Liam: Branded Brothers Read online

  She sighed before she reached for her back pocket. It was time to get the hell out of here and back to Jack’s house. She’d have to kill some time to let the alcohol wear off before she got back on the road to take the drive. Maybe she’d splurge and get a pedicure at the spa down the road. She at least deserved that. She was sure Jack would have agreed. Her fingers grasped the corners of the envelope.

  “God, you have me down right to the last detail,” he said, still with a hard face. She couldn’t resist finding pleasure in the way his jaw tightened up. She had laid out his cards, just like he had done to her.

  “Oh yeah?” She fought to hide her smile.

  “I was in the Marine Corps for six years. I’m twenty-eight now, bought the Dirty Leprechaun two years ago. I do work out down the street at a boxing gym, except it’s only two hours a day.” He crossed his arms, highlighting the massive bulk of his chest.

  Charla nodded her head, pulled out the envelope, and waved it in the air.

  “What’s that?” He eyed the envelope with suspicion.

  “It’s for you.” She took a deep breath and tapped it once against the edge of the counter before sliding it over to him. She didn’t know what was in the envelope, and she wanted to keep it that way. She wanted to stay out of it as much as she could, or at least as much as Jack allowed. He was gone, and her life had been turned upside down, once again. She thought she’d be used to it by now, but she was wrong. Giving him the envelope would bring her one step closer to getting her life back on track.

  “What is it?” Liam picked up the envelope and studied the front inscription.

  “I don’t know.” Charla dug in her purse to retrieve a ten dollar bill and threw it on the counter. “Whatever it is, good luck.”

  “Good luck?”

  “Yeah, good luck. You’re going to need it.” Charla turned to walk out of the Dirty Leprechaun, leaving a still gaping Liam behind the bar. Dealing with Jack had been more than a handful the last two years, but she had come to love his crazy antics and demands. It shouldn’t be surprising that he would wreak more havoc after his death. Jack wasn’t the type of man to go out peacefully. But she wanted to pass the torch and move on, and more than anything she wanted to forget all the things he said before he died.

  “That’s it? How’d you know who I was?” He called to her. “Who is it from?”

  “I’m just the messenger.” She shrugged her shoulders without turning around. With any luck, it would be the last time she’d see Liam Murphy and his damn tattoos. A little peace, she reminded herself. She opened the door and let a stream of midday sun into the dim bar, pausing momentarily to call over her shoulder, “Don’t shoot me.”

  ***

  Charla pulled into the driveway of Jack’s cottage in the waning summer sun. The drive back was at least more tolerable than the drive to the Dirty Leprechaun. Her jean shorts only stuck to her legs for the first half of the trip back. Regardless, the envelope was delivered. She figured in a week’s time she could have the house cleaned out and listed with a realtor. And if she priced the house low enough, she could be sitting with a good stack of cash in no time. She’d been shocked when Jack’s lawyer told her he’d left the cottage to her. She was sure there would have been some long-lost kin down the line he hadn’t mentioned. She had grabbed the paper from the lawyer to see her own name in black bold lettering. A house, her own house. Jack left her without a job, but he definitely didn’t leave her high and dry. She could pay off the rest of her school bills, get a new car, and put a down payment on a house. She could start over thanks to him.

  She wanted to call Dotti and tell her how wrong she’d been. That working for Jack was the best thing she could have done for herself. But she knew dollar signs would flash in her green eyes and somehow she would sucker Charla into her latest sob story, and convince her to dig her out of some financial mess like she always did. It was always someone else’s fault. Her stingy boss. Her asshole landlord. The stop sign that came out of nowhere.

  Charla killed the Corolla’s engine and promised herself she wouldn’t tell her alcoholic mother under any circumstances. It would be different this time.

