Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Until Bran flattened his foot on the porch boards to stop rocking. “Mr. Greaver might have known Rob went out that night.”

  “That would shake a father up,” Zach agreed.

  “But there’s another possibility, you know. What if it was the other way around? What if Rob heard his father leave the house?”

  The possibility exploded in Zach’s head. However shaken, would a teenage boy tell anyone something like that? For all these years, Zach had held his silence about hearing Dad get up during the night. And there was what Bran had just said: I had to defend him from all comers. Rob might well have done the same, but anger and doubt would have made him even more volatile than he’d already been. Never sure whether his father could have done something so monstrous...

  Yeah. It worked.

  “But Mrs. Greaver is mad at Rob.”

  “Because he made wild accusations she couldn’t let herself believe?”

  “Jesus,” he said, then thought back to her odd tone. “What if her father molested Mary?”

  “Who was conditioned not to tell anyone,” Bran said slowly. “Not Mom, not her brother. Maybe did her best to block the memory. Mary stood by her parents—for her mother’s sake?—but with her dad gone now, those memories could have crept out of hiding. What if tonight she connected some dots? She talked to you because she wanted to help, but she still can’t bring herself to admit what happened to her.”

  “All logical, but it could as well be fictional,” Zach pointed out.

  “I can’t argue.”

  “Did you run Mr. Greaver?”

  “Yeah. No arrests popped. But we both know a lot of pedophiles never get caught.”

  “No. We could try Mrs. Greaver again,” Zach said, but doubtfully. He thought she was too entrenched in the way she’d framed the family history to admit to any crack in it.

  Bran shook his head. “Rob. If there’s any chance we’re right, Rob is seriously conflicted. A part of him has to want to spill what he knows.”

  “Would you?” It was risky to ask this, but Zach felt compelled. “If you’d had a suspicion about Dad?”

  A few months ago, that would have been enough to light the fuse of his brother’s temper, but now Bran only shook his head. “If I’d had a suspicion... I don’t know. But I never questioned whether Dad could have done it. Not for a minute.”

  After a pause, Zach said, “I shouldn’t have, either. I wish—” He couldn’t get it out.

  “He never quit loving you,” he said quietly.

  “Damn.” Zach turned his back, not wanting anyone, even his brother, to see him with tears in his eyes.

  “We can’t go back.”

  No one knew that better than him. But, God, sometimes he wished he could.

  “You know, I’m freezing my ass off here. What I suggest we do is get that toilet upstairs before my joints lock.”

  “Yeah.” If he sounded a little hoarse...Bran was unlikely to comment. Zach used his shirtsleeve to take a surreptitious swipe at his face. “There’s a plan.”

  * * *

  SUNDAY WAS A strange but good day. Except for grocery shopping, which he insisted on doing, Bran stayed home with Lina, displaying little of his usual restlessness. The effort he was making was painfully obvious, but...sweet.

  Last night, while the two men had been out talking in sub-zero temperatures on the front porch, she and Tess had done some talking of their own while they lurked in the kitchen, ostensibly working on dinner. Until Bran, Lina had never known a cop, and she’d been wondering how typical he was.

  Bran was so controlled—too controlled. Too protective. It might be refreshing to have him yell at her.

  “I wouldn’t call myself an expert,” Tess demurred. “On Zach, maybe, and he and Bran do have some traits in common... Overbearing and dictatorial, come to mind.” Tess grinned. “Zach tries.”

  “Overbearing is definitely one word to describe Bran,” Lina agreed. “And with him so determined to keep me safe, I’ve had to give way more often than can possibly be good for him.”

  “What is it you’re worried about?” Tess asked bluntly.

  She’d always disapproved when friends or women at work complained about their boyfriends or husbands, and didn’t want to be like that. On the other hand, she had to talk to someone. Tess not only had insider knowledge, she was becoming a good friend.

