Two-Against-Nature [Suncoast Society](Siren Publishing Sensations)

  “Was he abusive?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Looking back on some of it, I suppose yeah, it was borderline abuse. I can see where he tried to tone it back when he’d blow up. I guess he was a different person at work than he was at home. Sometimes he’d yell at the kids or parents or umpires at Little League, but so did other guys. Mom said it was because he’d been in the military. I’d just go to my room and shut the door and wait for him to calm down.”

  “Did he ever hit you?”

  “No.” Her brow furrowed. “And a lot of the time he was a nice guy. The only thing I can figure is when he lost his job, he snapped. He and Mom had been arguing off and on for a couple of weeks before that, way more than usual. I stayed out of it and kept my head down since I was living there. Louis did the same.”

  “Why would he attack you and your mom?”

  Another long pause before she answered. “I don’t know what led up to him getting fired, exactly. I mean, beyond what happened at work. Maybe Mom was tired of him blowing up. Maybe he’d been drinking more than we realized and Mom hid it. I don’t know. I wish I could remember what happened. My best guess is that I told him and Mom when I left for work that I wouldn’t be home until late, because I was going out with friends after. Louis said I did that. But apparently I forgot to take clothes to change into. My friends said I texted them that I had to run back home and change. Louis usually didn’t get home from his job as early as he did, but he was close to running overtime, so they sent him home.

  “Maybe Jason didn’t plan to kill Mom. She shouldn’t have been home, either, and to this day, I still don’t know why she was home that time of day. He called her after leaving work, according to cell phone records. They talked for a couple of minutes, so I don’t know. Maybe he’d planned to kill himself and she went home to stop him and they fought. I wasn’t supposed to be home. Maybe he’d planned to commit suicide and he was so drunk and out of it he attacked us. I don’t know. There are so many questions that we’ll never know the answers to because they’re both dead and my memory is gone.”

  He watched her throat work as she swallowed hard. “All I know is Louis saved my life. Jason was standing over me, strangling me, when Louis walked in. That’s what he said. Jason had apparently beaten me. Maybe I walked in on him attacking Mom and I tried to pull him off her. I don’t know. It’s literally a black hole in my brain. Louis went after Jason and got him off me, saw Mom was on the floor, and then saw the gun. Louis shoved Jason off him and went for the gun. He swears he was only going to scare him with it, try to hold him off until he could get 911 there, but Jason lunged for him and Louis pulled the trigger. He had to, because he knew Jason would kill him.”

  She stared at her lap for a long moment. “Louis is a gentle kid. Even though I was five years older than him, he was always my buddy. Even when I was in high school. I helped him study, he’d go out with me with my friends to dinner, he’s a smart kid. He studied hard. If you listen to the 911 tape, he’s hysterical, crying, begging them to get there to help all of us. He wasn’t some calm gang-banger who’d just executed two people and attacked a third.”

  Holly finally met his gaze again. “If Louis hadn’t come home when he did, I’d be dead. I know it. Either from my injuries, or Jason would have put a bullet in my brain to finish me off. Mom died shortly after getting to the hospital. He’d fractured her skull.”

  * * * *

  Holly stared at her hands. “They told me I had blood and skin under my nails when I was brought into the ER. Apparently, I fought back and fought back hard. In the autopsy photos, you can see the wounds on Jason’s hands and arms from where Mom and I both clawed him, and we had defensive wounds on our hands, but if you look at Louis’ arrest photos, there aren’t those kinds of wounds on him. He took a punch in the face from Jason and had a black eye, but that’s it.”

  She spotted the familiar confusion on Walt’s face. “Why would a jury not find at the very least reasonable doubt?”

  “It was an all-white jury. The public defender wasn’t very good and didn’t spend a lot of time on the case. He didn’t listen to me, and another problem was that, early on, I was doped up pretty heavily from my injuries and having a hard time making myself clear. So I wasn’t even a reliable witness. The prosecutor thought I was trying to cover up for Louis. He was a real fucking asshole.”

  “So says Kimbra.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons she wants to handle this case. He’s not a good guy, apparently.”

  “You got that right.” Holly fought back the old, familiar seething anger threatening to break through. She’d spent a lot of time angry—enraged, even—over how her brother’s case was handled.

  “I even talked to the FDLE about the case and they said it was up to the prosecutor’s office, unless I had hard proof of misconduct, to reopen the case. Or I could hire an attorney to file appeals. The problem is I never could afford a decent attorney. Most of them, they’d glance at the stuff or look at news reports and then blow me off or quote me some astronomical figure just to get me out of their office. I got ripped off early on by one guy who assured me he could get Louis a new trial.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ten grand wasted, and he fled the state after losing his license due to malpractice.”

  “Youch.”

  “Yeah. I could have filed a suit against him, but good luck with that.” More anger. “I feel like I’ve failed him. He’s my little brother, and it’s my job to take care of him, and I can’t even do that.”

  “Are his birth parents alive?”

  “His father died while his mother was pregnant with him. The state took Louis away from her right after he was born because she was living with a registered sex offender and wouldn’t or couldn’t move. He has three older half-sisters somewhere, who were also taken by the state. Mom and Dad tried to find out more about them, but then Dad was killed in the car wreck and Mom was a single parent. I don’t know if his birth mother’s still alive or not. He never wanted contact with her.”

