The Complete Series Boxed Set (42 page)

“I’m…no, no, Mike, you have me all wrong. I’m not here for your money.”

“You’re here for Laura’s.” Mike didn’t ask. He declared.

“
I am here to get to know my niece and grand-niece!” Frank declared in a staged voice, as if there were an audience. Mike was a singular witness, though. Shelly was long gone.
 

“You’re here to exact money from us, just like you forced poor Laura to cough up a bunch of her mother’s estate,” Mike said flatly. “Don’t play games. We know.”

“Is that what Laura told you?” A bitter, sad laugh followed. “I knew she was mentally fragile, but I didn’t know she was…inventing like that.”

Mike’s heat flashed over to ice cold.

“Excuse me?” If he’d possessed a weapon of any kind, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to stop his hands from using it. Shit.
Dylan would know how to end this, how to make this guy leave, how to drive him out like a dog with his tail between his legs. Mike wasn’t good at this, and his internal sense of how to structure his words, how to read Frank’s nonverbal cues, was falling apart.
 

He was devolving into something primal,
the
instinct to protect Laura and Jillian
at full throttle
, and if he gave in to it Frank was going to get hurt.

Writing a check for more than he earned in a year just three years ago was less of a price to pay than a lawyer’s defense fee on an assault charge.

A tiny voice inside him, the one that guided him through breathing deeply and not turning Frank into a pile of ground beef, couldn’t fathom that he had the potential for such violence in him.

Apparently he did, and Laura and
Jillian
were the trigger.

Frank tilted his head as if he were struggling to say something distasteful, as if he were being modest and not wanting to speak ill of someone. A white and red cloud of rage made it hard to actually watch the man.

“Laura always had a flair for the dramatic,” Frank said with a low chuckle, moving covertly toward the door. Perhaps Mike wasn’t hiding his anger as well as he thought.

Perhaps that was a good thing.

“Dramatic.” Mike repeated the word like he’d taken a bite of fresh cow shit.

“So you know?” Frank’s smile twisted Mike’s guts.

“I know what?”

“How she can make situations seem different from the facts.”

Oh, no. Oh, no.
T
he man did not just do
that
.

“Get out,” Mike roared. The sound was so loud, so packed with sheer fight, that it made Mike’s ribs vibrate. He half expected the window to shatter.

Frank jumped, his neck twisting with shock. “Excuse—”

“Get out of my office before I show you exactly how I handle someone who comes into our life and accuses my woman of lying.” Mike bore down on him, making Frank stumble. A warning voice told him not to touch the man, but there were about three seconds left between Mike’s ability to hold himself back and the need for Frank to get the fuck out of his sight.

“Lying? No, I wasn’t—” Frank froze. Whatever he saw in Mike’s eyes made him shut up and walk to the door, as jittery as a man fleeing an uncaged game lion.

“You have exactly twenty seconds to be out of my building before I call security,” Mike ground out from his door, grabbing the
edge
with a hand that left finger imprints in the soft wood.

Shelly came out of her office and looked at both men. “Can I—”

Slam!

Mike picked up the phone, stabbing the numbers with brutal efficiency. Dylan’s voice cut through the oppressive cloud of everything.

“Mike?”

“He was here.”

“And?”

“
G
et that PI on the case now. Right now.”

“You okay?”

“No.”

Dylan’s long sigh made Mike wince. “Go for a run, man. Right now.”

“Can’t. I’m in a suit.”

“You own the place. Just run. Do the stairs, go on the trails—just run. I don’t want you driving like this.”

“Like what?”

“Mike,” Dylan said in a low voice. “You sound like you’re about to murder someone.”

Mike’s hand holding the receiver began to shake. “I was.”

“I know.” The gentle tone his partner took made the mist clear, dropping like a fine dust all over Mike’s soul. “And I know you. Run it out. Fuck the expensive suit and shoes.
P
ound it out before you come home. And for
G
od’s sake, don’t go near that motherfucker. I don’t want to bail you out of jail for assault.”

“Hasn’t happened yet,” Mike barked.

“And I hope
i
t never will.”