  Lina bit her lip, then said, “He’s so closed off a lot of the time. So...unemotional. Remote.”

  Tess made a sympathetic face. “That probably is part of what happens to them with the job. I mean, they’d have to distance themselves.”

  “Yes, but I look at Zach, and then I look at Bran...”

  “I know what you mean,” Tess conceded. “How well he hides emotion is actually the first thing I noticed about Bran. Along with the fact that he’s as sexy as Zach.”

  Lina laughed. The brothers did look an awful lot alike.

  Frowning now, as if determined to find the right way to say this, Tess went on, “He was being polite to me, and yet it was all I could do not to shiver. I thought it was probably just me until...um, he was still engaged at the time.”

  Reluctantly curious about the fiancée, Lina nodded.

  “He’d have to be different with her, right? But when Paige walked up, even when he smiled his eyes were cold. I wondered how she couldn’t have noticed.”

  “She did call off the wedding.”

  “Well, that’s true. But my point is, he’s not like that when he looks at you,” Tess said slowly. “Sometimes I think you scare him a little, but he feels a whole lot.”

  Please, God. “If he’d just talk to me,” Lina exclaimed in frustration.

  “Patience, patience.”

  In explanation, Tess had told Lina a lot of what she’d figured out about how the two brothers’ background had affected them in the same and different ways. Some of it Lina already understood.

  Remembering that conversation today, she made patience her watchword. Bran was relatively relaxed. He’d done some pretty amazing things for her, after all. Plus—except for the night when they first met—they’d known each other not even quite four weeks. Maybe she was expecting too much.

  At lunch and after, he made it plain he was open to talking, although predictably not about himself.

  Because he seemed to really want to know, she did tell him more about her family. It was his pointed questions that had her analyzing for the first time why she had to pretend to her parents that her marriage was fabulous even when she’d begun to see fissures opening. And why the humiliation of having to turn to her parents at the end and admit he’d been cheating on her had been almost as bad as finding out he had been in the first place.

  “Mom’s...critical,” she finally said. “She calls it honest. I mean, I’ve never doubted she loves me, but she says things without thinking. Or maybe doesn’t believe in little white lies. I don’t know. You’re taking your ego in your hands to ask her if she likes your new haircut.”

  Bran nodded, eyes steady on her face and...warm. As if he’d meant it when he asked her not to quit talking to him. If only he understood it had to be reciprocal, she thought wistfully.

  “I think Mom and Dad love each other, but she’s sharp with him, too. I suppose she eroded my confidence. The guy you marry—that’s big. I took him home to meet my parents. After he left, Mom snapped, ‘What on earth do you see in him?’”

  Bran grimaced. “Makes me eager to meet her.”

  “Something tells me she’ll approve of you.” She should feel happier about that than she did, a bothersome thought she pushed away. “If I don’t marry you, she’ll tell me I should grab what I can and quit imagining life’s a fairy tale. It’s as if she was disappointed, but if so, it’s not anything she’s ever talked about.” Lina s
ighed. “I’m making her sound worse than she is. Mostly, we’re friends. But...she has this way of puncturing my mood when I’m feeling good about something. If I buy a dress I think is a little daring, she’ll say, ‘You don’t really plan to wear that, do you?’”

  “What did she think was wrong with David?”

  “He tried too hard to be likeable. ‘Doesn’t he have any confidence in himself?’” She found herself mimicking her mother’s voice. “‘Any substance?’”

  Bran gave a rough laugh. “I’d feel sorry for him if he hadn’t turned out to be such a loser.”

  That topic ended with her sticking out her tongue at him and saying, “Thank you.” Although she did manage, later, to say, “Looking back sometimes helps.”

  Come late afternoon, they went swimming—his idea—albeit he persuaded Zach and Tess to join them again. She felt sure both men had gone armed into the dressing room. Lina might have minded Bran calling for backup if she hadn’t liked Tess so much. Plus, after another lesson it was obvious Tess was at least slightly less terrified of trusting herself to the water, which made Lina feel good.

