Breathe Me In Page 2

  She opened her mouth to say you’re welcome, but a breathless “thank God you’re okay” cut her off.

  Becca turned just in time to see Camille Adams making a beeline across the street toward Nate, a sullen teenager trailing in her wake. It had taken Becca longer than expected to get Jesse Adams released from custody. The kid hadn’t done anything; no charges had been filed, and all the corroborating evidence had the kid at least a block away from the crime scene. Aside from the fact that the kid had attitude to spare and looked like he was auditioning for the part of teenager thug, Becca couldn’t figure out why the officer in charge seemed intent on dragging his feet.

  The only thing that made the disastrous night even halfway palatable was the sheepish teenager’s grateful mother. The attractive young black woman had grabbed her son by the shoulders in a way that made it unclear whether she intended to hug him or shake him. It reminded Becca of the way her momma looked at her brothers when they’d been reckless teenagers. Gabe more often than Emerson, but they’d both had their moments. In the end, the mother folded her son in her arms, and the kid had the good sense to muster up a few tears. He was scared enough; Becca didn’t doubt they were genuine.

  Becca managed to take a step to the side as the boy’s mother threw her arms around Nate. His expression shifted from a grimace to acceptance as he gently patted the woman’s back.

  “I’m so sorry you got caught up in all of this. I can’t think about what might have happened if you hadn’t been there. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to thank you.” She paused long enough to gaze up at Nate in a way that said she’d be happy to come up with something.

  Becca turned away from the happy family scene playing out in front of her and caught the kid watching Nate and his momma with a mixture of cringeworthy uncomfortableness and longing.

  “It’s not me you should be thanking. Ms. Southerland...Becca, wait!”

  The sound of her name made her glance over her shoulder in time to see Nate untangling himself from the grateful woman. Ms. Adams had already thanked her so many times, Becca had insisted she stop. She didn’t want her to start again.

  “Of course,” said Ms. Adams. “Thank you again for everything you’ve done. I’ll find a way to repay you.” The sliver of worry that crept into the woman’s expression made Becca feel like a lawyer, the ambulance-chasing kind.

  “That’s not necessary. It’s already taken care of,” said Becca, pausing long enough to make sure the other woman understood what she was saying. Jesse’s mother had been lovely, and Becca could tell she had more than enough to worry about without feeling indebted to her. Her brother wouldn’t want that either. “You two try to stay out of trouble.” She glanced between Nate and the boy.

  Nate opened his mouth as if to say something, but Becca didn’t wait to hear what it was. She gave one last glance at the three of them standing together, looking like they had the makings of a happy if slightly dysfunctional family, and went to try to salvage what she could from her night.

  BECCA SOUTHERLAND WASN’T THE MOST surprising thing about the past twenty-four hours, but she was the thing that kept circling around in Nate’s head. She’d taken up valuable real estate in his mind most of the day and the whole time he’d been running. He’d gotten home from work still feeling the patina of his time at the police station and decided to head to the greenway to clear the grime from his head. All he’d done is make room for her.

  He couldn’t get over the way she’d dismissed him when he was simply trying to thank her for saving him from something he hadn’t even done wrong. She’d treated him like an irritating problem to be dealt with and not someone who’d been looking out for an errant kid.

  It didn’t help that getting cuffed and shoved in the back of a cop car made him predisposed to feel that way. Being grilled by the detective in the windowless interrogation room made him feel trapped in a way he hadn’t for years. Not since he was a skinny twenty-year-old with more attitude than sense, stuck in basic training with no way to call his grandma to tell her she might have been right about his mouth overriding his better nature.

  It was a lot easier to pin those feelings on the beautiful attorney than it was to face them. Obsessing about Becca—petite, with too-perceptive eyes and enough curves under her buttoned-up lawyer clothes to be distracting—might have been a blessing in disguise. If he had to think about Becca’s dismissal to avoid reliving those couple of hours of helpless feelings, it was a small price to pay.

