Defender: A Stepbrother Romance (2 page)

T
he doctor came
by later in the morning–a good looking man of about forty. Mom made goofy eye movements at me behind his back, making a clear attempt to get me to flirt with him or something. Like I was going to flirt with him while I had a bandage the size of Houston on my head. Doctor or not, I’m sure he didn’t want Frankenstein coming on to him.

“Everything on the CT scan looks good. You’re probably going to have a headache for a few days,” he said, “but I don’t see any reason to keep you any longer. As soon as the nurses can get your discharge papers together, you’re free to go.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to smile my most grateful smile, but the pounding ache on the top of my head made that nearly impossible.

“I’ve written a prescription for the pain. One every four hours for as long as needed.” He touched my leg lightly before glancing at my Dad and quickly removing his hand. “If you have excessive dizziness, nausea, or vomiting, be sure to come back.”

“Thank you,” I repeated, feeling like a myna bird.

He studied my face for a second longer, then just nodded. He started to back out of the room, mumbling something about being more careful behind the wheel of a car when Dad stepped forward with his hand outstretched.

“Thank you, doctor,” he said. “We really appreciate everything you’ve done.”

The doctor shook his head, humble enough to lower his chin as he accepted the praise. “Keep an eye on her. Bring her back if anything worries you.”

“We definitely will,” Mom chimed in.

Then he was gone and I was alone with my parents and a splitting headache.

“You’ll come back to the house with us,” Mom immediately said. “You shouldn’t be alone with a head injury.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Jeannie’s just downstairs–“

“She’s right,” Dad announced. “You shouldn’t be alone with a head injury. There’s no telling what might happen.”

“Daddy, it’s just a gash. You heard the doctor.”

“We heard him,” Mom answered. “He said if you have any symptoms, we should bring you back. How are we going to do that if we don’t know what’s going on with you?”

I opened my mouth to object, but of course, you can’t fight a mother’s logic.

They pushed me out of the hospital in a wheelchair, then Dad picked me up and sat me in the car like I was two again instead of twenty-five. Though I had to admit that the soft pillows and sweet smelling, homemade blanket Mom gave me after Dad settled me on the couch was kind of nice. So was the chicken soup. I love Mom’s chicken soup! Everything I needed for the rest of the day was right there at my fingertips, thanks to the parents. They wouldn’t leave me alone in the room, wouldn’t let me get up unless it was to go to the bathroom, wouldn’t let me do anything but lay there and rest. If not for the perpetual looks of concern on their faces, it might have been the best vacation I’d had in years.

But reality has a way of biting you on the ass, doesn’t it?

S
ix weeks after the accident
, I was back at my apartment, back to my boring little life with a thin scar that stretched the right side of my forehead to my scalp to remind me of the accident. It was a scar that no one would let me forget about, no matter how many tutorials I watched on YouTube to figure out how to cover it up.

I lived in a very small town just below the Texas Panhandle where everyone knew everyone. I knew every kid at my high school, had known most of them since kindergarten, and the majority of them still lived in the area. A few moved out of state, some who couldn’t pass up better paying jobs and some who couldn’t wait to get away from their families and/or our small town morals–like Crawford. But most lived within twenty miles of the houses they grew up in, a lot of them raised their own kids the same way they were raised. I was one of those. I had an apartment that was less than ten miles from the house I grew up in and I worked as a receptionist for the school where I studied all twelve years of my less-than-stellar educational career.

I wasn’t a loser. Not really. Just the kind of girl who had the tendency to make stupid mistakes, and then the girl who was afraid to do anything out of fear of making another stupid mistake. After a while, that girl becomes sort of stuck. That’s what I was. Stuck.

I loved my Dad. But I also loved every minute of the four years I spent at the University of Texas at Austin. Living in a city like that after eighteen years of living in a Mayberry type of town? Magic.

I could understand why Stanford changed Crawford so drastically. And why he never looked back when he got into law school.

It killed Mom. I could see it. Every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, she always glanced over at his empty chair with this sort of longing but accepting look. I think some part of her always knew Crawford would hit the ground running when he fell from the nest. But still… How could he treat such a kind woman in that way?

I was thinking about Crawford more frequently. I told myself it was because of the head injury–Head injuries will do things like that to a person–but it was probably because I knew Mom called him after the accident, when the cops frightened my parents with some bogus blood alcohol test that never actually resulted in anything. If the test had really been as bad as my Dad kept insisting, wouldn’t they have arrested me by then? Wouldn’t I be standing in front of a judge that afternoon instead of watching another rerun of
Reba
on CMT?

