Luc indicated the booth with a tilt of his angular jaw. “Why don’t we sit down.”
They slid into the booth, Luc on one side and he and Jake on the other. They’d barely settled when the waitress showed up, tossed down a couple cardboard coasters and placed a Fat Tire in the bottle in front of Jake and a pilsner of Ridgetop Red in front of Max.
“Elise said she might as well save us all some time,” the woman said, referring to the bartender. “You want me to run ya a tab?”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Jake said. “Thanks, Sally.”
When she walked away, the three men simply looked at one another for a moment. Then Luc blew out a breath.
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” he said, taking a sip of his beer, then setting his schooner down. “I’ve been searching for you ever since Dad died and I found out I had brothers.”
“Charlie died?” Max demanded. Looking inward for a moment, he tried to figure out how he felt about that. It only took a seconds to realize that he felt...nothing. Nothing at all. It had been too long and too damn much water under the bridge. He glanced at Jake out of the corner of his eye.
His brother must have been doing the same to him, because Max saw him essay the faintest of facial shrugs.
“Yes,” Luc replied. “April eighteenth.”
“How long did it take them to notify you?” Jake asked.
“How lon—?” New Bradshaw’s dark brows came together, then he gave his head a faint shake and smoothed out his expression. “I was notified right away.”
“Like right away, right away?” Max gave him a curious look. “How did you manage that?”
“Uh, I’m...his son?”
“So are we, bro.” Jake gave him a level look. “And yet here it is almost six months since his death, and this is the first either of us has heard it.”
Luc shook his head. “Look, I’m guessing he was no kind of father to you—”
Max snorted and Jake said, “Ya think?” under his breath.
“—but he was a good dad to me.”
“He didn’t leave you and your mom flat when he fell in love with some other woman?” Max asked.
“No!”
Jake raised a brow. “Didn’t go from being the greatest dad in the world to ignoring your very existence?”
“No, Jesus.” He slowly set down his beer. “He did that? To both of you?”
“Yes.” Jake’s voice was hard. “At least he had the decency to leave town when he did it to me—so I didn’t have to watch my perfect-up-until-then father cut me out of his life at every turn. Max had to live in Razor Bay when Charlie left Max’s mom for mine. He was a great dad to me while it lasted, but Max might as well have been invisible, so thoroughly did our so-called dad ignore and look right through him.”
Something about Jake’s statement felt like the real mess-with-my-brother-you-mess-with-
me
kind of defense they’d never shared as kids. It probably made him too juvenile for his jeans that he
loved
how squarely Jake was on his side, but you’d just have to excuse the hell outta him if it did. Because, face it, they’d found themselves at war for far too many years. Feeling all warm and fuzzy, he bumped his shoulder against his brother’s.
“Dammit, Max, you made me spill my beer.” Jake set his bottle back on the coaster and blotted the drops around his mouth with the back of his hand. But he shot him a slight, lopsided smile.
Max raised a
see what I have to put up
with eyebrow at Luc. “He’s always had a slight drinking problem.” Then he got serious. “So, what you’re saying is that Charlie stayed with your mom and raised you?”
“Yes.”
“And never said a word about Jake or me?” Not that
that
was a big wedgie of surprise.
“I didn’t know anything about you two until I started going through his stuff.” Luc scrubbed his hands over his face, then dropped them to press against the scarred tabletop. “My mom died a couple of years ago,” he said in a low voice to his whitening fingertips, “and it was just Dad and me. My work often took me away for long blocks of time, but he sure as hell had enough time to fill me in on the fact that I had a couple of half brothers.” The dark eyes he raised to them were baffled. “He never said a word.”
“Yeah, Jake and I know a little something about that.” He looked the new Bradshaw half brother over. “You were in the picture when Charlie left Razor Bay with your mom. Or at least some kid was.”
“That was me.”
“I’m just trying to figure out the timeline. You look about my age. Did he adopt you or is he your father by blood?”
“Blood. I don’t know how old you are—I’m thirty-five.”
“I just turned thirty-four, so clearly Charlie didn’t let any grass grow under his feet between your mother and mine.”
“My folks always made their love affair sound like a star-crossed lovers’ story. Mom got pregnant with me, but her dad, who was a very traditional Argentinean, butted in. He didn’t tell my dad—Charlie—that she was expecting, but he did tell him that she didn’t want to see him anymore. He told my mom the same thing—that Dad didn’t want to see her. Dad married someone else—”
“A couple someones,” Jake murmured.
