by Julie Kenner
What had it been like to be Mitch growing up? She’d had a rough childhood. Her mother had been in and out of jail, in and out of rehab, but they’d owned their trailer and somehow Will had always found a way to keep them together and fed. She’d always had Will and Lila and Lisa. They’d given her support and love and stability.
Mitch, it seemed, had none of those things.
“He could have fought for custody. It sounds like he would have won.”
“I didn’t say my father was perfect. He went through a divorce and married my mother. And then another divorce. I suppose he lost track of Mitchell, lost the will to fight. Like I said, he’s not perfect.”
She couldn’t imagine having a child in the world and not fighting to be his mother. “What does he want with Mitchell now?”
Flynn leaned forward, his eyes on her as though he could will her to believe him. “Laurel, he’s dying. He was recently diagnosed with stage four cancer. The doctors have given him maybe a month to live. Six weeks, tops. He wants to make things right with Mitch. He needs this. It’s his dying wish.”
“And you’ve written to Mitch?” How could Mitch know his father was dying and not talk about it? She talked about her mother often. He’d even driven her and Lisa halfway across the state the prior weekend to visit their mom in prison. He’d made sure her mother had everything she needed.
But not once had he mentioned his own father was dying.
“Multiple times. I’ve sent e-mails, letters, left voice mail messages. He changed his number, naturally, and now I can’t find it.”
He’d changed it for a different reason, but Flynn didn’t need to know that. She wasn’t sure how much to tell him. “He hasn’t talked to me about it. Mitch can be stubborn. I know he feels your father abandoned him.”
Flynn’s hands were fists as he moved them off the table. “Then Mitch should confront him about it. All my dad wants is to see him. I don’t think it will matter if Mitch needs to yell and scream and let it all out as long as he gives our father a few minutes of his time so he can say what he needs to say.”
“Mitch would never yell.” He never lost control that way. Except the first couple of times they’d made love. When they made love now, he was very controlled. He brought her an enormous amount of pleasure, but it felt like there was a distance between them. He was thoughtful and she knew she should be grateful for it, but she missed the passion they’d had those first two times.
Mitch wouldn’t yell. Not at his father. Not at her. Maybe it was a good thing or maybe he simply didn’t care enough to yell.
“He needs to. My father would take it. He knows he hurt Mitch, but how can he ever have any chance to make it right if Mitch won’t talk to him?”
“I’m not sure Mitch believes in second chances.” It was another thing that frightened her. They were happy for now, but when the pressure hit and she couldn’t play the perfect submissive, when she had to be a woman with all her flaws, how would he handle it?
He always said the reason he hadn’t wanted a relationship with her was because she deserved better. What if he’d just been kind by saying that? What if the real reason had been he simply hadn’t wanted her?
Flynn sat back, his sandwich untouched. “Then there’s not a lot I can do. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
He started to push his chair back, like he was leaving. She couldn’t let that happen. Flynn had ties to Mitch, knowledge she needed. Flynn was his brother. He couldn’t walk away with nothing. She reached out a hand and put it over his.
“Please don’t go. I know Mitch won’t talk to you or your dad, but I will. I lied to you. Mitch and I are serious. Maybe not about getting married, but we’ve got a commitment between us and you should know I’m pregnant.”
Flynn sat back, a smile covering his handsome face. “That’s great, Laurel. It’s about damn time, as my dad would say. Mitch isn’t getting any younger. When’s the wedding? Or are you waiting until after the baby’s born? I know that’s a popular thing to do. Damn, Dad’s going to be happy to hear that. He doesn’t have any grandkids.”
Why did she always blush when she had to answer the wedding question? It was the twenty-first century. Plenty of people had babies without getting married. She’d grown up in a household where her mother had never married and had four kids. Not that she wanted to follow in her mom’s footsteps, but still. “We don’t have plans to marry at this point. I’m afraid this baby wasn’t planned, though I’m very happy about the pregnancy.”
