His Target: The Downing Family Book 4

by Wild, Cassie

  Although I told myself not to jump to conclusions, as I sat up and looked around, I knew he was gone.

  The house just had that quiet feel.

  There was nobody there but me.

  The smile had already faded from my lips, and when I padded into the bathroom, it was to meet the sad-eyed woman standing there.

  “Don’t be so morose,” I told her. It wasn’t like I’d been looking for anything more than sex anyway.

  That’s what I told myself as I took a quick shower. Part of me wasn’t all that thrilled about the water sluicing off my body. As I showered, I washed away the scent of his skin on mine.

  But smelling it and wondering where he was, if he was safe, it all bothered me more than I liked to admit.

  * * *

  I had a bowl of cereal in front of me, and I’d just pushed my spoon into the bowl so I could scoop up my first bite when the phone rang.

  It was my cell phone, and a quick look at the display revealed my youngest brother’s name.

  With a smile, I greeted him. “How’s the happy couple?”

  “You’ve asked that every time we’ve talked since the wedding,” Sean said in a dry voice.

  “I’m just checking to make sure the flame is still burning,” I said loftily.

  His response was a choked laugh. “Shit, Briar. I’m not talking about…flames with you. You’re my sister.”

  “Oh, please.” I laughed, amused by the idea. “You’re the brother who treated all of us to a blow-by-blow the night you…” I paused, a wicked smile flashing across my face. “The night you first got a blow by blow.”

  “Briar.” He groaned out my name.

  It took no imagination for me to picture how he probably looked, red-faced and uncomfortable. I figured it was fair play. He kept nagging me about how I needed to find myself a boyfriend, going so far as to push his friends at me, despite the fact that I’d told him I didn’t want a boyfriend. Sean just couldn’t grasp the idea that I was perfectly happy with the life I was building for myself.

  A flicker of Cormac’s face flashed before my eyes, but I pushed it out as quickly as it formed.

  “Fine,” I said in a rush, a little too fast for it to sound as casual as I’d like. “So. How is Isabel?”

  “She’s…great.” There was a faint hesitation in his response, and I wondered about the cause.

  I waited to see if he’d offer anything else, but he didn’t. His next question was a clear attempt to change the subject away from him and the pretty girl he’d recently married. Isabel Castellanos—now Isabel Downing—was several years younger than me and a ballet dancer. I liked her well enough, although we didn’t really know each other. Back when she and Sean had first started dating, I’d still been trying to finish up my residency, which didn’t allow for much socializing.

  “Enough about Isabel and me,” Sean said. “How are things with you? Everything going okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Well…I dunno.” He waited a beat before asking, “I was just kind of thinking maybe something happened at Green Valley. You up and quit—I thought that place was like one of the top ten hospitals in the region.”

  I made a face. It was one of the biggest money makers, yes, but that didn’t make it a top hospital. Not in my opinion, at least.

  “I just wasn’t happy there. I didn’t become a doctor to get bitched at because I took care of the pregnant woman who appeared to be in labor before treating some rich old bastard’s gout or some prima donna’s swimmer’s ear. And heaven forbid some twit gets pissed off at me when I wouldn’t finish up her emergency exploratory laparotomy with a tummy tuck.”

  “I think I understood half of that,” he said, sounding amused. “Are any of those rich old bastards friends with Dad?”

  I made a face. “How would I know? It’s not like I keep up with his golfing buddies.” Or any of his other acquaintances, for that matter.

  I didn’t mention that last bit to Sean, though. We’d been down this road before. There were a lot of things my family wouldn’t ever tell me, and because I loved them, I didn’t go poking around. Okay, to be honest, it had more to do with fear than love. What would I discover if I poked around? Would it hurt so much that I had to cut myself off from my family? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. It was cowardly, and I knew it. I had no desire to do any deep soul-searching over the matter, so things would remain at the status quo.

  “You just quit?” Sean asked, unaware of my mental gymnastics.

  “Yes, I quit.” Sighing, I pushed my hair away from my face and leaned back in the chair. I wasn’t about to go into detail about the incidents with Drs. Wayne and Henderson. My brothers would get pissed off, and I refused to let them fight my battles. “I became a doctor to help people—to make a difference. I wasn’t really doing that there. And I knew there was so much more I could be doing.”

  “Brooks told me where you’re working now.” He named the large county hospital. Despite the name, it was located in downtown, not too far from West Philadelphia. It was one of the largest trauma centers in the region, and it operated on a smaller budget than Green Valley. “You talked to Dad since you quit?”

  “No.”

  “He’s not happy about it.”

  “Well, he’s not the one who needs to be happy,” I said breezily. Despite my casual tone, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the discussion with my father. As protective as my brothers were, they paled in comparison to Dad. I was still half-expecting him to call me up on any given day and insist that I either move back home or let him hire a security guard to stay at the house with me.

  Not that I’d oblige him in either circumstance, but it was surprising he hadn’t tried. He definitely hadn’t been happy when I told him I was moving out.

  “We’ll see if that’s still your attitude after you two talk.”

