Falling For The Brother

Why was his shirt unbuttoned? Surely not for her? Had she told him she liked running her fingers through the hair on his chest? Parts of that night they’d spent together were a blur.

Other things she remembered as though they’d happened yesterday.

He was talking to the waiter about beers on tap and specials. Her preference was neither on tap nor on special. She waited.

He ordered a tall dark lager for himself. And the light beer, bottled, that she’d always preferred.

“You changed your clothes,” were the first words out of her mouth when the waiter left. She wished she’d bitten her tongue.

He nodded. “I was up most of the night and hit the sack as soon as I got home.”

And then he’d obviously showered when he got up. That was why the musky aftershave he wore was reaching her nostrils so clearly. He’d just put it on.

“Where are you staying?”

“At home, why?”

“You drove back to Albina this morning?” And then another two hours to meet her for questioning?

“Yeah.”

“You going all the way back tonight?”

His shrug distracted her. Those shoulders... She had a mental flash of tanned, smooth skin. And a strength that allowed him to support his own weight, and hers, too, as he’d moved them together into the most incredible physical experience...

“Depends on how much beer I drink,” he said, not quite smiling, but she thought he might have if their situation had been different.

“Well, don’t let me keep you.” Their beers had arrived. She took a long cold sip before he could tip his mug to her bottle—something he’d done with each and every drink they’d shared that long-ago night. Their toasts had grown more and more ridiculous as the night had worn on. If she was remembering right, they’d tipped their glasses to see-through bras and boxers at one point.

He opened his pad before he took a sip. Got out a pen. Asked a series of questions that she knew were designed to put her at ease. Did she and Bruce purchase their house together? Had she liked it? Did she help choose the furniture? Yes, to all of the above. He wanted to know how she liked Santa Raquel. She liked it fine. Did she miss Albina? Not really.

She missed being closer to her parents, but since he didn’t ask, she didn’t reveal that piece of information.

It dawned on her, as she sipped twice as fast as he did, that he’d been driving for the past couple of hours. “Did you have dinner? They have great bar food here.”

His weakness. She knew that from Bruce.

Funny that she’d only ever seen the guy a handful of times in her life and yet knew so much about him.

Knew him intimately...

She took another sip. Her limit was three. He’d better be done with his questions by then because that was when she was leaving.

“I made a sandwich and ate it on the road.” He glanced at the tables around them, presumably to see what others were consuming, and she reached for a menu, placing it in front of him.

Her tentative theory was that if he was busy eating, he couldn’t be worrying about getting information for that pad he’d yet to write on. She really had nothing to give him that could in any way prove that Bruce had hurt Miriam. She had proof of him not keeping his word. Proof of unexplained absences. She’d caught him looking at normal adult porn on the internet once in the year they’d been married.

None of that added up to anything worthy of an investigation. Or anything criminal, either.

It just added up to a man she couldn’t accept as her partner in life. And one she tried to keep from disappointing her daughter.

“I think I’ll have this combination platter,” Mason said, looking up from the menu. “Will you share it with me?” He was getting fried green beans, onion rings and barbecued chicken niblets.

“I’ll have an onion ring or two. If you don’t eat them all.” She’d shared an appetizer platter with him once before. Really late at night, when she’d been too drunk to be aware of what was on it.

Or so she’d told herself.

In actual fact, she’d been tipsy enough not to care, enough to deaden the pain, but she hadn’t been too drunk to know about the choice she’d been making. She’d known, when she went to bed with him, exactly what she was doing. She simply hadn’t cared how wrong it had been.

Not until she woke in the bright light of day and found herself naked in his bed.

Mason ordered and tacked on another round of beers to be delivered with his dinner.

“Everyone has some kind of temper. Everyone gets angry.” His gaze met hers with total focus now.

“Yeah.”

“What did Bruce do when he got mad?”

She wanted the truth as badly as he did, so she met his eyes. Tried to recall a time when her husband had been in a bad mood, or upset about something. Other than when she’d told him she was leaving, of course. That had been a once-in-a-lifetime bad morning for both of them—inarguably the worst of her life. She’d said things, called him a loser, with colorful language attached. Her only comfort in the whole situation was that at three months old, Brianna had been too young to understand her words. Or remember them.

