She almost wished she had never told him about that. Last year, Malia had tried out for a select club and made the top team. Her new coach had pulled Piper aside after a couple weeks and told her that Malia was on track to play in college . . . full ride, no less, if she kept developing her skills. It was practically all Cruz could talk about. Malia, the first Walsh to go to college . . . to break the curse of their name.
“Yes, Cruz. Her coach says she’s coming along great.”
“Good. Good.” He nodded, looking relieved. He worried. It was all he could do behind these bars. Worry about them. “And her grades are still strong?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s passed me up in about everything. Math? Forget about it.”
He snorted. “I don’t believe that. You were always so smart. You should have gone to college.”
Should have. She’d lived all her days in a continuous state of “should have.”
“It’s true,” she insisted with a chuckle, shaking her head. “I’m no help to her. But it doesn’t appear to hurt her.”
They fell into silence for a moment. Then he found his voice again. “How’s work?” The hated question but he forced himself to ask it. Every time.
He hated where she worked and he had never disguised that fact. He stomached it because he knew she only ever waitressed there and her options elsewhere were nil. She had to take what she could get. He understood that. Plus, he had North.
North kept an eye on her for Cruz. That gave him some comfort. Even though she knew he had to know North couldn’t cover her every moment, it gave him some peace of mind. And considering he was stuck in here, she wanted him to have that measure of peace, however false it was.
“It’s fine.” She shrugged. “Work, you know . . .” She hated lying to him, but she definitely didn’t want to tell him the truth of it. She couldn’t bear to put this on him. He worried enough and worrying about her when he was in here and could do nothing was pointless.
She’d come to see him because she needed to see him.
She needed to look at his face. So that she could fortify herself. So she could convince herself that going back to Joe’s was the only solution.
She stared at him, absorbing his large hands knotted around the phone, his prominent knuckles crisscrossed with the battle scars of this place.
It put everything in perspective and made any sacrifice on her part small and insignificant.
She glanced down at her hand splayed flat on the cold surface of the table, feeling her shoulders dip from an invisible weight. “This isn’t right, Cruz. You’re not supposed to be in here—”
“Piper, don’t. We’ve gone over this and we’re not going to talk about it anymore.” His gaze slid left and right as though verifying no one was paying attention to them. “The subject is closed, understand?”
“North is engaged, you know.”
He nodded once. “Yeah. I know.”
An awkward pause fell and she wondered if her brother was thinking about his future. If he believed there could be happiness ahead of him when he got out of here. Just like North found. He deserved it and she wanted him to believe it could be his, too. For herself, selfishly, she needed him to believe that.
She moistened her lips. “His fiancée is a social worker. Her father is the retired sheriff of Sweet Hill. Her brother is the current sheriff. They’re an influential family in these parts.”
He stared at her, waiting for her to get to her point.
She paused, knowing she was ignoring her brother’s request by taking the conversation in this direction, but she had to do it. “She’s a good person, Cruz.”
“I’m sure if she’s marrying North she is a good person.” He meant because she could overlook the crimes of his past.
“I could talk to Faith . . . tell her about Shelley Rae. Maybe she would have some insight. Maybe she could help you—”
“No.” He slammed a hand down on the table, jarring her.
A guard near the door took a step forward and called out a warning. Cruz leaned back in his chair, appearing relaxed, but his eyes glared at her in warning. “You can’t tell anyone, Piper. We made a promise. We can’t risk it. Don’t go messing things up.”
Piper lowered her gaze and stared at her hands knotted on the table in front of her. Her knuckles had gone white. “As opposed to the way things are now? Because they’re already pretty messed up.”
He laughed darkly. “You have no idea. Things can always be worse. And they will be if you go talking to people you shouldn’t.” People like Faith Walters and the members of her family.
It was strange thinking that things could get worse than her brother sitting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Seven
“Hi. It’s me.” She flexed her hand around her cell phone. She’d put off this call as long as she could. For hours today she had been gathering the nerve to do it. “Piper,” she clarified, in case he didn’t recognize her voice.
Joe started laughing and then the sound twisted into a hacking cough. He really should lay off the cigarettes. After a moment he caught his breath and asked, “Called to beg for your job back, huh? That didn’t take long.”
“I’ve been thinking.” She glanced toward the closed door of the room she shared with her sister, afraid that Malia would finish her shower before she finished her call. She didn’t want her to walk in on her and hear this conversation.
“Don’t matter none. I told you no second chances.”
“Just hear me out.” She inhaled, bracing herself for the words to come. The words she had called to say.
They were merely words . . . sounds that passed her lips, but it felt as though she were lifting long-rooted boulders out from her depths.
She had wanted to break the mold fashioned by her family. She’d wanted to be a better person for her sister. A role model. But then maybe that chance had long ago deserted her and she simply needed to accept that.
“I’m not ready to go onstage yet,” she began. Hopefully that could be avoided altogether. Taking off her clothes to a room full of men shouting filth at her was something she’d vowed never to do.
