“Not so fast, Vik.”
Mentally, she groaned. He always was too damned smart for his own good, which meant he was a fine cop who always suspected the worst in people. Unfortunately, he was almost always right.
“Why the sudden interest in a homeless street artist in the middle of a snow storm? Surely you’re not thinking about letting this punk into your home.”
“Thanks,” she said firmly. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Fuck.” In her mind, she could see him at his desk, jumping to his feet and raking his hand through his hair. “You did. You invited this asshole into your home. Are you insane? He’s a druggie. A scumbag. You know they can never come clean. Give them a ten and they’ll buy a hit instead of food.”
“He’s not like that.” She used her softest voice, trying to calm him down before he decided to get on his white horse and charge over here like a knight in shining armor. “He just needs a little help.”
“Jesus, Vik, does he have any weapons? Did he bring drugs into your house?”
“No!” Although I didn’t think to check. “I can handle this, Reyes.” Deliberately, she emphasized his cop name, the cold and formal relationship they’d used at their jobs even when they shared a bed once in a while. “I don’t want you to interfere.”
“You should have thought of that before you invited a homeless junkie to spend the night!”
“I have my phone right here and you’re on speed dial. I promise I’ll call you if I get even a hint of a weird vibe from him, but he’s barely more than a kid, Elias. He’s not going to hurt me.”
“You’re damned right he’s not.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He’s not a kid, Vik, even if he looks helpless and innocent to you. He hasn’t been a kid in a long time. One of his raps was for prostitution when he was barely sixteen. Yeah, he must be a real pretty boy, huh? I’m surprised he came on to you. Seems like a rich queer is more up his alley.”
The thought of Jesse’s brilliant eyes scrunched up with pain or staring up at a jerk forcing him to give a blowjob made her knees quiver hard enough that she had to sit on a barstool. She’d known he must have had a hard life, but the reality made her stomach heave. “He didn’t come on to me.”
“Maybe he’ll come on to me, then.”
“He’s not like that.” Her voice quivered, betraying her. She clenched her jaws a moment, concentrating on retrieving that calm, cool exterior she’d learned as a defense attorney. “I saw him in the snow and cold—he was helping me because I fell on the ice!—and I couldn’t leave him out there.”
“If you used to see him over at the park near Wagner & Leeman, then why the hell was he way out by your place? He was staking you out, Vik. He knew exactly what he was doing when he just happened to walk by. I bet he seemed real shocked to find you, didn’t he? They’re damned good actors when they need to be.”
Torn between outrage and concern, she tried to remember if she’d ever told Jesse where she lived. Would he really come dozens of blocks in the cold to give her a birthday card? Surely, he couldn’t have pretended that much surprise when she asked him to come inside. She was a good judge of character. She’d seen more than her share of bad guys willing to sell their mamas if it would get them out of prison.
“Jesse’s not like that. He’s not one of the bad guys, Elias. I can see it in his eyes. He needs someone to give him a break.”
Wheels screeched on the street below so loudly that she jumped up and ran to the window. Elias jumped out of his truck and stormed up to the door of her building. “I’ll give him a break. I’ll break his fucking arm if he even lays a finger on you.”
She glared down at him, whether he could actually see her or not. “I told you I could handle this!”
“Let me in, Vik, or I’m going to owe you a new door.”
Elias heard her shouting at him as she ran down the stairs, but he didn’t stop. He threw open the door to the rear living quarters, grabbed the invader, and slammed him face-first against the wall with a satisfying crunch.
The kid didn’t put up a fight. Man, Elias reminded himself. Not a kid, no matter how scrawny and slender he was, not at twenty-five years of age.
Vicki screamed, a high, shrill wail like nothing he’d ever heard from her. “Jesse!”
Her terrified voice pierced through Elias’s rage. As a kid huddled in a narrow bed with his younger brothers and sisters while his crazy father beat the shit out of his mother, he’d sworn to never make a woman scream like that. He slapped cuffs on the man and forced himself to ease off. He had to be the cop in this, not the enraged, jealous, overprotective—and almost always absent—lover.
