Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Grace, Levi’s dog, darts out the screen door and launches herself at my legs, her strong little body butting up against me.
“Hey there, Gracie. You been a good girl?” I scratch behind her ears with one hand and close the door with my other, leaning into her body so she doesn’t get caught between the door and the side of the car in her wiggle frenzy.
Grace licks my pant leg and marks up my polished shoes with her tongue, taking a moment to sniff one. “Just me, girl. Haven’t traded you for another lady.”
The screen door opens again, and Levi hobbles out, his ankle in a cast, a nearly full-grown beard on his face.
I’ve never seen a black eye as bad as the one Levi’s been sporting these last couple of weeks.
It covers his face, going from the middle of his forehead across the slope of his nose and halfway down his cheekbone, and looks nasty as hell.
“When was the last time you saw a razor?” Beards are popular again, but Levi is a clean-cut guy. He grew whiskers younger than the rest of us, and has been fighting the battle ever since.
He scratches his beard. At least the T-shirt he’s wearing appears clean. “Can’t remember.” Levi gives Grace a pat, since she’s tossed me over and turned her attentions to him. “What brings your sorry ass around?”
He moves to the side of the porch and props his walking cast on a bench, dropping onto the porch swing.
I climb the steps and glance pointedly at the Italian suit I’m wearing, then back at his cast. “My sorry ass? My sorry ass is in fine form, or so the ladies tell me.” I grin cockily.
“Is that what you tell them to get laid?” he says absently, rubbing the top of his leg above the cast that stretches up to the bottom of his knee.
“No need, brother. They flock.” Of course, I won’t mention to Levi how long I’ve been without a woman. He’d give me crap for it.
Women in town are either looking to settle down, or searching for someone with deep pockets, and both types are transparent as hell.
There is one exception…Hayden is feisty, but she keeps me on my toes.
I’m not sure what I would do if she changed her mind and took me up on my flirtation.
I’d like to think I’d be smart enough to stay away from the disaster that would be any relationship we attempted, but I’m not sure my large brain is in command anymore where she’s concerned.
I fold my suit jacket on the bench opposite Levi and sit, tugging my pant leg to cross my ankle neatly over my knee.
I shake my head. “Levi, we gotta get you out. You look like a lumberjack, and not a healthy one at that.” That’s not entirely true.
Levi is a fireman. He’s always been physically fit, but the patches of his skin that aren’t black and blue are pale now with a grayish tinge.
Levi pats his thigh and Grace hurries over, licking the crap out of his hand. That dog is easy. “I’m doing fine right here. I figure by staying in the house for a while I’m saving the mothers out there a conversation about the bogeyman.”
“Who cares what you look like? The cement that fell on your stubborn skull could have killed you. You’re lucky you made it out with all of your limbs and your brain intact.
When did the doctor say you could return to work?
” If anything will snap Levi out of his funk, getting back to the fire station will.
He loves his job more than his own brothers.
Levi scratches Grace’s side and stares at her fur coat, his voice barely audible as he murmurs. “No more jobs.”
I take a moment to decipher his meaning. “Your ankle’s busted up, but once it heals, you’ll work again.”
“I said jobs—fires. There’s no going back. They wanted to reclassify me to a desk. So I quit.”
I drop my foot and lean forward. “Why would they do that? You’re set to make captain in a couple of years.” I glance at his cast. “You said it was a clean break.”
He absently touches the left side of his forehead, right above the angry red scar he sustained after a partial roof collapse during his last fire.
“The ankle was a clean break. The knock to the head…I lost some vision. Nothing I can’t live without, but enough that the fire department wants me on desk duty. ”
I take in the desolate look on his face, the tension in his wide shoulders.
Levi carried the weight of the family—was the responsible one, while I catered to our father and the others ran wild.
He knocked our skulls together when we fought, told us to get up when we fell down, and went up against our father when he was being pigheaded about who our friends were, our plans after high school—pretty much everything.
And right now Levi is trying not to fall apart; the brother who’s always had it together.
I swallow the dry ball that’s lodged in my throat. This can’t be happening. Cade men are tall and athletic, but Levi is built like the houses he protects. He’s a brick of a man, and to see him weakened mentally or physically is unnatural.
I rub my face. “Jesus Christ.” Being a firefighter is the one thing he’s ever wanted.
Desk duty would be like a death knell for him.
No wonder he’s been holed up these last two weeks, not wanting to see my brothers or me.
The only reason I’m here is because I’m a pushy bastard who never listens to what my brothers say.
I was the conformer in the family, accepting the sports cars our father gave me whenever I did something he liked.
I dressed the part of a Cade, wore designer clothes, lived lavishly, while the rest of my brothers did whatever the fuck they wanted.
They pursued careers outside of Club Tahoe, lived month to month on their working-class paychecks as waiters, tour guides—firemen—while I danced to my father’s tune, doing whatever Ethan Cade told me to do.
Just as long as I got my monthly trust fund check.
I stare blindly at the pile of logs off to the side. I came here today to lean on Levi and ask what he thought about this Bliss venture, but he’s the one who needs someone to lean on. And I’m no good at being dependable.
I stand and unbutton my dress shirt. I drop it on top of my jacket. “Wood needs chopping.” I tug my undershirt from my pants and stride across the yard to the ax.
I don’t know if Levi needs more wood in the bin, but he’s getting some, because I need to hack things up.
My older brother can’t be a mess. If he is, that leaves me, as the second eldest, in charge.
Not a single one of my brothers respects me.
Loves me? Sure, as much as brothers who’ve harassed and argued all their lives can love one another.
But their respect was something I lost years ago when I gave in to our father’s demands.