Forever Never

He stabbed at the doorbell as he’d done a thousand times before, knowing full well that Chief Ford would complain about his insistence on formalities. But he wasn’t the type to just stroll into his boss’s house on a Friday night.

“Get in and get out,” he reminded himself, shifting the paper bag to his other arm. “No need to linger. Don’t think about her naked.”

“Uncle Brick!” Ian threw open the door and launched himself at Brick’s right leg.

“Hey, kid,” Brick said. Reggae music, most likely Remi’s doing, poured out of the kitchen. He heard voices coming from the back of the house and smelled roast turkey. But the siren song that lured him inside was the promise of Remi’s presence.

Not that he’d be doing anything about it. After the earlier disaster, he’d recommitted himself to not being attracted to her.

He plopped his hat on top of Ian’s head then shed his coat, perversely hanging it on top of Remi’s parka.

“Hi, Uncle Brick,” Hadley said from the foot of the stairs.

Most confused her quiet demeanor for shyness, but the kid was a natural observer, lurking in corners and committing everything she saw and heard to memory. If the girl ever witnessed a crime, Hadley Olson would be able to tell the cops the perp was left-handed, how many tattoos he had, and what color his eyes were.

“Help me leg cuff him, Had!” her little brother demanded. “We can get him this time!”

Ian had the brain power of an adult, but he still played like a typical seven-year-old.

“It’s gonna take more than you two scrawny mosquitos to stop me,” Brick said, knowing his role by heart. Since they were toddlers, it had been their favorite game with him. In another few years, he probably wouldn’t win.

With a roll of her eyes that was too close to teenage angst for Brick’s liking, Hadley reluctantly sauntered over and grabbed his left leg.

“Is that Brick I hear?” Gilbert called from the back of the house. “Come on back, bartender.”

Carefully, Brick made his way toward the sound of adult voices, a kid attached to each leg.

“It’s not working, Ian,” Hadley observed.

“Try to weigh more,” Ian insisted.

Brick couldn’t help but crack a smile as he rounded the corner into the Ford family’s airy kitchen, a space that had felt like home to him for the last decade and a half. Like a home, he corrected, not his home. Growing up, home had been a never-ending series of rentals that rotated every few months depending on which parent was following their dream or scheme at the time. They bounced around from places like Reno and Las Vegas to Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, and even a stint in Florida when his father got a hot tip on a land deal.

Sometimes he had his own room.

Sometimes he and Spencer didn’t even have their own beds.

He’d envied kids who went home to the same house every day. Kids whose parents came home every night.

The Ford girls had grown up with both of those things.

Darlene, still in her Mackinac PD sweatshirt, was bent over a saucepan on the stove. Gil, in corduroys and a sweater vest, was peering at a printout of what was probably his new drink recipe. Kimber was tucked back in the breakfast nook by the fireplace, arranging neatly sliced vegetables on a tray.

Remi was nowhere in sight. But he still felt her.

He reached down and plucked Ian off his ankle, throwing the kid over his shoulder. “Delivery for a Kimber Olson,” he reported officially.

Kimber accepted her wriggling, giggling son with a series of noisy kisses on his face. “Just what I always wanted,” she said.

“Ew! Mom!”

She was an attractive woman by anyone’s standards. Thick russet hair shades darker than her sister’s framed a lean face with a full mouth and straight blade of a nose. She had her mother’s unflappable calm and leggy height. She loved fiercely, without fuss, and could always be counted on.

In Brick’s never voiced opinion, Kimber could have done a hell of a lot better than Kyle Olson. A man who appeared to be absent once again.

Hadley disengaged her leg lock and took Brick’s contribution to the meal—a bottle of decent bourbon—over to her grandfather.

Kimber turned her wriggling son loose and greeted Brick. “Nice to see you, Sergeant Callan.”

“Hanging in there this winter?” he asked. It was a natural question for anyone who lived on Mackinac through the winter. Isolation, loneliness, boredom, depression. Everyone was susceptible sooner or later, regardless of who they married.

“Like a champ,” she said. The smile she flashed was a tired one that didn’t quite climb to her eyes.

“Mom’s learning French this winter,” Ian piped up. “Say something French, Mom!”

Living this close to Canada for so many years, Brick had known enough Quebecers to loosely translate some of the sentence Kimber said into colorful four-letter words.