At least that’s what I was doing until someone knocked on the door.

It was a process server.

“What’s this for?” I asked, confused by the woman’s brisk but polite manner.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I only deliver them. Sign here.”

After I signed the notice on her huge clipboard, she shoved a manila envelope in my hand and stormed away, as though standing that close to me was unpleasant. I couldn’t imagine it was a fun job, being a process server. But she didn’t have to be so rude.

I closed the door and flopped down onto my secondhand couch, tearing at the envelope. I could never get those little clips undone properly–they always stabbed me quite painfully under my nails without budging. Or they broke. So I ripped the top off the envelope and discovered I was being sued. For a hell of a lot of money.

My first thought was:
My bank account is overdrawn until payday, next Thursday. How am I supposed to pay some guy $300,000?

My second thought was:
I’m seriously screwed.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

I jumped to my feet, scanning the legal jargon on the paperwork. I didn’t understand half of it. Something about damage to his car, to his health, and his mental stability. I was the one who was rushed to the hospital in the back of an ambulance–which I don’t remember, but will have to pay one hundred percent for, because my insurance already sent me a notice that they wouldn’t cover it–my head gushing blood that ruined my favorite little black dress. But he was claiming damage to his health because he had to go to his private doctor the following day and have his neck x-rayed for potential whiplash injuries.

It didn’t make sense to me. How could he sue me? My car was totaled. My Dad took me to the salvage yard after I was back on my feet to get my belongings out of it, and the whole car looked like a giant kicked it then sat on it. The insurance guy who met us there said that the other car was only slightly damaged.

That slight damage was worth $300,000?

“
O
ur witness identified
the defendant from a picture lineup,” the NYPD detective said, leaning forward just slightly so that he caused some feedback on the microphone. “She said that he was the man she saw coming out of the victim’s apartment building.”

“But you later spoke to a witness who said that my client was with her the entire night, did you not?” I asked.

The detective shifted just slightly, once again moving too close to the microphone attached to the low bar in front of the witness stand. “Yes.”

“Was there a reason why you didn’t believe the second witness?” I asked, turning to the jury with what I hoped was a baffled look on my face. “Was he a drug addict?”

“No.”

“An inmate in a federal prison?”

“No.”

“A prostitute working the street corner across from the victim’s apartment?”

A few low moans from the galley suggested I might have gone a touch too far with that one, but the jury seemed to be keeping right up with me. One of the jurors, a petite redhead about thirty, even smiled at me.

“No,” the detective said, again causing feedback to screech through the room.

He was getting nervous. He knew where I was going.

“Then why, might I ask you, didn’t believe this second witness?” My tone was purposely low and respectful.

The man’s face was as red as the beets my mother used to harvest from the family garden.

I had him.

Twenty minutes later, I was escorting my client out of the courtroom, his unimpeachable witness–a Catholic priest with the local diocese–beside him. It was a lucky break. Thank goodness no one had any idea that the priest was a blackout drunk who couldn’t remember what he had over lunch, let alone the night my client decided to beat his ex-girlfriend so violently that she was still in a coma at a nursing home upstate. But priest still looked better than prostitute, even in this day and age of rampant child molestation in the church.

My new assistant–Kendra, I think her name was–rushed up to my side, my smartphone in her hand.

“You’ve gotten half a dozen calls in just the last five minutes,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I thought it might be important.”

“What’s important is that Mr. Stone will be livid if I miss that deposition this afternoon on his nephew’s case.”

That’s what Mr. Stone had wanted that day I had to fire my last assistant. His nephew got himself caught up in a raid on his frat house at NYU. The cops charged him with drug possession after they found eight ounces of cocaine in his room–just enough for a felony charge. The kid was looking at jail time if I couldn’t find a way to throw out the search. It didn’t help that he already had a record that included two previous drug convictions.

Stone wanted me to pull off some sort of miracle. Said his sister would never forgive him if her son went to prison. Said family is everything. Even asked me if I had a sister. What was I supposed to say to that? Yeah, I have a stepsister I haven’t seen in ages? A stepsister I try every day to forget even exists?

I didn’t think that would have made the impression I needed to make if I wanted to change the junior in front of my official title of partner at the firm to senior.

It was hard enough to move through the ranks at a law firm without complicating it with family drama. My family drama. Stone could throw as much crap into the works he wanted. His name was already on the door.

“But Mr. Foster,” Kendra whined. “I really think it might be important. It’s your mother.”

I groaned. They must have arrested Eden.