  She acted like she owned every room she walked into. If his grandmother was alive, she’d have said butter wouldn’t melt in Becca Southerland’s mouth. When he’d been fool enough to touch her without her permission, she hadn’t wasted any time putting him in his place, freezing him with a look. It was arrogant and should have been off-putting—and it was. But in her defense, when Camille showed up with a marginally repentant Jesse, Becca had been nothing but gracious, reassuring his neighbor without making her feel like she was beholden to her.

  Knowing Gabe and Emerson the way he did, he shouldn’t have expected anything else from their sister, but her actions felt at odds with the ice queen image he’d built for her. Which meant one of two things: either her behavior with Camille was an act or he had the ice queen thing wrong.

  Tired from the ten miles he’d run, but still not free from the remnants of the previous night, he slid his key in the lock and opened his apartment door. He would grab a shower and a beer and try the Morgan Freeman thing on demand.

  “About time you got home.” As if called by the Devil, Gabe Southerland lounged in his big leather armchair, sipping what Nate was pretty sure was his last IPA.

  “Jesus. A little warning next time.” He threw his keys in the bowl on the table inside the door and tried to talk his heart into slowing back down to a closer to normal rhythm. Finding the other man in his space was one thing; looking Gabe in the eye after what he’d been thinking about his sister was another thing entirely. “You know I gave you the key to my apartment for emergencies, right? Not so you could come over here and drink my beer.”

  Gabe didn’t bother looking repentant. His girlfriend, Berlin, was the only one he’d ever seen make Gabe reconsider his behavior. Even his older brother Emerson couldn’t manage it, but it was clear at first glance, the pixie-like woman with purple hair owned Gabe’s heart. It was kind of sweet, or it would be if Nate was inclined to think warm thoughts about the man sitting in his chair. Since he was also part of the reason Nate hadn’t spent the night in jail, the beer wasn’t too high a price to pay.

  “They make phones, you know.” Neither Gabe nor Emerson had been in the office that day. They’d been off courting some new client. Nate didn’t see how that justified a house call. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just checking to make sure you’re okay. And to find out why the fuck you got caught up in an active shooting.”

  The words echoed Becca’s so closely for a moment Nate had a flash of her hazel eyes instead of Gabe’s brown ones.

  “Since when do you check up on me?” Nate headed to the kitchen, hoping there was at least one beer left. “Don’t you have a woman waiting at home for you?”

  He opened the door and found an untouched six-pack of his favorite amber lager. Gabe brought beer with him, which made Nate feel even worse for the thoughts he’d been having about Becca. Both the ice queen thoughts and the sexy attorney ones, not that he had any intention of divulging either.

  He twisted the cap off one of the amber bottles and took a long pull. The ice-cold beer hit the back of his throat, washing away some of the scratchy feeling. He was pretty sure rehydrating with beer after a run wasn’t an endorsed training thing, but he couldn’t muster the energy to care.

  “Thanks,” he said, raising his bottle in Gabe’s direction.

  “Berlin’s out of town for the night, and my visit’s not completely altruistic. I’ve got a favor to ask, but first I want to hear about how you ended up in jail. You’re usually such a fucking Boy Scout. What were you thinking?”

  “The beer’s appreciated but not necessary. I already owe you for sending Becca to get me out.” He didn’t stumble over her name. Maybe he could make it through the conversation without tipping Gabe off to the fact that he thought his sister was both hot and infuriating as hell. The other man had eyes. He had to know both. But still... Nate didn’t have a sister. He’d been an only child. But if he had, he could imagine how he’d feel about someone—anyone—touching her. “It was the neighbor kid,” he said, changing the direction of his thoughts to safer territory, irony notwithstanding. “He’s a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet and embracing every bad black youth urban stereotype at his disposal. His mom’s raising him by herself. She works a lot, so when I saw him sneaking out, looking like a magnet for trouble, I followed him.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and took another long pull of his beer. In hindsight, he still wasn’t sure what he could have done differently. It’s not like the kid would have listened to him if Nate confronted him. He had no authority in that situation. The little asshole was more likely to have set his heels than to change his behavior.

