Stripper: The Fringe, Book 4 (12 page)

“I thought you understood.” Her forehead wrinkled and then smoothed quite suddenly. “Oh, you were only pretending to be okay with everything to get Scott onboard.” Her shoulders slumped. “I should have realized you were acting too good to be true.” She shook her head and lowered her gaze to the floor. “If I had known you were alive, I would have told you. I never would have
knowingly
kept him from you.”

“You didn’t even bother to find out. You could have contacted Michael and just asked.”

“Asked Michael?” Incredulous, she lifted her brows as she considered him. “Oh, I’m sure he would have let me know you were alive. And then he would have hunted me down, killed me for what I did to him and stolen my son.”

“My son,” Duster snarled, tucking his boots under the chair.

“Our son,” she snarled right back.

Compressing his lips, Duster bit back a slew of nasty comments. He wanted to yell at her until all the fury in him was spent. But he didn’t. Scott slept utterly exhausted right outside their open door.

Deliberately, he lowered his voice. “You didn’t bother because you didn’t want to. I heard you talking with Sheldon. The only reason you told me now was to protect yourself from my wrath.”

Confusion twisted the pretty right off her face. “I don’t know what you heard Sheldon and me discussing, but I didn’t withhold anything from you intentionally. Sheldon was worried you were angrier than you were letting on. Turns out he was right. And I told you when I told you because it was the right time.” She lowered her voice. “Had I known years ago, I might have—”

“Might have. Ha. Obviously, if I hadn’t found you now, I never would have found out at all.”

“Sadly, you’re probably right.” She refused to cower away from him and met his incisive gaze with bold honesty. “But I didn’t keep him from you on purpose. I thought you understood when I explained that I had no choice.”

“Right. My princess has to screw me over again.”

Diane lifted her head, peering down her nose at him with queenly pride. “You can denigrate me and call me whatever names you want. Just don’t do it around Scott.”

“Don’t see him in the room.” Duster realized it wouldn’t endear him to his son to call his mother names. Not only that, but it was completely juvenile. “Fine. I won’t call you names.”

“Wonderful. We’ve reached the maturity of teenagers in our relationship.” She sighed. “I thought you understood that after I left you—”

“After you abandoned me to almost certain death, you mean.” To his own ears, he sounded petty and unreasonable, but he simply couldn’t stop. He wanted her to hurt the way he hurt—an eye for an eye—but he knew that was impossible.

Diane drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “If you want to be nasty, go ahead, but I’m not asking for your forgiveness for what I did. I was eighteen.” She said this forcefully and paused, allowing him time to remember what it was like to be that young. “I was terrified that the network would find out I carried the son of a slaver. I did the best I could to keep my word with them and keep my word to you.”

“Your word to me?” Did she have the unbelievable gall to try to make him culpable in this?

“I’ve always considered myself married to you.” Defiantly, she lifted and extended her ring-clad finger. “Whether you believe it or not, I made a commitment to you, and I kept it. There has been no man but you.”

Deep down to his toes, he knew she told him the truth. It eased a bit of the pain in his heart, but not enough for him to let go and move on. “’Cause Sheldon doesn’t count.”

Clearly baffled by the change in the conversation, she exhaled hard. “Sheldon counts very much, but he’s my friend and nothing more. We share—shared—an apartment. He would watch Scott when I was working. And if ever the network started snooping around, we could claim Scott was his child.”

“Her child.”

“Sheldon prefers to be addressed as male.”

“So that oddjob has been watching my son—”

“Our son!” Diane lowered her voice. “Again, denigrate me all you want, but not Sheldon. Especially not around Scott. He loves Sheldon very much, and Scott will defend him against you or anyone. I’ve seen him do it before.”

“Scott understands what Sheldon is?”

“Apparently a lot better than you do.”

