Beneath the Covers (Kimani Romance) by Dara Girard Page A

him a name or something—I don’t remember—and said I’d go by myself and told him to keep watch. When I went down there, I found some boxes and trunks that I started going through. I didn’t hear Thomas call out to tell me that my father was coming. Because he didn’t want me to get into trouble, he ran down the stairs to come and get me. It took a while for him to find me. I was all the way in the back room.”
    Peter squeezed his eyes shut. “The wheezing started almost instantly. Thomas couldn’t catch his breath.” He opened his eyes and stared sightlessly ahead. “I recognized that he was having an asthma attack. I tried to help him up the stairs, but he couldn’t make it and collapsed. I got my father and he carried him upstairs. My mother called an ambulance, but by the time the EMTs arrived, he’d suffered a stroke and he never fully recovered.
    “The strain of my brother’s care caused my parents’ divorce. My mother eventually remarried. I have a stepsister who is a physicist and a stepbrother who is a neurologist. My father never remarried. He raised the two of us.” Peter took a deep breath. “He’ll never say it but my father blames me, and there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about what Thomas could have been. I think about it most when it rains.”
    “Your brother is who and what he is,” Claudia said softly. “I know you love him no matter what, and that’s okay.” When he didn’t respond, she continued. “I had an aunt who came to stay with us for a while and one day I broke a beautiful teacup and desperately tried to put it back together so I wouldn’t get into trouble. Of course that was impossible, and my aunt caught me. Tearfully I apologized, and she said that it was fine and left it at that. A few days later she showed me a mosaictile trivet she had made. She said this is a lesson about life. Sometimes in life things break and can’t be put back together again as they were. They must become something else. I still have that trivet as a reminder. Don’t see your brother as broken—see him as he is now. He is worthy now.” She licked her lip, uncertain. “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”
    “A number of reasons.”
    “Name one.”
    Peter opened his mouth then closed it. “It’s complicated.”
    “No it’s not. Did you think I would judge him or something?”
    Peter looked away.
    “I knew you were hiding something from me even back then.”
    “I wasn’t hiding anything. I just didn’t want my family to interfere with us. You don’t know what my father’s like.”
    “I don’t know what any of your family is like. You never introduced me.”
    “You didn’t miss anything.”
    “Your father couldn’t be any worse than my mother.”
    Peter sent her a look but didn’t reply. His meeting with Claudia’s mother hadn’t gone well. Although Mrs. Madison appreciated that he was working toward his degree, she wished he had more ambition.
    “Now I see it wouldn’t have worked out between us.” Claudia rolled onto her back.
    “Feeling validated now? You dodged a bullet. You don’t have to deal with a man who has a damaged brother and father issues.”
    Claudia regretted her words. “That’s not it at all. I—”
    “Like I said, my family is complicated and I didn’t want you swallowed up in it. I knew you would try to get involved, and I didn’t want that. Back then you thought you could solve everything. You were opinionated and stubborn. It would have been a mess.”
    “So I’m nosy, opinionated and stubborn, huh?” She sat up. “With a list of other faults you probably haven’t shared. I’m surprised you wanted to marry me in the first place.”
    “Blame it on the idiocy of youth.”
    Peter meant to hurt her, and he succeeded. She pushed back the covers. “I knew this was a mistake.”
    “Wait. Dammit. Come back to bed.”
    She pulled on her nightclothes.
    “I—I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be. We weren’t meant to