Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
RHETT
When he'd agreed to let Jacob's brother move in while he was looking for a place of his own, he'd been trying to catch his bearings after a house fire and a three-car accident. He'd remembered the date that Morgan was due in San Antonio, but that was about it.
He'd cleaned out his spare room, not as if there was a lot that he'd left in that room to begin with, but he'd cleaned it out so that Morgan could have the whole space to himself.
Looking around his apartment, he wasn't all that excited to have someone else in his space, not that he was there all that much. And when he was in his apartment, he didn't really socialize. He'd never had anyone over to his apartment. If the shift got together, they were at someone else's house or a community center or park.
His apartment was his sanctuary.
He picked up his phone and swiped it open thinking he should call Jacob and ask when his brother was due to arrive. It's not like he had to go anywhere. Not really. There was a gym in his apartment complex, and he could just leave a note on the door if that was the case.
He dropped the phone back down on the table and walked away to look out the window. The parking lot was mostly empty at this time of day. Most of the complex was likely a nine to five crowd. He rarely saw people when he left the complex or came home from his shift, which was fine with him. He liked to help people, but interact with them?
Not so much.
What did Jacob say that his brother drove? A Kia of some sort? Or a Hyundai. Hmm...
A car turned into the parking lot from the main street and Rhett narrowed his eyes to try and see the make of the car. He was sure he'd never seen a car like that in the parking lot before. Likely a visitor, but whoever they were coming to see was in for an interesting time. It wasn't one color. It was likely four or five colors. He didn't know for certain, but he had a feeling that the paint job was hiding a dent or two.
It was painted in a camouflage pattern that was likely done in spray paint.
Pretty well done, too.
It wouldn't be a vehicle that you could run from the police in. It would stick out like a sore thumb, unless it was at night and then pulling into a bunch of bushes or trees would probably hide the car well enough.
Interesting.
His phone pinged with a message, and he moved back to the table, picking it up and looked at the screen. The message was from Chief Blaise.
CB: A young woman stopped by the firehouse looking for you.
A young woman?
Butler: Did she say why?
He waited for a return message but after a minute, he realized that the guys were probably on a call. Chief Blaise would reply when he could. He rarely used text messaging when he had the time to call.
Still, a woman coming to look for him?
It seemed almost crazy.
A knock sounded at the door and a message pinged to his phone.
708-555-6474: Hey! It's Morgan. I think I'm at your door?
Rhett looked at the message a second time, rereading it in his head.
There was something strange about the words... about the syntax, but everyone texted in different ways.
So he set his phone back down on the table and called out as he headed to the door. "Morgan?"
"Yeah! It's me!"
His brain was snapping different pieces of the puzzle together in his head.
And when he reached the door, he looked through the peep hole and everything fell into place.
Morgan.
Morgan wasn't a guy.
Morgan was Jacob's sister?
Turning his head to the side, Rhett had to take a moment. He could have sworn that he remembered Jacob introducing him to a... No.
The memory popped up in his head.
A late summer afternoon in the City Center Park. Several dozen fire houses and police precincts had set up booths and a carnival company had arranged for food and snack booths to go up as well.
Rhett had been assigned to the First Aid tent and was standing at the tent opening when Jacob walked up to say hello.
"Hey, man!"
Rhett had lifted his chin in greeting before the two had leaned in for a hug and a hearty slap on each other's backs before Jacob stepped back.
"You working all day?"
"Mostly. I'll have about a half an hour in the middle of the event to go and get something to eat. You?"
Jacob shrugged. "Not officially. I'm moving around from tent to tent checking in. See if folks need something. I'll grab food as I go. 'Sides, I brought Morgan along with me. I've got to feed the kid."
Rhett remembered that Jacob had been raising his younger...
Oh.
His younger sister.
Oh, shit.
Dragged right back into the present, he opened the door and stared at the woman in the hallway.
