Bastard Stepbrother (Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  For an instant, a feeling of relief surges through me. If I am going after Deborah, if she's in play, then I don't have to go after her daughter at all. Autumn's a good worker, an attractive woman.

  I could do worse than her. A lot worse.

  No, though, I decide. Not going to happen. Fruit of the poisonous tree. I might like her all I can like anyone, but I know how Deb was, when she wanted to be liked. It was all smiles, everyone thought she was great. Nobody would have begun to guess that she was who she was.

  Her daughter might be different, but that was exactly how Deborah would do it, too. She's changed now, as she's gotten older. She's calmed down.

  Only, you go to anyone who's known her for a long time, and nothing's changed at all. She's just putting up an act for you. Autumn's life seems to be on that roller coaster, and that means that all I'm experiencing right now is the train being in the loading dock.

  The minute I get on, and the safety bars come down, we'll get moving again, and then I can either be the one getting hurt, or I can be the one who hurts someone else, but if I'm on the ride, then someone will always get hurt.

  It's always tempting to believe that this time will be different. That other people are basically good people. I've been able to use that quite a lot in my life so far, times when the other people around me were too willing to accept, or times when I could skip through small-talk because I can get a quick and easy read on people.

  But with Deborah, with the Graysons-Logans-whatevers, I have to keep a very tight leash on that instinct. Because they have a unique way of having every signal showing green lights, and when there's a big pileup in the middle of the intersection, they act all surprised.

  My thumb taps out a rhythm to the sound of the music. It's got a calming influence. Always does. And I needed that calming influence, because I've got some mischief on my mind, and I need to either do it, or not do it. The one thing I can't afford is to wait and then move on things too late.

  The song ends, and the second one starts up. The music picks up. And I pull my cell out of my pocket, pick a number out of my contacts, and call him up.

  It's late, but I know he's up. Probably still at the office, for that matter. He's not going to be going home any time soon, either, if what I hear about him and his wife has any basis in truth.

  "Hello?"

  "Tom. Hey. It's Eric."

  "Eric. It's late, what's up?"

  "I need to ask a favor. Real quiet."

  "Okay. I'm gonna have to hear what you want, before I just agree."

  "Of course, Tom. No—I've just got a client. Friend of his just got picked up, and he wants to know what kind of trouble we're in. I mean, just got picked up, so I'm sure you probably don't have anything on them yet."

  "Okay, so what do you need me for?"

  "Well, like I said. My guy wants to know what we're in for, so it would be a big favor if you could just give me a call when you get a file for a Deborah Logan. Local PD just picked her up."

  "I suppose I could do that, maybe."

  "And I need it kept quiet that you're telling me."

  "Of course."

  "Thanks, man. I owe you."

  He hangs up the phone first. I don't mind that. Not in a position to complain about anything much at all, because that's my ticket in. Maybe I involve myself in the case eventually, but first I need the details of the arrest.

  I need to know what she's accused of, and what the evidence is. It's a strange position to be in, because I've always worked defense. It's where the money's at.

  But now, I'm playing district attorney, because somehow I'm going to make sure that woman sees the inside of a jail by the time I'm done with her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I don't know what she expects me to do, exactly. I didn't get her into this mess. She got herself into it, and now she's going to have to get herself out, somehow or other, sooner or later. I can't just be responsible for saving her ass.

  It's always on someone else. It's never her problem. Always someone else's. And it's always bigger than it should have been, magnified by her unique powers of getting herself into impossibly bad situations, and pissing off the wrong people.

  When you can help her, then you can help her, but when you can hurt her, oh boy. It's amazing how she can charm her way into almost any situation that will eventually feel, to her, like it's trapping her and making her nuts.

  On the other hand, when it's time for all of that trouble to come down on her head, then all of a sudden she becomes impossible to deal with. The entire charming persona shifts into a snake oil salesman and anyone can see through it. And frankly, they're a little offended that she tried such a blatant stunt.

  That's how it always is. How it's always been. How she manages it, I'll never know.

  I step inside and try to look confident in spite of myself. The police continue to go about their business as if nothing's happened. It's almost as if they have real work to be doing. As if they aren't just waiting on me to come deal with Mom.

  "Excuse me, I'm here for a Deborah Logan?"

  The lady cop looks up at me. She types something into the computer. "Bail hasn't been set yet. She'll go before a judge in the morning. Come back around ten or eleven."

  "I'm her legal counsel."

  She takes a second look at my clothing. It doesn't look like legal counsel clothing. It looks like 'just left a date in a hurry' clothing, and that's because that is exactly what it is.

  "Can I see some ID?"

  I pull out my driver's license.

  "And you're licensed to practice law in the state of California?"

  "Taking the bar in July, but that's my mom in there."

  The woman at the counter looks at the computer screen in front of her a minute, types something, and then looks back at me.

  "Alright, go on. Good luck with the exam. Sorry about, you know."

