Making Promises (4 page)

She didn’t say anything else, but her eyes darted to where her brother, Crick, and his boyfriend were washing dishes. Deacon—the boyfriend—actually owned the horse ranch, and Shane knew the place was in trouble. Deacon had been outed in a spectacular fashion that involved being beaten by a local police officer and a rather dramatic court case. The fallout had resulted in a loss of a lot of the ranch’s local business. When Crick had returned from Iraq in May—injured and unable to go out and earn any extra income—keeping the ranch had been an iffy proposition at best.

Something had happened to give them some time. Shane knew it had something to do with Crick’s decision not to go to college after his return (a thing that hurt Deacon deeply but didn’t seem to bother Crick at all) but whatever had happened didn’t change the fact that finances were still touch-and-go. Once a month the family—and that included Shane now, much to his honor—had a meeting where Deacon showed them how much money they had lost and how much they still had in capital and what sort of spread that could afford them in another part of the state or even the country. They all knew it would kill him to give up The Pulpit. His father had started the ranch from scratch, and Deacon loved it only slightly less than he loved Crick. But Deacon was adamant—the family came first.

Benny and little Parry Angel would have the best education and the best circumstances money could buy, and if that meant moving the ranch before they lost it, that’s what it meant.

That didn’t mean everybody’s heart didn’t stop during the monthly family meetings while they waited to see if they had just a few more months for the ranch to start making money again. It didn’t mean that Deacon wasn’t thin and transparent from stress—his best friend Jon had instituted a “Deacon weigh-in” during the family meetings so the family could keep an eye on Deacon’s health. Shane looked unhappily to where Deacon stood, his six-foot frame made to look short by Crick’s extra four inches. At the last weigh-in, he’d been one-sixty. It was better than when Shane had gotten there—called out because Crick and Benny’s crazy-assed family had decided it was time to share the crazy and take the baby from her young mother—but it was still not enough to make him look strong and healthy, and Shane needed him to be strong and healthy.

Shane was working for the local police force these days. He should have been the enemy after what Deacon had been through, but they’d invited him into their family as a friend. His entire life, Shane had never had a family with that much warmth. He needed the ranch to be here in Levee Oaks. He needed this family to be all right.

Shane looked thoughtfully to where Deacon was shooing Crick off from resting a pointed chin in his shoulder to try and get him to eat a slice of pie. He was six feet of scrawny, determined alpha male hidden behind a shy smile and a blush. Deacon himself wouldn’t have denied Benny or Parry Angel anything. If Benny had held off on a Renaissance Faire shopping spree, she had probably not spent the money voluntarily, to do her part toward keeping The Pulpit right where it was.

Shane looked back at Benny. Her hair was bright orange this month, and her eyes—a pretty blue but still the same shape as Crick’s—were wistful and dreamy. Benny could be the closest thing to a damsel in distress that Shane ever got to rescue.

“What did you want to get?” he asked, inviting conversation. He set his detective’s brain on “record” then, and it was a good thing too. It turned out a sixteen-year-old girl with a beloved baby on her arm could dream a whole lot of princess after one trip to the Faire.

A few minutes later, Benny carted the baby off to her bath—which turned out to be a community event, since Deacon’s friends, Jon and Amy, Making Promises

were there, and they decided that four-month-old Lila Lisa needed a little bathwater on her bottom as well. When the community baby-bathing event had sucked half the people out of the room, Deacon asked who wanted to bring the table scraps out to the potbellied pigs. Shane practically knocked his chair over in an effort to volunteer.

The pigpen was in the dark behind the stable, but Shane didn’t mind the walk. The early October night was still warm enough for cargo shorts and a T-shirt, and the breeze that blew off the delta and through the valley was crisp enough to suggest November was coming. It was a pleasant night to be out, and that was good, because he had something to do while he was there under the stars.

He rounded the corner to the barn on the way back, found the stack of hay bales under the soda light suspended from the barn, pulled his little notepad and pen out of his pocket, and started writing. He was so intent on his task that after he got all of Benny’s fanciful wishes from the Renaissance Faire down on paper, he was surprised to see Jeff had come out on the porch of the house and was standing there smoking a cigarette.

