Dead Man District

by Julie Miller

  “Okay. Thank you.” Corie seemed pleased with his explanation, if a little overwhelmed by the loving, crowded scene he’d described. “I’ll owe you a whole pie for helping me out tonight.”

  “You’ll owe me nothing.”

  She smiled—a huge, beautiful, bright curve that gave him a glimpse of straight, white teeth and softened the tension around her lips. Didn’t she understand that smile was payment enough?

  “I’ll bring the pie, anyway.” When she reached out to squeeze his hand, Matt squeezed back. He loved the feel of her hand in his. Small and soft compared to his big workingman’s hands, but strong. With sensible, unadorned nails and the faded stripe of a scar between her thumb and forefinger. Her fingers tightened around his before she released him and backed across the hallway into her apartment. “I’d better get changed. And I won’t forget the pie!”

  Chapter Six

  Three hours later, Matt raised his hands in triumph as he busted through the kitchen wall they were taking down with their fire axes a split second before his younger brother, Mark, broke through the drywall in his section. His older brothers, Alex and Pike, slapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him before razzing Mark.

  “That’s how you swing an ax.” Pike smacked Matt on the shoulder.

  Alex agreed. “Told you he’d win.”

  “Not fair,” Mark protested, always ready to prove himself against any of his three older brothers. “Matt’s arms are a good two inches longer than mine.”

  “Why do you think I didn’t take that bet?” Alex, the oldest and shortest of the four, teased.

  Pike Taylor, the only brother with blond hair, picked up a couple of pieces of Sheetrock and carried them to the trash can in the dining room that was now open to the kitchen, save for the two-by-four framework that was coming down next. “If you don’t want to give Matt credit, think of it this way—Alex and I are the real winners because we didn’t have to do any of the teardown work.” He glanced down at Alex, who was picking up the debris Matt and Mark had created. “Right, Shrimp?”

  “Really? Shrimp?” Alex tossed his load in after Pike’s. “I always thought it was you and me against the wonder twins.”

  “Un-uh,” Mark reminded him, poking Matt in the chest. “He’s two years older than I am. I’m the beloved baby boy. Grandma said so. It’s every man for himself in this family.”

  “Matt!” Evan shot around the corner and skidded to a halt when he saw the four men laughing and ribbing each other. The dragon he carried had sprouted a second set of yellow wings, telling Matt how Evan and his nephew Gideon were staying busy. The boy’s wide-eyed gaze settled on the long-handled ax cradled across Matt’s shoulders. “Where’s your hammer? Are you okay? Did you cut yourself?”

  Matt questioned the pale tinge beneath Evan’s brown freckles. “I’m fine, bud.”

  “Do you dragon swear?”

  Um, yeah?

  “What are you boys arguing about now?” Meghan Taylor, the brothers’ adoptive mother, showed nary a wrinkle on her youthful features, except for the amusement crinkling beside her honey-brown eyes, when she appeared behind Evan. She carried a toddler wearing pink, fuzzy pajamas in one arm, and rested her free hand on Evan’s shoulder as they peeked around the corner from the bedrooms, where she and their father, Gideon Sr., were corralling Evan, Pike’s son, Gideon Jr., and Pike’s little girl, Dorie. “Seriously? You two used your regulation axes to take down that wall? It’s a good thing that no one lives above or below Martha’s apartment with the fuss you four are making.”

  Matt’s gaze zeroed in on Evan’s pale features as the boy shrank back against Matt’s mother. Had the kid been startled by the pounding and crashing? Did the potential weapon he wielded make the boy think he and Mark had attacked more than the wall? “It’s a noisy job, Ev,” he explained, lowering the ax to cradle it securely between both hands. “We’re all good here.” He wasn’t sure of the protocol, but he drew a cross over his heart. “I dragon swear.”

  Mark set his ax in a safe corner and threw up his hands. “Speak for yourself, big guy. Mom, you know these three bullied me into turning this into a race.”

  “Un-uh.” Their mother had heard—and dismissed—that excuse many times over the years. “The axes were probably your idea.”