“That guy comes near Laura or Jillie, so help me
G
od—”

“He won’t.”

“But if he—”

“He
won’t
. Just run.”

Mike could feel his heart beat again, the slow adjustment back to a more aware state seeping in. Pure fury had taken over, mingling all his body functions into a cloud of noise. Now he could feel the hard plastic of the phone against his palm, how the receiver scratched against his chin, the way his blood pounded through his thighs, needing to be drained and wrung by a long run.

“Just run,” Dylan repeated.

So Mike did.

The front door opened and in walked Mike, dripping wet from sweat, wearing the same gorgeous suit he’d worn this morning, battered black dress shoes flying across the floor as he kicked them off. His hair was absolutely
drenched
, so wet it curled up in little ringlets around his head, just like Jillian’s did after a bath.

H
e was soaked through, suit jacket and all, a handful of dry patches here and there. Pants, too—sweat spots took over most of the clothing.

“Run into a sprinkler on your way home?”
Laura joked.
She caught a peek at the driveway outside before he closed the door behind him and stared in confusion. “Where’s the
J
eep?”

“Not here.” Mike could barely talk as he peeled off his clothes in the foyer, dropping the fine cloth to the ground, where it hit with a strange thud,
like a melon wrapped in a wet pillowcase
.

“What do you mean not here? Did the Jeep break down?”

“No.”

She felt Dylan’s presence behind her and turned around to see an inscrut
a
ble look on his face. His eyes met Mike’s, and something passed between them, some unspoken message that she knew she’d never know. They had this…
ab
i
lity
to do that. It used to make her feel left out.

Right now, though, she was just glad that so
m
eone understood what on earth was going on with Mike, because it looked like he’d just—

“You ran home,” Dylan said in an admiring tone.

“Yes.”

“From where?” Laura asked. “And in dress shoes and a suit?”
Why would he run home? Had there been a catastrophe? A flash of September 11, 2001 shot through her consciousness, making her eyes dart to the blank television screen, the set turned off. Had some world disaster struck?
 

“From work.”
Mike’s two-word sentences were freaking her out.
 

“From the resort office?”

“Yes.”
Now he was down to one-word utterances and she was being driven absolutely mad.
 

“But that’s miles!”
Her own shrillness made her stop talking, swallow hard, and turn to look at Dylan, who was staring at Mike. She knew Frank had been in his office. How bad had it been?
 

“I run it all the time.”
Mike struggled to unbutton a cuff, and after the third failed attempt simply ripped at the fabric, a button pinging off a light fixture, landing an inch from her foot. Peeling his arm out of the wet cloth, he dropped the shirt on the floor. A part of Laura’s mind did an inventory of buttons; Jillian would find one and swallow it if allowed. She bent down to get it, and her eyes found his shirt and mentally cataloged. All buttons accounted for.
 

M
ike’s sense of balance was remarkably absent. If only it were as easy to track as buttons…

“
You run home, yes,” she conceded. “But i
n proper running shoes and clothes! Not in tight wingtips and a business suit!”

Bright eyes met hers, feral and predatory. Dangerous. She shut up instantly.

Dylan’s warm hand covered her shoulder and she took a few breaths, trying to understand what had happened. “
I
t’s cool. Go shower, Mike. I’ll explain it all to Laura.”

Mike was stripped down to his boxer briefs, which were as soaked with sweat as if he’d gone swimming in them. His body gleamed, muscles swollen with use, his legs strong and contoured. An urge to touch them, to run her hands along the hills and valleys they made on his thighs and calves, swept through her,
her eyes drinking in the slopes of his glutes, how he looked like a tanned black diamond ski trail, all twists and turns and something she wanted to summit.
 

And go down
.

Sex was the last thing on Mike’s mind,
Laura knew
, as he shook his head curtly and marched past her. The hiss of a shower turning on echoed in the distance.

Laura turned to Dylan and asked, “What the hell is that all about?”

He reached for her hand, then nudged her toward the couch. Uh-oh. Something was
wrong
.

