CHERISH (12 page)

Family
? “I thought he didn’t
have
a family,” I say, confused as hell. “He said he was an orphan, having lived on the streets until he came here.”

“Well, he most certainly has family. Only, he doesn’t.”

I’m in no mood for riddles. “Just spit it out, man. Don’t take the fucking scenic route.”

“Okay, here’s the Cliff Notes. She shut me down when I started prying into family stuff, but at first she gave up something I think might be useful. Louis, a.k.a. Bakari Raz, was cast out of the family for what she calls, ‘unforgiveable shame.’ Now, when I tried to dig into that steaming pile of shit she shut it down, but she
did
say that they do, in fact, have family still alive and well in Cairo. And get this, the family includes their ninety-four-year-old father—the same father who apparently tossed Louis out on the streets when he was eleven years old. Now, whatever
unforgivable sin
he committed, disowning a little kid? That’s some crazy, fucked-up-shit, man. Imagine the scars that would leave behind.”

“Fuck.” My head spins. So maybe he's going to family and not just running for cover? Could be good news. But without more details, who knows? Could be bad. “Anything else?”

“Not much. I guess the dad isn’t doing too hot. The sister said she was just there a couple of weeks ago. But we’ve got an address. Family still lives where Louis was born, so if we need to drop in, I’m ready when you are.”

Part of me wants to grab my passport and leave a note for Promise telling her I went out for milk. But I know better and without any family to speak of for either of us, we really are all the other has. Now’s not the time to go rogue on her. There's enough of that shit going around already.

I give myself the same advice I gave her.

Slow down. Plan. It’s about the strategy and there are still far too many unknowns.

“Alright, let me process. If we need to get on a plane, I’ll probably take you up on your offer. But let me think it through. I mean, the fact is, Louis has been squeaky fucking clean since he got here. The picture and message from Jordan looked legit. He looks safe, at least for the moment. Whatever happened with Louis’s family, fuck knows what that might be, but I’m going on my own personal experience with him, and I’ve never picked up on anything hinky. Fuck, dude, if I've read him this wrong . . .” I shake my head.

I’m going to beat myself up over my mistake every fucking day for the rest of my life.

“Maybe he wasn’t playing you. Maybe he really is stand up and there’s some other explanation. But it’s still fucked up he didn’t keep you guys in the loop.” I hear him sigh on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know, man. I wish the mission was clear. We’re good at following orders, but I can’t pinpoint the way out of this one. Besides just getting on a plane and doing what we do best. And like I said, ready when you are.”

We wrap it up with a few more details and I hang my head down, resting my forearms on my knees, thinking of every detail of Louis at the wedding. Everything he’d said, trying to find a clue.

I get to my feet, stretching tall, trying to figure out the day.

Shit, not just the day, the rest of our lives. I’m officially out of the service, and with Louis gone rogue, the job I expected to start with his security company is a non-event. My book deal will tide us over for a while, but even with all the other shit going o I have to figure out our future. Financially and otherwise. Promise is my wife. My responsibility.

Fuck, we should probably get the hell out of this loft too. It’s got Louis’s name on it and I don’t trust anything with that branding right now.

I look around the marble bathroom and see the navy blue robe I wrapped Promise in that day after the attack. The day I made love to her for the first time. The day I realized something lived inside of me I’d never known before.

As far as money, we’re okay for now. I can get us a new place. A fucking house if that’s what she wants. Not long after she moved in here for good, we played a game every night over dinner. We each got five questions. Anything and everything we wanted to know about each other.

I asked her what her dream house would be. She didn't know it, but I planned on giving it to her no matter what she said. I smile as I think back, that sweet little girl who never counted on any place to call home . . . she described in such vivid detail the world she would have if she could. I burned her words into my memory that night and I will give it to her someday. Her every wish. Every fantasy.

I’m a saver, never had much need for the things other people spend their money on, the meaningless shit. So my bank account is flush with unspent earnings, but that's all it is—earnings. It's no trust fund. And the weight of the decades in front of us is definitely on my mind.

I shift back and forth, stretching the tense muscles in my back. My neck tingles and I have to let out the twitches that are impossible to ignore. I had thrown on just my jeans when I got out of bed to sit at the computer and strategize.

Stepping out of the bathroom, I see the tangled disaster that is Promise, laying across the white sheets. I raise my eyes to the windows. Metal frames with about forty panes each, tiny crisscrossed wires running through the glass, making a thousand diamond shapes. The sun peeks up from the horizon, breaking through the clouds, throwing a hint of light through the two vacant industrial buildings across the street.

The rain from yesterday is gone and the morning sun casts its light upon Promise like she’s an angel sent to ease all my personal aches. I'm going to have a battle with her today. When she finds out where I'm headed after we meet up with Northrup, that little hellcat is going to fight me.

I grit my teeth until my jaw muscles hurt, then slump back down at the long table where my laptop sits open and shoot an email to the one other person I know cares about my girl. And fuck knows I’m going to need him in my corner, today and every day.

No matter what happens, I’ll take care of her. I’ll get Jordan back even if it means giving up my life. That’s what love is. That’s what her mother never realized.

Her loss.

Promise

“Beck?”

I reach my hand across the bed but I know he won’t be there. Not because I think he’s left, but because I don’t think he really sleeps.

I blow some air up toward my eyes where my hair covers my face like Cousin It, then bring both hands over to my face to try to create order out of the strands unwilling to fall into place, especially after Beckett twisted his fingers in it for two hours last night.

I’ve found that I love having my hair pulled. And my ass spanked. And a few other combinations of pain and pleasure. I’m as surprised as anyone that I love it all so much. But, it’s
him.
That calm, dominant beast I see in him turns me into something I’d never imagined before.