  "Yeah, I know,"

  She gestures me inside, and another uniformed police officer meets me at the door. He's evidently gotten the gist of what I'm here for, and he takes me in through the busy station, back to the jail, and into one of the cells.

  I don't much like the way it feels inside these cells. Being watched, everyone able to see you from every angle. It's one of the reasons that I've always been careful not to get into trouble.

  Once I'd gone to law school, and running around facilities like these for a few minutes was more or less required, then it only solidified my desire not to spend any more time than necessary in one.

  "Mom," I say, finally. She rolls over. She's been facing the wall, which I don't doubt for an instant was all a big setup so that she could theatrically look over at me, her face wet with tears streaking her cheeks.

  "Oh, Autumn, thank God."

  "Mom, what happened?"

  "I got arrested," she says. "They put me in handcuffs and they put me in the car, and they made me get my picture taken and my thumbs, and—"

  She breaks into tears. I might feel bad if I hadn't seen it before. Getting arrested is a first, but whenever anything blows up in her face, it's an emergency, and she's got to have a big, theatrical blow-up about it.

  "Mom, stop it. I need you to tell me what happened."

  That just makes her cry harder. I wait, impatient. I could have been having sex. Right now. I could have been having sex for the past thirty minutes. The best sex imaginable. Mind-blowing stuff. Sex worth years of therapy.

  Instead, my mother is crying crocodile tears and refuses to allow anything but my sitting through the entire show that she's got lined up for me like a good girl. She's my mother, and I should be kinder to her.

  But at the same time, she's my mother, and I know exactly what this is, and I know that it's not even important enough to qualify as a cry for help. She's just being a baby.

  "Mom, I need you to listen."

  She's bawling like a little child. I can't help if she doesn't tell me what is going on. Which she isn't likely to until she's good and rea
dy. And that's what frustrates me more than anything.

  I take a deep breath. I know what this is. I shouldn't have tried to fight it. That's what I keep learning, over and over again. There's no point in fighting the perfect image she's got in her head. As long as I'm her little doll, her plaything, that's the easiest way to go.

  And if I want to make this go quickly, so I can get back to my life and do my part of making all of this go away, then she's going to have to calm down, and to calm her down, I'm going to have to…

  I settle into the uncomfortable cot beside her and wrap an arm around her shoulder.

  "That must have been awful, mom."

  "It was awful," she repeats. "Everyone saw me."

  "Nobody saw you, Mom. You were at my apartment, nobody knows you."

  "They all saw me," she repeats.

  "I know, but they already forgot all about it. It's going to be okay."

  "I got arrested." I take a breath and pray for some sort of strength to deal with her nonsense.

  "I know, Mom."

  "They said I stole something."

  "What did you do?"

  "Nothing! I just, I was at Macy's. And, I just. I tried on this dress, and I forgot I had it on, and…"

  I hold a breath. That's the way that you calm down best, right? You take a deep breath, and you hold it.

  "So you stole the dress, then?"

  "I'm going to jail, aren't I?"

  I close my eyes. Stay calm. I know how to handle the case. I can probably get it settled. I'm not experienced, but I can use plenty of resources at my disposal to deal with this thing. I just have to stay calm and remember what I've already learned.

  Handling my mother is a different issue entirely. Anyone who says that they can handle her is lying or doesn't know her well enough yet.

  And I'm going to have to do both to get her out of this.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I've got other things to take care of today. I really can't afford, not even in theory, to sit here and obsess over a former relative. She's not my step-mother any more. That ended a decade ago.

  The fact that I still can't get her out of my head, after all this time, really should be a hint to how much of a number she did on me back then.

  Even that isn't really enough to explain it, though. It's not just her. It's me, too.

  A bigger man might have been able to let the whole thing go. Let sleeping dogs lie. That sort of shit.

  I'm not that kind of guy. I can't help myself. You have to be tough, in this world. Someone plays ball with you, then you can play nice with them. Maybe. But if someone fucks you over, you don't just let it go.

  Otherwise, every other one of these crazy sons of bitches will make you regret it. And I'm not about to let the entire world decide that I'm losing my touch.

  The phone rings, and my entire body seizes up. Is this going to be the one that finally sets me at ease? A moment later, Shannon's voice comes through the intercom.

  "Mr. Warren, I've got a call on 2 from the District Attorney's office. Said he's getting back to you about the Logan case."

  "Thank you. I'll take it."

  I kick the butt of the phone with the heel of my palm and ease the handset into the crook of my neck. "Tom, hey."

  "We just finished assigning your pet case. You're not working this one, are you?"

  "I don't know," I tell him. Which is true. "I just know that I was supposed to look into it. What can you tell me?"

  "Petty larceny. She's probably going to get off with a slap on the wrist. No real criminal history. No big deal."

  "Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. You know who's prosecuting it?"

  "Leah Kent should just be getting out of arraignment right about now. I can have her give you a call, if you need."

  "No need. She looks good for it, though?"

