Brody

by Kathi S. Barton

  “Look, I’m tired of debating how loving and wonderful my dick faced husband is. Just let me in, Mom. I’m not kidding you.” Her mom said no, and just as Rachel was ready to barge in anyway, the elevator dinged and four officers got out. “You called the police on me? Mother fuck, Mom. Why the hell would you do something like that? I’m your daughter. You can’t even let me in to get some money and a shower?”

  “No. I told you, we’re only here because we agreed to not allow you entrance. Rachel, I’m sorry to say this, but I’m glad that man left you. You aren’t a nice person at all, are you?”

  Rachel was escorted out of the hotel and told not to come back. Nearly spitting on one of the officers, after being warned that would get her prison time, she stomped away.

  And now here she was staying in a fucking house that had nothing but a bed and a fridge. Ralph was certainly keeping a low profile in his choice of home, she thought. Looking at the road that as far as she was concerned was too close to the house, she frowned when Ralph asked her what her plan was now.

  “Find him. And Jordan. He has to give me something. Even my clothing would be nice about now.” Ralph had given her one of his shirts after she’d gotten a shower finally. “I had about a hundred grand stashed away in that place. And now there isn’t even a planter on the front porch. I tell you, Ralph, the man is going to have to get his act together before things start to go badly for him.”

  Rachel wasn’t entirely sure what she could do to Brody. Not only did he have all the money, but he also could afford an expensive attorney, and had the ability to pack up two houses—in less time than she could have thought possible—and disappear from the fucking earth for a day and a half before she found him.

  “I did find out that he was working at another hospital, didn’t I?” She nodded. Ralph had, but it hadn’t done her a bit of good. Not with him not there when she wanted him to be. “Next time you go and look for him, Rach, I’d suggest you go during the day. We both know that doctors never do anything full time, and they certainly never go out in the night anymore.”

  She’d not thought of that when she’d gone looking for him. Ralph had told her what he knew, and she took his car and went after Brody. Now she was not only barred from the hotel where her parents were, but the hospital had told her that they’d have her arrested on the spot if she returned, even if she was injured. Not nice, but she had made a horrible mess before leaving.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she wondered what she was going to do now. No money, no clothing—not even a decent meal to be had. What really pissed her off about all of it was that she had a lovely home that her and Ralph had pooled their money to get, and the bank had seized it. She was still trying to figure that part out. It hadn’t been Brody’s, damn it.

  “When do you have to go looking for a job?” He said in the morning. “I’d look too, if I had anything to put on. But they wouldn’t hire me anyway, I don’t think. I’ve made a nuisance of myself, I was told.”

  “We’ll be all right. As soon as they figure out that the house doesn’t belong to Brody, we’ll have a nicer place to live. And since you had some of the things from the house put in it, we’ll at least have something else to sit on than a bed.” Rachel asked him what the banker had said about why they couldn’t live there. “I don’t know. Something about you taking money from Brody to buy it. But you told me it was your allowance, right? We used what he gave you monthly to get it.”

  “Yes.” Another lie, she thought. Christ, she’d never had a job. Brody didn’t allow her to use the credit cards he had. He’d buy her a prepaid card, and that was all she was allowed to spend. Like she was fourteen and didn’t know the meaning of money.

  But the house and getting it, Rachel realized, was going to be a problem. Not only had she taken things out of the house that belonged to Brody, but she’d used money that she’d stashed away every month by buying things then taking them back for cash. Yes, she supposed they had used his money. And that was going to be what his sharp assed attorney was going to tell her too.

  “I can’t even use the family attorney for this shit. He said that he didn’t work for me, but for Brody. Mother fuckers, does the world work for him?” She didn’t want to cry; there wasn’t any way that she could repair what little makeup she’d been able to steal from the department store. As it was, the shit was cheap and didn’t match her skin tone.

  Lying down on the bed next to Ralph, she thought of Brody. Christ, he had a cock that was as big as her arm. And he did know how to use it, despite what she’d told him. He could make her come more times than all the men that she’d fucked put together. And when he’d cut her off, Rachel had been tempted to find her way into his bed again, just for some fun. But the fucker had locked her out of the room he’d been using since before Jordan had been born.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get Jordan after all this. If we don’t, then we’re screwed. He won’t have to pay me a dime, and knowing him like I do, he won’t either.” Ralph suggested again that they just take Jordan. “That is going to be another plan, I think. Jordan doesn’t much care for me anyway, and if I take him and get caught, we’ll both end up in prison. I need some money, but not enough to have to be in prison for the rest of my life.”

  “Too bad we can’t hire someone to get him for us. I mean, just getting a million for us would be something to live on for a little while.” She nodded, her mind thinking of who she might know who’d do it. “Do you have any idea who the baby daddy is? Maybe he’d do it, knowing that he’s living with Brody and not you.”

  “There are four men that I think could have been his daddy. But I wouldn’t even know where to find them now. I mean, they were, for the most part, one-night stands. It was fun, fucking people in that big bed, but I couldn’t tell you where they were from, or even a phone number to call them.”

