The Last Man She Expected

by Michelle Major

  A birthday party was supposed to be fun, not an event to make her daughter feel even more of an outsider.

  Why couldn’t anything be easy these days?

  As they got closer to the opening, Evie lost her balance and face-planted on the floor, sending her glasses flying.

  Mara’s stomach pitched. “It’s okay, honey.” She bent and plucked up the frames before they got wedged in the side of the house. As she turned back, a pair of wide shoulders blocked her view of her daughter for a moment. Then the man who’d been jumping with the kids hauled Evie up, her poufy pink skirt flouncing around her, and helped her out of the structure.

  Mara couldn’t decide whether to be grateful for the help or nervous Evie would freak out at the attention.

  As long as she didn’t puke, Mara thought as she lost her balance again. She tumbled forward to the edge of the entrance, and the corner of the flap that covered the opening snagged on her shirt because that’s how the day was going. Why not flash half the party on her way out the door? Then a warm, slightly calloused hand touched her bare back before she could yank the fabric into place again.

  Righting herself, she turned to thank whoever had rescued her daughter only to come face-to-face with the man who’d helped ruin her life.

  “You,” she whispered, her throat going dry. Rage roared through her.

  Her ex-husband’s pit bull of a divorce attorney offered a friendly smile, clearly not recognizing her. “It’s kind of crazy in here, right?”

  Crazy pretty much summed up what Mara was feeling at the moment. Crazy angry. Crazy bitter. Crazy with the need for revenge.

  The one thing that didn’t feel crazy was moving forward, crowding Parker Johnson and whispering, “I hate you,” before trying to elbow her way past him.

  Confusion marred his movie-star handsome features as he reached for her. “Wait. I don’t even know you.”

  She yanked her arm away, throwing him off-balance in the process. He stumbled a step and then he was gone, falling through the opening to the bounce house and landing with a thud on the hard ground.

  * * *

  “Your friend is crazy,” Parker Johnson muttered, hissing as his brother pressed a bag of frozen peas to the knot on the back of his head.

  “She’s not,” Josh insisted tightly. “Hold the peas, Parker.”

  His hand replaced Josh’s, and he tried not to wince. “You should have seen the look in her eyes when she said she hated me. If she’d had a dull knife in her hand, she probably would have gutted me.”

  “You were her husband’s divorce attorney,” Josh said, as if that explained everything.

  “I’ve been a lot of peoples’ divorce attorney.”

  “And you’ve never been practically knocked unconscious? I’m shocked.”

  Parker narrowed his eyes and ignored the truth of the statement. “Funny.”

  Josh moved toward the window of the small laundry room that held the extra freezer where he’d found the peas, and pulled the curtain aside enough to see out. “We need to sing Happy Birthday and cut the cake. This party needs a distraction. I don’t want Anna’s celebration to be a total bust.”

  “Go,” Parker told him. “I’m fine.”

  Josh turned with a sigh. “Are you sure you don’t need a trip to the ER? It looked like you popped your head pretty hard. You might have a concussion.”

  “I don’t have a concussion. I have a dull headache, but at this point my pride is what hurts the most. She caught me off guard.”

  “Mara’s great, but the divorce was really tough on her. She lost everything. Starlight is a good place to start over, but she’s had trouble letting go of her anger.”

  Parker swallowed down the lump of guilt that tried to lodge itself in his throat. He hadn’t become one of the top attorneys in Seattle by allowing himself to feel bad for the work he did. If he took someone on as a client, their marriage was already way off the rails. Yes, he was cutthroat. Of course his tactics bordered on ruthless. Those things made him the best.

  There was no room in his life for entertaining another person’s bruised feelings. When a marriage went south, weakness only led to more heartache. He’d learned that lesson from his parents and he figured he knew way more about losing everything than Mara Reed ever would.

  “Take care of Anna and the party,” he told Josh. “I’m sure you’ll love reliving the moment I was felled by a woman.”

  “A woman who probably weighs fifty pounds less than you,” Josh clarified with a small smile. Josh and Parker shared the same build, big and broad, although that’s where their physical similarities ended. They had polar-opposite personalities, as well. Frankly, Parker was stunned at how natural the role of dad came to his little brother. “Mara is tiny.”

  “That should make the story even better.” Parker had noticed Mara the moment she climbed into the bounce house, chiding himself for admiring the figure of one of the moms at his niece’s nauseatingly pink sixth birthday party. He’d registered her enthusiasm for getting into the structure but realized the venture wasn’t for fun as she’d awkwardly moved toward a kid cowering in the corner.

  Parker had been happy for an excuse to stop bouncing with the kids. When the girl had fallen, he’d helped her out, just in the nick of time based on the unnatural shade of green coloring her face.

  Next he’d placed a steadying hand on the woman when she’d stumbled. In his mind it had been an innocuous touch, so her reaction had shocked him. The woman hadn’t stuck around after he’d fallen, had climbed out, then lifted her daughter into her arms and disappeared amidst the crowd of partygoers that surrounded him, most of whom he’d known since childhood.