Duster was ashamed that he was picking on Sheldon when that wasn’t what the problem was either. The problem was, he was hurt and angry and didn’t see any way to relieve himself of those emotions in a healthy way. He wanted to fight or fuck. Possibly one, then the other. Neither one would solve his issues, but they’d make him feel a hell of a lot better. As much as he wanted to do the latter, he knew he was safer with the former. Fighting was easy and had far fewer risks than fucking ever could. If he’d never fornicated with Diane, they wouldn’t be in this mess now. But fighting could cause longer-term damage not only to him and Diane, but to Scott as well. Duster understood that intellectually, but that didn’t seem to get the message to his ego.

“I’ve raised Scott to be tolerant of others, to accept the differences in people. If you hurt someone he loves, he will want to hurt you back. He’s learning to voice himself rather than fight physically, but he is six and is inclined to strike rather than speak. The last time someone denigrated Sheldon around Scott, I had to pull his windmilling fists away.”

“So you’ve raised him to be a bully?” Duster knew that wasn’t what she was saying. He just couldn’t seem to stop himself from picking on her in any way he could. Even as he did it, he knew he had to find a way to stop. It wasn’t just that it was unhealthy, but also he didn’t want his son to witness his terrible behavior.

“Of course not.” Diane rolled her eyes. “Scott cares about those he loves. Perhaps you could learn something from our son.”

Taking the comment in stride, Duster changed the subject and asked, “How did you even meet up with someone like Sheldon?”

At first, Diane seemed suspicious of him backing away from their verbal sparring. He could almost see her gearing up a snide comeback to keep the argument going, but she glanced at the open door, and he knew in that instant, she thought of Scott. And changed her mind.

“Sheldon came to me for help. Initially, he wanted me to alter his brain chemistry. He wanted to accept that he was a woman and be a woman attracted to men. But in working with him, I learned that wasn’t truly what he wanted. He actually wanted to accept his female body with a male mind. And so I helped him do that with therapy rather than chemically altering his brain or having him surgically changing his body from female to male. I helped Sheldon accept himself.”

“Accept what?”

“Sheldon is a man trapped in a woman’s body.” Diane shrugged. “It happens. The brain and the body are of the opposite sex.”

“So why didn’t you just fix her?”

“Him. And Sheldon didn’t need to be ‘fixed’.” Diane made quotes in the air. “Sheldon needed to be okay with himself exactly as he was. That was the easy part. Sheldon had already basically accepted himself. Getting Sheldon to accept that
other
people had a hard time accepting
him
proved to be the real problem.”

One Duster had demonstrated rather clearly. He felt even more like an ass for saying what he had and peering at the man as if he were some kind of freak. An urge to apologize possessed Duster, but saying he was sorry to Diane wouldn’t do anything but assuage his guilty conscience. He should apologize directly to Sheldon. Sadly, he wasn’t likely to ever get that chance.

“Once Sheldon realized he had no control over other people’s perceptions, he became more secure and more accepting of himself.”

“How did you end up living with him?” Duster toed his socks off and tossed them next to his boots. “Seems to me you shouldn’t mix business with…living arrangements.”

“We traded therapy for babysitting. And then we realized that together we could get a better place to live. Sheldon does his computer work from home, so he was always around to watch Scott. It worked out well for everyone.” Following his lead, Diane removed her shoes. “And for what it’s worth, Sheldon has lots of girlfriends. All are beautiful women. I’m not any more his type than he is mine.”

“You’re beautiful.” The words slipped out before he could stop them.

“Thank you.” A blush stained her cheeks when she smiled and lowered her head just a bit. “But still, I wasn’t his type.”

Duster stopped himself from saying she was most definitely
his
type. But she seemed to sense his feelings anyway as she cast him a gaze that made it clear he was her type. When Diane looked at him like that, the spacious room seemed to compress. Inadvertently, he licked his lips and considered the open doorway. No way. He couldn’t do that with Diane while his son was right outside the door—closed or not.

To distract them both, Duster asked, “You don’t just strip people?”

