Take Me Down (Riggs Brothers #2)

by Julie Kriss

  I nodded. “How did it start?” I asked. “The informing? Since I already know about it, you can tell me.”

  He looked away and quickly drummed his fingers on his jean-clad knee. Always thinking, thinking. This man looked like an everyday bad boy, but he was so damned complicated, I didn’t think I’d ever peel away all of his layers. “I guess you know my mother left,” he said. “That must be in the file.”

  “Briefly, yes.”

  “Well, briefly describes how long she was in my life. Dad raised us. Which meant basically we were on our own.”

  I tried to imagine that and couldn’t. I wasn’t close to my parents, but at least I’d had them.

  Jace went on. “When I was seven, I made a big mistake. I asked Dad if I could get a bike. All the other kids had one, and I wanted one.” He drummed his fingers on his knee again, then stopped. “Dad laughed in my face and said that was a pussy thing to ask for. You have to understand that pussy is Dad’s biggest insult, next to faggot. My father is all class.”

  I looked down at my lap. No, I couldn’t imagine it.

  “Dex was there,” Jace said. “He was nine. He defended me, which wasn’t his usual M.O. He told Dad that a bike wasn’t a pussy thing, it was badass. And that at least I’d be able to pedal away from him faster.” He lifted his hand and traced the shell of his ear. “Dad punched him hard, right here. Right on the ear. Dex fell over—it was the surprise, I think, because Dex was a tough kid. Of the four of us, he took the most hits. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t cry, but his ear was bright red for the rest of the day. My big brother had stood up for me for once in his life, and Dad knocked him down for it.”

  My heart was breaking. “Jace.”

  He shrugged, his shoulders graceful under his leather jacket. “The next day I went to Riggs Auto and I opened the till and took the money to buy a bike. And I didn’t feel bad about it.” I raised my gaze and found him looking at me. He continued. “After high school, Dad gave me a job at Riggs Auto. When he got involved with the stolen car shit, he told me to shut up and do as I was told or I’d be in big trouble. So I shut up and did as I was told, and then I went to the cops and offered to tell them anything they wanted to know. And I didn’t feel bad about that either.”

  I shook my head. “What about the stealing? How did that start?”

  “Dad told me to do it,” Jace said. “By then I was overhearing important shit. Everyone saw me as the quiet Riggs brother, the obedient one, so they said whatever around me. I was getting information on drug shipments, warehouses, illegal firearms deals. If I said no, I was out of the circle. So I stole cars.” He ran a hand through his hair, and I caught a glimpse of his silver rings in the moonlight. “I actually was good at it. That part was true. Yeah, it was illegal. But I made some good money and I never hurt anyone. It was fun to be really good at something for once.”

  “They let you go to prison,” I said, “after you gave them all that information.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully, tilting his head. “If you steal cars, you might spend some time sitting in a cell. That’s how the world works.”

  “Well, it sucks,” I said, forcefully.

  He smiled at me, and it was a little sad, and I wanted to climb into his lap and put my mouth on his until he stopped looking sad and instead looked like he wanted to fuck me right here on this bench. I wondered if I’d ever make him look like that. I wondered if some other woman made him look like that, and who she was, and whether she was beautiful.

  I don’t fuck, Jace had said. He’d never explained why.

  As if he was reading my mind, he leaned in toward me, his breath against the shell of my ear. He smelled like leather and beer and hot, sexy man. “You can’t help me, Tara,” he said. “You think you can, but you can’t.”

  I swallowed hard. “It’s my job.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t.” He inhaled softly, and I knew he was scenting me like I’d scented him. He changed position and his lips ghosted over mine, the touch so light I almost thought I’d imagined it. I inhaled in surprise, but he pulled back, still looking in my eyes. “My broken parts will stay broken,” he said. “You can’t do anything about that.”

  “Because that’s the way the world works?” I asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  I gave it back to him. I leaned and brushed my lips over his, petal-light.

  “Watch me,” I said.

