ARRESTED: A Stepbrother Cop Romance (18 page)

It’s a beautiful day, the perfect mix of sunshine and breeze, without
too much humidity.
 
Outside the station I
catch a scent on the air, floral and damp as though someone has been watering
hanging baskets, and it reminds me of days spent in the backyard, dancing under
sprinklers with Brandon.
 
I think about
him every so often.
 
He’s a part of my
past that seems so distant that it takes a song, a scent or another person with
the same name for me to recall my long-ago stepbrother.
 
It’s been fifteen years since he left,
promising he would keep in touch.
 
Shit.
I swallow down a lump in my throat as I recall the day his dad came to collect
him.
 
He sat in the backseat of his
father’s truck with his head hanging forward, not wanting me to see how upset
he was about leaving.
 
By that point I’d
become used to holding in my tears.
 

I make my way through the automatic doors and into the cool waiting
area, pushing those memories aside.
 
It
smells musty, like old magazines and unwashed bodies, the nose-wrinkling odor
of crime.
 
I scan left and right looking
for someone who resembles a ‘Connor’ and a huge, hulking man stands up and
makes his way over.
 
He has that way of
walking that is part stalking animal and part aggressive human male.
 
Shorn hair and all black clothes make him
menacing, but I’m used to dealing with individuals like him.
 
I draw myself up to my full height, 5’8” plus
my skyscraper heels.
 
Even so, I only
reach his chin when he comes to stand way too close.
 
“Samantha,” he says surprisingly quietly.

“Connor?” I ask.

He nods and draws a brown envelope from inside his bomber jacket.
 
“This is for you.
 
There’s payment inside.
 
When you need more, there’s a number inside
the envelope for you to contact.
 
The man
you’re representing is being held on assault charges.
 
It’s important that he gets released without
charge.”

“Okay,” I say, taking hold of the envelope cautiously.
 
Cash handed over in envelopes is highly
irregular, and the envelope is fat enough for me to suppose it contains a large
quantity.
 
I want to tell Connor this but
I can tell he’s just carrying out someone else’s instructions, probably someone
he wouldn’t want to ignore.
  
“What’s my
client’s name?”

“Brandon Ford,” he says, and I blink at him in shock.
 

“Brandon Ford?”
 
It’s not a
particularly unusual name but it’s weird that I was just thinking about my
ex-stepbrother and now here’s Connor mentioning his name.

“Yeah,” Connor says, stepping back and looking towards the door.
 
“Look, I’ve gotta go.
 
I’ve been sitting here for hours and I got
shit to do.
 
You got it from here?”

“Yes,” I say, although inside I’m not sure I have.

Connor nods and makes for the exit and I turn to the desk in a haze of
memories tinged with a little bit of fear.
 
It can’t be my Brandon being held in those cells.
 
He was a good kid.
 
Clever and quiet.
 
I tell myself that it’ll be some other
Brandon Ford I’m representing and everything will be fine.
 

The desk officer ushers me though and I talk to the officer working on
the case.
 
The Brandon Ford being held in
the cells got into a bar fight and beat a man.
 
The officer says it was quite brutal.
 
He also says that Mr. Ford is suspected of being a member of a local
crime organization, known for their involvement in illegal gambling, drug
running and other nefarious activities.
 

I ask if he has an existing record and the office mentions a couple of
other charges that were dropped.
 
Then,
when I’ve finished jotting down my notes, I’m taken towards the interview room
where I will meet my new client.
 
My navy
patent heels click on the tiled floor and I adjust my purse on my shoulder,
feeling ridiculously nervous.
 
Half of me
is desperate to open that door and find that Brandon Ford the criminal is a
stranger to me, but the other half is so damn desperate to see my stepbrother
again.
 
Hearing his name has brought up a
swell of old feelings inside me that has left me feeling shaky.
 

Just as the officer opens the door, I remember how good my day has been
so far.
 
Whoever is behind that door is
about to change all that.
 
I can feel it
in my bones.

Chapter 2

Samantha

When I was eight my father
married again.
 
My mom had died not long
after I was born of an asthma attack.
 
She had the condition severely and on the day it happened, she was standing
at a bus stop on a busy road, surrounded by pollution and other irritants, and
she’d left her inhaler in another purse.
 
By the time the ambulance reached her she was already gone.
 

Thinking about her makes my chest feel tight, partly because I spent so
much time as a child imagining what it would be like to die that way, gasping
for a breath that was impossible to force into your damaged lungs.

My stepmom was a lovely woman who took me under her wing
immediately.
 
