Just For Him (The Cerasino Family, #2)

by Zanders, Abbie

  I frowned. Her head was down and her hands were in her pockets. She seemed preoccupied instead of alert, which was not how a woman was supposed to be when walking the streets alone at night. Muggers, and worse, looked for targets like her, women who were distracted and unlikely to put up a hassle. My brother Nick’s woman discovered that the hard way a couple of weeks earlier. I had found her knocked down in a puddle in an alley not too far from here and had taken her to the ER. Her attacker, unfortunately, was still on the loose and had mugged another woman just last week. I didn’t want his next victim to be Haven.

  I warred with myself. Did I follow along behind her and ensure her safety as my conscience urged, or did I sit here and watch for the brother? It was a tough decision, but ultimately, I stayed in the car. Haven had gotten along fine this long without me hovering around behind her, playing guardian angel. She was no more my responsibility than any other citizen I’d sworn to serve and protect.

  My inner voice called bullshit. Haven wasn’t just any other citizen. Right or wrong, I felt more protective of her than most. Denials wrapped in rationalizations wouldn’t help ease the guilt I would feel if something happened to her tonight.

  I was still waging an internal debate when I saw the kid slip out a few minutes later. He was dressed in dark clothes, allowing him to blend right in with the shadows. After looking left and right, he took off in the opposite direction of Lindelman’s.

  Suddenly, I was faced with another decision. Did I simply follow him and see what happened? If anything went down, I was duty-bound to report it. My other choice was to follow my gut and run an interception. Prevention was the better option, I reasoned.

  Decision made, I drove around and parked a couple blocks down, then got out of my car and started walking north. When I saw him approaching, I moved into the shadows and waited.

  “Nice night for a walk.” I stepped out and began walking beside him.

  Startled, he flinched and moved away. His surprise then changed to annoyance when he recognized me.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to know what brought you and your sister to my precinct today.”

  He stopped dead and glared at me. “What do you know about my sister?”

  “I know she deserves better than cleaning up her brother’s messes.”

  “You don’t know jack shit.” He started walking again. So did I. We made it another block before he turned around and said, “What is your deal, man? Are you into harassment or something?”

  “No, I’m hungry. What do you say you and I grab a bite to eat, and you can tell me what’s going on? Or, I can take you back to the station for breaking town curfew. We can call Haven to come get you ... again, and I can get the story from her instead of you.”

  His eyes flashed. “You leave her out of it.”

  I shrugged. “That’s up to you.”

  “What do you care?”

  That was a good question, and one I wasn’t sure I could answer.

  “Haven’s a friend,” I said finally, “and I look out for my friends.”

  “Yeah? Good for you, man.” His scowl deepened as he weighed his options. He wanted to tell me to get lost and go about his business, but he was smart enough to realize the odds of that happening were slim to none.

  Part of me felt for the kid. He’d had a pretty lousy day, and I was adding to it. Another part of me didn’t care. If I could help him and his sister and catch a much-needed break on the case, I would do it. I’d like to think Haven would agree.

  “I go with you, you don’t call my sister?”

  “Not unless you give me a reason to.”

  His shoulders slumped and he exhaled, resigning himself to the inevitable. “Fine.”

  There weren’t many places open that time of night, which was one of the reasons Lindelman’s did such a good business. I didn’t want to take him there, for obvious reasons. Luckily, I knew just the place.

  I walked him over to my car and told him to get in. He was hesitant at first, but he did.

  He tensed up as we drove past Lindelman’s, but I was doing the cruise-by for my benefit, not his. I wanted to know that Haven had made it into work okay. She had.

  Through the big, plate glass windows, I saw her behind the counter taking a guy’s order. A guy who was sitting in my usual seat.

  Did she give him extra sausage links, too? My chest tightened and my jaw clenched at the thought. I ignored it.

  A few minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of Mama C’s and turned off the engine.

  “What the hell is this?” Joel asked.

  “Il ristorante della mia famiglia,” I answered. “My family’s restaurant.”

  I walked him around the back and took him into the kitchen. Things were quiet. The restaurant was closed to the public, but was always open to family. My parents were used to us popping in any time, day or night.

  I pointed the kid to the table in the corner, then went to the massive refrigerator where my mother always kept extra prepared meals for us. I grabbed two and popped them in the commercial microwave. While they heated up, I grabbed a couple of sodas, too.

  I put the chicken parmigiana in front of him, keeping the pasta aglio, my personal favorite, for myself.

  “Eat,” I commanded, waving my fork toward his plate. “Then we’ll talk.”

  He glared at me.

  I ignored him and happily tucked into my own meal. Eventually, he stabbed the chicken cutlet and took a bite. Then another, and another, until he had finished the whole thing.

  I withheld my grin. No one could resist mia madre’s cooking. My siblings and I had crumbled more than once at this very table.

  I grabbed my plate and took it to the sink to rinse it. After a minute or so, he did the same.

  “So,” I said, now that our bellies were full, “let’s talk about how that stuff got in your locker.”