  And then there was the raw hunger in how Bran looked at her when she got out of the water and walked toward him, lounging in the hot tub. And with her being seven months pregnant. Muscles knotted in his jaw and his eyes glittered. His gaze lowered, slid over her as tangibly as a touch. If her nipples hadn’t already been hard, they were by then. She’d had to swallow twice before she could say, “I’m ready to go shower.”

  He made a sound and let his head fall back. “Yeah,” he said huskily. “You do that.”

  Neither talked on the drive home. As usual, his attention was on their surroundings as he rushed her upstairs to his apartment, but they were barely inside when he had her backed up to the door.

  “God, I want you.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, wrapped her arms around his neck and rose on tiptoe to meet his kiss.

  They made it to the bedroom barely, and only, she thought, because he worried about hurting the baby. She’d been ready for him from the moment she saw that expression on his face at the pool. Bran seemed desperate. He kissed her, touched her, sucked on her breasts, then flipped her over and took her from behind with near-frantic lunges.

  Lina’s body seemed to implode. A guttural sound escaped him, and he drove one more time, going rigid.

  Lina was shaking, stunned by the power of what they’d just done. Bran had to help her lie down on her side, his powerful body spooning her. It helped that he was breathing as hard as she was and that she felt his heart hammering against her back.

  She wanted to say something—Wow? What was that?—but didn’t. She waited for him to speak, to express his tenderness in more than the way he stroked the curves of her body or pushed her braid aside to press his lips to her nape, but he didn’t. In fact, five minutes later, he stirred.

  “I’ll go start dinner.”

  As a mood killer, it didn’t get much better than that.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  COME MORNING, BRAN was his usual guarded self. Instead of putting in some hours at work as he often did on Mondays, he’d volunteered to help his brother work on that new upstairs bathroom. Later, once he had her safely locked down at the apartment, he and Zach planned to drive back to Seattle to confront Rob Greaver again, she knew.

  Lina eyed the shoulder holster he wore with jeans and T-shirt. “I suppose you plan to follow me to school?” she asked, knowing the answer. Why else would he be armed now?

  In the act of pouring himself a second cup of coffee, he barely glanced at her. “I’ll drive you.”

  “It’s been a while,” she said. “Nothing’s happened. Even if the shooting at the high school was him, he may have—”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Given up? Would you, if you were him?”

  That momentarily silenced her as she tried to imagine being someone who was willing to hold a gun to a woman’s head and pull the trigger just because he was being denied something he wanted. “The drawing is out there,” she said finally. “I’m not so important anymore.” Her “Am I?” came out more timid than she liked.

  “Yeah.” His darkened eyes seemed to show both regret and the caring he was unable or unwilling to acknowledge. His voice deepened as he gripped her arm. “You’re important. You’re—” He shook his head rather than finish the thought.

  “Do you mean...to you?”

  “Unfortunately, I think you are to him, too. Even if he knows about it, the drawing is merely suggestive. You on a witness stand in court saying, ‘That man right there’ as you point at him will send him away. You’re the only witness, Lina.”

  “So you think...”

  Bran’s voice was hard as he said, “He’s watching. Waiting. After his screwup, I’ve had you under wraps. That doesn’t mean he’s given up.”

  She didn’t say again, I’m sorry you’re stuck with me, because she knew better than that. However much of an enigma he was, she had no doubt he wanted her, or that he was determined to marry her. And that he’d keep her safe even if he had to die to do it.

  Could that be his way of saying I love you? But Bran, she suspected, would throw himself between any woman or child and danger. His protective instinct was that powerful.

  So...was she really special to him, or just his current focus?

  She nodded and said, “Okay,” which seemed to satisfy him. As usual, on the way down to the car he let her carry her own tote, packed lunch and handbag, she presumed to leave him free to reach for his gun if he had to.

