Breathe Me In

  Also by Evelyn Adams

  For the Billionaire's Pleasure

  Wired for You

  Wrapped Around You

  For the Billionaire's Pleasure - Eric & Julie

  Wrapped

  Around

  You

  For the Billionaire's Pleasure - Luke & Claire

  Wired

  Wanton

  Won

  Wanted

  Saints and Sinners

  Deposition and a Dare

  Cocktails and a Kiss (Coming Soon)

  Southerland Security

  Falling Free

  Wicked Intent

  Closer This Time

  Slow Motion

  Breathe Me In

  Studio 1247

  Bound Collection

  The Southerlands

  Feels Like Home

  Loving Bailey

  Practical Arrangement

  Riding the Pause

  A Little Bit Closer

  Love at the Lost and Found

  Laws of Attraction

  Someone to Love

  Halfway to Happily Ever After

  Feels Like Family

  House On Fire

  Southerlands: The Complete Collection

  Southerlands: Volume One

  Southerlands: Volume Three

  Southerlands: Volume Two

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  NATHAN SOMMERS SHADOWED THE KID down the alley and contemplated the wisdom of his recent life choices. He was too old to be doing this cloak-and-dagger shit—at least without backup and the guarantee of a lucrative payday at the end. The problem was the fifteen-year-old punk who lived in the apartment next to his was too young to get mixed up in what Nate suspected was going on at the end of the alley. He’d seen the kid sneaking out of the building, looking like a pre-pubescent gansta in a black hoodie, baggie jeans, and sporting the standard I don’t give a fuck slouch. It didn’t take great deductive skill to know he was up to no good.

  The kid’s mother worked long hours at the power plant to keep a roof over their heads—not that the ungrateful little asshole seemed to care. But that meant there was no one home to keep him from making a mistake that could change the course of his life. The kid—his momma named him Jesse, but he insisted on being called Dray for who knew what reason—might think he was invincible, but he could barely keep his pants up. He’d be the first one to get busted and then Nate would have to live with the guilt of not stopping him when he’d had the chance. It seemed easier to catch the boy before he made the mistake to begin with, but in hindsight, he might have misjudged things. The dude might not be smart, but he was fast. Nate was rapidly considering giving up the element of surprise in order to catch his scrawny ass.

  Voices sounded at the end of the alley and Nate watched Jesse slide a little more swagger into his step. Dumbass. He picked up his pace and opened his mouth to stop the kid from going any farther. They were close enough to hear the voices clearly now, shouting parallel streams of curse words, which made the pop of the gunshot even more shocking. It sounded as if it were in the alley with them and Nate’s training was the only thing that kept him from flinching in response.

  Jesse hunched over and turned away from the sound, coming up short when he saw Nate behind him.

  “Where’d you come from?” Fear made the kid sound younger than his age, and his eyes widened when he noticed the gun on Nate’s hip.

  “It’s okay,” he said, reaching for the kid with one hand and the gun in his holster with the other, hesitating rather than drawing his weapon. He didn’t want to be the guy holding a gun at the scene of a shooting, but he also didn’t want to be the guy lying dead in the alley if whoever had done the shooting decided to come their way. He’d take his chance with the alley for now.

  “This way.” He didn’t give the kid a chance to make the choice to follow him. He tightened his grip on the kid’s shoulder and moved him back the direction they’d come, shielding the boy’s body with his own.

  The lack of resistance was a testament to how scared the boy must be. Nate kept half his attention on the direction of the shot behind them as he steered the kid down the alley. No one followed them and he’d almost started to believe they were going to make it out of this clusterfuck unscathed. He’d put the finishing touches on scaring the shit out of Jesse so he’d never do anything this stupid again, dump the kid on his momma’s couch, and be back in his own place in time to let Morgan Freeman tell him more about the Story of God. He’d been a sucker for the National Geographic channel since he was a kid. Drinking a craft beer—because why waste money and taste buds on crap—and listening to the voice of God teach him about the intricacies of the mandalas and mantras used by the Buddhist monks in the Nepalese Mountains was the perfect way to cap off what felt like an endless week. Even better if he got to top it off with his good neighbor routine.

  He’d almost slipped into self-congratulation, which made him the dumbass. He knew better than to relax before the job was finished and everyone was home safe and sound. The police cruiser screeched to a stop, blocking the end of the alley.

  “Freeze! Hands where I can see them!”

  Nate hurried to comply, keeping his movements slow and fluid and his hands visible the entire time. Beside him, Jesse looked scared enough to pee his droopy pants. Nate could sympathize. If he hadn’t spent years working his way out of tighter spots, he might be dealing with his own incontinence issues. He was a black man with a gun at the scene of an active shooting, standing next to a kid who looked like an extra on Empire. The ways this could go south were too numerous to mention.