  Eleven

  Jace

  The Thunderbird, I decided, was an awesome fucking car. It needed work on just about everything, because it had obviously been sitting parked and rusting somewhere for years, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. In between working on cars for actual paying customers at Riggs Auto, I’d sneak over to it and spend half an hour here, an hour there, tweaking and caressing it. It was ugly and it wasn’t classic, but the metal trim and that fucking V6 were sexy as hell. It was growing on me. I’d never had a car that was my baby before, but this one sure was.

  I was under the hood working the engine when Luke came over. “You got a delivery,” he said.

  I pulled my head out from under the hood and frowned at him. “What?”

  “Delivery,” Luke said again. He was wiping his hands with a rag, his coveralls off and stowed in a locker. We were almost done for the day. “Up front. You have to sign for it. They won’t let me do it.”

  There was nothing I could think of that it could be, but I wiped my hands on my coveralls and unzipped them—it was freaking hot back here, airless in the day’s heat. I was wearing a T-shirt that showed my tatted arms, and I let the coverall drop to my waist as I walked to the front of the shop. There was a courier there, a young redheaded woman with an envelope in her hand. “Are you John Riggs?” she asked when she saw me.

  I tried not to wince. The only time I heard my given name was at the doctor’s office or in court. Even my parole officer called me Jace. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Sign, please.” She handed me the envelope and a pen. I signed the slip, and when I handed it back to her, I saw that her cheeks were pink. “Thanks,” she said. “Have a nice day.”

  I frowned as she walked out the door, but Luke, who was standing in the doorway, only laughed softly. “She was totally into you, man.”

  “She doesn’t know me,” I pointed out.

  “That’s not how it works,” Luke said. “You see someone before you know them. See?”

  “Thank you, O Wise One,” I said, turning the envelope over in my hands. It was stamped from the Michigan Correctional System. Yeah, this was going to be fun, whatever it was.

  “If you paid attention, you’d get laid more often,” Luke pointed out, ignoring the envelope I was holding. “Women dig you, Jace. You have that soulful poet thing going on.”

  “I look like a con,” I said absently, staring at the envelope. I’d already signed for it. Did I even want to open this thing?

  “Sure, don’t take my advice,” Luke said. “There are women everywhere, you know. Single women. Good-looking women. If you just got your nose out of a book or from under the hood of a car, you’d clean up.”

  I looked at him, finally distracted from the fresh hell that was probably this envelope. “Maybe I already clean up,” I said. It’s a reflex when you have three brothers. You can’t show weakness.

  “You live in the guest house out my window,” Luke said. “You don’t clean up. I would know.”

  For some reason, the first thought that came to my mind was Tara Montgomery. The way she’d brushed her mouth over mine. Watch me. I tried to remember the last time a woman had put her mouth on mine, and it was so far back it was too depressing to contemplate.

  “What’s it to you?” I asked Luke. Deflecting, Tara would have called it. “Why do you care how often I get laid?”

  Luke shrugged. “I’m just trying to help you out.”

  “Dude, you were hung up on Emily Parker for eight years. You’re hardly an expert in playing the field.”

 
; Score one for me. Luke hadn’t been celibate for those eight years—he’d never discussed it, but I’d bet my sweet Thunderbird on it—but he wasn’t about to dispute the fact that he’d been hung up on the one and only love of his life. “Okay,” Luke said, “if you don’t trust my advice, you should ask Ryan. You know he’s banged most of the female population of Westlake between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.”

  True. Ryan had cleaned up during his high school years, in a big way. But then he’d gotten a girl pregnant and had a kid at twenty, and four years later she’d dumped their son on his doorstep to raise, so all of that had put the brakes on Ryan’s big-league sex life. “At least he knows more about women than you do,” I said to Luke. “Or maybe I should ask Dex.”

  We both laughed at that. Dex was crazy—do-not-pass-Go, flat-out fucking crazy. Every woman who had the balls to go near Dex had been crazy too. The few brief dating relationships he’d had had ended up in screaming fights and tears, thousands of phone calls on repeat and threats to call the cops. Something about Dex made women absolutely lose their shit, and not in a good way. Maybe it was something he put in their water.

