Bishop's Pawn Read online

  “It means we’re getting married.”

  She shoved him so hard he stepped back. “Married? Why? I don’t understand.”

  He plowed ahead because all of a sudden his mind cleared and he knew what this surreal situation needed.

  “To be perfectly blunt,” he spelled out with emphasis, “there’s something primal sparking between us. Pardon the vulgar directness of this but Carina, when our clothes come off? We fuck like animals. And that energetic fucking left you in a vulnerable spot courtesy of some shitty latex. I’m not clairvoyant, but it’s a safe bet that we’ll be heading for round two and probably three, possibly four before tomorrow rolls around. And since I’m not fully loaded with protection our options are thin. Pulling out and coming on your tits sounds like fun, but not all the time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh. And since I’m guessing neither of us intends to back off, the chances of you getting pregnant go up exponentially every minute we’re alone together. There have been enough illegitimate kids in your family tree.”

  “Ouch,” she griped. “That was a bit brutal, don’t you think?”

  “Brutal but true, luv. Your mother, you, Matty, Liam. I don’t know what’s going on with us, but one thing is sure. You’re mine, Kelly. And I think you like the idea.”

  They looked at each other in silence for a long time.

  “God. Now I really need that tea.”

  That’s all she said before making a mad dash into the kitchen. He let her go and allowed the space between them. She needed time to come to grips with everything being thrown her way.

  Tomorrow really would be the dawn of a new day, and it was going to take everything he had to keep this whole thing from heading straight into the crapper.

  He’d called it when suggesting they’d fuck the night away, and she had not a single regret about any of it. It worried her though how quickly she’d let him into her life. She’d never let anyone in. Ever. Only Sam and Ginny were the exception. And Matty, of course.

  “You guys don’t seem bothered at all by the snow,” she remarked to the brood of Rhode Island Reds. “Bet you’re glad now that I insulated this baby, huh?”

  She did a bit more upkeep to the chicken coop and made sure her hens had plenty of water. The overnight conditions made ice in their pan, so she had to remind herself to trek out here every few hours and break up any chunks that formed.

  On the way across the backyard to the goat shelter she built with her own hands and Matty’s questionable assistance, Kelly trudged through the snow, at times breaking a path through thick drifts of the frozen white.

  Goats were her mother’s brilliant idea, one of the few she brought to the table and miracle of miracles, the little animals turned out to be a very good idea. First, they were better than any lawnmower Sears ever came up with, and to be honest, she liked the milk goats they kept.

  Ginny showed her ways to manage a small group of animals and how to get the most bang for her buck. The goat cheese and milk products she sold at the Farmers’ Market paid for the annual costs and gave her a free and easy supply of milk.

  Chuckling she muttered, “Ah, life in the wild.”

  A while later the chores were done, and the sun finally came out. They were buried under a foot and a half of snow and some pretty significant drifting piles. The only thing keeping her from jumping out of her skin was knowing Sam would arrive at some point and use his truck plow to clear the bumpy dirt road to the house and help get Bandit dug out. Good thing too, because there was a pile of trash covered with a tarp and ready to go to the dump in the truck’s bed.

  The rumbling growl from her stomach was all the reminder she needed that food was next on her to-do list. The heated up leftover coffee from yesterday that she held her nose and guzzled earlier had eaten a hole through her empty gut. She needed something substantial before getting on with the rest of the daily grind.

  “Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.” Using her booted feet as mini-plows, Kelly kicked snow away from a new path leading from the rear of the big backyard to the door. Half way there she noticed the smoke from the chimney had increased and the porch light was off.

  Roman must be up.

  She paused. The thought came so easily to her. It was as if he belonged there. Maybe not so much in a literal way, because he was a fish out of water in her world. But everything she felt and all they’d shared seemed like destiny. There was no way two people who just met could generate that much intensity, heat, passion and connection for no goddamn reason.

  At the steps, she kicked snow off her boots and then almost flew into the house when the aroma of bacon wafted through the air. She and Matty were a lot alike in their dedication to all things bacon. Sam sold the best smoked pork belly in Oklahoma. Knowing a butcher wasn’t exactly a bad thing!

  Bursting through the back door, she called out while ditching her hat, scarf, coat and boots in record time. “Is that bacon I smell? You realize of course I will arm wrestle with you over every piece.”

  She stepped around the corner into the kitchen and stopped dead. Had he become even more head-to-toe yummy in his sleep? My word! Nobody should look that hot or be so distracting this early in the morning.

  Following her nose, she sniffed her way next to him at the stove and stood on her toes to try and get a look over his shoulder. “Why, Mr. Bishop. You know your way around a cast iron skillet!”

  He snickered and smiled down at her. “The trick is to get the pan screaming hot before adding the bacon. This fancy man has done his share of camp cooking, and I’m not talking about leisurely recreation in a national park.”

  “Semper Fi?”

  “Yup.”

  Did you kill anybody when you were in the war?”

  His jaw clenched so tight she was sure his teeth would crack from the pressure. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and moved away to let him finish.

  “I’m going to wash up. Be right back.”

