“There’s a third brother, Harry. He’s not in good shape right now. He was blown up in Syria. He’s working with me. I’m going to make him a partner as soon as he’s better. Right now he’s barely on his feet. That’s the three of us. The reason Harry and Mike and I are so tight is that we spent part of our growing-up years in the same foster home, run by a brutally cruel couple. We had each other’s back, always, otherwise I don’t think we’d have survived. We’ve been looking out for each other ever since.”
He stared down at his clasped hands. They were clean, the nails short, but they looked like they’d been used a lot, and hard. There were scars and nicks and calluses, the hands of a man who, though a businessman, didn’t shy from manual labor. Completely unlike the hands of any other man she’d ever been out to dinner with.
Nicole couldn’t help herself. She reached out, one hand hovering over his clasped ones. She hesitated for just a second, then covered his hands with her own. She wanted him to feel the human connection. He’d known hard times, too.
His hands were warm, radiating heat and strength.
He spoke, looking at their joined hands.
“My mother abandoned me in a Dumpster. Just threw me away, like garbage.” He looked up at her shocked gasp, opened his hands and sandwiched her hand between his. A wry smile lifted his mouth. “It’s okay, honey. The story has a happy ending. Eventually. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” she murmured. Hewashere. And how. Huge and strong and utterly unlike any other man she’d ever met. She tried to suppress the sharp punch she’d felt when he called her “honey.”Stop that, she told herself sternly. This wasn’t going anywhere. Getting her heart involved wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all her.
“Someone had seen her doing it and fished me out. They took me to the hospital immediately and I was put in an incubator stat. Apparently, I was about a month old and seriously underweight. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Nicole looked him over. Immensely broad and tall, with hard-packed dense muscles. It was impossible to connect him with an undernourished baby. This tragic story definitely had a happy ending.
“This woman—my mother—was a drunk and a prostitute. She was known in the area. I have no idea who my father was. I don’t think she did, either. The police tracked her down and she was tried and convicted for attempted homicide and was sentenced to ten years in jail. She served eight years, then was paroled. She went looking for me at the orphanage, spouting nonsense about wanting to atone and start over.” He rolled his eyes. “Some nutcase of a social worker believed her and they simply gave me to her. I was eight years old and I’d never seen the woman who claimed to be my mother before.”
“Oh no,” Nicole breathed. The story might have a happy ending but it sounded like there was to be tragedy before they got there.
“Yeah.” His hands tightened on hers. “Her name was Darlene Reston. I can’t think of her as my mother, she was just this…woman I had to live with for a few years. She drank away the welfare checks and there were drugs going on, too. One thing I do know is that she sure wasn’t buying food and milk and clothes with what the State sent her. Once I got a bad ear infection that went untreated and I was left with a weakened eardrum. I squeaked by the physical to get into the Navy but then a mortar round finished the eardrum off. I was almost deaf in one ear, had to leave the Navy on a medical discharge. I had an operation that restored some of my hearing. But I can’t dive to any depth.” He shook his head. “Can’t be a SEAL if you can’t dive.”
Nicole had a flash of a young, skinny, vulnerable Sam, trapped in the care of a woman who drank away his food money, who wouldn’t get him medical care when he needed it.
“There were men around, too, lots of them.” Sam’s deep voice was low and dispassionate. “Most of them were high and stayed high for days. They barely noticed me but when they did, I got the shit kicked out of me. For most of my childhood, I was badly undernourished and weak.” His mouth tightened. “The kind of kid a bully loves to kick around. Makes them feel strong. When I was around twelve, a teacher finally noticed that something was deeply wrong. So the State took me out of Darlene’s care and put me in a foster home.”
“Thank God.” Nicole blinked the tears back. The strong, successful man in front of her was light-years away from the small, abused boy and he wouldn’t want her tears. But her heart ached.
