Page 70 of Deadly Secrets
She mock-saluted him and he pulled out her chair. He handed her silverware and she inhaled deeply over the steak. “This smells amazing.”
“I’ll get us some drinks.”
He turned to go back in and Brooke slapped him on the ass.
“Don’t be long.”
He grabbed her wrist, heat igniting the air between them. Bringing the tips of her fingers to his lips, he let his tongue do a slow lick over the end of each one.
Her breath hitched and he released her before she launched herself at him again. He was more than happy to take her back inside and ravish her but there was no sense wasting a good cut of meat. They had all night.
“Before I give out any more sexual favors,” she said a few minutes later, around a bite of food, “I want to know about your brother.”
His fork stopped in mid-air. “I don’t talk about him.”
“I know that. I don’t talk about my shit with people either, but I opened up to you.” She raised her wine glass to him. “Remember? Turnabout’s fair play, and as I recall, Dr. Walsh, you told me you were an open book the other day at lunch. You said you’d tell me anything I want to know.”
Busted.
He went back to eating.
She didn’t seem to care. “I’m serious about putting out. You want more sex tonight? Start talking.”
What had brought this on? “That’s a dangerous trick.”
“Is it?”
The smirk on her face didn’t hide the sincere solicitude in her eyes. She seemed to understand how his demons haunted him. That his driving need to take care of her, and all the others, stemmed from them.
“Percy was an Army Ranger. Three tours in the Middle East. A true hero.”
Those facts were easy to recite.
“Heroes always have flaws,” she said.
There was no judgment in it, just simple observation.
A not so simple truth, nevertheless.
Lowering his fork, he wiped his mouth on a napkin. “He came home with a back injury and an addiction to pain killers. Things went downhill from there.”
“Usually does. What happened?”
Dog on a bone. “I got him the help he needed, rehab for both the injury and drugs. Got him clean, helped him get a job. Next thing I know, he’s in deep shit with a major drug dealer here in San Diego. I bailed him out, covered it up so our parents wouldn’t find out, and nearly lost my career over it.”
She swirled the wine in her glass, nodded, but didn’t offer platitudes.
He appreciated that. He tossed the napkin on the table and took a deep breath. Talking to her was as easy as fucking her. It was a first for him. “It took time initially, but I brought him here, cleaned him up, insisted he fess up to the entire family. He wasn’t going to get better hiding his addiction. At first, he was adamant that no one find out. After a year in Narcotics Anonymous and a lot of heart-to-hearts with me, he finally agreed he had to come clean. I thought he’d turned a corner.”
He chugged the last half of his beer and still she offered no comment. Her gaze was fixed on the distant view of the water and she waited, letting him take his time.
“He was going to explain everything to the family at a birthday party my mom was having for him a few weeks before my wedding. She insists on celebrating our birthdays every year and this was a biggie. His thirtieth. He’d missed a lot of them while on his tours and she was really looking forward to it. We all were. That morning, he was found in an alley, dead from multiple stab wounds. Another man, a low level drug dealer, was also dead, his neck broken. A drug deal gone bad. The cops believed Percy met with the guy, killed him, and then was killed himself by another gang member.”
She shook her head. “Damn.”
“My parents were shocked, beside themselves and devastated that I had withheld the truth from them. My sisters, my fiancee…they all felt betrayed and for good reason.”
“They would rather you had betrayed Percy’s trust and confidence?”
