by Ivy Layne
"I was walking home last night a little after eight thirty and someone jumped me in my front yard," she said.
Her delivery was emotionless, as if she were describing something that had happened to someone else.
"He knocked me down and I hit on my side, face first. My shoulder and hip are bruised up, and he tore out a chunk of hair, but otherwise, I'm fine."
Evers stared at her for a long moment, considering, before he turned to me. "Where the fuck were you?"
Charlie cut in. "Fortunately for me, Lucas was sitting in his truck in his driveway. He saw the whole thing, and if I hadn't tripped in the front yard, he would've had the guy."
"I had him on the ground," I explained. "Charlie took off for the neighbor's house, but she went down and I couldn't see her. I didn't hear a shot, but I couldn't be sure. He could have had backup."
Charlie's cheeks were pink and her eyes on the floor when she said, "I tripped in a hole in the lawn. Stupid. It knocked the wind out of me so I couldn't tell Lucas I was okay. If I hadn't tripped, whoever jumped me wouldn't have gotten away."
"But they did," Evers concluded. "And now we don't know if you have a stalker or if that was just a random attack."
"Whoever it was, he had no interest in her purse or getting in the house. Her locks are shit, not that there's anything to steal," I said. "She needs motion sensor lights, sensors on all the basement and first-floor windows and doors, and a panic button, to start."
"I know my job, Jackson." Evers sent me a scowl.
"Just helping out," I said with a grin. Unlike Charlie, Evers knew exactly who I was. He wouldn't fuck with me unless he had to. It probably wasn't smart to poke at him, but it was fun.
"Do you want coffee, Evers?" Charlie offered.
"Yeah, I'll take some coffee. And while we're getting it, you can explain why Lucas Jackson is in your house at the crack of dawn, Charlotte."
Charlie's spine went straight and her hands landed on her hips. She raised her chin and narrowed her ocean blue eyes on Evers.
"Don't you 'Charlotte' me, Evers Sinclair. It is not the crack of dawn. And I can have my neighbor over for coffee if I want to. It's none of your goddamn business. So fucking nosy."
Turning to me, she said, "They're the worst gossips. Tell one of these boys anything and the others know it five minutes later."
"Hey," Evers protested. "I know how to keep things confidential, Charlie. We've never had a client—"
"I wasn't talking about work, Evers, and you know it. I was talking about you Sinclair boys and the Winters boys and the way you all tell each other everything. Especially when things are none of your business."
I dropped my face to my coffee, hiding my amusement. Evers was honest enough not to argue with her.
"Evers," she said, the teasing tone gone, "you can't tell anybody about this."
"Charlie, you know that's not going to happen." He shook his head at her. "You really think I'd keep something like this from Aiden? Or Cooper? No fucking way."
"Sinclair," I started, and when his eyes swung to me, they were hard and calculating.
"What, Jackson? You don't want me to tell Aiden or Holden that you're banging their sister?"
"Fuck you, Evers," Charlie said without heat, handing him his coffee. "This isn't any of their business."
"You and Jackson? Debatable. You getting jumped in your yard? That's definitely their business, and you know it. I didn't hear about this, so I'm assuming you didn't make a police report."
"She made a report," I said.
"Brennan?" Evers asked, approval in his eyes for the first time.
Charlie looked between the two of us for a few seconds before awareness dawned.
"You two know each other," she said. "How do you two know each other?"
I cleared my throat, trying to think of the best way to explain who I was. Evers took care of the problem for me, the interfering bastard.
At least he told her the truth.
"You remember the president of the Raptors motorcycle club who killed Big John when he went after Abigail?" Evers asked Charlie.
Her eyes went comically wide. I would have laughed if my heart hadn't been trying to pound its way out of my chest.
Charlie wasn't mine, but I wasn't ready to give her up yet. And that Lucas Jackson, the Lucas Jackson who'd been president of one of the most notorious biker clubs around—he wasn't me. Not really.
