Caught in the Act (The Davenports) (26 page)

The combination made her eyes lose focus.

She pressed back frantically, wanting more, grinding against him. She was desperate.

Her moves seemed to sever his need to drive her out of her mind, because his fingers clenched tightly, and he suddenly picked up speed. She could tell that she was no longer the only one out of control.

He grunted as their skin slapped together.

His strokes grew tighter, and he leaned forward so that his body covered hers. Their skin slid together. His hands reached around, seeking out her breasts.

She bit her lip when he found her, attempting to hold in the groan, but she failed. Her head hung as his fingers tugged at her flesh.

“Brody,” she whispered, her need urgent.

Understanding, he slid a hand down her belly until it was between her legs. His touch did the trick yet again. As she felt the contractions build, her knees dipped. But Brody was ready for her. He caught her, holding her tight, and with one final move, he ushered them both across the finish line.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

B
RODY HELD HIMSELF
off the bed with his elbows, Cat’s body stretched out beneath his, open to him. Her gaze was locked to his. He slowly pumped his hips, filling her, before retreating and doing it again. His heart pounded with the depth of the moment.

Neither of them spoke. They merely felt.

They’d fallen asleep in her bed a few hours earlier. It wasn’t morning yet, but dawn was breaking. Which meant their time was almost up. He didn’t want to be caught sneaking out of her house. She didn’t need that. Plus, her kids would be arriving soon.

He’d turned his head on his pillow a short while ago to find Cat watching him. The look in her eyes had scared and thrilled him at the same time. He hadn’t been the only one lost for the last few days. He’d seen that in her. Yet fear had also been in there. As if she was still unsure about them.

He refused to accept that. They belonged together. He would find a way to make it happen.

Without a word, he’d moved over her, and he’d begun to show her what she meant to him.

He pushed the hair off her face now and dropped a kiss to her cheek. He wanted to make love to this woman every morning for the rest of his life. His mouth found hers and he held on until they were both breathless.

He slid in deep, closing his eyes as his body begged for release, and let out a tiny groan when her hands moved over his back. Her nails dug in. Not deep, but enough to know that she was gaining in speed, same as he. He shuddered in her arms. He didn’t want this moment to end. When it did, they had to face reality.

They still had things to work out. Being together wouldn’t be easy.

He’d shown up, and they’d made love. Then they’d moved to the bed and had reached for each other again. Afterward, she’d fallen asleep in his arms before he’d been able to say all the things on his mind.

But this morning he had to get them out.

He loved her.

He would fight for her.

But she had to be willing to do the same. Was she really ready to stand up to her mother? For good?

A small gasp hit his ears, and he felt Cat’s movements shift. Opening his eyes, he showed her the depth of his emotions. His love was there. And it was hers.

Several minutes later, he rolled to his side with an exhausted but happy grunt, and brought Cat with him. With her wrapped in his arms, he kissed her damp temple and whispered, “I want to tell you about my father.”

Her eyes opened.

“I need you to believe that I am not anything like them, and I never will be.”

“I do believe that.” She sat up, pulling the cover with her and tucking it under her arms. “I knew it the other day. I know who you are. And no, you’re nothing like them.” She reached out to touch his arm. “But I would love to hear what you have to say. I’d like to better understand you.”

He pushed himself up, propping beside her against the headboard, but he didn’t start talking immediately. He grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and took a moment to relieve himself of the condom as he let his mind return to that summer almost two decades ago. Then he stared straight ahead and blew out a heavy breath.

“Mom used to work for Arthur’s dad, Thomas Franklin Harrison. He was a Georgia senator. My brother got his name from him. Mom has a poli-sci degree and worked on a congressional campaign in New Hampshire the year she graduated college. She loved it. And she was good at it. Someone on Harrison’s team heard about her and was impressed. He stole her away. From what I understand, she had a promising career ahead of her. She’d established herself as a valuable commodity and had secured a position with Harrison in Washington. Her life was setting up exactly as she’d dreamed.

