Falling for the Brother

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  What should she do?

  Taking Brianna to Albina was better than having Bruce back in Santa Raquel. Near Miriam.

  She’d have to come up with some explanation to give Brianna to make certain the little girl didn’t mention seeing Miriam to Bruce.

  What would Mason suggest she do?

  She could see her parents. Time with them always put life in a more manageable perspective.

  “I think I can do tomorrow afternoon,” she heard herself say before she’d consciously reached that decision.

  He seemed delighted, which always made her feel better.

  But she hung up with a pit in her stomach.

  Dressing, tending to Brianna’s morning preparations, she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling of unease. She didn’t want to call Mason—although she had to let him know about the meeting—until she knew why she was feeling that way.

  She wasn’t afraid of Bruce.

  So what was it?

  * * *

  GRAM’S MAKEUP COMPLETELY covered her bruises, but Mason couldn’t look at her without remembering they were there.

  She’d resorted to lying to him. How on earth was he going to help her?

  Half of her doughnut gone, she’d pushed it aside. “I really need to get back,” she said, her hands on the table as though getting ready to stand.

  Placing a hand on one of hers, he said, “How about if I bring Grace down here to visit you?” The idea had just occurred to him, but he knew it was a good one. “She really wants to see you...”

  Gram’s hesitation didn’t seem to be caused by fear, but she was frowning. “I don’t know, Mason...”

  “Just for a few hours. You’ve been friends for practically your whole lives. What could it hurt?” Unless she was afraid that Bruce would find out? “She’ll only be able to come if she agrees not to say anything to anyone.”

  Gram didn’t seem convinced, but she was no longer shaking her head. “It’s just...she wants me to do things...”

  Finally. “Like what?” Get away from Bruce? Grace had already told him as much.

  “Skydiving, for one.”

  “Skydiving?” He studied her. Was she losing her mind?

  Gram nodded, her lips pursed with disapproval. “She read an article on the internet about a woman who went skydiving for her ninetieth birthday and she couldn’t let it go. She said we had to do it together. Kept going on and on about it...”

  Grace had never mentioned skydiving. Mason shook his head. “So...if she promises not to talk about skydiving?”

  Another few seconds passed and then Gram’s eyes lit with decision. A look he recognized from when he was a kid and was about to be told what to do.

  Funny how some things lost no effect at all as you aged.

  “I’m okay with her coming if you’ll do something for me.”

  He felt a surge of relief flood him—more emotion that didn’t normally invade his days. “What?” He’d pretty much do anything for her. She had to know that.

  Unless it involved contact between her and his brother...

  “My car’s due for an oil change. I was scheduled to take it in yesterday.”

  And she couldn’t ask Bruce to do it for her. She still saw to her own car maintenance. As the independent woman she was.

  She was thinking ahead—about driving and living an active lifestyle in the near future.

  “Of course I’ll get your oil changed,” he told her, pleased that he’d gotten off so easily.

  “There’s a coupon in the glove box,” she said, seeming more relaxed than he’d seen her in recent days. “It’s good for half off and expires this week, which is why I don’t want to wait.”

  Gram was counting pennies? The woman had enough money to live two lifetimes.

  Unless...whoever was hurting her had been taking her money, too?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MASON’S MEETING WITH Gwen was completely unproductive. She swore, looking him straight in the eye, that Bruce had nothing to do with her showing up at his house the other night. Swore that she and Bruce had not spoken in over a week.

  She also assured him, quite insistently, that she wasn’t going to tell him how she’d found out about Gram’s abuse and his private investigation. He could guess, though. O’Brien had probably called her in for a talk, on the QT. As Bruce’s only regular partner when he wasn’t on undercover duty, she’d be the one most likely to know if there’d been changes in his behavior. O’Brien would have to be certain that he wasn’t putting people at risk by keeping Bruce on the job while Mason did his looking around.

  It all made sense. He just didn’t like the fact that O’Brien hadn’t told Mason that Gwen knew.

  He also didn’t like that the woman had nothing but praise for his brother. Translated: she wasn’t being honest with him. No one was that perfect.

  Pushing aside an almost constant desire to call Harper, he moved through his tasks. From meeting Gwen to getting the oil changed in Gram’s car, which gave him an excuse to have another look through her house, homing in on her room. And Bruce’s. And the home computer, downloading the hard drive to a large-capacity storage disk to peruse later. He couldn’t access his brother’s personal laptop. He didn’t have a warrant, and Gram’s permission to search her home wasn’t enough. Still, nothing stood out immediately as different or in any way alarming.

  If you ignored the filth of his brother’s lifestyle during Gram’s absence.

  He found a locked box in Gram’s room. Wooden, about the size of a shoe box, beautifully embellished with a painted ocean scene. He could have picked the lock, but didn’t. Instead, he carried the box through the garage and out to her car with him, to move into his SUV later, so he could take it to her, along with the bag of other things she’d asked him to collect. More clothes. A watch. Some earrings. And a round brush she’d forgotten when they’d stopped by her house to pack the night they’d left.

  Though he hadn’t seen the box before, he wasn’t surprised that Gram had it. She’d always been one for keeping treasures and hoped he could get her to open it and share them with him.

