Page 367 of Tormented Billionaire Romance Series

She went into a blank expression,set down the rag and the Pledge on the coffee table, and sank into a chair facing me. “Kane? Coming back here? Really?”

“I know,”I said, shaking my head. “Like I really needed him now.”

“Like youeverneeded himatall,” said Sarah in a pained voice. She might as well have been our father. I could hear in my head the same reaction in Dad’s voice. I didnotlook forward to Dad finding this out.

“What are you going to do?”she asked anxiously.

Wavingmy hand as if the situation were a fly that I could swat away, which I wouldn’t have minded doing with Kane himself, I said, “I don’t know. He says he wants to go out and do something when he gets settled in.”

Sarah shut her eyes dreadfully.“Kane ‘doing something.’ When I think of the kinds of things he does…”

“Tell me about it,”I muttered.

When she openedher eyes again, they were welling up with tears. I hated to think of my sister in pain, and I could see that the memories associated with Kane were actually hurting her. “Elijah, you can’t do that. You can’t let him back into your life. You’ve just gotten everything cleaned up. Don’t let him wreck it, please.”

“I know, I know,”I said, shoulders slumping. “I just don’t know how I’m going to handle him this time. I just wanted to be done with him.”

“And, you will,”said Sarah, reaching out and putting her hand on my knee. “Where there’s dirt, you can wash your hands — and youhaveto wash your hands of him. We’ll figure something out.”

“Thanks, Sis,”I said. She made me almost believe it was possible. But, Kane was the kind of dirt that made you want to scrub up to your elbows like a surgeon.

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That night,I sat up on my bed, too keyed-up to peel off my clothes and climb between the sheets. The text that I got wouldn’t make it any easier to get to sleep.

It wasa group message not only to me, but to some other guys that we used to run with. Kane was putting out feelers to our whole gang, wanting to know who was still in town and who was interested in coming out and reminiscing about old times when he got back.

My blood rancold at the thought of Kane getting the guys back together. Reminiscing about old times with them could easily lead to trying to relive them. I hadn’t seen a lot of our crew since I started getting my act together. I wondered how many of them had started getting their own acts together.

Kane wasthe kind of guy that parents called a bad influence, and getting older didn’t make him any less of one. It was easy for me to see him “influencing” them the wrong way, and see myself getting swept up in it if I let him. But, no way was I going to let him.

If I could have doneit, I would have put a barricade at the Cincinnati city line saying,KANE MARCUS, KEEP OUT.Not that it would have done any good. Kane, like any roach, was good at finding his way into places.

The imminent returnof my old friend and this new message that I didn’t answer sent me from keyed-up towired-up. No way was I about to be able to crash now, unless I did something to burn off this mood. Bitterly, I got a T-shirt and some sweatpants out of my closet and changed clothes for a run.

It waswhat Ben always advised. Running was not only good for the old heart and vascular system, it was also good for pushing through a bad mood and clearing out bad feelings, if only temporarily. All I needed to do was get clear enough to get some sleep, which Ben also was always quick to remind me was indispensable.

With every impactof my sneaker-clad feet on the pavement around my neighborhood, I seemed to relive a moment that I’d spent with Kane. They were all moments that I now wished had never happened. If only I could launder my whole life the way I was going to wash what I was now wearing. Kane Marcus, damn him, was a ground-in stain that I would have loved to wash right out of my past.

Doingstupid things is part of being young,I tried to reassure myself. To which I couldn’t help adding,but, did Ihaveto bethatstupid?

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I wassweaty and tired when I got home, ready to get a shower and dive into bed — but Kane, like that ground-in dirt I’d been thinking about, was still staining my thoughts as stubbornly as ever.

Gritting my teeth,I took my phone and did some research, bringing up his name and cross-referencing with recent police records. The facts of his recent life that were on public file jumped out at me. My old buddy was still running true to form. There had been arrests, court dates, stays in police lockups — not in actual prisons, but he’d still been behind bars not long ago and that was enough to tell me he was still as much trouble as he’d ever been.

Tossingthe phone onto the bed, I growled, “Great. Just great. And now, he’s looking forward to a homecoming.” I peeled off my clothes and stalked like an angry tiger to the bathroom to shower. Kane was not something that I could wash out of my life. Getting clean of him would be a whole different kind of problem.

CHAPTER4

Corinne. Tuesday

When you’re moving, you think you have everything you need and it’s only when you’re almost ready to go that it occurs to you that there’s one last detail that slipped your mind.

I was all packed and ready for the big move to Cincinnati, or so I thought. It was only then, of course, that I remembered that the drawstring on my laundry bag had broken at the most inconvenient time, sending me out on a last-minute trip to the drugstore to pick up a new one. While I was there, I decided to get a few extra bathroom and kitchen items because the places in the new apartment that I’d want to get into move-in-ready shape immediately were the kitchen, the bedroom, and the bathroom.

That was all that was on my mind until I came around the corner from the bathroom aisle and there, coming around the corner from the men’s grooming section, was Blake.

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