  Dashing into the bathroom, she questioned why she felt so perfectly at ease with him. And why she was secretly bummed the storm ended, and the sun came out. She’d have liked another day of it being just the two of them before that other life she could feel pressing urgently against the boundaries of her simple existence came crashing down.

  Roman watched her cute, curvy backside march away and sighed. Everything about this was so damn weird. They interacted like an old married couple, banged like porn stars, and verbally sparred better than a point-counterpoint TV show.

  Relieved that the things they’d done and said in her old brass bed hadn’t destroyed the unusual bond forming, he’d mentally fist pumped his joy when her lips touched his shoulder.

  Kelly James was one tough, fierce female. But that didn’t mean she was hard. This harsh, unrelentingly difficult life she was placed in by her mother hadn’t damaged her heart or her ability to be deeply empathetic. And wise.

  He thought of them curled together in the narrow bed as sleep claimed her, and how she burrowed into him murmuring, “Hold me tighter.” It had been his pleasure to pull her tight. She’d curled closer like a small child and tucked a hand beneath her chin. It felt so right that some part deep inside him wept tears of happiness.

  And then, as dawn broke and he reached for her only to find the bed space beside him empty, his desire to introduce his young love to the sweet relief of morning sex crashed and burned in the face of this life she led.

  It amazed him that she showed no frustration or displeasure with the hard realities she so adroitly managed. That amazement tripled because she wasn’t bitter. Or full of crazy anger. From where he was sitting, this balls-to-the-wall twenty-three-year-old had more sense and drive than a good many of her peers.

  “What were you doing out there?” he asked when she came back. “And why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “Wake you up?” she said with a half-startled expression. “Whatever for?”

  Jesus. She was gonna kill him with this ‘I can do anything’ shti
ck. Forking the crispy bacon from the skillet, he dropped the hot strips onto a plate and pushed the hot pan from the burner before facing her.

  There were probably a dozen responses vying for air time as he turned, but all of them vanished when they were face-to-face. Sliding an arm around her waist, he pulled Kelly forward and kissed her firmly on the mouth. “Good morning.”

  Her lovely smile had a lighthearted quality. She melted into him and twined her arms around his neck. “Good morning to you too.”

  Palming her ass, he relaxed his hips against the counter and kept her plastered to his front. “I could have helped,” was all he said. She looked at him quizzically. Didn’t she get it?

  “But I didn’t need any help, Roman.” Her shrug was short and to the point.

  “But I could have helped,” he said again.

  “But…I didn’t need any help.” Her face was a mask of confusion. “Is this a macho thing? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”

  He started to answer, but she kept speaking.

  “Does it bother you that I have things under control? By myself?”

  Attempting to defend his position he growled, “You shouldn’t have to do all this by yourself.”

  “But I did, and I do, and to be frank with you, I don’t know any other way.”

  She sounded like Liam and the way he described growing up with his mom. She was so damaged by Adam Ward’s malevolence that he’d truly been the man of the house while still riding a bicycle. He was starting to see more than just eyes as a similarity in the siblings.

  Her stomach growled.

  One quick but extremely thorough kiss later he had her at the table, digging into a pile of bacon and a plate of perfectly fluffy eggs while they enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and discussed the world.

  “May I ask a few questions?”

  Her eyebrow arched. Dropping a strip of bacon on her plate, she wiped her hands on a purple fabric napkin and gave him all of her attention. “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you talk like everyone else around here? It’s not my imagination that you show zero southern or country twang. What am I missing?”

  “Wow. You went straight to it, didn’t you?”

  He wasn’t even going to pretend he wasn’t pleased with her reaction. That’s when it struck him that not many people got this close to her.

  “The simplest answer is the truth. Outside of my mother, I wasn’t exposed to other people very much. She home schooled me. Sam and Ginny are from the east and don’t talk Okie either. So I guess you could say that you hear my mother’s background.”

  Roman nodded and considered the new information. Deb James was the key to so much, and he needed to understand what the fuck had been going on here all these years.

  “How did your mother afford all this? I know it’s not much, and you pretty much exist off-grid, but there are still expenses.”

  Her half-smirk was not in any way warm or friendly. “I believe the expression you’re searching for is sugar daddy.”

  His eyes narrowed, and a dangerous surge of anger toward Adam Ward fired off inside. “Are you serious?”

  Kelly shrugged again and crossed her legs. The hair flip was intended to be nonchalant as if to suggest she didn’t care but he saw through the act. Roman wanted to lash out at everyone who in even the most insignificant of ways had fucked with her life.

  “I don’t know anything for sure except this. Along with the house and land, part of Deb’s inheritance included an escrow account with funds to cover the land taxes for about twenty years. Lucky her, huh?”

  The gritty animosity came through loud and clear.

  “She insisted there were savings too and that’s what paid the meager bills. After she died, those so-called savings took on another form.”

  Emitting a pained and heavy sigh, she rose and went into the pantry, coming back a minute later carrying two old tin cans from another era. One said Beechnut coffee and the other slightly larger can read Charles Chips. She placed them on the table in between them and sat down.

  “Go ahead. Look.”

  He watched her face in between reaching for a can, prying the lid off and looking inside. Pulling out several plastic storage bags he had a second of complete astonishment at what he found.