  During the drive, Lina thought about her day. She was starting a new unit in her seventh grade social studies classes, this one focused on civil rights. Beyond the framework of the required textbook, she brought color to any topic by using other sources and by encouraging questions and discussion.

  As they neared the school, she noticed how heavy traffic was. They must have gotten a late start.

  It really would have helped if she could have gone to the library this weekend—

  “Son of a bitch!” Bran said sharply, accelerating while swerving at the same time to avoid rear-ending the car in front of them. From behind came the screech of brakes and tires skidding on pavement.

  Heart pounding, Lina turned, craning her neck to look behind them. She met the driver’s wide, shocked eyes. He was a kid, and the car was packed full of other boys, presumably on their way to the high school, just ahead.

  Lina’s teeth chattered, adrenaline flooding her. “They almost hit us, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah.” Bran’s gaze took her in. “It didn’t happen, Lina. We weren’t moving fast enough for anyone to be seriously hurt even if it had.”

  “Your car—”

  “I’d have been mad as hell about that,” he admitted.

  Still shaking, she dug her fingernails into her palms. “I was hit...oh, not that long after I moved here. March or April, I think. A boy came down a driveway on a bicycle. I didn’t see him sooner because of a parked car. He shot right out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and wham! I’d vaguely known a car was behind me, but I’d slowed down and I guess he hadn’t. It...was really frightening.”

  Bran put on his turn signal and whipped around the next corner into an apartment complex.

  “What are you doing?”

  He circled and pulled to a stop facing the entrance, then set the emergency brake. Looking fully at her, he said, “I want to know what happened. Were you hurt?”

  “Bruises from my seat belt and some whiplash. Fortunately, the boy was pedaling away fast enough, I didn’t hit him even though my car was knocked forward.”

  “No airbag?”

  “Getting rear-ended doesn’t set one off. Since I missed the parked cars... There was some major damage to my poor car, though. At first, my insur
ance agent seemed to think they were going to total it. Instead, I ended up taking it to an auto body shop.” A picture formed in her mind. Her car on the lift, the men looking at the crumpled metal. All turning when she stepped into the garage.

  She might as well have touched a bare electrical wire. Lina clapped a hand to her mouth as she turned to look at him. It took an effort to make herself pull her hand away. “It was there.” Her voice rose. “Bran, that’s where I saw him! Oh, my God. It wasn’t dirt smearing his face and the shirt. It was grease.”

  * * *

  BRAN HAD BEEN living for weeks with the knowledge that he could fail, that everything he could do to protect Lina might not be good enough. A bullet could shatter the windshield of his Camaro. She could die, sitting right there beside him. She could be a target in her classroom with the windows looking out on the playfield. No lock could keep out someone who was determined enough. He sweated every minute he wasn’t with her, and some of them when he was.

  If that scum got to her, if she was killed... Usually he faced what had to be faced and went on. This...was different.

  But now, at last! There was nothing like the feeling when an investigation cracked open, when he knew he was finally closing in on the creep he’d been hunting. After leaving Lina at the middle school, Bran expected to feel the same thrill. Instead...he was charged, sure, but the relief and deep-down anger overpowered any sense of triumph. This wasn’t a job; it was deeply personal.

  He’d driven straight to the autobody shop that fixed her car, confident this was the kind of business that would be open by eight.

  When he pulled into the parking lot, the doors were up, exposing both bays of The Car Doc. Had to be half a dozen guys working on the two vehicles currently on lifts. All wore the same blue uniform pants and shirts, names embroidered on the pockets. That matched Lina’s recollection. He got out of his car to the sound of ringing metal. Unfortunately, none of the men’s faces matched the drawing. If Tag had been here... Bran hoped he’d have had the self-control to cuff him rather than kill him.

  Unfortunately, Tag was earning big bucks in his new occupation. Why would he hold on to a job laboring for someone else?