Taking off your clothes for men doesn’t make you a bad person. Plenty of good women strip for a living and aren’t too proud to do it. It was the mantra she had been telling herself all week.
Besides. It wouldn’t matter what kind of person she was when she couldn’t afford to buy groceries and she had to send her sister to bed hungry. At that point nothing else would matter. She’d sell her soul to keep her sister from starving.
She released a pent-up breath and added, “But I can do private dances. I—I can do a couple of those a night . . . but I get to choose. I say yes or no to the client.” She reminded herself that it was better than being on stage before a house full of rowdy men. She wouldn’t feel so on display then . . . so like a piece of meat to be slavered over. Not only was the money better if she did private dances, but the prospect of a bouncer standing watch in the corner made her feel more secure.
“Huh. And how picky you plan on being?”
“Not too much,” she reassured.
The image of Clive Lewis flashed before her. His face and others like it, boys she’d gone to high school with—the bullies who’d tormented her and called her trash because her last name was Walsh. She could never dance for them.
“If I do that, will I still have a job?” she pressed.
He took a long moment before replying. “Sure, Piper. If you start doing private dances, you’ll still have a job.” He chuckled lightly. “I guess you all have to start somewhere.”
She winced, hoping that wasn’t true, that this wasn’t the start of her heading down a dark path.
Eight
“So you’re not going to Evan’s bachelor party tonight?”
Hale couldn’t hide his grimace at his sister’s question before ducking back inside his mother’s musty-smelling closet for another box.
They were in their parent
s’ bedroom, hauling boxes out and sorting through them. Unfortunately, their mother had never thought to label any of them.
The room had changed very little since their mother’s death years ago. The entire house had changed very little, in fact, but nowhere less than this room.
Their father had left everything virtually untouched. Her clothes still hung in the closet. The book she had been reading still sat on her nightstand beside a tiny jewelry dish that held her wedding ring. It’s like that band was still waiting for her to return it to her finger. The sight of it all made him uncomfortable—always had.
The idea of loving someone and losing her and then never fully recovering from that loss . . . never truly being whole again? No thanks. He wanted to avoid anything permanently scarring like that. Besides. He liked his life the way it was.
Hale was thirty-one years old and had never been in a relationship that lasted longer than six months. There was a reason for that. He chose to keep relationships short. He was okay with that. He saw no reason to change that pattern.
He emerged from the closet holding another box. Faith pointed where she wanted him to put it. She’d asked him to come over and help her today on his lunch break. She knew better than to ask Dad. These kinds of chores got him emotional.
Faith was on the hunt for their mother’s box of wedding things. Now that he could face the fact that his sister was marrying North Callaghan without wanting to hurl something through a wall, he’d agreed to help her.
North was out of town delivering some of his welding pieces to a buyer in Oklahoma City. He preferred to deliver his work personally, assuring that it arrived safely and that he had face time with buyers and gallery owners. The guy was actually making a living off his welding. Faith had bragged that his last piece sold for five thousand dollars. Just another reason he should feel relief. His sister wasn’t marrying a deadbeat that planned on mooching off her meager salary.
“Hello? Did you hear me? Are you going to Evan’s bachelor party?”
“Uh. No.” He shook his head. “What makes you think I would go to that?”
His sister made a face. He knew that face. It reminded him of their mother. She had made that face, too, whenever their dad tracked mud in the house. Or when he and his brother horsed around and knocked over some piece of furniture. Man, he and Tucker could do some damage.
“What’s with the look?” he prodded. “I didn’t think you were a huge proponent of strip clubs. What did you used to call them? Dens of exploitation? When you were fifteen didn’t you make a stink? Insisting Dad shut Joe’s Cabaret down?”
She nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, but Evan is our cousin.”
“Is he really?” He squinted and looked sideways as if contemplating that fact.
“Fine. Second cousin,” she allowed. “But it’s not as though we have a ton of family in this town. Mom always wanted us to be closer to him.”
He sighed. She had a point. Family was family. His mother had always invited her cousin and his family to every holiday. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Easter. When Hale and his brother played football in the yard, Evan would watch from the porch in his perfectly starched shirt and pressed chinos, sullen because his parents had forced him outside and wouldn’t let him play video games inside the house.
Evan was the only child of their mother’s cousin, Sam. Sam and his wife had retired years ago to Florida, so now Evan ran his father’s concrete business. Although that didn’t mean that Evan actually worked for a living. He left everything in the hands of his office manager so he could play golf, doing little more than collecting a fat salary every month.
The guy was an asshole, plain and simple, but that asshole was his family . . . whether he liked it or not.
Hale met his sister’s gaze. “Gotta pull out the Mom-would-have-wanted-you-to card, huh?”
“Works every time, right?”
“Right,” he grumbled as he opened up another box and peered inside. Just old albums. No wedding stuff. “Fine. I’ll go. But I’m not going to what’s-his-name’s bachelor party.”
His sister’s pretty features twisted into a scowl at his reference to North. “You know his name.”
He made a noncommittal sound.
“North,” she reminded him sharply.