  “I told them breaking through the wall like that could be dangerous and wanted no part of it.” Pike was the next to offer up an explanation, as he swooped in to pluck Dorie from their mother’s arms and blow a raspberry onto his daughter’s cheek, making the tiny blonde giggle with delight. Evan tilted his chin up, looking more curious than alarmed by the farting sound and resulting laughter. “Can I help it if they won’t listen to reason?”

  Matt was pleased to see his mother switch both hands to Evan’s shoulders, perhaps sensing the boy’s nervousness at being surrounded by all this noise and activity. “How hard did you try?” Meghan asked Pike with a deadpan tone of doubt.

  “Not as hard as I did,” Alex insisted, tossing more debris into the trash. “That’s what sledgehammers are for, I said. But have these three yahoos ever listened to me?”

  Their mother shook her head, then turned her soft brown eyes up to Matt. “You’re my last hope for a straight answer, son. Why would you all risk someone getting hurt and making all this racket by chopping through walls?”

  “The job needed to be done.” Matt might have learned that deadpan delivery from his mom. “Since it’s an exercise we practice time and again in our firefighter training, I knew we could do it safely.”

  “And we have a winner.” Meghan Taylor bent down and whispered a reassurance against Evan’s ear. “I told you they were fine. Matt just beat all his brothers in the wall-chopping competition.”

  As their mother beamed him a smile, Matt was instantly struck by the reminder of how good it felt to be the one who could make someone he cared about light up like that. Maybe that’s why Corie’s smile was such a turn-on. It was rare and hard-won. And though he was probably a fool for thinking it, her smile felt like it was a special gift just for him.

  While the quiet moment passed between mother and son, there was laughter and a round of applause from their grandmother, Pike’s wife, Hope, Alex’s wife, Audrey, and Mark’s fiancée, Amy, as they joined them. The younger women were supposed to be painting the walls and trim in the living room. But the “Yay, Matt!” from Evan was the only voice of approval he needed to hear. Whatever concerns the boy had had when he’d run out to the main room disappeared with Meghan’s explanation. When Matt caught Evan’s gaze across the room and winked at him, the boy flashed his gap-toothed grin and dashed back into the bedroom to play.

  Yep. Making someone smile felt pretty damn special.

  As he had many times throughout his life, Matt thanked the fates that had landed him in this family. The competition was real, and occasionally intense, but always full of love. And the ringleader of them all—a shrinking, widowed, eighty-four-year-old woman—quieted the room by simply raising a plastic tub filled with cookies she’d baked to go with the dinner they’d all eaten earlier. Martha Taylor swatted aside Pike’s hand as he reached for a cookie. She wrapped her arthritic fingers around Matt’s forearm and held on to him for balance as she stepped around the debris.

  “The first snickerdoodle is for our winner,” she announced, handing Matt one of her delicious cookies. He promptly stuffed it whole into his mouth while she hugged him around the waist. He dropped a kiss to the top of her snow-white hair before she pulled away and handed an equally delicious cookie to Mark. “And a consolation prize for second place.”

  “We always try harder.” Mark held his cookie up and did a misplaced victory dance before kissing Martha’s weathered cheek and hugging her, too. “Thanks, Grandma.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Alex pouted, drawing his red-haired wife, Audrey, to his side. “I’m starving.”

  A
udrey poked him in the flank. “You had seconds at dinner.”

  “Yeah, but they weren’t cookies.”

  “Oh, all right,” Martha relented, as they’d all known she would. “Time for us all to take a break. Everybody dig in.” She wrapped a stack of cookies in a paper napkin and handed them to Pike’s shy wife, Hope, who’d been rubbing noses with Dorie and brushing crumbs from Pike’s chin. “Take some for Evan and the Gideons.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  “I’ll help,” Pike offered.