  Although I wasn’t as close to Sean as I was to Brooks, it seemed my kid brother was an expert when it came to gauging my reactions.

  Refusing to acknowledge he had a point, I looked at my watch. “I need to say goodbye, Sean. It’s my day off, and I’ve got groceries to take care of, as well as laundry.”

  After we said our goodbyes, I sighed deeply. Yes. I had a great deal to do.

  Thirteen

  Cormac

  I sat behind the counter at the tattoo parlor and tried to ignore the come-hither looks Melia kept shooting my way. I hoped if I didn’t pay her any attention, she’d get bored and move on. It was a fifty-fifty gamble.

  It had worked a couple of times, but there had been other days when she’d simply saunter over in that hip-swinging gait of hers and prop her elbows on the counter in a way that pushed her tits together. It must have been her favorite move from her playbook. She’d used it enough that I could even calculate her next actions.

  Once she gave me a birds-eye view of her cleavage, she’d smile at me, then lick her lips. After that, she’d reach out if I was within touching distance and trace a polish-slicked nail down the back of my hand before making either an innuendo or offering an invitation.

  I wasn’t in the mood for invitations. Not from her, at least.

  As a general rule, I didn’t sleep with the same woman twice, and Melia wouldn’t be an exception. I already had that figured out, and if I gave her any reason to hope, she’d be looking to make this out to be something serious.

  I didn’t always stick to the rule, though. Sometimes, if I knew a woman was out looking for the same thing I was—sex, plain and simple—I wouldn’t mind a repeat.

  What about Briar?

  The thought drifted through my mind, and I immediately wanted to smack myself. I’d managed to go half the day without thinking about her, finally, and now here she was back in my head again.

  I couldn’t lie to myself.

  If I had a chance, I’d damn well fuck her again. More than once, I’d been tempted to go to her place and see if said chance didn’t present itself. I’d stayed away, thoug
h. Not because I wanted to, but because I wasn’t at all comfortable with how much she’d started to dominate my thoughts.

  A shadow fell across the counter in front of me, and the smell of apples drifted in my direction. I closed my eyes and tried to summon up some patience. It didn’t work. When I looked up at Melia, I found myself biting back some rude comment about leaving me the hell alone.

  I could only imagine how she’d react to that. Nothing pleasant would come of it, and while I wasn’t exactly working at the tattoo shop because it was my dream job, I didn’t see any reason to make the atmosphere any stickier than necessary.

  Pissing her off would definitely do that. She was one of the most requested artists in the shop, and while I wasn’t worried she’d get me fired, I had no doubt she could make my time here a lot less pleasant than it was now.

  She did as I’d expected and leaned her elbows on the counter, pushing her boobs together with her arms. She was wearing a bra today, which was a change. It was black lace, and over it, she wore an almost-completely transparent white t-shirt.

  I’d seen the get-up earlier, when she came into the back room as I ate a sandwich, straddling the nearby chair. I’d given her a noncommittal response earlier when she’d asked if I wanted to hook up after work, and now I was regretting it because I already knew what had brought her over here.

  “It’s almost quitting time for you and me, Cormac.” She smiled at me, her red-slicked lips curving upward. “You thought any more about going out and grabbing a drink with me?”

  “I don’t think so, Melia.”

  Her lids flickered at the blunt refusal, but her smile stayed firmly in place. “We could always stay in.”

  The we grated on me. There wasn’t any we, although I knew she hadn’t really been implying such. “I’ll have to pass, sugar.”

  “Tomorrow, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Her smile faded slowly, and I could see a spark of anger flare in her eyes, but before she could say anything, a door opened, and a tall, thin man covered in ink from almost head to toe came in, making the bell over the door jangle. “Melia! Baby!”

  Her lips had pursed in a frown, but that frown was already fading as she turned around. “Mickey…so good to see you, honey!”

  * * *

  Even though I didn’t know him, seeing Mickey qualified as good for me too. His arrival had distracted Melia from whatever she might have said to me, at least for now. He had waved a stack of bills at her, all but begging her to finish up the work on a piece he had started a while back.

  My replacement showed not long after she’d settled in her work area, and when I left, Mickey had been bare from the torso up, lying face down on the table.

  I was more than happy to duck out, relieved to make my getaway while Melia was otherwise occupied. Although I hadn’t been interested in getting a drink with her, I wasn’t all that eager to go straight up to my shitty little apartment either.

  I’d stayed in worse places, and smaller places, but any time I was up there, the four walls threatened to close around me. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, and I’d already taken to spending as little time there as possible.

  My mind drifted to the house where Briar lived—a home. That’s what she had—a home. It had been a long time since I’d had anything that felt remotely like a real home. It was weird to realize I sort of missed having someplace that really felt like mine. Up until the past week, I would have laughed at the idea, but things had up and changed on me.

  I didn’t have to think about what had caused the change.

  Briar.

  It all boiled down to Briar and the shit she had managed to stir up in me, all with a quiet look and slow smile.