The junkie stayed against the wall, legs automatically spread. He knew the drill all too well.
“You don’t smell like a bum, so I guess you’ve already taken advantage of your hostess’s hot water. Do you have anything stashed in these nice clean pockets?”
“No, sir.”
Damn it, he even sounded like a kid, his voice breathless and shaking with fear. Elias twisted his lips into a furious snarl. The punk was afraid of being caught. Afraid of being thrown in jail instead of enjoying a nice cushy night under Vicki’s roof, stealing everything not locked down while she slept.
She stepped between them, her face white and her mouth tight with strain. “I gave him those pants. How dare you come in here and throw him around like this? He’s hurt! Look at him, Elias, he’s bleeding!”
Crying, she cradled the jerk’s face in her hands and wiped the blood from his split lip with a tissue snatched from the bedside table. “Jesse, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know he’d come over like this. I didn’t know he’d hurt you.”
“It’s okay. He’s protecting you. I’ve had much worse done to me.”
The nicer he acted—pretended to be!—the worse Elias felt, which pissed him off even more. He grabbed the ratty duffel bag lying at the foot of the bed and dumped it out, using an ink pen to separate items so he didn’t get poked by a dirty needle. “Any weapons? Drugs? Paraphernalia?”
“No, sir. Just my straight-edge razor. I’ve used it as protection a few times, but no knives or guns. I haven’t touched drugs in five years. I’ll take a drug test right this minute if you order it.”
Elias flipped open a small wooden case, but all it contained was tiny whittled down pencils and precious little nubs of chalk, so used up that a normal person—with money—would have thrown them out and replaced them long ago. Feeling more and more like a heel, he methodically emptied the pockets of everything. Wadded up small bills littered the bed. A five in each denim pocket, a twenty in the threadbare shirt, several more bills tucked into the rolled socks, but certainly no nice wad of cash that a dealer would carry. Spreading the bills out across the meager belongings would make it more difficult to steal his precious savings.
“I have a hundred dollar bill in each boot hidden beneath the insole.” Jesse leaned against the wall as though the entire building would crumble around them without his weight propping it up. The pants sagged low on his slim hips, and he didn’t have on a shirt. Bones moved beneath his skin in sharp, painful relief. The kid was half-starved and malnourished. In despair, he hung his head, his streaked golden-brown hair falling down to hide his face. “Took me a year to save that much because the punks on the street keep stealing it. They know I don’t have a weapon.”
Elias knew the answer, but he wanted to see how many lies the kid might weave. “How do you know Vicki?”
“She used to come to Highland Park where I hang out. When she quit coming, I asked one of her friends what had happened. I missed her, and I wanted to make sure she was okay. She was always nice to me, but I never thought she’d help me like this.”
“Get these cuffs off him,” Vicki said in a deceptively pleasant voice that sent shards of ice skittering down his spine. This was the defense attorney, not a woman who’d called him to check out a friend. “He answered your questions satisfactoril
y and you have nothing to charge him with. He’s not trespassing and he’s not a danger to me or himself.”
When he hesitated, she narrowed those glittering dark eyes on him and lowered her chin, preparing for the charge. “I might not work for Leeman any longer, but I’ll have him crawling in every orifice you’ve got unless you release Jesse immediately.”
Chapter Two
Uneasy and tense with the other man sitting beside him at the breakfast bar, Jesse took a sip of the cocoa she’d made and all his nerves simply melted away. Vicki hid a smile behind her cup.
Even Elias’s mood seemed to sweeten with each sip of chocolaty warm goodness, although he grumbled as she poured fresh coffee into her mug. “Why you insist on ruining good hot chocolate with coffee is beyond me.”
“I don’t understand how you can work twenty-hour days without spiking your drink with extra caffeine every chance you get. If you two can enjoy your cocoa without killing each other, I need to start the cornbread.”