"That was a temporary thing," I said. "I'm out of the Raptors. I have been for a while, and you fucking know it, Sinclair."
"You have a motorcycle?" Charlie asked, her head tilted to the side, curiosity alive in her sparkling blue eyes.
What?
Of all the things I'd imagined her saying after Evers's revelation, asking about my bike wasn't on the list.
"In the back of the house, under a cover. Actually, I have two. The Harley was my brother's. He's the reason I was working with the Raptors. The Triumph is mine."
"I'll do you a favor," Evers said to Charlie. "I'll wait until the end of the day to talk to Aiden. We need to get the security system up and running. My team should be here any second. Let's talk about what we're going to do."
Evers ran through a list that included everything we'd already discussed, plus a gate on the driveway, cameras inside and out, and a handful of other things that would guarantee no one would get to Charlie while she was in her house.
The Sinclair team arrived and got to work. Evers took charge of the installation, which kept him too busy to bother Charlie or me.
I thought about going home. I had plenty to do and no reason to stay. Charlie was safe. I had work piling up.
Instead, I found myself following her into the living room where she was stripping paint from an old mantle. It was a beautiful piece, made of oak with intricate carving that had been all but ruined by multiple coats of paint.
"Are you stripping all the paint off the trim?" I asked, turning around to study the rooms in the front of the house.
All of them had wood trim that had been painted dark brown. Why you'd paint trim like that a dark brown instead of just staining it, I didn't know.
The trim in my house had been the same, and returning it to its natural state had been a bitch.
"I'm planning to," Charlie said. "This paint stripping stuff is awful though. It stinks and it takes forever."
I crouched in front of the fireplace mantle beside her and picked up the paint stripper and a rag.
"This isn't the best way to strip paint off wood. Not on the regular trim anyway. The way this mantle is carved, it's pretty much your only option."
"There's another way to do it?" Charlie asked.
"Yeah, heat. I've got a thing at my house. I'll lend it to you when you're done with the fireplace. You plug it in, hold it over the paint, and the paint bubbles up—practically lifts right off the wood. I'll show you how it works when you're ready to move on from the mantle."
"That sounds awesome," Charlie said. "I really wanted to stain all of this trim, but after working on the mantle yesterday . . . ugh."
Between the two of us, I figured we could have the mantle knocked off in an hour or two. We worked in silence for a while before Charlie got up to open the windows.
When she came back, she asked, "So why were you with the Raptors? Was it a job?"
"No. That wasn't a job. That was revenge."
"Will you tell me about it?" Charlie asked, sneaking a glance at my face.
I thought about it.
Why not?
I didn't have anything to hide, and her brothers or the Sinclairs would probably tell her if I didn't. But not now. Not with the Sinclair team and Evers in the next room.
Glancing over my shoulder, then back at Charlie, I said, "I will. Another time."
A thud and curse sounded from the kitchen and Charlie nodded. "Later," she agreed.
I wondered if she'd still welcome me into her bed after she knew the whole truth. I was going to find out. The truth was ugly, but
I wouldn't lie to Charlie. She'd have to take me as I was, scars and all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHARLIE
I left the Sinclair team at work securing my house. Lucas went home to check in on a new job, and I was headed to Winters House to ransack my storage bins in the attic.
We'd finished with the fireplace mantle, and it was as gorgeous as I thought it would be, but I'd underestimated exactly how messy stripping paint could be.
I'd spent the last few years wearing mostly suits and dresses. I didn't have a large collection of clothes I was happy ruining while I worked. I was pretty sure that after college, I'd thrown a bunch of old jeans and T-shirts into a storage bin and hauled them up to the attic.
Assuming they still fit, they'd be exactly what I needed. I'd already dropped a bunch of money on the futon, the mini-fridge and the coffeemaker. The idea of a newish truck to replace my ancient sedan hovered in the back of my mind.
If I decided to trade my car for a truck, I didn't want to have wasted money on new clothes I was just going to end up ruining.
