Chapter 11
“Thanks again for allowing me to come with you,” Nate said to Chief Mendoza as the two of them and Penn Griffin, the arson investigator on the case, rode the elevator up to Sophie’s floor Tuesday evening.
“It’s not the norm,” the chief said.
“She doesn’t have anyone who’s really there for her,” Nate said.
“No family?” Penn asked.
“Not that she talks about.” Of course, she hadn’t mentioned the brother, and Nate was still trying to swallow her lack of trust in him.
Small fish, he decided as the doors opened and the three of them stepped out.
The chief knocked on Sophie’s door. Nate stood off to the side and tried to prepare himself to lay his eyes on her again.
It’d been four days. They’d texted a few times since their date Friday that had ended on a …
well, not a particularly high note. Just casual messages, a half dozen in total.
He was smart enough to realize when he’d been coming on too strong. And yet he had to be here for this.
The door opened and Nate’s heart hammered.
It’d taken all his willpower to stay away from her for ninety-six hours.
He drank in the sight of her. Her hair was pulled sloppily back, with several pieces hanging down and framing her face.
She wore black yoga pants and another heavy zip-up sweatshirt that hit her mid-thigh.
Her eyes turned warier than usual when they landed on the chief and Penn, but he thought she warmed a few degrees when she spotted him. Wishful thinking?
“Hello again, Chief Mendoza, Penn. Hi, Nate. What can I do for you?”
“Can we come in, Sophie?” Chief Mendoza said. “There’s been a development.”
Sophie’s eyes veered to Nate’s, and he wanted to pull her close, tell her everything was going to be okay.
“Of course.” She stood to the side and let the chief and Penn walk in. Nate paused next to her, rubbed her upper arm. “What’s going on?” she asked him in a quiet voice.
Nate nodded at the other two. “They’ll explain. I’m just along for the ride.”
“Have a seat,” she told the others.
Chief Mendoza and Penn seated themselves on opposite ends of the gray couch. Sophie went to the adjacent love seat, and Nate sat next to her, several inches away, on the edge of the cushion.
“Is there a new lead in the case?” Sophie asked.
Penn and the chief exchanged glances. Chief Mendoza nodded, giving Penn the go-ahead, and Penn cleared his throat.
“More than a lead, Sophie. There’s been a confession.”
Her eyes widened, but that was her only reaction. No, Nate decided as he watched her with hawk-like focus. Not the only reaction. She was holding her breath, waiting. He put his hand on her thigh to convey his support, suspecting she was going to be blindsided.
“A man came in earlier today and admitted to starting the fire at the office building on Garcia Avenue.”
She pressed her lips together, moistening them, and her eyes darted to Nate for a moment. “Why? Why did he do it?”
“He claims he didn’t know anyone was in the building when he started the fire,” Penn said. “He was going for property damage, apparently. Shock value, as well, in my opinion.” Penn paused, and Nate tensed, knowing what was coming. “Sophie, the man who confessed is Robert Alexander.”
“What?” She grabbed Nate’s hand, dug her nails into his skin. Her face turned ashen, looking like she had right after the fire. “My brother?” When she glanced at Nate, she explained, “Estranged. I haven’t talked to him for years.”
Nate nodded, signaling that he wasn’t worried she hadn’t mentioned him — at least not at the moment.
If Robert Alexander was the kind of guy to torch his sister’s office, Nate could understand why she’d neglected to talk about him.
It did make him even more curious about her family’s history, but he shoved that aside.
“He didn’t know you were inside,” Penn repeated.
“That doesn’t make it okay!” Sophie stood and took several steps.
“No,” Chief Mendoza said, his voice quiet and yet still conveying the passionate hatred that everyone in their profession held for arsonists. “It’s not okay.”
“So he wanted to burn my office down, didn’t he?” she asked, her back to them as she gazed out the window toward the Gulf of Mexico.