“What’s that mean?” Hadley asked, forehead furrowed.

“Can you tell me where the library is?” Kimber lied without a hint of dishonesty on her face. Maybe the sisters had more in common than he thought.

“What are we making tonight, Gil?” Brick asked.

While his oldest daughter spent her winters learning to swear in foreign languages, Gilbert Ford mastered cocktails.

As the man launched into the history of Manhattan recipes, Brick’s Remi radar sent out an alert. A buzz of energy nearby, a low-level threat. It made him sweat.

As much as he would have preferred not to be anywhere near her, it was better to keep an eye on the threat rather than have it sneak up on him.

“Brick? Can you grab the gravy boat in the dining room?” Darlene asked. “I asked Remi to find it, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

He headed toward the dining room with the enthusiasm of a death row inmate. The familiar recipe of dread, anticipation, and adrenaline mixed in his gut.

The dining room was tucked away in the back of the house, across the hall from the kitchen and past the laundry room. He ducked his head in the doorway and spotted the long maple table dressed up like it was Thanksgiving Day. The long interior wall held a small electric fireplace and sturdy built-ins. A petite redhead was swearing—in English—as she stood on tiptoe on the sliver of butcher block that served as a counter. Blindly feeling inside one of the cabinets with her bad arm, she used her good hand to anchor her in place.

The woman was a goddamn danger to herself.

He hadn’t even completed the thought when those fingers slipped from their hold.

“Oh, fuck.” She didn’t even have the decency to sound scared as she tipped backward.

He liked to think that he took a moment to consider letting her fall, letting her suffer the consequences. But he didn’t. He never would. Instead, she landed neatly in his arms as if he’d been created with the sole purpose of catching her.

Those green eyes, mesmerizing like sunlight shining through bottles on a window sill, looked up at him. Boring into his soul. Tunneling his focus until the only thing that existed was the woman in his arms. How could one sister make him feel nothing but brotherly concern and the other make him feel everything but?

He wanted to dump her on the floor.

He wanted to toss her over his shoulder, take her home, and shake some sense into her.

He wanted to—

“Hi, Brick,” she said on a soft breath. The fingers of her good hand brushing the skin on the back of his neck, scorching him, torturing him.

Without a word, he set her on her feet and opened the lower cabinet. He grabbed the gravy boat and its platter off the shelf and held it out like a shield. “Here.”

“Well, hell. Since when do they keep it there?” she complained.

Her hair was pulled on top of her head in a fiery knot. Loose strands escaped as if even her hair refused to be tamed. She was dressed casually in another pair of long tights and a cropped sweatshirt the color of fresh grass. It was loose-fitting, the hem flirting with the high waist of her pants. He knew he’d lose sleep that night thinking how easy it would be to slide a hand under it.

She reached out to take the dishes, her fingers brushing his, and he wished for things to go back to the way they’d been before. Before she’d come home. Before she’d walked into his arms. Before he’d seen the shadows.

Before he’d jerked himself off so violently he still felt the damn vibrations of it.

He should be letting go of the dishes. He should be taking several steps back. Not obsessing over the feel of her fingers against his.

Breaking out of his fugue, Brick took the dishes back. “Stop falling off shit,” he snapped.

“Stop telling me what to do.” Her gaze flicked to the doorway and back again. “And stop fighting with me. Everyone thinks we hate each other.”

“Don’t we?” He hadn’t meant it. Not really. He hated himself when it came to her. But he could never hate her.

Old Remi would have punched him in the shoulder and called him an asshole. But this new Remi was an entirely different creature. Watching the hurt bloom in those moss green eyes made him feel like a fucking asshole.

“Remi, wait—”

She shook her head and stepped out of his reach as he juggled the gravy boat. “I’m too tired for the hot-cold routine. Let’s leave it at cold and leave each other the hell alone.”

“What hot-cold routine?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice low. He knew exactly what she was talking about but didn’t want her running out of the room until they were back on an even keel.

“You know what I’m talking about, you monumental ass,” she hissed. “One second, you’re stocking my freezer with your cock hard enough to cut off the circulation to your lower body. The next, you’re telling me you hate me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied.

“Fuck off, Brick.” She flipped him off on her way out of the room.

He swore under his breath and followed. It was going to be a painful night.