Chapter FIVE
TUESDAY MORNING AT five a.m., Austin rolled out of bed and moved into his kitchen. He poured himself some coffee and then sat at his table, his ears on guard for any noise coming from Leah’s apartment.
He heard a low beeping and assumed it was her alarm. That would make sense since his breakfast area wall and her bedroom wall were one and the same. He could swear he heard a moan. Was she not a morning person?
He recalled the wine. Had she drunk it? Too much of it?
A few minutes later he heard light thuds, footsteps moving around. Was she a coffee drinker? Was she going after a cup right now?
Pulling the steaming cup of black coffee to his lips, he thought about her sipping from her own cup. For some reason he tried to remember the last woman he’d shared the simple ritual of sipping coffee together. Had he even had that since… Cara? The one woman he’d almost gone the whole nine yards with, until… a little murder conviction had her running scared. He pushed her memory away because he didn’t like thinking about her.
Then he recalled Brenda, the nurse. They’d shared coffee. They’d dated for about four months last year. A record for him. She’d been… different. Less of a party girl, and more… domesticated. Instead of hitting the bars, they worked out at the gym, rented movies, and had sex. It had been a nice change.
Oddly, he couldn’t recall why he’d stopped seeing her.
Oh, yeah. Her ex was moving back into town, and she wanted to give it another go. Perhaps when Austin got back, he’d call and see if it had worked out for them. If not, maybe they could pick up where they’d left off.
But, on second thought, maybe getting a dog was a better idea.
He didn’t miss Brenda. He missed the easy company. He missed the comfortable sex. And he missed what they had. Which was almost a real relationship, minus the emotional ties. He hadn’t been hurt when she cut things off, not like Cara, nor had Brenda been all that upset to say good-bye. And that’s the way he preferred it. No emotional entanglements. Easy in and easy out.
Just like your daddy.
“Get out of my head,” he muttered, hearing Candy Adams’s words again. The woman had nerve showing up. Even more nerve to call herself his mom.
Why would she even tell him about his father? Austin didn’t care. He couldn’t recall the man—supposedly he’d impregnated the seventeen-year-old girl, stayed a year, but left because he’d wanted no part of being a dad.
But his mom, yeah, he remembered her. Remembered missing her. He’d been almost three. Just old enough that a few of the memories hung around.
Sometimes he didn’t know if he actually remembered it, or if he’d just heard it whispered behind his back by all the social workers over the years.
Dropped off at a new day care by a mother who worked at a strip joint and had a drug problem, and she just got too busy taking her clothes off, or too high on drugs, to come back for him. The boy was so sick over it, he stopped eating. Told everyone he’d only eat his mom’s grilled cheeses.
A year later, the system found her. She’d been arrested for selling drugs and hadn’t bothered telling anyone she had a son. After her two-year stay in the county jail, the foster program wanted to give her a chance to get her kid back. They hadn’t asked the kid what he thought. He’d been more than a little leery of the woman who said she loved him, but left him anyway.
But she got a job, got clean, was taking parenting classes. She actually came to see him once a week. It was those last visits when she won him over. She’d taken him to the park and played ball with him—something his foster parents had never had the time to do. Once she took him out for ice cream and let him order a triple scoop. She didn’t even get mad at him when he couldn’t eat it all.
But on the next scheduled visit, his mom had been a no-show.
He remembered sitting for hours, waiting on the porch steps for her. His foster mother had forced him to come inside. He’d been certain his mom was just running late. Certain she wouldn’t have abandoned him again.
She had.
And it was worse the second time.
Seven years old and he’d stopped counting on people and started counting on himself. And he’d done a damn good job, too. Not that his attitude back then had made him very adoptable, or even easy to foster. He’d quickly gotten dubbed as closed-off, cold, distant. They slapped the title “troublemaker” on him. How many times had he been told that he was going to wind up in jail?
And yeah, he’d gotten into some trouble as a teen. Who hadn’t? Nothing serious. Until the murder conviction. But that had been bogus.
Bogus crap that had robbed him of sixteen months of his life. And the man responsible was DeLuna, Leah Reece’s half brother. But as much as he resented DeLuna, the thing that still ate at Austin the most was the pride it had cost him. He could almost hear the social workers who’d overseen his case…“Like mother, like son. We knew that boy would land himself in prison.”