“Yeah, yeah.” He’d come to terms with the idea of North Callaghan and his sister. Together. A couple. Engaged. But that didn’t mean he didn’t like giving his sister a hard time. As a brother, it was his job. He’d never think any man was good enough for his little sister. Much less a man like North Callaghan. Convicted and imprisoned for twelve years, he most assuredly wasn’t good enough for Faith. Unfortunately, she was in love with him. And at the risk of losing his sister, Hale accepted that and supported her.
That didn’t mean Hale wouldn’t kill him the first time he hurt her. He winced as the irony hit him. North Callaghan went to prison for killing the man who had raped his cousin. A rape that had ultimately pushed her to suicide. Hale might be a lawman who believed in the system meting out justice, but if he’d been in Callaghan’s shoes . . . he wasn’t certain what he would have done.
“North has no interest in having a bachelor party. I’ve already asked him. And Joe’s isn’t really his thing anyway.”
Hale was hard-pressed not to remind her that her husband-to-be had spent plenty of his time at Joe’s Cabaret before they met. But then, before her, Callaghan had done many things and none of those things seemed to make a difference to her now.
“You mean he doesn’t like to hang out at Joe’s in his free time? Well, that’s a relief. You know, considering you’re getting married.”
“Ha.” She closed a box back up and slid it to the side. “Trust me. He doesn’t go to Joe’s anymore.”
Except when he goes there to see Piper Walsh.
He sucked in a breath at that thought. He’d been having one too many thoughts about Piper since seeing her. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as though any of their exchanges had been friendly. They could hardly even be called civil.
It was unsettling. He wasn’t one of those guys that liked women who played hard to get. He didn’t like prickly women and he didn’t get his rocks off fighting with a woman. He liked women who liked him. Women with soft smiles and soft words. He saw enough fireworks when he was on the job. When it came to his personal life, he wanted peace and ease. Like Annabelle in Alpine. There was never any drama with her. Just good sex and good times.
“He doesn’t even go there to check on Piper Walsh anymore?”
She looked up, startled. “How do you know about Piper Walsh?”
“I know things.”
“Of course. ’Cause it’s your job,” she said sharply, but the judgment was there. He knew that growing up she hadn’t loved having an overprotective brother working in law enforcement. What little sister would? There wasn’t a guy she dated that he hadn’t run a background check on. At least, once he became a deputy for his father. Before that, his father ran the background checks.
He shrugged. “And I’m your brother.”
“Before you get any ideas about him and Piper, let me assure you they’re just friends.” Yeah. He already knew that. “North and her brother go way back—”
“Her brother is in prison for murder.”
“And so was North,” she reminded. “Try not to be so judgy, Hale.”
“You trying to say Walsh and North are alike?” He shook his head. There was a huge difference in their crimes. “Cruz Walsh killed a girl. An innocent high school girl. Not a rapist.”
She inhaled. “Why are we even talking about Piper’s brother? Whatever he did has nothing to do with her.” Her expression turned speculative, eyes narrowing slightly on him. “Why are we even talking about Piper? You like her or something?”
He snorted and opened another box, averting his eyes.
Her eyes widened. “You do like her! When did this happen? How?” She dropped down on the bed. The ancient springs squeaked in protest.
r /> “Watch your mouth, Faithy. Get that out of your head. I don’t like her. She’s just a kid.”
“A kid?” She shook her head. “She’s not that young.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged. “I don’t even know her,” he repeated. She couldn’t stop staring at him. It was almost like he had something on his face. “What?” he demanded.
“Piper is great—”
“Stop right there.” He pointed a warning finger at her. “I don’t need you playing matchmaker with us.”
She pulled back, clearly affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean? You think you’re better than her or something?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m not looking for any—”
“Let me tell you something about Piper. A lesser woman would have broken under the kind of pressure she’s had to live with. I see it all the time in my job—”
“So do I,” he bit out. “I’m aware that’s she been dealt a rough hand, Faith. That doesn’t mean I’m a dick if I don’t want to date her.” He didn’t date anyone. His sister knew that. He doubted Faith would appreciate it if he entered into a casual sex-only relationship with Piper Walsh.
Not that that was even a possibility. Piper didn’t respond to him the way most women did. “Besides. She doesn’t like me either.” And that, for some reason, bothered him. Maybe that’s even why he was so antagonistic with her.
She tapped her chin. “Now I’m just going out on a limb here . . . but could it be because you’re a prick to her?”
He shrugged. Maybe. But Piper gave as good as she got.
She gave her head a slight shake. It looked as though she wanted to say something more, but instead she pressed her mouth into a flat line. The lawman in him stirred to life. How many times had he faced a perp and knew when there was something they weren’t saying. If not outright lying, they were withholding information at the very least. Plus, this was Faith. He knew all her mannerisms. He especially knew when she was hiding something from him.
He decided to let it go though. Sometimes it was better not to dig too deeply in Faith’s mind. Especially if she actually believed he might like Piper Walsh. She needed to get that idea out of her head.