by Liz Talley
“Bullshit. I’m tired of being your burden, and I’m tired of this crappy town.” Clint picked up his plate and tossed his half-eaten cake over the rail. Hilda’s dog would eat it and probably throw up on her expensive carpet. Jake would have to pick it up after Clint left.
“Yeah, that I get.” Jake sighed because that made sense. He felt the same way. Trapped by his decisions from long ago. Like a string stretched tight, he’d begun to fray. Obviously, Clint felt the same way. “So what are you going to do?”
Clint’s dark eyes blazed, and for the first time in a while, Jake really looked at his friend. Clint’s dark hair was peppered with silver, and his eyes were haunted. His friend looked faded, like an old tattoo. At one time Clint had been a tall, gangly jokester. His full smile, dark wavy hair and pretty brown eyes had driven the girls crazy and had allowed Clint to get away with anything at St. George’s Episcopal, where he’d graduated salutatorian to Jake’s valedictorian. They’d been partners in crime with devilish charm and extravagant youth on their side.
Until that goddamn night.
“I don’t know, but I can’t keep pretending things are good anymore. I’m shriveling up.” Clint looked down at his useless legs. “Not my body. My soul. I gotta move toward something more. I wish things were…uh.” Clint closed his mouth and sat there. Seemingly no words could define what he felt.
Jake wanted to say something profound. He wanted to say that things between them were the same as they’d always been, but he knew that elephant in the room grew bigger. The accident, all that he’d taken from Clint, would always be between them. Jake didn’t know how to change that.
So he didn’t have words, either. Hell, he didn’t have the emotions. He felt an empty shell.
Maybe that’s what this whole Eva thing was about—wanting to feel. He was grasping at a way to do that, and Eva was the closest person to grab on to.
Clint looked up at him. Jake met his eyes, trying like hell to communicate something. Anything.
His friend shook his head and then maneuvered his chair, rolling back on the stone patio, heading toward the French doors and the sanctity of a silly birthday party.
Jake stared out at the shadows falling over the still green manicured yard and thought about bumming a cigarette from the produce guy at Maggio’s, who stood hidden behind a statue of David. The reproduction sported one notable alteration, and if anyone knew Hilda and her sense of humor, they’d know why she’d added a few inches. The produce guy didn’t seem to care. He looked as lonely as Jake felt, so Jake decided not to bother him. Maybe the patio was the perfect spot for lonely losers.
And maybe Jake needed to fix that about himself.
If he needed distraction, if he needed to get his mind off Eva, he needed to be proactive.
One sure way to distract himself was to call Kate. The sexy librarian knew just where to scratch an itch…and she loved to have sex in the stacks after the Magnolia Bend Library closed for the night.
Maybe it was time for Jake to return the last book he’d checked out at the library. And since it was late, he’d have to pay a penalty—a kinky, toe-curling penalty.
He pulled out his cell phone.
Yeah. That would fix things.
Or not.
He looked at his phone, at Kate’s number in his contacts, and then tucked the phone back into his pocket. Kate wasn’t an answer. She couldn’t drive this thing with Eva out of his head.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVA TOOK CHARLIE’S hand and led him carefully down the steps of the government office building. The Superdome threw its shadow on them as people hurried to and fro on the busy street in the Central Business District of New Orleans.
Chris had just said his goodbyes after Eva signed papers granting her temporary custody of her brother. But Charlie had yet to say a single word to her.
That morning Eva had attended Claren’s hearing before the judge. She’d met the foster care worker who’d be monitoring Charlie’s case, and she got to thank the temporary foster parents for taking care of her brother. After the judge heard the recommendation of CPS, she was granted physical custody of Charlie. Claren had cried the entire time.
Hadn’t been the easiest hour Eva had ever spent.
“It’s been a long time since breakfast. Let’s grab something to eat. What sounds good to you, Charlie?” she asked, turning toward the large parking garage sitting beside the Civil District Court Building.