I let myself in the front door and locked it behind me. Footsteps echoed through the front hall, too heavy to be Mrs. Williamson. Still edgy after being jumped the night before, I spun around and froze.
Aiden loomed in front of me. When his eyes landed on my bruised, scraped face, they went white-hot with rage.
"What the fuck happened?"
Aiden took my face in his hands, his touch gentle in contrast to his furious voice. He tilted my cheek to the light and gritted his teeth.
"Are you okay? Did Lucas Jackson do this?"
"Why does everyone think Lucas would hurt me?" I asked, stepping back and jerking my face out of Aiden's hold.
A thought occurred to me. "How do you know about Lucas? Did Evers call you?"
"How does Evers know about Lucas?" Aiden asked with a raised eyebrow. "To answer your question, I know about Lucas Jackson because my sister bought the house next door to his and I make it my business to know who her neighbors are. He helped out Jacob with Big John, but that doesn't mean he isn't a dangerous man, Charlie."
"Well, he didn't do this. I got jumped in my front yard last night and Lucas happened to be sitting in his truck next door. He ran the guy off. Lucas would've had him but I tripped and he let the guy go so he could make sure I was okay."
"Fuck," Aiden ground out.
"He called a police detective he knows so I could make a statement without it getting out to the media. He may be dangerous, Aiden, but he took care of me."
Aiden's jaw clenched.
"And how does Evers know about Lucas?"
I shrugged one shoulder and studied the crown molding in the entrance hall, suddenly feeling like a teenager getting the third degree after missing curfew.
"Lucas was at my house this morning when Evers got there to start working on my security system," I said, trying to sound innocent.
Aiden let out a harrumph that let me know he wasn't buying it.
"Charlie," he said on a growl.
I pinned him with a glare.
"Not your business, Aiden."
Aiden matched my glare for a long moment before he let out a long, resigned sigh.
"You're right, it's not my business," he said, the growl still in his voice. "And you're wrong because everything about my baby sister is my business."
I let out a growl of my own and started past Aiden toward the stairs, saying over my shoulder, "You're annoying. I'm going up into the attic to grab some stuff. You're working from home?"
"Just for a little while," he called after me. "Stop into my office before you leave. And give a shout if you have anything heavy to bring down. I'll get it."
I shook my head at him as I climbed the second flight of stairs up to the attic. Aiden, for all of his alpha-male bossiness, had his mother-hen act down to an art.
The attic was not as creepy as it sounded. Our house was old, but not ancient. It'd been built at the end of an era in which families like ours had live-in staff. What we now used as the attic used to be staff quarters and the nursery.
These days, the only live-in staff were Mrs. Williamson and the gardener, both of whom had small private cottages on the grounds.
In the years since we'd downsized, these rooms had been taken over by a disorganized array of old furniture, unused artwork, unlabeled boxes, and plastic storage bins.
At some point in the last five or six years, Mrs. Williamson had taken a stab at bringing order to the chaos, but she didn't get very far before deciding it was a waste of time. Running Winters House was a full-time job and organizing the attic was a massive project.
She'd settled for making sense of a single room, the one that used to be the nursery. Now, it was lined with custom-built shelves filled with neatly stacked bins, all meticulously labeled.
This was where Mrs. Williamson stored holiday decorations, extra linens, and anything else she deemed important for the proper management of Winters House and the Winters family members in her charge.
The other rooms remained a mess. I picked my way through the room where I thought I'd dumped my stuff from college.
Hands on my hips, I surveyed the hodgepodge of boxes, bins, and loose junk strewn around the room. We really needed to do something about this. The problem was that sorting through old dusty boxes of stuff wasn't anyone's idea of fun. It definitely wasn't mine.
I opened the first bin that looked like it could've been a few years old. Baby clothes, whose I don't know. Maybe mine or Annalise's based on all the pink. I refastened the lid and shoved it aside, reaching for a dusty green plastic bin.
