Because of a Boy

by Anna DeStefano

  “I work at the academy, Katie,” her brother argued, using the nickname he refused to stop calling her, no matter how old she got or how many times she’d said to call her Kate. “Even if I was APD, I’ve only been on the local payroll for a few months. I—”

  “You make friends faster than anyone I’ve ever met.” She was being unfair, pressing him this way, after her advice to Lissa to leave the man alone.

  But she had to find Dillon. She couldn’t be the reason he didn’t receive treatment. And since abuse was no longer a factor, the APD officers she’d spoken to didn’t seem terribly concerned about making their latest missing person a priority. Stephen Creighton was off somewhere trying to make some headway, but the current consensus seemed to be that Manny had taken his son, and no one in Atlanta was likely to see either of them again.

  “You could ask one of your Atlanta buddies—”

  “There are no Atlanta buddies!” Martin insisted. “Listen, it’s good to hear from you, but I’m not an active-duty officer, and I don’t know any in the area well enough to call in a favor. It’s almost more than I can manage just to get my ass out of bed and teach every day. It’s not like I’m going for a beer with the guys at night.”

  Of course he wasn’t.

  He was home shutting out everything he still didn’t want to deal with, getting by just fine without her or anyone else in his life. And Kate had left him in peace, respecting his right to make his own choices, so sure she’d been doing what was best—until she’d heard the emptiness in his voice.

  “Lissa’s been talking about coming to Atlanta,” she heard herself say, suddenly ashamed that a woman who’d known Martin for only a fraction of the time Kate had, was waging a solo battle to help him.

  “Lissa had better keep her butt in Oakwood, where it belongs. I don’t need her coddling me.” Martin sounded desperate not to need anyone.

  Kate turned to catch Stephen Creighton talking with one of the APD officers who was interviewing hospital staff. The lawyer had insisted on driving her over. He’d seemed impressed with how hard she was fighting to take care of a kid she barely knew.

  He, of course, couldn’t know she’d spent the past year and a half feeling secretly grateful that her injured brother didn’t expect anything from her. She closed her eyes against tears she refused to let fall.

  No emotion at work. It was her hard-and-fast rule.

  Not that there was ever much emotion at home, either, which had done wonders for her marriage.

  “You know,” she said into the static crackling across the phone line, “if you ever need anything, I’m just—”

  “What?” Martin quipped. “You’re just, what? Planning to help Lissa plan my pity party? You don’t have enough on your plate trying to find runaway immigrant children with life-threatening genetic disorders? You’re going to take on what’s left of me, too?”

  She was making things worse for her brother, just as she had for the Digarros. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  But when she’d realized how much trouble she’d caused, she’d turned to her brother out of instinct.

  “It’s not you.” Martin cleared his throat. “It’s good to hear your voice, Katie. It’s…it’s been a long time.”

  Too long.

  Their parents had only just been buried, after a fatal car accident. She’d been haggling over details with insurance adjusters and an estate lawyer who’d needed an inventory of the things in their parents’ house when Martin had stumbled across their mother’s diary.

  Its pages, covered in Florence Rhodes’s shaky handwriting, had revealed the nightmare beneath the veneer of their parents’ rocky marriage. A nightmare Kate had known about but had kept secret—much to her parents’ relief. Martin, the youngest, had been shielded from a lot of it. The abuse had dwindled to mostly psychological and emotional by the time he was born, but there had still been wounds hidden beneath their mother’s smiles and the long-sleeved, high-necked blouses she wore, even on the hottest summer days.

  His mother’s abuse had been something a grown-up Martin had refused to accept. Or maybe he’d hated Kate for hiding the truth from him for so long. She’d probably never know which.

  “Katie?” he asked. “You still there?”

  “Ms. Rhodes?” Stephen Creighton appeared at her side, checking his watch.

  She’d promised to speak with him about Dillon’s condition in more detail once they got to the hospital.

  “I have to go,” she said to her brother. “I’m sorry.”

  And she was, about so many things.

  “Yeah,” Martin said. “Me, too. I hope you find the family you’re looking for.”

  He hung up before she did, her rough-and-tumble brother sounding as close to tears as she was.

  “I didn’t mean to rush your call.” Creighton’s harried expression softened when she turned toward him. “Everything all right?”

  “Sure.” She sniffed back the unshed tears blurring his image.

  She’d spent most of the last ten years exiled from the small town and brother she adored. She’d allowed her crusade for the rights of the homeless and the displaced, and her hypersensitivity to domestic abuse, drive a father to run from the hospital with his seriously ill child. And now she desperately needed a tissue before she fell apart all over a man she’d lost her cool in front of just yesterday.

  Life just didn’t get any better.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN the police department’s not going to try to find them?” Kate demanded over the bustle of activity surrounding the nurses’ station. “A sick little boy is missing.”

  Stephen weighed his answer, wary of the emotion rippling beneath her words. His gutsy warrior seemed ready to crumble.

  His warrior?

  Right.

  Kate Rhodes wasn’t his anything.

  “It sounds like the authorities aren’t going to search for the Digarros anymore,” he explained. “At least not at the local level.”

