by Mary Calmes
Chapter Fourteen
SAM still wasn’t home in the morning, and I was disappointed because I wanted him to go with me to take the kids back to school. The text message I got told me he was still being debriefed, though, and as it turned out, Dane was there waiting for me when I rolled into the parking lot.
“Is your manic husband better today?” he asked peevishly.
“I have no idea what that means.”
Apparently Sam had called Dane at some point in the night or early morning, and they had spoken at length about the house, and then Sam had asked Dane to be my backup because he knew he would still be sitting with the guys from DEA.
“I don’t want to know. All I do know is that it sounds as though you will not be returning to your home but will instead be moving from my loft into the house in Oak Park. There are movers and cleaners going to your current residence today. I’m having Pedro take care of all the change of address forms.”
“My neighbors are going to be so confused.”
“I suspect Sam doesn’t care about that.”
“I wonder what the new ones will be like.” I squinted up at him.
“Different,” he informed me as we started up the stairs, me holding Hannah’s hand and him holding Kola’s. “You own a home in historic Oak Park now. I took the liberty of contacting the man I have taking care of the grounds now, Mr. Kincaide, and telling him that you will be taking over the billing. If you or Sam want to do it yourselves, maintained and—”
“Can we put up Christmas lights?”
“What?”
“It’s a deal breaker, Dane.”
“Of course you can put up Christmas lights. What kind of—”
“I just wanted to be sure.”
“If I live to be a thousand, I will never understand all the different places your mind goes.”
I was certain that was true.
We walked Kola to his room first, where Miss Taylor was now and not Mr. Michaels. Poor girl—I thought she was going to liquefy as she stood there, gazing at Dane. When he finally turned and smiled at her, she puddled and I groaned.
As we walked Hannah to her room, she explained to her uncle about getting in trouble for the water gun.
“Never carry a big gun,” he cautioned her. “You just get a tiny spray bottle like you use when you iron clothes and you use that. That way you can test to see if you’ve got a witch without alerting them that you’re onto them.”
Her eyes got big and she nodded.
“I’m sorry, my brain works oddly?” I said irritably.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Dane charmed Ms. Brady as well, the older woman simpering under his charcoal-gray eyes. And yes, he was handsome, but it was more. I had always had the feeling that Dane was simply larger than life. I was so thankful that I had him in mine.
“I don’t tell you like I should,” I said as we were walking back down the hall toward the front door, “but I appreciate everything you do for me, and I love—”
“Yes, same. Good.” He was brusque as he patted my cheek before he turned and took the stairs down the front stoop, waved without looking back, and started across the parking lot.
I should have known better.
“Mr. Harcourt?”
Turning, I found Mrs. Petrovich.
“I’m sorry about my husband,” I told her. “He’s a yeller.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry for Mr. Michaels, who has been dismissed, and Mr. Parker, who has been barred from school grounds.”
“Okay.”
She reached out and took hold of my arm. “You and your family have been part of ours for the past three years, Mr. Harcourt, since Kola started when he was in preschool, like Hannah is now. You didn’t think twice about enrolling her with us because he was doing so well here. I don’t want that to change because of this incident, but mostly because I don’t want you to think that we don’t care about your children. All the kids mean the world to me, I wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case, but Kola is just a jewel, and Hannah….” She started to smile. “I just don’t know what goes through that girl’s head sometimes, but I just can’t wait to see her every day.”
“Okay.”
“So I sincerely hope that we can all get past this incident and back to how things were before. That is the first such occurrence we’ve ever had at this school, and I can assure you that it will most certainly be the last.”
I smiled at her. “You’re adding aides to all classes, aren’t you?”
She cleared her throat. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You’ve been pushing that for a while, but the board wouldn’t budge.” I nodded, grinning at her. “I read the newsletter and that’s a very good way to prove your point.”
She took hold of my hand. “You know that I would have never chosen to have—”
“I know, you didn’t want a child hurt to illustrate your concerns, but the point was certainly made, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes it was.” She exhaled, releasing my hand. Such an attractive woman in her Donna Karan suit, short, stylish haircut, reading glasses hanging on a chain, pearls, makeup immaculately applied, and her dark-blue eyes locked on my face. I had found her so polished the first time we met, and the perception had never changed.
I crossed my arms. “Did Rick Jenner scare the board?”
“Mr. Jenner terrified the board. Jenner Knox is a very well-known law firm here in Chicago.”
“But it’s not even a year old,” I said, making my eyes big for her, all innocence.
She cleared her throat. “Richard Jenner may have just started his new firm, Mr. Harcourt, but we all know that he was the managing partner at his old firm for many years.”
I arched an eyebrow for her.
“He’s quite intimidating.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know.”
She squinted at me. “I must say that when you applied here, you and the marshal, I did not suspect that if there was ever a problem that a man like Richard Jenner would be who I would find in my office.”
“My brother, who you just saw… did you see him?”
“He would be hard to miss.”
