I can’t help it if I’m a one-woman man.
He claps a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. When do you think she’ll be back? I need to thank her.
She wouldn’t want any thanks. I shrug my shoulders. I wish I knew.
Matt points toward the fight, which is about to escalate into a full-out brawl. The little guy is dumb enough to shove the big guy. He falls into a woman behind him, and then her boyfriend starts swinging.
Now, Matt says.
Now. I f**king love this part of the job. It takes four of us. Matt, Ford, another bouncer, and I all jump into the fray and quickly have it under control. But the big man is on the floor with his eyes closed. He has a smile on his face. He’s murmuring something, but I can’t read his lips.
I think he’s singing? Matt says, his eyebrows arching in question. Girl you make my speakers go boom boom?
I laugh. People look over as noise bursts from my throat, but I don’t care. Laughter feels good. Emily taught me that. Help me get him up.
Matt takes one arm while I take the other, and we hoist him onto his wobbly legs. His girlfriend, who is pretty unsteady herself, says, “We need a cab.”
Matt and I haul him out to the cabstand and throw him into a taxi. The girlfriend gets in behind him. I feel bad for the cab driver who will have to throw his big ass out on the sidewalk.
I dust my hands off. At least it’s done.
Snow is falling on us, and I brush my hand across my hair. Suddenly, Matt tenses beside me. What? I ask.
He smiles, claps me on the shoulder and says, Take the rest of the night off. Then he points behind me.
I turn around and freeze. My lungs refuse to do their job, and I stand there, not breathing, not moving, trying not to feel anything. But there she is. Emily is standing on the sidewalk looking at me.
She shifts from foot to foot, looking nervous as hell. Snow is falling on her hair, and she’s not wearing a coat. Surely she can afford a coat. Her family is worth billions. Her dark-blond hair, so unlike the black hair with the blue stripe she had when I met her, falls down to the middle of her back, and she has it tucked behind her ear. She’s not wearing clothes from around here. She’s full-on Madison Avenue right now.
But the best thing about it is… she’s mine.
Matt says something to her, but she doesn’t speak to him. She doesn’t break eye contact with me, and I feel like there’s an invisible tether between the two of us.
I look at Matt to tell him I’m going wherever she goes. He grins. I guess we won’t have to worry about your dick dying from lack of use after all.
I’ll see you later.
I doubt it, he says. But he’s still grinning that goofy smile. I want to go and hug her, but I guess you get first dibs.
And last dibs. And all the dibs in between.
He waves to her and signs the word later.
She nods, throws him a kiss with the tips of her fingers, and then starts toward me. Her boots leave footprints in the snow, and I force myself to stay still. I tuck my hands in my jeans pockets to keep from grabbing her.
Hi, she signs.
I can’t stand it any longer. I reach for her so quickly that she startles, but she’s reaching for me, too. I haul her against me, needing to feel her heart beating against mine.
Her breath brushes my ear and f**king tears sting my eyes. I tuck my face into her neck and breathe in the scent that is uniquely hers. She wraps her arms around my waist, and her hands slide into my back pockets. We stand there in the snow like that until I feel dampness on my shirt. I tilt her face up to mine so I can look at her.
“I’m so glad you’re home.” I use my voice because I don’t want to take my hands off her.
“Me, too,” she says. A lone tear tracks down her cheek. I wipe it away with the pad of my thumb.
“You’re back?” I ask.
She nods, turning her head to kiss my palm.
“For how long?”
“Always.” She smiles. God, she can undo me with that smile.
“Promise?” My heart is pounding in my chest.
She nods and draws a cross over her chest. “I swear it.”
“What about your father?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about my father right now.”
“I’ll never survive it if you leave me again.” I swallow the lump in my throat.
“Can you come home with me?” she asks.
If I take her home right now, we won’t get to talk at all because I’ll be all over her. “Let’s go get some pie,” I say instead.
Her face falls. “You’re mad at me.”
“I love you like crazy, girl. How could I be mad at you?” I drink her in from the curve of her lips to the way her eyes look almost black in the darkness of the night.
She squeezes my hands. “Is Matt all right?”
I nod. “Thanks to you, yes.”
She exhales, and it’s like a balloon has been emptied inside her. “What do we do now?” she asks.
“Pie,” we both say at the same time. I take her hand in mine and lead her to the diner where we had our first meal together. Pie is safe. Pie is good. Pie will buy me enough time to be sure she still loves me as much as I love her.
Calmly, Carefully, Completely
Book 3 in the Reed Brothers Series
Pete
Nobody f**ks with you in prison when you’re all tatted up.
Not a single, solitary soul.
It could have something to do with being big, too. I haven’t asked. I’ve just enjoyed it.
