Because of a Boy

by Anna DeStefano

  “She needs to hear this from you,” Stephen said without hesitation.

  He wanted to be there, to help her process the latest round of bad news. And he would be, he realized. Nothing short of her asking him to leave could keep him away tonight. But she had to work out as much as she could with her brother, too.

  She needed to know what Martin had done for her. What he was still willing to do for her.

  “It’ll mean a lot to Kate, to know you’re helping out,” Stephen added.

  “You know, you’re not exactly what I expected,” Martin admitted.

  Stephen shook his head.

  Turned out, since meeting Kate, he wasn’t anything close to what he’d expected, either.

  “WE’LL MAKE THIS WORK,” Kate promised the woman she suspected might one day become her sister-in-law—if what they were about to do didn’t end Lissa’s chances once and for all.

  “This is dirty pool,” Lissa countered as they walked from the parking lot to Martin’s apartment. “Even if I am grateful you’re letting me tag along.”

  “I was always better at pool than my brother,” Kate assured her.

  Because she’d cheated and moved the balls while Martin had pretended not to look. Technically that meant she wasn’t to be trusted, and he’d let her win. But the point was she’d won. Martin was one of the most competitive men she’d ever met, but he had a soul-deep soft spot buried under all that macho.

  Lissa hefted the bag filled with garlic bread, salad mix and a bottle of wine they’d thrown in for good measure.

  “Here goes nothing.” She stepped around Kate to knock on the door. “Eight ball in the corner pocket.”

  Kate was still chuckling when the door swung open.

  Martin swallowed his welcoming smile at the sight of them. Lissa shoved the groceries at him and breezed inside.

  “You should open the wine and let it breathe for a while,” she said. She was already fiddling with the dials on the stove by the time Kate stepped inside. “Do you have any pans for the garlic bread?”

  “Do I have pans!” Martin shadowed Lissa, his limp barely discernable. He dumped the bags on the counter. “No, I’ve been boiling water in my bare hands!”

  Lissa started opening drawers, searching for something.

  “Ah!” She wielded a box of aluminum foil like a sword against Martin’s chest. “Perfect. Where do you keep your knives? I need something to spread garlic butter.”

  “You don’t need a knife.” Martin slapped the foil down beside the food. “You won’t be staying long enough to use it.”

  But Lissa had found the silverware drawer, then the knife. She scooted back to the bags for the bread and butter.

  “Garlic powder?” she asked sweetly.

  Martin gulped, then rounded on Kate.

  “If this is your idea of some kind of—”

  “This is dinner,” Kate affirmed.

  “This is an ambush.”

  “Nope, it’s lasagna.” She handed over the baking dish. “Three-fifty for thirty minutes or so, and it should be bubbling and ready.”

  “Katie—” He set the pasta aside and grabbed her elbow. “This isn’t right, and you know it.”

  “Sometimes, right doesn’t get the job done, baby brother.”

  Until yesterday’s kiss with Stephen, alone had always seemed right to Kate, even when she’d been married to Robert. And even with Stephen—especially with someone who made her feel as amazing as he did—she still wasn’t sure she could belong.

  She didn’t want that kind of right for Martin.

  “I need to talk to you.” He steered her toward the living room. “It’s—”

  “We’ll talk.” She dug in her heels. “I’m glad you want to. But tonight, you and Lissa—”

  “It’s about Manny and Dillon Digarro.” His grip gentled. “Stephen Creighton asked me to look in to a few things. I ran some details by him this morning. He thought you’d be more comfortable hearing them from me. He thought—”

  “That it would be a good thing for us to talk it through together.” Just as he’d given them time Thursday night, after he’d made sure she’d survived extracting her two-hundred-plus-pound brother from the bath.

  That’s why he hadn’t called all day, while she’d been assuming he was regretting what had happened at the hospital.

  “He really is a good guy, isn’t he?” she asked the universe in general.

  Martin shrugged. His grim expression registered.

