All a Man Is

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She listened, intrigued, as he told her more about Noah. He owned two more restaurants besides the one here in Angel Butte, but evidently had enough energy left over to have decided to run for mayor.

  “Consensus is, the last mayor was known for turning a blind eye to a lot of shady practices, while Chandler may be an SOB but is scrupulously honest.” Alec shrugged.

  Their salads arrived, and they both picked up their forks.

  “Back to the story,” he said after a moment.

  Cait had survived one murder attempt, after which her brother and Noah both had done their damnedest to keep her safe, according to Alec. Watching anyone 24/7 was next to impossible, though. Perhaps inevitably, she’d been left alone for the few minutes that allowed the killer to grab her.

  It was Noah who had rescued her, at high cost to himself. The bullet had come close to killing him.

  “Gutsy thing Chandler did,” Alec conceded. “He’s barely back at work.”

  She smiled at his air of grudging admiration. “Come on, you like the guy.”

  He grinned crookedly. “Like I said, I’m warming to him.”

  She laughed, studying him across the table. Noah Chandler definitely had sexual charisma that would have any woman giving him at least a second glance, but as far as she was concerned, so did Alec...times ten.

  There were moments when her heart caught at his resemblance to her husband, but more often she would wonder why he didn’t look more like Josh. Both men had the near-black hair of their Italian mother as well as her rich brown eyes. Josh had been an inch or two taller and definitely broader, although some of that might have been because of the conditioning he had to maintain as a navy SEAL. His face had been wider, his features less sharply defined. Alec had a lean, greyhound elegance his brother had lacked. Josh in general had been more physical, less thoughtful. He always wanted to be doing something. He’d drag one of the kids out to kick the soccer ball or practice pitching. He’d started teaching Matt to surf. Evenings, he and Matt would retire to Matt’s bedroom, where she’d hear them hooting and groaning as they played video games. Josh was so competitive, it had become a joke between them—but what was funny when she was twenty-two had become less so as the years went by.

  Alec, she thought, was more subtle. He was hard to read; it was rare to catch naked emotion on his face. She suspected he, too, liked to come out on top when it came to the important things, but he was relaxed about the little everyday moments that to Josh were all a contest. The irony to her was that, as a SEAL, Josh had needed to be able to take initiative, but in a more cosmic sense he was always following orders. What if he disagreed with the politics behind a military action? she would ask, and without fail he’d deal the patriot card. Meanwhile, she’d watched Alec steadily rise in the hierarchy, accepting the loss of action so that he could gain command and the ability to make the decisions.

  For the first time, she identified the key difference between the brothers. For all that he was a warrior, Josh had remained boyish in his motivations. Boyish was not a word that would ever occur to her in relation to Alec. He was all man, and had been for a long time.

  Part of what made him a man was his unwavering sense of duty. For all she knew, he didn’t even like her. But, by God, she was his brother’s widow, her kids were his niece and nephew, and so he would take care of them.

  What scared her most was to think that he might stay single because of a commitment to her, when he didn’t love her at all.

  Oh, dear God. I should have said no. I should have taken the kids and gone home to Minnesota, she thought, the squeeze of panic stealing her breath. I shouldn’t have let him make such a huge sacrifice for us.

  “Do you hate your job here?” Her voice came out thin, and under the table her fingernails bit into her palms.

  He stared at her. “What brought that on?”

  “I don’t know.” She fought to recover her poise, to keep him from knowing how close she sometimes was to a complete breakdown. “Belated second thoughts, maybe?”

  “You think you forced this on me.” Those dark eyes read her too well.

  “I didn’t mean to, but—” she closed her eyes briefly before she could finish “—I think I did.”

  “No.” The one word came out harsh. “Damn it, Julia! I didn’t know you were still thinking like this. If you’d taken the kids and gone back to Minnesota, I’d have gotten hired as police chief there whether you liked it or not. I’d have followed you.”

  “Because you think that’s what Josh would expect.”

  Now she really couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “No,” he said finally, calmly.

  It was her turn to stare. Was he implying...? But he couldn’t be.

  “I used to lump you and Josh together, in a way,” she heard herself say.

  A flicker of some emotion passed through his eyes. “Except that you were married to Josh,” he said after a moment.

  She flapped her hand. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I thought you were both addicted to taking risks. That you’d chosen the careers you did because parachuting in the dark under gunfire or kicking in a drug dealer’s door gave you the ultimate high.”

  His jaw bunched. “You mean, you thought we were a pair of adolescents.”

  Julia bowed her head, unable to hold that intense gaze. “Not quite, but...I suppose I believed there was an element of that in both of you.”

  “Did Josh know you felt that way?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, trying not to remember that last, terrible fight and the things she’d said. She had to live forever with that memory, but she didn’t have to tell anyone else about the end of her marriage.

  “It didn’t occur to you there was any idealism in our career choices?” Alec asked. “To you, we were just a couple of cowboys out for a good time?”