Shane put the paper and pen in his pocket, grabbed the empty plastic bowl that had held the scraps, and tried to walk back into the house like he hadn’t been doing anything that needed talking about.

Jeff wouldn’t let it slide.

“Did you remember the scent of the hand lotion she wanted?” he asked as Shane came up the steps.

Shane flushed. “Chamomile-lavender, with a little bit of vanilla,” he said quietly, and Jeff raised his eyebrows on the inhale. “Those are bad for you,” he said, trying to just go past that other thing.

“Which is why I only get one a day,” Jeff said primly, blowing smoke. “The military might have paid for Andrew’s new, spiffy race-specific prosthetic eventually.”

Shane tried for innocence. “Why would you think they didn’t?”
Don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush don’t blush.

“For one thing, Benny only spent a day on the phone trying to clear up the insurance—we all know
that’s
a children’s fairy tale in itself, don’t we?”

“What makes you think it was anything else?” Shane kept his face as neutral as possible.

Jeff looked sadly at the end of his cigarette and stubbed it out on the bottom of his shoe. “Mmmm… I don’t know. Maybe the office buzz about the ‘big hulking cop’ who came in and paid for Andrew’s new, spiffy black-skinned leg and asked billing to keep it hush-hush? That’s always a big hint something else happened, you think? I work in the VA hospital, Shane—did you think it was going to be a secret?” Shane grew extremely uncomfortable, and, yes, the dreaded blush swamped his fair skin. “Please don’t tell them,” he begged at last. “People have their pride, you know?”

“I’m not going to ask you why you’re doing it,” Jeff said after a moment, “because we both know it would take months the other way, and I’d probably do it too—but I don’t have the money.” Shane looked down, and the silence stretched long enough for Jeff to trot down the stairs and throw the butt-end away in one of the trash cans at the end of the house. He came back, squirting alcohol on his hand from a bottle he kept in his pocket.

“You ready to tell me yet?” he asked, rubbing his hands crisply together, and Shane shrugged. “Look, big guy, I’ll keep your secret, but only if I know you’re not out on the streets turning tricks for the green, okay?”

Shane actually managed a chuckle on that. “Funny.” Jeff shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve got a mouth.”

“Not your mouth—the idea that anybody would want me. They’d probably be afraid of weirdness, like some sort of STD.” Jeff pulled in a breath and peered at him in the dark. “This family loves you, Shane. In fact, I think they worry about you. If you’re weird it’s because you’re too much in your own head, and you only have to look at Deacon to see how that can hurt a guy. Now are you going to tell me where you’re getting the cash, or am I going to have to blab about your Secret Santa routine?”

Ouch. Shane glared at Jeff. “You don’t even like me.” It was true—

Jeff had been the master of the catty epithet since he’d arrived. “Big guy” was an improvement over “Yeti,” “Sasquatch,” and (after he’d outed himself at the dinner table) “Shane the hairy Hoover.”

“That’s not true,” Jeff protested without even flinching. “I like you fine. I was
jealous
of you, but I think you’re an okay sort.” Making Promises

“Jealous.” Blink. “Of me?”

Jeff shrugged. “You walk in to answer a call, and they invite you to dinner? Hell—I had to work Crick’s arm like Christ himself with the healing touch to get that invite!”

“Jon invited me,” Shane mumbled. “He was kind of a dick to me when he got here. He felt bad.”

“Really?” Jeff perked right up. “So it was a pity thing? Excellent. No hard feelings, right big guy?”

Why would there be? Jeff was the one who had offered the olive branch. Shane shrugged. “Nope.”

“Good, then tell me where you got the money, I can tell Deacon to stop worrying, and it can be our little secret.” Shane scowled, feeling like shit. “Deacon put you up to this?” Jeff waved his hand. “No—he was going to do it himself. The thought of the two of you out here
not
talking was enough to give even the baby a case of the squirmies. So spill or this goes public to the family.