“It appears he’s got a lot of issues,” Penn said. “Resentment, anger…”
Sophie laughed harshly. “You think?” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if protecting herself from memories.
“That guy is overflowing with jealousy. It seems he’s jealous of everything about you, though that’s not quite how he phrased it.”
“I’ve worked my ass off for everything I have. While he was getting suspended from school and picked up for shooting BBs at local businesses’ windows, I was studying. Working. Doing something with my life.”
Nate walked over to her. “There’s no way to make sense of a person like that, Sophie.”
She dragged in a ragged breath.
“He’s in custody now, so he won’t hurt you,” Penn said from behind them.
She nodded vaguely, lost in thought. Nate rubbed a hand back and forth on her back until she turned away from the window and faced the others.
“Is there anything else I need to know right now?” she asked.
Penn stood. “Just that we’ll be doing everything in our power to see that he gets the maximum punishment.” His voice held determination. “And again, he’s behind bars now. You’re safe.”
She bobbed her head again, looking a little more alive, a little less shell-shocked. “I appreciate you coming over to update me,” Sophie said to Penn and the chief. “You too, Nate.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’ll find a ride home later.”
The chief sized him up and gave his silent consent, and Sophie didn’t protest.
“We’ll be in touch soon, as we work on the case, Sophie,” Penn said. “I’m sorry to have to deliver such disturbing news.”
“It’s a lot to digest,” she said as she led him and the chief to the door.
“It sounds like this isn’t the first sign of trouble from your brother,” Penn said.
Again, Sophie laughed, but it, too, was far from her normal laugh. “Oh, no. Not the first sign. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your visit.”
Nate narrowed his eyes at the change in her tone. It was like she’d become all business and they were discussing a building remodel or something, not a murderous, sick-in-the-head family member.
They said their good-byes, and Sophie closed the door and leaned against it, allowing the all-business act to fall by the wayside.
Thank God, because that was going to piss him off. Nobody could get news that a sibling had almost killed him or her and not be bothered.
But still, he was walking a fine line between being the support she needed and … too much.
Still slumping against the door, she pressed both her hands to her face, covering her mouth and nose. Nate walked toward her, but she didn’t even notice.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
She came to him willingly. Hands still covering her face, she burrowed into his chest. Nate breathed in her scent and felt centered. Content. The need to give her the same feeling pulsed through him, but he wasn’t sure how.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered. He kissed the top of her head and tightened his arms around her, imagining what he’d do to her brother if he ever laid eyes on him. The bastard was lucky to be locked up, frankly.
Most women he knew would be bawling right about now, but he didn’t feel so much as a shudder of her shoulders …
for better or worse. He wasn’t well versed in the art of comforting a crying woman, but with the news she’d just gotten, she should be doing something besides standing there frozen. Shouldn’t she?
“Sophie? Talk to me, darlin’. You breathing?”
A few seconds later, he felt her nod. She removed her hands from her face and wound them around him. Held on for all she was worth. Which was just fine by him. He was glad to have any kind of response, especially one that wasn’t pushing him away.
They stood there for eons, not talking, the only movement that of his hands caressing her back. “Tell me what you need,” he said. “What can I do?”
In response, she shook her head. A few seconds later, she straightened. “Can we go outside?”
“On the balcony?”
Sophie nodded.
He took her hand and walked toward the door. On the way, he snagged the blanket from the back of the easy chair.
Outside, the two teak lounge chairs stood sentinel over the view, which was now shrouded in darkness.
Purposely not turning on the outdoor light, Nate sat on the one in the corner, the most protected from the wind, and pulled Sophie down crosswise on his lap.
Once she was settled, he draped the blanket around her shoulders.
She tucked her head into his shoulder, her hand resting on his chest.
They sat like that for several minutes, not speaking, the roar of the waves insulating them from the rest of the world.
Nate had so many questions about her brother, but he didn’t want to infringe on any calmness she’d found since the chief and Penn had left.