  His wannabe mortal enemy had been a stranger, or so he’d thought until Josh explained that her ex-husband was Paul Reed. Parker hadn’t particularly liked the man he’d represented in divorce court three separate times, but friendship was by no means a requisite of his job. In fact, he tried to keep his professional and personal lives separate. Since he usually worked seven days a week, he had very little personal life to speak of.

  The sound of a throat clearing several minutes after Josh returned to the party had him glancing toward the laundry room door.

  “Come to finish me off?” he asked as Mara Reed walked into the room.

  She sniffed. “How’s your head?”

  He removed the bag of peas, tossing them to the top of the dryer. “I’ve taken harder hits.”

  “Not that I meant for you to fall, but I can’t say you didn’t deserve it,” she told him, crossing her arms over her chest.

  He raised a brow. “That’s an interesting way to apologize.”

  She gave a humorless laugh. “I’m not here to say sorry.”

  Parker felt his mouth drop open. “You practically pushed me out of the bounce house.”

  “Not quite. You grabbed for me and I evaded you with my catlike reflexes. Is it my problem that you’re clumsy?”

  He had to admire her moxie. The moment had happened so fast, but he was pretty sure she’d given him a tiny shove when he stumbled. Not that he’d throw her under the bus by telling anyone. “If you didn’t seek me out to apologize, why are you here?”

  “You took everything from me,” she said instead of answering, her husky voice laced with bitterness.

  “Your anger is misdirected,” Parker said, shifting under the weight of her stony glare. “I’m not your ex-husband.” He’d represented hundreds of clients over the years, but this was the first time he’d actually been confronted outside the courtroom. He didn’t like the way Mara Reed made him feel, as if he’d been the one to cause the destruction of her marriage.

  “No,” she agreed, her hazel eyes giving him a slow once-over. Despite her obvious dislike of him and the obstinate set of her heart-shaped jaw, there was no denying Mara’s beauty. She had dark hair with a few hints of b
urnished gold highlighting it and pale, luminous skin that would have inspired the finest Renaissance painter.

  She was taller than average, something he’d always appreciated in a woman given that he stood well over six feet. She’d fit perfectly with him, a thought that almost made him laugh for its absurdity. He couldn’t imagine any scenario which would make Mara want to be close to him.

  “You made it possible for him to destroy me,” she said, her voice oddly devoid of emotion. He wanted to deny it, but the truth was he couldn’t remember the details of her case, especially since she’d been Paul Reed’s much younger third wife. He’d already been twice down that road with his client. It was a mental trick he employed, not allowing himself to see the opponent as a person. Mara Reed had been a name to him, an entity he’d set out to take down like he was a remote-control drone zeroing in on a target.

  “It wasn’t personal.”

  She flinched, and he wanted to take back the words. They were simple enough as part of his job, but he imagined they felt like salt dumped into an open wound to Mara. Despite his now pounding headache, he didn’t mean to hurt her. He understood what he did for a living and had come to terms with the man he’d become as a result, even if he didn’t always like himself because of it.

  “It was to me,” she whispered and walked away.

  Chapter Two

  “Thanks for holding down the fort,” Josh said as he entered the kitchen later that night. “How’s your head?”

  Parker gingerly touched two fingers to the small goose egg on the back of his head. “It’s fine.”

  Josh grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top and then took a long pull. “It meant a lot to Anna to have you here.”

  “I should have been around for her treatments. If I’d known—”

  “I had it under control,” Josh said without emotion despite the pain etched across his features. For a second Parker barely recognized his kind, gentle, teddy bear of a brother.

  “Your daughter had cancer and your wife left you.” Parker shook his head as he reached for the final length of pink streamers hanging across the breakfast nook. “Hell, Josh, I’m good at what I do. At least I could have helped with the divorce.”

  “I didn’t need help, and I told you I don’t want to talk about Jenn. It’s fine.”

  “Then do you want to talk about where you went tonight?” After the guests left the party and Anna was tucked in for bed, Parker had been ready to head back to Seattle when his brother asked him to stay at the house so he could run a quick errand.

  “Not really.”

  “Is it a woman?” Parker had a feeling the explanation wouldn’t be so clear-cut, but he had to ask. “If not Mara then—”

  “There’s no woman,” Josh insisted, placing his beer on the counter. “Definitely not Mara.” Josh grimaced. “That would be like dating my sister.”

  “We don’t have a sister,” Parker felt the need to point out. He couldn’t imagine how his brother—or any man—wouldn’t be attracted to Mara.

  “You know what I mean. Tonight was business.”

  “What kind of construction emergency happens at eight on a Saturday night?”

  Josh stared at him a long moment and then said, “I bought the Dennison Lumber Mill.”

  The breath whooshed out of Parker’s lungs like he’d been punched in the gut. “How? Why?”

  “It was right after Anna finished chemo. Jenn had left and I was overwhelmed. I felt like I didn’t have control over anything and I wanted—”

  “To saddle yourself with an abandoned building?” Parker scrubbed a hand over his face. “The building that was the bane of Dad’s existence. When I think about all the frustration that place caused him and the ways he took out his anger on us...” He stalked to the edge of the kitchen, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat.