  THE REPETITIVE BUZZ of her phone pulled Becca Southerland from thoughts of depositions and class action reforms interspersed with peonies, ranunculus, and dark chocolate groom’s cakes. Careful to avoid the pins, she picked up the Tiffany blue charmeuse of her skirt and stepped gingerly off the platform in the center of the bridal salon. She’d had to work to get the alterations department to agree to an evening appointment. But with the push to make partner piling on her workload, she couldn’t afford to cut out of the office early, even for the final fitting of her maid of honor dress.

  “Excuse me for just a minute, please.” She smiled at the seamstress crouched at her feet. The woman didn’t look happy, and Becca couldn’t blame her. She hated it when people asked for special accommodations, assumed everyone else would jump to comply, and then acted as if it didn’t matter.

  She expected people to do what she needed. It was kind of her thing, but she paid generously for the privilege, and she never took other people’s time for granted. At three hundred and fifty dollars an hour, most people didn’t take her time for granted either.

  She slid her thumb across the phone to silence the buzzing and frowned at the picture of her brother Emerson on the screen. She’d taken the photo in one of those rare moments when her older, uber-responsible brother actually smiled. Usually seeing it made her smile back, but everyone in her family knew every spare minute of the week was filled with work or finishing touches for their sister Amanda’s wedding to Michael. If her brother was calling, either something was wrong, or he needed something from her. Neither option appealed to her.

  “What’s up?” she asked, not wasting any time ge
tting to the point.

  “I’ve got a problem. I need you to fix it.” Her brother’s voice came through the other end of the line, strong and succinct. Efficiency was one of the things they had in common.

  “I’m busy,” she said, glancing at herself in the three-way mirror. The slip dress draped her body in a way that felt sexy but wouldn’t yank any church lady chains during the ceremony. It was perfect—or would be when it was four inches shorter and wasn’t trying to swallow her. “Can it wait?”

  “No.” He didn’t explain or justify his request, which left her two options: either tell him no outright, which he knew she wouldn’t do, or ask him for details.

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to get someone out of jail. Two someones, actually.”

  “Oh hell.” She ran a hand over her dark hair still held tight in the sleek ponytail she’d fastened it in that morning. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to do it. She was as familiar with the process as any other attorney, but the police station was halfway across town, a couple of blocks from the courthouse and her office. In traffic, it would take her the better part of an hour to get there. She knew because she’d made the drive in the opposite direction an hour and fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Becca, it’s important,” said Emerson, and she wondered if the accused was a friend, an informant, or something else. Her brothers stayed on the right side of the law. Almost all the time.

  “Text me the info, but whoever it is is going to have to wait until I finish up here.”

  Her week had been a beast. She’d had to beg, borrow, and steal to find the time for the alteration appointment. She’d planned to get her dress sorted and head home to finish prepping for her pretrial in the morning. If she was efficient—her normal state—she’d be able to squirrel away a few minutes to spend with a glass of shiraz and a falling for my brother’s best friend romance before bed.

  Instead, she had to haul her ass across town to save someone who ended up—for whatever reason; she’d take that up with her brothers later—on the wrong side of the law and was too stupid to avoid getting caught. It probably wasn’t the salient point, but it was the one in the front of her mind at the moment. By the time she finished with the seamstress and dealt with the situation across town, she’d be lucky if she even saw her bed before eleven. It would make the last-minute morning prep for the pretrial impossible without copious amounts of coffee. And concealer, she thought, glaring at the shadows under her eyes reflected back at her from the mirror. Spackle maybe. Dammit.

  Becca turned to face the seamstress, who placed pins on the cushion strapped to her wrist and stood.

  “Can you fix the hem with what you’ve got or do we need to reschedule?” There wasn’t time to reschedule. There wasn’t time to do anything extra this week.

  “If you can give me a few more minutes, I’ll make it work,” said the other woman with a resigned shrug of her shoulders.

  Becca would have to find a way to make all of it work. It would be nice to be as sure of the outcome as the seamstress.

  “I TOLD YOU; I don’t know anything else.” He’d repeated his story about a dozen times already, but Nate had at least enough sense to avoid pissing off the detective on purpose. Not while he was in custody with no idea how long he’d be there.

  He said a silent prayer that his one call to his boss at Southerland Security was enough to get him released sooner rather than later. It had been a couple of hours since he’d talked to Emerson and the other man assured him he’d send someone. Nate just hoped they showed up before things devolved further. The detective grilling him had a vein popping up on his temple and didn’t show any sign of flagging. He didn’t want to see what happened when he really got going.

  It could be worse; Nate could be dead. He was a black man with a gun who’d been found leaving the scene of an active shooting. He was grateful the officer who’d taken him into custody had been decent, and he was pissed that in the twenty-first century, that was something he had to be grateful for. It didn’t matter that he had a concealed carry permit, had served his country in Afghanistan, and had no prior arrests or record. Nate wasn’t naïve enough to think he had to actually have committed a crime for the police to hold him and make his life exponentially more difficult than it had been when his day started. But knowing a thing was true and making his peace with it was an entirely different matter. Nate was bone-weary and the feeling got worse with every minute he spent in the stifling room.