She didn't look at all like her brother. Jacob was dark haired and tall. Broad in the shoulders with muscle, and rather imposing if he was being honest. Morgan Rafferty, if that's who she was, was just an inch or two shorter than himself. She had honeyed blonde hair and even in a T-shirt and long loose pants, Rhett could tell she had an athletic form.
Wow.
He smiled. It had been a long, long time since the word 'wow' had been in his vocabulary, but it fit the situation.
"Morgan?"
Her brow furrowed a little. "You got my text, right?"
He gestured toward the apartment behind her. "Yeah. Yes. I got a text message that you were at my door. I'm just a little... confused."
"Confused?" Morgan's expression went from confused to horrified. "Oh my god. Jacob did tell you that I was coming, right?"
"Oh? Yeah. I mean, Yes. He told me you were coming but I was..." He hated the words that were about to come out of his mouth. "I was expecting... I thought... I thought you were a guy."
Lord, he wished that he could take it back. He saw the way her face fell and wanted to kick himself in the ass.
"I heard Morgan and thought-"
"That I was a boy." She shook her head. "I get it." She looked away, her gaze lifting toward the ceiling before dropping down to the ground of the carpeted hallway. "So... I should probably find somewhere else to stay."
She bent over to pick up a bag and he reached out to stop her.
"Wait. Don't."
She looked up and they almost collided with each other. "Palmer, I-"
"Morgan, please-"
She took a step back, putting some distance between them. Rhett's instinct was to close that distance and draw her into his arms.
He wanted to comfort her and make up for the way that he'd just shoved his foot deep into his mouth.
"I can find a hotel or something, Palmer. It'll be fine."
"No, no it won't." He took that step forward and she didn't move back. She lifted her face to see him, and he was instantly struck by her blue-grey eyes. "You're staying with me, Morgan."
He saw her hesitation.
He knew what it was like to be new in a town and struggling to get your footing.
If she tried to find something, somewhere to stay, she wouldn't end up in a great place. Not on a teacher's salary, because that's what she'd come to do in San Antonio. Teach high school.
And if he let her leave and try to find a place to stay, he'd be a total asshole.
He might look like a jerk, but he wasn't on the inside.
And his mistake wasn't her fault.
"You're staying. I have a spare room and I'm hardly here, so it would make no sense for you to go anywhere else. I'm a man of my word."
"And I'm not a man," she offered him a hesitant smile.
"No," he almost smiled, "you're definitely not a man."
He reached for the bag that was weighing on her fingers and tilted his head toward the windows. "Come on in. I'll show you where the room is and then I'll help you get the rest of your things from your car."
Rhett saw her fingers flex and didn't know if she was trying to get feeling back in her fingers or if she was thinking of taking her bag back from him.
"Come on. It's going to get hotter outside soon, so let's get your things inside before the sun is at its peak and then you can think of ways to argue with me later."
She drew back and frowned at him. "I wasn't arguing with you!"
"Good to know." He was pretty sure he was about to smile. "Come on, let's get moving."
He stepped back and when she took a step in his direction, he went straight past the closet and took a turn toward the bathroom. "We have a shared bathroom. There's a tub and a shower. One of the best things about this apartment is that we have great water pressure, but the heater isn't all that great. So just keep that in mind."
As he reached the area between the bedrooms and the bathroom, he turned back and saw her nod as her gaze swept around the main room.
"Your bedroom is to the right." He lifted his chin toward that side, seeing her drag her gaze to him before he dropped his chin back down. I'm on the other side."
Rhett watched as she moved past him and into the bedroom.
"Oh, wow. It has windows."
Okay, he was smiling.
"Both bedrooms do. We're the last apartment on this side of the hall so we have windows on both sides."
She dropped her shoulder bag down on the bed and made a beeline for the windows, opening the shades before she turned back around to look at him.
No, not him.
She was looking beyond him.
"Your bedroom looks so dark, are you sure this is my room?"
"I have blackout curtains in my room," he knew it wasn't the norm. "With my long shifts at the firehouse, sometimes we get to sleep during our shift and other days..."
"Other days," she smiled, and he felt like she was really listening to him, "you probably don't get to sit down before you're back out on another call."