  “What does that mean?” Even the frown lines on her forehead were adorable.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted, but it didn’t sound good. “The hospital has assured the APD that Manny’s not a threat to his son, just like you said. It wouldn’t take much for officers on the street to keep a look-out for the kid. Except…”

  “Except what?”

  “Sounds like someone pretty far up the chain of command doesn’t want the department on the case any longer.”

  But why? he wondered. No one from the APD was saying much of anything that made sense, including Curtis Jenkins. Stephen didn’t like things that made no sense.

  “They have to find Dillon!” Kate pressed. “The doctors won’t be certain until a specialist runs further tests, but if it’s not Gaucher’s disease, there’s some other metabolic disorder at work, enlarging Dillon’s liver and spleen. I was wrong to accuse Manny without more information, but I wasn’t wrong about how much danger his child is in.”

  “That makes it a medical issue now. APD’s been ordered off the investigation.” Stephen raised an eyebrow as Kate’s frown deepened. “That’s probably a good thing.”

  “How can you say that? Dillon—”

  “Is an illegal immigrant.” Stephen stepped closer and lowered his voice.

  “What?” Kate’s fresh scent reached out to him.

  He breathed her in. His gaze dropped to her lips, then he met her surprised stare and exhaled in an attempt to clear his head.

  As if that were going to happen with her still so close.

  “I doubt Manny’s and Dillon’s green cards are worth the paper they’re printed on,” he explained. “The less the police focus on this family, the better.”

  “Except Dillon’s condition is most likely chronic, and degenerative,” she argued. “Mr. Digarro has no idea how important treatment and an accurate diagnosis are, and there’s no way he’ll voluntarily come back to the hospital now.”

  “How degenerative?
Are you saying the kid’s running out of time?”

  “The sooner he starts treatment, the less damage his body can do to itself. There are several variations of the disease, not all of them treatable. That’s why more tests are needed. Dillon’s body isn’t storing fat properly. Seizures are possible in the later stages of Gaucher’s, as is organ failure, even permanent brain damage. Every major system could be affected if we don’t stop whatever’s happening.”

  And she was determined to do just that. Just as determined as she’d been to protect Dillon from his father when she’d thought Manny was the problem—no less committed than Stephen had been to making sure the Digarros got their chance to grab a piece of the American Dream.

  Remarkable.

  “Where did you come from, lady?”

  “YOU DON’T LIKE the APD calling off the investigation any more than I do,” Kate challenged Stephen over the rim of her coffee cup.

  She had accepted his invitation to stop at a local diner on the way back to his office. Legal, addictive stimulants were her one true vice. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that Stephen was worried about more than his client’s immigration status.

  Instead of responding to her jab, he took a slow sip of his second cup of coffee.

  “So,” he finally said, “this brother of yours, the ex-cop. He refused to help you look for Dillon and Manny?”

  “My brother has more pressing problems than running down information for me.” She studied the swirls of cream she was spooning around in her cup, as if they were magic tea leaves eager to impart knowledge. “He’s still recovering from the injury that took him out of active duty. I shouldn’t have bothered him. Chances are the Digarros have moved to another shelter in town. My contacts in the homeless community might help me locate them. If not, I’ll find another way to make this right.”

  The silence stretched long enough to tempt her to glance up. Stephen was watching her stir. She realized she’d yet to take a sip. That the cup and the coffee inside were both stone cold.

  “You’re pretty hard on yourself, you know that?” He drained the last of his decaf and signaled the waitress for more. “One minute, you’re beating yourself up for trying to protect an innocent kid from abuse. Now, contacting your brother is messing with you, and you’re willing to totally disrupt your life to hunt down a family that doesn’t want to be found. Is it just the Digarros, or do you figure you’re responsible for every bad thing that happens around you?”

  Kate was still slack-jawed by the time their server scooted over from the counter. The gum-chewing Amazon—Trina—had had eyes only for Stephen for the last half hour.

  Hearing her ex husband’s “don’t be so hard on yourself” speech coming out of the mouth of a stranger—a stranger she was inexplicably annoyed with for returning the busty Trina’s smile—was the last straw.

  “I’m out of here.” Kate grabbed a few dollars from her purse, dropped them onto the table and fished out her cell phone as she headed for the door.

  “Hey.” Stephen hustled after her. “What are you doing?”

  “Calling a cab.” She navigated through her cell’s contacts and selected the car service that took her back and forth to the airport when she flew. “I have work to do at the shelter, a long shift at the hospital tomorrow, and a father and son to find.”

  Stephen’s hand covered hers, pressing the phone closed before the call connected.

  She’d panicked when he’d touched her yesterday. Her reaction to powerful men she didn’t trust was always the same. She’d seen firsthand the kind of damage masculine strength could do to a woman.

  Only today, the zing racing up her arm wasn’t from fear.

  Who knew pleasure could be more terrifying?

  “I’ll take you back to your car,” he said.

  “I…I can get back fine on my own.”

  “Why make things harder for yourself—and take twice as long—when I could have you there in just a few minutes?”

  Because harder seemed a much wiser choice at the moment.