  “So it really was a wrong place, wrong time thing. That’s some kind of luck you’ve got.” Gabe drained the last of his beer and set the bottle to the side.

  “Tell me about it.” Nate ignored for the moment thoughts of Becca storming into the interrogation room. She’d been amazing—competent, beautiful, in complete control. It was his own special kind of catnip. If she couldn’t stand him, he shouldn’t care. “Anyway, the kid’s scared enough it ought to keep him from doing anything else stupid for a while.”

  “You really are a Boy Scout if you believe that.” Gabe shook his head. “Getting in trouble rarely deterred
me. It just made me sneakier. If he’s running with the kind of guys you’ve said, getting picked up by the cops is likely to have the opposite effect. More a badge of honor than a deterrent.”

  “Let’s pray Jesse has more sense than you then.” Gabe was right about the kid, but Nate was too tired to figure out what to do about it. “It’s not exactly a high bar.”

  “Asshole.”

  “My point exactly.” Nate grinned at the other man, feeling a little bit more of the helplessness of getting hauled downtown slip away. He didn’t do well being at anyone’s mercy, and the detective hit too close to every stereotype he knew. He’d be glad to replace those memories with about anything else. “Seriously, I owe you. What do you need?”

  “And extra set of hands and eyes at my sister’s wedding.”

  Nate choked on his beer, coughing and spluttering until he finally managed to catch his breath. The idea of Becca in a wedding dress was almost as much of a shock to his system as the idea of her walking down the aisle to another man, which was its own kind of fucked up. He didn’t know the woman. She couldn’t stand him and despite his almost obsessive thoughts, he wanted to pretend the feeling was mutual. But it wasn’t Becca getting married; it was the other Southerland sister—Amanda? Nate hadn’t met her, but he’d talked to the guy she was marrying a couple of times at Gabe’s place.

  “Whatever you need. Just tell me when and where.”

  “Thanks, man. The wedding is in three weeks at the East of Eden Farm.”

  “That place out near Kinston?”

  Gabe nodded. “You don’t mind wearing a tux, do you?” He sounded like he was asking Nate to wear a hair shirt. A tux was exactly what he wanted to be wearing the next time he saw Becca. It would even the playing field and give him a chance to show her he wasn’t the fuckup she assumed he was.

  “Not at all, man. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gabe looked so grateful. Considering the thoughts he’d been having about his sister, it gave Nate a pang of guilt, but not enough to change anything.

  “Thanks for the beer and for springing my ass.”

  “That was Becca.” Gabe shook his head and started for the door. “I imagine she already made you pay for it, at least a little bit. She gave Emerson an earful about the value of her time.” His smile cut the sting of his words.

  Nate didn’t have to work to imagine Becca lecturing her big brother. And he didn’t have to guess about how the Southerlands felt about one another. It was clear from the time he’d spent with them, in any combination, that they loved one another hard. Even if one of them was a sexy bitch on wheels.

  “I appreciate everything she did.” He walked Gabe to the door and opened it to find Camille standing in his hallway, holding a bakery box.

  “I’m sorry,” said Camille, glancing from Nate to Gabe and back again. “I didn’t realize you had company. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “You’re not interrupting.” He hated to see the woman look so uncomfortable. He didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. He wasn’t interested in being anything more than friends, assuming she was even thinking something like that, which she probably wasn’t. But he knew how hard her week had been, and the last thing he wanted was for her to feel awkward. “He was just leaving.”

  “Too soon by the looks of it,” said Gabe, eyeing the bakery box. “I’m Gabe Southerland. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Southerland? Are you related to Becca? Of course you must be,” she said, juggling the box to take Gabe’s offered hand. “Your sister is an angel.”