Charlie didn’t say anything. Just stared straight ahead, his Captain America backpack over one small shoulder.
“Oh, I know,” Eva said, forcing cheerfulness into her voice. “How about pizza?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Okay, pizza it is.” Eva tried not to panic at the thought she was now responsible for Charlie…at least until Chris returned from England. But even so, she may not be able to just hand him over to her older brother. And that wouldn’t necessarily be fair to Charlie.
His mother would be in court-ordered rehab for eight months since she was a repeat offender…and that was if the nutcase stopped fighting against being an addict and started making a true attempt to kick her addiction to the curb. At present Claren was too busy making excuses for her actions.
Eva hated moving Charlie to Magnolia Bend when he’d already started his first grade year at St. Matthew’s, but she had no alternative since Chris would be out of the country. And even if he weren’t in England, her brother’s life was too untethered to give stability to a small child. Claren’s parents lived in Ohio and were currently in a senior care facility. They definitely weren’t capable of taking care of a six-year-old. So it was either take Charlie in and do the best she could or surrender him to the foster care system. And though the two people she’d met earlier seemed perfectly nice, she thought she could do better than placing him with strangers.
But she wasn’t sure.
The foster care worker assigned to Charlie’s case hadn’t been keen on Eva taking Charlie so far away from his normal setting, but Eva had been adamant—she’d take care of her brother, but she wasn’t moving back to New Orleans. At least in Magnolia Bend she had a support system. Fancy Beauchamp had volunteered to care for Charlie when Eva was on duty and Jake’s brother Matt, the principal of St. George’s Episcopal, had found a place for Charlie in Mrs. Snyder’s first-grade classroom.
When they reached her car, she opened the back door. “I got you a booster seat. Um, I think you’re supposed to use one, right?”
Charlie dropped her hand and climbed inside, settling into the booster seat, clicking the seat belt into place. He didn’t say a word.
“Okay, then,” Eva breathed as she closed the door, making her way around the car, sending up a prayer that she could do this.
Please help me do this. Please help me not screw him up. Please help his dumb-ass mother to get better so she can be the one he goes to therapy to complain about.
Therapy.
The social worker said she’d push through the paperwork necessary to acquire a therapist, but since Magnolia Bend had only one mental health professional, Eva would have to call Macy Hebert at the local women’s shelter and see if she could provide what Charlie needed. Obviously, her brother had some issues. The poor thing had been left by himself for almost twenty-four hours while his mother partied, got high and then tried to charge a NOPD undercover vice cop a cool hundred for a blow job.
Her brother had survived on dry cereal, soured milk and the Disney Channel. According to the foster care worker, Charlie had been plagued with nightmares, had wet the bed every night and hadn’t talked beyond muttering directives.
Yeah, Eva wasn’t equipped to handle a normal kid, much less a kid with emotional trauma.
“Okay, off we go,” she said, cranking the engine and eyeing her brother in the rearview mirror. He stared stoically out the window, his sandy-blond hair falling into a perfect bowl cut, his brown eyes so emphatically sad. She knew Charlie had always been a shy child, but he�
��d always had a smile for his older sister when she came to take him to the zoo or to a movie. They hadn’t been close to one another since Claren divorced her father a few months before he’d passed away, but they’d always known they were family and thus fell into an easy way with one another. Not so this go-around. “Why don’t we go to a pizza place that has a cool arcade? I like playing skee ball, do you?”
Charlie shrugged but didn’t verbally respond.
An hour and a half later, after spending thirty bucks on tokens, watching Charlie pick at his pizza and failing to establish any kind of bond with the six-year-old, Eva drove them to Magnolia Bend. She had a panicky feeling deep inside. It didn’t help that she’d spent all of Sunday not just worried about bringing Charlie home, but also anxious over how things between her and Jake had changed so quickly.
She wanted to call him and talk to him about Charlie, and yet she didn’t, because she was scared of the feelings unleashed at just the touch of his lips.