  Before they headed down the hallway, Hope swiped her fingers across Pike’s lips, even though the crumbs on his face were long gone. When they lingered there a second and Pike’s blue eyes heated at the contact, Matt felt a spike of envy. Not because he lusted after his sister-in-law or begrudged his brother his well-earned happiness, but because he wanted that, too—that connection with a woman who had eyes only for him. He wanted that connection with Corie McGuire.

  Only, he wasn’t quite sure how to make that happen. Or if Corie was even interested in him trying.

  He was thirty years old and had never been in a serious relationship. He’d dated. He’d had sex. But nothing had ever worked out for him. Probably something to do with being six foot five and what that one blind date his brothers had set him up with had described as spooky quiet. He didn’t always have a lot to say and got stuck in his head sometimes while he thought things through before he did speak. He lacked Mark’s glib sense of humor and Alex’s outgoing personality. Even Pike had a goofy sort of nerd charm going for him. Matt was just... Matt. Physical. Direct. He’d been a troubled kid who didn’t speak for months after his birth parents’ deaths—not until Meghan and Gideon Taylor had done their patient, loving child-whisperer thing with him and gotten him to open up about the tragedy he felt responsible for. And though he’d worked through his demons, it was still hard for him not to be that guarded, excessively observant survivor he’d once been.

  Yep. A relationship with him probably wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  The man who had saved Matt’s life when he’d been that silent little boy, Gideon Taylor Sr., strode into the main room, sliding his arm around Meghan’s waist, unknowingly completing the image that everyone in this family had a partner except for Matt...and his widowed grandmother. But she’d been blessed to have been married to their grandfather Sid for more than sixty years, until his death this past summer. “None of the cookies made it past those two boys and Pike.” His dad pointed to each of his three remaining sons around the room. “Talk about déjà vu.” But he was grinning. “Ma, you got any more?”

  Martha held out the tub for him to help himself to a snickerdoodle. “I’m so fortunate that you’re all helping me with this remodeling project. I love how you’ve opened the kitchen up to the rest of the apartment. Makes me sorry that I had to move.” She put up a hand before Gideon could remind her of her health issues and the flight of stairs leading to the front door, which was no longer safe for her to negotiate on her own. “I know it’s for the best, and I admit I’m having fun finding the perfect place to put everything in my new home. But do you know how many years I was stuck back in that kitchen cooking, missing out on all the activity out here?”

  “We were all in the kitchen with you, Ma.” Gideon dropped an arm around her shoulders. “You never missed a thing.” She leaned into the kiss he pressed to her temple. “Come on. Let’s get back to my grandkids and your great-grands and stay out of harm’s way while the boys finish tearing down in here.” It wasn’t hard for him to reach around Martha and pluck a second cookie to munch on. “And bring these with you so the big boys don’t eat them all.”

  Martha might be in her eighties, but she was quick. She ducked from beneath her son’s arm and faced the middle generation of young men who had torn up her kitchen. “But I want to hear about Matthew’s young woman.”

  “Oh?” Gideon and Meghan stopped and turned, both looking at Matt with hope and curiosity. Great. Now his parents would be part of the inquisition, too. “You’re seeing someone?” his dad asked.

  Matt carried his ax to his toolbox and slipped the protective cover over the sharp blade. Then he picked up a broom and dustpan to attack the powdery drywall dust on the floor, hoping the personal question would just go away.

  “Evan’s mother,” Martha offered when Matt didn’t immediately respond.

  “We’re not seeing each other,” Matt clarified for his father. “Corie and I are friends.”

  His brothers and sisters-in-law filled the room with teasing catcalls. His father slowly munched his cookie, his narrowed eyes assessing the full disclosure or lack thereof in Matt’s response. Gideon Taylor had earned the silvered hair at his temples after raising the four of them. He knew how to wait out his sons until he got the answer he wanted.

  And though Matt had gone back to work, his younger brother, Mark, ignored the shushing from his fiancée and poked the bull. “Tell us what she looks like, Matt.”

  Matt focused on the muscles in his arms and hands as he worked, trying to ignore his well-meaning family. Sweep. Dump. Sweep some more. But it seemed everyone was waiting for his answer now. “Prettier than you.”