“Yeah, well, he watches out for me, he’s the scary one, and—”
“Make no mistake, Mr. Harcourt, the scary one in this scenario has always been and I suspect will always be Marshal Kage.”
I cleared my throat. “Again, sorry he yelled.”
“He had every right to.”
I reached out and squeezed her arm. “We’ll get past this.”
“Good,” she whispered. “We’ll see you after school.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I was smiling when I reached the minivan.
After pulling out of the parking lot, I took a left, and a car passed me and then cut in front of me sharply and came to a stop. I had to either slam on my brakes or ram into it. I hit the brakes.
The car door flew open and the second I saw Mr. Parker get out with a baseball bat, I grabbed my phone and dialed 911. As he yelled at me to get out of my faggot car and get my faggot ass out there, I talked to the operator. When he started beating on the hood, the operator asked what that noise was. I explained that he was hitting my van.
“And it’s new,” I groaned, because really, I was safe as long as I didn’t get out.
She sounded more frantic than I was.
He hit the window and by that time I had the operator on speaker and my phone shooting video because there was nothing else to do—I was stuck until the police got there.
“Mr. Harcourt, did you call in a 211 the other night?”
“Yeah.”
“That was wonderful, what you did. I just… we weren’t allowed to contact you or… any….”
“Which one?” I asked as Mr. Parker took out the passenger side mirror. What was I going to tell Aaron?
“Detective Everman is my brother-in-law… we’re all very thankful.”
“Are both of them a
ll right?”
“Yes.” She sighed deeply. “Both of them will make a full recovery.”
“Good, I’m—shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
He had retreated to his car, and now he had an ax. “Tell the officers coming that this guy has an ax now.”
“Will advise. Move away from the windows, Mr. Harcourt. ETA is one minute out.”
“Okay.” I took a breath, scrambling into the backseat as Mr. Parker charged the van and swung at the windshield.
I was really sick of hearing sirens, hearing the yelling, but the sea of blue uniforms was cool, and the way they held their guns on him until he dropped the ax was like a scene out of a movie.
He was on the ground, and it was overkill, in my opinion, but they had no way of knowing what the man was on, and he was big and strong. But there was a knee driven down between his shoulder blades, one in the small of his back, and the last guy sat on his legs. It could not have been comfortable.
They sort of hog-tied him with PlastiCuffs and carried him to the back of one of the police cars. Once there, they came for me. The street in the little suburban neighborhood was full of working families, so there was no one out on the sidewalk to witness any of the excitement.
I gave my statement to Officer Fields as more men in blue joined us, clustering around. They asked if I was okay, and I explained again that I had not gotten out of the van. It was picture-taking time after that.
When my phone rang, I saw that it was Sam and excused myself.
“Where are you?” he asked me.
“Where are you?”
“I’m finally home. I took a shower and—did you go to work? I want to talk to you about everything and just… I need to see you, so can you come home?”
I coughed. “I’m actually with the police.”
There was a brief silence.
“What?”
“Mr. Parker just attacked me after I dropped off Kola and B, but I’ll be home after I finish with the police and then call Aaron to figure out where to take the—”
“Attacked you?”
“Well”—I gestured at the poor Mercedes he couldn’t see—“yeah, I mean the van, not me. Well, yeah, me, but mostly the van. It would have been me if he could’ve reached me, but—”
“Jesus Christ, Jory! Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt, were you listening? I was in the minivan and it just got beat to shit.”
“Where—” His voice cracked, bottomed out. “—are you exactly?”
I read him the street sign I could see from where I was and told him to hold on because the policeman had to talk to me.
“Put him on the phone.”
“But Sam, I—”
“Put him on the phone,” he growled.
“Fine, God, don’t make that noise,” I snapped, passing my iPhone to the officer. He looked confused.
“Just—” I nodded, gesturing for him to put it to his ear. “Talk to the Federal Marshal.”
Fun to watch the man’s eyes go all big and round, and he started answering questions that were being fired fast, judging from the brevity and quickness of the answers. Apparently Mr. Parker’s ex-wife was now suing for sole custody of their son based on the incident with Kola at the school. Until the custody got sorted out, Oliver was with his mother, and she had filed a restraining order against her ex-husband as well.
If Sam had not been a marshal and an ex-Chicago Police detective, he would not have been given all that information, but as it was, the officer spilled it all and did a lot of yes sir, no sir, very good sir until the phone came back to me.
“Don’t move. Sit your ass down on the curb and wait for me.”
“But what about the—”
“I’m sending a tow truck for the van. Just… sit.”
“How in any realm of possibility can this be my fault?”
“You’re a trouble magnet.”
“I am not!”
“I bet you said that with a straight face!”
“Sam!”
“Get off the phone. I have to call Aaron Sutter, which is gonna make my whole fuckin’ day!”
“He really likes Duncan, you know.”
“Oh that’s fantastic news.”
“The sarcasm is not lost on me.”