Jake had texted her earlier. He had wanted to know who Charlie was. The tinge of jealously in his breezy question might have made her smile if she’d not been so twisted into knots over all the turmoil in her life.
But she’d deal. She always did.
“When is my mom coming to get me?” Charlie asked.
At his sudden question, Eva jerked the steering wheel to keep from going off the highway. “Oh, um, I’m not sure, honey. She’s at a place that’s helping her get better.”
“But she’s not sick.”
Eva turned her head to look back, not trusting the rearview mirror. Charlie glared at her, anger in his eyes, his mouth pressed into a mulish line. “In a way, she is.”
“I don’t want to stay with you. I want my mom.”
“I know, Charlie.”
“I can stay with Chris. I’d rather stay with Chris. He has a dog and lets me eat doughnuts for breakfast.”
“Chris is leaving for England next week,” Eva said, trying not to be hurt that Charlie would rather stay with a man than with her. Weren’t little kids supposed to gravitate toward women? Maybe her maternal gene was nonexistent. Maybe Charlie had hated every outing they’d taken. Maybe he didn’t love her, didn’t like her and wouldn’t even piss on her if she caught fire.
“Where’s England?”
“It’s really far away. Look, Charlie, we have to do things this way. You don’t want to stay with strangers, do you? And where I live is nice. Remember the fire station and the pancakes we had at PattyAnn’s?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go to a new school. I want to go to St. Matthew’s. All my friends are there, and I was going to be on the basketball team.”
“You can play basketball in Magnolia Bend if you’re still here when it starts. Let’s just look at this as an adventure. Like a summer camp…just not in summer.”
He shrugged and went back to staring out the window. The exit for Magnolia Bend loomed ahead, and Eva tried not to allow the tears welling in her eyes to slip down her cheeks. She felt overwhelmed, sad and scared for Charlie, and she wished she’d made a stronger effort to get to know her younger brother better.
Her father’s final wife, Claren, had not been the easiest person to deal with. Eva would call to make a date to see Charlie, and the woman would drum up some excuse as to why Charlie couldn’t go. Eva should have pushed harder to spend time with the boy; she should have paid more attention to Claren and what was going on in her life. She knew she’d had a problem with prescriptive drugs when she’d been with her father. She knew how screwed up Claren was, so she should have realized the woman was using again. God, she’d been buying Oxycontin like it was a grocery item. And the fact that she had been prostituting herself to score the drug was mind-boggling.
Charlie had needed Eva, and she’d been too busy trying to climb the ladder toward captain of the MBFD to notice. She’d been too involved in herself, and now Charlie had to pay for the adults in his life ignoring his needs.
Eva would work to fix it. She’d make sure of that—
“What about my birthday?” Charlie asked.
Oh, snap.
Charlie’s birthday was…next week.
“We’ll have a party, uh, if you want one. You want one, right?”
The boy shrugged. “Mom said I could have a campout, like with a tent.”
“Uh, no problem. We can have a campout in the backyard. We can even roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories.”
“But who’s gonna come?”
Good question. “I don’t know. Yet. But we’ll have fun. I promise.” God help that to be true.
He fell silent as they wound around through the thick woods surrounding her subdivision. Laurel Creek contained small patio homes built in the Creole cottage style. The development sat behind the grand Laurel Woods, a stately historic house turned into a bed-and-breakfast by Abigail Orgeron. Thick trees and the wildlife that accompanied the woods surrounded her house. Hopefully, Charlie would like the backyard with the squirrel feeder and the room she’d spent all day Sunday decorating with a nautical theme. She’d gone with bright sailboats instead of the predictable fire truck.
“Here we are,” she said, pulling into the driveway. Newly purchased ferns swung on the shady porch, and someone had left a bag with a gingham bow on her doorstep.
Charlie unbuckled himself and climbed from the car, his little face grave as he looked over the yard. “I never seen this house before.”