  She opened the cottage’s side door and threw her purse on the kitchen counter, assessing the boxes she had started to pack. It would take her another three or four days to finish sorting and boxing up all his stuff. She wouldn’t keep much for herself besides some kitchen items she had purchased while living with him. The rest she would donate or toss. She cursed Jack for being a pack rat and for not letting her start this process sooner, especially a few weeks ago when she first noticed he was starting to fail. He was getting weaker, spending more time in bed, and forgetting who she was every twenty minutes. She had started to pack some boxes then, but he lost it, taking a jar from a box and attempting to throw it at her head. The glass had slipped out of his hand and shattered just inches from his toes. She had stopped packing the box, brought him to bed, and sat in a chair while she held his hand.

  “Damn you, Jack,” she said softly as she picked up a pot from a box. He was one stubborn son of a bitch. She felt a sudden wave of emotion swell in her chest. She wasn’t the crying kind; she was the strong one who cleaned up everyone else’s messes. She was the one who didn’t cry when luck turned to shit, when her fiancé cheated on her, or when the man she had grown close to died holding her hand. She didn’t shed a tear when her step-father was lowered into the ground or when Dotti admitted herself to rehab.

  A single tear rolled down Charla’s face, burning her cheek with a liquid hot streak. She quickly wiped it away and slammed the pot back into the box. She couldn’t let any of it break her. Nothing had so far, nothing would.

  She looked out the back window of the cottage to the lake. She would miss it here. Jack’s cottage felt like home more than any other place she’d ever lived in. The crap apartments, the run-down duplex on Fifth Street, her aunt’s sweeping two-story colonial. Those were all places she’d stayed. This cottage was home. She would have liked to keep it that way. It had a beautiful view and was the perfect size for her, but Jack insisted in his will she sell it.

  She looked longingly at the swing just a few feet off the shimmering water. She used to sit down there with Jack when he could take the stairs. That was in the beginning, when he was coherent and fresh-legged, as he called it. It had been at least a year since he had been down there. She folded the box back up and grabbed one of his old Cubs sweatshirts off the coat rack hanging by the door. She trotted down thirty-two wooden steps to the swing, wishing the entire time Jack could have experienced this one last time even though he wouldn’t have remembered it. The simple smile on his face would have been worth every drop of blood and sweat she had endured over the past two years. He would have been happy, even if just for a passing moment. She wanted to bottle up that happiness and save it for herself. God knows she needed it right about now.

  She slid Jack’s sweatshirt over her head, inhaling the familiar smell of him. It was a mixture of outdoors, musky cologne and man. She loved the smell of a man’s man. She sat down on the cracked wood of the swing and kicked her legs forward. “Well, I did it. I delivered the note, Jack. You should be happy. It’s what you wanted.”

  The low hum of crickets filled the cooling summer air. “By the way, that Liam Murphy is something else. He reminded me of you. Cocky with a wicked smile. I’m sure he kills it with the ladies, which I’m sure was the case with you when you were younger. He had a tattoo just like you. I don’t know what this is all about, Jack, but you better bet your ass I’m going to stay away from it all. I’m going to sell this place like you wanted me to and move on.”

  She paused, letting her feet dangle as she listened to the creak of the swing. A smile spread across her face as she heard his irritated voice bitch back in her head. She loved a good fight with Jack. It kept them both on their toes. “Don’t worry, I’ll come back and visit every once in a while. I’ll check in to let you know I’m doing okay.”


  A chill circled Charla as she looked out into the small rippling waves of the water. She wrapped her arms around herself, marveling at the beauty of the shimmering lake. Jack had truly found an incredible resting place.

  “Are you crazy or something?” A man’s voice pierced the air behind her.

  “What the -” Charla jumped out of the swing, her heart crawling out of her chest. She spun around to see the brooding eyes of the Irish man from the Dirty Leprechaun. Liam Murphy. “Damn it. You scared me.”

  “A little on edge?” Liam put his hand on the rusted pole of the swing, leaning toward her.

  “I don’t expect people to come up from behind me like that.” She folded her arms across her chest. She hated feeling vulnerable, a feat most people couldn’t achieve with her. “On private property. How did you know I was here?”

