by Lea Griffith
Toby just sat there and stared at her.
Well, shit. “I thought Jeremiah was legitimate now?” she asked, and there was a tremor in her voice.
“He is, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff from the past that haunts his present.” He glanced away and took a deep breath. “There are so many things he kept from you.”
“He’s still keeping things from me. He’s been back on my radar for less than a week and already he’s evading questions, refusing to share information,” she responded harshly.
“There are things you’ll never know, Day-day, things he may never share. It’s his way, but that doesn’t mitigate that something is happening and we don’t have a fix on what it is yet.”
She moved around the couch and sat down. It wasn’t just her hands that were cold anymore and she shivered. “Have you talked to David?”
Toby nodded. “He’s neck deep in it, but we’re still sorting it all out. In the meantime, Jeremiah wants you to stay at his place.”
He didn’t look at her as he said it. Her brother obviously remembered who the hell he was dealing with.
“I’m good here,” she said firmly.
His broad shoulders tensed and his jaw bunched. His brown gaze, so like her own, sliced to her and he pinned her with it. “You’ll be safe there.”
“I’m safe here. David visited me earlier tonight and I handled it just fine.”
His eyes widened.
“Yeah, didn’t know that, did you? Your security people must kinda suck,” she tossed out, and pulled a blanket from the back of the couch over her. “He wanted to warn me to stay away from Jeremiah. Said Jeremiah was, quote, ‘bad news.’ ”
“Goddamn that little weasel,” Toby said harshly and then got up to pace. “How he shares the same blood with Copeland and Ruthie I’ll never know.”
“Well, you and I share blood with the incomparable Judge née Senator Heyward Edwards. No accounting for blood, I would imagine,” she responded.
Her mind raced. David had been the reason she’d left Jeremiah before. He’d gotten himself in deep with a drug dealer he was representing in a case against the State of Georgia. The State had the dealer dead to rights for cocaine distribution. When David tried to back out of the case, the dealer had blackmailed him. Jeremiah had stepped in and done … well, he’d done something incredibly illegal to ensure that David was safe. The younger brother had never been able to stand on his own two feet. Jeremiah had forever been picking him up and dusting him off.
But making sure the dealer’s drug shipment into the United States had gone off without a hitch had been much more than dusting David off. Jeremiah had committed a crime for him and Daly hadn’t been able to handle it.
Her man, her love, had scraped together enough capital to start his own shipping business. That he’d done it for Daly had never been in question. But he’d known her hard limits, both in the bedroom and out. Criminal activity wasn’t okay—in fact, it was a total deal-breaker.
“I don’t know what he’s caught up in this time. But it’s just too fucking convenient that his trouble has brought you and Copeland back into each other’s lives,” Toby said distractedly.
Daly held a hand up in the air. “Wait, Toby. I don’t know that I’d say we’re back in each other’s lives.”
He threw her a “get-real” look and continued pacing.
“Toby, sit down. You’re giving me whiplash,” she urged.
He stopped pacing and looked at her. “What did Daddy-o say to you tonight?”
His sudden, predatory stillness bothered her. He went cold so fast. Where was the boy who’d loved mischief? There wasn’t anything of that boy in the man before her. “Nothing. Why?”
Toby shook his head. “My gut is churning, Day-day. I don’t like it when my baby sister is involved in things I can’t see or understand.”
She snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Anger vibrated in his voice, outrage dancing across his face.
“Just sayin’ …”
“I was busy,” he responded.
“For three damn years?” she asked, and her disbelief echoed back.
He sat down beside her. “You see my face, right, Day-day? It’s been a rough three years.” He sighed deeply. “I don’t ever want anything I’ve done to touch you. You’re my baby sister. My only sister. It’s why when you and Jeremiah were together it drove me nutty. Danger followed him, Daly. I didn’t want you in the middle of that life.”
“You had no problem being around him. But honestly, it was never your decision to make. Who I chose to be with, who I choose to be with now, has no impact on our bond, Toby. I look at you now and you’re different,” she said and grabbed his hand. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Not just your face, moron. Though you aren’t quite as pretty as you used to be.”
He snorted now.
She chuckled, then sobered. “You’re harder. I wouldn’t have wanted that for you, but I realize Jeremiah is as much your brother as I’m your sister. You don’t share blood but the bond is as deep. Hell, it might be even deeper, considering you’ve seen him every day the last few years while you’ve seen me a sum total of zero.”
Her brother squeezed her hand and she felt the strength of him in his grip. “He is my brother, you’re right. But he’s needed me these last few years. You left him and he was destroyed, Daly. It took him a while to even begin going out. He handled business but stayed away from everything else. He came to you after you’d been gone almost two months and you rejected him again. That was the trigger and he became self-destructive, going through women and alcohol. He almost lost his shit on top of losing his business. Finally he recovered.” He took a deep breath, as if the words pained him. “I can say there hasn’t been a day since you left him when he hasn’t gotten that faraway look in his eyes and I knew it was you he was thinking about. But you two were bad for each other. I’d maybe even say toxic. I don’t know if you both love too hard or not enough, but after only a few days spent together you’re right back in the thick of something murky.”