“But thanks to Arthur, she had to give that up. He wouldn’t acknowledge a child with her, and he promised ostracism if she so much as uttered his name. He wanted her gone. If she’d stayed in DC, he assured her that her choices would be limited. He’d used her, and he was done with her.

“He did offer abortion, as I understand it, but that wasn’t an option for Mom—thank goodness.” He winked at the horrified expression that came to Cat’s face, but kept on going. “So she told no one, and she came home. She’s been teaching at the community college ever since. She’s happy—and she has been for years—but it infuriates me that Arthur changed her life that way. And that he had zero remorse in doing it.”

Brody wrapped an arm around Cat and held her close. “Not to mention having nothing to do with me,” he added. “Mom never talked about my father. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I accepted it. He was someone she’d previously worked with who had chosen not to be in my life. That was all she’d ever say about it.”

“That must have been hard,” Cat said. “Not to know more.”

Brody nodded. “It was. I was curious. But I was also mad. Why didn’t he want anything to do with me? And deep down, I wondered if it was the fault of my mom. Maybe he
had
wanted me, you know? But she’d chosen not to let him?”

Cat squeezed his hand.

“I know,” he agreed with her unspoken comment. “I shouldn’t have doubted her.”

“You were a boy, and you had no dad. Of course you’d wonder. Any kid would.”

Her support warmed him.

But she was wrong. He should have had more faith.

If he had, he and Cat may not be in the situation they were in today. He wouldn’t have sought the man out.

“I found a picture when I was sixteen,” he told her. “It was from the time Mom worked in DC. It was her with Arthur Harrison and another guy. Arthur Harrison was a senator in Washington by that point, and the other man was a guy my mom had known since college, Clark Trent. Clark lives in Boston and works for the New England Political Science Association. Very intelligent guy.

“I’d met him a few times in my life, and we were friends.” He shrugged. “As much as you can be friends with your
mother’s
friend. But we got each other. We had a lot of the same likes, and he was one of the people who encouraged me to work hard in school. He’d even offered to help with college entrance essays when the time came.”

“You thought it was him?”

He nodded. “Made sense to me. And that hurt. Clark had come around my whole life. Not all the time, but consistently through the years. He’d show up to visit Mom, but he always made time for me. Yet he didn’t care enough to want to be my father?
That
did not make sense.”

He shrugged again as if none of it mattered now. But he’d wished so many times Clark had turned out to be his dad. “So I headed off to confront him,” he stated.

A laugh rolled out of him as he remembered that day. The look on Clark’s face.

“I confronted him all right.” He glanced at Cat and placed a quick kiss on her upturned mouth. “He didn’t seem all that surprised to see me, but he
did
manage to surprise
me
. He introduced me to his life partner.” Brody shook his head in fond remembrance of that day. “Clark was most definitely not my father.”

Cat made a small
O
with her mouth, humor in her eyes. But the humor disappeared as she somehow figured out what he had yet to say. “But he knew who was?”

Brody nodded. “Told me to go home and ask my mom. But I didn’t need to. The minute he looked at the picture I’d brought with me, I got it. My real father was the other man in the photo. Arthur Harrison. At the time I found out the truth, Arthur was up-and-coming. Had a kid, married for fifteen years. He had the ideal life.”

He paused long enough to let his mind really settle into that time. He’d been angry. But he’d also been hopeful. Maybe once Arthur met him in person, he’d see that they were family.

Brody felt like a chump, even today. He never should have gone to DC.

He forced a curve to his lips, but he didn’t look at Cat. And his smile was stiff. “I didn’t go home and ask Mom. I got back in my car, and I headed south that night. The car barely made it. It was such a piece of junk.”

“The car you have now?” she asked. “You said it was the first car you’d owned, right?”

Remembering her early description of his car, his smile turned real. He ran his hand up her arm. “Yeah. The car I have now. The ‘red one.’ ”

She grinned at his teasing, and he had to force himself not to kiss her again.

