The Big O Series

by M. S. Parker

Before I could let myself start the line of self-doubt and questioning, I sent the email off.

  “Okay,” I whispered, shoving back from the kitchen table that doubled as my desk. “You went and did it. Now it’s out of your hands.”

  I blew out a hard breath and looked back at the laptop. How long would it take for her to answer?

  Oh, shit. What if she didn’t answer?

  I dropped my face into my hands and groaned.

  She did answer. Less than an hour later, actually.

  I heard the little swish announcing a new email and all but tripped over my feet running over to the table.

  I hadn’t mentioned anything about Matthew and I being related when I reached out to her.

  That wouldn’t be the most ideal way to broach this, so I simply acted like I’d read the article and had a few questions, and asked if she’d be open to meeting for drinks?

  Surprisingly, the email reply was a yes.

  Slumping in my seat, I read it repeatedly to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

  She could meet…tomorrow.

  The place she named was unfamiliar to me, but I rarely got out and about. If it wasn’t near NYU or the boutique, I wasn’t likely to know about it.

  I hurriedly emailed her back before she could change her mind – she still might and then what was I going to do?

  This time, her reply was almost instantaneous. Eleven o’clock.

  Tomorrow, at eleven o’clock, I was going to meet the woman who’d helped my brother clear his name.

  And then all I’d have to do is convince her to help me out, so I could meet him.

  Eight

  Raye

  I changed my clothes four different times.

  By the time I was satisfied with the way I looked in the mirror, I’d spent nearly an hour getting dressed. Also, I realized with a grimace, I was wearing the first outfit I’d tried on.

  Talk about being indecisive.

  It was only a little after nine, too. I’d already done my hair and make-up. The trip uptown would only take a half hour, although I planned to leave at ten and be a little early.

  Better early than late, always.

  I made myself wait until ten to leave, although I was itching and chomping at the bit to get there. Showing up at ten o’clock wasn’t going to make her show up any sooner.

  I made myself take my time walking to the restaurant and even ducked into a lingerie boutique – not to shop. It was a competitor, and we liked to keep up with the competition. After wasting about ten minutes inside and deciding their displays weren’t as good as ours, I cut out and finished the walk to the restaurant.

  I got a table just a few minutes before eleven and was watching for Michelle. She had a picture on her LinkedIn profile, so I knew who to look for, a redhead with a great smile. She looked too innocent to be writing all those hawt articles. Part of me wished there wasn’t something so messed up inside me, wished I wasn’t as shy as I was when it came to things of intimacy and the like.

  When she came in, I recognized her right away and lifted a hand to wave.

  She gave me a hesitant smile as she approached. “Are you Raye?”

  “I am.” I rose and offered my hand. She shook it quickly before slipping out of her coat and draping it over the back of the chair. “It’s so cold out there.” A bright laughed escaped her. “Granted, it’s January in New York City. Of course, it’s cold, but sometimes, it’s like it cuts right through me.”

  “Tell me about it.” I smiled at her. “I hate this kind of cold.”

  We made small talk for a few minutes as we waited for the waiter and placed an order for drinks. I had juggled the budget, and if I took my lunch all week instead of treating myself once or twice, I’d be okay to buy the drinks and an appetizer, so I asked if she was interested in nachos.

  Her eyes gleamed. “When am I not interested in nachos?”

  I laughed. “A girl after my own heart.”

  After the server disappeared, Michelle focused her blue-green eyes on me. “So, what did you want to ask me? It’s been a while since all of that went down.”

  “I know. Really, I wanted to ask you about…” I bit my lip as nervousness began to rattle inside me. “It’s about Matthew Jakes.”

  A change settled over her face. It was subtle but undeniable. Her eyes became more guarded, and a faint tension tightened her muscles. She still smiled, but it was less relaxed, one of those blank polite smiles that could hide a million emotions.

  “Oh?” She reached for the ice water and took a sip, shifting subtly in her seat as she did so. “What do you want to know about him? As I said, it’s been a while since I wrote that series.”

  “I…” The change in her attitude was unsettling, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. As my nerves got worse, I glanced around, wishing the waiter would hurry up with our drinks so I’d have something other than the water. “This is going to sound kind of crazy, but I have…well…” That damn server still hadn’t shown up. I reached for the water, although I was still freezing from my walk from the subway. I took a sip to wet my throat, then met her eyes once more. “I think Matthew Jakes is my brother.”

  She blinked.

  Slowly, she straightened in the chair.

  She shook her head and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “But can you repeat that?”

  I did, and she blew out a hard breath. “Maybe you should give me a little bit of the back story here.”

  “Okay.” The server finally showed up with our drinks, and I greedily grabbed the Irish coffee I’d ordered. Sure, it was before noon, and I was having a drink, but it wasn’t every day that I reached out and tried to find my brother, right? Folding my hands around it, I waited until the server walked off, then I met her gaze once more. There was still a world of speculation in the blue-green, and I could sense her guard was up, but at least she was still listening.