  “When I found it in an old bag in her closet there was a little over twenty-five thousand dollars. Spent some,” she ground out. “There’s roughly nineteen thousand four hundred and sixteen dollars left.”

  Ah. Now he understood so many things. Like having a satellite dish and a flat screen but no microwave.

  “And you think this money is from your uh…”

  “Father? Pfft, please! I’m not sure he would even qualify as a sperm donor.”

  “We’ll get to him, Carina,” he drawled smoothly. “But let’s stick to the cash for a minute.”

  “Well, I’m afraid if you want additional information, you’ll have to wait for Ginny. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she knows way more than I ever imagined.”

  Hmmm. He considered her wording and manner. Not a deflection. She knew nothing. And despite her clear affection for the older woman, Kelly wasn’t pleased about it.

  Touchy subject. He got it. Moving on…

  “You mentioned home-schooling,” he said with a deft subject change. “Is that why you don’t show up in official records?”

  Her answer was a starchy sniff, hastily crossed arms, some evil eye, and a shaking foot. “Are you legally allowed to stick your nose into anyone’s business?”

  The smirky grin spread across his face with supersonic speed. “Wanna see my badge?”

  She ejected out of her seat with an awkward jerk and stood up with an expression of alarm on her face. “Are you with the government?”

  “Easy sweetness,” he calmly murmured. Gesturing, he asked her to sit down. “I’m sorry. Let me explain.”

  “I don’t need any trouble, Roman,” she spat in a very unambiguous way.

  Oh god. His clumsy attempt to be charming and funny did not get the laugh he expected.

  “Cards on the table?” he asked.

  “I’m a pool shark. Not a card player. Hard to learn when it’s just you.”

  He reached across the table, took one of her hands and brought it to his mouth for a gentle kiss. He didn’t relinquish control though and kept a firm grip.

  “Yes, I am licensed to carry. I’m also what the feds will tell you is a highly trained interrogation specialist courtesy of the military. For the past many years I’ve been doing private security. Security that sometimes includes surveillance.”

  “And protection?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re my…you’re that guy’s bodyguard?”

  He noticed she went out of her way not to say Liam’s name, a quirk he found troubling.

  “I prefer Head of Security. And these days it’s more like a friend who also takes care of shit.”

  Her hand got pulled back, he searched her face for why and knew immediately he’d unintentionally put his entire size thirteen foot into his mouth.

  “Did you just refer to me as shit?”

  “Please don’t overreact.”

  “How ‘bout you watch your mouth?”

  Heat like what you’d expect if you got too close to a sun flare burst around them. Her fire tempted him in ways that would shock her innocent sensibilities if she knew.

  “You get one,” he told her. “And that was it. The next time you get bitchy with me the view of the floor will be all you see.”

  He expected a comeback, but instead she colored like a summer rose coming to bloom. And then his dick started doing the rhumba in his jeans. Her embarrassed, guilty-pleasure silence almost ended with her naked from the waist down and impaled on his cock.

  “I was poking around in your father’s house of lies when a surprising tidbit of information came to light. That tidbit led me to you. Liam was dumbfounded. Frankly, so was I. But we couldn’t move the information ball
downfield at all. Your mother did an excellent job of slamming that door shut.” He paused and considered how to say what he knew she had the right to know.

  “Kelly Anne James is not your birth name.”

  All the color leeched from her face. He gulped and prayed she didn’t faceplant on the table if she fainted.

  “Looking for you was like trying to find the needle in a haystack. Once Debbie brought you here, the leads ran cold. No school records. Social security. Bank accounts. Nothing. How is that, Kelly? What am I missing? Besides Matty.”

  The muffled buzzing in her head had a strangely cold quality that gave her a shiver.

  Not her name. Of course not. Why would it be?

  An angry blast of hurt engulfed her soul. Her mother was an even more fucked up unit than she ever imagined. Same for Kelly’s biological other who manipulated and destroyed everything—with Deb’s complicit consent. The two of them. Ugh.

  She reached up and threaded shaking fingers through her hair, pushing the whole mess away from her face. He was only asking for the whole story, and she wanted to let it all out. God knows she did. But with every minute she was reminded of how little she knew.

  The name thing for instance. An old memory, a conversation with Debbie sprang to life in her head. It was the year she turned sixteen, and all she wanted, all she cared about, was getting a driver’s license. Such a simple thing in her young mind but holy crap Deb reacted like a driver’s license was a threat to mankind. She’d worn her down and eventually got permission to go through the fuss and bother.

  Needing a certificate of some kind to prove who she was, Kelly had been astonished when her mother produced an Oklahoma I.D. and social security card. Only the name was Kay James. Her explanation at the time was that somehow her initials, K and A, morphed into Kay and became the name on record. As far as the state was concerned, she was Kay James which also explained why she called her brand K.A. James. If Roman or anyone was searching for her as Kelly, they were gonna come up empty.

  Everything was such a mess and starting to feel like a boulder picking up speed and damage potential as it hurtled downhill. For the very first time in her life that she could recall, Kelly felt a worrisome tingling in her nose as hot tears gathered in her eyes.