  “Okay, do not ask Dex for dating advice,” Luke said. “But go after that courier and ask her out. I’m telling you, she’ll say yes.”

  “Or here’s another idea,” I said. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, just like I always do.” But damn, he was right. I was starting to see that. I was twenty-five, for God’s sake. I was out of prison, and I wasn’t dead. I’d started to think it, but now I was getting more convinced. It was time.

  Tara Montgomery made me think it was time.

  Except I wasn’t going to have Tara Montgomery. Not now, not ever.

  She saw me as a project. Even though she wasn’t my counselor anymore, she saw me as someone to fix, someone to save. And it wasn’t going to work. I knew that already—because I wasn’t fixable.

  “What’s in the envelope?” Luke asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.

  Shit. The envelope. I ripped it open and pulled out the letter inside.

  It stated that the Michigan Correctional System had ruled that my parole obligations had been discharged in full. I no longer had to report to my parole officer. I no longer had to follow the stringent rules and report in. I was finished with the correctional system entirely. I was a free man.

  My hands went numb. My vision blurred for a second, and I couldn’t breathe. Then I forced in a breath and blinked.

  I owed you that, Tara had said. I wasn’t stupid. I knew full well that I was getting this letter because of the report she’d written about me and sent up the line. The report she’d written after the second time we’d had an argument in session. If she hadn’t written that report, and sent it so quickly, I would still be stuck in the gears of the system, waiting for something to happen.

  She was trying to fix me—but for a second all I could see was Tara. The way her dark hair fell over her shoulders, her slim body, the line of her lower lip, the way her eyes flashed when she was mad, the way she looked at me sometimes in a way I couldn’t fathom. The way she smelled of pure, sweet female skin.

  We were done. I’d already known that, but this paper made it official. We were over.

  But because of this paper, we were not fucking over.

  At the very least, she deserved a thank you.

  Maybe I needed to give her one.

  Twelve

  Tara

  It was Friday, and for the first time in a long time, I was looking forward to the weekend. As I finished my last appointment and started clearing off my desk and wrapping up the last few emails, I realized that I’d been letting work take over my life. I usually stayed late on Fridays, working ahead on my own time, and I often took work home—case files, session plans, research and articles to read. I’d spend my weekend ensconced in my little apartment, working and doing housework until Monday came again.

  It had been like that since the breakup with Kyle, the cancellation of the wedding plans. That made some sense, even though the breakup had been my idea. But when I thought back, I realized the pattern went back much farther. Those last months with Kyle, I’d withdrawn into work, made it the center of my life, probably to avoid facing the problems in our relationship head-on. I hadn’t been happy, and instead of taking it out on Kyle and having fights, I’d simply gone to work.

  I didn’t know what had changed, but tonight I wanted out of here. Summer was ending. Maybe I’d take a walk. Maybe I’d read a book—a novel, not an academic book. Maybe I’d make popcorn and watch mindless TV and do my nails. I was nearly jumpy, my blood singing, my skin tingling, all at the thought of two whole days to myself.

  Okay, fine, maybe I did know what had changed. Jace Riggs had kissed me, sort of. I’d sort of kissed him back. It was nothing, but I still felt like I was on a rollercoaster, climbing to the top of the peak and about to go over. He was an ex-con car thief who smelled like leather and bonfire smoke, and when he’d leaned in close to me, when I’d felt that light brush of his lips and his beard, I’d been giddier than I’d ever been in two years with Kyle.

  All of it was stupid, and all of it was in my head, but it had happened, and it still put me in a good mood. So, of course, my mother chose that moment to call me.

  “Mom,” I said, picking up the phone because if I didn’t, she’d simply call again. “What’s up? I’m just heading home from work.”

  “Tara,” my mother said. “Your father and I would like you to come out to dinner.”