It wasn’t time for talking yet, unless she started it. He could be patient.
Sophie curled in closer to Nate, if that was possible.
The news from the arson investigator had caught her off guard, but honestly, when she thought about it, wasn’t really shocking at all.
Her brother was a loose cannon. Always had been.
Though she wasn’t aware of any record of him doing something on this scale, he’d always been on the edge, like he was just one rage away from blowing up the world.
The fear of him was so old, so much a fundamental part of who she was, that there was no grieving for what he’d done to her.
Mostly, now that the facts had started to sink in, there was …
profound relief. She hadn’t realized it before, but now it was clear as day that, on some level, she’d always been waiting for Robert’s crazy to surface somehow, sometime.
Always. Even though he hadn’t been in her life for years and years and she hadn’t laid eyes on him for more than a decade.
Didn’t matter. She’d always known that he and his brand of crazy were out there somewhere.
Now he wasn’t. Or not free, anyway. He was in custody, and hopefully he’d be put away for a long time. At any rate, Sophie would breathe easier.
Was she pissed? On some level, she felt fury, but she didn’t have the energy for it.
Robert Alexander wasn’t worth it. So she pushed any anger aside, maybe for another time.
Maybe for never. She’d learned early on that getting angry was letting him win, because getting a rise out of people was part of what her brother thrived on.
Not today. She wasn’t going to give in to it. Honestly, she just wanted to forget it. Forget him.
With one finger, she traced a line up Nate’s ridged chest and back down, over the faded red cotton of his T-shirt.
His body was a perfect male specimen, like a model for a drawing class where the challenge was to show all the ripples of muscle and valleys between and arcs of perfection.
The only drawing she ever did was for building schemes and plans, with lots of straight lines and angles, but she imagined sketching his masculine beauty as she continued to explore his chest and shoulders.
His strong, scruffy jaw was next, and she relished the texture under the pad of her finger and tried to commit the exact curve to memory.
She was drawn to the contrasting smoothness of his lips and hesitated only a moment before running her finger over the bottom one and then the top.
He opened them slightly, as if to say something.
Sophie traced another circle over them, her heart rate picking up, and she finally got the nerve to lean in and press her mouth to his, gently.
Their breaths mingled, and then she traced the same path with her tongue, lightly, teasing his lips.
“Sophie.” His voice was a low rumble, barely more than a whisper. “You must be reeling…”
She toyed with his lips a moment more before answering. She had no desire to talk about her criminal, psychopathic brother. Brushing her knuckles over his jawline, she shook her head. “I’m okay.”
“Do you want to talk about…?”
“No. I don’t want to waste a single second on him. He’s so one thousand percent not worth it.”
She pulled his head back to hers and kissed him again, less gently, more insistently, trying to communicate without words. She managed to distract him for a minute or so before he broke contact and spoke again.
“I came with the chief and Penn to be here for you, Soph, but this doesn’t feel like what we should be doing.”
A wave of self-doubt rolled through her, and she straightened. “You don’t like me kissing you?”
His lips flirted with a grin. “I always like you kissing me, but you just found out—”
“Please, Nate.”
He brushed her hair away from her face, running his fingers over her cheek and then cradling her jaw. His milk-caramel eyes stared back into hers, searching.
Maybe it wasn’t normal of her to not be in hysterics over tonight’s news. Maybe it was crazy that she wanted to distract herself from everything with this beautiful man. There was nothing normal about her situation or the way she’d lived in constrained fear for practically her whole life.
“Tell me what you want, Sophie. What you need…”
She swallowed, knowing full well what she wanted but unsure whether she had the nerve to ask for it.
Screw it. No more fear.
She shifted so one leg was on each side of his thighs and her body was centered over his, and it was impossible to miss that, regardless of his protests, his body was hard as stone and good to go.
“I want you to make me forget the rest of the world exists.”