  Rachel hated to admit it, but she was fucked. And the fact that she hadn’t planned better and gotten more money was all her fault. She’d seen that Brody Downs was a doctor, and dollar signs had gone off right before her eyes. Him having a medical degree should have tipped her off that he was smarter than she was thinking, but all she saw when she looked at him was handsome sap. And the ass hadn’t aged one bit, so far as she could see, in the ten years they’d been married.

  Looking down at her own body, she wondered what the hell had happened to her. She wasn’t fat—plump was a word that she called herself. In reality, she’d gotten very plump over the years, and having the kid hadn’t helped her figure either. But she’d been happy with the arrangement that they’d had—until Brody got a burr up his ass about her having affairs. What did he expect her to do, be celibate like he was? No fucking way.

  Sex was fun. It was a way to escape from the world for a while. Coming hard, letting her body tense up then relax, had given her endorphins that she’d never had as a teenager. Rachel had been having sex since she’d been around twelve, when the boy next door, older than her, had introduced her to it.

  Closing her eyes, Rachel tried to rest, to clear her mind. But all she could think about was how she’d messed up. Taking Brody for at least a portion of what he had wasn’t working out in her favor. The man was worth billions, she thought, and she wasn’t going to get anything of it. Even if Brody were to suddenly end up dead, she’d been told by his fucking lawyer, nothing came to her. Everything went to his mom.

  Williemae—or Mrs. Downs, as she’d been ordered to call in her the last years of her marriage to Brody—hadn’t liked her from the very start. Not only had she been mean to her about helping out with the wedding, but she had refused to throw her a shower when Jordan was born. The old biddy acted like this was all her fault, when Rachel was sure that some of it had to be lain at the feet of her precious son, Brody.

  He’d been a jackass to her about catching her and Ralph in the bed together. Then when she’d decided to gather her shit, he’d locked i
t all away from her. Rachel wondered if even then he’d known what she was up to. Then there was him not allowing her to spend any time with her parents. Smiling, she wondered if he realized that he’d done her a favor. Rachel didn’t like her parents any more than he had, honestly.

  After a while, she tried to sleep. It was proving as difficult lately as it had been getting any money. Why, she wondered, wasn’t she being thought of as the victim? Whenever her friends had gotten divorced, they’d had parties for the woman—given her advice on attorneys, for Christ’s sake. All she got from the so-called friends when she went to them was doors slammed in her face.

  Rachel was going to come out on top of this thing. She didn’t have the slightest clue how that was going to happen, but by God, she wasn’t going down without a fight. Brody would figure out that she wasn’t nearly as dumb as he apparently thought she was. Rachel was smart and savvy.

  ~*~

  Brody thought that the house was nearly finished. The pizzas and other things that Howie had ordered for dinner would be here in twenty minutes. Walking to the front door, he answered it himself, telling Howie that he had it. The man standing there was unfamiliar to him, and he felt his body tense up for whatever he had to harm him with.

  “I’m Emmi’s brother, Aaron Wright.” Brody nodded but didn’t move. “Am I too late for dinner?”

  “No. No, I’m sorry. I have about a million things on my mind right now.” Brody moved so that Aaron could join him in the hallway. “I might have met you at the airport, but I can’t remember anything about you.”

  “That’s fine. Emmi needed your attention more than I did. I’m only here for a few more days, then I have to leave again.” He looked surprised, like he hadn’t meant to tell him that. Jordan took that moment to come down the stairs to greet him. Brody introduced him to his son. “Hello, Jordan. I’ve heard a great deal about you. Emmi is my sister. She told me that you and her are going to be friends, she thought. I’d like that as well.”

  “We just moved in, and I have the neatest room. You want to see it?” Jordan was off with the man before Brody could object. For some reason, he didn’t think that Aaron would harm Jordan, but he didn’t know him at all.

  While he was standing there debating whether or not to go get Jordan, Henry and Patrick entered the house with Christy. She gushed over the house and everything, but she was strangely hesitant to leave the front hall. It wasn’t until the rest of them showed up that she went to the living room. Then the food arrived.

  He’d ordered twenty-five extra-large pizzas with a variety of toppings, but he did order six of them with all the stuff they could shove on one. The pizza place would become a favorite of his if the pizzas tasted as good as they looked. Digging in with the rest of them, he was glad that the table he had was big enough for all of them. Even little Jenna was enjoying her meal of peas and carrots. Jordan’s new grandparents, Willy and Ann, even showed up, and it was a great way, he thought, to get to know everyone.

  Conversation was light. Jordan joined in a lot, having an opinion about nearly everything. Wine was served to the adults, and he noticed that the shifters—he knew who they were—didn’t partake of any.

  “We don’t get anything from alcohol. Drugs rarely affect us either.” Jake looked over at his partner, and laughed before continuing. “I had no idea that a redhead would need more drugs. When I heard about it, I had to go and look it up. I guess there are a lot of things that don’t work well on redheads.”

  Emmi showed up just as the conversation turned to talking about redheads, and she joined in like nothing was wrong. Quincey never left her side, and Brody could tell that it was annoying her. It was funny, really, to watch Emmi come to terms with the big man. Brody thought them to be a perfect couple.