“I can chemically alter a subject’s brain to fix things like depression or epilepsy. Only if there is no other way to address a client’s issues do I strip them. That’s why it took a year of negotiations with you.” It was as if all of a sudden she realized she’d led them right back into their prior argument. And it was too late to take back what she said. Softly, reluctantly, she defended herself yet again. “I wanted to make sure you understood exactly what you were asking me to do. Seven years is an eternity.”

“I’ll bet you’re wishing now you had gotten rid of me when you had the chance.” He too fell right back into that discussion, and all that anger rose again. Duster checked the wall com in Diane’s bedroom. The new sensor he’d installed would go off with a piercing alarm if another ship came within two hours of range.

“I’m not wishing that.” Diane removed her stockings. “If I were to wish for anything, it would be your understanding and forgiveness for what I had to do.”

“As if I can just forget everything!” Gritting his teeth, he strode over to her and picked her up by her upper arms. As much as he tried to let the past go, she kept reminding him why he shouldn’t. Holding her close, he kept his voice low. “You’re wishing for something you’ll never get.” Even as he held her in fury, he wanted to pull her into his arms and fuck the daylights out of her. Simultaneous lust and loathing made him tremble as he held her.

“Then why are we bothering with one another?” Diane looked exhausted and didn’t fight him. She just gave up. “I’ll share Scott with you. We’ll work something out—”

“Let me tell you how this is going to be.” Softening his grip on her shoulders, he found himself caressing her and pulled his hands away. “I’m taking you and Scott to Windmere. You’ll live in my house, you’ll sleep in my bed and you’ll be my wife in every respect.” Duster took his ring from his right hand and moved it to his left. “You said you always considered yourself married to me? Good. You are.”

“You think this is a good thing for Scott to see? His father hating his mother and treating her like a possession? Is that the kind of man you want him to grow up to be?”

Duster considered. Alongside wanting revenge on her, he knew he had to find a way to work around it. Not only for his son, but also for himself, and even Diane. “Scott’s not going to see that. He’s going to have what you and I never did. A home. A
normal
home with a mom and dad. We’re going to give him the very best of ourselves, no matter what we have to suffer to do it.”

“How do you propose that’s going to work when you hate me?”

“I don’t—I do—” Grunting with frustration, Duster took a few deep breaths. “I’m going to put that aside. Because as much as I might distrust you, I love my little boy. And come hell or high water, I’m going to give him the very best I can manage. So, might I add, are you.”

“I always have. But we have to forget about the past and start over. We’ll never make this work if we don’t. You’re sounding like a man who wants to own me.”

“I’m sounding exactly like what I am. A hurt and angry man who’s going to make this work if it takes the last bit of my energy and will. Every last shred of my resolve.” He took off his shirt and draped it over the chair near the rest of his gear.

It appeared to him that Diane tried to stop looking at him, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. He was bigger now than he’d been seven years ago. Her hungry gaze lingered on the expanse of his chest for a moment, then slid down to his trousers. When he lifted his hand to take them off, she drew her gaze away.

“Look all you’d like. You’re going to be seeing my body frequently, so you best get used to it.”

Declining the offer, Diane turned her gaze to the floor, but he caught her looking again within seconds. He grinned inwardly. At least he wasn’t the only one having a difficult time keeping his attention to himself.

Duster yanked off his canvas-and-leather trousers, then put them on the chair with his shirt. Husky and low, he ordered, “Get undressed and get into bed.”

Diane looked up from the mattress where she sat like a lost queen, like a royal without a kingdom. She looked excited and terrified. Her gaze darted to the open doorway. “Why?” she asked softly.

“My wife sleeps in my bed with me. I sleep in the nude, and so will you.” Duster slipped off his briefs, adding them to the pile on the chair. “Are you going to argue this with me?” Proudly naked, Duster pinned her with his gaze, offering her a challenge.

She glared at him for a moment, but then she obviously realized that defying him was futile. Diane stood and pulled the diaphanous, green gown over her head, quickly following with her underclothes. Before he could get a good look at her, she darted beneath the covers and curled up on the far side, with her back turned to him. Her message was clear—she’d sleep in his bed, but she wasn’t going to get anywhere near him.