  “How much trouble are the Digarros in?”

  “They were in trouble a long time before that kid got hurt at your shelter,” her brother responded.

  “And…” When he hesitated, she pointed a sisterly finger. “Don’t sugarcoat things for me, Martin. Tell me what you found.”

  Lissa shut the stove after putting the casserole in. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Martin shook his head and patted Kate’s arm.

  “We can go over it after dinner,” he offered, “if—”

  “We can go over it now!” Kate yanked her arm away. She’d been so sure Manny was still in the city. But every contact she’d made had come up empty. Something was wrong. She’d felt it for days. “Tell me, Martin.”

  “Just remember, it’s not your fault.” Her brother led her to the kitchen table. “Lissa, could you start some coffee?”

  “Sure.” The other woman slipped away.

  Martin squeezed Kate’s fingers. “Sounds like this family has been on the run for a long time. What happens to them may be beyond anyone’s control. You can’t fix everyone’s problems, Katie, no matter how hard you try.”

  The same way she hadn’t been able to fix Martin’s or her parents’…

  Yet there her brother was, holding her hand. The way she should have stayed and held his ten years ago, regardless of how hard he’d fought her. And tonight he’d let Lissa into his apartment, even though he was clearly terrified of his feelings for her.

  “What happened?” she asked again, loving him for everything he was starting to deal with. “I need the facts. I have to do something for these people. Please.”

  Martin winced. Lissa pulled up a chair beside them, leaving the lasagna and garlic bread and coffee to fend for themselves.

  “We need to find them, Katie,” he said. “It’s not just about the kid anymore.”

  “I THINK IT HELPED Katie to have you here as a buffer,” Martin said to Lissa, as he rubbed at the lightning bolt strobing behind his left eye. His sister had excused herself to the back of the apartment, close to crying and needing to hide. “Thank you.”

  Hell, it helped him to have Lissa there. He’d give anything to drag her into his arms and hold her until the pain and confusion went away.

  “How close is your sister to this family she’s trying to find?” Lissa asked.

  “She’s only met them a few times.”

  “But she seems to feel so responsible for—”

  “Katie feels responsible for everyone. She’s everyone’s champion. She got you here tonight, didn’t she?”

  “Actually, I kind of hijacked tonight’s festivities.” Lissa left him sitting at the table, and crossed the room to pull the lasagna and bread from the oven. “Right after I insisted on stowing away at her place until I talked some sense into you.”

  “And here I’ve spent the evening worrying about Katie’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility for people she can’t save.”

  Martin had to fight like hell not to stare at Lissa’s backside every time she bent to do something with the oven. His body’s newly rediscovered appreciation for her soft curves was becoming more uncomfortable by the second. He shifted against the growing pressure below his waist.

  “I don’t want your help, Lissa.”

  She walked slowly back to the table and set the bubbling lasagna on a heat-safe pad.

  “Maybe I can change your mind,” she challenged. The spicy aroma of the Italian food wasn’t nearly as tantalizing as the serene
smile she flashed. “Like you and Kate and this Stephen fellow are plotting to change this man Digarro’s mind about getting his son taken care of.”

  “That’s different. My sister’s patient is in more medical danger the longer he’s not being treated, and he and his father—”

  “Need to understand their limited options?” Lissa’s smile deepened at his scowl. “Yes, I heard.”

  “I’ve already chosen the option that works best for me,” he insisted, forcing himself to listen to his own words while he was at it.

  If he’d thought their problems were only about the impotence, he’d have had her flat on her back on the academy’s couch despite Stephen Creighton’s surprise visit.

  “Giving up on you and me isn’t an option,” Lissa countered. “It’s quitting. Look how well that worked for Kate.”

  “Katie didn’t quit,” he bit out. He’d let himself believe she had for too long. He couldn’t have been more wrong. “She came to Atlanta to avoid being a daily reminder to me that our father beat on our mother for the entire twenty-five years of their marriage. And that Katie had known, and that she hid it to protect me. All those years she knew and never said a word. What does that do to a child?”