“Not really. The foster home wasn’t any better. Old Man Hughes and his wife took in older, unadoptable kids because they got paid more. The wife gave us watered-down canned soup and crackers bought in bulk, slapped us upside the head when the spirit took her, and locked herself in her room when her husband had his little spells of rage. He could go beserk on a dime. Anything could set him off. An unmade bed. Cracker crumbs on the table. A look, even. We learned never to say anything, ever. He hated a lot of things, but mostly he hated what he called ‘mouthy’ women and kids. He was a big, mean son of a bitch and he loved using his fists on us.”
There was a huge boulder on Nicole’s chest, making it hard to breathe. Her battle against her tears was a losing one. He reached out once more to dry a tear against her cheek.
How terrible life could be. She’d wept for her dying father and now she wept for a child who’d never known love, only neglect and violence. She met his impassive gaze. “Tell me something good happened. Please. Tell me they took you out of that foster home and put you in another one.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Stayed there until I was old enough to enlist. But a couple of good things did happen. There was a nice elderly lady lived next door. Mrs. Colley. Strange old coot, but kind-hearted. She was scared to death of Old Man Hughes but when he wasn’t around, she invited me over and stuffed me full of food. I grew six inches and put on forty pounds in one year. I made sure they were forty pounds of muscle. The old man started thinking twice about using his fists on me.”
“Good for you,” Nicole said fiercely. Sam Reston had grown up to be the kind of man no one beat up on, not without serious consequences.
“Another good thing happened when I was twelve. My brother Harry Bolt arrived and then three months later my other brother Mike Keillor. Harry had tried to defend his baby sister and his mother against his mom’s meth-head boyfriend. The fucker—pardon my language.”
Nicole nodded and waved the expletive away with her free hand.Fuckersounded about right for a man who hurt little girls. “Fucker beat Harry’s little sister and mom to death. Harry went wild. Put the guy in the hospital but not before he got both legs broken. He was fostered out to the Hughes. I saw Old Man Hughes smile as Harry walked through the door on crutches and I knew exactly what he was thinking. I wasn’t an easy target for his rage any more. He needed an outlet and here comes Harry, crippled, fresh meat. That night I took a knife to Old Man Hughes and I told him that if he so much as touched the new guy, I’d cut his miserable hide to ribbons, starting with his balls. I meant every word, too, and I think he knew it. By that time I was as tall as Hughes, though he had a lot of weight on me. But it wasn’t muscle, it was all gut. Harry healed and Mrs. Colley shoved as much food down his throat as he could eat and by the end of that year, he was as big as I was. Harry and I were really tight. And then Mike came. It was his eighth foster home. The three of us banded together, looked after each other and we all shipped out as soon as we could. Me to the Navy, Harry to the Army and Mike to the Marines.”
Nicole opened her mouth to say something but he hadn’t finished. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, lips warm against her cold skin. Sam’s story had chilled her to the bone.
“Now, the reason I told you all of that is so that you can understand something. Me and my brothers came out okay because we looked after each other, no matter what. All three of us know, up close and personal, what it means when no one looks out for you. When no one cares. And we know, deep down in our bones, what it means when someone cares and does the right thing. We all have jobs where we see, daily, the effects of not caring for your kid or your wife or your parents or your friends.”
His face suddenly sharpened, the skin over those high cheekbones tightening, eyes boring into hers.
“So, Nicole, you will forgive me if I don’t find it a turnoff that you love your father so much. That you’re sacrificing important things to make sure he has a dignified death and you’re making sure that he’s right where he wants and needs to be. You’re doing the hard thing, the right thing, and I admire you for it. I was blown away by you the first time I saw you, but by God, it’s worse now that I know what’s behind that gorgeous face.”
She was utterly incapable of movement, of thought.
“Not want you?” Sam’s voice was raspy now, as if he found it difficult to get the words out. He breathed out hard. His jaw muscles bunched and his nostrils flared. “I’ve wanted you since the first second I saw you. I couldn’t do anything about it because I was on an undercover job but I sure as hell thought about it, night and day. Christ, Nicole, I want you so much I can hardly breathe. I want you so much I can’t think. Say you’ll come back home with me. Now.”
This was utterly insane. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
There was no air in the room.