He was nothing like his mother. Chances were, he wasn’t like his ol’ man, either.
He didn’t plan on having kids, but if he did, he’d never leave, and that child would never be sitting on porch steps waiting for him. He didn’t take on much responsibility, but when he did, he took his responsibilities seriously.
And right now, he felt responsible to make that a*shole pay who’d framed him and his partners. More importantly, he longed to clear his name.
Yeah, their exoneration had made the news. But until the courts had someone to lay the guilty verdict on, there were people who still believed they’d gotten away with murder.
That was why he had to find out what Leah Reece knew. That was why he had to find DeLuna. And his gut still told him the pretty little brunette was the key to the puzzle.
When he’d planned this, he hadn’t considered if his intrusion into her life would cause her any trouble. Now he thought about it. The idea of tricking her into trusting him didn’t feel right, but it didn’t feel wrong enough to stop him from doing what he had to.
He stared at his handiwork from last night on the kitchen table. His few semesters in computer engineering had taught him a few useful skills. And his few years working as a cop had taught him just how much time he could get for using the skills he’d learned, too.
Risky, yes. Illegal, yes. Necessary, hell yes.
But he’d given plan A a shot and it hadn’t worked. Now, with a few wireless webcam transmitters and a few plastic circuit boxes, he had his bugs. Getting them into her apartment and placing them where she couldn’t find them, and where he could hear from room to room, was going to be more difficult than building the devices. He glanced around his own apartment, almost the exact layout as hers, and mentally stationed the bugs. Three should allow him to hear any conversation she had throughout her place.
A groan of running water came from the other side of his wall. A shower? His mind created a vision of her shedding her nightgown. He made it something sexy, too. Then his imagination saw her naked beneath a soft spray of water. Pulling his coffee cup to his lips, he put himself in the shower with her. Having never dated a woman that short, he wondered how their naked bodies would meet.
When a few visuals had his blood running south, he shut the image off. He didn’t need a hard-on for her getting in his way of getting this job done.
As soon as she left this morning, and the apartment hall cleared, he’d do a little breaking and entering—another thing that could land his ass back in jail—and place the bugs. Hopefully, in a couple of days he’d have the info he needed.
Hopefully her cats would stay out of his way while he did it, too. And if not, he was prepared.
He picked up the new pistol he’d purchased along with the other plan B supplies. Letting the awkward weight of it fill his hands, he aimed at his refrigerator.
“Hiss at me again and you’ll regret it!”
He placed his finger on the trigger, and then what the hell, he pulled it back and watched the supercharged water squirt out of the barrel.
Yup, he was prepared.
Leah let herself into the vet clinic at five forty-five to dish out love and food—after she’d done the same to her own babies at home. Carting a wine headache, every step caused a twinge in her temple. She really should have stopped at two glasses instead of three. Ahh, but it had been so good, she almost didn’t regret it.
Almost.
She plopped her purse on the front desk. Spooky meowed from the back room. Apparently, the orange tabby had recovered enough to protest being locked up. Answering his call, she opened the cage, pulled him into her arms, and whispered soft words when he butted his chin against her forehead.
“See, you don’t even miss them.” She gave him a scratch behind the ears. He let out a pathetic meow, and if her head wasn’t slightly throbbing, she’d have chuckled.
“Hey… I think I got you a possible person. He’s a tad pushy, but he has great taste in wine. I think you two will get along.”
After filling the kitty bowls and checking on her patients, she started a pot of coffee, caught the first drops of it in her cup, and made her way back to the front desk to sink into the chair and baby her headache. The message light flashing on the phone caught her eye. Finding Evelyn’s aspirin in a drawer, she downed two with coffee, then proceeded to check the messages.
Six calls.
She hit play. The first one was from a client who rescued feral cats wanting to know if she would offer free neutering for a couple of males. Leah sighed. She was never going to get ahead doing freebies, but she did them anyway.
The second call was a hang up. As was the third and fourth. The fifth…“Shit.” Rafael’s voice came on the line.
“Still haven’t heard from Luis, Sis. Am I going to have to come there myself to get his number? Don’t make me do that.”