“That’s because I lived in an apartment the last time you came to Magnolia Bend. I just moved here in the spring. Do you like it?” she asked, proud of the tended flower beds and pretty stacked-stone columns.
“It’s fine,” he muttered.
She ignored his less than enthusiastic response. “And someone left us…oh, dinner.” She lifted the bag filled with storage containers that were still warm. Looked like spaghetti, French bread and salad. Had to be Fancy’s handiwork.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Yet,” she said, giving him a cheery smile while she unlocked the door. Charlie carried a backpack with his underwear, socks and a change of clothes. Thankfully, the social worker had emailed her the sizes she’d found in Charlie’s closet, so Eva had picked up some new jeans, shirts and a spare pair of sneakers for her brother. Fancy had already put in an order for the St. George’s uniforms, borrowing a few items that had grown too small for Matt’s two boys.
Eva pushed open the door and looked back at Charlie, who moved at a snail’s pace up the walk. Just as he finally stepped onto the porch, Jake pulled into the drive.
He drove a red Chevrolet Silverado, sports package with flashy chrome and a fresh wax job. Firemen had a thing about polished chrome and shiny trucks. Jake hopped out, jogging around the side, only to come to a halt when he saw Charlie standing next to Eva.
“Hey,” Jake said cautiously, still eyeballing Charlie.
“Hi,” Eva said, not knowing whether to be aggravated Jake had poked his nose into her business or relieved to have someone else there to serve as a distraction. Either way, Jake looked especially gorgeous in the dying light of day, so that was something.
“Who’s this?”
“I’m Charlie. Who are you?” her brother said, looking interested in the man standing at the foot of the step, trim and hunky in his uniform.
“This is Charlie?” Jake asked, lifting his gaze to hers.
“My younger brother,” Eva said, placing a hand on her brother’s shoulder. Charlie stepped away, his eyes still on Jake.
“Oh, the third wife’s kid. That’s right. I didn’t remember his name.”
“Who are you?” Charlie asked again.
“This is Jake. We work together,” Eva said.
“You’re a firefighter?” Charlie asked.
Jake nodded and gave Charlie a smile. Sticking out his hand, he made a fist. Charlie responded with a fist bump—a male ritual even a six-year-old obviously understood.
“What are you doing here?” Eva asked Jake.
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“I’m on my way to work. Just thought I’d check on you,” he said.
Eva made a face. Jake never checked on her. She had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with the previously unknown Charlie. Just why Jake was so intrigued baffled her, even as something deep down inside lifted its head at the thought Jake might be interested in her life because she was more to him than a mere friend.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one affected by the kiss. Maybe…
No.
She didn’t have the luxury to entertain anything different than what was. She and Jake were coworkers. They were friends. Nothing more. So she had to stop reading into every action Jake took.
“Well, do you want to come in? Looks like your mama left us dinner. Spaghetti.”
“Nah, I had some at her house earlier. I need to get to the station and now that I can see you’re okay…” He trailed off.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You know. Just things.”
Yeah, she knew. He thought she was still mad about the kiss. He wanted her to forgive him. “I’m fine.”
His blue eyes met hers and something passed between them, reminding her she was a liar. She wasn’t fine. Things weren’t the same.
Two kisses had changed everything.
“Okay, then. I’ll miss you tonight.”
That should have sounded the way it sounded anytime Eva switched a shift and Jake bitched and moaned about having to put up with Dutch’s snoring and blistering farts. Don’t leave me with Dutch. I’ll miss you.
But this time it sounded intimate.
So weird.
“Don’t worry, Dutch will keep you warm. His wife always cooks red beans and rice on the second Sunday of the month,” Eva joked, trying to regain their easy camaraderie. Trying to go backward had become a habit. But she had to try.
Jake made a face. “I’m letting him sleep in your room.”
“Don’t you dare,” Eva said.
“Wait, is he your boyfriend?” Charlie asked, pointing to Jake.
“No!” they both said in unison.
Charlie looked from her to Jake and then back to her. “Can I go watch TV?”
