Nothing wrong with that.
I tried not to feel possessive and territorial about her, but it wasn’t something I could easily control. She was so gorgeous and so little and so incredibly willful.
She did exactly what she wanted, even if it wasn’t smart. Someone needed to look out for her, and I needed to be that person.
The week after she turned seventeen, she went to a party at the house of one of her friends. It was one of those parties—the kind that get thrown when parents are out of town. I’d been to plenty myself, so I suppose I didn’t have any grounds to complain.
But still.
Harper should not be surrounded by a bunch of drunk, horny high school boys, especially if she had been drinking herself.
The idea of it raised my hackles, got me going good.
I’d been at the bowling alley that evening, and I only heard she was at the party second-hand, from a buddy of mine who’d just left. On hearing where she was, I stopped bowling and drove out to the party.
I was just making sure she was all right.
I pulled my truck to a stop across the road from the house and saw the party was spilling out onto the front lawn. That was just stupid. The cops would be out here any minute. It was a small town. If kids in high school wanted to party like this, they had to do so out of sight.
I saw Harper even before I got out of my truck. She was wearing a short skirt—way too short—and the straps of her top were slipping off her shoulders. Her hair was tousled and wavy, and she was strolling down the front walk next to a guy whose hands should definitely not be touching her the way they were.
She was smiling up at the guy, and every nerve ending in my body fired off at the absolute wrongness of her looking at any guy in that soft, admiring way.
Any guy except me.
I found myself getting out of my truck and striding over to her.
She jerked to a stop when she saw me, blinking as if she couldn’t quite process what I was even doing there.
“You need to get home,” I said, a lot of gravel in my voice. “The cops are going to be here soon. You think the neighbors aren’t going to call when a bunch of drunk kids are hanging out in the front yard?”
She blinked at me again. “Levi?”
“You’ve been drinking.” It was clear to me that she had, although she looked only slightly tipsy and not dead-drunk.
“So what if I have? You and Gavin got drunk when you were fourteen years old.”
We had, although I had no idea she’d known about it.
She was clinging to the arm of the boy beside her, and it was making me crazy. She should not be hanging on that stupid kid.
She should not be hanging on anyone but me.
“Take off,” I growled at the boy.
He puffed up his chest, looking outraged for just a minute, but one more intimidating look from me and he staged a quick retreat. I was bigger than he was.
“What the hell?” Harper gasped, still looking blurrily from me to the retreating boy, as if she couldn’t quite understand what was happening.
I took her arm and started to walk her toward my truck, quickly now since I could hear sirens in the distance. “Do you want the cops to pick you up?”
“No.”
“Then shut up and get in the truck.”
She was too out of it to put up a fight, which was a relief. I got her into the passenger seat and then pulled my truck into the street before the first police car arrived.
She was silent as I drove through town, but I could feel resentment bristling through her body.
Finally, she burst out, “What did you do that for?”
“Someone needs to look out for you, if you’re going to be that stupid.”
“It was just a party. I only had one drink! I can take care of myself.”
“Can you? Because it looked like you were leaving with some drunk guy. You think he wouldn’t take advantage of you, when you’re in this condition?” I was angry—simmering with the idea of some selfish bastard doing things to Harper when she was too buzzed to know better—and I knew she could hear it in my voice.
“What if I wanted him to?”
“To what, exactly?” I asked thickly.
“To have sex with me. What if I wanted it?” Her blue eyes were flashing, and her straps had slipped from her shoulders again, causing her neckline to dip far lower than it should.
I wanted her so much I had to stare at the road in front of me and breathe deeply.
“Well?” she demanded, when I didn’t answer.
“If you want to have sex,” I said at last, “then you damn well better find a guy who wants you for you, and not just because you’re a hot body too drunk to make a good decision.”
The words lingered in the air, and soon I knew I’d made a mistake.
When I glanced over, she was staring at me with wide eyes. “You think I have a hot body?” she breathed at last.
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.
“I said you want a man who knows you’re more than that,” I muttered.
“Oh.”
I knew she was still buzzed because she normally would have put up more of a fight. She always did when someone tried to boss her around.
We drove the rest of the way back to her house in silence.
She looked more like herself when I stopped the truck—a few houses down from hers so she might have a chance of sneaking back in without her parents seeing.
I was going to wait until she got into the house before I left, of course.
“I was really okay,” she said as she unbuckled her belt.
“We’ll have to disagree on that one.”
“You’re not my brother,” she said. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Then don’t do stupid things.”
She was glaring at me as she got out of the truck and walked way.
I watched her as she made it down the sidewalk, then up her driveway, and then into the side door of her house.
It was only then I drove away.
I wasn’t her brother. Her brother was my best friend.
And one day I would have to stop lusting after her this way.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop wanting to take care of her.
***
Eleven years later, I was still wanting to take care of her.
And still lusting after her.