  Imagining pictures of him and Bruce when they were kids, of his father, of his grandfather with Gram when they were a young couple, he backed Gram’s car down the drive. Suddenly an older gentleman appeared in the rearview mirror, waving at him.

  In brown plaid shorts and a short-sleeved white golf shirt, with short gray hair, the man appeared to be somewhere between seventy and eighty. He was pretty spry as he moved toward the car door. Mason put on the brakes.

  “I’ve been—” The man stopped speaking when Mason exited the car, just as the man got close. “Oh.”

  Staring at Mason, his expression changed from welcoming to guarded. Why his presence brought negative reaction, Mason didn’t know. He’d never seen the guy before in his life.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No.” Backing down the drive, the man shook his head, and turned, hurrying to the sidewalk.

  “Wait!” Mason called as he chased after the guy. “Who are you? What did you want?”

  “No one. Nothing,” the guy said over his shoulder, not slowing at all.

  “Hey.” Mason caught up to him, keeping pace. “You know my grandmother?” he asked. He’d been in Gram’s car. The guy must have thought, with the car pulling out of the driveway, that he was Gram.

  “Nope.” The guy shook his head again. “Wrong house,” he said, then turned up the drive four houses down from Gram. Mason had knocked at that door the day before, when he’d been canvassing the neighborhood. No one had answered. “I’m expecting a call from my daughter,” the man continued, hurrying to let himself into the house.

  He’d had a key, so he could very well have been confused and gone to the wrong place. On the street, staring at the two houses, Mason could see the simila
rities. Most of the homes on the block were identical in size. All of them featured the typical siding and brick of older California homes.

  Still, the man hadn’t been heading to the door of the house. His goal had clearly been Gram’s car. He’d been flagging her down.

  Unless he’d wondered why someone was pulling out of his drive?

  He’d seemed completely lucid, but...

  Taking one last look at the man’s home, he noticed the twitching of a blind in the front window.

  And knew that he’d just come across an unexpected piece of his puzzle. The problem was figuring out where the hell it fit.

  Did Gram have a neighbor problem? One she hadn’t told anyone about? Afraid of what Bruce might do to the guy if he found out the older man had been bugging their grandmother?

  Could he be the one who’d put those bruises on Gram’s face? Broken her arm multiple times? Hard to imagine and yet...the guy was definitely in good enough shape to overpower an elderly woman.

  He’d been unpleasantly surprised to see Mason.

  And he’d run instead of staying for the casual conversation that would’ve been more likely in a case of mistaken driveway.

  Unless he was worried someone would notice he was missing a beat or two and send him away?

  Remembering the story Harper had told him about the resident at the Stand whose family had been threatening to put her in a home, he turned back to Gram’s car with a heavy feeling in his gut.

  Grace had been pressuring Gram to skydive. Gram had lied to him about Bruce telling her not to go out at night. And she had a neighbor neither she nor Bruce had ever mentioned. A neighbor who’d just lied to him, too.

  The puzzle was getting more convoluted by the minute.

  He sure hoped something was going to break soon and he could get on with his life.

  * * *

  HARPER WAS BUSY all morning with a new resident check-in—the young woman’s abuser, her ex-husband, had shown up at her home early that morning in spite of a restraining order, but had only managed to wrench her shoulder out of its socket and leave a few bruises before the cops showed up, called by a friend in the apartment next-door.

  Unfortunately, Bella Anderson’s abuser had spotted the police car coming up the street, taken off and was still on the loose. Until he was in custody, the Stand was on high-threat alert—which meant that all entrances and exits, secret though they were, had two guards. Residents were on lockdown inside the grounds, and no visitors were allowed. It also meant that any employees coming or going had to have an armed escort. A desperate abuser might not hesitate to kidnap, hold hostage, hurt or kill an employee in an effort to get to his victim.

  While all of this made Harper’s job much more intense, the day went on as usual for the residents and children living there. Except for the residents who’d been scheduled to work in the Stand-owned-and-run businesses on the strip bordering their property, who had the day off. There’d been no visitors scheduled. No residents had appointments outside the Stand that day.

  Lila handled getting the secondhand store and computer shop staffed.

  And then it was time for lunch.

  Time to call Mason and let him know she’d be bringing Brianna to Albina in the morning to see Bruce.

  Assuming Bella Anderson’s ex-husband was in custody. The Santa Raquel police expected that to happen within the hour.

  Which was why Harper ate lunch before calling Mason. Might as well make sure she’d be going before raising the alarm.

  With the imminent phone call on her mind, she ate alone in her office, thinking about Mason. About the fact that the night he’d slept with her, he hadn’t told her his brother had lied about sleeping with Gwen instead of a perp. About the fact that Mason had come looking for her that night, not sent by fate, as she’d always thought, but by Bruce.

  She spent a lot of the twenty minutes obsessing about the twenty-four hours after waking in Mason’s bed without a phone call from him.

  Interspersed with all the memories were moments of fighting with herself. She wanted him. More that day than ever before. Having him in her home had been a worse mistake than she’d ever imagined. She’d woken up over and over in the night, sweating, her body hot for him.