  They talked while Walt repaired the frame. When it was time to put the door back on, she helped hold it in place while he screwed the hinges on.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Let’s take it back off and I’ll coat the frame with primer.”

  “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later, that was accomplished. He then started tackling the front porch light. The screws holding the fixture into the junction box it was mounted to had rusted and given way over the years, leaving it swinging by just the wires. It took him less than twenty minutes to have it secured once again.

  “There,” he said as he folded the stepladder he’d brought with him. “Now we can move inside and work in there.”

  “At least my AC works,” she said. “I kept up the home warranty stuff. That’s been a huge lifesaver more than once.”

  She made them sandwiches from cold cuts when he took a break between tackling the leaky faucet and the toilet.

  “I really appreciate this, Walt. I wish you’d let me pay you back.”

  “I told you, you can cook dinners for me. After we finish talking with Kimbra today, I’m taking you out, if you feel up to it. Or I’ll go out and get stuff and make you dinner here.”

  She had to ask. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Because I like to help. And in my job, while I can help, there are mostly things beyond my control that I can’t do anything about. So when there is something that is within my control to make better, it makes me feel good to do it. I don’t have to worry about your front door smacking you in the head, or your light falling off. Your water bill will probably go down now that the faucet doesn’t leak, and once I fix the toilet so it doesn’t run when it shouldn’t. And the other things I’ll tackle today. Those are things I can do. I’m a little bit of a control freak, if you didn’t notice.” He smiled. “Goes with the territory of being a Dom.”

  “Thank yo
u.” She wistfully sighed. “I wish I could tell you I’d help pay you back by letting you spank my ass, but I wouldn’t be a very good bottom for you.”

  His smile widened. “And who says I need to spank your ass to have fun and enjoy spending time with you? Ask Kimbra. We were married for six years and the most she’d let me do in bed was tie her hands and blindfold her.”

  “I hate my body.” She forced herself to take another bite of her sandwich. “I used to have a normal life, you know? I used to go to the gym and have fun and be able to do stuff. Now sometimes I don’t even have the spoons to make the damn bed.”

  “Spoons?”

  “It’s a story a woman wrote about her chronic illness to illustrate to a friend what it’s like. Imagine you have a finite amount of spoons in your hand. Twenty, for example. Getting out of bed and getting a shower in the morning is two spoons. Getting dressed is a spoon. Making breakfast is a spoon. Getting to work is five spoons. Et cetera. Once you’re out of spoons for the day, that’s it, no more energy. So when you get down to your last couple of spoons for the day, you have to decide, what’s the priority? Washing the dishes, or going grocery shopping, or doing your laundry? You can’t do it all.

  “And you might not even have the same amount of spoons from day to day. One day you might have less spoons. One day, you might have more. And the days you have more, life might kick you in the balls because you take advantage of the rare day you feel good, you do stuff, and pay for it the next day by having even less spoons than usual. Nature’s ultimate ‘fuck you.’”

  “Wow. I’m sorry. That must be hard to deal with.”

  “You have no idea,” she quietly said, finally giving up on her sandwich and setting it on her paper plate. “And then the stress over Louis’ case. It was sheer luck I went to Venture last night. Joyce begged me to go with her, and I went just to shut her up.”

  He reached over and lightly laid his hand on top of hers, his blue gaze pinning her in place. “Well, if it means anything, you have no idea how glad I am that you went.”

  Her stomach fluttered. “Why’s that?”

  “Because I wouldn’t be here right now if we hadn’t talked and then played. Not to come off creepy or anything, but you should expect to see a lot more of me, unless you don’t want to.”

  She found herself nodding, which made him smile.

  “Is that a yes you want to see more of me, or yes you don’t want to?”

  “Yes I want to,” she found herself saying.

  His head tipped to the side, his gaze sweeping across her face in a way that made her heart flutter even harder than her stomach. “Thank you,” he said. “Because I’d really like to get to know you better.”

  Chapter Ten

  Oh, Holly had no idea how much better Walt wanted to get to know her. As he finished one last project before he needed to clean up ahead of Kimbra’s arrival, he ran over a mental list he’d been compiling of other projects he’d discovered needed doing.

  He’d meant every word of what he’d said. Even if all they became was really good friends, he’d like that.

  Right now, he really didn’t have much of a social life outside of Venture. Getting out of his rut would require baby steps.

  That he could do good for someone else in the process was merely a bonus.

  After grabbing a quick shower and changing into jeans and a button-up shirt, he emerged to find Holly had also cleaned up and changed. Another long, shapeless skirt, but this time topped with a pretty, flowing loose blouse.

  “Fair warning,” she said, looking utterly adorable despite how self-conscious he could tell she felt, “I don’t dress up very often. Clothes hurt sometimes.”

  “I want you to be comfortable. And Kimbra honestly won’t care what you’re wearing.” He heard a car pull into the driveway and glanced at the time on his phone. “And there she is, fifteen minutes early.”