  She wasn’t like the kind of women I normally went after. At all. Everything about her was different…unique, and not just because she had a degree or made me want things I hadn’t wanted in a long while. Things like lying in bed behind her, just feeling the slow rhythm of her breathing or losing myself in the scent of her hair.

  “Stop thinking about her, ya dumb fool,” I told myself as I hit the sidewalks and started to walk. The tattoo parlor wasn’t in the nicest area of town, but it wasn’t really the roughest either. Since arriving in Philadelphia, I’d done some digging around and exploring, wanting to know the territory around me.

  I picked a direction and started to walk, not at all surprised when my feet started taking me toward one of the rougher areas. I hopped on a bus after a block, and fifteen minutes later, I hopped off. The shops on the street around me had bars on the windows. A few of the places were closed, boards covering the exterior with faded for-sale signs on one or two. They were all but hidden under the graffiti.

  I walked by two such buildings on my way to my destination.

  It was a ragtag old building that had seen better centuries. Even when it was new, I doubted it looked like much. Now, it just looked like shit a dog had puked up. In the window, a sign read Bar. If it had any other name, it had probably long since been forgotten. I knew dives like this. I tended to gravitate toward such establishments, looking for anonymity, cheap liquor, and on occasion, a fight.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a fight just then, not when my ribs were finally starting to feel better. The bruise on my face had started to fade into that sickly yellow-green, and it no longer hurt like a bitch when I had to shave or wash my face.

  I wasn’t opposed to a distraction, though. Maybe if I found the right kind, I could block thoughts of Briar from my mind.

  I hadn’t been on the stool at the bar for more than ten minutes when one such distraction presented herself. I looked over to find a cute, skinny woman who looked like she had gotten the best genes from a variety of races. Her curly blonde-brown hair poufed out around her heart-shaped face, and her full mouth spread into a grin as our eyes met. “Hey, there…I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before,” she said.

  “Probably because I haven’t been here before.”

  “Well, then. Welcome.” She brushed a finger down the stool next to mine. “Mind if I sit down and keep you company?”

  Despite my earlier desire to find a distraction, I almost said no. I stopped myself just in time and nodded at the seat. “By all means.”

  She sat on it so she faced me, her knees spread wide. She wore a pair of short shorts that just barely covered what was required by law and a halter top that stretched over a very nice pair of tits.

  She caught me looking and cocked her head. “See something you like?”

  I just smiled.

  She leaned in, and I wasn’t surprised when she put a hand on my thigh. “I know I certainly do.”

  I caught the scent of her hair. I didn’t know what it was—something light and spring-like, and it made me think of Briar.

  Just those thoughts were enough to stir me in ways I hadn’t even realized I could be stirred. It had only been the vaguest connection to Briar, something I knew, but at the same time, it seemed everything connected to her. If it wasn’t for my arousal, for my need for a woman who was out of my reach, nothing else would have mattered.

  But this girl, whoever she was, her scent was too much like Briar’s.

  As she leaned in closer, my baser instincts took over, and when this girl pressed her mouth to my neck, all I could think about was having Briar naked, open, waiting…wanting.

  * * *

  She smelled like Briar.

  I kept my eyes closed in the dark, dingy room where she’d led me, and as she unzipped my jeans, I tried to pretend that she was the woman I couldn’t get out of my mind.

  It was harder than I would have thought possible. Granted, I hadn’t spent a lot of time considering how easy it might be to pretend one woman was somebody else entirely. Women were—or at least they had been—interchangeable for me.

  But despite the fact that the lady on her knees in front of me had a very talented mouth, I couldn’t disconnect like I wanted. The way I needed to.

  M
y dick wasn’t having any such issues.

  As she scraped her nails over my balls, I summoned up an image of Briar, only to shove her face from my mind a few seconds later.

  By the time it ended, and she sat back on her knees to smile up at me, I was wishing I had called a halt to the whole mess. I’d thought maybe the release would do me good, but instead of feeling a little more relaxed, I felt hollowed out and scraped raw.

  She stood in front of me, but when she went to lean against me, I caught her wrists. “I’m an asshole.”

  She looked puzzled.

  But I just shook my head and eased away from the wall, lingering just long enough to adjust and zip my jeans.

  “What are you…”

  I just shook my head and left the room. I heard the door open just as I hit the main area of the bar. She might have said something, but I just kept on walking.

  I had to get the hell out of there.

  And go where?

  My instincts were quick to respond on that one.

  I wanted to see Briar.

  But I knew I wouldn’t go to her.

  It just wasn’t going to happen.

  It couldn’t.

  Fourteen

  Briar

  “Dr. Downing.”

  I looked up to see a nurse gesturing to me.

  I closed the chart and crossed over to her, head cocked.

  She pushed the curtain back. “Dr. Wo wants you for a consult.”

  Surprise must have shown on my face because she grinned at me and beckoned at me once more.

  I pushed through the curtain and came up short.

  There was a man lying on his side, facing me, his features pale and drawn, although he looked rather alert.

  The alertness was surprising, especially since there was a metal pole protruding from his abdomen.