Southerin Nights and Secrets (Boys are Back in Town) Read online

  “Sandy, you stupid mother fucker.” Vega didn’t look afraid. Initially surprised, that expression had slid off his face and was replaced with scorn and derision. Beck winced at the proof that his old man couldn’t even command respect when he had a gun aimed at the man’s head.

  “I’m not going to let you shoot my son,” Sandy said, his gravely pack-a-day smoker’s voice calm and deadly. There was no bluffing in his tone, his father was as serious as his inevitable heart attack, but Vega couldn’t see beyond his own self-importance to know just how deep in the shit he was. Sandy Sutherland was a really good shot. A dead-eye.

  “Vega. Last time,” Sandy said. “Drop the gun and let him go.” His voice shook only for the briefest second but the level of steel never lessened. “Let my son go.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Sandy wasn’t kidding, and he barely paused to take a breath when he lifted the gun the miniscule space to zero in on his target, moved his finger to the trigger, and took the deep steadying breath he’d taught Beck so many years ago. Danny’s eyes flared at the last possible moment—just a fraction of time too late—and his grip wavered as the realization that he was royally screwed hit him harder than the bullet that tore out of Sandy’s gun and blew a hole in his forehead and splattered his brains on the wall.

  Everything went quiet for a few seconds, the echo of the gunshot, the gasps of the spectators suspended in the acrid scented air. The crash of Vega’s body hitting the desk and spilling all of the tacky knickknacks to the hardwood floor shattered the silence. It seemed as if everything and everyone was moving at once.

  The DEA agents burst through the door, Jack and Lucky right on their heels with guns drawn. Vega’s men closest to the door hit the ground on their knees, firearms lying next to them. The practiced moves of men who knew when the jig was up. Ones at the back of the room scrambled out of the opposite door, beating feet and not sparing a glance for the man lying in his own blood. Danny Vega was forgotten, and his body wasn’t even cold.

  Sandy also went down on his knees, but it was a controlled move and he took deliberate care to lay his Glock in front of him, raise his arms, and lace his fingers behind his head. His expression was placid, accepting, resigned. This meant prison for him for violating his parole and then a trial for murder. Unless some miracle intervened, his father would never see the outside of a prison cell ever again.

  There was no love lost between them, nothing ever resembling that emotion, but Beck couldn’t stop the question he gritted out between teeth clenched in pain. “Why?”

  “This isn’t how you go out,” Sandy said, as if it were a foregone conclusion. He turned his face to stare at the ground, ending the conversation and leaving Beck with all kinds of questions.

  Two burly agents stopped Beck from following up when they surrounded his father, patting him down and slapping the cuffs on him. Beck shifted to watch but the pain in his shoulder flared and he groaned, falling back onto the ground as the sensation took his breath away.

  His vision blurred, but the soft hands on his cheek, tenderly testing the flesh around the wound made him blink back the fog of shock. Ginger was here. Murmuring sounds of distress and what sounded like sobs. He didn’t want to make her cry. He’d made her cry enough.

  “Gin…” Beck forced his eyes open, blinking away the wash of tears from the pain. She was leaning over him, holding what looked like a sweater against his shoulder as she sniffled and rubbed her wet cheek on her shoulder. There was blood on her and for a second he panicked. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Not my blood you idiot.” She spared him a glance, filled with pain and her own fear, before her gaze lifted to quickly scan the movement all around them. He reached up with the hand that still worked and pushed her hair back from where it stuck to the skin on her cheek, stroking until she looked back down at him, confusion, worry, and anger warring to overtake her expression. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I’m never going to let you free fall by yourself. I told you that.” It hurt to push the words out of his throat, the cold was all over him, bone deep and paralyzing. His hand slid from her face against his will, even though his mind screamed to maintain the contact. He was terrified that if he didn’t hold on to her now, he’d wake up and she’d be gone for good. “It’s our time…our time.”

  “Jack! Lucky!”

  Ginger called out, and he heard her just beyond the nightfall that obscured his vision. Her touch was firm against his body, her stroking of his skin a constant petting and soothing, and he just wanted to hold her close. If only he could summon the energy to lift his arms.

  “Beckett stay with me,” she pleaded with a voice wet with her tears. “Come on. Stay with me, please.”

  The thud of Jack landing beside him on the hardwood floor, his large hands replacing Ginger’s to increase the pressure on Beck’s bullet wound, and the gruff “stay with me, buddy” all registered somewhere in his mind, but the battle to stay conscious wasn’t one he was going to win.

  Ginger’s lips pressed against his cheek, and his last thought was a prayer that she’d be there when he woke up.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Virginia jumped and dropped the packing tape when someone rapped three loud knocks against the front door of her condominium. She leaned over the large box, searching blindly under the end table where the item rolled just out of her reach.

  “Damn it,” she muttered to herself, adding a harsher “keep your pants on” growl when the visitor knocked again. Whoever it was on the other side of that door better have a large coffee in peace offering because she was itching for an argument. It had been one of those weeks. She did not get her wish.