  He headed for the front door and had it open for Kimbra as she hurried in, her laptop case slung over one shoulder and her arms filled with a heavy-looking banker’s box that she immediately handed off to Walt. “Hey, Fingers,” she said, smiling.

  Then she turned to Holly and stuck out her hand. “Kimbra Luzon. You must be Holly.”

  “Easy on the handshake,” Walt warned her. “She has fibromyalgia.”

  “Ah. Thanks for the heads-up.” Kimbra flipped her hand over, palm up, for Holly to take. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Thank you for coming over today,” Holly said. “I really appreciate this.”

  “Hey, not a problem. As I told Walt, I’m really eager to get my hands on this case, and I’ll be honest that it’s not just for altruistic reasons. I kind of have my own reasons for it.”

  * * * *

  Holly was still trying to process that she was Walt’s ex-wife. Kimbra had beautiful blue eyes a different shade than Walt’s, a long mass of curly dark brown hair barely corralled by a colorful jewel-toned scarf, and flawless dark golden brown skin.

  How can someone like me ever compete with someone as pretty as her?

  Holly felt frumpy and fat next to Kimbra’s vibrant, easy manner and movements.

  They moved into the living room to spread out, but Kimbra also wanted to see what Holly had compiled on her own. That led them to settling in Holly’s office, where Kimbra and Walt ended up sitting on the floor while Holly sat in her office chair at their insistence and pointed to where things were that Kimbra wanted to see.

  After an hour, Holly wasn’t sure she wasn’t just a little bit in love with the friendly woman, who didn’t hesitate to take playful jabs at Walt from time to time.

  Kimbra had also brought her laptop into the office and was adding notes to the file she’d started on Louis. “I’m going to pull the discovery notes and see what else I need to file to get my hands on,” she said. “I have a feeling we’re going to find a lot of evidence that was never brought out at trial.”

  Holly caught herself staring at her hands. “They never talked about the evidence under my nails, or Mom’s,” she said. “Even though the coroner’s report said it was Jason’s blood and skin, not Louis’. I asked Louis’ lawyer about that, but he said it was irrelevant. The trial lasted almost three days, and the jury was only out for an hour.”

  Anger flashed across Kimbra’s face. “To be perfectly honest with you, that guy who defended your brother is an idiot. He’s now working for a private practice up in Palmetto and handling DUIs.” She let out a disgusted-sounding snort. “I wish I’d caught this case when it happened. Your brother likely wouldn’t be in jail if I had.”

  Holly desperately didn’t want to get her hopes up. “Do you really think you can get him a new trial?”

  Kimbra shifted position on the floor so she was facing Holly. “I can’t promise you anything, unfortunately, except that I will do my damnedest and try my hardest. I can see several things right off the bat that are valid reasons to file motions to set aside the verdict and ask for a new trial. I’ll be tossing everything at them, including the kitchen sink. Best-case is that I can dig up enough evidence that wasn’t presented and catch a different prosecutor who’s willing to drop the charges and we get his sentence vacated and his record expunged. Worst-case, we have to go to trial again, and that could take a while. But I guarantee you, if we have to go to trial, it’ll be a freaking media circus.”

  Holly felt her guts roll in a bad way. “Really?”

  “Oh, honey, I meant in Louis’ favor. I looked at the media coverage, and they basically regurgitated what the police and prosecutors said. They didn’t present all the facts.”

  Walt had ended up on the floor next to Holly’s office chair. He gently laid a hand on her knee. “I’ll be there with you every step of the way, don’t worry.”

  “But what about your job?”

  “About something like this? Not a problem. Might mean we don’t go to Venture for a while, though.”

  She laid her hand over his. “I’d hate to be the reason you couldn’t
go.”

  “You let me worry about that. Right now, your focus needs to be on yourself and saving energy for this. Oh, and I’ll take you to your appointment at Nate’s Tuesday after work.”

  She blinked, surprised he even remembered that. “But that’s kind of inconvenient for you, isn’t it?”

  “Nope. I have an early day Tuesday. I’ll come by in the morning and pick you up, drop you off at work, and then come get you and take you there so you don’t have to drive. Then we can have dinner after, if you feel up to it. Or I’ll bring you home and make you dinner.”

  “He’s a dang good cook,” Kimbra said. “Oh, and Wednesday night, I hope you don’t have plans.”

  “Why?” Holly asked.

  “Because we’re having a family dinner. Walt was already invited, but so are you. Papi’s birthday.”

  This was moving so fast. “I-I…are you sure that’s okay?”

  Kimbra grinned. “My parents love a family party. Don’t worry, Papi loves chocolate, so you don’t have to worry about spending anything crazy.”

  Walt smiled up at her. “I should have warned you there might be one potential cost to getting Kimbra involved.”

  “What?”

  “Getting adopted by my family,” Kimbra said with a beaming smile.

  * * * *

  It was nearly seven when Kimbra finally left, taking a lot of the paperwork with her that Holly had accumulated over the years. Walt helped Kimbra load the boxes into her car. Once the two of them were alone again and standing inside Holly’s front door, she found herself staring up into his eyes.

  “Well?” he asked, a playful smirk curving his lips.