  “Lord, please don’t ever let her hear you say that. She’ll be unbearable.” He steadied the box and hit Camille with a smile that seemed to leave her momentarily stunned.

  “I mean it. She helped my son. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay her.” Camille glanced down for a second, and Nate could almost see the weight of everything the woman carried by herself.

  “You don’t have to repay her. She wouldn’t want you to. I know she was happy to help.”

  Gabe’s words went counter to what he’d been telling Nate moments earlier, but he was grateful to the other man for putting Camille at ease. The last thing the woman needed was another burden to carry.

  “I owe you a thank-you too,” she said, turning to face Nate and holding the box out to him. “They’re not homemade. I didn’t have time, and I know it’s not nearly enough. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there yesterday.” Her voice broke on the last word, and both he and Gabe took a step toward her.

  It was a protective stance and as automatic as breathing. It could also be easily misconstrued, depending on the context. Luckily, Camille was too busy fighting back tears to pay attention. Gabe met his gaze across the top of her head and motioned back to the apartment. Nate nodded.

  “I’m not leaving before the baked goods come out,” said Gabe. “And we can’t leave Nate to eat all this himself. It’ll wreck his girlish figure.”

  Camille laughed at his words, but she let Nate take the box from her hands while Gabe gently steered her back inside the apartment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when they were sitting on the sofa, the box of pastries open on the coffee table in front of them. “I didn’t mean to break down. This was supposed to be a thank-you, not some kind of intervention.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He wanted to say they’d all been there, but he didn’t think that was true. He and Gabe had been in plenty of dangerous situations; none of that compared to being the sole caretaker for a child. Aside from the physical stuff, there were all the emotional bits and pieces to help them navigate. And the consequences of the inevitable bad choices. Tonight’s case in point.

  “Apple fritters. God, I love these. Whatever you did, Sommers, make sure you do it again.” Gabe snagged an apple fritter from the box and inhaled half of it in one bite.

  “Actually, I kind of wanted to talk to you about that. I know I’m overstepping,” said Camille, but her voice grew stronger as she spoke. He knew before she said the words whatever she was about to ask wasn’t for her; it was for her son. She’d gone from weary woman to protective momma bear before his eyes. “I appreciate you looking out for Jesse—more than you know. I was wondering if we could maybe make it a more regular thing. The only men he has in his life right now are those assholes who got him in trouble in the first place. He needs a better example, and I can’t be that for him.”

  He could see how much the statement weighed on her—knowing her kid needed something and not being able to provide it for him. But that wasn’t exactly true. She’d ignored her nerves and showed up on his doorstep with pastries that probably meant she’d have to cut back somewhere else to try to convince him to help her son. There was no way he could say no to that. If the expression on Gabe’s face was any indication, the other man was swayed as well.

  “I’m happy to help any way I can.” He’d just be careful to catch the kid before he headed down any alleys next time.

  “We’re happy to help. All of us.” Gabe hesitated for a moment as if he was turning something over in his head. “Jesse can intern at Southerland Security. That will get him around half a dozen or so men, most of whom are at least marginally good influences. The rest are smart enough to teach him not to get caught. If that’s okay with you?”

  “Better than okay. That would be amazing.” She paused for a moment and Nate could see her working through something in her head. “You’re sure?” She glanced between Gabe and him.

  He was blown away that Gabe offered the intern thing to the kid. As far as he knew, they’d never done anything like it before, but it was perfect. Nate would do anything he could to help the kid and his tired momma. His Uncle James and some of his dad’s friends had been there for him when his parents died and he went to live with his grandmother. He’d love a chance to give back some of what he’d gotten. But he was just one guy and one the kid wasn’t always inclined to listen to. The guys at the firm could give Jesse the tribe he’d been looking for.

  “Absolutely,” said both men in unison.

  If the little asshole could get it together, maybe he’d even find a kind of family. Nate knew the value of the family you created when the one you’d been born into didn’t fill the gaps.