“You know Bruce,” she finally said. “He’s always so self-assured, so confident. If something doesn’t go his way, he looks for the bright side, sure he’ll find one, and then convinces everyone else that the darkness is gone, too.”

“I asked about his anger.”

She had a flash of the time a prosecutor had refused to press charges after Bruce had worked six months to make an arrest. She explained the circumstances, then said, “He sat for over an hour with this...chiseled look on his face, staring at a blank television screen. His jaw was clenched. Whenever I walked by the room, he’d still be sitting there, staring. Eventually he got up, told me he was going out for a while, and he left. When he came back, he was more subdued than normal, but still easy to get along with. He helped me make dinner.”

Mason’s expression was intent. “Do you have any idea where he went? What he did when he was gone?”

She shook her head. “I assumed he went in to work. That’s what he normally did when he had something to sort out. He’d talk to Clark or other people at the precinct.”

“But you don’t know if he did that day?”

“Like I said, it was my day off, so no, I wasn’t there to witness his presence or conversations.”

“Do you remember anyone ever mentioning that he’d been there? Or hearing anything about the conversation?”

She shook her head again.

“What about the case? The prosecutor? Did anything change? Were charges eventually pressed?”

“Not for dealing. He got him on possession, though—with enough drugs to put him in prison for a while.” That was how Bruce worked. He found a way. “If something prevented an outcome he needed, he came at it from another direction.”

Shouldn’t be news to Mason.

“What about at work? Did he have a reputation for getting physical with his perps?” He frowned. “Roughing them up, I mean.”

“No. He’s tough, you know that. He’s not afraid to stand up to anyone if he believes the action is warranted. He doesn’t shy away from danger or back down. He’d blast a guy with words. But I never heard of a single instance of him doing anything more than not putting cuffs on gently. You know, maybe lift a guy’s arm a little high on his back, or put the cuffs on tight. But nothing compared to some other cops. He never shoved or struck anyone that I ever heard of.”

His food arrived and she sat back, figuring they’d relax now. She really wasn’t aware of anything that would help him. If she’d had any concerns about Bruce having anger or violence issues, she’d never have left Brianna with her father overnight. Or unsupervised.

“And at home? When he got angry at home, what did he do?”

“He didn’t mince words in letting me know I’d pissed him off. He raised his voice sometimes. Then he’d usually leave for a while and when he got back, he’d have calmed down enough for rational conversation. We’d talk about it, and things would be fine.”

“Where did he go when he left? Did you ever ask?”

Harper shrugged. “Not really. I wanted to give him his space.” She paused. “I got the impression that he drove around for a while. Or, if it was evening, that he went up to the bar for a couple of beers. So I didn’t ask.” Truth was, she’d been glad that Bruce had taken his anger out of the house. He’d always been ready to talk fairly when he’d returned.

“Would he come home drunk?”

“Bruce handles his alcohol, you know that.”

“Would he come home drunk?” he repeated.

“I’m not sure I’d recognize it if he had. I once saw him put down eight beers at an after-funeral gathering with the force, and he didn’t act any differently than if he’d been drinking tea. He didn’t argue when I announced that I was driving home, though.”

“Did he ever come home smelling of alcohol?”

“Sometimes. Slightly. He hangs out at the bar with off-duty officers. Again, something a lot of them do. Something I occasionally did, too, before Brianna came along. It’s good to unwind with other people who get it.” Surely Mason socialized sometimes when he was working with departments around the country.

“I went by to take a look through the house today before I headed back here.” He picked up a couple of fried green beans, put them in his mouth, then pushed the plate toward her. “If there’d been a fight, Bruce would’ve had plenty of time to clean up, but you never know what a scene can tell you. His truck was there, so I didn’t stop.”

He really seemed convinced that Bruce had done this.

“What about the house the two of you shared?” he asked. “Was anything ever broken? A knickknack that got shoved? Maybe a door opened with enough force to push the knob through a wall?”

“Of course not! Don’t you think I’d remember something like that? And have concerns of my own?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he loaded his fork with sauce-smeared chicken niblets and ate them.

Still managing to keep her hands off the onion rings, and to nurse her second beer, she leaned forward. “Look, if you’re trying to convince me that Bruce would manipulate the truth to make someone look bad, maybe, given time and enough examples, you could get me to see that. I know that he struggles, and sometimes fails, to keep his work distinct from his personal life—in terms of separating a carefully concocted pretense from reality. But I also know, for a fact, that he owns up to his mistakes. Before he’s caught. Not afterward. Like that time he did a line of coke to prove to a dealer that he was trustworthy. He went to the captain the second he was off duty and volunteered for daily testing the rest of the time he was on that case. He never touched the stuff again.”