The idea made something swell and thicken in my throat for a brief second. Something that another person might think was motivated by concern. But it wasn’t concern. I didn’t give a shit what happened to Eden. But I did care how everything Eden managed to fuck up concerned my mother.

I stopped so abruptly in the middle of the courthouse hallway that my client knocked into my shoulder. I leveled a dark glare at him and he immediately stuttered an apology.

“Go home, Derrick,” I said. “And try to stay away from women for a while. You can’t afford my rates anymore.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Foster,” he said, the gratefulness in his eyes almost pathetic. “Thank you.”

I didn’t even acknowledge his gratitude. I turned away from him, effectively dismissing him, and snatched my smartphone out of Kendra’s hand. He may have been my client, but I had no respect for men like that.

Sure enough, my mother had called half a dozen times in the past ten minutes, leaving a long list voicemails. I listened to the first two, satisfying myself that Eden wasn’t in immediate danger, not bothering to listen to the rest or to call her back right then.

I had a deposition to get to.

“
H
e’s not answering
.”

My Dad slid his arm around Mom’s waist, tugging her close to him. It hurt my heart a little to see the worry in her eyes and the smile she tried to mask it with waver as she studied my face.

“He’ll call back when he’s not busy,” she assured me.

I nodded, my eyes falling to the papers stacked neatly on the kitchen table in front of me. I didn’t know what to do with the court papers, so I did what I always do when I find myself in a situation I didn’t understand: I ran to my Daddy.

“Can’t we hire a lawyer here?” I asked.

“Sure,” my Dad said. “I can call Sherman Thomas and ask him for a recommendation.”

“But Crawford is family,” Mom said. “He’d be more motivated to put your best interests first.”

I almost laughed but I bit my lip, because she had no idea what happened to Crawford and I that last summer he came home. If she did, she would know better than me that I was the last person Crawford would want to see again, let alone get out of yet another jam.

She remembered Crawford as a devoted brother, the kind of guy who let me follow him around everywhere he went. I can remember following him to the local park to watch him play football and basketball with his friends when he was in middle school. He always tried to make me go home, shooing me away the moment he stepped out the front door until we arrived at the park. But if I moved out of his line of sight for even a second, he would come looking for me, actually retracing my steps several times to find me sound asleep on the couch in the living room. When he was older–when I was older–I still followed him around. It was always more fun to watch him with his friends, to listen to them joke around with each other, than it was to play Barbie dolls with my girlfriends. Don’t get me wrong. I liked playing with dolls. But I liked hanging out with the guys, too. And after a while, Crawford stopped resisting it. In fact, I think he felt kind of odd when I wasn’t lurking somewhere nearby.

Then he went to college, and I started high school a couple of years later and things changed. I grew up, I guess. Or he grew up. Or we just grew apart.

There was that one weekend when he invited me to stay with him in his dorms at Stanford. And…well, I sometimes think that it was that weekend that changed everything between us.

And then a few months later, he rescued me for the last time.

I really didn’t think Crawford would be too hot to come home and handle my little crisis for me. Not even at Mom’s request. “We should call Sherman,” I suggested.

“But Eden–“

“I just…” I looked at her, my heart breaking to see the worry in her eyes. I promised myself that time in high school when I came home drunk from a party at Elsie Franklin’s that I would never do anything that would make Vera look at me that way again. But, here it was.

“Crawford is so busy in New York,” I said softly, lamely.

“No one is ever too busy for family.”

But I’m not really his family.

I so wanted to say that out loud, but I knew it would hurt Mom more than anything else I had to say on the subject. Even the secret that caused Crawford to leave for law school and never look back. Because Vera didn’t see it that way. Vera’s first husband was such a rotten man–violent in ways I’m not even sure Crawford is completely aware of. My Dad told me things that gave me nightmares for months. What my stepmom went through with that man is just unbelievable. And, for that reason, my Dad, Crawford, and I are more important to her than the very air she breathes.

Family.

Just the word makes her tear up, cross herself, and send a quick prayer of gratitude to God. It was everything to her. So, to even suggest that Crawford and I weren’t real family would be like spitting on everything she believed. It just wasn’t right.

“How about this?” my Dad said in that tone that told me he was just trying to placate everyone. “I’ll call Sherman and get a recommendation, but we don’t act on it until we hear from Crawford.”

Vera nodded immediately. “Sounds fair.”

They both looked at me, expectation on one face, caution and a little pleading on the other.

“Okay,” I said.

But I still didn’t think Crawford would catch the first flight out of New York to help me. From my perspective, Crawford didn’t give a shit about me anymore.