  “I don’t believe you.” The detective rocked back in his chair, the legs practically groaning under his weight.

  It was one of those metal chairs with the Naugahyde-covered seats reserved for neglected waiting areas and interrogation rooms. Nate willed the chair to tip back a few inches more and dump the arrogant man on his ass, but his Doctor Strange skills were sorely underdeveloped. Morgan Freeman could probably do that shit with his voice alone.

  He’d had such high hopes for the night, none of which included spending time being grilled by some overweight, underpaid bully in a room that smelled of disinfectant and stale cigarettes. Just proof that no good deed went unpunished. Nate didn’t really believe that but a few more hours in this place and he’d lose what was left of his normal optimism.

  “Let’s go through it one more time.”

  The door opened, and the detective thunked his chair down on all four legs.

  The woman standing in the doorway was gorgeous—petite but curvy in all the right ways, with dark hair and big hazel eyes—and pissed. She radiated control and glanced at the detective as if she were royalty, and he was one of her subjects.

  “Who the hell are you?” The detective finally managed to find his footing. Literally.

  He stood, puffing out his chest and posturing. The woman didn’t even bother looking at him. Instead, she fixed her laser-focused gaze on Nate, and he fought to keep from flinching. He hoped she was on his side. He’d hate to be out of her good graces.

  “I’m Mr. Sommer’s attorney. Are you charging my client?”

  His side. Thank goodness.

  The detective hesitated a second too long. Nate almost felt sorry for the guy—or he would have, if the man hadn’t been forcing him to repeat the same story over and over for the past couple of hours. The woman turned to face the other man, and it was a little like watching a sphinx prepare to play with a mere mortal. She was fantastic and his attorney. His boss Emerson must have sent her to get him out. He loved the Southerlands liked brothers before. He had no idea how he was going to repay them for sending this woman to save his ass.

  “It’s a yes-or-no question, Detective. Are you charging my client?” She asked the question slowly, enunciating every word.

  “No.” The detective looked like someone had taken away his favorite toy. Nate bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. No way was he going to push his luck. Not until they were out of the building and he was on his way home.

  “Then we’ll be going.” She stood to the side, clearly intending for Nate to lead the way out of the door. He hurried to comply.

  “We might have more questions.” The detective sounded sullen, a far cry from the cocksure man he’d been moments before when he’d been grilling Nate.

  “I’m sure you have Mr. Sommer’s contact information. My name is Becca Southerland. I’ll be representing him should anything else come up. All requests should go through my office.”

  Southerland. Something about Emerson and Gabe’s sisters rolled around in Nate’s head. One was a climbing guide. The other was an attorney, which meant this gorgeous, powerful woman he’d been having less than pure thoughts about was his bosses’ sister.

  “HEY, HOLD ON a minute.”

  Becca glanced down at the hand on her arm and debated how much ice to slide into her gaze. She turned to face Nate, and the man had the good sense to pull his hand back. It might have been the only good judgment he’d exercised in the past five hours, but that wasn’t her problem anymore. He
was free and out on the street. Her job was done. Until the next time her brothers called her, which, if they were smart, would be long after Amanda’s wedding and her trial.

  “I’m sorry,” said Nate, looking appropriately sheepish. There was something about the creases around his dark eyes and the slight curve of his full lips that managed to make him seem penitent and on the verge of causing mayhem at the same time. It was the kind of expression that could get a woman in trouble if she let it. Becca had no intention of ever letting it.

  “For what, Mr. Sommers? Getting caught, armed, with a minor at an active shooting, for pulling me away from a previous appointment, or for touching me without my permission?” She punched the last three words and watched his eyes flare.

  “Point taken, Ms. Southerland.” He held his hands up in front of him, but the tone in his voice and the fire in his eyes didn’t feel like surrender. “I shouldn’t have touched you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.” Her words slid from icy to outright bitch. She was pissed. At his bad judgment, at her wrecked evening, and at expecting a thank-you she hadn’t received yet. She’d ignore for the moment she hadn’t given him much of a chance and focus on getting home while she still had a shot at five hours of sleep.

  “I just wanted to say thank you.” His voice sounded as clipped as hers had earlier. “I know you’re here because of Emerson and not me, but I was the one looking at a night in the county lockup. I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to help me. Thank you.”

  Despite the tone of his voice—she didn’t expect him to be friendly after she verbally flayed him—there was a sincerity to his words that made Becca consider thawing. She’d heard his story from the arresting officer when she arrived at the station. The police had reason to take him into custody, but the repeated grilling was unnecessary given his easily provable credentials. She couldn’t help but feel that he wouldn’t have been at the station for so long, if he’d been white. Becca respected the police. She had a better understanding than most of how hard they worked. But no one was perfect, and it only took a few bad actors to color everyone’s opinion.