  “Martin. I—”

  “And I guess I knew it, too, in a way. But I pretended everything was sweet Southern pie, right up until I got my hands on my mother’s journal and read it all in black and white.”

  I can’t leave without the kids, and I can’t support them on my own…

  If I can just stop making Jim so angry…

  At least if he’s hitting me, the kids will be safe….

  His mother had resigned herself to a lifetime of abuse for Martin’s sake. For Katie’s. Jim Rhodes had been an abusive bastard who’d let everyone around him lie to protect his secret.

  Martin’s entire childhood had been a lie.

  “Martin, don’t—”

  “Don’t what!” Now that Lissa was here, now that he was facing what he couldn’t bear for her to know, now she didn’t want to hear it? “After living the way we did, lying the way we did, it’s no wonder Katie needed to move to the other side of the state. That her own marriage didn’t work. Do you finally get it? I’m not any more capable of keeping a healthy relationship going than my sister is. My only experience with love was watching my mother be silently tortured every day of my life!”

  Lissa should have been shocked. Scared. Running for the door. Instead, she spread her hands on the table and pushed slowly to her feet.

  She walked into the family room, trailing her fingers over his mother’s favorite Stickley chair, then the miniature rose bush on the table beside it. Lissa had brought it his first week in the hospital. He’d been coaxing the thing to bloom all winter, knowing the flowers would remind him of her.

  “So, your world wasn’t as happy-go-lucky as you made it out to be,” she said. “So, there was a mess—a lot of it. Don’t you think maybe I’ve figured some of that out over the last year? You know, right about the time you were hurt too badly to keep pretending to be everyone’s good-time guy?”

  Martin nodded. Lissa always had been smarter than people gave her credit for. Smarter and more special than any of the “easy come, easy go” women he’d been with before. Special enough to tempt Oakwood’s most determined bachelor to reach out and believe he could hold on to something real.

  “So, now you know it all.” He made himself stay put instead of going to her and pulling her into his arms. Soothing them both. “It’s time for you to head back home to your girls and stop wasting your time chasing something that isn’t going to happen with me.”

  “Tony and Angie said they can watch the girls for a week or so,” she replied, talking about her sister and Stephen’s ex-chief, who’d been married for years.

  “Lissa, look—”

  “What makes you think my trip up here is all about you?” she demanded.

  “What? So, you’ve been dying for a vacation to Atlanta, and this is your excuse to get away from it all?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Don’t push this, Lissa.” He was standing in front of her and didn’t remember crossing the room. He reached for her before he could stop himself, cupping her elbow in his hand, rubbing her satin-smooth skin with his thumb.

  “Why? Because you’re already hard at work pushing yourself?” She gazed around at the memories of home, and her, that he’d dragged all the way to Atlanta. “Except for how you’re trying even harder to sabotage your recovery, it doesn’t look like anything much has changed to me.”

  “So, I’m a coward.” He was still hiding. He’d always be hiding from the things that had scared him as a child, and the things that still terrified him as an adult. “What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you!”

  He should pull away. Why wasn’t he pulling away?

  Why wasn’t she?

  “You’re not a coward.” Lissa patted his arm, as if she were talking to a damn child. “You’re human, and vulnerable, and you hate that. Too bad for you, it only makes me want you more.”

  “You’re confusing pity with want. You—”

  Martin’s cell rang, from where he’d left it on the kitchen table beside the lasagna.

  He let its electronic chant play on as he fell into Lissa’s open expression—her need to believe in him.

  When he couldn’t stand it another moment, he limped back to the phone and flipped it open without looking at the display.

  “Rhodes,” he barked.

  “Good evening to you, too, buddy,” Tony Rivers drawled in his slow, easy way. “Bad timing?”

  “It’ll do.” Martin forced a calming breath. “You got something new?”