“Then they bumped into each other when he was in San Clemente, where I grew up, on business. And that, they always said, was that.” He killed off his beer. “But I can see it wasn’t all that. Not for you guys.” He knuckled a drop of beer off his lower lip. “Look, I grew up an only child, no cousins or anything. And when I found out I finally had some family, I wanted to meet them. But if my being here is just going to dredge up bad memories, I understand if you’d rather not get to know me.” He swept his change off the table and lifted a hip to drop it into his front pocket. The dollar bills still on the table he pushed to the middle, then slid toward the end of the bench.
“Oh, sit down,” Jake said. “Don’t get your shorts all in a wad. ’Course we want to get to know you. Well, I do, at least. Max here tends to be resistant to change.”
“Please,” Max said. “I came and got
you
when I got his call, didn’t I? Even though I knew you’d probably dick it up.” He looked at Luc. Six months ago he likely would have questioned this guy’s story. But from photos he’d seen of Charlie, he could see hints of their father in him. The full mouth was Charlie’s and so was the shape of his jaw.
For a moment he heard his mother’s strident voice in his head going on the way she used to do about some tramp and her little bastard running off with Charlie—then laughing bitterly and saying the only good part was how it had left that
other
tramp and her oh-so-precious brat in the same boat that Charlie had long ago left them. Her constant bitching had made him detest the unknown boy almost as much as he’d hated Jake in those days, and he waited now for the old rage to surface.
It didn’t. Instead, Luc’s word
family
resonated in his mind. Why should he cut himself off from exploring what was what with the guy? By blood at least, the newly discovered Bradshaw really
was
family—and it wasn’t as if Max was overburdened with relatives. His and Jake’s years-long rivalry had kept them from getting to know each other as real brothers until the past few months, and he actually felt a lick of anticipation at the idea of maybe forging some kind of relationship with Luc, as well. So he looked at him across the table.
“Jake’s easy,” he said. “Me, not so much. I can’t say I’d be willing to give you a kidney anytime soon. On the other hand—” his shoulders hitched “—what the hell. I suppose I wouldn’t mind getting to know you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“J
ENNY
THINKS
WE
’
RE
overdue for our Ladies’ Night skinny-dip.”
Harper wrenched her wandering attention back to Tasha. Part of her had been aware of Tash and Jenny kidding around with the kind of ease that could only come from a long, knows-everything-there-is-to-know-about-each-other friendship and had vaguely wondered what that must feel like. Mostly, however, she’d been thinking about the proposal she was contemplating running by Max. Belatedly, Tasha’s words sorted themselves into a coherent sentence in her mind, and she gaped at both women. “Excuse me?”
Jenny grinned. “That got your attention,” she said beneath the conversations and clatter of a crazy busy Saturday night at Bella T’s. “We need to get Tasha away from here for a while. She’s been working flat-out this weekend—hell, for most of the summer, really. And it feels like forever since we’ve gone skinny-dipping.”
Tasha nodded. “Not since last year. We’ve let this entire summer slip by without going once.” One of her waitresses came up with a question, and she stepped away for a minute.
Harper turned to Jenny. “You truly go skinny-dipping?”
“Sure.”
“Buck
naked?
”
Jenny laughed. “That’s kind of the definition.” She studied her. “Haven’t you ever been?”
“No.”
“I’ve lost count of how many times Tash and I have gone. It started the first year I moved to Razor Bay.” She smiled reminiscently. “We were sixteen and thought we were pretty daring.”
“Let me assure you, as someone who’s never once considered swimming without a suit, there’s no ‘thought’ about it—you’re positively daring.” And wasn’t it interesting how this subject tied in so neatly to her recent ruminations?
She’d been thinking a lot about roots lately. Which was rather funny, considering that as little as a week ago, she would have unequivocally sworn she was against them, at least for herself. Settling down equaled...well, not
dying
exactly—
Nerves zinged like an electrical shock up her spine, making her involuntarily startle. But, please.
Be honest with yourself, if no one else, girl. That’s
precisely
what you equate it with.
What she had always equated it with, especially since her father’s death.
But even with such thoughts circling the periphery of her mind, it was exactly the sort of continuity and connection her new girlfriends enjoyed—this doing something with a friend year after year the way Jenny had outlined—that she had been thinking about with increasing curiosity.
And what it might feel like to stay in one place long enough to experience something like it.
“So, are you in?” demanded Tasha, who had sent the waitress on her way and turned back to them. She looked directly at her.
Harper had participated in her share of daring adventures in far-flung places over the years. But they had always involved keeping her clothes on. “When were you thinking of going?”
“Tonight.”
“Ah, gee, too bad. I’ve got flotilla duty tonight.”
Jenny simply looked at her. “You already arranged and checked out all the boats to the guests scheduled to watch the fireworks, right?”
“Yes.”
“Saw all those guests into the boats and on their way to the bay?”
“Yeeeees.” Sensing a pitfall in admitting it, she dragged out the word. She’d done precisely that, of course. But she suspected a catch in saying so.