They
are
our family, right?”

Shit. Yeah. “L.A.P.D. let me walk into an ambush. When I didn’t get my queer ass blown to hell, they gave me some cash to take away the sting.”

Jeff opened his eyes large and pushed theatrically on his swinging jaw. “Are you
shitting
me?”

Shane rubbed at his chest, where he could still feel his scars from the surgeries under his shirt. “Naw. You know, when your ribs puncture your lungs through your vest and they have to take out your spleen and shit, I guess a little joke’s gone too far.”

He was unprepared for Jeff’s slug to his jaw—both for the connect and for it to hurt so much. He landed on his ass and looked up at Jeff with absolute amazement in his eyes.

“What in the fuck…?” He was just that befuddled.

“You still
work
that job!” Jeff said, upset. He was shaking out his hand—and he should have been, dammit; that
hurt.

“So….” Shane blinked hard. “Can I repeat? What in the fuck?” 14

“You
asshole
!”
Jeff growled, and Deacon came out just then and took stock.

“What in the fuck?” Deacon stretched his hand out with the question, and Shane took it, still looking puzzled.

“Deacon, he
hit
me!”

And Jeff was furious at
him.
“Deacon—you want to know where his money comes from?”

“You promised not to tell!” There was something about this conversation that sounded… unfamiliar and familiar at once. Shane couldn’t put his finger on it, but it made the moment even more surreal.

“That was before I found out you were attempting suicide-by-cop!” Jeff snarled, and Shane let go of Deacon’s hand and sat down hard on the porch again.

“I’m what?”

“You get
shot
in L.A. because you’re a big stupid queer-ass bastard, and then you come
here
where even the civilians get beaten for it! And you don’t tell anybody here…. You just show up to Sunday dinner like you’re going to be around for a while and not a soul here knows you’re a walking fucking target!”

“I’m not a walking target,” Shane said, coming heavily to his knees and once again taking Deacon’s patiently offered hand. “And I only wish I was fucking. Something. At all.”

Deacon Winters had an extraordinarily pretty face, shaped like a squarish oval with a square jaw and chin and an angel’s mouth and lovely, dark-fringed green eyes. At the moment, those pretty eyes were looking at both of them like Shane had seen him look at Crick and Benny when they argued, and that’s when it hit him.

He and Jeff were arguing like brothers. He looked at Jeff again. The guy was examining the manicure on the hand that had bruised Shane’s jaw as though it was something precious. Okay—they’d been arguing like a brother and sister. Whatever. Siblings.

Shane flushed and spoke the truth because he owed the guy that.

“It’s nice of you to worry,” he said quietly, and Deacon arched an eyebrow at him, as though he had more to say. “Seriously?” Shane asked Deacon, responding to the unvoiced question, and Deacon nodded.

“Fucking seriously.”

Shane blew out a breath. “Okay. Fine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all there might be a problem that way. I just didn’t think it was worth your time, okay?”

“No,” Deacon said judiciously. “Jeff, how bout you go inside and have Benny or Crick look at your hand. Shane and I need to have a talk out here.”

“Yeah,” Jeff muttered.

“Jeff?” Man, Deacon had that note of command in his voice. Shane would give his left nut to sound like that.

Shane was thirty-one, Jeff was his age or older, and Deacon was younger than both of them. Jeff turned to Deacon like a little boy would turn to his father. “Yes, Deacon?” he asked sweetly, batting the dark fringe of his brown eyes at the man.

Deacon looked blandly back. “I do believe Shane apologized.”

“Fi-ine.” He said it complete with rolled eyes too. “Fine. I’m sorry I hit you, you big stupid cop. Please try not to get your dumb fat ass shot off before next Sunday, okay?”

“I promise,” Shane said sincerely, looking at the man in surprise. He took an awkward step in, and Jeff sneered at him. It was Shane’s turn to roll
his
eyes. “Thanks, Jeff, for giving a shit.”

“Yeah, what-the-fuck-ever.” Jeff snorted and walked back in to the house, leaving Shane alone with Deacon.

He was unaccountably nervous.