  My spine tightened, like it always did when my mother issued an order. There was never a hi honey, how are you from my mother—she always told me immediately what she wanted me to do, and there was always something. My father simply never called at all.

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked Mom, trying to stay polite.

  “The occasion is that we haven’t seen you in two months,” Mom said. “We’d like to see you and get an update on your progress.”

  Honestly, this was how my mother talked. An update on your progress. My parents weren’t bad people, but two people who should never have been parents in the first place. It was so patently obvious they were unsuited to parenthood that I’d figured it out by the time I was fourteen. “I’m doing fine,” I said to Mom. I was pulling my purse from my drawer and toeing off the heels I’d worn, replacing them with the flats I’d brought in my bag.

  “Regardless,” Mom said, “we should have dinner at Aldi’s.”

  Aldi’s was one of Westlake’s most expensive restaurants. My parents were both investment brokers, and money had always been plentiful—we weren’t filthy rich, but I’d had more money than, say, Jace Riggs. Enough to go to private school and get a college degree, though both of my parents completely disapproved of my career choice. They’d been hoping their only child would be a surgeon. Counseling the downtrodden, the mentally ill, the ex-cons, and people who were on the skids of life was not what they’d imagined for my future.

  I’d grown further apart from my parents since I started this career; they didn’t want to talk about it, which meant I couldn’t talk to them about the biggest thing in my everyday life. The breakup with Kyle hadn’t helped at all—they’d at least wanted to see me “settled” with someone unobjectionable like Kyle, and when I’d called the whole thing off, they’d been painfully confused. They still didn’t get it.

  So I knew what this dinner would be. They’d ask for an update on my life; I’d tell them I was still single and still a counselor, and the rest of the night would be bitter tension. There were no two people more rigid, more unforgiving, than my parents.

  I left my office and locked it, the phone crooked between my shoulder and my ear. “Maybe we can do it some other time, Mom,” I said, feeling my happy Friday night slip through my fingers.

  “Tonight is the only night your father can make it,” my mother declared. “He has golf Saturday and Sunday.”

  “Dad doesn’t care about dinner,” I said. I meant to t
oss the words off, but they were true. I could see my father once a year at Christmas and he’d be fine with it. I’d dropped off his radar when I got my counseling degree. I took the stairwell two flights down to the street because the elevator was known to cut off phone signals.

  “Tara, it’s been two months,” Mom repeated.

  “Is there a schedule?” I said.

  “Laura Ferrano’s daughter visits her every Saturday,” Mom replied.

  I felt my jaw go tight. How many times had we had this argument? Too many times to count. My mother’s requests—her commands—were always based on the idea of what behavior was correct rather than a true desire to see me. The older I got, the more correctness was required, based on where she thought I was supposed to be in life, and no matter how much I argued or how I worded it, I couldn’t get her to see it. The minute the topic opened, her defenses would go up. I loved my mother—I loved both my parents—but she was exhausting.

  I exited the stairwell door to the street. “Mom—” I stopped.

  Jace Riggs was sitting on the bench on the other side of the sidewalk. He was sitting with his elbows on his jean-clad knees, his hands dangling between his legs. He was wearing a T-shirt with a soft, slim-cut black hoodie over it that skimmed every muscled line of his torso and arms. His hair was clean and combed, his beard trimmed close to his jaw, and his gray gaze had lit on me.

  I froze with the phone at my ear and held his gaze. There was no way it was a mistake; Jace was here for me. Waiting.

  “Tara?” Mom said.

  “I can’t come to dinner, Mom,” I said. “I have plans.”

  “Plans?” Mom said in disbelief. “With who?”

  No, oh no. I wasn’t telling my mother about Jace Riggs. “A friend,” I told her.

  “What friend?”

  “I have to go. He’s here.”

  “He?”

  I hung up and walked toward him. “Jace,” I said.

  He watched me come forward. When I got close he lifted his elbows from his knees and leaned back on the bench, stretching one arm casually over the back—a pose that did beautiful things to his shoulder muscles. “Are you finished with work?” he asked.