“Shit what?” Sara walked in the front door.
“Nothing,” Leah said, and hit delete.
Sara moved in and sat on the edge of the counter. “It’s way too early for your brow wrinkle to make an appearance.”
Leah forced a smile. “Headache. I had wine last night.”
“I told you, take two aspirin before you drink and it prevents headaches. It’s like Beano before you eat that nonfat veggie soup, no aftereffects.”
“You back on the soup diet?” Leah asked.
“Yeah. Just five more pounds.” She pinched her waist, not that there was enough to pinch. Sara looked great. Taller than Leah by at least four inches, and blond, if Sara wore the right clothes and makeup, she looked more Hollywood than Texan. She was classy looking compared to Leah being cute. Sure, Sara had lost a lot of weight, but she’d never been fat.
“Frankly, I don’t know why I don’t just eat all the ice cream and cookies I want. It’s not like anyone appreciates my efforts. The last guy to see me anything close to naked told me to relax and apologized for his hands being cold. And I got his bill a week later.”
Leah grinned. “So you dated my ex, too?”
Sara chuckled. “Not phone sex bills, he was my gynecologist.” She pulled a small envelope from her purse and handed it to Leah. “Brian’s birthday invitation. He’s going to be two next week. Do you know what that means? It’s been two years, eight months, three weeks, and four days since I’ve had sex. And I can give you down to the hours if you want. Ugg! What’s wrong with me?”
Leah opened her mouth to offer some empathy, but Sara held up her hand.
“No, let me rephrase that. What’s wrong with us? You’re as bad as I am.”
“Not quite.” Leah smiled. “It’s only been two years for me.”
Sara shook her head. “Yeah, but you don’t even have the excuse that I do.”
“I’ve got plenty of excuses.” Leah had covered several of them last night as she drank her third glass of wine and talked herself out of stepping next door to continue the verbal rendezvous.
Sara rolled her eyes. “Please, you didn’t gain sixty pounds and push a ten-pound kid through your who-who. You didn’t get approximately three hours’ sleep a night for a year. Nor did you find yourself with a little person who looks at you with so much love that you feel guilty when you want something in your life besides him. I swear, anytime I think about anything outside of being Brian’s mommy, I feel like a terrible mother.”
Leah rested her hand on top of Sara’s. “You’re the best mom I’ve ever known. And single moms date all the time.”
Sara sighed. “And kids of single moms end up emotionally damaged because of it, too.”
“Not if you pick the right guy,” Leah offered.
“You’re talking about me, remember? If I like a guy, that’s a guarantee that he’s on meds, illegal or antipsychotics, or has at least three warrants out for his arrest. I fall for mental cases, addicts, or felons.” She paused. “And sometimes I get extra points when they are all three in one. Seriously, I’ve told you about Brian’s father.”
“And you don’t think we can learn from our mistakes?” Leah had asked herself that question last night.
“Do you?” Sara asked.
“I hope so.” Leah paused. “Someday.”
“You mean someday when we’re too old to enjoy sex?” Sara dropped her face in her hands. “God, I’m so…”
“Horny?” Leah downed the last sip of her coffee.
“No.” Sara dropped her hands. “Okay, maybe a little. Mostly, I’m lonely. Everywhere I look I see happy couples. Last night I took Brian out for ice cream. There was this couple sharing an ice cream cone, laughing, and whispering. The guy looked at her as if… as if she was his world. With one finger, he brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear and then moved his finger to trace her lips. It was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. She said something and he burst out laughing. I sat there watching them and I felt so… empty inside. I want someone to touch me like that. I want someone who laughs at something I say. Someone who melts when they look at me. I want to be that special to someone.”
Leah inhaled, feeling as if her friend was echoing her own sentiments. “Then do it.” Leah had concluded last night that she wasn’t ready to step into the big scary world of dating yet, but that didn’t mean Sara wasn’t.
“Do what?”
“Start dating. I’ll watch Brian for you.”
“Date who?”
“I don’t know. Go steal ice cream girl’s guy,” Leah teased. “Wait. What happened to… Mr. Tall-dark-and-handsome, the one who brought in Spooky? You went to lunch with him. You said you had a good time.”