“Didn’t Jed and Norm go along to supervise the actual transportation to and from the log boom?”
She nodded. “But you know I have to be at the dock to check all the boats back in and do a head count after the fireworks are over.” Part of her was relieved she wouldn’t be available to go skinny-dipping. But another, perhaps larger part, the one that adored being introduced to new adventures—and perhaps even more importantly, that adored these two women—was a bit disappointed.
“Then you’re in luck, sweetie.” Tasha gave her a knowing smile. “Because we plan to go while everyone’s in town watching the show. We’ll have you dressed in plenty of time to get those boats checked back in.”
“Oh.” She could actually feel the wry twist to her smile. “Busted.”
Her friends laughed. “I plan on closing Bella’s and walking out the door at nine on the dot,” Tasha said. “Let’s meet at the inn’s boat dock at nine-thirty.” She looked at Harper. “Wear your suit. Ever since Jenny started working at the inn, which was, oh, like the second she moved to town, we’ve always either swum out to the float or taken one of the boats out to it. You already know the boats are all taken tonight, but we won’t strip off until we’re there. It cuts way down on the risk of exposure.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Buck up, baby—you’re gonna love this.” Jenny shot her a trust-me smile. “I’d put money on it.”
An hour later, flanked by her friends, Harper found herself diving into the canal from the inn dock as the summer sky began to rapidly lose its grip on the late evening Pacific Northwest twilight. This wasn’t like riding the shoulders of a hot-skinned male on an eighty-degree day where a dip in the shockingly cold water was refreshingly welcome. As they edged into September, the evenings had rapidly begun relinquishing the days’ warmth, replacing it with an almost autumn nippiness, and every muscle in her body clenched when she hit the water. As she swam out to the anchored float, however, those same muscles began to acclimate. By the time she was within a few feet of it, she no longer felt chilled to the bone.
It wasn’t yet fully dark, but she had learned over the course of the summer that even when the last of the light faded, which it would do mere moments from now, on a clear night like tonight the sky was more often a deep midnight-blue than black. Stars grew more brilliant as the sky grew darker, and the Milky Way washed a pale swath across the heavens. The moon was a meager sliver that had barely cleared the trees behind the inn. Yet even without its illumination, the mountains across the canal didn’t disappear into the night sky. Instead, they sketched rugged silhouettes against it. Down on the water, however, all was stygian, even the few boats still anchored offshore visible only as murky shadows.
She reached the free-floating dock a few strokes ahead of Jenny and Tasha and swam around it to put its solid bulk between herself and the lighted grounds of The Brothers Inn a hundred feet away. Treading water, she unfastened the halter ties of her bathing suit and worked its wet fabric down her body, freeing her breasts, her stomach, guiding it over her hips and struggling to peel it away from her butt. When she’d finally slid it down her legs and over her feet, she tossed the garment on the float’s deck. It hit with a soft, sodden slap.
As her friends’ bathing suits, a bikini top and bottom from Jenny and Tasha’s one-piece, followed her own onto the float, she kicked her legs.
And experienced the difference that the lack of a flimsy piece of material could make. “Oh.”
Jenny’s teeth flashed white in the night. “I know, right?”
“Oh, that’s amazing.” She smiled and kicked them a bit more vigorously. “I
like
it.”
“Toldja.”
For twenty minutes they played with the full-out zeal of slightly demented children, and Harper discovered the freedom of horsing around with friends. Jenny and Tasha were maniacs, and she soon learned it was dunk or be dunked. She did her best to emerge as the dunker more frequently than the dunkee, and while the results were mixed, it was wonderful fun. Bare butts momentarily flashed as the three of them dove beneath the canal’s mirror-smooth surface in what was often the opening salvo in a sneak attack on whoever could be caught off guard.
Occasionally, one of them would climb onto the float and stand naked in the night for a thrilling moment before diving back into the cold shock of salty, buoyant canal water. Jenny’s dark hair adhered sleekly to her skull, wrapped around her throat and clung like seaweed to her small breasts. Harper’s and Tasha’s shrank into wet, tight curls.
The three of them settled down when the first big ball of color exploded over the bay in extravagant sparks that started out green, then turned to orange, then white. Harper floated on her back, watching the show. She was dividing her time during a lull in the pyrotechnics between tracking a satellite’s movement across the sky and trying to figure out if the slightly larger, ultra bright stars near the moon might actually be Venus and Jupiter when she became aware of the soft rhythmic lapping of oars in the water. She dropped her legs to tread water. “Hey,” she said softly to the other two women, who were also floating peacefully. “Do you hear that? I think someone’s coming.”
“Whoa, mama,” a masculine voice said. “Are my eyes deceiving me, or is that naked women?” The tone was hopeful, then sadly resigned when he added, “And me without my camera.”