  “It’s kind of…awkward, okay?” Huffing out a breath, I took a sip of the coffee then put the cup down. The heat of it seeped into my hands, and it felt so good. “I’m originally from Illinois. I was born there. I’m here in New York going to NYU. My mom called me the other day and…well….” My face reddened. Shit. Now, I had to explain. “See, I never knew who my father was. My mother told me when I was a teenager that she had an affair with a married man, but she didn’t find out about me until after it ended. When she told him about me, he said he didn’t want to have a relationship with me and…well, it was just Mama and me. I’ve never known anything else about him.” I’d spent the past few minutes checking out the swirls of whipped cream on my coffee, but now I made myself look up at her.

  To my surprise, there was compassion on her face. “I guess that wasn’t easy.”

  “I never thought about it much,” I said honestly. “It’s just what I knew.”

  She nodded to indicate she understood, and I continued. “During the call with my mom…” Reaching into my bag, I pulled out my phone and went to the gallery, opening to the picture of Leland with the little boy that I thought was Matthew. I flipped the phone around and showed it to Michelle.

  Her eyes widened as she took the phone, then they softened. She reached up and traced a finger of the screen. “Huh,” she murmured under her breath.

  She continued to stare at the picture, and I had the weirdest feeling she forgot I was there.

  “Michelle?”

  She started at the sound of my voice. “Sorry. Ah, my mind was wandering,” she said, a faint blush rising to her cheeks. She returned the phone. “What’s the deal with the picture?”

  “Mom sent it to me. She told me that was my father. His name is on the back, along with MJ. I did some digging around online and found that my father is supposed to have a son…Matthew Jakes.” I took another sip of coffee, a bigger one, needing it to bolster my courage, even though the coffee was still scalding hot. “I read about the accident. I know he went to jail.”

  Focusing on her, I added, “
And I know how you helped discover that it was that politician’s son who was actually responsible. He got his name cleared because of you.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “It wasn’t just me.” She licked her lips, clearly flustered.

  “But it was in part because of you.” My throat tightened, and I had to fight back the urge to reach out and grab her in a hug.

  She opened her mouth, then stopped, smiling at me. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Her gaze fell back to the phone, and she sighed. “I guess maybe the two of you should meet, huh?”

  Nine

  Kane

  An ugly scrape marred the back of my knuckles. Okay, it might qualify as more than a scrape. If I had much sense, maybe I’d go get it looked at because it might need a stitch or two.

  Instead, I prowled through the first aid kit that Eddie and Rick had helped me stock and pulled out something called a butterfly bandage. It took another couple of minutes of holding pressure to it before it stopped bleeding long enough to slap the bandage into place, but once it was done, it looked like it had managed to close it enough so that only a little blood seeped through. I covered that with a bigger bandage and went back to work on the truck that had appeared in my lot during the middle of the night.

  I’d expected it.

  It had come from Ringo, one of the guys I used to run with before I’d gone to prison. Of course, Ringo had been the one to suggest I go on the run that had landed me in prison.

  Shit.

  “Don’t think about that mess,” I told myself. Ten years stood between me and the stupid boy I’d been when I’d taken the job to run some drugs to Mexico via Texas. I’d gotten caught, arrested, and summarily sent to prison for possession with intent to sell. Since I’d had a record in New York, they hadn’t given me much of a chance, and I’d taken the deal rather than risk a heavier sentence.

  After five years, they’d let me go, and I’d come back here, back home to New York.

  I’d started working in a garage, avoiding that old life, but there were still reminders of it. Reminders in the form of trucks belonging to Ringo that kept showing up. Sometimes I wondered why I kept any kind of contact with those guys. Every time somebody like Ringo came around, I found myself thinking about how different my life might have been if I hadn’t done that run through Texas.

  “What’s the matter, Kane? You forget how to handle a wrench?” came a lazy familiar drawl.

  The sound of that voice made me smile, and I turned around, grinning at the tall, lean blond standing in the doorway. “Hey, you son of a bitch.”

  Jake King came striding toward me, and the two of us met in the middle of the garage, greeting each other with a quick hug and a slap on the back.

  Pulling back first, Jake pointed a finger at me. “You stood me up, you bastard. You were supposed to come by the house for New Years. You chicken out?”

  “I sure as hell did,” I admitted honestly. “I don’t do champagnes and canapes.” I was almost positive I’d pronounced it wrong and watched as Jake shook his head, his grin widening. I didn’t take it personally. “I told you that when you called me to ask if I’d be coming over.”

  “I know, I know. That’s why I asked Michelle if she minded if I had a guest over for dinner sometime this week. That way, you and I can ring in the new year the right way.” He winked at me. “With beer and a good action flick.”

  “That sounds more like it.” I considered what I had on schedule the next day and figured I could come in an hour or so later in case the night ran late. Although Jake was no longer in his previous line of work, he still made his own hours, and it didn’t matter to him if he stayed up until one or two in the morning occasionally. Even though I was self-employed myself, garage owners who had hours like that were either shit-faced with exhaustion all the time, or they just didn’t sleep. “How is Michelle?”

  Jake had been seeing this girl for close to a year now, although I hadn’t met her until late spring or early summer. She was a doll, no doubt about it, and she didn’t seem to mind that I was about as rough as they came. As far as she was concerned, friends of Jake’s were friends of hers.

