Falling for the Brother

Other than her motives, it was all true. Or at least a pretty close version of the truth. Harper felt sick.

Miriam didn’t even know the worst of it.

“Then when Bruce makes a mistake with a stranger who meant nothing to him, you leave him high and dry, so you can pursue Mason. But until now, Mason had nothing to do with you. He’s a good man. A Thomas.”

She’d never, ever pursued Mason. Unless you counted moving from his bedroom to his living room that night. That she’d done.

But she’d never gone after him. Never contacted him. Not that night. Not before it, and not after.

She could see how Miriam might think she had, though. With the facts being presented to her as they’d been.

How could she not have realized that Bruce had seen what she hadn’t? That her heart had always belonged to Mason?

How awful that he’d known it.

And he’d loved her so much, he’d married her anyway.

“Now, with all of this, you’ve got your chance. Mason is here, talking to you. I’m begging you, Harper, please walk away. Leave him alone.”

She couldn’t. Not completely. He was the father of her child.

She could tell Miriam about Gwen. About the other times Bruce had found it necessary to sleep with a perp. How he used sex even when it wasn’t completely necessary. But that would only make Miriam defensive and they needed her to tell them who’d been hurting her. If she didn’t press charges, it would be much more difficult to protect her.

Needing to find a way to reassure Miriam that neither she nor Mason had any intention of pursuing so much as a close friendship out of obligation to Bruce, Harper was searching for the right words when her phone rang.

“It’s Bruce,” she said, glancing at the screen, and took the call.

“Hey, babe, I’m here with Mason.” Babe? He hadn’t called her that in years until this past week. Not even when he’d been trying to get her to agree to think about giving them a second chance.

That felt like a lifetime ago. Before she’d known Mason was the father of her child.

“We need you to bring Miriam to meet us…” He named a place, a national park, halfway between Santa Raquel and Albina. “We’re hoping, with the two of us together, and apart from anyplace that has any emotional hold on her, she’ll tell us the truth about what’s been going on.”

At first she wondered if he was drunk. Glancing at Miriam, who was clearly interested in finding out what Bruce was saying, she said, “Okay, when?” The last time Bruce had asked to meet with her, Mason had told her to do it.

But taking Miriam out of the shelter? She had to speak with Mason. And couldn’t very well challenge Bruce’s statement that he and Mason were together. Not in front of Miriam, who knew Bruce was on the phone and who’d just warned her away from Mason.

“We were thinking tomorrow morning?”

Smiling for Miriam’s sake, she agreed to a time the next morning and rang off.

To Miriam she said, “He’s got some free time tomorrow and wants me to meet him.”

“And you agreed.” Miriam smiled, too, patting her hand. “You’re a good girl, Harper,” she said. “Just…stay away from Mason.”

A warning tone had crept into those last words and Harper found it hard to believe that anyone was getting away with abusing this woman.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

IT HAD BEEN the right thing to do, letting Bruce make the call to Harper. Considering the circumstances. That didn’t mean it had been easy.

He was relieved when, five minutes later, he saw her name show up on his caller ID. He’d just left his brother in the bar where the two had met after his session with Elmer Guthrie. On his way home, he pulled off at the next beach entrance to talk to her, sitting in his car facing the road.

“Are you with Bruce?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you were with him when he just called me?”

This was wrong. All wrong. He and Harper needing to talk to each other. Knowing it was wrong…

But neither of them could give up their ethics to be together. That would surely doom any relationship they might be able to create. If she even wanted to try.

“I was with him, yes.”