  “I followed you.”

  “You followed me?” Charla’s eye shot to the steps of the cottage. There was no way she’d be able to beat him up those stairs. Whatever mess Jack got her into, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

  He raised his eyebrows and held up a sheet of paper with sprawling blue ink. The dramatic slant and sweeping letters of Jack’s writing was unmistakable. “I didn’t follow you. The address was on the letter.”

  “Oh,” she said, loosening the grip around herself. She took a deep breath. “What do you want?”

  “I have a few questions for you. Some mysterious woman can’t come into my bar, drop off a letter, and not expect to hear from me. This letter claims some pretty crazy shit that doesn’t make any sense. And apparently, only one person has answers. And that person is you.”

  “I don’t even know what’s in that letter. Jack gave it to me two years ago and made me promise never to open it. So I didn’t.”

  “You’re telling me you have no idea what’s in this?” He held up the letter, the paper flapping in the breeze.

  “No clue.” She put her hands on her hips, feeling defensiveness rise to her throat. She held onto that damn letter for two years. She didn’t break promises. She wasn’t going to be accused by someone who decided to make the letter her problem.

  He pulled the letter down, folded it, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. Her eyes traveled up his arms, following the ink to the sleeves of his black shirt. She wondered if his chest was covered in tattoos. Her mind conjured an image of intricate designs with the military tags resting lightly in the middle of his chest.

  Damn it, Charla.

  He cleared his throat and folded his arms across his chest. The noise snapped her out of the trance, and she looked up to meet his eyes. “I never opened that damn letter and to be honest, I don’t want to know what’s in it. I don’t want anything to do with it,” she said.

  “How did you know Jack anyway?”

  “I lived with him for the last two years.”

  His eyebrows raised. “You were sleeping with him?”

  “Oh, God no,” Charla said with a laugh, although Jack had tried on more than one occasion. His libido was still very much intact, but she made sure his playful suggestions stopped at that. She couldn’t blame him, though. He claimed he hadn’t been with a woman in over twenty years. “I was his in-home caregiver. Jack had early onset dementia and then Alzheimer’s. Jack was only fifty-nine when he died four days ago, just two weeks shy of his sixtieth birthday.”

  “Oh,” he said, nodding his head. “That’s young.”

  “Yeah, it really is.” She inhaled, looking back out at the lake. She wished she had a few more weeks, even a few more days with him. Even though she knew it was coming, his decline had all seemed so fast. “Whatever it is that you’re looking for, I most likely can’t help you. Even though I spent the last couple years with Jack, I don’t know anything about you or why he had me give you that letter. The only thing I can tell you about is the Jack I knew. The guy who forgot to put on his pants most days and the one who cursed like a sailor and the one who threw peas at me. Other than that, I don’t have much to tell you.”

  He nodded his head, pausing momentarily before asking, “Did you have a funeral for him?”

  “No, he didn’t want all the fuss. He didn’t have any friends or family. He was afraid the only people who’d show up at his funeral would be his lawyer, the crazy cat bitch down the street, and me. At least, that’s what he told me. He didn’t remember the crazy cat bitch died last year. I had Jack cremated and dumped his ashes in the lake yesterday.” She nodded her head back toward the water.

  “No friends or family, huh?” He followed her eyes out to the lake and then pointed at the canoe tied to the dock. “Is that his canoe?”

  “Sure is.”

  “I want to go out on it.”

  “Okay, I guess you’re more than welcome to. There’s a paddle and life jacket in the canoe,” she said, reluctantly. She wasn’t going to be rude to him, but she also didn’t want Liam hanging around anymore than he needed to. He was a tall, dark and handsome distraction she didn’t need right now. “I should get back in the house and start boxing stuff up again.”

  “I want you to come out on the lake with me,” he said, holding a steady gaze.

  “No,” she replied, inhaling sharply. There was no way she was going out on the lake with a guy she just met given the circumstances of Jack’s ramblings. “I have a ton to do with the house before I put it up for sale. Plus, did you see the sky over there?” Charla pointed to the menacing gray clouds threatening to float over the lake.

