The Foster Family (35 page)

“Sounds like something he’d actually like,” Malcolm agreed.

“You make sure he doesn’t take another shit job, Malcolm. You want to be his Dom, then pay attention and do it right.”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t my Dom. Not right now. I could talk to him however I wanted. “And make sure you tell him what’s going on in your head. Don’t make him guess and worry. If you’re freaking out, tell him.”

“Are you the boss of me, now?”

“I’m not the boss of anyone,” I said. “But you know on the airplanes when they say put your own oxygen mask on before you try to help anyone else? Yeah. Well, that.”

“Just that,” Malcolm said.

“Take care of him, because he takes damn good care of you, and he deserves it, and he should never, ever doubt that you love him. Because that’s just cruel.”

“Jesus, Kerry, you about done?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I was breathing hard, though, and my palms were sweating, and more than anything, I wanted to feel his arms around me and be reassured that it was okay to feel this way. However “this way” was.

“Who’s taking care of you?” Malcolm asked.

“I am.”

There was a long pause. “Okay.”

“I can look after myself, Malcolm, and you need to know that. I know your introduction to me sort of proves otherwise, but I can. And I will.”

“I believe you.”

It was hard to know if he actually did, but I let it go. “Anyway, remember what I said about Charlie, and make sure he goes to see Lissa.”

“Are you going to look after him too?” Malcolm asked.

“Of course I am.” I wanted to say
and you
, but his voice was still aloof. Not cold, but not warm, either. “Everyone needs more than just one person looking out for them.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Even you,” I said, and held my breath.

“That is definitely true.”

There was a long silence then, and I wasn’t sure what either of us was waiting for.

“You’ll call again soon,” he said at last.

“I will call again soon,” I intoned, doubting he’d get the joke.

“You are a good Padawan.”

How ridiculous was it that such a small hint of praise made me light inside? “I will call again soon,” I assured him.

“I hope you do, Kerry. Take good care of your family, in the meantime.”

I assured him I would and ended the call completely at a loss to figure out where the hell I was in my own life.

M
ALCOLM
HANDED
Charlie his phone, amazed his hand wasn’t shaking. “First you fuck me, then he rips me a new one. Why didn’t anyone tell me it’s backward day?”

Charlie laughed at him and pulled him down onto the couch. “Because if someone had told you, I’d have no fun at all seeing your face when you figured it out.”

“I don’t like it.” Malcolm tried to pull out of Charlie’s grasp, but Charlie was having none of that. “I’m going back to my office,” Malcolm told him, “and you can come get me when the weirdness is over.”

“Okay, but wait one sec, because I want to show you something.”

“Should I have coffee for this?”

Charlie looked thoughtful, then went around the back of the couch to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Irish whiskey, which he plunked on the coffee table as he sat down again.

“Sure,” he said, casual as if the bottle were filled with water.

“I’m thinking this is going to be a rough morning,” Malcolm groused.

He went to the kitchen, though, and poured two mugs of fresh coffee. A little twitch in his heart made him pause when he noticed the mug Kerry usually drank from was sitting in a place of honor in the middle of the dining table holding a wild array of cut flowers.

“What’s this?” he asked, carrying both coffees in one hand and the flowers in the other.

Charlie gave him a crooked grin. “He’s not gone forever,” he said with confidence. “That’s so you keep thinking about him.”

“You think I’d forget?”

Charlie accepted his coffee and set it beside the bottle of whiskey. “I think you have a history of walling things up so you don’t have to remember, and that’s sort of not the same thing. I’m not letting you do that with Kerry.”

“He deserves better.” Malcolm joined him on the couch. “Okay. So what’s so important you have to show me before I go back to work?”

“This.” Charlie spun his laptop around and pointed. “Recognize him?”

For a moment, Malcolm studied the picture on the monitor. The man was about their age, with wide features, a dimpled chin, and huge brown eyes that were a tiny bit too intelligent to be considered naïve. There was a bit of gray at his temples and a faint dimple showing in his cheek. Malcolm knew that dimple was the real deal when he smiled, and there were plenty of lines around his full mouth and his eyes to prove he smiled a lot.

“Maybe. Should I?” He had a feeling he really should, but he couldn’t fit a name or location to the face.

“I thought maybe you might not. He was what, nine, last time you saw him?”

“Nine?” Malcolm looked at him. “Who is it?”

“Bobby, though he goes by Robert Leigh-Jones now. Do you know what he does?”

“Bobby?” Malcolm reached out, almost touching the screen, then realizing what he was doing, he drew his hand back and wrapped it around his mug. “Wow. He grew up.”

“People tend to do, Mal,” Charlie said softly. “I know he’s stuck as a scared kid in your head, but he’s not a kid, and he’s not scared anymore.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a social worker. Based in Seattle.”

“Seattle!” Malcolm shot him a look. “You’re shitting me.”

“No, I’m not. It’s why he moved schools. The foster family he moved to after the foster monster, the dad was transferred, and rather than send Bobby back to the group home, they arranged with his birth mother to adopt him. They moved to Seattle, Mal, and he grew up just fine.”

“He looks happy,” Malcolm agreed, sinking back into the couch, his coffee in one hand and the neck of the whiskey bottle in the other. He thought hard about pouring a healthy ounce of it into his coffee, but set it back on the table instead. “A social worker, huh? Based in Seattle?”

“Yeah.”

“Makes me want to send that to Kerry and see if he knows him.”

“Or”—Charlie handed him his cell—“you could call Bobby.”

Malcolm shook his head and thought about that whiskey again. “No. That’s a hundred years ago. He won’t remember me.”

“You don’t know that.” Charlie spun the computer around, clicked over to another window, and started reading.

