Page 67 of Sweet Temptation
Good answer. See you soon.
Lucky
Thanks, Cait.
My niece Anastasia hands me a pink teacup. “You have to drink it, Uncle Lucky,” she babbles in her baby girl voice that makes me feel like a great big softie before her brother knocks it out of my hands, and Ana cries.
“Come here, baby girl.” Her father scoops her up and shakes his head as he looks at me with a warning in his eyes. He doesn’t voice it because he knows what it’s like to fall in love with his best friend’s sister. And by all accounts, it worked out to be a pretty good life for him, but the warning is still there.
Lexie is Callen’s niece—because everyone in this entire fucking town is related somehow. It’s amazing we’re not all inbred. And it’s not just Lexie’s parents and brothers who are protective. It’s everyone. Everyone, including me. My need to protect is different though. “I’m not going to hurt her, Callen.”
“You know she’s different, Lucky. It’s not just about hurting her. It’s about taking care of her.” He puts Ana down to chase Joe, who’s just stolen her tea pot. “It’s Lexie. There will always be a level of putting her first that, I gotta be honest, I’m not sure you’re capable of.”
“Callen Sinclair, I love you with my whole heart, but if you put that bullshit in his head for one single second, I will show you just what I can do with that pretty pearl-handled knife Dad gave me for my birthday.” I love my fucking sister. She’s always been the one person to stick up for me, even when I wasn’t so sure I was worth sticking up for. “Do you really think he’d go there? That he’d go after Lexie—knowing what he does and having the friendships he has with her brothers—if he wasn’t in love with her?”
Oh fuck.
She went there.
I haven’t even gone there.
Not that I didn’t know it already. I do. How can I not? It’s Lexie. There isn’t a world where it wasn’t going to be her and me in the end. But fuck me, hearing her say it makes it a little more real. Can you love a woman you’ll never be good enough for? Never truly be worthy of?
“You, better than anyone, should know what it’s like to love someone everyone thinks you should stay away from. Stop underestimating my brother because he was a dumbass kid and treat him like the grown man he is now because he’s a pretty fucking good one. Now man up or take my babies in the other room and decide how you’re going to make it up to me—because to say I’ll be furious with you is the understatement of the century. I’m talking noMommy, Daddy, middle of the day, alone time during naptime for a very, very, very long time, Callen.”
Yeah. They broke the mold when they made Cait.
Callen looks at me like a man scared of never getting laid again. “Swear to God, Lucky, I will be one in a long line of Sinclairs who’ll kill you if you hurt her. Just remember that. And in my fucking defense,”—he looks from me to my sister, a little pissed and a little less scared now—“none of us are ever going to be good enough for these women. Not me. And not you. You’ll have to prove it to yourself, to her family, and most importantly to Lexie every goddamned day. Get used to it, buddy. That’s love, and that’s life, and that’s the legacy we bear.”
Callen wraps an arm around Caitlin and kisses her temple. “I’m going to take the kids upstairs for their baths.”
Cait watches him as he picks up both kids, a dirty smile stretching across her face. “Oh, he’s so getting laid tonight.”
“Yeah, I’m going to act like I don’t know that,” I grumble and move to the couch, now that my tea party is over. “Did you mean that shit?”
“Be more specific,” she demands as she picks up a stuffed dinosaur and points it at me. “I said a lot of things, Lucky. I might not have meant them all. Carving my husband up with that knife would probably dull the blade, and you and I both know I like them sharp.”
“Do you really think I’m a good man? I’ve done a lot of stupid, reckless shit in my life, Cait.” I’ve never regretted any of it as much as I do right now though.
“I think you’re one of the best men I know. You just have to look at yourself through the lens of an eighteen-year-old. We all do stupid stuff when we’re kids. That’s normal, little brother.” She tosses the dinosaur to me and tugs a basket full of toys over.“It’s what we do when it matters... how we choose to handle ourselves then. How we step up for the people we love. That’s how I judge the measure of a man.”
Funny, how you can look at life one way for years until the right person says the right thing the right way. That’s all it takes to look at it in a completely different light.
“You measure up, Lucky.” She adds the tea set and Joe’s stuffed football to the basket, then her bright blue eyes stare right into mine. Making sure I’m paying attention without saying a word. “You love your family. You’d do anything to protect us. You’ve already done it so many times. But no one else ever sees that because you’re not showy.”
I grin because I can’t stop it. “Pretty sure some people would argue with that, Cait.”
She sighs and throws a dog toy at my face. “You don’t need the world to know you’re a good man, Lucky. And that makes it even more true. It means you live your life that way because you want to, not because you want the world to know. You’ve never had a problem letting everyone else believe whatever they wanted because it never mattered to you. None of those people mattered.”
“And what if it matters now?” I ask, feeling like a whiney bitch. “What if that costs me the one woman who matters most?”
“She knows you. She won’t doubt you,” Caitlin assures me, but it falls flat.
“It’s not her I’m worried about,” I admit, remembering her father telling me I wasn’t what Lexie needed. That I was the reason she was in the hospital.
“If she’s the right one, she’ll tell everyone else to fuck off. Their opinions don’t matter.”
I smile, because I’ve only ever heard Lexie sayfuckwhile I was inside her.