  Chapter Five: Haven

  I smiled and engaged in topical chatter with my customers, but inside, I was worried. Officer Vinnie hadn’t come in after his shift. I hadn’t realized just how much I looked forward to seeing him each night. Tonight, especially, I could have used his familiar, comforting presence.

  Running into him at the station earlier after being grilled by those gumshoes had been slightly awkward. I wondered if he would mention it when he came in. If he came in.

  Sometimes he was late. Being a cop wasn’t exactly a regular nine-to-fiver, after all. It was rare that he didn’t come in by now, though.

  He had a dangerous job, I knew that. Our community didn’t have the kind of jaw-dropping crime stats that the big cities had, but bad things still happened. Several places in the surrounding blocks had been hit over the past few months, and according to local news, there had been some attacks, too. Women were being urged not to walk alone at night and to take extra precautions until the attacker was caught.

  I heeded those warnings, especially since I walked to work in the dark every night. Carrying the small, handheld Taser in my pocket provided a sense of security. If someone tried to get the jump on me, he or she would be treated to eight-hundred-thousand, you-picked-the-wrong-girl-this-time-buster volts.

  I checked the clock again. The post-second-shifters had come and gone. Half the night was over and Vinnie still hadn’t shown. Was he working a case, burning the midnight oil? Too tired or sick to come in? Who took care of him when he was feeling under the weather?

  I admit I worried about Vinnie probably more than I should. We were just friends, and barely even that. More like circumstantial acquaintances, really. Vinnie probably would have been just as charming, just as kind and sweet to anyone who waited on him. That was just the kind of guy he was. I was nothing special. If I felt more strongly about him, well, no one had to know. Except Wanda, of course. That woman had the eyes of a hawk and the hyper-sense of an intuitive.

  Or maybe I wasn’t as good at keeping my crush to myself as I thought I was.

  “You should call him,�
� Wanda said when she caught me looking out the window again.

  It was nearly dawn. I had to face facts: if he hadn’t shown by now, he wasn’t going to. While I was disappointed, I was more worried. I hoped he was okay.

  “Call who?”

  “Don’t try to pull that crap with me, girl. Officer Hot Pants. He gave you his number, didn’t he?”

  I felt heat rise in my face. “That was only if I needed him.”

  “Well, clearly, you need to know he’s all right.”

  I sighed. “No, I don’t. He’s a big boy, capable of taking care of himself, and I’m fine.”

  “Is that why the coffee pot is overflowing behind you?”

  I turned around and gasped. “Crap!” I stabbed the power button and grabbed for towels. Lost in my own thoughts, I must have poured more water into the machine without replacing the full carafe with an empty one. That wasn’t my first mistake of the night. I had also messed up several orders and gave one guy the wrong check.

  “Call him.”

  I wasn’t going to call him, not over something like this. It crossed the boundary of our sort of friendship and ventured into uncharted territory. Not that I would mind dipping my toes into those waters, but I would do so only if I was certain Vinnie wanted that, too. So far, he hadn’t said or done anything to make me think he did.

  Wanda wasn’t going to be satisfied with that, though. I would bet dollars to donuts that if I didn’t call Vinnie by the end of my shift, she’d snatch my phone and do it for me.

  While worrying about Vinnie was preoccupying my thoughts, I had other things on my mind, too. I’d lost my day job at the café, and I didn’t know what I was going to do about Joel. I’d hoped getting him out of his crack-addicted mother’s house would get him back on the right path, but it was a constant battle. Seventeen was a tough age, and I was his half-sister, not his mother.

  Today’s trip to the police station had been a hard slap of reality. I had to accept that doing everything I could for my brother might not be enough. Joel needed a strong male role model, someone to talk to about “guy stuff.” To go to ball games and car shows with. I tried my best, but what seventeen-year-old boy wanted to confide in or hang out with his big sister?

  Working twelve to sixteen hours a day didn’t help. I had put night school on hold and picked first and third shift work so I could spend some time with him after school every day, but that wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped, either. Most evenings, I could coax him out of his room to share a meal together, but afterward, he would head right back in, put in his earbuds, and refuse to engage.

  Maybe if I shared some of that with Wanda, it would get her off my back about calling Officer Vinnie.

  “It’s not just about Vinnie, Wanda.”

  Since we were in a lull, and because Wanda was the closest thing I had to a girl friend, I laid everything out to her. Thankfully, she parked her snark and listened to me vent. I felt drained afterward, but sharing had been kind of cathartic, too.

  “You need help, Haven,” she said thoughtfully once I had run out of steam. “You shouldn’t have to do all this on your own.”

  Before I could respond, the door jingled, heralding the arrival of more customers.

  “We are going to talk more about this,” she informed me.

  Wanda went to greet them and get their drink orders while I started a fresh pot of coffee, with an empty carafe this time, thinking about what she’d said about me needing help. I didn’t disagree; I just didn’t know who I could turn to.

  Vinnie’s image popped into my mind, but I shook it away. Now was not the time for my daydreams.

  The rest of my shift passed without incident. I didn’t have to rush to get to the café, so maybe I could get some online job searching in before I roused Joel to hit the books. Just because he was suspended didn’t mean I was going to let him sleep until noon.

