his fists for ten years isn’t nonsense. Look, I have to go. I’ll have Emma call you next week.”

  I end the call before she can say anything else, tossing my cell phone angrily onto the passenger seat and bringing the camera back up to my face. I push my mother’s words out of my mind as I see Mr. Bradford swing his leg over the seat of a brand new Harley. The click of the shutter release echoes through my car as I take over fifty pictures of him starting up the motorcycle, pulling out of the dealership and gunning it top speed down the street.

  Once he’s out of sight, I pull the camera way from my face and quickly scan through the photos. These should be good enough for the plant to take to their lawyer and put an end to their weekly payments to Mr. Bradford. A man with that many problems and in so much pain shouldn’t be able to drive a Harley.

  There’s nothing like the feeling of closing a case. When Brady first asked me to help out at the office, I had no idea what I was doing. Now, I’m out on jobs and doing investigations on my own. William never let me have a job. He was adamant that I stay home and be at his beck and call. Being able to come and go as I please and have a job I love is the best feeling in the world.

  Setting the camera down on the passenger seat, I start up my car and drive a few blocks to the grocery store to pick up a few things before Emma gets home from school. As I walk up and down the aisles, throwing random things into the cart, I stop in my tracks in the soup aisle when something makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The overwhelming feeling of being watched fills me and I whip my head around nervously. I’m the only one in the aisle. I shake my head at my foolishness and turn back around, pushing my cart to the next aisle. The feeling of being followed lingers and I rub the goose bumps off of my arms, looking over my shoulder every few minutes as I finish my shopping.

  It’s probably just because of the conversation I had with my mother. Thinking about William always leaves me feeling uneasy. Just because I had to put my whereabouts on the divorce papers, doesn’t mean he would come here and find me. My lawyer assured me that William agreed to the divorce without complaint and said that he would do whatever I asked to make things happen smoothly and without publicity. He knows that at any moment, I could out him to his colleagues as an abuser. His reputation would never recover.

  Shoving aside the nerves, I load up my car with the bags of groceries and head home to Emma. Another call to my lawyer just to make sure William is still in New York probably wouldn’t hurt.

  Chapter 5

  Austin

  Brady gave me an extra key to his office months ago in case of emergency. I never thought I would be happy to use this thing, but arriving at the dark office an hour before Gwen has its benefits – like snooping through her files, for instance. Not only do I want to see what kind of jobs Brady has going on right now, I want to see what kind of “personal issues” Gwen has. I’m pretty sure she won’t keep a list of said issues in her desk drawer, but you never know.

  My cell phone buzzes, bouncing across the desk and I quickly grab it.

  “Hey, asshole, how’s country living?”

  I laugh when I hear Cole Vargas, the fourth member of our SEAL team, on the other end of the line. Cole took some mandatory time off after our mission in the Dominican last year to heal. We went to the Dominican to help our SEAL brother Garrett rescue the love of his life and his best friend, Parker. She was taken by a nasty son of a bitch and by the time we got to her, she had sustained a shit ton of injuries. While she was in the hospital, she became friends with Olivia, one of her nurses. Cole fell in love with Olivia and they settled down in California where she still works as a nurse.

  Even though he’s living it up with a good woman in Cali, he’s never been the same since our time in the Dominican. Two of his best friends from the Naval Academy were killed right in front of him. He puts up a good front about being happy with his new, slow-paced beach life, but I know better. He’ll never be happy until the people who killed his friends are six feet under. The few times I’ve brought up the subject, he’s bitten my head off, so we both just pretend like it’s not an issue right now. One of these days though, he’s going to explode from keeping all of that shit bottled up.

  “It’s not eight-thousand degrees in the middle of the desert with a rucksack on my back and an M-16 in my hands, but it will have to do,” I admit with a chuckle.

  “I can’t believe you gave up a recon mission in Iraq to babysit Brady’s kid sister. Has the state of Tennessee taken a chunk out of your already tiny brain?”

  Ignoring Cole’s barb, I immediately wonder how the hell he knows I was supposed to go to Baghdad, but turned the orders down to take some personal time.

  “Care to tell me how your civilian ass knew about Iraq?” I question as I lean back in Gwen’s chair and kick my feet up on her desk.