“I had a nice time. He obviously didn’t. He never called back. Besides, I think he was more interested in you. Half our conversation was about you or the clinic.”
“Please,” Leah said. “He couldn’t keep his eyes off you. I almost cracked up the first time he laid eyes on you. He was talking to me and you walked in and bam, he was off somewhere in his head probably making love to you.”
“Was it good? Details please.” Sara chuckled and pulled up one knee and wrapped her arm around her leg. “He was so good looking, too.”
“Call him,” Leah said.
“I gave him my number. He didn’t give me his.”
Leah arched a brow. “But he gave it to me.”
“So he was interested in you.” Sara almost looked jealous.
“No, he gave it to me when I filled out the form about Spooky.” Leah rolled her chair over and pulled out the file. She thumbed through the files. “Here.” She yanked it out and slapped it down beside Sara. “No more excuses. Call him.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Leah insisted.
Sara frowned. “I told him about Brian. That’s probably why he hasn’t called.”
“Did he act like it bothered him?” Leah asked.
“No, but…”
“Then call him.”
Sara dropped her head on her knee. “He’s probably a criminal.”
“No. He rescued a cat. How many criminals do you know who rescue cats?” Leah knew for a fact that the average law-breaking a*shole didn’t like felines. Rafael had proven that the day after she’d told him off about not involving Luis in his drug business. He’d sent Cruz to her house to deliver a package. She hadn’t opened the door. She’d waited an hour to see what he’d left on her doorstep. And to this day the memory of her beloved cat in that box still horrified her.
Right then Spooky came swaggering in and jumped up onto the counter.
“Look at you. Spry and ball-less.” Sara dropped her hand and gave the tomcat a good scratch behind his ear.
“I possibly have him an owner,” Leah told her, pushing the ugly memories away.
“Really?” Sara asked.
“Yeah, a new neighbor. He lost a cat not too long ago.”
“He? Is ‘he’ cute?”
Hell, yes. An image of him standing in the parking lot without a shirt filled her mind. The patch of light brown hair spread across his chest like angel wings. She willingly accepted the image to help her chase away the one from her past. “Didn’t notice.”
“Liar.” Sara grinned.
Leah laughed, feeling a bit sinful. “Okay, he’s… drool-worthy.”
“And?” Sara asked.
“And I think he’d make a good pet owner,” Leah said.
“And?”
“And nothing,” Leah said.
“Please, what did you just tell me? To start dating.”
“That’s you. I’m not that horny yet. I haven’t salivated over a guy licking an ice cream cone,” Leah teased.
Sara picked up Evelyn’s smiley face stress ball and threw it at Leah as they laughed. Laughed until the phone rang.
“Purrfect Pet Veterinarian Clinic. Can I help you?” Humor rang in Leah’s voice.
“Just the person I wanted to talk to.” Rafael’s voice raked across her nerve endings, melted her smile, and shot her good mood to hell. And the throb in her temple came on full force.
Leah waved at Sara as she walked away.
“Just a minute,” she said. But she didn’t say anything else until she closed her office door. “What do you want?”
“The same thing I wanted yesterday. To talk to your damn brother.”
“What do you want with Luis?” she asked.
“To ask him some questions.”
“About what?” she seethed.
“He ran into a friend of mine in Austin, and he was acting really strange, and then my friend ran into trouble.”
“And you think he had something to do with that? He doesn’t want anything to do with you or your friends! Leave us alone.”
“I need to talk to him!” His tone was dark and dirty.
“He’s not home. He’s in San Antonio.”
There was a pause. “San Antonio? What’s he doing in San Antonio?” Accusation rang in his tone.
“Helping a friend move,” she answered.
“That better be all he’s doing. Give me his f*cking number, Leah. I’m tired of playing games.”
“Go to hell.” She pushed the off button and punched in Luis’s number. As expected, he didn’t answer. The phone went to voice mail. “Hey… call me!”
She hung up and moaned. Then, standing in the middle of her office, her heart pounding in rhythm with her headache, she got a bad feeling.
What was it that Rafael thought Luis did? Could Luis be lying to her and be up to no good?
No. Luis was a good kid. But he’d fallen prey to Rafael once before. And even if Luis wasn’t guilty of anything, if Rafael thought he was doing something, there would be hell to pay.