  His father’s long tenure as mayor of Starlight had been marred by one huge failure. Mac Johnson had tried to prevent the lumber mill from closing, and the fact he hadn’t been able to plagued him and triggered his temper on many occasions. Almost a hundred local jobs had been lost when the mill owners pulled out, a hit a small town like Starlight couldn’t afford. Parker hated everything about the mill and what it represented in his childhood. How could Josh tie himself to that building?

  “I wanted to succeed where he failed,” Josh said into the silence that stretched between them. “I needed something—a project, a goal—something to make me feel like I had control.”

  Parker schooled his features and turned to face his brother. He wouldn’t show how much the thought of that place got to him. “Has it worked?”

  “I can barely step onto the property without wanting to puke. I’d planned to turn it into a multiuse space. Adaptive reuse is all the rage in historic preservation these days. But I’m so behind schedule and now...” Josh let out a humorless laugh.

  “Tell me.”

  He watched as his younger brother’s fingers tightened on the edge of the counter. They were only fourteen months apart, but Parker had always taken care of Josh, or at least he’d tried to when they were younger. That had mainly consisted of keeping them both out of reach of their mercurial father, who’d been beloved by the community but feared and hated within his own home.

  Parker still wondered what would have happened if his mom had found the courage to leave Mac when he and Josh were boys. But there was no changing the past. Lillian Johnson had done the best she could, he supposed. Yes, she’d stayed with an abusive husband but had attempted to prevent Parker and Josh from becoming targets. She’d hidden her bruises and kept a smile on her face, but both boys had known how difficult Mac made life for their mother.

  Josh, a quiet boy who never developed the subtle skill of staying out of his father’s crosshairs, had been particularly sensitive to the violence. Parker had made it his mission to protect his brother, although it hadn’t always worked and more often than not, Parker would end up comforting Josh in their darkened bedroom after one of Mac’s violent tirades. After a sudden heart attack killed Mac during Parker’s senior year of high school, all bets were off. Parker left Starlight and the difficult memories behind, hoping his brother would do the same.

  But Josh had stayed, working on construction crews in the area and eventually getting his general contractor’s license. He’d met Jenn at a local bar and they’d gotten married in Vegas after a whirlwind romance. Parker hadn’t even known about the wedding until months later.

  Despite their distance, Josh had seemed happy, which made Parker happy. He hadn’t pushed for a closer relationship with his brother or his young niece. They had their own lives, he told himself. Up until a few months ago, he believed that dinner once a year and a few texts back and forth were enough.

  Not anymore.

  “I’m going to default on the loan if the project doesn’t open on time,” his brother said, his eyes drifting closed as if saying the words caused him pain. “There’s a second mortgage on the house, and I’m behind on those payments, too, so...”

  Parker muttered a curse. “What do you need? How much?”

  “I’m not a stupid kid.” Josh shook his head. He’d always been quiet, sweet and stubborn as hell. “I don’t need you to bail me out.”

  “I know you’re not a kid.” Parker forced himself to take a slow breath. He could hear the thread of agitation in his brother’s voice. “Despite the struggles, you’ve made a great life for yourself. I don’t know how you made it through Anna’s treatments on your own. To take on a project like the mill at the same time is amazing. But if you need help—”

  “I’m not taking your money.”

  “It doesn’t have to be money.” Although writing a check would be easy, Parker knew it wouldn’t solve the deeper problems of their past. Returning to Starlight reminded him of all the things he’d done wrong in his life, and top on that list
was leaving his younger brother. “You’re not alone in this. You never have to feel like you’re alone.”

  Josh pressed his fingers to either side of his head. “I can’t fail. Dad always expected me to fail.”

  “He’s been gone for years,” Parker murmured, even though he understood the way memories could hold a person hostage. Physical injuries healed quickly enough, but they’d never discussed the lingering emotional scars each of them harbored as a result of growing up with an abusive parent.

  Josh had always seemed so much like their mother, and Lillian flourished after her husband’s death. She became a totally different person, no longer the broken, scared woman he’d known growing up. Mac’s death had been a release of sorts. Unshackled from her horrendous marriage, she’d reinvented herself.

  She’d gone back to college, and now worked as a nurse at a pediatrician’s office two hours away in Spokane. She had a large group of friends and had dated the same man, a retired postal worker, for the past few years. She rarely came to Seattle and didn’t ask Parker to visit her. She seemed to expect nothing from him, never pressuring him to settle down the way some mothers did.

  It was almost as if she’d blocked that whole period of their lives from her memory, and Parker thought Josh had done the same thing. Parker was the son who’d taken after their father, both in looks and temperament. He hated his resemblance to Mac more than anything and tried to ignore it, which was part of the reason he kept his distance from Starlight. Locals loved to walk down memory lane with him, never realizing the way they remembered his dad was categorically opposite of the man Parker had known.

  “I think you need to talk to Mom, too,” Parker told his brother.

  “She helped enough when Anna got sick. She took time off work to stay with us during the worst of the recovery and stocked the freezer with meals.”

  “If you asked for more help—”

  “I can’t do that to her.” Josh forced a smile. “Or to you.”