  “Did you know that you have a ghost with you?” No one stopped their talking, and he looked at Christy and asked her what she meant. “I don’t know who it is. And I’m not allowed to ask them, but they’ve been hanging around you for some time. And there is one that was living here before you moved in.”

  “I don’t know if you’re serious or not.” She said that she was very serious. “Why can you see them? I’m not saying that I believe you or not, but why is it that you can see them and I can’t?”

  “You’ve not become a family member yet. You and your mate, you have to find each other.” He told her that he didn’t want to find anyone else for his life. “I’m afraid that it’s too late for that, Brody. He’s here now.”

  He didn’t want to think about finding another person to live with. Brody certainly didn’t want someone in his life that was going to demand things—

  “Did you say he is here?” Christy nodded, smiling at him. Brody leaned in closer to her. “Honey, I’m not gay. I have a son. I just left my wife, who was definitely female.”

  “So did Jake.” Brody looked at the man across from him, talking quietly with Brody’s mom. “You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, the ghost that lives here with you, he’d like to ask you something. He said that its very important.”

  “All right. I don’t know what I can help him with. As you know, I just moved in here today. And until the divorce is final and things are settled, I’m just renting this place from Jake and Forrest. After that, I can deal with the ghost because the house will be mine.” Brody found himself glancing around the table. The only other male, besides him, that wasn’t attached was Aaron, and he didn’t strike him as a gay man. “What can I do for him? I don’t want to be caught up in family drama right now. As I said, I don’t own this house as yet.”

  “Oh, no. You couldn’t do that anyway. There are rules that they learn when they pass over. I’m not sure how it works really, but they have them in their mind when they die.” He nodded, not sure what he was to believe or not. “He wants to know if you have been to the sublevels. I think it’s the basement.”

  “No. I mean, I went down there, just to have a look around, but I didn’t see anything. Please tell me that there’s not a body down there and I’m not going to have to move again.” Her laughter drew the attention of the rest of the table. After she explained to everyone what was going on, Brody went with her when she said that the ghost wanted to show her something. “Christy, if I find a body down here, I’m going to be sorely pissed off.” She laughed with him.

  They walked to where Christy told them. He hadn’t been aware that almost everyone but him could see the dead man, and when he wondered on that, his eyes went to Aaron again. It was ludicrous, he thought, that this man or any man would be his mate.

  “The ghost remembered his name. He said that he’s Samuel Brown. And this, at one time, was his family home. He lived here until his family carted him off to a nursing home, where he died alone while they lived here in his home.” Brody told the ghost that he was sorry. “He said that he is as well. They were looking for his stash.”

  Brody looked at the men and women in the basement with him when Christy started to explain. The ghost didn’t want him to do anything for him other than to pull his stash from the wall.

  “He said that at one time he was worth millions, but his family drained him day after day until they got tired of waiting on him to die. He said that before he left here, as they were making arrangements to move him out to die, he put everything that was his and his wife’s, special things that they’d purchased for each other, in a leather bag and hid it here.”

  They found it without any trouble. Brody asked what he was to do with it since Jake and Forrest owned the house. He was told that as far as they were concerned, it was his home. Christy looked to be listening to the ghost, and when she nodded, she smiled at him. “He would like for you to give it to your son. He said that he’d like to know that the pretties, as his wife called them, would be given to someone again. Someone that loved as much as he did his own wife.”

  Brody dumped the bag on the floor, and they all marveled at w
hat was there. A diamond necklace; rings that were expensive as well as beautiful—their wedding rings, he’d bet—as well as other things that he’d stashed away so his greedy children, he called them, couldn’t sell them off without regard to what their worth was to him and his wife.

  Jake said that he’d look into it. If it was named in the will or the estate, then he’d have to find an owner, a relative. Mr. Brown told them that no one was left, but for Jake to go ahead. Drugs and alcohol had ended his family, he said, much too late for him.

  He felt terrible for the gentleman, and told him that he’d do as he asked so long as there were no attachments to the things he’d told him about. When Christy looked at him again, she too had a sad smile and told him that the man had moved on.

  “And the other ghost? What can I do for him? And to be honest with you, I’m a little leery of this, but I will help as much as I possibly can.” Christy thanked him and told him the other ghost was his father. “My dad?”

  He found himself on the floor. Brody wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there, but he felt better there instead of standing. The others had left them, he noticed, except for Aaron. Brody wasn’t sure if having him there was such a good idea, then Christy spoke again.

  “He wants you to know that he loves you very much. Even now.” Brody nodded, tears filling his eyes. “He said that you might not have known it, but he was there on your wedding day and the day that you had your first delivery. He was also there when Jordan was born. Another wonderful thing that he thought he would miss. Mr. Downs said that he was proud of you, and spoke of you to anyone that would listen.”

  “He died before I was out of med school. And I was sad when he couldn’t be at my wedding. Does he know that I’m getting a divorce?” Christy said that was why he was here. “Why for that?”

  “There is information that you need to have. Mr. Downs said that he’d tell you in a moment. He said that I could call him Cain, if that was all right with you.”