Was she? She wanted the baby. She knew that, but it was hard to be happy about it when Mitch didn’t want to talk about baby things. Every time she brought up things like nurseries or baby names, he shifted the conversation to something different, saying they had plenty of time to discuss it. They needed to live in the now and let the future work itself out.
She was getting sick of living in the now.
“That’s great. I know you don’t know me very well, but I would love to know my niece or nephew.”
She sat up straight. Maybe it was time someone knew Flynn Adler. “I would like that, too. Are you married?”
He shook his head. “No. I run the family company. I don’t have time to date. We’re moving into a couple of new and exciting areas. I always wanted to run R&D, but I was needed in management. Chase is a better programmer anyway. He’s incredible. I’m worried he won’t make it out of high school. He’s had some trouble with drugs. It scares the hell out of me.”
Flynn seemed like a man who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He reminded her a little of her brother. There had been a time when Will had to juggle school and work and being a dad because they didn’t have one. “Where is your mother in all this?”
“She’s in Monaco with her second husband, who happens to be younger than me. Chase’s mom died of breast cancer a few years back. We’re all that’s left. I seem to be failing at raising a teenage boy. I don’t know how to get through to him. I can’t make him understand that life isn’t high school.”
He was alone. “Would it help at all if I talked to your father? I can’t promise you that Mitch will, but I can at least tell him about the baby and how well Mitch is doing professionally.”
Flynn had his cell phone out in a heartbeat. “I can’t tell you how much that would help.” He punched in a few numbers. “Hey, Dad. Guess who I’m talking to?”
A few minutes later she took the phone and had a long talk with the grandfather of her child.
Chapter Nine
Mitchell looked around the small apartment and thanked god Laurel hadn’t been here. Someone had kicked in her door and then taken a knife to the place. Her furniture was slashed all to hell, pictures broken, all her dishes smashed.
Lisa walked in, her eyes red. She’d been the one to call the police, and then Derek Brighton had immediately contacted Li. It had been a good thing to let Derek know McKay-Taggart was on the case. Otherwise, it might have been hours before he would have been notified.
Lisa walked right up to him and threw her arms around his waist, crying. “Who would do this, Mitch? Who would try to hurt her like this?”
The good news was he was totally getting used to dealing with crying Daley women. He was sure at one point in time he would have hesitated, but now he simply hugged her back. She was Laurel’s sister and he was Laurel’s…damn. Well, he was Laurel’s Dom and it was his job to comfort her sister and that was that.
How would they view him after a while? He knew the whole Daley family thought they were only months away from a wedding. Would Lisa seek comfort from him if he knew he and her sister were never going to get married?
He pushed the thoughts aside because only one thing mattered now and that was dealing with the problem in front of him. The police were busy, taking pictures, looking for fingerprints.
“This isn’t about her. It’s about me,” he explained to Lisa. “And I’m going to fix it.”
She stepped back. “It’s about you?”
“Someone doesn’t want me working on the contract I’m writing at the moment.”
Her jaw firmed and a stubborn light hit her eyes. “Well, screw them. You can’t back down.”
The Daley women were a bit stubborn too, he’d learned. Oh, they could be sneaky, but they tended to get their way. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew the mashed potatoes Laurel served hadn’t had a damn potato in them. He suspected cauliflower was the culprit. But she’d looked so excited about it, he’d played along.
He’d specifically requested she stop nagging him about his diet. Not requested. Ordered. And he hadn’t even thought about punishing her for lying. He’d smiled like an idiot and eaten every semi-nasty bite, and then found out that Laurel’s version of brownies contained something that wasn’t sugar, but also wasn’t half bad, and he hadn’t disciplined her for that either.
“I’m not going to back down. I’m making a lot of money on this contract and I’ll need it. Besides, me backing down only sends the problem along to someone else. I’d rather catch this guy and make him pay.” He nodded as Derek stepped out of the kitchen with Liam.