  “Can I help you?” she said as she swung the door open and revealed a disheveled Beckett standing in her hallway. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with “sarc: my second favorite –asm” written on it. The arm sling that held his left arm immobile brought the past forty-eight hours racing toward her at the speed of bad memories.

  Two days ago, they’d rushed him to the hospital from the circus at Danny Vega’s house and funneled her into a police car with an escort to the local DEA office for questioning. They’d been kind, Agent Chase going out of her way to get her a blanket and coffee to ward off the bone-deep chill and a new shirt because the one with Beckett’s blood on it had been evidence. She’d also explained that she’d never been Beckett’s lover, the look on her face pleading with Virginia not to stay mad at him for too long.

  But she was mad. She was also grateful and shaken and scared. She was…off balance.

  “Hey,” Beckett’s voice, rough and barely above a whisper, interrupted her thoughts. He was moving toward her, easing his way into her place, and she stepped aside to let him in. He smelled really good—male plus that sharp cologne he wore—and his body heat was a sharp contrast to the chill of her air-conditioning. He turned to face her, the wince as he shifted his arm was so fierce she had sympathy pain in her own shoulder.

  “Do you need something for the pain? They let you out already?”

  He snorted, his laugh dark and very short. “I hurt like a motherfucker, but I couldn’t stay there any longer.”

  “You signed yourself out?”

  He nodded. “They were glad to see me go.”

  “Are you one of those doctors who make a terrible patient?” she asked.

  “I’m one of those patients who hates being in the hospital.” He shifted on the bed, and she reached forward to help him adjust the pillows, the grimaces on his face almost comically pitiful. “It was cold, my ass was hanging out of that stupid gown, I couldn’t sleep because they poked at me all goddam night, and it was noisy.”

  In spite of her mood, Virginia had a hard time not laughing at his complaint. She bit her lip to stave off her smile, but he saw the move and pointed at her accusingly with his one good arm.

  “Fuck you. I got shot,” he huffed out on a half laugh as her own disappeared. She couldn’t laugh at that, the
memory of the entire scene still played in her head like a horror movie. She could still smell the blood. “I save your life and you’re ignoring me?”

  Anger, swift and as white hot as the sheets on the bed finally rose up inside her, and she couldn’t stop them from spewing out of her mouth like a verbal volcano.

  “You could have been killed!” Virginia shoved the door closed behind her with a violent shove. She wanted to throttle Beckett, but hitting the injured man would be poor form all around. She got up in his face, letting all the hurt and fear of the past few days fall down on him like a summer rainstorm on the mountain. “Did it occur to you that Danny Vega might try to kill you at this meeting?”

  “Of course it did. I was counting on him doing something stupid like that,” he said with no apology, no regret. “I just didn’t count on him dragging you into the middle of it.”

  “So, it was okay for you to get killed?”

  He shook his head, holding his hand up in a placating gesture when she flinched away from his attempt to touch her. “No fucking way. I don’t have a death wish. I had a plan, tons of backup just outside the door. I didn’t walk in blind—”

  “It was still dangerous.”

  “He was a dangerous man. What we had going down between us was deadly, and I knew it.” He sighed and rubbed his one good hand over his eyes, the fingers shaking with his frustration. “That’s why I tried to get you as far away from me as possible.”

  “Well, that part of your plan worked!” Oh, hell, had it worked. That bone deep pain would never be forgotten. The moment when she thought he’d played her for a fool once again? Memorable and not in a good way.

  “I didn’t come here to fight with you,” he said, his voice low and pleading. Everything about him screamed remorse, and she knew she would forgive him but it really didn’t matter anymore.

  “Well, that’s too bad because other than fucking it’s what we seem to do best.”

  He was fast, even with an injury and she was pinned to the door, his heavy body covering hers before she could let any protest slip past her lips. Virginia gazed up at him, the warmth of his breath against her face in contrast to the cool air of the room made her shiver. He was hard as stone from the glint in his eyes, the set of his bristled jaw, and the length of his cock pressed against her belly. Her own body went involuntarily soft in her most intimate places, confusing the adrenaline signal with anger as her hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt and dragged him even closer.

  She debated for a millisecond about whether she would push him away, but her sentimental heart won the argument. She’d take her memories of Beckett close enough to touch where she could get them.

  “I’m sorry that I lied to you about Alison…about everything.” He closed his eyes for the briefest second before he pushed out on a harsh exhale and lowered his forehead to touch hers. “I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”

  “I think I know why but…why?”

  “He said he was going to hurt you.”

  “And you decided that you’d hurt me instead?” Her voice was raw, more upset than angry. More hurt than pissed but anger roiled underneath it all.

  “He said he was going to hurt you, and I took the one thing I knew would keep you away from me and get you off his radar.” He shrugged. “Keeping you safe was the only answer, but I didn’t plan to do that to you. Never. Not again.”

  “But you did it anyway.”

  “I did.” His tone said he wouldn’t apologize for it.

  She’d been here before, listening as her parents argued every time her father extended for one more tour, went on one more mission, one more deployment. He never asked her, never included her, and it had eaten away at her mother’s self-worth until there was nothing left. Virginia had understood then that her father was supporting the right cause just like she knew that Beckett had hurt her for all the right reasons, but it didn’t make it any better.

