The person was pounding now, and Grant sat up. “Oh! Maybe it’s my Uncle Joe!” Swiftly he rose from the bed and slid on his boxers and jeans, jogging out of the room shirtless.
Sophie scrambled out of the bed as well, sliding on her underwear and pantsuit. There was no way she wanted Grant’s father figure to catch her naked in his apartment.
Grant’s broke into a smile as he strode down the hallway. Joe was finally coming to visit him! He flung open the door and immediately gasped, his face morphing from exhilaration to shock in one second.
Standing on his doorstep was a dark-haired man, just his height, staring back at him. Logan.
“I have to talk to you,” Logan said.
“No!”
“Grant—”
“You’re not welcome here!” Grant’s eyes flared with rage.
Logan stepped forward and was inside the apartment before Grant could stop him. “I know you’re angry with me. Just hear me out,” he pleaded.
Clasping her halter top in place while straining to hear the conversation, Sophie froze. I know that voice. She stopped breathing and didn’t move a muscle. It felt like her heart stopped beating as well.
“Get out of my home!” Grant yelled, trailing after his brother. Logan had strolled into the living room and was taking in the two plates on the messy kitchen table, covered with leftover food.
“Did you hear me?” Grant hollered, placing a hand on Logan’s muscular shoulder and spinning him around. “You can’t be here. I’m on parole! I can’t associate with known criminals!”
Suddenly Grant noticed Sophie quietly step out of the bedroom. The look on her face made him instantly drop his hand from his brother’s shoulder and go to her. All color had completely drained from her face, and her lips were parted in shock as her body visibly trembled.
Logan turned to look, and his jaw dropped at the sight of the elegant woman in the doorway.
“Sophie?”
“Logan,” she numbly acknowledged.
Grant gaped at the man and woman to his right and left.
“You know my brother?”
It took a second for his question to register, then a look of abject horror crossed her face. She drew her hand up to cover her mouth, feeling like she was going to faint, collapse, vomit, scream, punch, slap, explode, disintegrate …
But she did none of those. Instead, she tore ahead on wobbly legs and sprinted down the hallway, rushing past both men with such velocity that they had no chance to stop her. She was out the door before Grant knew what hit him, and he took a tentative step toward the exit before deciding he would never catch her in her frantic state.
He turned back to his brother, and a lifetime of hurt and fury poured into his seething words. “How the hell do you know Sophie?”
28. Fathers
Reeling from Sophie’s swift, unexplained departure, Grant’s bare chest heaved with strained attempts to get air.
“I’ll ask you again,” Grant fumed, glaring at his brother. “How the hell do you know Sophie?”
Logan continued to feel at a loss for words. That was Sophie? Coming out of what had to be Grant’s bedroom? They’d probably just had sex, although her haunted mahogany eyes had not looked sated but terrified. Logan knew that fearful look well. He’d seen it many times on the faces of men he was about to kill. She’d been afraid of him, and he felt sick with remorse.
But Sophie had seemed scared of Grant too. How did they know each other? Turning the tables, Logan inquired, “What was she doing here?”
Refusing to be redirected, Grant spat, “She knew your name! She knew you!”
Logan tried to figure out how to play this situation. He wasn’t about to share that he’d been in therapy. “Why do you care, man?”
“I’m the one asking questions here! How do you know each other?”
Running his tongue along his lower lip, Logan began cautiously. “We met about two years ago. At a, um, game. A Cubs game.”
“You met at a Cubs game?” Grant’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Yeah,” Logan confirmed, making it up on the fly. “We randomly sat next to each other at a game and found ourselves talking about the players. She really knew her stuff—first time I met a chick who actually knew anything about baseball. We went on a date or two, but nothing really happened.”
“That’s a lie,” Grant said, his lips curling into a sneer. “You’re lying.”
Damn. He thought it had been a good story. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Because Sophie is a Sox fan, you fraud.” Nostrils flaring, he inched closer to his brother, refusing to be intimidated. Dressed only in jeans, Grant’s lean upper body seemed almost scrawny compared to Logan’s bulk. “I’ll ask you one more time. How do you know her?”
Silence. Logan’s deep-blue eyes met his gaze with a calculated stare.
Grant threw his arms up. “Why can’t you just tell the truth for once? You’ve destroyed me, Lo! You forced me to commit that robbery, to go to prison! Why can’t you just help me for once? Why?”
Logan sighed, gritting his teeth. He was once again hurting his brother, which had not been his intention at all. In a low voice he confessed, “Because I didn’t want to tell you she was my shrink.”
Grant stood perfectly still, listening intently.
Watching Grant’s non-reaction, Logan wondered if he had heard him. “She was my shrink, okay? The fucking judge made me go to therapy after the Great Lakes thing. I had to see a goddamn shrink! How embarrassing! Are you happy now?”
Instead of a satisfied expression on his brother’s face, there was a stunned paralysis. Grant’s tanned olive skin was rapidly losing color, and he looked almost green. Logan watched with fascination as his brother began trembling, crossing his balled-up fists before him and clenching his stomach.
Grant gave an anguished cry. “It was you! You—you stashed money in her office.”
“What?” Logan replied, dumbfounded. “How did you know that?”
A sickening realization took hold. “She knows we’re brothers,” Grant whispered.
Suddenly he made a mad dash to the bathroom. He yanked open the toilet and retched violently. Remnants of the dinner Sophie had cooked for him came rushing up, the reminder of her kindness making him even queasier. His whole body quivered as waves of nausea pulsed through him, and he gripped the counter for balance. Evidently his stomach of steel was a thing of the past.
Logan started to follow but stopped short, disgusted by the sound of his brother getting sick. He had no idea why Grant was so upset. “You okay in there?” he hollered, hearing nothing but heaving from the small bathroom.
Finally, the torturous vomiting ceased, and Grant pulled himself to the sink. Scooping handfuls of cold water into his parched mouth and onto his hot face, he dared to look into the mirror. Dead, glassy eyes stared back at him, and he fought the urge to claw violently at his skin, his hair—anything to remove the identifying markers bestowed upon him by his family. He wanted nothing to do with them.