“I could give a fuck! The only—”
“Oh come on, you care a little, I can tell. You and Duncan Stiel are—”
“Like I started to say, the only thing those two are gonna fuckin’ do is make each other fuckin’ miserable, but they’re both bastards, so they deserve each other!”
“Back to swearing, are we?”
“Jory!”
Oh he was mad, and for whatever reason, I couldn’t stop smiling.
God, I loved Sam Kage all pissed off. It made for the violent rush toward bed that made my heart stop. Because when Sam was furious, he went silent and cold, but right now, pushed and prodded, he was like one of those rodeo bulls that just charged out and decimated whatever was in its path. I couldn’t wait to get home and have him throw me down on the bed and hold me down. Oh, I was so in for it—I would be completely and utterly ravished. I shivered just thinking about it.
“Dane said we’re moving,” I baited him some more.
“I already told you we were moving! Do you ever listen to anything I say? Ever?”
This was fun. “And so Dwyer and Salcedo were the same guy, huh, Sam? I guess love is blind and you missed it.”
“What? What did you say to me?”
I cackled. There was no way not to. “It’s okay, you loved him and he loved you, but you had to come home to—”
“I came home because the op was done and I had to get back to you! I needed you! I wanted you! I loved you! That’s why I fuckin’ came home!”
“Loved?” I pressed him.
“Jory, I swear to God, I will fuckin’ beat you if you don’t—”
“So you love me? Sam? Do you? Am I it? The only one? Am I?”
“I’m gonna kill you!”
“Oh come on, say you love me. C’mon, Sammy, you can say it… come on….”
“Sammy?”
I lost it in heaving laughter, his complete indignation slaying me completely.
He roared and the phone went dead, and I had the sudden urge to hide or run, but instead I called Aaron Sutter.
“Can’t talk now,” he told me when he picked up. “Your man is on the other line.”
“Yeah, but you like me better.”
“Yeah, but Duncan… he mentioned that he respects Sam quite a bit, and he was thinking that he might want to follow the same path as Sam did in becoming a marshal and was hoping he could get Sam’s help with that.”
“You don’t just decide one day to become a marshal; it’s like, a real job, you know.”
“No, I know, he knows.”
And it hit me. “Jesus, Aaron, you way more than just like Duncan Stiel.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said and hung up on me.
It took me a minute to wrap my brain around Aaron Sutter hanging up on me. Usually I hung up on him, not the other way around.
But I had taken a backseat; I was finally clearly in the friend column, because the real guy had finally shown up.
I always thought that not being the guy Aaron Sutter wanted would be a letdown. It was an ego boost to be the ideal, someone else’s heart’s desire. I thought I would miss it when the day came that I tumbled from my pedestal. I figured, in my secret heart, that I would be sad, but faced with it now, faced with forever being just his friend, I was thrilled… and terrified.
What if Duncan was not ready for the force of nature that Aaron was? What if he ran? What if….
I would help if I could, but that was all I could do. All my life I had fixed everything—or tried to—but really I had no control over any of it. I had power over just me, influence over a few others, and the ability to make Sam and my children happy. What more could I ask for?
I tu
rned my head at the roar of a motor, saw Sam’s monster car, and ran down the sidewalk. He pulled up alongside me, the door flew open, and he got out and rushed around the front of the car to reach me.
I held out my arms.
He froze.
“Come here.” I wiggled my fingers.
“What is this?”
“This is me delirious to see you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.” I glared at him. “Now come here.”
“I love you too,” he growled and pounced, and I was in his arms, crushed in the iron embrace, his face pressed to the side of my neck as he shivered hard.
“Not leaving you, never leaving you. We’re good, we’re solid.
But for you, where would I be?”
He just breathed me in.
“I don’t care who you loved or who loved you. I’m not jealous because look where you are. You chose me and our life, and you’re not going anywhere without me or the kids.”
“No,” he promised as he lifted his head and took my face in his hands. I saw it in his eyes, the emotion surging through him, and then he was kissing me violently, completely, missing nothing as he devoured my mouth. “Never—” He kissed harder, deeper, his mouth so hot and wet. “—leaving you, you’re mine, you make it all work.”
I couldn’t think of anything better.
MY TORRID sex fantasy got waylaid by Sam and I having to go down to the police station to press charges against Mr. Parker, which took a lot longer than I thought it would. They asked me if he had yelled anything when he was attacking the car, but I lied and said no. I knew why he was enraged, and it honestly had less to do with my sexuality and everything to do with his ex-wife and his kid and pinning his anger someplace. Me being gay was not the issue; the issue was displacement. I was not the victim of a hate crime; I was the scapegoat because he had anger issues. And just because I didn’t want to think about it anymore, I deleted the video of him coming at me first with the bat and then the ax. I didn’t want to be caught in a lie and saying that it was too painful to keep sounded plausible.
I wasn’t sure how things were going to work out for him. This was his second time in jail in days—Chaz and Pat had picked him up for breaking Kola’s finger—and he would not be arraigned until the following morning.