Jesse peeked up at her, a quick, furtive glance through his tumbled hair. He’d always worn it pulled back in a ponytail. She’d never realized that his hair was more blond than brown. All tumbled and loose about his face, his hair set his stunning turquoise eyes off to perfection. With his full, luscious lips and strong jaw, he could have been a GQ model, not a homeless junkie selling himself on the street corner.
What happened to you, Jesse?
Blinking back tears, she retrieved the eggs and milk from the fridge and the cornmeal from the pantry. When she lugged out the iron skillet and melted butter, Elias dared a question. “Don’t you use a mix?”
“Hell no,” she retorted in mock outrage. “No Southerner worth her salt would serve cornbread made out of a box or cook it in anything but an iron skillet. You can’t get the nice crusty edges without it, and the box mixes are too sweet.”
“I suppose you don’t put ketchup in your chili either.”
She pressed her hand to her heart and pretended faintness. “Never. Surely I’ve made chili for you before, haven’t I? Good Texas chili should be more meat than beans, with a beer thrown in for good measure.”
Shutting the oven door on the batter-filled skillet, she straightened and caught a look on Jesse’s face that knocked her back on her heels. A bit of accusation, followed by resignation. Maybe she hadn’t been hard enough on Elias after he’d busted in like a crazed jerk. Or maybe my young friend harbors feelings for me that I never allowed myself to consider.
She swallowed hard at the memory of Jesse’s arms around her, his low murmurs in her ear while she’d sobbed like a baby.
Jesse studied the bottom of his cup like he was surprised he’d found it so quickly. “How long have you known each other?”
Taking the hint, she poured him another cup of cocoa. “Oh, let’s see. I worked at Wagner & Leeman about seven years, counting my time as an intern. How long have you been on the DPD, Detective Reyes?”
“Fifteen years,” Elias replied, his mouth down turned in a frown. “Long, hard years, especially when dealing with an annoyingly talented defense attorney who managed to get off just about every drug dealer in the city.”
She turned back to the stove and kept her mouth shut. She refused to give him the pleasure of arguing yet again, but she dumped in more—a lot more—cayenne pepper. She loved spicy chili, but Elias would probably be up all night moaning about his stomach.
“I still didn’t really know Vik until the last year or so. Some weeks she tolerates me more than others.”
Which was a piss-poor way of saying they were off again, on again lovers, whenever he could drag himself away from those drug dealers he blamed her for being back out on the street. Even though she’d quit the firm months ago.
“How long have you been on the street?”
She couldn’t help but stiffen with interest and alarm both, although she didn’t turn around to see how Jesse took the other man’s question. Long moments went by before he answered.
“I left home when I was fifteen, a proud, stupid kid who thought I knew better than my old man. He was a washed-up, wannabe country singer doing bars in Nashville, trying to catch a break, and I thought he was a mean bastard. I hung with the wrong crowd, made some bad decisions, dropped out of school, got arrested for shoplifting, drugs, you name it.”
Vicki turned so she could see his face. He smiled, a strange, beautiful twist of his mouth that made her want to cry for him.
He dropped his gaze to his hands wrapped around his cup. “When you’re young and stupid, you don’t think the bad stuff could ever possibly happen to you. You can drink and drive and not get caught, certainly never wreck your car or hurt anyone else. You can go to class or your job high and no one will ever know. You can walk out on your old man, call him every name in the book, and laugh when you find out the mean SOB died of a heart attack. Then you realize that you were the only one stupid enough to buy your bullshit, and the only person left in the whole world who ever cared about you is gone.”
She couldn’t help but take his trembling hand in hers. He clung to her but didn’t look up.
“I’ve done bad things. I’ve seen and lived worse. I’ve tried to leave those things behind, but they aren’t as easy to wash off as the dirt.”
“There are shelters…” Elias began in a gentle voice, but Jesse only shook his head on a harsh laugh.