  “I may or may not have talked to Risner the other day.”

  Hearing that Cole talked to our Captain is more than a little shocking. Last I knew he wanted to forget about the Navy and just enjoy his woman. I knew it would only be a matter of time before he came back.

  “And what does Olivia have to say about this?” I question.

  Olivia Laferriere is honestly the nicest woman I’ve ever met. She also doesn’t take shit from anyone and can hold her own in a room full of SEALS, but I know she’s the main reason behind Cole’s leave of absence. She doesn’t like the idea of her man going off into the unknown and possibly never coming home.

  “Olivia doesn’t know,” Cole responds after a few quiet moments.

  Well, that explains it.

  “Enough about my shit. Seriously, what the hell are you doing in Tennessee?”

  With a sigh, I explain to Cole about the phone call I received from Brady.

  “Huh, so that’s it? You’re supposed to just sit on your ass and keep an eye on Gwen? Suddenly, sitting here on the deck staring out at the ocean seems like a party compared to what you’re doing,” Cole laughs.

  “Fuck you. Speaking of Gwen, what do you know about her?”

  Cole and Brady went to the same high school. It never even occurred to me until now that I probably should have just asked him what the deal was with her. Brady would only tell me what I needed to know and Gwen obviously isn’t going to give up the goods.

  “I haven’t seen her in years. She was a few years younger than us in school so I never hung out with her or anything,” Cole explains. “She was pretty shy and quiet, blonde hair down to her ass, did whatever her parents told her to do. She married some big wig doctor back in New York and turned into the socialite her mother always wanted her to be.”

  Are we talking about the same person? The Gwen I know has purple and blue streaks in her hair, a nose piercing and a mouth like a trucker. That’s a far cry from being an ass-kissing social climber.

  “I was kind of surprised to hear she skipped town with her kid a few months ago and never told anyone,” Cole continues. “Definitely not something the Gwen I knew would do.”

  Jesus Christ, what the fuck has Brady gotten me involved in? Even though I want to ask Cole a million questions, something now feels wrong about prying into Gwen’s life without her knowing. I’d much rather have her tell me what the fuck is going on. I end the call with Cole, making him promise to let me know the minute he decides what the hell he’s planning on doing with his life.

  Forty-five minutes later, after sorting through all of the customer files in Gwen’s desk, I’m bored sitting around waiting for her to come to work so I make my way to the back room where I know Brady has a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling and a stack of free weights.

  Wrapping up my hands with some of the boxing tape Brady left on the floor by the weights, I take my frustrations out on the bag, beating the shit out of it until I work up a good sweat. It was good to talk t
o Cole again, but doing so always brings up bad memories that are better left buried. With every punch to the bag, scenes from the past flash through my mind.

  “Vargas, man, they’re dead. We have to leave them.”

  Punch.

  “You need to pull it together right now. We have to get the fuck out of here!”

  Punch-punch.

  “You can’t save them. They both took a bullet between the eyes. I’m not about to let that happen to you so get the fuck up and let’s go!”

  Punch-punch-punch.

  Pushing aside the memories, I hit the bag so hard that my hands sting and the muscles in my arms burn, but it doesn’t matter. The pain in my body takes away the pain in my heart from seeing one of my best friends completely lose it in the field, cradling the dead body of one of his friends to him and rocking back and forth in a daze. I need the distraction of being here, helping Brady out so I can forget about how one of the strongest SEALs I’ve ever met broke down and has never been the same since.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  At the sound of Gwen’s angry shout, my arms pause mid-punch. I didn’t even hear her come in. Fuck, I’m losing it. I’m a SEAL, people aren’t supposed to sneak up on me. She’s like a Goddamn ninja.

  “I was working, then I got bored waiting for you,” I tell her, glancing at my watch. “You’re fifteen minutes late.”

  She slams her purse down on the table by the door and stalks around to the other side of the heavy bag. She’s wearing her usual uniform of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that hugs her body. Just once I’d like to see her wearing something skimpy that shows a little skin and a lot of cleavage.

  Fuck, I need to get laid.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” she asks me angrily as I begin unwrapping the tape from my hands.

  I ignore her question. “So, I’ve been bringing myself up to speed this morning. You got some good shots of Bradford on the Harley.”