“Is this about Frank?” she asked in a voice so shaky she cringed, hating the neediness in her own tone.
Not that she could help it. Her mind raced to locate Jillian in time and space. That’s right. She sighed and turned around to find Little Miss Sweetie spread out on an activity blanket on the floor in front of the sofa, a set of stacking cups in front of her, spilled pell-mell all over the place.
 

Jillian was chewing on the edge of one of Dylan’s tennis shoes.

“
Yes,” Dylan said, pulling her in for an embrace she didn’t know she needed until his warmth covered her.
 

“Mama hug! Mama hug!” Jillian called out, clapping fat little hands.
Abandoning her snack, s
he leaned forward, stuck her bum in the air, and pushed herself up to standing, toddling over to Dylan and Laura, inserting herself between. Tiny ringlet curls banged against Laura’s knee.

S
he laughed, the sound tight and almost hysterical. Dylan wouldn’t let her pull away. But she had to.

“I need to check on Mike,” she said, and as if she’
d
hollered
Open, Sesame,
Dylan’s arms parted, landing on her shoulders as his eyes locked with hers.

“Go to him,” he said in a deep, calm voice. “He needs you right now more than anything.”

“Dillie hug! Dillie hug!” Not quite mastering her Js yet, Jillie knew how to advocate for what she want
ed
, making Laura reach down and rub the light hair that covered the little girl’s head.

Dylan
picked her up like she was a bag of sugar and tipped her, ass over tea kettle, onto his shoulder, giggles pealing out like happiness in the form of sound. “Dillie, huh? Is that my nickname?”
 

“You dada!” Jillian shouted,
pointing to herself. “Me Dillie!”
 

That’s right
, Laura though
t
.
You dada
. A sharp, bitter taste filled her mouth. If it had a color, it would be green. The same feeling, like
a
squeeze over her heart, had started when Jillian was tiny, just days old. Her own father took off long before Laura could form memories, and watching Dylan and Mike form a fortress of love around their daughter made Laura deeply jealous. Jealous. Not envious, because she certainly didn’t want to take one drop of her fathers’ love away from Jillie, but jealous? Yes.

Ferociously.

The only person she knew who she could even talk to about it was Josie, but right now Josie was so busy with the business and with Alex that Laura hadn’t had two seconds to give her a call and bring it up. Besides, she thought with a sigh as she strode toward the bathroom where Mike showered, there were more pressing matters to attend to.

Franks’s sudden appearance threw her entire life out of balance.

And rightly so.

The man was supposed to have filled the big hole left behind by having no father in her life, but instead he’d never been around. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t talk about him much, but when he breezed into town every few years they’
d
made a to-do about him. The one Thanksgiving and two Christmases she remembered seeing Frank were etched
in
her mind, because they were the only holidays where she’d watched her mother drink to the point of being drunk. Slurred words and silly behavior from a woman who, generally speaking, was mild-mannered, a diligent worker, and a steady presence in Laura’s life.

I
f a little boring.

Grandpa had better filled the father role in Laura’s life,
and
he’d been good. Not enough, though. Not what Jillian had with Mike and Dylan.

Frank’s weird appearance was triggering her emotionally, left, right, and upside down. Mike, too, it seemed.

Mike.

She shook her head slightly to clear her thoughts, eyes tracking Dylan as he carried Jillie into the kitchen to give her a snack. The two spoke to each other in rumbling laughter that faded as the sound of the shower grew sharper, filling Laura’s ears.

A loud thumping alarmed her and she barged into the bathroom, shouting for Mike.

“You okay? What’s that sound?” she called out through steam so thick it covered up the world.

“Fine. In here.” The thumping stopped. A hand splayed across the shower door, peach skin against the white condensation. A thin pink licked at the edges.

“You’re bleeding!” she gasped, opening the shower door. Rough hands pulled her in, clothed and all, the shock of being soaked through
b
y hot needles of wetness making her breath come in hitched whoops, trying to re-establish normalcy.
Mike’s hands gripped her, palms so big he could wrap his fingers around her biceps, and as that registered, the dig of frantic flesh pressing against hers, all thought was obliterated by the crush of his mouth against hers, sucking all the air out of her lungs, the room, the world.