Even with the air conditioning in the apartment, he felt heat creeping up the back of his neck.
"Does the same thing happen as a schoolteacher?"
Her smile was brilliant and the look in her eyes was far away.
A few moments later, her eyes fixed back on his. "Sorry, I was just thinking how amazing it is that I'm finally getting to teach instead of sub-in for a day or two here or there. I mean, I know she might not be out for the rest of the year, and I'm not happy that she was hurt, please don't think that-"
He shook his head. Of course she didn't wish that on someone.
He didn't know her well, but he had a good radar for the temperament of people, and he could tell that Morgan was a really good person."
"It's just nice thinking of myself as an actual schoolteacher. And yes, some days you have to hit the ground running and you never stop until you slide into the driver's seat of your car." She looked at him with a strange uncertain look on her face. "I think I should go and get the rest of my things." She looked away again before meeting his gaze. "I heard it’s going to get pretty hot outside and I am not fond of sweat."
"Well, then," he gestured for her to come with him, "we should get started and bring your things in."
She followed behind him, this time closer instead of letting her gaze drift around the room. He wasn't sure he was completely in the clear for his shit greeting earlier, but he was trying.
He opened the door, and she stepped out before him, giving him time to take a better look at her without her seeing it.
She was very different from her brother.
Rhett smiled. The biggest difference being that she wasn't a man.
Oh god, he was sure that Morgan was going to tell Jacob and then he'd never live it down.
He had to fight down his smile that at point. He just didn't want her to think that he was making fun of her.
They were headed down the hall when she turned to the right to go into the stairwell.
"Did you park close to the stairs?"
"I think so," she looked over her shoulder at him. "I remember seeing a door close to where I parked. I'd like to see how close my guess is."
He shrugged. "Good observation."
She took the first few steps down the stairs and then she paused and smiled. "Oh, it's cool in here."
"The stone that makes up the stairway keeps it cool during the summer, but wait until the winter, especially when it happens to snow. Then-"
"Ah," she lifted her pointer finger, "I heard I won't have to worry about that for a few years. So, I'm going to pretend that winter doesn't exist for a few months."
He shrugged and moved along beside her as they descended the stairs.
"We don't have assigned spots in the parking lot," he explained, "but if they see guests staying around for days on end, they'll tow. So we'll go to the office on Monday and get you a parking pass."
She caught up to him at the bottom of the stairs and waited a step back as he pushed on the long bar to open the outer door. "Is it a sticker?"
He wasn't sure what she was worried about, but he stopped when she headed straight for the camo-painted car that he'd seen driving into the parking lot.
"You worried about the sticker peeling off the paint?"
She looked at him with a smiling wince. "Yeah... I don't allow any stickers on Claude, here."
"Claude?"
She popped open the back of the Kia and he had to round the back bumper to see her.
"When I got him, there was a dent in the back bumper and instead of getting a new one, I took it off and pounded it back into shape, but Jacob told me it looked like shit, and I should get it refinished."
Rhett had to smile at that. "I can hear your brother in that."
She beamed at him. "Right? He's... um... certainly hardheaded and stubborn, so I have to remind him that I didn't fall far from him on the tree."
He couldn't argue with that.
Morgan pulled out a bag and he took it from her hand, earning himself a curious look before she reached in for another bag that she had set down on the other side of her body from him.
"I decided to listen to my big bro for a change." She gave him a look that dared him to say something.
He remained quiet.
Morgan's smile twisted a little at the corner. "And I went down to the hardware store and bought about six colors of spray paint and got to work in the driveway."
She set down another bag on the far side of her body, so he moved closer and reached into the car and took out a suitcase, setting it on the ground by his leg and extending the handle so he could add another bag on top of it.
When she turned back to the car, she did a quick take and looked around her legs. Morgan saw the suitcase he'd set down. "I can get my stuff."
"Sure you can," he shrugged, "but I can help."
"So is this a man thing? A first responder thing?"
"How about a nice thing?"
