I stared at her. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Eight years,” I said. “She’s blamed you for eight years so she doesn’t have to question why she knew nothing about her own home and husband and—” Anger licked up my spine and I whirled to face her parents. “And you let her? She hasn’t spoken a single word to your daughter in eight years, and you thought that was fine? You let her get away with treating Chloe like that under your own roof?”
Angie looked flustered. “We couldn’t—I don’t—Grams cannot be reasoned with,” she stammered. “Butwedon’t blame Chloe.”
Like that made it okay.
Terry’s mouth flattened. “What exactly would you have had us do? It kept the peace. You don’t know how hard things were for this family back then. Angie’s sickness, the bankruptcy. We all did the best we could, but it was a heavy time for all of us.”
“So you let Chloe carry the extra weight. Like always. Not because youhave to, but because she can. It’s easier that way.” I split a look between them, and they stared back in shock. Fuck that. My jaw clenched hard. “Get your things, Chloe. We’re leaving.”
“You can’t leave yet,” Angie protested. “We haven’t had pie.”
I almost laughed. “Angie, I like you a lot and I know Chloe thinks the world of you, but your priorities are seriously out of whack if pie is what you’re worried about right now.”
Angie flushed.
I took Chloe’s elbow. She stared up at me with wide eyes, her lower lip falling open. “Do you want to stay here and have pie with the people who thought it was perfectly okay for you to carry the blame of your grandfather’s death for eight freakingyears, or do you want to come home with me and I’ll make you something sweet?”
Her gaze shifted over my face and then her lips firmed. She nodded. “Take me home.”
I steered her out of the kitchen and through the living room. “Let’s go, Amy. We’re leaving,” I said as we made for the door.
“Without pie—” Amy said in consternation, glancing up from UNO. One look at my face and she jumped to her feet. “Right. Coming. Thanks for dinner. It was great.”
I brushed aside her brothers’ protests and helped Chloe into her coat while Amy hastily grabbed her jacket and bag, and then we were out the door.
Chloe didn’t lose that dazed expression until we pulled onto the highway. She shifted in her seat to face me. “What you did back there…the way you stood up for me?” She shook her head slowly, disbelievingly. “No one’s ever done that. Not once in eight years. I can’t believe you did that.”
My hand found hers in the space between us. “I can’t believe you put up with anything less.”
The knockon the door was so faint I thought it was wishful thinking. I froze, every cell in my body on high alert, my heart beating out of time in my chest, my breath stuck in my throat. A moment passed, and then another. Hope ebbed like a July snow field.
The second knock was louder and unmistakable.
I kicked free of the covers, launched myself across the room, and wrenched open the door. Chloe stood there, wrapped up in her fluffy robe, her feet bare.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice rough and breathless like I had run a ten-mile race instead of crossed a tiny ass bedroom.
She fidgeted with the belt on her robe, looking uncertain. “Do you want me to go?”
I reached around her for the doorknob and pulled the door closed. “Don’t even fucking think about it, princess.”
One eyebrow flicked upward. “Good.”
She gave one quick tug on the knot at her waist and shimmied her shoulders. The robe tumbled to a heap at her feet.
I stole one fevered look at her luscious naked body and slammed my eyelids shut with a groan.
“Steven,” she said, and I could hear the bafflement in her voice. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t think straight when I look at you.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not here for thinking,” she said.
Her hands landed gently on my bare pecs, making me tense, but I still didn’t open my eyes.
“We should talk,” I managed, clinging to my resolve by a gossamer thread as her fingers trailed over my stomach, tracing the squares of muscle, following the V-line to my groin. God, her hands felt good on me.
“I don’t want to do that, either.”