I love having
him
pull my hair. Especially when he is behind me, inside me and in complete charge of me. Relinquishing control makes me hum and lose myself, and sometimes that is just what a girl needs. A good man with a big cock and just enough of the right kind of pain to make it all the more intense. It makes me smile just thinking about him.

“Beck?” My sleepy whisper turns to a soft yell because now I’m panicking that he might be gone.

“Beck!”

“Babe, I’m right here.” My heart slows down as he comes in the door of the loft. “I was just checking out the building, making sure no one decided to set up a meth lab or start a chop shop.”

He flashes me that devious smile that always makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. For a moment I relax; the morning feels new and watching him walk toward me always makes my tummy do deliciously flip-floppy things.

How can a walk be so dang sexy? I don’t know. But his gives me the special tingles. He has this cadence. He dips down with his left step just a bit more than his right. His strides are long. Solid. Like he knows exactly where each step is supposed to fall. He takes my breath away.

But the moment of bliss is short-lived. As reality seeps into the sleepy first minutes of the day, my heart remembers and suddenly I feel sick. What kind of sister am I to forget the most important thing in my life for even one fucking moment?

Jordan.

In my mind's eye, I can see his stick-straight, blond hair, his skin that matches mine, his effervescent gleaming smile that even our shitty childhood couldn’t stomp out.

Why him? Why now? Just when I finally thought we both had our happy endings. I’d relaxed,
believed
in happily-ever-after when I shouldn’t have trusted it. He doesn’t deserve this. If ever there was a pure soul on this earth, it’s my brother. For all the hardship and bullshit life has shoved down his throat, he’s stayed sweet. Kind. He still believes in happiness and that people can be good.

“Good morning, baby.” Beckett braces two hands on the bed, locks his elbows and leans over, forming two perfect indents with the solid weight of his torso. He kisses me on the forehead, then the top of my head, then both cheeks like it's some sort of ritual. “How’s my girl?”

Such simple words. But they can have such an effect on me. Every morning he says the same thing and every morning I fall in love with him all over again.

“Fine.” As soon as I say the word I cringe and go red because I know it was a mistake.

Beckett pulls back to glare playfully at me. The left corner of his lips pulls up into a reluctant smile, the light catching the peaks of the textured scars there.

“I mean, I’m worried. I’m not feeling bad, but I can’t stop thinking about Jordan.”

Beckett taught me quickly that when he asks a question, it's real. Those filler words that people use as answers, they're not acceptable. When he asks how I am, he wants to know how I am. When I dismiss him with ‘fine’ or ‘whatever’ not only is it insulting to him, it comes with a minimum of a firm few swats to my fanny.

Not that I mind.

“Me too, babe. I’m working on it. We need to get you something to eat, get organized and get down to see Northrup.” He takes a seat on the edge of the bed. “I can go alone if you’d rather stay here.” He leans down on an elbow as my eyes soak in the way the muscles and tendons in his forearm ripple.

“No, I want to go. It would be worse just sitting here. I almost wish I was back at work. Almost.”

“Babe, if you want to go back to work, you go back. I know they miss you there. That card they sent was something else.”

Bruce must have organized it, but every resident of Windfield had signed the card. It was the size of poster board and featured caricatures of us, standing in our wedding day best, while hundreds of tiny people gathered around our feet, throwing ropes up like we were the giant in Gulliver’s Travels.

“I miss Bruce.” I lift my hand and set it on his arm, unable to stop myself from tracing the lines and indents of the sinuous muscles that move and flex. It’s my Kryptonite.

If I were wearing panties right now, they’d be wet. Just looking at his hands and his forearms does it every time.

“Call him.” Beckett bounces off the bed, reaches over to grab my phone off the nightstand and holds it out to me. I shift and sit up against the mass of pillows behind me.

“I can’t go back to work yet. There's no way I could concentrate, and that wouldn't be fair to the residents.”

My fingers brush his and that familiar jolt of magic rushes over my skin at low voltage. He stands over me, smiling in a way that only he can, and I want to tear his clothes off right now.

He’s usually the one with the off switch that's out-of-order, but the last few days it’s been me. Given everything else that's on my mind right now it feels inappropriate, but there seems to be a near constant purring between my legs.

I take the phone and lean my head back, admiring him. He’s wearing the same soft, worn denim shirt he had on that day when he rescued me from the two men in the building across the street. The jeans riding low on his hips have been well broken in. All I want is to let my tongue follow the valleys of the ‘V’ shape down to where I can see the bulge grow in his crotch.

“Breakfast,” he says, seeing the look in my eye. “You get me started and we will not get to Northrup by nine.”

He spins on a heel and I stare down at my phone.

“French toast is on the menu. Coffee or juice?” he asks as he strides toward the kitchen.

I hear the clank of a skillet meet the cast iron burner on the industrial stove and a loud sizzle as he throws a glob of butter onto the hot surface. Usually, the smell of cooking is even better when I can watch him do it. But today it feels different. The scent of butter browning and coffee brewing makes my stomach do an unpleasant flip and it takes me a moment to reply.

“Coffee,” I mutter as I tap the screen on my phone, pulling up Bruce’s number but I don’t know what to say, so I just put the phone back down.

The smell of the French Toast gets stronger as Beck strides over and puts the mug of coffee next to the lamp on the nightstand.

“Here you go, babe.”

The next second my stomach turns again and that's it. My hand flies to cover my mouth as I bounce out of the bed and barely make it into the bathroom before I’m heaving into the commode. Shit.