Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans Book 4) - Julie Ann Walker Page 0,31

celebrating with him when he’s old enough to drink a beer and tell a good joke,” Daddy said. “You go, Loraine.” Then the sound of his work boots on the floor carried toward the front of the house. “I’ll head down to the pub and raise a toast to Bran’s birthday with the boys.”

Only after the front door slammed did Bran dare push up to his knees. And then the closet was opening and there was Momma, bending down to him. Her face wasn’t bleeding this time, but a ring of purple bruises was forming on one side of her jaw.

“You ready to go watch Bambi, birthday boy?” she asked, smiling. But it wasn’t her Little House on the Prairie smile. It was her fake smile.

“Can’t we stay in?” That sick feeling in his stomach was swirling around and around.

“But you’re turning five today,” Momma said, her dark eyebrows pulled down. “We can’t stay in on your fifth birthday. We have to celebrate!”

Bran wasn’t sure what the word celebrate meant. But he was sure he wasn’t going to like it. Still, if Momma wanted to go…

“Okay, Momma.” He took her hand and let her lead him from the closet. “But first I needa go potty.”

“Can you do it yourself or do you need me to help you?”

“I’m a big boy now,” he told her, puffing out his chest. “I can do it myself.”

“Okay,” Momma said, playfully swatting his bottom when he turned toward the bathroom.

Closing the door behind him, Bran walked over to the toilet and lifted the lid. It smelled strongly of the cleaning stuff Momma used. She was always scrubbing. Daddy liked a clean house.

Bran waited a little while, long enough to fool his mother into thinking he was peeing, before he flushed. The moment the toilet made its loud whooshing noise, he bent over and threw up every last bite of his macaroni and cheese…

“It’s a long and sordid tale,” Maddy said, dragging Bran back to the present.

“Sorry.” He shook his head, trying to jostle away the sense of impotent rage that always came with memories of his miserable childhood. “What’s a long and sordid tale?”

“How we know each other,” she said, digging back into the medical kit to pull out a rolled length of Ace bandage. While he’d been sucked down Memory Lane, Maddy had finished stitching him up.

His chin jerked back, his brows drawing together. “It’s not sordid,” he insisted.

“Well, then it’s just a long tale. One we don’t have time for.” When she bent down to grab the loose end of the bandage she’d wrapped around his leg, her warm breath fanned the inside of his thigh. She might as well have wrapped her amazing mouth around the head of his dick the way his shaft pulsed with delight.

He must’ve jumped or sucked in a sharp breath or something, because she looked up at him sharply. “Now how in hellfire did that hurt? I didn’t even do anything.”

“Uh…sorry,” he told her, disgusted to hear his voice was little more than a gravelly croak. “Just a…a…phantom pain, I guess.”

She curled her lip before finishing her work, using the little metal cleats that came with the Ace bandage to secure the loose end. Then she sat back on her heels, cocking her head.

“I think it should hold,” she declared, her expression tinged with satisfaction.

He pushed to a stand—happy his loose cargo shorts disguised the semi he had going—and tested the strength of his leg as well as the integrity of the dressing. Both held up surprisingly well.

One more mark in the Maddy Powers plus column.

Like she needed one. By his calculations, when it came to Maddy, every mark landed in the plus column. “It’s good,” he told her. “Thank you.” Then, without thinking, he reached to hoist her up.

The minute they were palm-to-palm, a flash of awareness blazed through him and he nearly lost his balance. He hoped to cover his stumble by making a grab for his weapon.

He must not have been all that successful at hiding what he was feeling—contradicting his earlier thought that he could have a job on the stage—because Rick narrowed his eyes and blurted, “So, are you two, like, an item or what?”

Bran’s spine did its best impression of a ramrod.

“No. We aren’t an item. We’re just…”

What are we exactly? Not mere acquaintances. Those hundreds of emails and those few heart-to-heart phone conversations had pushed them far beyond such an insipid term. Friends, maybe? But that implied a strictly platonic