“Jake Bradshaw,” his fiancée said sternly, “what the hell are you doing out here?”
“Sightseeing. There’s too many damn boaters out to see the fireworks, and we got tired of trying to maneuver around them. Decided to take a little tour instead.”
Jenny must have spotted the second shadow that Harper had just noted in the rowboat slipping closer through the black water. “Is that Max with you?”
Harper could have told her it wasn’t. Not only was he working tonight, but while the shadow looked very fit, it didn’t have Max’s breadth through the shoulders. She edged up to the dock, wondering if she could reach her suit without exposing herself—and if so, if she’d be able to wriggle into it in the water.
“Nope.” Humor laced Jake’s voice. He shipped his oars. “This would be Luc, the newly discovered other Bradshaw.”
Great. A stranger. She felt more naked and vulnerable by the moment.
“They can’t see anything,” Tasha said in her ear.
Anchoring herself to the float with one hand, Harper turned toward the sound to find the other woman also clutching the dock next to her.
“I know it feels like they can, but trust me,” Tash murmured. “Jenny and I have been doing this for years, and I doubt a spotlight would penetrate more than an inch or two beneath the surface of this water at night. They don’t even have a flashlight.”
She nodded her thanks. Hearing that made her feel a little less exposed.
So did Jenny’s uncompromising, “Well, take your long-lost Bradshaw, turn your damn boat around and row on out of here.
Now.
”
Jake leaned over the oars he’d pulled into the boat. His amusement was clear when he murmured, “Now, why would I want to do that, love?”
“Because if you don’t,” the little brunette said with a suspicious reasonableness that had him sitting back up, “I’ll haul myself up on the float and give you—and your newly discovered brother—an eyeful.”
“Time to go, Luc.” Jake slid the oars back into the water, their rubber cuffs engaging the oarlocks with a muffled
thunk.
Dipping one oar deep, he hauled hard on it and whirled the boat a quarter turn so that the other man’s back was to the women. His voice drifted to them as he put his back into rowing toward the boat dock. “See you at home, baby.”
The other man laughed, and Tasha stiffened beside her.
Harper looked at her. “What it is? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Of course. It’s just...for a minute there the new Bradshaw brother sounded exactly like—” Tasha gave her head a sharp shake. “No. Clearly my imagination’s run amok.” She hauled herself up onto the float and rapidly donned her bathing suit.
Then she picked up Harper’s, shook it out and extended it toward her.
Harper hesitated.
“It’s safe,” Tasha said. “Even if they look back, the most they’ll see is shadows.”
Jenny materialized next to her and pulled herself onto the decking, so Harper did the same. Shivering in the chilling evening air as she worked the recalcitrant bathing suit up her body, she thought longingly of the towels Jenny had packed, which were back on the inn dock.
But she grinned at her friends. “What an amazing night,” she said. “I’m so glad you included me. Last one to the hot tub has to fetch the wine from my place.” As she dove into the water, the last thing she heard before the water closed over her head was her friends whooping their approval.
* * *
“I’
VE
ONLY
GOT
a few minutes.” A frown gathering his brows over his nose, Max slid into the booth next to Jake and across from the newly arrived Bradshaw. The Anchor was packed to the rafters—and every damn person in it looked annoyingly happy.
Jake gave him a look. “Whoa, what’s put a bug up your butt?”
“No bug.”
Or not that big a one, at least
. “You called. I’m here. You didn’t tell me cheerful was a requirement.”
“O-kay. You still on duty or something, while everyone else is playing?”
“No. I just got off.” But he’d been low-grade moody and a lot edgy for most of the day and wasn’t feeling sociable, to say the least. Still, a guy didn’t take out his crap mood on his half brothers—at least not more than he just had. He supposed he owed it to both of them to go through the motions and at least pretend to be friendly.
So he raised a brow. “Sorry if I seem distracted. But FYI, I have plans a helluva lot more satisfying than hanging with you two.”
But for how much longer, Slick?
That was the question, wasn’t it? Harper would be leaving town in—what?—two days, maybe three at the most? Not that they’d actually done anything as mature as discussing her timetable, but that was what he’d understood upfront. And he was trying real hard not to let the knowledge drag his mood down any lower than it already was. But, hell, it hardly took a genius to figure out what had given his irritability its chops in the first place.
When they weren’t burning up the sheets, working their jobs or at the Village, he and Harper had managed to go out on a few dates. They’d mostly shared meals at a couple of Silverdale restaurants. But they’d talked about everything under the sun. Hell, he’d been downright chatty at times, even going so far as to tell her how differently he’d handle the department if
he
were sheriff. She made him laugh more than anyone he’d ever known.