  Stephen’s calm, controlled logic unnerved her. His shocking blue eyes focused on her, reading each emotion she couldn’t hide—the way he undoubtedly sized up everyone who walked through his office door. It was all too much.

  Meanwhile, she was battling the absurd impulse to tell a flirtatious waitress whom Stephen had barely glanced at to back off.

  And now Stephen was touching her again, and she was letting him. And enjoying it. A lot.

  Oh, stop ogling the lawyer, and get on with it!

  “I have a child to find.” She tried to pull free.

  He held fast.

  “Good.” His slow, Southern smile made her mouth water. “That makes two of us.”

  “What? Your client’s off the hook. You said that not looking for him would be the best thing.”

  “Yes,” he began, “except that you’re right. The APD being pulled off this case is a red flag. They usually partner with INS. Under normal circumstances, Immigration wouldn’t be interfering with local police operations. Something’s not adding up, and I have to be sure my client is really in the clear before I can let this go.”

  Kate could only stare. Stephen’s desk had been overflowing that morning. The man had been buried in work hours before most people poured milk over their Fruit Loops. He had the perfect excuse to be done with the Digarros and move on to his next case. But he had to be sure….

  “What…” The word scraped across her dry throat. Where was her cold coffee when she needed it? “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I admire people who are willing to go the extra mile to help someone the rest of the world is happy to pass by without a second thought,” he said. “Since you’re as determined to find the Digarros as I am, it makes sense for us to combine our efforts. When would be a good time tomorrow to start, Kate?”

  His question and use of her first name were as much of a shock as the way her skin tingled simply from the thought of seeing him again.

  Stephen’s connections with the APD would be an asset. For Dillon’s sake, she should say yes. But what did she do about the fact that a total stranger was making her wish for things she’d be a fool to pursue?

  Reckless things, like trusting him, and having coffee with him again. Trina-free coffee. And she admired the fact that he’d been up at six o’clock in the morning, working as hard to help people as she typically was at that hour, and probably not getting paid much more for the privilege.

  Which wasn’t saying a lot, since her predawn activities were generally volunteer work.

  She was in serious danger of liking this man, not to mention needing his sincerely offered help. Neither of which was an option.

  “Do whatever you like, Mr. Creighton.” She yanked away from his grasp. “Just leave me the hell alone while you’re doing it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WE’VE BEEN THROUGH this before,” Robert Livingston assured Martin as he closed the file he’d been leafing through and sat back in his office chair. The neurosurgeon handed over Martin’s records. “Your mobility is actually very good, considering the extent of your paralysis.”

  “Then why can’t I get rid of this damn crutch?” Martin shoved the offending item aside, bumping the fishbowl his sister’s ex kept on the edge of his desk.

  No fish inside, mind you. Just an empty bowl that Katie had most likely tended to while they were still married.

  “I understand your frustration,” Livingston commiserated. “And I’m happy to keep meeting with you to give you a second opinion on your rehab progress. But this is way out of my field. The best I can tell you is that your specialist’s program sounds right on the money.”

  “My specialist thinks kicking a foam soccer ball around should be the high point of my week. She doesn’t get it. I don’t care about a damn ball! I want to walk again, without having to hold on to something for dear life.”

  “The scale of return naturally diminishes the further you get
into recovery. Each new task, no matter how small, is a victory. The major milestones are behind you, Martin. You’re on your feet and independent. You’re back to work and regaining the muscle mass you lost. I’ve read every scrap of diagnostic paper on your initial injuries, the surgery and everything you’ve accomplished since. You’re already light years beyond the prognosis you were given two weeks post-op.”

  “Yeah,” Martin said, nodding. “I’m a lucky guy.”

  A walking miracle. But he wasn’t back to where he wanted—needed—to be.

  “You’re impatient,” Robert corrected. “And you have unrealistic expectations. In my professional opinion, that’s the only reason you’ve recovered as fully as you have.”

  He slapped Martin on the shoulder as he stood.

  “Just don’t be greedy and expect much more?” Martin spat back.

  “Not at all.” Livingston frowned. It had been years since the man had been married to Katie, and he and Martin hadn’t met until a few months ago. But Robert hadn’t flinched when Martin first asked to see him. He was a good guy, even if he didn’t have the magic answers Martin wanted. “Keep fighting. But a little perspective on how far you’ve come wouldn’t hurt. You need someone besides me to bounce things off of. I know you and Kate haven’t spoken in a long time, but—”

  “She moved up here to start her life over when I was being an absolute bastard to her.” Martin pushed out of his chair, using the doctor’s desk to balance himself as he settled his crutch against his side. “I’m not dumping my problems on my sister now.”

  “You know, even though we were already divorced when you were shot,” the other man said, “I remember when she came back from visiting you in Oakwood. She was torn up. She couldn’t help you, and in her mind not being able to help means she’s hurting you. Again.”

  Again.

  Silent understanding passed between them. Robert clearly knew enough about the Rhodes family’s history to be dangerous.

  “If my sister’s anything like she used to be,” Martin reasoned, “she’s already rescuing more people than one human being should try to. She doesn’t need me on her radar.”