At home, it’s a completely different story. At home, everyone f**ks with me. I am the youngest of five, all brothers. They’re all as big as me, if not bigger, and they have even more tats than I do. You don’t get any points for being adorable. At my house, all you get points for is being a good person, contributing to the household, and supporting your family in every way possible.
It’s too bad I sucked at all the requirements. I f**ked things up royally two years ago.
I never should have done what I did. But I did it, and I did my time behind bars. I just hope that they can forgive me at home and not hold it over my head.
A hand clapped onto my shoulder jerks me from my internal dialogue. I look up and see my pro bono attorney, Mr. Caster. “Good to see you again, son,” he says as he sits down across from me. He opens a file folder in front of him.
“Why are you here?” I blurt out. I wince immediately, realizing how rude that sounded. But his brow just arches as he shakes his head. “I mean, it’s good to see you, sir.”
He chuckles. “Nice to see you, too, Pete,” he says. He takes a brochure from the folder and turns it so I can read it. “I have an opportunity for you.”
My oldest brother, Paul, says opportunities are other people’s problems. “What kind of opportunity?” I ask hesitantly. I open the brochure. There are pictures of horses and children and climbing structures and a pool with lots of splashing going on. I look up at him.
“This is a brochure for Cast-A-Way Farms,” he says.
“And?” I ask.
“The opportunity,” he says. “I talked to the judge and told him you would be good for this program.” He raises his brow again. “I hope I’m not wrong.”
I hate to sound like a numbskull, but… “Not following, Mr. Caster.”
“I need a few good young men to help out at the Cast-A-Way camp for five days this summer.” He starts to reload his folder and closes it. “I read your file. I liked what I saw. I think you have potential. And you have the skill set that I need for this particular camp.”
Skill set? All I can do is ink people. I work at my brothers’ tattoo shop when I’m not behind bars. I don’t know how to do much else. “You want me to tattoo them?”
He chuckles again. “I need your signing ability,” he admits. “We have a camp every year for special needs kids. We have a very special boy this year who has MS, so he has a tracheostomy tube. He can’t speak. He signs. His mother’s going, but she can’t be with him 24-7. So, I thought you might be able to come and help.” He shrugs. “There will also be a small group of boys there who are hearing impaired. You might work with them some, too.”
I look at Mr. Caster’s forearms and think I see a tattoo creeping out of his short-sleeved dress shirt. He follows my gaze and shrugs.
“You think you’re the only one who wears your heart on your sleeve, Mr. Reed?” he asks, but he’s smiling.
I shake my head. “Your opportunity sounds interesting,” I say. “But I’m on house arrest for a year. I can only go to work and/or approved activities.”
“I already talked to your parole officer,” he says. “He’s in favor of it.” He crosses his arms in front of him on the table and leans on his elbows. “Only if you want to, though. No one is going to force you.”
I pick up the brochure and start to read. It actually looks kind of interesting.
“You’d be doing me a big favor,” he says. “I need another man present who can be a good role model for the boys we’ll be taking from the juvenile detention facility. They’ll be there working, getting service hours. I need someone to help me with them. That’s why I need you.” He narrows his eyes. “You’re big and scary looking enough.” He grins. “And your file looks good.”
“You’ll have the youth offenders at your camp? Working with the kids?”
He shakes his head quickly. “They’ll interact some with the kids. But not much. They’ll be there more to help with the daily living tasks—feeding the horses, moving hay, stacking boxes, doing odd jobs, helping with meals…”
I’ve never been afraid of manual labor. My brothers have drilled it into me from day one that I am going to work hard at everything I do or I’ll have to answer to them. I heave a sigh. I’m slowly talking myself into this.
“There’s a perk,” he says. He grins.
“Do tell,” I say. I sit back and cross my arms in front of me.
“If your time spent at the camp goes well, I can ask for leniency with regard to your house arrest, based on merit.” He looks into my eyes. “If you earn it, that is.”
Wow. I could get leniency? “It’s for five days?” I ask.
He nods. “Monday through Friday.”
I heave a sigh. “When do we leave?”
He grins and holds out a hand for me to shake. I put my hand in his, and he grips it tightly. “We leave tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” I gasp. I haven’t even gone home yet. I haven’t gotten to spend any time at all with my brothers.
He nods. “At oh-dark-thirty.” He smiles again. “You still up for it?”
“It can really shorten my sentence?” I ask.
He nods. “Maybe. It’s up to the judge. And depends on how things go at camp.” He sobers and looks directly into my eyes. “Pete, I think you could help with the boys I’ve invited to the camp. With all of them. You can help with the hearing-impaired boys, the ones who can’t talk, and the ones from the youth program. I think you can do brilliant things. I believe in you, Pete, and I want to give you an opportunity to prove you’re better than this.” He makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses the room.