Both of them at once, as I stared at the television, where Harper was on the local news, talking about Gavin and how there might be some sort of cover-up going on surprised me anyway. Didn’t the woman ever listen? I knew that my superiors weren’t going to talk to her, no matter how much of nuisance she made of herself to them. Her public plea wasn’t going to change a damn thing.
Snapping off the television, my first instinct was to go and throttle her. I was sure I wasn’t the first person to feel that way. People didn’t get their tires slashed randomly.
This was definitely personal.
Pacing had become my favorite pastime since coming home. Normally it was out of boredom, but now it was out of frustration. What the hell was she thinking? There was standing up for what you believed in, and then there was just plain stubbornness.
Like that was anything new where Harper was concerned.
She’d been the same way all her life. It was one of the things I most loved about her.
And also the thing that drove me most crazy.
It was a good thing no one was around to hear my growl of frustration or to hear the words flying out of my mouth over this whole damn mess. There would be too many questions to answer if anyone saw me. As it was, my entire family was walking around on eggshells, trying to act as if nothing was wrong. No matter how much I threw myself into the construction jobs, I could feel everyone looking at me as if they were expecting me to crack at any moment.
Maybe I was.
Like now.
Damn Harper and her causes. Why couldn’t she just leave this one alone? There was no
story here. At least that was what I kept wanting to believe. I knew the way the military works— I’d get more answers than Harper would if I confronted any of my commanding officers, but that didn’t mean I wanted to. I’d be lying if I said that a few theories hadn’t crossed my mind, but most of them involved me and my own role in the whole thing.
“Are you worried about making enemies, Harper?” the reporter asked right before the camera panned back to her.
“Not at all. If there’s nothing to hide and what they’re saying is true, then they have nothing to worry about. All I’m asking for is the truth.”
“How do you know they’re lying to you now?”
Harper’s gaze narrowed slightly. “Because they haven’t agreed to meet with me. All I’m asking is for a few minutes of their time, to know how my brother and so many others died. If they’d just talk to me, I’m sure that would go a long way to clear things up.”
This time I actually did smile. Hell, I even laughed. Harper was in over her head on this one. This wasn’t some small campus rally to lower the price of school lunches or an initiative about safety in the public parks. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she was pissing someone off big time.
Someone right here in town had been bold enough to slash her tires. Shit. There were probably a lot of candidates, and I hadn’t been back long enough to get the gossip on where people stood these days in their political views.
Guess it was time to start mingling with the locals again.
***
It was weird to stand in front of a place that was so familiar and not feel the comfort of it like I once had. Gavin’s house. I’d put it off as long as I could, but I now needed to do more than just go to work and go to bed, so this was where I ended up.
The house looked exactly the same, but I knew it wasn’t. Gavin wasn’t here. This was the first time I’d ever come to the Murphy’s home without him. Don’t go there right now, I reminded myself, even as I tried to remember how to walk up the steps to the front door. My legs were like lead, and it was all I could do to breathe normally.
I didn’t even have to knock. Charles Murphy must have seen me coming because the door opened before I lifted my hand. “Levi! What a surprise.” Rather than the handshake I’d been expecting, he pulled me in for a hug. We went inside, and I no sooner had a foot in the door then Gavin’s mother, Darlene, had me in her embrace. They were huggers. It wasn’t personal.
“Look at you!” she said as she appeared to assess me for some hidden injury. “You look wonderful, Levi. Have you eaten? Charles and I were just about to have some coffee. Can I get you some?”
There wasn’t a hint of animosity or anything remotely distant about them—they welcomed me like I was family—and yet I couldn’t let my guard down. Not yet. The place smelled like freshly brewed coffee and pine. Darlene Murphy was a clean freak, and it almost brought me back to our childhood, when Gavin and I would skate around the freshly waxed wood floors in our socks. And then had to run like hell when Darlene caught us.
“How’s the job going with your dad?” Charles asked when Darlene put our mugs on the table.
“It’s good, sir. The jobs are relatively small—residential jobs and all—but I think my dad likes having me work with him.”
“And so he should,” Darlene said as she took a seat.
The silence was almost deafening for a long minute, and I felt myself wanting to squirm. “How are you both doing?”
Darlene’s face saddened first, and Charles’s wasn’t far behind. “We have good days and bad,” Charles said, his voice much softer than it was moments ago. “Gavin had been away for so long that sometimes I find myself thinking that’s all that’s going on and he’ll be home soon.” He paused. “Then I remember.”
There wasn’t a damn thing I could say to that because I felt the same way. I never wanted to go into construction or work for my dad, and on some really bad days, I found myself grabbing for the phone to bitch to Gavin. And then I would remember.
Darlene reached for one of my hands as if she’d read my mind. Words weren’t really necessary.
The quiet moment was shattered by the slamming of the front door and the decisive click, click, click of someone’s ridiculously high heels coming our way. “Please tell me that the coffee is fresh,” Harper called out, just before she walked into the room.