  Mentally and physically exhausted, I wasn’t sure what the day would bring. I just hoped it was better than yesterday.

  Chapter Six: Vinnie

  I woke up feeling unusually irritable. It didn’t take me long to figure out why. I hadn’t gotten my Haven fix the night before, and that made me cranky. Seeing her, spending time with her each night after my shift, even from across a counter, was like having a weight lifted from my shoulders.

  I knew what that meant. I was a police officer, trained in and adept at reading between the lines. More importantly, I wasn’t an idiot.

  I had it bad for Haven McAlister.

  The question was: what should I do about it?

  I had always been of the mindset that, with my job, not getting seriously involved with anyone was the smart thing to do. The demands of the job, along with the risks, would put a lot of stress on a relationship. That, in turn, would require a lot of time and effort to maintain that relationship and even more to make it grow. I hadn’t found a woman who had compelled me enough to consider all that extra time and effort was worth it.

  Until now.

  Haven was gentle and kind and hardworking. People, including me, were naturally drawn to her. She had a smile for everyone, and I had yet to hear her say an unkind word about anyone, even the jerks who stiffed her on tips. After dealing with the kind of things I dealt with every day, she was like a balm to my soul, a reminder of why I did what I did.

  My problem was, I was spoiled. I had grown up with parents and grandparents who were still insanely in love with each other after decades of being together. Things weren’t always wine and roses, but there had never been any question that, when push came to shove, they were always there for each other, good times or bad. That was what I wanted. I just wasn’t sure it was possible.

  Last night’s conversation with her brother further muddied the waters. My intentions were good ones, but Haven might see it as meddling. If things didn’t work out the way I hoped, it certainly wasn’t going to win me any points.

  Joel hadn’t given up Slash or any of the others, but I hadn’t really expected him to. He was seventeen and trying to get through his last year of high school. I wasn’t so old that I didn’t remember what a tough time that could be, nor that being labelled a snitch would make things that much harder. Nobody liked a narc.

  He had made a mistake in getting involved with those guys in the first place, and I thought he knew that. My gut told me that Joel was a good kid at heart and regretted it, but now he found himself between a rock and a hard place. No doubt word of what had happened had spread like wildfire. By now, everyone knew about his trip to the precinct and that he had been suspended from school. Slash and his minions were probably biding their time, waiting to see if Joel gave them up.

  That was when I realized what it was—a test. An initiation of sorts.

  Slash hadn’t gotten to where he was by not being clever. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that one of the gang had called in the anonymous tip about the stolen goods in Joel’s locker, prompting the search and seizure. They knew there was nothing linking Joel, or the goods, back to them. If we pulled Joel in then started asking them questions, they would know exactly where the information had come from.

  However, if Joel kept his mouth shut and bore the weight solely on his own shoulders, he would have passed the test. More challenges would follow, each more difficult than the last, until he eventually became a full-fledged member. I wanted better than that for him.

  My time hadn’t been wasted, though. I had learned a few helpful things. The first was that Joel was very protective of his sister. He hadn’t said so, not in so many words, but it had been there, in his eyes, along with an unspoken statement that he would do whatever it took to keep her safe. I knew then that Slash had probably hedged his bets by implicitly or explicitly threatening Haven if Joel started having second thoughts. Intimidation was a strong motivator.

  Frankly, I was feeling pretty motivated, too, but for different reasons. The thought of Slash, or anyone else, harassing Haven made me want to eliminate the threat with extreme
prejudice. I wanted to keep her safe and erase those worry lines I had seen between her brows.

  I also knew that coming down hard on her kid brother wasn’t the answer. If he was half as headstrong as I thought he was, he would dig his heels in even deeper. No, handling this situation would require some finesse.

  Hopefully, I had laid some of the groundwork for that last night. I’d let him know that I had a personal interest in the case, and that I would be watching. I wanted him to understand that he wasn’t the only one looking out for Haven, and maybe that would take some of the pressure off and make doing the right thing a little easier.

  I hadn’t bothered hanging around after dropping him off at Haven’s place. If Joel really wanted to sneak out, he would, and short of sitting outside his place twenty-four seven, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had said as much, wanting him to know that one, he was responsible for his own actions, and two, doing so was ultimately a breach of Haven’s trust.

  Guilt was a powerful motivator, too.

  By midmorning, I was feeling restless. I still had a couple hours before my shift started, so I decided to head over to my grandparents’ bookstore for a visit. I saw them every Sunday at the restaurant for dinner, but I tried to stop by at least once a week, too.

  My brother Nick was there, as usual. Nick was an author and spent a great deal of his time at the bookstore, drinking free coffee and crafting his next great novel. He grinned widely when he spotted me. Of course, the guy was always smiling these days, ever since he and Kat had found each other. He’d had a rough time of it there for a while after he had come back from active duty. It did my heart good to see him so happy, even if some tiny part of me was a little envious.

  Maybe you could have that, too, a little voice whispered in my ear, with Haven.

  The automatic, vehement denial that usually followed a thought like that didn’t come this time.

  “Hey, Nick.”

  “Hey, Vin. If you’re thinking of grabbing an espresso this morning, don’t,” he warned.