  “She’s fantastic.” Everything about him changed as he talked about her and I couldn’t deny a little bit of envy.

  It wasn’t likely I’d ever end up finding somebody who accepted me the way Jake had with Michelle.

  The two of us had both done time in prison, but Jake wasn’t rough around the edges like I was. Hell, I wasn’t rough around the edges. I was rough all over, and I knew it.

  It turned out that Jake’s stint in prison had been all for nothing because he’d been framed. How he managed not to be bitter about it, I didn’t know, although Michelle probably had something to do with it. Maybe being able to go home to a woman with a summery smile who looked at him like he’d hung every star in the sky made all the difference in the world.

  Shrugging off the melancholy, I gestured for him to join me as I got back to work on Ringo’s truck. “You got time? Have a seat.” I scanned him up and down, taking in the expensive sweater and jeans that had probably never seen a speck of grime on the threads and snorted. “If you weren’t dressed so pretty, I’d tell you to get your hands dirty. That’s assuming you remember how.”

  “I’ve forgotten more about cars than you ever knew, dickhead,” Jake said. He looked the truck over and shook his head. “I thought you were trying to take in more imports and shit. This thing is a hunk of junk.”

  “I know. It’s a job for a friend.”

  His eyes slid to mine, and I knew he didn’t need any hints to figure out exactly what kind of friend Ringo was.

  “You so sure it’s a good idea to keep any kind of contact with those…friends?” Jake asked after a moment.

  “Let it go.” I dropped down onto the rolling stool I used while he grabbed a folding chair and joined me.

  “Hey, I’m just being a friend. If you were in a car, heading straight for a ditch, I’d tell you to steer away from the ditch,” Jake pointed out. “This just seems like a bad idea.”

  I bit back the smart-ass response that immediately jumped to my lips because he wasn’t entirely wrong. Sometimes, one of the guys brought me a vehicle that was in…questionable shape. I always figured if I didn’t know anything about it, I was free and clear, so I never asked, and I didn’t let them tell me anything either. But I doubted it was as simple as that, if I was being honest with myself.

  “You’ve thought about it,” Jake said softly.

  “Hell, all I’m doing is fixing up a banged-up truck,” I told him, irritated now.

  “And how’d it get banged up? Looks like it hit something – another car, maybe?” Jake held up his hands and looked at me. “Hey, I ain’t trying to start anything. I got your back, always have.”

  That was the truth. The two of us had been tight in the joint. That hadn’t changed, even though he’d gotten out a year before I had. The two of us had both ended up in New York City about the same time, and he’d helped me land a job at the garage where I’d worked up until I bought this place.

  He’d left the garage before I had to pursue an, um, alternate line of work, and while I’d missed having him around regularly, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to get up at the crack of dawn and listen to that old bastard who’d constantly ridden our asses. That was why I’d been dead set on getting my own place.

  I’d done that, just a couple years ago.

  Was I jeopardizing what I had because I just couldn’t sever that connection to a past that was better left in the past?

  I didn’t know.

  “You ever miss your old life?” I asked him, staring hard at the truck.

  “What old life? I’ve had a couple by now.”

  I cracked a grin and looked up at him. “The one you gave up for Michelle, I guess. You sure as hell can’t miss living behind bars, and it goes without saying you miss what you had with your mom and dad, although nothing will bring that back.”

  His
eyes took on a far-off look. Jake’s mother had been dead for years, and his father had disowned him. “Nah, man. I don’t miss prison, and you’re right. I’m not getting back that time before Mom died. I wish I could sometimes…wish I hadn’t been that stupid kid who’d gotten wasted at that party, but you can’t turn back the clock.” He scratched his chin. “Even if I could, I don’t think I would.”

  “Why not?” I asked, curious. If I could go back and save my dad…

  “Because the road I’ve been on led me to where I am, and I’m not giving up Michelle.” He shrugged. “Not for anything. So, to answer your original question…do I miss whoring? Not even a little.”

  His blunt words weren’t any shock. He’d never tried to pretty up the occupations he’d chosen after he left the garage. He’d somehow slid into a life where women – beautiful, wealthy women – were happy to pay him for sex, and he’d gotten to where he was in serious demand for it, from what I could tell. There had been a time when the two of us barely had time to get together for more than a quick beer every few weeks, his fucking dance card had been so full.

  “Ain’t that something,” I muttered, shaking my head. Bemused, I studied him, and he still had that goofy grin on his face. “You slept with beautiful, rich women for money and you don’t even miss it. You had the life.”

  “Nah. That wasn’t the life.” Jake shook his head. “What I’ve got now? That’s the life.”

  Jake surprised me by finding a pair of coveralls to slip into, and the two of us spent the afternoon getting that old, beat-up truck back into shape. Ringo wouldn’t like it, but Ringo didn’t have to know, and I knew if there was anybody I could trust to keep their mouth shut over something, it was Jake.

  “So, I figure if I charge you my going rate…” Jake said as he stripped out of the coveralls, “you’ll be owing me from now until…hell, maybe next New Year’s Eve. Sound, about right?”

  “Why don’t you suck my dick?” I suggested.