  She was still hot. And wet, too. Just thinking about his shoulders lifting those weights. The touch of his fingers on her arm.

  Why hadn’t Bruce ever made her feel that way?

  Feeling as though she should tell her ex-husband about her encounters with Mason, feeling disloyal for not doing so, she put off picking up the phone.

  When Bella’s ex was in custody she’d call.

  Until then, there was no reason to do it.

  * * *

  IT DIDN’T TAKE much time for Mason to know a hell of a lot more about Gram’s neighbor. Home and eating a ham sandwich on stale bread, he sat at his computer and signed in to the secure network his government clearance gave him.

  Elmer Guthrie was seventy-eight years old. Retired career army man. He lived alone in the home he’d purchased a year ago—four doors down from Gram.

  A year. Right about the time that Gram and Grace had had their falling-out.

  Grace had never mentioned Elmer. Had she known about him? It seemed to Mason that she would’ve said something if there’d been any concern—or even jealousy. Of course, Gram’s oldest friend hadn’t mentioned skydiving, either.

  Was it possible that his grandmother had a new beau? One who she was sneaking around to see? One who was abusing her?

  He needed to talk to Bruce, to find out what his brother knew about their neighbor. But he couldn’t. Not until he was sure that Bruce hadn’t hurt Gram.

  Grace had heard Bruce verbally abuse Gram; he knew that Bruce had hauled her off a ladder and dropped her roughly enough into a chair that Gram had been left breathless—according to Grace.

  Who hadn’t told him about Elmer or skydiving.

  He had to get the two women together. With a receipt for Gram’s oil change in his pocket, his next step was to hold Gram to her part of the bargain.

  Which meant he had to phone Harper to get security clearance for Grace.

  Finally. A legitimate reason for the call he’d been yearning to make all morning. And an excuse to head back to Santa Raquel, too.

  * * *

  HARPER WAS SITTING in the surveillance room, watching cameras with Tasha while the officer assigned to that duty was at lunch, when her phone rang. One look at the screen and, heart pounding, she motioned to Tasha that she had to step out and took the call as she headed onto the grounds.

  Being cooped up in her office wasn’t an option at the moment. She needed air. Space.

  He must’ve found out that she’d agreed to come to town. Had Bruce talked up the visit and he’d heard about it at the station?

  Feeling guilty she started right in, “I don’t know if I can make it or not. I need confirmation of an arrest here, and was waiting to call you until I’m sure what’s going on.”

  She should’ve called him. She’d known the second she’d seen his name pop up. He was conducting a legitimate investigation. She’d agreed to cooperate. Hiding Bruce’s phone call made her look guilty.

  She was a cop. She knew how things worked.

  She also loved the sound of Mason’s voice. Even when it was saying, “What are you talking about? You know this is Mason, right?”

  “Of course I know it’s you.” Her heart thundered inappropriately in her chest—that, not the phone call, was what made her feel disloyal to her ex.

  “Mind explaining, then, what it is you don’t know if you can make? Did I sleepwalk through a phone conversation in which we made some sort of plan?”

  His tone sounded...teasing. Her entire being flooded with desire.

  “No... I thought...never mind. Bruce called me this morning. He wa
nts to see Brianna and now that he’s trapped up there on a job all week, wants me to bring her up tomorrow for a picnic lunch on the beach.”

  “And you told him you would.” Not even a hint of teasing now.

  “I did. Yes.” She was the head of security, a licensed cop, doing her job. “He has a legal right to see her. I determined that it was best to keep him away from Santa Raquel and Miriam.”

  “What arrest is pending?”

  She told him what she could about Bella. Just the basics of having a new resident with an active abuser threat. “Police expect to have him in custody this afternoon.”

  “And you can’t leave until that happens.”

  “Right.”

  He didn’t sound angry...not exactly.

  “Then you were going to call and tell me you’d talked to Bruce?”

  He had doubts. She could hear it in his voice.

  “I swear to you.” She had no doubts herself where that was concerned. “I wouldn’t have seen Bruce without letting you know first.” Yet, as she heard herself say the words, she felt that prick of guilt again.

  Bruce was the man to whom she’d been married. They were raising a child together. That alone denoted a sense of...loyalty.

  Ganging up on him with the lover who’d thrilled her more in one night than Bruce ever had was just wrong. Had to be wrong. And that was before factoring in their brotherhood.

  His silence bothered her. “Wait...if you didn’t know about the pending visitation, why were you calling?”

  “It’s kind of a moot point at the moment,” he said. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Was he upset with her? Did he care that she hadn’t called him right away? Put him first?

  Why should he care about her or who she put first in her life?

  What was wrong with her that she was still craving Mason’s regard? She had been since the day she’d met him, more than six years before. That family dinner, when Bruce had introduced her to his FBI brother, had been a day she’d never forgotten.

  And never remembered without a load of guilt piling up on her.

  She’d loved Bruce. But Mason... His presence had overpowered her. It wasn’t love or anything relationships were built on. It couldn’t have been. She’d just met him. And truly did love Bruce. But that day, and the days that followed, the dreams she’d had—both daydreams and when she was asleep at night...