Falling for the Brother

He approached her slowly, stopping a foot away. The urge to hold him hit her as suddenly as the nausea had. Water wasn’t going to settle that one.

If she had to use Bruce as a barrier between them, she’d do it. For all their sakes. “Clearly, I’m not a victim of Bruce’s manipulations,” she told him. “I’m here. I left him. As Grace put it, I was the only one who didn’t let his love control me.” Or something to that effect.

Again he looked as though he wanted to say more. He studied her instead. If he wasn’t going to leave on his own, she’d show him out. Heading to the door and to the hall, her unfinished workout didn’t matter anymore.

Mason stopped her just short of the front door, turning her to face him.

“Please be careful,” he said, his expression reminiscent of early morning hours in the moonlight, giving her the false impression that nothing mattered more to him than she did.

“I’m armed every day,” she reminded him. “And I’m always careful.”

“Be careful with Bruce. Don’t accept things at face value. If your leaving changed him, just think what losing Gram could do to him. He has no idea she’s protecting him…”

“If he didn’t do this, he won’t figure she’d need to protect him.”

“But if he did do it…”

She’d hate to imagine the walking and staring he’d be doing. The walking out and returning hours later. Except, who would he walk out on? And return to?

“You don’t really think Bruce is going to do something as stupid and bold as to try to get into the Stand? To Miriam or me?” Or Brianna?

Her vision reddening around the edges as fear engulfed her, Harper felt weak in the knees for the second it took rational thought to return.

“Not unless he thinks he’s on the verge of being reprimanded—if he was suspended from work, for instance—but he wasn’t. Still, because he’s shown up in Santa Raquel for the very first time right now, while all of this is happening, I can’t just put his presence here down to coincidence.”

“My job changed a month ago,” she pointed out, facing down the fear his words were raising within her. “We’ve recently agreed that he’ll visit Brianna here.”

“I know. And he hasn’t been to see her once in those weeks, until two days after I brought Miriam to you.”

She had no argument, so she promised to be careful, looking at his lips as she told him good-night.

And felt his gaze linger way too long on hers before he opened the door and let himself out.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AFTER A RESTLESS night in a nondescript motel room, with a bed like many of the others he’d slept in around the country, Mason was eager to unwrap his little bar of complimentary soap and jump in the shower Thursday morning.

Three days ago, life had been…predictable. Fine. Just the way he’d established it. Normal.

That morning, other than the leather satchel that served as his bathroom cabinet and dresser, he hardly recognized anything. Least of all himself.

As a guy who moved through life analytically, he wasn’t prone to emotion. Or spending nights lying awake in the dark, questioning himself.

Was he wrong about Bruce? Had five years of suppressing questions gotten to him while he was busy with other things? Was his perception so clouded by an unrequited desire for the one woman he could never have?

Was he Brianna’s father? Missing out on the most incredible experience he’d ever know?

Was he after his brother because, only by proving that Bruce wasn’t worthy of his family, could Mason step in and claim what was his? Or rather what he wanted to be his?

But Harper wasn’t, and never had been.

The family, though… Gram… Brianna…

Bruce.

Bruce was his family. His closest family.

The one way his brother would come through this without a smudge was if Mason proved his innocence before anyone else knew about the report sent from urgent care and started asking questions.

Shaking the water out of his hair as he left the shower, he determined to realign his thinking. Darkness was gone. The light of day had arrived.

And with it came sense. Clarity.

Gram had been abused. He hadn’t conjured up that fact. His job was to find out who’d hurt her and make it stop.