I put my hair in a simple braid and opted for a getup that was pretty plain for me. A tight, black skirt and a ruffled top that looked like something an old-time Spanish saloon girl would wear that perfectly matched the red streak in my hair. I put on some fierce red pumps because there was no way you could go into battle with another woman and not have on footwear that wasn’t as impressive as your adversary’s and still feel confident. I gave myself one last look over in the mirror and headed down to LoDo.
LoDo was pretty quiet on Mondays, which was one of the reasons the shop was closed on that day. It took me a second to find the law building where Sayer worked because she had never actually given me the exact location, and when I found it I was a little stunned and admittedly intimidated to go inside the elegant brass-and-wood doors.
This was no tiny law practice. This was a giant operation with multiple partners, and everything screamed wealth and opulence as soon as I hit the lobby. There was a security guard at the desk that gave me a curious look when I asked if I could see Sayer.
“Do you have an appointment?”
Did I look like I had an appointment? I bit back a sarcastic comment and smiled, making sure all of my teeth showed.
“No. But if you tell her Salem is here to see her, I bet she’ll have you send me to her office.”
He shook his head and turned back to the monitor in front of him. “No one goes up without an appointment.”
I wanted to growl at him and I was considering just going to the coffee shop and stalking her until she showed up like she seemed in the habit of doing, when I heard my name called from somewhere behind the guard and his massive desk.
I took a few steps back and noticed Sayer coming out of the elevator with a young woman that was in tears. Sayer was telling her everything would be fine, that she just had to trust her, but her soft words seemed to have little effect. The woman had mascara running all over her face and was oblivious to the scene she was causing, but she repeatedly told Sayer “thank you” and accepted her hug on the way out the lavish front doors.
Sayer made her way over to where I was standing and I noticed she twisted her hands together. Good. I was glad I made her nervous.
“Do you have a minute?” I made sure that my tone indicated even if she didn’t, she better find one for me real quick like.
She nodded. “My next client isn’t until one but I have a conference call with opposing counsel for a divorce I’m working on that I have to make before then.”
“I won’t take up too much of your time.” I would take as much time as I needed to tell her what I had come to say to her.
She nodded again and walked over to the desk and smiled kindly at the security guard. “Marvin, can you sign in Salem Cruz for me and give her a visitor’s pass?”
The guard obviously had a soft spot for her because he didn’t grill her about who I was or why I was there, he just did what she asked and soon I was following her to the elevator. We took an uncomfortable ride up to the top floor and I realized belatedly that Sayer wasn’t just a lawyer, she was a partner in this well-established firm and her very classy and plush office reflected that.
“You’re kind of a big deal? Aren’t you?”
I settled myself in one of the leather wingback chairs across from her mahogany desk and declined her offer to grab me a cup of coffee or some water.
“My dad was one of the founding partners. I was grandfathered in. They do a lot of pro bono work and tend to be really active in the different communities the firm sets up offices in.”
“How influential were you in getting them to branch out to Denver?”
She flushed a little and leaned back in her chair. “When the proposal to open a new office came up I might have suggested Denver as a location, but there is a board that has to vote, so they could have picked Santa Fe or Phoenix, which were the other two options on the table.”
“You know you could have explained who you were and avoided the trouble of coming into the shop.”
She closed her eyes for a second. “After my dad passed away it took a while to track Rowdy down. The entire time I kept thinking it was one last ‘screw you’ from a man that had never loved me. I thought it had to be a joke or some scheme to keep me from inheriting his estate. Once I knew Rowdy was a real person—really my brother—I couldn’t stop thinking about getting to know him. Once I got to Denver and settled in, it took me over a month to work up the courage to even look up where the shop was at. It took me another two to walk in the doors. When I saw him—when I saw how much we looked alike . . .” She exhaled loudly and opened her eyes back up. “I knew it was real. I played out every scenario there was on how to tell him. I had nightmares about what his reaction would be. It went about as well as I expected.”
“Can you blame him? He had no warning, no way to prepare himself for that kind of news. He’s always been on his own, never had a family until he got here and Phil wrapped him up in the Marked family. All of a sudden he has a sister and a dad that didn’t want him. What would you do in his shoes?”
She just stared at me for a minute before finally looking away. “I don’t know. I never meant to hurt him, but I couldn’t keep it from him any longer either. I have to settle the estate. I only had one more week until my dad’s attorney was going to move to contact him if I didn’t reach out myself.”
I sighed and scooted a little closer to the edge of my fancy leather seat. “You need to understand something about Rowdy St. James. He has a huge heart. He’s a good man but he has suffered so much loss in his life it’s really hard for him to let anybody get too close. You being family—actual blood family—has him scared out of his ever-loving mind.”
Her blue eyes were identical to the ones I had been gazing into all weekend.