“Mitchell, we haven’t been able to get hold of Laurel,” Derek said. “We were hoping you would know where she is.”
She’d texted him and told him she was going to lunch with a friend at the deli close to work. “Her phone was dying. Something’s wrong with her battery. It’s being replaced this afternoon. She texted me she would be out of pocket for an hour or so right before Liam and Kai showed up. Where are Kai and the big guy?”
“Kai took Tag to lunch. I can’t let him go into a meeting hungry. He tends to eat the clients. Derek will give me a ride back to the office,” Li explained. “Lisa called it in. She has a unit at the end of the hall. She was coming back from a class and noticed the door was open.”
“It was kicked in,” Lisa said, sniffling. “I looked past the door but that was all I needed to do. I was too afraid to go inside. I tried to call my sister but it went to voice mail. When I called Will, he told me to call Derek directly and here we are.”
“You did the right thing.” He worried Laurel wouldn’t have. She would have marched in and tried to confront whoever was in her apartment. And why did she still have this place anyway? She was paying rent on a place she didn’t live in. Why would she need to do that? They should have packed the place up and moved her stuff to storage.
Derek gestured back to the techs he had working the scene. “We’ve already got a couple of prints. We need Laurel’s and whoever else would normally be here so we can exclude them. This place only has security cameras at the gates. If someone jumped the fence, it’s likely we don’t have them on camera, but we’re going to look.”
Which meant they likely wouldn’t get much. “I want to know where Harvey Dixon was while this was going on.”
“I’m already on it.”
He looked around at the mess that had been made. Laurel had brought most of her clothes with her. She’d brought books and some pictures, but she’d left her dishes because he’d had his and there wasn’t a ton of room for more. Now he wondered if she’d spent time selecting the pattern. They weren’t in one piece anymore but there was color to her dishes. His were a plain white chosen for utility. Laurel would have picked something she thought was pretty or had reminded her of something that made her happy.
Why hadn’t he offered to bring her things into his home? Was he still thinking of it as his home? Not theirs?
When he thought about it, the house he’d bought when he moved to Dallas didn’t fit Laurel. He’d given the realtor a set of parameters and when he’d found one that met his needs, he’d purchased it. Good neighborhood. Close to work. No big yard upkeep.
Laurel would have liked a yard. He didn’t have anywhere to sit in the back and when she’d brought it up, he’d told her no because it would be hot soon and no one sat outside in the Texas heat. He’d told her it was silly to spend good money on outdoor furniture they wouldn’t use for more than a few months of the year.
And she’d simply sighed and gone in to cook dinner.
Why had he done that? Why was it bothering him now?
Because she’s going to leave you. Because she’s going to find someone who’ll move heaven and earth to get her a damn patio set so she can sit outside and have her coffee even if it’s only a couple of days out of the year. Because she’ll find someone who can make her happy.
“Are you sure this wasn’t random, Mas…Lieutenant Brighton?” Lisa winced. “Sorry, Sir.”
Derek put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine though I notice he’s just Mitch to you. No formalities for him?”
She blushed. “He’s family. You put a baby up in my sister, you’re family. I don’t call my brother by a title either. Ever. It’s not going to happen no matter who spanks me.”
Liam chuckled, but Mitch was thinking it was nice that she didn’t even think to follow club rules with him. Because he was family.
“And I think the note left in her bedroom is solid proof that this wasn’t random.” Derek pointed to the door in the back. “If you’re careful, I’ll let you come back and see it. Try not to touch anything. Mitch, I’ll need your prints, too.”
But he wouldn’t. “I’ve never been here before. Lisa brought her a bag for the first week and when we decided she would stay with me, she came after work and picked up the stuff she wanted. I was stuck on a call about a liability claim against a company I represent.”
“You’ve never been here?” Derek asked, stopping in the doorway. “She’s lived here for three years.”
He’d never been to her apartment because he’d known what would happen if he came here. It had happened anyway. He’d pushed her away back then and now he had to wonder if he wasn’t doing the same thing now. He was crazy about her, but he still kept his distance. He still placed that very significant mileage between them.
