Don't Leave Me This Way: A Rags to Romance Book

CHAPTER ONE

“She’s nice, JJ.”

“She’s my law clerk. I’m not dating my clerk.”

“You have to date somebody.”

James Joseph “JJ” Brant looked at his beloved sister and smiled. They were in Bigsby, an upscale restaurant in Scottsdale, Florida, and she and her five-year-old son were seated in his booth facing him. Desperately trying to get him to see the harmfulness of loneliness, she wouldn’t let up. But he just wanted to eat his dinner. “I didn’t know dating somebody had become a requirement.”

“You know what I mean, JJ.” Sylvia Kramer wasn’t smiling as she looked at her big brother. “I just hate thinking of you alone in that big house. It’s not good for man to be alone.”

“I’m not alone. I have you.”

“And me, too, Uncle JJ.”

JJ smiled and reached over and ruffled his nephew’s curly hair. “And of course you too, Logan,” he said as he continued eating. “How could I ever forget you?”

As Sylvia looked down at Logan’s plate of food, urging him to eat his peas, JJ did what he normally did and checked out his surroundings. The restaurant was packed as usual on a Sunday night and a long line were waiting to be seated. Scottsdale was a wealthy bedroom community on the outskirts of Jacksonville that only boasted eight thousand residents in the last census. That was why he knew most of the faces in the restaurant. But a handful, including a short guy seated at the bar, he’d never seen before.

“Just keep eating,” Sylvia said to her son. “You’re doing good.”

“But I hate peas,” said Logan as he moved them around on his plate: many of which he’d already smashed with his fork. “They taste like paste.”

JJ smiled and looked at his nephew. “How would you know what paste tastes like?”

“Like this,” said Logan, pointing to his peas.

JJ laughed. Sylvia shook her head at her son. “Just like your father,” she said.

JJ looked at her when she mentioned Artie. “Any changes?”

Sylvia let out a long exhale. “Not a one. And I’ve told him repeatedly that I will not continue to put up with it. But he’s not hearing me.”

“Why don’t you and Logan come stay a few days with me? I have that big house,” he began saying, but Sylvia interrupted him.

“That you need to fill with your own wife and child, not your sister and nephew.” Then she leaned forward and touched his hand. The way she sometimes treated him he wondered who was really the oldest. “I worry about you, JJ.”

“I’m fine, Sylvie.”

“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine in years. You’re always alone. You won’t date. It’s like pulling teeth to get you to go anywhere outside of your normal routine. It’s not good to be by yourself all the time like that. I just want you to be happy.”

But JJ turned the table on her. “Are you happy?”

She sat there momentarily. Because they both knew the answer to that. Then she removed her hand and leaned back. “I’m fine,” she said, tossing it right back at him.

Then she noticed that her five-year-old had stopped eating his peas and was on his phone.

“On a phone? Really, Logan?” She snatched the phone away from him. “Now eat your peas, boy, I’m not playing with you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Logan said sincerely although JJ knew he didn’t mean it. JJ smiled, tossed his napkin up on the table, and stood up.

Logan looked at his tall uncle. “Where are you going, Uncle JJ?”

“Men’s room.”

“May I go too?”

“No. Not until you eat your peas.”

“But they taste like paste!”

JJ laughs. “Then eat your paste and I’ll take you after you finish.”

“Okay,” Logan said reluctantly.

But Sylvia was looking at her brother. “Didn’t you use the restroom when we first got here?”

JJ looked at her curiously. “Yes. And?”

“And why do you have to go again?”

“I’m an old man. What can I say?”

Sylvia laughed and raked her blonde bangs back off her forehead as she watched him walk away. He was six-one and gorgeous. Even ladies at other tables were checking him out as he walked by. But he refused to give any woman the time of day after that heifer Iris broke his heart. He wouldn’t even date after that disastrous marriage, and that was seven years ago. He was in his thirties then. He could afford to take his time. Now he was pushing forty-five. She was worried about him.

But when she looked down and saw that her son still wasn’t eating his peas, her attention shifted as it usually did. “You’re taking this too far, Logan. If you don’t eat every single one, I’m going to tell your father.”

Logan looked concerned. His father was not nearly as patient with him as his mother. “Please don’t tell Father.”

“Then eat. I let you have that hamburger because you promised me you’d eat your peas as well.”

“Excuse me?”

It was a stranger’s voice. Sylvia and Logan both looked over at the man now standing at their table. She noticed him when he first arrived and took a seat at the bar. “May I help you?”

“Are you Judge Brant’s family?”

Sylvia leaned back and stared at him. Why on earth would he need to know that?

Inside the restroom, JJ stood at the urinal, shook one time to make sure he got it all out, zipped up and made his way to the sink. As soon after he washed and began drying his hands, he heard what sounded like a pop. But then he heard bloodcurdling screams. And then the unmistakable sound of a volley of bullets firing in rapid succession. JJ’s heart dropped. His family was in the very place where the shots were being heard. His family was in there! He fled the restroom.

But as he ran into the hall and was trying to get back to his booth, a crowd of screaming customers were running toward the restrooms, forcing him to push them aside as if he was a fullback on the football field trying to advance the ball. He had his own gun out as he ran back into the front of the restaurant where he left his sister and nephew.

And that was when he saw the gunman.

He was standing at their booth with the smoking gun still in his hand. He remembered him as one of the men seated at the bar: as a stranger in the restaurant. But as soon as JJ was about to aim his own weapon at the assailant, shots rang out again as a uniformed officer that JJ knew, who had just run into the restaurant, shot the gunman several times. The assailant dropped to the floor, and his gun dropped out of his hand.

But then JJ saw his sister and his nephew. Both were slumped over in their booth. Both as lifeless as the gunman now was.

He and the officer ran to them. Maybe there was still hope. It couldn’t be what it seemed. It just couldn’t be!

But when he got to that table and saw the extent of their injuries, and when he realized what couldn’t be actually was, his gun slid from his hand. His entire face went white.

He fell to his knees.