“I came across the information on his mother’s murder when I tried to track him down initially.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. His mom, and then me. We were really, really close growing up and I left him without a backward glance because I was selfish and young, and then there was my sister.” I bit down on my lower lip and powered through. “Rowdy adored her, claimed to be in love with her, and even went as far as to ask her to marry him.” My voice cracked a little and I had to clear my throat. “And then there is Phil Donovan. He’s the man that started the tattoo shop. He saved Rowdy. He brought him to Denver and gave him a dream job, fostered his art, and let him be the man he was always supposed to be. He gave Rowdy the one thing he always wanted, a home, and he passed away from cancer not too long ago. Everyone Rowdy loves has let him down or left him in some way. That’s why he froze you out, why he wouldn’t hear anything you had to say to him.”
She sucked in an audible breath and put her palms flat on her desk. “That is a lot of loss.”
“It is. He’s been kicked around a lot by the people that were supposed to take care of him and he’s just trying to keep himself safe.”
She tilted her head to the side just a fraction and those sky-blue eyes narrowed at me. “What about you? You left and he let you back in.”
I let out a dry laugh. “I have a toe in the door but I’m nowhere near back in. Every time I grab my purse, every time I tell him I have to run out for something, he looks at me like I’m never coming back. He knows me better than anyone in my entire life ever has even after ten years apart, but he doesn’t trust me to stay with him at all.”
“But aren’t you involved with one another?” She laughed and wrinkled her nose up a little. “He thought I was trying to ask him out on a date last night and told me in no uncertain terms he was seeing someone.”
“We’re involved, but I think that level of involvement might differ depending on which one of us you’re talking to.”
Her pale eyebrows shot up. “You love him?”
I snorted in an entirely unladylike way and tapped my fingers on my knee to dispel some of the tension that built up inside of me at that question.
“I’ve loved him in many different ways since he was ten years old.” She cringed because even I could hear the wistfulness in my voice. “I told you I was here for him.”
“How did you know he would welcome you back into his life? Ten years is a long time.”
“I didn’t. But it was a chance I had to take because in all the time that passed he is the only one that stuck with me. He was worth the risk . . . he still is, even though I know stuff now I didn’t know then.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Salem? I can see it in all of this but I don’t know you, or Rowdy, well enough to put it all together.”
I got to my feet and smoothed a hand over the fabric of my skirt. “I’m telling you he’s worth it and that eventually he’ll get out of his own head and want you to be there. Be patient with him. When he’s done being terrified that you’re just another person that can leave him or let him down, he’s going to come looking for you.” I made sure she could see how important what I was telling her was in my steady gaze. “If you’re gone or no longer interested when he starts moving toward you, it’s going to break him and he doesn’t deserve that. So before you make any decisions on really being his sister—on being in his life—think about how committed you are to staying put until he finds his way to you.”
She got to her feet also and I had this weird thought that Rowdy really couldn’t have two more different women on every single level there was trying to find a place in his life at the exact same time. One thing was obvious that Sayer and I did have in common was that we were both strong and both determined to force our way in no matter how bad our boy wanted to keep us out.
“I’m not going anywhere, Salem, and if I do, I promise I will do everything humanly possible to make sure he can find me. I will not just disappear. He can find me when he’s ready.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a lopsided grin. “The funny thing is, I understand all about loss. My mom took her own life when I was pretty young and my dad was a cold, distant man that spent a lot of time working and a lot of time pretending I didn’t exist. I mean I physically had a parent in my life, but emotionally”—she shrugged one of her shoulders—“I was just as alone and unwanted as he was and really, he had you. I had no one.”
I smoothed some of my hair down and turned to walk toward the door. “Don’t hurt my boy and you can have me as well, Sayer. I like you. I think you have class and coolness for miles. That’s why I came in peace and wanted to offer you some advice. If I thought you were out for anything other than a real, tangible connection to Rowdy, I would have stormed in with claws out and one of us would have been bloody by the time I was done. Like I said, just give it some time.”
I was at the door and pulling it open when she called my name softly. I looked at her over my shoulder and saw that there was a fierce gleam in her ocean-colored eyes.
“I know I don’t have the same claim on him as you do but don’t let him down again, okay? If you think I could break him, just imagine what it would do to him if you left now that he has you again. He loves you. I can see it, so you have to be able to see it.”
“Oh, I see it all right. I just have to make sure he’s not looking through the fog left over from the past before I fully believe it. If you wanna talk you know where to find me.”
I closed the door behind me and took the elevator back down to the lobby. I winked at the security guard as he cocked a questioning eyebrow at me, clearly wondering what a tatted-up rockabilly chick wanted with one of the partners, but he was too polite to ask.
I was tired. After being up all night with Rowdy and the emotional toll he took on me as well as the showdown with Sayer, I was ready to spend my afternoon off taking a nap. I didn’t know how long a hike in the mountains was going to take but I figured I had enough time to grab a burrito at Illegal Pete’s and catch a few z’s before Rowdy showed back up with the puppy and both of them wanted to play. I got distracted window shopping and saw a really cute minidress that had my mind spinning with ideas of how to turn it into something I could use at the store, and before I knew it I had squandered away an hour and was hustling back to my apartment just in case I missed Rowdy coming in shirtless and sweaty . . . yum.