“I’d rather go back to prison. At least then I’d know the man raping me would protect me in the yard tomorrow.” He raised his head, his eyes pleading for understanding. “When I got out of prison, I was clean and I’d earned my GED while behind bars. I had two minimum-wage jobs and I gladly worked my ass off. I had an apartment—wasn’t much and I paid by the week, but it was mine. I could lock the door and sleep almost through the night without waking up, terrified that someone was coming in.
“But then I got sick. Just the flu, but as soon as I missed a day of work, they fired me. I didn’t have much money saved, and I lost my apartment as soon as I missed the first week’s rent. I didn’t have any place to go, no family left, no one to take me in but the drug dealers I’d known before jail.
“I could have gone back to running drugs for them, selling on the corners and in the schools, but I didn’t. It would have been a hell of a lot easier. I live on what I earn with my art, drug-free and legal, but once you lose everything, it’s hard to get people to see you. If I walk in for an interview in the only decent pair of jeans I’ve got left, it won’t matter if I shaved or if my fingernails are clean, because I still stink of the streets.”
Vicki didn’t realize she was crying until Elias slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her against him. Jesse loosened his fingers on her hand, but she gripped him tighter, refusing to let him go. “See?” She buried her face against Elias’s shirt, hating for anyone to see her so vulnerable. “See why I had to help him?”
“I know,” he whispered, rocking her gently. “You were right. I apologize, Jesse, for slamming you up against the wall like that. I should have trusted her judgment.”
“You saw me. Me,” Jesse whispered, but his voice rang with intent. “You’ve already given me a chance to get a real job by letting me take a shower. I look like a normal, decent person, someone who can get a job, and for that, I can’t thank you enough.”
“You’re going to stay here.” Wiping her eyes, Vicki straightened and shot a firm glare at Elias, silencing whatever arguments he might throw at her. “I’ll help you find a job and get back on your feet. No matter how long it takes, you won’t end up on the street again. Do you hear me?”
A ghost of a smile flickered on Jesse’s lips and he ducked his head, as though tipping his hat to her. “Yes’m.”
“If something happens to you again, if you’re ever out there, lost, alone, then you call me.” Her voice broke but she didn’t soften her stance. She leaned across the counter, squeezing his hand to make sure he met her gaze. “Call me. Anytime. Anywhere. Reverse the charges. Mail me a letter. W
hatever it takes. I’ll come get you and bring you home. You can count on me to be there for you.”
His eyes gleamed with unshed tears, crystal jewels in spring water. “You…I…” He bowed his head, shoulders shaking. His tears fell on the back of her hand still gripping his. Raggedly, he whispered, “I’ve never had a real home.”
“You can always come home to me.”
Elias had never seen Vicki’s nurturing side, not like this. Bemused, he watched her stuff the kid full of chili and cornbread until he could barely keep his eyes open. She practically tucked him into bed, making sure he had a dozen blankets before sending him downstairs. “If you need anything, just buzz the door. I’m going to arm the security system on the entire building before I head to bed.”
Mumbling his thanks, Jesse headed down the stairs to the lower apartment. When he paused and looked back up at her like she was the most beautiful angel he’d ever seen in his life, Elias put his arm around her and drew her into his side.
“Good night, Jesse,” he said firmly, staking his claim on her. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
Shrugging off his arm, she pulled away and shut the door. “That was cruel.”
“He needs to know that you’re taken.”
“By who?” She marched into the kitchen and attacked the dishes like they’d shot her mama. Elias had met Mrs. Connagher, and that would be a feat indeed. “I haven’t seen you in at least three months. If I hadn’t called you tonight…”
“I was on my way over.” He refused to admit just how many nights he’d been sitting outside her apartment, keeping watch, supposedly, but mostly trying to convince his pride to bend just a little. “That’s why I got here so fast.”
“So now you’re psychic? You felt the subtle forces of the universe warning that another male was encroaching on your territory?”
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