She released his hand as anger clawed its way up her throat. “I’m not in the middle of anything. Jeremiah wouldn’t return my calls, so I took David’s ring to him and I left. He followed me.”
“But you didn’t say no. You still haven’t said no,” Toby reminded her.
Her shoulders fell, the anger sliding away in a huge puddle of anxiety. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Not to him.”
“You walked away, though. Twice.” Toby grabbed her hand again when a tear fell down her cheek, squeezing tight. “Then maybe you do love too hard. I had wondered.”
Daly glanced up at him, a question on her lips, but Toby’s look stopped her mid-breath.
“Sometimes you’re the most stubborn person I know. Three years, Daly? You stayed away from him for three damn years? I think after the first three days your point was made. He went legit for you when crime was all he’d ever known. It would have been easier for him to stay with the DM. He went through hell trying to undo the damage to his reputation and he did it all for you. He tried to be good enough for you.”
Pain cascaded through her, trickling through her mind and settling in her heart. She rubbed her chest. “Then he threw it all away.”
“For his brother. And believe me when I say I would have done the same thing for you. That dealer was going to kill David. And he didn’t throw it all away.”
Daly had always been very black and white. There were some shades of gray, but lines were drawn for a reason. Step outside of them and you were screwed. And yet hadn’t she always stepped outside the lines with Jeremiah in the bedroom? Wasn’t the pleasure she received from him a bowing to unconventionality and everything colored in gray?
How could she so easily break her own rules for pleasure yet when the man she loved did something that stepped over those same lines, she ran?
“How many others were affected by the decision Jeremiah ma
de? How many babies were left without mothers or fathers because of the drugs that hit the street? How many died? He allowed that to happen.”
Toby grunted and stood up. “Sometimes I wonder where that sense of right and wrong you have comes from. You damn sure didn’t get it from Heyward Edwards.”
Her brother sat down in front of her on the coffee table. The poor coffee table had been used more the last week than it had since she’d bought it. The thought made heat bloom in her abdomen, and the images from earlier tonight flashed through her mind.
“Things happened, Daly. Those drugs never hit the streets,” he told her in a cold voice.
Shock zipped through her, leaving her freezing cold.
“Yeah,” Toby bit out as he stared at her face. “You didn’t give him time to tell you. Just packed up your shit, left his collar, and hightailed it somewhere else.”
Daly couldn’t process it.
“He knew you wouldn’t be okay with that. Fuck, Day-day, did you not hear the reports about David’s client?”
She shook her head, but suddenly something Jeremiah had said to her the other night made perfect sense. “He was murdered.” She didn’t ask a question. The knowledge was a conviction in her gut. “He killed him?” Daly didn’t know if she felt horror or relief. Where were those lines now?
“Well, goddamn. Do you always think the worst of him? No he didn’t kill the bastard. Not personally, anyway.”
Something in her brother’s tone had her head snapping up and her gaze locking on his scarred face. “No, Toby. Tell me no.”
“Not me.”
Her relief was instantaneous. She felt at once elated and defeated. What the hell had she done by leaving Jeremiah?
“The dealer deserved what he got, but he got it from his own people. Jeremiah made you a promise, Daly, and to this day he’s kept it.”
The words scored her heart. The sob caught her by surprise. Toby scooped her up and sat her in his lap, tucking her head into his shoulder and rubbing her back. It was how he’d always made her feel better. She fell off her bike? Toby hugged her. She fought with her dad? Toby hugged her. She destroyed the only man she’d ever loved? Toby hugged her.
After a long time sobbing, she caught her breath. “I asked him that last time he came to see me why he couldn’t let things go. Why he had to engage in crime to save David.”
Toby remained silent.
“He sa-sa-said, everything would be clear if I’d give him time,” she managed to get out around a whimper. “I asked him to walk away from whatever it was and he just sh-sh-shook his head.”
Her words brought forth another wave of self-recriminations and tears. Toby held her through them all.
But slowly anger began to work its way through her pain. Anger at herself most assuredly, but anger too at the man who hadn’t trusted her enough to give her all the details. Details that definitely would have changed her perspective and her reaction to the situation.
That anger became white-hot rage. She’d trusted him with everything she was—every hope and dream, her body and her submission. And hadn’t told her the truth. It was a vicious circle they’d engaged in, neither trusting the other enough.
She wiped her face, sniffled, and patted her brother on the back before she stood up and moved to the kitchen. Daly filled a cup with water and drank it down, her throat appreciating her efforts.
Her brother entered the kitchen and stood at the door of the mudroom.
“He didn’t trust me, Tobias. That fucking hurts,” she said, wincing when her voice hurt her throat.
“I think it’s the other way around, little sister.”
She shook her head, the anger continuing to dig deep and refusing to allow her to be rational. She’d given that man everything. Every last piece of her, and he hadn’t trusted her enough to deal with the truth. Then he’d let her walk away believing the worst. Three years they’d been apart. Three damn years.
She stared out her back window. “I want you to go now, Toby.”