  “I’m a grown woman. Did it ever occur to you to clue me in to the plan, to ask me to participate?” She shook her head and pushed him back a fraction when he began to speak. This needed to be said. “Did you think I would tell you that it was a crazy idea? Did you think that I’d refuse to play along?”

  He looked confused, like she was hurling trick questions at him. “Umm…yes?”

  “Well, fuck you Beckett.”

  “Wait,” he squinted. “Are you saying you would have been okay with the plan?”

  “Hell no. I would have told you that you were nuts.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  “The point is, genius, that I deserved the chance to tell you that you were a moron before you went and did it anyway.” She pulled out of the embrace and scooted around him, stopping when she could lean against the sofa for support.

  “Ginger, I really am sorry.” He turned to face her, his expression confused and then sliding into deeper misunderstanding when he saw the boxes piled around the room. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m leaving Elliott,” she said on a rough exhale as if she needed the force to say what she knew would hurt them both.

  “Wait? What the fuck happened while I was knocked out?”

  He didn’t know.

  Why she’d assumed that Bent would make it a point to relay the most important information to Beckett, she had no idea. She knew firsthand just how petty he could be.

  “Please tell me that you know you’re the new team leader for the trauma center.” His eyes widened, a flush of excitement and pride on his cheeks, and his cautious nod told her that he did. “It was really no contest in the end. Congratulations.”

  “You voted for me?”

  “I did.” She shrugged. “You’re the best doctor for the job. It’s as simple as that.”

  He paused, taking in her words, replying in a softer tone. “Thank you. That’s means a lot coming from you.” He gestured around the room. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re leaving.”

  She dipped her head, her own emotions a tumult of fire and ice in her belly. She was still in shock, she supposed. Virginia looked back up at him and mustered as much dignity as she could when delivering embarrassing news.

  “My contract was terminated. I was fired.”

  “What?” Beckett strode over to her, his shock telling her that this really was the first time he’d heard it. For once, the Elliott gossip communication system was not working.

  “I was on probation. The official reason is ‘difference in managerial styles’ and I got an excellent reference.” It didn’t ease the sting of losing her dream job, but at least she had a hope of getting another one. Maybe. When you had to explain something like this to a potential employer, it was never good. “But I know it was because of my vote. Bent was so pissed about your reinstatement, he struck out where he could.”

  “I’ll talk to the board. He can’t do that to you.”

  “He really can.” She held up her hands to cut him off. “Beckett, my contract allows for this in the first year. I was on probation. I knew it when I took the job. I’m an attorney. I read the fine print.”

  “That’s bullshit. What a fucking bastard.”

  “I don’t disagree.” She sucked in a steadying breath. The job news was hard, but the worst was still to come. “So, after Teague and Risa’s wedding, I’m leaving. My landlord thinks he can find a new tenant pretty quickly and with no paycheck, I could do without a rent payment. I’m going to stay with my sister until her wedding in a few months. By then, I should have a job.”

  “Can’t you find another job around here?”

  “I checked Roanoke, Charlottesville, Richmond. No openings at this time for anything in my field. I have a couple of promising leads on the West Coast.”

  “California?” Beckett spat out the word as if she said she were going to the moon. When she thought about leaving, it sure as hell felt like it. He walked forward, only stopping when he could stand between her legs, his fingers weaving in her hair as he examined her face, searching
for an answer to the question hovering between them. All the things they now knew might be possible between the two of them…if only the timing was right.

  He kissed her. His firm lips parted and his tongue pressed against her own, invading her with a sensual sweep that dragged a moan from her throat. He responded to her sound by deepening the kiss, taking her mouth with a possessive gentleness that ached with tender promises and apology. It was soft, sweet, and filled with something she really wanted to hold on to with both hands. But she couldn’t.

  She ended the kiss, leaning into his chest, listening to the accelerated thrum of his heartbeat under the warm cotton of his shirt.

  “Can’t you—”

  She cut him off with a press of her fingers against his lips, knowing that talking about things that could not be would only slice deeper in the long run. She was already bleeding on the inside, barely hanging on to her self-control.

  She sucked in a shuddering breath, unable to stop the tears rolling down her cheeks. She hadn’t cried since the entire nightmare started with her abduction and then ended as Beckett bled all over her, unconscious with his face as pale as death.

  Bent firing her kicked her feet out from under her. Now she was flailing.

  Her instinct to grab Beckett and hold on was overwhelming. But she couldn’t. She needed to figure this out, make plans, and get her shit together. She had to fix her future, and no matter how much she’d thought it was going to be here, it wasn’t.

  He must have sensed her decision because he pulled back slightly, enough to look at her face. He gently wiped away the tears as he stared at her, his own gaze assessing.

  “You’re leaving,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Should I try to talk you out of it?”

  “Please don’t,” she said, really hoping he would hear her out. “I need to figure this out. I need to—”

  “And you can’t do that here? You can’t let me help you?” Beckett was angry now, frustration leeching out of every word and gesture. He let her go and paced as few steps across the room.