Morgan gave him a look, but he couldn't quite identify it. She was a mystery to him.
Then again, he hadn't remembered that she was a girl, so his observation skills might be a little lacking.
"Okay. So we're sharing tasks?"
He shrugged. "Of course. We do it at the fire house all the time."
"But you've been living alone up until now."
"Yes. So I take myself to task and share the work around the apartment." He was pretty sure he was smiling at her, but she looked at him as if he was mocking her.
"Right. Ohhhhkay."
He gestured with his hand for another, but she shook her head, making him reach in to grab a big duffle decorated with painted flowers and looped the handles over the suitcase handle.
She gave him a look that threatened mutiny before she shut the door and locked it with the fob on her key chain. She hefted everything in her hands and the bag she wore as a backpack, walking beside him toward the front doors of the complex.
"So what happened?"
Startled, she looked over at him. "When?"
"When you painted your car in the driveway?"
She shook her head before looking at him, confused. "You really want to hear about it?"
"Of course."
"It's a stupid story about painting my car."
"Painting Claude, you mean."
She laughed. "Yes. I painted Claude."
He stepped ahead to open the door with his key and then held the door open.
She walked by and had to turn at an angle to fit through the doorway. "I started painting it while my brother was at work, because if I did it while he was there, I'm sure I would have gotten a lecture, or he would have stood there judging me with his eyes."
Morgan gave him a steady stare as he walked up to the bank of elevators.
"It's a remarkably accurate look."
"I know, right?" She laughed as they waited for an elevator to come down to the lobby level. "Well, I was done with the first color, spraying here and there around the body until I felt like I had a good start, when I heard the loud, uber-distinctive electronic trill that announced there was a black and white behind me."
Rhett managed to smother his smile as the elevator doors opened.
He let go of the suitcase handle to hold his arm out and block the auto-sensor that would have closed the door on them.
Once in the elevator, he punched the button. "What did the officer have to say?"
"The officers," she exaggerated the S, "were ready to cuff and stuff me into the cruiser when our neighbor came running out to stop them."
Rhett was trying not to blurt out any questions, but they were at the tip of his tongue.
"Missus Klein was an elementary school teacher for years and yes, she had been mine. She came running out to ask the officers what they were doing besides bending my arms behind my back like a fancy dressed chicken in the butcher shop window."
He raised an eyebrow at that.
"Yeah, well, she let them know that my brother was on the force, which is when I wanted the ground to open up and drop me into a hole all the way through to China."
Rhett had to bite into the inside of his cheek not to respond, but the doors at his back opened at that moment.
He held the door and followed her as she grudgingly went out first.
"What did the officers do?"
She stopped outside his door and gave him a smile and a roll of her eyes. "They called my brother, of course. And he freaked out. If it wasn't for Missus Klein, I think they would have just taken me right down to Juvenile Hall."
He opened the apartment door and paused, looking at her with a raised brow. "But you were an adult."
"Well, I still looked like a stick back then. I looked fourteen, sixteen tops. That's probably why they thought I was playing hooky from school and painting a car with a drop cloth."
She moved her bags in and set them down in the entry to rub her arms.
"It turns out that Mister Lucas across the street called in to say that I was defacing private property."
His shoulders shook. "Your own private property."
She lifted her hands before wincing. "Missus Klein was in top form. She reminded the officers that it was a good idea to ask questions before rushing to judgement. She told them that I was one of her former students and that she found the idea that I'd be defacing property... laughable."
"Well, as nice as it would be to trust everyone's elementary school teachers as character witnesses, it's probably not police procedure, but-"
"But they basically talked over me at first, so I stopped talking all together after I told them to get my wallet out of my hoodie pocket and check it against the registration."
He nodded. "And they didn't do that?"
"Not really. They told me that I could answer their questions at the police station if I didn't want to talk, but I'd already tried and I was pissed, too. I don't think that broad daylight in a quiet suburb was the site for people to launch into a painting project if I was just a tagger or a... youthful ruffian."