She had a son who was two
years older than me and we hit it off straight away.
 

I was a sporty kid, so Brandon and I spent hours in our yard with bats
and balls, challenging each other to races across the field behind our
home.
 
Brandon was always faster but he
never gloated when he beat me.
 
Instead,
he’d look down at his watch and compliment me on my timing, or nod his head and
tell me my technique was improving.
 

At night we’d camp out in our tent and eat marshmallows and his mom’s
chewy home-made cookies, never running out of things to talk about.
 
He loved nature and would tell me all about
the obscure animals he’d been reading about.
 
To this day I think I know more about native Australian mammals than
anyone else I’ve ever met, barring Brandon.
 
A couple of years ago I travelled to Sydney and spent a whole day at the
zoo there, marveling at the wombats, koalas and bilbies, wishing he was with me
to see them.

He’d wanted to be a zoo keeper when he grew up so he could work with
animals.
 
He wanted to research their
native environments and find better ways to house them that were closer to the
places they came from.
 
Brandon had a
love of people and animals, a soft-heartedness that his mother nurtured with a
stream of pets.
 
He looked after each one
as though it was the most precious thing in his life, but it was Wombat, his
brown mongrel puppy, that he loved the best.
 
Wombat would sleep between us in the tent, guarding his precious owner
as he slipped into his dreams.

Even as a nine-year-old I thought Brandon was beautiful.
 
Not in a perfect-looks way but because he had
so much light inside him which seemed to flow through his face.
 
His eyes were a soft blue-green with gold
flecks around the center, the color of the lake we used so swim in on hot days
when our parents would take us for rambling picnics.
 
He had long, light-brown eyelashes that were
fairer at the roots and darker at the tips.
 
They made him look angelic when he was sleeping.
 
In the summer freckles would appear on his
cheeks as though the warm weather sprinkled him with glitter.
 

I loved him deeply; my best friend, my brother and so much a part of my
home that I couldn’t recall what it had been like before he arrived with his
mom.

We had two blissful years together, full of innocent fun, before tragedy
struck our family and blew it all apart.

I have the memory of the ten-year-old Brandon sleeping curled around
Wombat in my mind when I walk through the door to the interview room.
  
The man sitting at the table is big and
broad, sitting with his body slumped down in chair, legs spread wide and arms
folded across his chest.
 
Time seems to
stand still as his eyes scan over me, starting at my feet and rising slowly,
seductively, as though he wants to turn me into something he is in control of
rather than the other way around.
 
When
he finally looks me in the eye I see the flash of recognition.
 
It’s like a spark of electricity between
us.
 
This rugged, shorn-haired, thuggish
man is my Brandon Ford and I can’t take it in.
 
I rest my hand on the back of the chair that I’m supposed to be sitting
on, suddenly feeling like I might teeter in my heels.
 
His eyes close, just for a second, but it’s
enough for me to see that he knows and is trying to pull himself together.

“Brandon?” I say, my voice filled with emotion, and when he opens his
eyes it’s as though he’s dropped the shutters over the feelings I had seen a
glimpse of.

He turns to the officer and says, “I want another attorney.”

“No,” I blurt out.
 
“Why?”

Brandon shakes his head and leans forward, resting his strong forearms
on the table, telling me with his body language to back down and do as he
wishes.
 
My stepbrother wasn’t anything
like this man, with his brutish mannerisms and aggressive posturing, but we
have too much history for me to walk out of here without finding out more.
 
I want to talk to him so badly.

“Because this isn’t any place for you, Sammie.”
 

His use of the nickname he gave me throws me off guard for a second,
taking me back to those sweet times when he would whisper through the crack in
my door to see if I was awake.
 
The
nights when he’d sneak into my bed so we could read comics feel an eon away.

“I’m a defense attorney,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm and
unaffected.
 
I hold eye contact with him
and he doesn’t look away, but I do when I see him clenching and unclenching his
bloodied fist.
 
“You need to get that
seen to,” I say and look over to the officer.
 
“My client requires medical treatment for the injuries to his
hands.
 
Please can you arrange for a
nurse to attend to them?”

The officer raises his eyebrows and so do I.
 
If he thinks I’m a pushover he’s got another
think coming.

I pull the chair out from under the table and lower myself to sit in it,
putting my purse on the table and finding my notepad and pen.
 

“I said I don’t want you,” Brandon hisses, leaning even further across
the table.

The officer is hanging around behind me, as if he doesn’t know what to
do.
 
I need to get Brandon to back down,
otherwise I’m out of here.

“Brandon, your friend has paid me a retainer to act on your behalf.
 
