Harkham's Case (Harkam's #1) (43 page)

It was easy to find the candles. They emitted a light vanilla fragrance as soon as she lit them. The long tapers cast a warm glow. She noticed they had dimmers in the kitchen, so she turned the unnatural lighting down to halfway, then took her seat.

Music floated into the room, and it was a beautiful piano piece she didn’t recognize.

Adam walked into the room, holding both his dad and Samara’s hand with Zach directly behind them. Zach’s hands were on Adam’s shoulders, and he was smirking.

“Can you believe this crazy family?” Zach asked Mari when they were all at the table, taking their seats.

“No, I honestly can’t, because I never ate with either of my parents. I can count on one hand how often that happened,” she said.

“That’s not what I meant.” Zach’s eyes softened and his smile faded. “That really sucks. Did you eat at the table alone?”

“Mostly in my room. I’d listen to music or watch something on my phone. Mom wasn’t usually around at dinnertime anyway. Either she’d work late or be out with her current boyfriend. I never paid much attention. Besides, she and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on food choices, so it kind of happened naturally that we ate apart.”

“That’s so sad.” Adam held her hand. “I’d miss eating with my family. That’s when we all get to talk about our day.”

Mari’s eyes flicked over to Samara. Would that change now that Mari was here? Would Samara keep quiet?

“No wonder this meal is so special to your family. I’ll try to honor it as best as I can,” Mari said.

“Too late for that,” Samara grumbled with her head down and her hands in her lap.

“What
did
I
say
?” their father said.

“I know what you said—doesn’t mean I agree,” Samara replied and looked up at him with an expression of bitterness.

“But you’ll keep it to yourself,” their dad responded.

She nodded, but barely.

“So, how do we do this? Do you bless it or do we all start eating after your da”—she cleared her throat and stopped mid-sentence when she remembered he’d asked her to call him by his name—“after Dusty does?” Mari winced slightly. It still sounded stiff and wrong to call him that.

“We’re not that formal,” Zach answered. He dished food onto his plate and started eating. “Once everybody’s ass is in a chair, the food is fair game.”

“Dustin?” Mari tried that one instead, and it felt as forced as the other one. “Can I ask you something?” Her voice was so soft she barely recognized it.

“Of course.” Dustin passed the rice to Adam.

Adam set it down and watched them with interest.

“I realized when I was talking to Amelia”—she swallowed at her sudden dawning on her lack of manners by referring to his
colleague
?
Friend
? by her first name— “I haven’t had a smoke in two days. Maybe this is a good sign. Maybe it’s time I quit?”

“You want my seal of approval? I think that’s a given—definitely get rid of that vile habit. You’ll be glad you did, and so will I.” Dustin loaded up his fork with food without looking at her once while speaking to her.

Mari smiled shyly. “That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to ask you . . .” Adam squeezed her hand, still with an empty plate before him. “I was wondering if you could help me—give me some medical advice on how to go about kicking this habit.” She started dishing Adam some food to keep her nervousness away. “Like, should I go on the nicotine patch? I know there’re other options, but I never paid any attention to them because I didn’t have a reason to quit. I finally feel like I don’t need them.” She gulped. Her stomach was arguing—warning nausea was around the corner.

This would be a bad time to throw up.

She rubbed her abs a little when nobody was looking and sipped some water.

Dustin’s eyes moved over to her, and his level gaze made her hands shake as she scooped rice onto her plate.

“I can definitely help.” Dustin’s eyes smiled at her even if his mouth did
not
. “I’m happy to give you some advice, and, Mari . . .”

“Mmm?”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am you came to me with this.” His dad took a bite of food, chewed with a thoughtful expression on his face and swallowed. “Now, who has something they want to share about their day?”

“I
do
!” Adam almost shouted. “Dr. Harkham said I’m a bright man with a spectacular future ahead of me.”

“That’s awesome,” Zach said, his dimples deep and welcoming.

“
I
thought so . . .” Adam’s thumb stroked the outside of Mari’s hand. “And she said if I want to have a baby with Mari, I should do a lot of research first. So that’s what I’m doing. Zach gave me a great book.”

His father’s face froze.

Mari’s heart stopped, and her hand was made of stone, clasped inside of Adam’s.

Zach snickered. “It is a helluva book,” he agreed.

“No porn in it?” his dad inquired.

Zach laughed harder. “Nope. Just good advice on how to have sex if you’ve never done it before. It’s actually a book Mom gave me a long time ago. It’s well-worn, but he didn’t seem to mind.” He took a hearty bite of his meal.

“Mari doesn’t want to have kids, though. She already told me. I think that’s a bad decision—we’ll talk more about it so when we’re married we’ll already agree.” Adam nodded and began eating.

Was this normal dinner conversation?

Mari sat, stunned, barely blinking.

“Children are a big responsibility.” Samara finally spoke up. “And what if your child has your disability?” Her dark eyes bore into his light, effused ones.

His glowing smile continued on. “I know that’s a possibility, but I would be able to teach my son how to deal with it in the right way.”

“
Son
?” Mari choked.

“Yeah.” Adam looked at her like she was slow. “It’s gonna be a boy. I can feel it. And that book has a section on how to plan the gender of the baby.”

“That’s not a 100 percent guarantee,” his dad said.

Nobody was eating anymore. Mari’s eyes roamed around the table.

“Is there a problem with girls? Are you saying you’d only love this child if it was a boy?” Samara asked, emotion’s cracking her voice.