“‘Robert Leigh-Jones was celebrated at a gathering of his peers and other city workers last night’—this was last November, actually,” Charlie interjected, “as one of the leading advocates for Children’s Protective Services reform. He was commended for his work in implementing recommendations gathered in a ten-year study that will change the way foster parents are screened, giving the best chance for healthy homes for our kids in need.

“In his speech to the assembled, Leigh-Jones had this to say: ‘I’ve been in the system, I know what it looks like from the inside, and I’ve met some really damaged kids, back when I was one of them, and now. Twenty years hasn’t changed anything. All that saved me from being one of those disheartening statistics was luck. We cannot rely on luck to help these kids. We have to be the ones to make the change, and we have to do it now.’

“It goes on,” Charlie said, leaning back to rub shoulders with Malcolm. “Basically, he was honored for doing something about the breaks in the system so fewer kids fall through the cracks. So whatever you think you did to ruin his life, maybe, just maybe, something you did led to this. Led to things getting better. Maybe something you did led to Kerry getting placed in Nash’s home and finding a family, Mal.”

Malcolm didn’t have anything to say about that. He rubbed a hand over his hidden scars.

“How long did you spend trying to find him?” he asked finally.

“A few hours. I had to do a bit of digging, but once I got his adopted parents’ name, the rest was a cakewalk.”

“How did you do that?”

Charlie smiled. “You forget what I’ve been doing for a living for the past eight years? I make shit happen. I get shit done, Mal. It’s what I do. And it might not be my bliss, but I’m damn good at it.”

“Not your bliss to get things done?” Malcolm asked, one eyebrow lifted and a hint of wicked in his voice. The joke was probably getting old, but Charlie grinned back.

“Well, there are things,” he said, “and there’s you. Totally different category.” He leaned in and took a kiss before Malcolm could stop him, but then backed away again before he was fully engaged. “And that is my bliss.” He trailed his fingers along Malcolm’s jaw. “Promise.”

Malcolm drew in a deep breath and held it until he felt as if his lungs and heart were actually ready to work properly again before he let it out.

“So can I go work now?”

“Actually, no. I wanted to show you something else.” Charlie moved to another window and turned the computer for Malcolm to see again. “I know I never paid much attention to all your real-estate shenanigans, but after last night and what you said about the foster monster, I thought I’d look up your old neighborhood and see if there was any chance we could make the difference down there he hadn’t managed to.”

His gaze fixed on Malcolm made him squirm, because Malcolm didn’t have to look at the monitor to know what Charlie had found when he’d looked up that end of town.

“Seems someone has already done a lot of work in that neighborhood, Mal. Someone did just what I thought we might try, already.”

“Yeah.” Malcolm carefully closed the laptop and pushed it to the middle of the table. “It’s taken a long time, but yeah.”

“Do you own every building in that neighborhood?” Charlie asked.

“No. Well, not now. I have, at one point or another, and there are a couple I’ve kept as decent low-rent housing, but mostly, the people who live there own them. I just help them manage them.”

“Help them manage them?” Charlie was outright staring now. “Mal, that’s putting it mildly. You put some of those people through business school.”

Malcolm shrugged and bit his lip. “I just… if it meant so much to the foster demon that it made him… like that. So bitter and angry that he couldn’t do it, I thought. I thought someone should, and they should do it right. He had shares in maybe six buildings, and he owned the dump we lived in. He left everything to me when he died. Lord only knows why, but he did. So I flipped the house because it was in a neighborhood where someone could pay a little more, and I did that for a few years until I could buy out those buildings, one at a time, and fix them up.”

“That takes money, Mal. And yeah, I know you have a lot, but how the hell did you make it? You didn’t raise the rent for the better apartments you renovated, and you didn’t fleece those people when you sold them the buildings. You can’t make money pouring it into a bottomless well and never bringing the bucket up for yourself.”

“There are houses in other neighborhoods you can buy for a song and flip for a profit. I have good contractors, and I’m no slouch when it comes to seeing the potential in things.”

Charlie gave him a half-grin, crooked and tender. “Yeah. I do know that about you.”

“And, I made some smart investments.”

“How do you make money flipping houses if you never do any of the work?”

“Pick the right neighborhood. It’s less difficult to find honest, reliable people to do the work when you’ve given them the bootstraps to haul themselves up by than you might think. Where do you think Mick came from?”

“Mick, your really hot carpenter?” Charlie’s grin widened. “Honestly? I thought you found him in the eye-candy store.”

Malcolm chuckled. “I’ll tell his wife you said that.”

“Lucky woman.”

Malcolm cupped his cheek and smiled, knowing he had Charlie’s full attention when the joking grin softened and fell away. “Not nearly as lucky as I am, baby. Do me a favor?”

“Anything,” Charlie breathed.

“I need the belt from that bathrobe you’re wearing.”

Charlie’s eyelids flickered, and when they lifted again, his gaze had gone darker, hotter. “Why?”

“Hand it over and find out. And stand up. I’ll need those sleep pants too.”

Charlie hovered his hands over the belt as he stood, as though he wasn’t sure which order to follow first, then flipped the robe out of the way and pried the waist of his pants over his stiffening cock. He pushed them down, hooked them with a foot, and lifted them to within Malcolm’s reach.

“What do you need those for?”

Malcolm tossed them over the back of the couch. “Nothing. But you need them even less.” He trailed his fingers over Charlie’s hardening length. “The belt?”

For a moment, Charlie struggled with the knot, as though overeager to hand it over.

“Take your time.”

He nodded and loosened the knot, pulled it free of the loops, and gave it to Malcolm.

“You’ll need to turn around.”

Charlie did, the sound of his feet shuffling on the carpet barely audible over his heavy breathing.

“It’s amazing how fast just the idea of getting tied up gets you hard,” Malcolm mused.