  “Just like you preferred to pay for your drink,” he said, running a hand through his thick brown hair. She couldn’t help noticing his hair was just like Jack’s. “What if I told you something about the letter? Would that change your mind?”

  “No.” She shook her head then walked around the swing toward the stairs. “I don’t want to know. Whatever it is, I’m staying out of it.”

  She exhaled as she walked past him, still feeling his eyes on her as she took the first two stairs up.

  “What if I told you Jack was my father?”

  Chapter 2

  Charla huddled in the front of the canoe wearing the faded orange life vest, facing Liam as he paddled out into the middle of the lake. She’d do anything for Jack, but there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to turn her back on this man. She watched the bulge in his arms flex as he dipped the oar into the water and pushed the canoe forward with ease. He lifted the oar out, swung it across his body and dipped it back into the water in one smooth motion while smiling at her. She had to admit he had a wicked body to match that smile, but she pushed away the thoughts of anything remotely romantic developing between them.

  After all, he was Jack’s son. Jack’s son. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her he had a son. He’d told her about his wife who had died over two decades ago, but he had never mentioned anything about a son. Just hours before his death, he’d mentioned something about a little boy and a suitcase, but that was it. She’d discounted it along with everything else he’d said during that time. If Liam was in fact the little boy with the suitcase, then she didn’t want to remember the rest of what Jack said. It couldn’t be true. Jack didn’t seem like the man he spoke of.

  “How much further?” Liam asked, holding the paddle across his lap as they drifted gently in the water.

  “Here is good. Under the oak tree,” Charla replied, turning around to see the tree on the edge of the shore. Its massive trunk was partly exposed and its branches reached over the lake in a great big sweeping canopy. It was Jack’s favorite sight on the lake. Of course, it happened to be on the crazy cat bitch’s property, which belonged to one of her daughters now. He hated that she had this tree because he loved the way the roots crawled into the water. Like reaching hands, grasping for life, he had said. He had proceeded that comment with Of course, the crazy bitch could only be so lucky. Charla didn’t think twice about scattering his ashes here.

  “So this it?”

  “This is it.” Charla’s words
hung in the air. There was a finality to them she couldn’t ignore. Tears welled deep in her eyes as she gazed out into the water. She fought them back, holding them in with every ounce of energy she had. She wouldn’t cry again and definitely not in front of Liam. Whatever Jack was hiding all these years, it was resurfacing now that he was gone. She felt guilty she’d had the opportunity to know Jack, unlike his son. She was the one who spread his ashes in the lake. She was the one he left his belongings and house to. He hadn’t even acknowledged the fact he had a son in his will. All he left Liam with was a letter and a life-altering declaration. It wasn’t supposed to work this way.

  “Well, I thought I’d have some sort of revelation or something.” He skimmed the oar on the surface of the water with thoughtfulness. “You know, that I’d feel some connection with my biological father. I knew he was out there somewhere, but I didn’t ever really want to find him. I had good parents and a nice house to grow up in. I had a good life, a life without him. He was the one that gave me up.” He set the paddle on his lap and dug into his pocket to retrieve the folded piece of paper. He opened it and held it over the edge of the canoe above the water. “All I feel is anger that he left me this goddamn note.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Charla said quietly, shrugging. She’d never met her real father and if given the chance, she doubted she would jump at the opportunity. As a child, she used to dream about her father, who in her fantasies was a pilot and millionaire and the greatest dad in the world. She’d envisioned him whisking her away from her absent mother and abusive step-father. But she knew those dreams were just that now. Childhood fantasies that were the complete opposite of the harsh reality she had to deal with. She was a product of a one-night stand with a grisly, bandanna-wearing ex-convict from a bar. If she had any luck, her biological father was dead. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t know the real Jack either. I knew the Jack with Alzheimer’s. The crazy old man who wore a cowboy hat but no pants.”