Did he want it? Did it make him feel safe because she couldn’t quite touch his essential self?
He followed Derek. “No. I brought her to my place when I could. She worked for me. Our relationship was kept to the office until recently.”
“But she’s pregnant. At least that’s what I heard.”
“Yes, our son or daughter was conceived on my desk.” He nodded as he realized certain truths. “I probably should keep that desk. It’s kind of historical.”
His child—maybe his only kid—had been conceived on that desk. Would it be his only? How much better would his life had been if he’d had brothers or sisters to depend on? What if he hadn’t been alone in the world?
How could he get her pregnant again and quickly, so she would need him even more?
God, he was such a shit.
Liam was chuckling. “It’s good to keep that handy. Avery and I have a couch very much like that, brother.”
Derek laughed and entered the bedroom.
He heard Lisa gasp and felt her move closer to him.
When he saw the far wall, he pretty much wanted to kill someone.
Someone had spray-painted the wall over her bed.
Bradford’s whore
Oh, someone was going to die.
Lisa gasped and then he heard a low growl from behind him.
“Son of a bitch.” Will stepped into the room, his eyes wide and an angry look on his face. “Tell me you’re taking care of this, Mitch.”
“I’m doing everything I can. I’ve got O’Donnell on the case.” He hesitated mentioning the bodyguard. As sweet as Lisa was, she would absolutely go straight to her sister and tell her everything, and then he would have one very stubborn Laurel to deal with. He tried her phone again. She should be back from lunch by now.
It went straight to voice mail.
“Maybe it’s time we thought about getting her out of the line of fire,” Will said. “She can come and stay with me and Bridget.”
“No.” He wasn’t giving her up. “I told you, she’s safe at the house. My place is far more secure than your build
ing. I’ve got the rest of it handled. There’s a reason he’s going after soft targets like this place.”
Will stared at him as though he could see through him. He finally nodded. “All right, but the minute he gets anywhere close, she needs to be out of this.”
“The contract is finalized next week. A few more days and it’s all over. He’ll have to find another target for his irrational rage.”
“Will, we’ve got an eye on all of this,” Li explained. “And Derek is taking another look, too.”
Will nodded and seemed to calm a bit. “I tried Laurel, but I can’t get hold of her. I’m going to run over to her office.”
Derek smiled and asked Lisa to join him so he could take her statement, leaving him alone with Will and Li.
Li leaned in, making sure Lisa couldn’t hear them. “Mitch put a bodyguard on Laurel a couple of weeks back.”
Will let out a long breath, obviously relieved. “Thank god. Does she know about the apartment?”
Mitch dialed her again and it went to voice mail. “No. I think you’re right. I think we should go and talk to her. Let me check in and make sure she’s all right.” He punched in a number and a Cajun accent came over the line.
“This is Guidry.”
“Do you have eyes on Laurel?”
“That’s my job. Though you should know that keeping my eyes on that pretty chère ain’t no job at all.”
Maybe she needed a new bodyguard. He had to hope all of Tag’s new employees weren’t such flirty asshats. “So she’s back at work?”
“Nah, she’s taking an extra long lunch today. Must have something to do with her male friend. You said this was a protection job. You didn’t tell me she was cheating on you. Do you want pictures or something?”
His blood seemed to chill. “What are you talking about?”
The line went quiet for a moment. “So this wasn’t about the fact that she’s getting cozy with someone else?”
His blood started to thump through his system. This was a place he’d been in before. It wasn’t the first time he’d stood there like an idiot while some professional investigator gave him the rundown of all the ways the woman he was committed to had given her body to someone else. A vision of Laurel in bed with some nameless man assaulted him. The man would be younger, kinder, more giving, he was sure. The new man would be all the things Laurel needed. All the things Laurel had given up when she’d gotten pregnant by Mitch. “Where is she?”