She held his heart in her hands, and she could either squeeze the life out of it or she could make him the happiest person on earth. He didn’t want to give her that power, but she had it. That scared him.

He turned his attention back to the open doors beyond the foot of the bed. “I had to stop at an auto shop on the other side of New York,” he said, remembering that trip and the pleading he’d done to get the service guy to cut him a break. “Took the last cent of the money in my pocket, but he got it running good enough to get me the rest of the way. When I got there, it was dark. I had no idea where to go, so I slept in my car. I showed up at Arthur’s office the next day.”

Cat’s gaze was on him, he could feel it. But he didn’t turn to her.

“By this time, my mom was frantic. I’d called her the day before and left a message but hadn’t talked to her myself. I’d intentionally called when I knew she would be out. Of course, I didn’t get
that
particular earful from her until I talked to her days later.” And he
had
gotten an earful. Until she’d learned where he was.

“I went to Arthur’s office the next morning but was stopped by his receptionist. Senator Harrison was much too busy,” he mimicked the snotty woman who’d been behind the desk, “but she’d be glad to give me a signed photograph of the senator as a thanks for my support.

“Please,” he ground out. He rose from her bed. “I didn’t want a photograph of the man. I knew what he looked like.” Brody pointed to himself. “He has my eyes. I saw it the instant I knew who he was. It infuriates me. I don’t want to look like him. When I told the receptionist to let him know that Annabelle Hollister’s son was there, his schedule suddenly opened up.”

Cat peered up at him from the bed, her hair wild around her face and her eyes as scared as he’d felt that day. “What happened?”

“At first there was denial,” he said. He grabbed the ridiculous leggings off the floor and stepped into them, realizing he stood there naked. “Claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. I presented the facts. I told him to look at my damned eyes. I told him when I was born. Seven months after my mother quit working for
his
father.” He swallowed and nodded, then crossed to the open doors. The sky was growing lighter. “He relented. He believed me. But he claimed he’d never known anything about me.”

“That’s what you wanted to hear,” Cat said when he paused.

He nodded. Guilt washed over him. His mother had built her life around him and he’d doubted her.

“Over the next few days, I met his wife and son,” he continued. “I stayed at his house—as Thomas’s friend. It was made clear that I was to tell no one who I was. Not yet. They had to figure out the best way to share the good news.”

He turned to face Cat, anger raging. “It was bullshit. The man went for two weeks acting as if he was happy to know about me. Told me to my face that my mother had kept me from him. He made me hate her. By this time, I
wanted
him to be my father. And I was willing to shun my own mother for her part in keeping him from me.”

He rammed his hands into his hair, pulling on the ends before letting go and clenching his hands into fists. “He bought me a car,” he gritted out. “A brand-new Mercedes.” Gullibility had never sat well with Brody. “It was a hell of a lot better than the piece of shit I was driving. I even let him get rid of the old car for me. No need for me to bother with such trivialities.”

His laugh that time was harsh, and he saw Cat cringe with the sound.

“The reality was, my piece of shit was parked in Arthur’s driveway. It was presenting the wrong image with his million-dollar home.”

Cat nodded as if she got it. And she probably did. Her world revolved around the image she and her family presented.

“So what happened?” she asked.

“He suggested I move in. We could make it permanent.”

Cat’s eyes widened. He’d been an idiot to believe anything Arthur Harrison had ever said to him.

“I went home to pack my bags. Mom didn’t explain things at that point, but we argued. A lot. She kissed my cheek before I left, and told me she loved me. I hurt her that day. I said ugly words to her. But I didn’t let that slow me down. I hopped in the car and arrived back in DC before Arthur was expecting me. I found him in his study with his personal assistant. They were discussing the best way to present me to the public. What would win him the most support? He was a wronged man, you know? Had never even known he had another son. It was a gold mine of an opportunity.”

Brody shook his head in disgust. His jaw clenched. “Then he said something which took me a few minutes to digest. He said, ‘Send Annabelle another check. The first one kept her quiet for sixteen years.’ ”