  “Impossible.” Amy swatted Mark’s shoulder at that joking remark, but his baby bro wouldn’t let the subject drop. Instead, Mark pulled the trash can closer, and he and Alex helped Matt with the cleanup job. “Just trying to get a sense of who’s rockin’ your world, big brother. Does Evan take after her?”

  Although he knew everybody in the room was hanging on the details he wasn’t sure he should share, Matt couldn’t help but picture his pretty neighbor. “Same mossy-green eyes.” He mentally compared her image to Evan—a cautious, curious boy who didn’t know whether to be the man of the house or Corie’s baby boy. “Corie doesn’t have freckles like Evan. Her hair’s the color of a ripe wheat field.”

  Alex paused with the remains of a shattered two-by-four in each hand. “A ripe wheat field? When did you become a poet?”

  As Alex stuffed the boards into the trash, Mark continued the interrogation. “Is she the reason you were asking Captain Redding about old-school fire starters?”

  Alex pulled out his phone. “That reminds me. I did a rundown on that name you asked me about—Kenneth Norwell. Career criminal with a long rap sheet.” As much as he knew mentioning the word criminal while talking about Corie and Evan would only make his family more curious to learn about them, Matt mentally logged the information Alex was reading off his phone. “His current address is Jefferson City. Apparently, he didn’t move too far from the penitentiary once he got out. He hasn’t missed a check-in with his parole officer there—met with him last week. There’s no indication of him living or working here in KC.”

  It was no surprise that their father was going to let mention of a paroled prisoner slide. “Why do you have KCPD checking the status of a paroled prisoner?” Gideon asked. “And why are you talking to Kyle Redding about incendiaries?”

  Matt supposed if he had more of a social life, his interest in helping Corie and Evan wouldn’t be such big news with his family tonight. “There was an oven fire at Corie’s place. I made sure it was out. Another fire the next night in the alley behind the building. Something about them seemed hinky, so I was following up on my hunch.”

  “Arson?” his father asked. As chief arson investigator for the KCFD, Gideon Taylor Sr. certainly knew his way around a fire—probably better than any of them, except their mother, who was captain at another firehouse.

  Matt nodded. “Corie insists that Evan wouldn’t mess with anything like that and that he knows all about fire safety. But if it wasn’t either of them, then somebody was in their apartment. Coated the heating elements with a flammable substance. Used it again in the alley fire.”

  Gideon’s dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Amy hugged her arms arou
nd her waist and shivered. “Arson fires are about the scariest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.” She looked across the room to Mark, who was already crossing toward her. They’d both barely survived the work of an arsonist this past summer. “I’d still have a home, and Gran and I wouldn’t be living with this guy.”

  Mark hugged her close. “You like living with this guy.”

  “I do.” Amy nestled her forehead at the juncture of Mark’s neck and shoulder. “And marrying him.”

  “And marrying him.” She reached up to touch his face, and the unbreakable bond the two of them shared gave her the courage to smile before turning to face the rest of them. “So, big, bad Matt rescued Corie from a fire in her kitchen. Is that what all you Taylor boys do? Rescue the women you love?”

  Love? Um...

  Mark rubbed his hands up and down her arms, still soothing away the nightmare they’d survived. “Red, you said you don’t like to be rescued.”

  “Well, I don’t always like it because I’m a stubbornly independent woman, and I believe I can take care of myself,” she teased. “But it is hot.”

  She looked to Audrey, who linked her arm with Alex’s and nodded. “Super hot. It means the world to know someone’s got your back and you can trust him without reservation. It allows us to be as strong as we need to be.”

  Alex turned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “That little girl we’re adopting will be lucky to have you for her mama.”

  Why couldn’t his family discuss the weather or how much they missed Royals baseball like other, normal Kansas Citians?

  Matt loved Amy like a sister and believed Mark had found a treasure, but the woman had no trouble speaking her mind. “Matt’s hot. I bet Corie’s hot, too.”