  “Only that the DEA showed up today, asking the sheriff why our department was snooping into the Vargas cartel. If we’d heard anything about a Manuel Cubrero they’re tracking.”

  “Did they say why the cartel might be tracking him?”

  “That they weren’t so eager to chat about. Sanders was cool. He passed the search off as part of our ongoing drug containment initiative, investigating recent arrests and gang activity. He waited until the Feds were gone before hitting me up for answers. But the DEA will eventually make the connection between me and you, and then you and that nurse who was involved with the Digarro case up there.”

  Martin winced as his headache spiked from annoying to excruciating.

  “Yeah. Thanks for letting me know. And thank Sanders for me, too.” He turned toward the den. “I’m sure Lissa wants to talk with her girls.”

  “Lissa’s there?” Playing dumb was about the only thing Martin’s best friend didn’t do well.

  “She already outed you and Angie as coconspirators.” That morning, when Tony had relayed the DEA intelligence he’d dug up about Manny Digarro, the bastard hadn’t breathed a word about watching Lissa’s girls. “Save the covert moves for the Feds and go fetch her kids.”

  Lissa was already at Martin’s side. She practically ripped the phone out of his hand. As far as he knew, she’d never spent a night away from Callie and Meagan. She should be home, not shadowing his ass. She should be where her girls needed her. Back at the job that had supported her family ever since her divorce from the county’s biggest loser.

  “No, hon,” she said into the phone. “Mommy’s interview is on Monday. I’ll know more after that. But if the position at the bank is as great as it sounds, and the interview goes well, we will all be moving here as soon as I find someplace for us to live.”

  Lissa smiled up at Martin’s shocked stare.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KATE WAS VISIBLY UPSET as she parked beside Stephen’s car at the curb outside her condo. And she wasn’t alone, as she approached his car. A familiar blonde walked beside her, not looking so It’s a Wonderful Life herself.

  Not that it mattered.

  Stephen wasn’t going anywhere until he was sure Kate was okay.

  He got out to join them. Kate motioned toward the w
oman. “Lissa, this is Stephen Creighton. He’s Manny Digarro’s attorney.”

  “Mr. Creighton.” Lissa slipped by and disappeared inside the building.

  He got a brief glimpse of blue, watery eyes and a nose red from crying.

  “She and Martin were together back in Oakwood,” Kate explained, watching Lissa’s departure instead of looking at Stephen. “She went over there with me tonight. Kind of fell apart on the way home. They still need to deal with a lot of things, and Martin’s not ready.”

  Stephen waited, aware that he might be one of the things Kate didn’t need to deal with right now.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, still standing too far away. “All the time we were at my brother’s, during the drive back, I couldn’t stop worrying about Dillon and his father, or wanting to talk things through with you.”

  “I’m a lawyer.” He buried his hands in his coat pockets. “I’m the guy you talk to, when you need to talk things through.”

  “You’re a good lawyer.” She smiled, and he lost his next breath. “You’re the Digarros’ best shot, even though things are completely out of control. But…That’s not the only reason I’ve been thinking about you all day, or all day yesterday.” She ducked her head before looking into his eyes again. “I’ve been trying to decide if seeing you again is a good idea or not.”

  “And…?” He suddenly needed her to want whatever this was between them as much as he did.

  “My brother’s terrified of what he could have with Lissa.” Kate laid a hand on Stephen’s chest, her touch so light he couldn’t stop himself from pressing her fingers closer with his own. “Neither one of us knows how to want people this way. We’re not good at needing….”

  “What do you need, Kate?”

  Her touch slipped away. “I’ve been awful to you. Called you a liar and a user from the start. Because that’s what I had to believe you were.”

  “Sounds about right.” He chuckled. “Defense attorneys have a rep for fighting for the bad guys.”

  “Except you only take on clients you believe are innocent. And you’re still fighting for the Digarros, long after another lawyer would have bowed out. I shouldn’t have been blind to your commitment to Dillon and his father.”