Papers and manila envelopes. A quick glance through the contents told me this was decades worth of report cards. I was not going through those.
The next bin had clothes, but not mine. These were for a boy, bigger than baby but not an adult.
Why did we save all the stuff?
As I realized the answer, tears filled my eyes. My mother had been a packrat. I'd forgotten that.
Surrounded by storage bins she'd probably packed herself, I remembered my father teasing her about her need to hold on to every scrap of our childhoods.
She always smiled at him and said, "Someday, you'll thank me." I rested my forehead on the side of the bin and let out a sigh.
I wished I had more of her than this. We had pictures, and somewhere up here, someone had probably packed up their clothes and things for us to deal with later. I wasn't sure if I wanted to find them or not.
Either way, they were both gone. Both my parents and my aunt and uncle. All of them gone. I dragged in a ragged breath, scrubbing my wet cheeks with the heel of my hand.
Crying about it wasn't going to do anyone any good.
I stood up and picked my way through the stacks of bins on the floor, looking for a new section to try out. I saw a bin that looked newer than the others, closer to the door. That could be it.
Peeling back the lid, I spotted a faded Emory Athletics T-shirt I remembered caging off an old boyfriend.
Jackpot.
I tossed the lid on the floor and rummaged through the neatly folded clothes. Jeans, cut off shorts, piles of T-shirts. Exactly what I was looking for.
I checked the sizes on the jeans and was relieved to see most of them would still fit. That was something, but I'd thought there was more than one bin.
Putting the top back on, I shoved it through the door and out into the hall. There'd been another bin next to it. Same color, looked to be the same relative age. I was pretty sure I'd filled one with sandals and sneakers and a few sweatshirts.
I tugged at the lid and pulled it back to find a pile of papers. I almost closed it up and moved on but my aunt's name on the label of a file folder, yellowed and curled with age, caught my eye. Why were my aunt's papers in one of the newer storage bins?
I pulled out the file folder and flipped it open. Medical bills. Not that interesting. The folder beneath had the record of her stay in the hospital when Tat
e had been born. The one under that was from Vance and Annalise, the next from Gage.
I gathered the files together and moved to put them back in the bin when I realized there was one more folder like the others.
Older. Opening it, I looked for the date. July 6, 1981. Before Gage was born. Before she married Uncle James.
A fine tremor shook my hand as I reached for the sealed manila envelope that had been beneath the mysterious hospital bill in the folder. I worked one finger beneath the seal and carefully opened the envelope.
What the hell?
Adoption papers?
Aunt Anna had a baby she gave up for adoption? I had a cousin—my cousins had a sibling—that none of us knew about. Unless they did know and just hadn't told me.
I knew Aiden didn't tell me everything, but this was too big to keep a secret, wasn't it? I stacked the folders with the hospital records in the envelope with the adoption papers and shot to my feet, running for the stairs.
I had to know.
The tread of my sneakers skidded across the polished hardwood floors as I raced down the staircase and took a hard right down the hall to Aiden's office. I screeched to a halt in his doorway, the stack of papers clutched to my chest, to find him on the phone.
One look at me and Aiden ended his call, setting his phone down on his desk.
"What is it?" he asked.
All my earlier haste had fled. The carpeted floor between the door and Aiden's desk was a mile wide. I trudged across it, suddenly afraid of what he would say when he saw the papers in my hands.
I couldn't imagine he'd shrug and dismiss them. He couldn't know about this. He couldn't. We'd lost enough family. Aiden wouldn't hide something like this from the rest of us.
Unless they were all hiding it from me. That sounds paranoid, but the boys—the older ones—have always had a tendency to try to keep things from Annalise and me, as if we were too innocent and delicate to handle the uglier aspects of life.
Absurd, because we'd all seen too much ugliness before we were old enough to drive. We didn't need to be shielded. Try telling that to Aiden, Gage, and the rest of them.