  “I said an element!” she shot back, shaken to realize he was angry. “I understood how dedicated Josh was. And you, too. I just—” She couldn’t go on.

  “What, Julia?” he asked inexorably.

  She shook her head.

  To her shock, he laid his hand over hers. “Tell me,” he said, his voice gentler.

  “I started to resent it.” Not wanting to see his expression, she looked at his hand, so much larger than hers, broader across, at the thickness of his wrist and the dark hairs dusting his forearm. “At home, all he did was kill time. I could tell he was waiting for a mission, for his real life. The kids loved him, but he was more like a playmate than a father.” Finally she lifted her gaze to meet his dark eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I was proud of him. Somebody has to do the job he did. He worked hard to do it well. He was courageous. I know that.” Her voice broke and she had to take a moment to collect herself. “But I came to realize we weren’t nearly as important to him as that job was. And call me petty, but the day came when I resented having to be a single parent while he was always off saving the world.”

  She saw understanding on Alec’s face, but also something more indefinable. He removed his hand, and she saw his fingers curl into fists on the tabletop.

  “So that’s why you were so shocked when I suggested we all move together.” He sounded careful, as if he wanted to be sure he understood how she saw him.

  “Yes!” She glared. “Do you blame me?”

  Again those muscles gathered in his jaw, before he moved his shoulders and the tension visibly drained from him. “No, I guess I can’t. I thought we knew each other better than that, but I realize Josh couldn’t talk about what he did, and it never crossed my mind that you were very interested in what I did all day.”

  “Of course I’m interested.”

  One corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Then I’ll start tal
king. To tell you the truth, there are times I’d like nothing better than being able to lay ideas out or vent to someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race.”

  “Unbiased.”

  He dipped his head without taking his gaze from her. “Yeah.”

  “Then I won’t do.” She felt her smile wobble. “Because I am biased. I’m on your side.”

  “God, Julia.” His voice was hoarse, his emotions momentarily unguarded.

  Her heartbeat did some wobbling, too.

  The waitress appeared with their entrées, probably a fortunate interruption. Julia noticed that Noah Chandler and his fiancée were leaving, Noah pausing only to nod at Alec, who did the same. She wondered what they’d conveyed with that very restrained exchange.

  “Men don’t always understand what women need,” Alec murmured, momentarily confusing her. Then she saw the amusement that lightened the depth of emotion they’d both been feeling.

  “I have noticed,” she responded.

  He laughed, although she sensed he might be forcing it. “When you need something from me, tell me. Otherwise, I won’t know.”

  Your heart. I need you to love me.

  He would tell her he did. Like a sister.

  “Anything,” he added, sounding husky.

  They looked at each other for an uninterrupted stretch that had warmth rising in her cheeks as she wondered crazily what he meant.

  Anything.

  “I never suspected,” he said after a moment.

  “Suspected what?” She didn’t sound quite like herself, but if he noticed he gave no indication.

  “I assumed you and Josh were completely happy.”

  “Don’t you think any marriage has tensions?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

  “Why not?” she asked. “Have you ever come close?”

  He shook his head. “I love my parents, but I wouldn’t want what they have.”

  She nodded her understanding. Norman Raynor was a tense, rigid, demanding man who both dominated and dismissed his wife. Even Josh, not often given to self-reflection, had talked some about his father’s expectations for his boys and his contempt for women. At the time, Julia had thought to be grateful that Alec and Josh didn’t have a sister. She had blamed Norm for his sons’ choice of careers, too; he had been a firefighter who thought men should be men. Mostly he and Rosaria had been great with the kids, but Julia hadn’t been enthusiastic about her children spending a lot of time with their grandfather as they got older and more conscious of things like gender roles.

  “I feel sorry for your mother.”

  “She made her bed.” Apparently realizing how harsh that sounded, Alec shook his head. “I don’t mean that. No matter how bad the marriage is, she’d never leave him. If nothing else, her faith wouldn’t let her. But it’s more than that. I’m not sure she even notices how he treats her anymore. I remember from when I was little how happy she was. Laughing and singing all the time.” His mouth crooked up and his expression softened. “Good smells from the kitchen, fresh flowers from her garden on the table, an Italian tenor bellowing from the stereo.” He grimaced. “Of course, the music went off when Dad walked in the door, and if Mama was lucky, he’d grunt his appreciation for amazing food. The change in her was gradual. She’d listen to music less and less often, smile less. By the time Josh and I were in high school, she’d lost any gift for happiness. I don’t know if she’d recover it even if he dropped dead of a heart attack tomorrow.”

  Julia couldn’t help herself. She touched him, only fleetingly, her fingertips to the back of his hand, but it was enough to draw a startled, somehow riveted stare from him.

  “Were their feelings hurt that we moved away?” she asked, as much to distract him as anything. His parents hadn’t said much to her, but she’d never been sure how they felt about her anyway.

  As a distraction, her question worked. Alec gave a grunt of his own. “Couldn’t tell with Mama. Dad thought me quitting my job was asinine. I’d be a captain before I knew it, maybe rise to chief of the LAPD. He knew how to bring Matt into line, and it didn’t involve pampering the kid or uprooting the whole damn family. ‘My belt’s still good for something,’ he said.”