“You need to watch your back. Until we know what’s going on be extra careful. Jeremiah will have a man on you at all times. Wait now—don’t be mad,” he hurriedly said as she threw her cup in the sink. “He won’t budge on this. I doubt he’ll come to you until whatever this is has resolved.”
She grunted at that.
“Don’t give up on him again, Daly. He deserves better than that,” Toby said.
Daly heard the mudroom door open and then close, and she was left alone. She almost staggered underneath the renewed onslaught of pain.
“What about what I deserve?” she asked the empty room.
* * *
“She’s pissed, I take it?” Copeland asked Toby as he walked into his office at The Underground.
“Understatement.”
Copeland winced. Nothing to be done for it. She needed to be protected. Something was going on; it had touched her, involved her somehow, and he’d fucking keep her safe no matter the short-term cost. To his heart or his dick.
He made his way to the bar and poured a finger of scotch. Impatience roiled under his skin. The need to exert that dominance had him growling under his breath. Toby kept a wide berth and Copeland would have laughed, but it wasn’t very fucking funny. He tossed back the drink.
He’d watched her leave the ballroom shortly after she’d left him in the security closet. Her cheeks had been rosy, her eyes bright with banked lust. Every man who’d seen her had stopped whatever he was doing to just stare. Goddamn them all, he’d wanted to annihilate them. He’d been the reason for those rouged cheeks and bright eyes. Him.
Instead, he’d walked back into the ballroom and joined a very pissed-off Savvy. They’d left shortly afterward and she’d lit into Copeland. He didn’t respond and when he dropped her off at her house, she’d given him a final piece of her mind.
“She’s going to end up paying for your arrogance, J.C. Be careful with her,” Savvy had said roughly before she slammed the door.
Copeland hadn’t given her words much thought until he was almost home. Savvy had never struck him as the jealous type, but perhaps that was where her attitude stemmed from. Regardless, he instinctively knew she was a solid cop and determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. When the call was placed to her about The Underground, she’d been pulled in.
Things were winging their way toward something, but Copeland couldn’t even find the path. So many different things were involved, and tomorrow morning he’d have answers from his brother.
“Who’s on her?” he asked Toby.
“Craft.”
“Good choice,” he responded. Craft was older and had a wife. He was also ex-military, so it made him perfect for guard duty.
“I told her, Copeland.”
The words dropped like acid into his gut. Fuck. She’d be even more pissed next time he saw her.
“I didn’t have a choice. She had this idea of how things went down, and—”
“You couldn’t let her go on believing a lie,” Copeland finished for his best friend. He poured another shot of scotch and sat down on the couch, warming the drink between his hands. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about doing what you did tonight, Toby?”
“I don’t know, J.C., how many?”
“Too many. What it all boils down to is the woman I loved more than my next breath didn’t trust me. She didn’t believe in me, didn’t believe my love was enough. She saw my past when the only thing I’d ever shown her was the present and the future.”
“My sister is stubborn. She comes by it honestly,” Toby murmured.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Copeland said with a smothered laugh. “Ruthie called earlier.”
Toby’s gaze collided with his. Yeah, at least he wasn’t the only one with I’m-in-love-with-your-sister issues.
“I’m assuming you’re telling me this for a reason?”
Copeland found a smile. It was really good to know he wasn’t alone in this whole misery g
ame. “No reason.”
Toby grunted and answered his ringing cell phone. He snapped it closed and glanced at Copeland. “Car’s here.”
“I’m going separately. I have to make a stop first.”
“Come on, man. I don’t have time to patch you up once she’s finished breaking your face,” Toby whined.
“She would never hurt my face, Toby. My heart, though, is another story. You go ahead. I’ll be out in a few hours,” Copeland said. He polished off the drink in his hand, then stood.
“Did Savvy have any new information?”
Copeland shook his head. “But your father is hiding something.”
“Nothing new, Copeland. He’s a shifty bastard.”
Copeland shrugged on his coat and grabbed the keys to his Mercedes. “Yeah, he is. Nothing new there, either. But he knows something. He went out of his way to warn me away from Daly. Three years later and the man is still worried about me? I don’t buy it. I need a financial on him, man. As soon as you can get it.”
“On it,” Toby said, but Copeland was already through the door.
He should not go see her. But he couldn’t stay away. He’d resisted fucking her earlier in that damn security closet and his cock was cursing him. He had to assuage this lust or his brain would shatter. She was all he thought about on a normal day. Having been inside her body again, knowing her needs and desires for him hadn’t changed, was driving him to the point of madness.
But most of all, he needed to breathe the same air she did. Feel the softness of her skin against his and hear the thump-thump-thump of her heart in his ear. He needed to settle on top of her body and renew himself in her.
Because everything began and ended with Daly. That was the cost of loving her. Without her, he wasn’t whole.
Chapter 17
Copeland checked in with Craft when he arrived at Daly’s. The man wanted to run out for something to eat and Copeland told him to take his time. It was nearing one o’clock in the morning, but Copeland wasn’t planning on leaving for a few hours.