Falling for the Brother

“I don’t think you’re deliberately holding anything back,” Mason said, picking up an onion ring and handing it to her.

It would be churlish to refuse. She had to accept it. And it would be equally rude just to sit there and hold it or throw it away. Especially with him watching her. She took a bite. Closed her eyes while she chewed.

He was grinning again when she opened them. “Good, isn’t it?”

It was good there was only one left on his plate. “Mmm-hmm,” she said and finished the onion ring, then took a sip of beer.

And promised herself that she’d be heading home within minutes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MASON WAS BROUGHT up short when he realized he was enjoying himself. He wasn’t there to have a good time. Nor was it appropriate that he do so with his brother’s ex-wife. Particularly when he was investigating that same brother.

No one would be happier than he would to find that Bruce had never had anything to do with hurting their grandmother. But his gut was telling him Bruce had done this. And it had to stop.

Period. For Gram. And for Bruce, too.

“Things aren’t always what they seem.” He was beginning to suspect that these days, with Bruce, they almost never were. It used to be only when he’d tried every other means to get his own way that Bruce would resort to manipulating the truth. But in the past few years, through things Gram had said, he’d caught his brother doing it for seemingly no reason at all—as though he’d been undercover for so long, he’d lost perspective on the difference between lies and truth.

None of which meant he’d turned violent. Or hurt Gram.

If Mason was going to find the truth, he needed help. Fast. And Harper, with her ties to Bruce and her current proximity to Gram, was the most obvious choice. Gram had given him a couple of weeks with her agreement to stay at the Stand. Two weeks before she’d insist on going home to Bruce.

Her hands on the table—Mason didn’t miss the open body language—Harper frowned. “What do you mean, things aren’t always what they seem? You trying to tell me something?”

He’d been debating, since seeing her again that morning, whether or not he would. Whether or not it was necessary.

Whether he dared bring up the night that had changed his life forever—and not in a good way.

He had two weeks.

“That night I found you crying…”

The atmosphere around them changed completely. Electricity singed the air he breathed. Leaving an unmistakable stench of acrimony.

“What?” Harper’s hands were no longer on the table. She’d put on her “cop” face, which she was remarkably good at. He couldn’t read a thing she was thinking.

Which left him with only the surface beauty he’d never been able to get out of his mind since the first time he’d laid eyes on her. It occurred to him that she might know full well the effect she had on him—especially after he’d noticed the leggings that sculpted legs he could still feel around him if he closed his eyes and allowed it to happen. Noticed the makeup drawing attention to blue eyes that had been haunting him for five long, lonely years…

She’d been bereft that night, and he’d taken advantage of her. He’d betrayed his own brother. Slept with the woman Bruce was in love with. He was a jerk and he paid the price every single day.

And here he was with her again, possibly building a case to put his brother in prison. Betraying him in the worst possible way. The irony of it wasn’t lost on him.

“What about my crying?” Harper’s tone was colder. As if he was a perp she didn’t trust.

She’d steered away from the latter part of that evening, and he was grateful.

Curious, too.

Slightly miffed.

And yet he didn’t blame her.

“You’ve said, more than once today, that Bruce owns up to his actions.”

“That’s right.” Her frown cleared. “And he did that day, too. I told you back then. As soon as he’d slept with that woman, he told me. He’d been pretending to be her guy for over a month. She’d come on to him and would’ve gotten suspicious if he turned her down. He couldn’t risk her feeling rejected and breaking up with him. Almost eight weeks of infiltration into the rent scheme she and her brother were running would’ve gone down the drain and thirty senior citizens would have ended up broke and homeless.”