  Julia shuddered. They were both silent for a moment.

  “I always thought I might be more like him than Josh was,” Alec said unexpectedly. “Josh was more...happy-go-lucky, for lack of a better term. I internalize everything.”

  Yes. She’d seen that.

  “I was thinking something like that,” she admitted. “The only thing is, Josh was only happy when he was in motion. Eventually I started wondering if he had an attention deficit disorder, but surely he’d have had to be patient, I don’t know, crouched somewhere waiting for the bad guys to make a move. I know he was smart, but he almost never picked up a book. Even TV bored him. He could sit down for about the length of a meal, then he’d get twitchy and leap up and need to do something.”

  “Yeah, he had some trouble in school. Far as I know, he was never diagnosed, but—” He put down his fork and seemed to mull that over. “Actually, I don’t know if that’s true or not. Dad would probably have given hell to any teacher or school administrator who tried to lay the blame for Josh’s issues on some problem in his brain when obviously they were lacking. He limped through graduation, but he enlisted the minute he graduated. Never crossed any of our minds that he might go on to college.”

  Somehow the conversation drifted after that. First Alec and she exchanged their own experiences in higher education. She shook her head over her idiocy in dropping out before getting her degree, Alec telling her his father had belittled his own determination to get his.

  “‘Why waste your time?’ he’d say. ‘You should have gone straight to the police academy. Think of the street experience you’d have by now.’ He’d shake his head. ‘You’ve been to school for thirteen years already. Why would you want to write a paper about Robert E. Lee’s military mistakes or the fact that some damn philosopher tried to prove himself wrong?’”

  “Some damn philosopher?” she queried.

  “Descartes. He was determined not to be smug in his beliefs.”

  “So he tried to prove he was wrong.”

  “Right.” Alec shook his head. “Funny Dad should have chosen that paper to disparage, because I take Descartes’s theories about self-doubt seriously. Whenever I go too far out on a limb, I think, hold on, remember Descartes, and take the other side. Sometimes I actually do convince myself I was wrong.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said, smiling. “You actually demonstrate the value of those college classes on a day-to-day basis.”

  He smiled, too. “I told you, I internalize everything.”

  She had been so wrong about him, Julia thought as they finished dinner and returned to the Tahoe. Why hadn’t she ever noticed how different he was from her husband?

  Of course, she knew the answer in part. While she was married, she hadn’t let herself dwell on any feelings in particular for Josh’s brother. And later—it had taken her a long time to emerge from the grief and the guilt, and by then she was consumed by her children’s needs. For all the time she and Alec had spent together, most of their conversations had to do with the kids, Matt in particular. It alarmed her a little to realize that this evening, she and Alec had been, for possibly the first time, only a man and woman. She couldn’t help wondering if he’d made any discoveries about her.

  She was more self-conscious than usual when they got back to the duplex. The kids weren’t due back for another half an hour. I could invite him in, she thought, but had the unsettling thought that doing so might be dangerous. She didn’t dare betray her feelings to him, not if she was going to continue to depend on him the way she had been. She’d be foolish to misinterpret the expression in his eyes when he
’d said, When you need something from me, tell me.

  So she thanked him for dinner, made her excuses and shut the door firmly on the man standing on her doorstep. The one whose voice had become husky when he implied he would give her anything at all.

  Inside, heart thumping, she knew her greatest fear having to do with him was that he’d give what she asked, but for all the wrong reasons. Even the idea of that was unbearable.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “YOU DIDN’T FOLLOW instructions,” said the hollow voice. It wasn’t any more distinct than it had been during the previous phone call, but Alec was damn sure the speaker was the same man.

  His phone had rung while he was waiting for a table at a deli near the police station and having the passing thought that he could have called Julia to see if she wanted to meet him. Of course, she’d probably have had to bring Liana, at least, which would have killed his fantasy of being alone with her, something he’d begun to crave.

  Seeing the unfamiliar number, he had stepped back outside. Traffic noise wasn’t a lot better than the buzz of a roomful of people talking, but at least he wouldn’t be overheard. With his back to the brick wall, he gazed unseeing at passing vehicles. He’d trace the phone number, but he was betting on a throwaway.

  The fact that he’d been thinking about Julia when this son of a bitch called to issue another threat roused all his protective instincts.

  “Something you should know about me,” he said. “I don’t respond to threats or blackmail.”

  “One last chance,” the muffled voice told him, and the call was over.

  He brooded as he stowed his phone. The first call had come less than two days after Julia’s arrival in Angel Butte. He couldn’t see how her showing up could have triggered anything. Probably one had nothing to do with the other...but he’d been police chief here in Angel Butte since the first of April. Only now that he had family was anyone threatening him. Yeah, that made him nervous.

  Today was July 12, which meant two weeks had elapsed since the first threat. That was remarkably patient of the caller, he reflected.