“No. I’d probably love a girl more, because she’d be like her mom, but something tells my gut it’s gonna be a boy.” Mari pulled her hand free. Adam’s fingers flexed, and he kept talking. “That is after I convince her to have a child with me.”

“She seems to be pretty good at saying no to you so far,” Zach said with his fist in front of his mouth, muffling his opinion.

Samara stood up, took her plate over to the garbage, emptied the food inside, rinsed the dish and set it in the dishwasher.

She marched back over to the table and asked her father, “May I be excused since I’m done eating?”

“Yes, you may, but you’re going to clean the bathroom right now as way of apology for being so rude to your new sister who cooked this meal for you since you couldn’t manage to do it in a civil manner.” Her father flipped his wrist at her like he was shooing her away.

Samara released a shrill sound as she tromped out of the room.

* * *

Mari and Zach were busy.

“I can move that,” Adam told Mari as she carried Zach’s laundry basket for him.

“I’ve got it,” she said.

He frowned. “Zach! Quit giving her heavy things. Give those to me,” he called out.

Zach chuckled from in his room. “She’s the one grabbing ‘em,” he hollered back.

A moment later, all three of them were in Mari’s new room. A few of Zach’s football posters were still on the walls, but most of his stuff was already moved.

Adam pouted. They didn’t give him much to do, and she kept talking to his brother.

“I hate that group!” she said with a laugh. “They’re sell-outs.”

“That’s what’s cool about them,” Zach said with a smirk.

Sell-outs
? What did that mean?

Adam flopped onto her new bed. It smelled like his brother’s cologne. Yick!

He got up and started pulling the blanket off.

Nobody seemed to notice or care.

She stood a foot away from Zach, smiling and saying in a happy voice, “That doesn’t even make sense.” She shoved Zach’s shoulder.

Zach laughed so loud Adam covered his ears.

“Come on—
you
work out. Use those muscles. Move me out of your space,” Zach challenged.

She grinned with her lips pressed tight together. “Don’t even . . .”

“Why?
Afraid
?” Zach shoved her shoulder back.

Adam sprung between them, but Mari moved him out of the way without even looking at him.

All of his insides were like black, sticky mud—messy and dirty. He wanted to push his brother so hard that Zach would pull a muscle and have to stay in bed for days.

His eyes watered.

This was wrong! But Mari and Zach liked each other. They talked a lot, and she was doing stuff with him she never did with Adam.

She didn’t play rough with him like
this
.

“I’m warning you, tough guy!” Mari smiled.

“Oh
yeah
? Warning me
how
?” Zach rocked back and forth from side to side.

“I grew up surrounded by big dudes. I played football with them all the time. They never held back, and neither do I.” She bit her lip, but her smile was still there.

“Show me. Arm wrestle?” Zach suggested.

“
No!
You’ll hurt her,” Adam protested.

“Leg wrestle. We’ll be more even that way,” she said.

Zach sunk to the ground.

She shoved a pair of Zach’s shoes out of the way and then lay down on the floor.

Zach was next to her, their hips lined up and their heads by the other’s feet.

She giggled. “This is so dumb.”

“Cool, huh?” Zach chuckled. “One . . .”

“Two . . .” She followed.

“Three!” they shouted in unison.

In a blinding flash, their legs were in the air and their knees intertwined. Within seconds she had Zach’s bent knee by his ear and he was flipped over.

“How’d you do that?” Adam asked, covering his mouth with a fist. The other hand shifted over his suddenly hard penis.

“Practiced with all sorts of guys—most of them bigger than you,” she answered, directing her comment at his brother like Zach had asked instead of him.

Adam growled. “My turn!”

“Nah, it’s okay . . . I need to set my stuff up in here,” Mari said, getting up.

He offered her his hand, but she ignored it and moved herself to standing without him.

A knot tugged at his stomach.

“Before you go . . .” she directed her words to his brother again “. . . explain real quick what you mean by ‘them being sell-outs is what’s so
great
about them.’”

Adam sat back down on the bed. “Please leave,” he told his brother.

Zach paced over to the doorway, turned around and paused. He looked at Adam briefly, smiling, then his attention went back to her. “Have you ever seen the
Matrix
movies?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Well, some people don’t like it because they say they copied other movies before them and kind of mashed them together. You following me so far?” Zach ducked down a little like he was trying to see into her eyes.

It was odd because she was standing several feet away.

She chuckled. “Yeah. So you’re saying they’re paying homage to other popular bands, taking what others do best and combining it into goulash music for our picky eaters?” She laughed loudly at him.

Adam’s insides were all mangled. His frustration over not understanding what they were talking about turned into numbers, but he hummed to make it go away. The problem was it was hard to hear what they were saying.

He fisted the sheet on the bed, took a few deep breaths and rocked back and forth.

“ . . . better go,” he heard her say at the end of some garbled sentence.

Soft hands cupped around his ears, lips landed on his crown and feminine fingers threaded through his hair.

“Adam . . . ? Sweetie, talk to me,” she cooed.

“I like it when you say that,” Adam whispered. His eyes were struggling to focus—his head was foggy.

“When I say
what
?”

“Sweetie. You’ve called me that five other times—this is the sixth, and I wish you’d do it more.” Adam’s body was still moving to a rhythm. “It’s nice.”

“I . . . I didn’t even realize I ever called you that,” she said, lowering herself into a crouch. Her hands used his thighs for support to get into that position.