Can I ask that you let me do my job for now,
and once we have dealt with the current matter, then you talk to your friend
and decide whether or not you want to seek alternative representation?”

Brandon stares at me with his blue-green lake eyes, framed by long
soft-brown lashes that are just the same in a way that is unnerving.
 
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me
after all these years.
 
I know it must be
disconcerting for him too.
 

“Please,” I say, wanting so desperately to spend time with him and learn
who he is now and what his life has been like.
 
He’s changed so much but he’s still beautiful to me, so much so that I
feel my heart skip a little as I take in the size of him, the sheer
masculinity.

 
“No,” he says in such a firm
voice I know I’m not going to get anywhere.
 
I feel wounded; I can’t understand why he doesn’t want me to represent
him.
 
Does he think I won’t do a good
job?
 
Does he think I’m incompetent?
 
My face feels hot, as my battered pride boils
to the surface.
 
Brandon must see my
reaction because he leans back and crosses his arms again, his eyes
softening.
 
“I don’t want you involved in
this, Sammie.
 
Trust me.”

Maybe it’s crazy but I do trust him, even after all these years and
despite the fact I can see the evidence of violence marring his hands.
 
I look towards the officer who is lurking
behind me in front of the closed door, and then back at Brandon.
 
“I’ll send someone else from my firm,” I say,
and he shakes his head.
 

“Take this number down.”
 
He nods
towards my pad and pen and I do as he says, jotting the number and the name
‘Adam’ as instructed.
 
When I’ve
finished, I look up and catch an expression on Brandon’s face that sends a
tingle all the way up my spine.
 
It’s the
same look he used to give me when we would lie next to each other in our tent
and whisper secrets, filled with intensity and warmth.
 
For seconds we just study each other, Sammie
and Bran-bran, best friends again.
 
And
then, like a fog has passed between us, it’s gone.
 
“You should go,” he says, looking towards the
door and the officer.
 

I pull a card out of the front pocket of my purse and slide it across
the table to him.
 
“Call me when you get
out,” I say but he doesn’t reach to take the card.

“You take care, Sammie,” he says, and that’s it.
 

Conversation over.
 

Reunion terminated.
 

I stand and pack my things, my throat burning with a rush of emotion
that feels too much for the situation.
 
With so many years between us I shouldn’t want to cry at what feels like
rejection, but I do.
 
I’m back in the
body of my younger self, watching my favorite person in the world leave me
behind.

“Bye, Brandon,” I say, the words catching in my tight throat, and I know
I should turn to leave but I just can’t stand the idea that this might be
it.
 
I might never see him again.
 
I rack my memory trying to find something to
say that might remind him of how things used to be between us, and that might
make me feel less of a stranger to him.
 
“I went to Australia,” I say.
 
“I
held a real wombat.”

The police officer clears his throat behind me but I don’t care if he
thinks I’m a freak because Brandon is looking at me like he remembers.

“I’ll speak to you soon then?” I say with a half-smile that is all I can
manage, and then I turn quickly before I lose all composure, and am led back
out of the station by the officer.

In the waiting area I sit down to rest my trembling legs.
 
I can’t believe it’s him.
 

My Brandon.
 

My boy.
 

My stepbrother.

 
I swipe at my face, needing to
get it together.
 
First I call my office
and inform my assistant of what has happened.
 
Then I call Adam.

The phone is answered on the first ring but no one speaks.
 

“Hello, this is Samantha Corrigan.”

“Did you see your client?” the deep, dangerous sounding voice asks.

“Yes,” I reply, “But he doesn’t want me to represent him.”

“Why?” he asks crossly, as though he isn’t used to anyone questioning
his wishes.

“He asked for me to call you and let you know you will need to send
someone else,” I say.
 
“I have the
retainer.
 
Can you send someone to come
and collect it?”

“Connor will be there in twenty minutes,” Adam says and hangs up.

I look at my phone feeling a little stunned and a whole lot
relieved.
 
I’m glad that I won’t have to
deal with Adam again.
 
He gives me the
shivers over the phone so I can’t imagine what he would be like in person.

True to his word, Connor arrives within twenty minutes and takes the
money.
 
I stand and leave the station but
once I’m outside I can’t bring myself to go and never come back.
 

Brandon isn’t going to call me, I know this.
 

If I go back to my office now I might never see him again.
 
He didn’t keep in touch the first time and
that rejection stings just as much now as it did then.
 

If I want to see Brandon, I’m gonna have to force the issue.

Want to read more of Escape – A Stepbrother Romance?

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