His forehead furrowed. "Who said that?"
"Mister Lucas when he called 911 to report rampant lawlessness going on across the street from him."
"Rampant lawlessness." He repeated the words and laughed. "He sounds like the villain neighbor in a nineteen fifties black and white TV sitcom."
Morgan raised both her hands. "Exactly!"
"What did Jacob do when he got there?" He leaned against the wall and watched her closely.
"He was assigned to a precinct out of the area we lived in, so he didn't know the officers who were detaining me. He had to get permission to take an extended break from his patrol and he had his partner with him. The two of them got out of their black and white and made our neighborhood look like a scene from Chips."
Rhett's jaw almost dropped. "Chips?"
She shrugged. "I loved 'classic' TV growing up."
"I'm not sure the seventies qualify as classic, but okay."
"At least I didn't start singing the COPS theme song."
Rhett nodded. "That wouldn't have gone over well."
"It was playing in my head, though."
He folded his arms across his chest. "I'll bet it was."
“So,” she dropped her chin and gave him a look that had his breath catching in his throat, “Jacob took one look at the whole situation and dropped his shoulders in a big bro sigh. ‘Is there a valid reason why you’re going to arrest my sister for spray painting her car? Or is this just a critique on her skills with an aerosol can?’” She smiled, her whole face lighting up with the memory. “According to Missus Klein, who had a better vantage point than I did, the two officers looked like they’d been spanked with a rolled-up newspaper for peeing on the floor.”
Her smile changed, giving her a kind of blood-thirsty look.
“It served them right.”
Rhett turned his head and gave her a bit of a sideway look, being a little cautious. “Did you get a hit in?”
“No, I used a little bit of my High School Theater experience and acted so grateful for my big brother’s help, hugging him around his middle and sniffling about how they had been so mean!”
Rhett was trying so hard to keep his laughter in that his lips had compressed into a thin, pinched line.
She waved a dismissive hand, but he knew it wasn’t about him.
“Jacob didn’t call me out on it when the officers were still there, but after they left, he gave me that ‘daddy’ look and wagged his pointer finger at me. He told me to ‘Behave’ and then he walked across the street to have a talk with Mister Lucas.
“Missus Klein sighed like she was on the vaudeville stage. ‘Goodness, Morgana! What are we going to do with you?’”
“Morgana. That’s your name?”
She shrugged. “Yes. Let me tell you, my classmates gave me so much grief over that name that I just started asking people to call me Morgan.”
He lifted his chin and dropped it slowly in a nod of understanding. “Did that help?”
She sucked in breath through her teeth and then gave him a sheepish grin that he had a feeling was more in jest than natural. “Well, Morgana can get her feelings hurt and be told to turn the other cheek, but Morgan,” she lifted a hand and made it into a fist, “Morgan can jab little Timmy in the nose for acting like an ass.”
She made a jab at an imaginary person between them and Rhett raised his eyebrows before he brought his hands up in mock surrender.
“Okay, okay! I’ll be nice, I promise!”
Morgan, Morgana in his head, laughed out loud and the sound of it echoed off of the empty spaces in his apartment, changing the very fabric of his world.
He just didn’t have a way to explain it.
He couldn’t even quite understand it at that moment.
She folded her arms a moment later. "You know," she gave him a bright smile, "You're pretty easy to talk to."
Rhett felt those words right in his heart.
He kept to himself a lot at work, which is probably why they saw him as aloof from the group, but while he cared deeply for his coworkers and their families, he felt more comfortable as an outlier instead of someone who got into the thick of things.
Talking to Morgan, or rather reacting to her words, made him want to learn more.
Want to talk more.
He knew that she felt odd about staying with him earlier when he admitted that he thought 'she' was going to be a 'he.'
He could leave it alone, but he knew he should say something to help her feel more comfortable.
Rhett had learned that through watching his friends go through the early parts of their relationships.
He leaned down and picked up the bag he'd set down just a few moments before. When he straightened, he looked her right in the eye. "I think we're going to get along just fine."