And stopped.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise to see her there, but it was. That was happening a lot lately. Sitting quietly, I watched as she kissed both her parents hello and then went to make herself a cup of coffee. Black. Either she was going to keep ignoring me, or there was something fascinating about fixing a cup of black coffee.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to Levi, Harper?” her mother asked.
The look Harper gave her in response was near comical. I couldn’t help but smirk at her, which only upped her ire. She mumbled a begrudging greeting before walking out of the room.
The Murphys looked at me apologetically. “How is Harper doing?” I figured that it might be easier to get a little insight into who was bothering her if I snooped close to home. Hopefully, she was out of earshot.
“Levi?”
Oops. Clearly not. “Yeah?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Her tone was so sweet it could give a guy cavities, but those eyes told me that I was in deep shit.
Taking my mug with me, I excused myself and followed her. I knew this house like my own, but it felt wrong to be here without Gavin.
“Why are you upsetting my parents?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why are you asking about me?”
“So asking about you is upsetting to them how?”
It was kind of fun to watch her get riled up. She might be tiny—in heels she barely stood taller than my shoulders—but when she was pissed, she seemed to become much bigger. I bet she could even be intimidating to a lot of people.
Not me, though.
“They are grieving the loss of their son, and people keep nagging about how we’re all doing, but at least they don’t come here to our home and do it. This is like a sanctuary for them, Levi, and then you show up and start asking questions!”
For just a moment, I was reminded of the time we were in middle school and Gavin and I had gone fishing. Harper had followed us and given us a long lecture on cruelty to animals and how we shouldn’t use the poor fish for our entertainment.
The memory of her heated outrage and fearless denunciation of us—so long ago—made me smile.
“I’m sorry, but is this funny to you?” she asked, crossing her arms under her breasts and giving me a spectacular view of her cleavage. I really didn’t need to be thinking of that right now. “My grieving family is… what, some kind of joke?”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said with authority. I towered over her, wondering if she’d back down.
She didn’t.
“Don’t tell me when it’s enough. You’re in my house now, and you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Geez, don’t you ever get tired of arguing? All I did was come here to say hello and see how your folks are doing. I haven’t seen them since the funeral.”
Harper averted her gaze at the word. “It was probably for the best. I’m sure on some level you’re a reminder of—”
“The fact that I’m still here and Gavin isn’t? Yeah, I got that. But not from them. From you.”
She at least had the grace to look sorry. “Okay, that was wrong for me to say that day.”
“You think?”
“I really am sorry about that. I shouldn’t have said it. But maybe you could cut me a little slack, Levi. I’d just lost my brother, and I wasn’t handling it well. It’s just been really crazy for the past couple of months. There’s Gavin and stuff with my job and no one wanting to talk to me and my tires were slashed, and then just yesterday there was this letter—”
“What letter?” It wasn’t often, if ever, that I
saw Harper on the verge of losing control, but she clearly was right now. “What letter, Harper?”
“You know that we didn’t get to bury Gavin right away, right? Well, after we got all the ‘official’ letters from the government, I felt that something wasn’t right, like they weren’t telling us everything. So I wrote a couple of articles about it in the paper, and I guess someone didn’t like it. They sent me a nasty letter yesterday.”
The curse escaped louder than I intended, and I almost cringed at the possibility of Darlene Murphy coming in and reprimanding me. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me, even getting it after your tires were slashed?”
“Shh! Keep it down! I didn’t tell my parents about that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I didn’t want to worry them, that’s why. They’re dealing with enough right now without my adding to it.”
“Then maybe you should let go of this little campaign for the truth that you’ve got going on. You’re not going to get anywhere with it, Harper. You need to let it go before you push the wrong person.”
She was silent for a long moment, and I was almost certain that I had her convinced.
“I’m not letting it go. This whole thing seems suspicious and maybe…”
Uh-oh. I might not have known Harper very well, but even I knew when I was about to be hit with something I wasn’t going to like. “Maybe, what?”
“You were there, Levi. Tell me what happened.”
That was so not going to happen. “You have all the documents that could be publicly released. It’s not open for discussion.” With a final swig of coffee, I put the mug down and turned to go back to the kitchen to talk to the Murphys.
“I never figured you for a coward, Levi.”
That stopped me. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Just tell me what you know.”
“And then you’ll drop your campaign? Just like that?” Her hesitation gave me my answer. “Sorry, princess, but I’ve got nothing to add that good old Uncle Sam hasn’t told you.”
Except my role in your brother’s death.
She stepped in close, and that was when it happened. The smell of her herbal shampoo and the heat radiating off her little body had my whole libido standing at attention and calling out that she wasn’t like a sister. This was a woman. A pissed-off woman but a woman nonetheless. And she was beautiful. And sexy.
Protecting His Best Friend's Sister (The Protectors Book 1) Page 3