  "Yeah, no doubt she did it. We've got footage. There's no doubt. But it's just a hundred dollar value, and we got the stuff back. I don't think the judge will really want to put her in jail. Not when we've got plenty of real crooks going loose."

  "Yeah. I get you. Thanks, man. You need anything, give me a call. I owe you."

  "Yeah, you do," he says. He's got a lightness to his voice. I'll send over a bottle of whiskey later. I recall that being his drink of choice. Maybe he calls me for something, but more than likely that's the end of it.

  I settle back in my chair, the weight already coming off my shoulders.

  Petty larceny. Yeah, she's not likely to see the inside of a prison cell. Not even thirty days. In a worst case, maybe thirty days to straighten her out.

  Which isn't near enough, but even that little bit is hardly likely.

  It sets my teeth on edge. It's hardly likely as it is. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. It could always happen. And as it happens, I could make sure that it happens, if I need it to.

  I lay my head back and close my eyes. See it in my head. The crime isn't really about the money. Not for a hundred bucks. If it was, it would just be cheaper for the district attorney's office to pay back the value of the dress.

  If they spend two hours getting the documents prepared, they've already gone over the value of the stolen merchandise, and then the hours of litigation keep adding more on top of it.

  Which is why it's got nothing to do with restitution. It's everything to do with punishing the criminal. And that's where my interests align, for the first time in a long time, with the district attorney's office.

  I've defended plenty of guys who deserved jail. But this is the first time that I've been interested in making sure that they get the maximum sentence.

  It's unusual for another reason, as well. I've had cases where I struggled to figure how to sow doubt about a case that's open-and-shut. What I haven't done, on the other hand, is try to take a case that's a shoe-in for a plea deal—a woman whose entire life has always been a roller coaster, a recipe for jury sympathy and the DA knows it—and make sure she sees the inside of a jail cell.

  If this is how the District Attorney feels every day, I might have gotten into the wrong side of this.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I've developed a little ritual over the past twenty minutes. I keep thinking, as I do it, that this time it's going to make all the difference. That I'll finally get all my ducks in order and I'll feel better and I'll be able to dig in a little and go inside the office.

  The secretary—I get a secret delight from calling her that. I really shouldn't, but I do—is watching me with bored eyes. She's probably thinking that I've got other work to do, and I do. But this is important, and sooner or later I've got to do it.

  The longer I put it off, the more that it's going to be trouble when I finally have the stones to go into the office.

  But at the same time, it means explaining a lot of stuff that I'm not remotely ready to explain.

  Why did it take me so long to tell him the truth, for example? We nearly slept together! I was ready to do it, too, so the idea that I wasn't that worried about it doesn't hold water.

  It's a huge breach of trust, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's real mad at me about it. But that changes nothing. I can't do this on my own, for a thousand different reasons.

  I'm not halfway used to the song-and-dance. Mom's in need of someone who's an absolute genius at it, because she's freaking out a thousand times more than necessary.

  I'm not licensed to practice law. Which means that I don't have any attorney-client privilege and further I can't do anything in court.

  I've never done discovery, so I really don't even know what I'm in for.

  Every single thing on the list just seems to get longer, and every one is worse than the last. How to get someone off on a case like this is something I learned in school.

  Actually doing it, though, is a whole different beast. I saw that once already, in Phoenix, and I don't want to see it in the form of getting Mom into more trouble than she's already gotten herself into.

  I know what
she'll say already, if I do. It'll be a guilt trip, in the form of telling me that it's all totally understandable. After all, I'm not even a real lawyer yet.

  But just, if I'd done a little better, maybe then she wouldn't have all these problems. But she understands. But maybe I should have just tried a little harder, worked a little more.

  Worse than that, I'm not going to argue with her. I'm not going to disagree. She'll be a hundred percent right, especially if I don't even bother going to the only person I know who could do the job right.

  And all because I didn't want him to hate me. Why would he? I haven't done anything wrong. So there's no reason to figure that he would think that I had done something. But something in my mind has me worried anyways.

  Deep breath in, forget the anxiety, and…

  "I'm going in," I say softly. Shannon looks up for a moment from the computer screen, and then looks back it. How delightful.

  I open the door. It's heavier than usual. Something about the anxiety mixes to make the sensation of weight that much more extreme.

  "Autumn. How can I help you?"

  "I need your help."

  He leans forward. "Is this about that thing last night?"

  He must have heard through my phone. It takes me a moment to temper my reaction.

  "Yes."

  He nods. "Okay. Well, let's sit and talk this through, then. Start from the beginning."

  "The very beginning?"

  "You can skip the first few chapters of Genesis, I got most of those."

  "Do you mind if I sit?"

  He gestures broadly at the chairs across from the table, and I settle into one.

  "My name is really Autumn Logan. I don't want to say I lied, because I didn't, but I might have left out some parts of my past that didn't seem immediately obvious."

  "Go on."

  "I used to know you, when I was little. Your dad and my mom used to be married. So technically, legally, you and I are—"