“Bruce doesn’t like to give up control. Nor does he have the ability to relax enough to enjoy the high. That’s why he’s never had trouble staying away from drugs.”

Her head cocked, she studied him. “What about you? You know how to ‘relax and enjoy the high’?”

It sounded like that was what he’d just told her. But...

“Nope. Which is why I understand and how I recognize the same trait in my brother. It’s also why neither of us drinks anything stronger than beer.”

“I’ve never so much as taken a drag from a joint,” she felt compelled to tell him. And then wondered why she’d felt that need. “Or a puff on a cigarette.”

His grin made her insides flip-flop. “I’ve met your folks,” he said. “They’re pretty straightforward, down-to-earth people. And with you being an only child, I’m guessing they kept you too busy on the farm, and too aware of the effect chemicals have on the body, to leave you with much opportunity, or desire, to experiment with substance abuse.”

Her parents’ all-organic fruit and vegetable business hadn’t made them rich. But it kept them comfortably warm, clothed and fed. “I know more about holistic treatments and remedies than I do traditional medicine,” she acknowledged, returning his smile. “And I also know that the world is what we make it—each of us, with our individual choices.”

She’d had a great childhood, and didn’t take that lightly. Or for granted. She felt a huge responsibility to give Brianna that same sense of purpose, of healthy living and societal contribution.

“I’m telling you, like I’ve already told you several times today, that if I had any suspicions about Bruce, any knowledge that would be of concern, I’d be calling Captain O’Brien myself.”

“I don’t think you’re deliberately holding anything back,” Mason said, picking up an onion ring and handing it to her.

It would be churlish to refuse. She had to accept it. And it would be equally rude just to sit there and hold it or throw it away. Especially with him watching her. She took a bite. Closed her eyes while she chewed.

He was grinning again when she opened them. “Good, isn’t it?”

It was good there was only one left on his plate. “Mmm-hmm,” she said and finished the onion ring, then took a sip of beer.

And promised herself that she’d be heading home within minutes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MASON WAS BROUGHT up short when he realized he was enjoying himself. He wasn’t there to have a good time. Nor was it appropriate that he do so with his brother’s ex-wife. Particularly when he was investigating that same brother.

No one would be happier than he would to find that Bruce had never had anything to do with hurting their grandmother. But his gut was telling him Bruce had done this. And it had to stop.

Period. For Gram. And for Bruce, too.

“Things aren’t always what they seem.” He was beginning to suspect that these days, with Bruce, they almost never were. It used to be only when he’d tried every other means to get his own way that Bruce would resort to manipulating the truth. But in the past few years, through things Gram had said, he’d caught his brother doing it for seemingly no reason at all—as though he’d been undercover for so long, he’d lost perspective on the difference between lies and truth.

None of which meant he’d turned violent. Or hurt Gram.

If Mason was going to find the truth, he needed help. Fast. And Harper, with her ties to Bruce and her current proximity to Gram, was the most obvious choice. Gram had given him a couple of weeks with her agreement to stay at the Stand. Two weeks before she’d insist on going home to Bruce.

Her hands on the table—Mason didn’t miss the open body language—Harper frowned. “What do you mean, things aren’t always what they seem? You trying to tell me something?”

He’d been debating, since seeing her again that morning, whether or not he would. Whether or not it was necessary.

Whether he dared bring up the night that had changed his life forever—and not in a good way.

He had two weeks.

“That night I found you crying...”

The atmosphere around them changed completely. Electricity singed the air he breathed. Leaving an unmistakable stench of acrimony.

“What?” Harper’s hands were no longer on the table. She’d put on her “cop” face, which she was remarkably good at. He couldn’t read a thing she was thinking.

Which left him with only the surface beauty he’d never been able to get out of his mind since the first time he’d laid eyes on her. It occurred to him that she might know full well the effect she had on him—especially after he’d noticed the leggings that sculpted legs he could still feel around him if he closed his eyes and allowed it to happen. Noticed the makeup drawing attention to blue eyes that had been haunting him for five long, lonely years...

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