Sinful Longing Read online

  “I don’t want you to stop being honest with me. What is it? Tell me.”

  He drew a breath and then said the easiest words in the world. “I’m madly in love with you.”

  The smile that he’d seen earlier, when she’d been listening to Sophie, reappeared for a moment. “I’m so in love with you, too,” she said, her voice bare. “That’s why this is so hard. I hate cooling things off when it feels like they’re just starting.”

  Elle rarely used the word hate. He didn’t want to end this night on that note. He wanted her to feel hope, even if they were heading their separate ways. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her as close as could be in the corner booth. “They’re going to arrest him. This is going to end. I don’t want you to be scared. I told you I’d find whoever was doing it. So just know as you go to sleep tonight that even though I’m not the guy in blue knocking on a door and putting someone under arrest, that I will take care of you.” He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, and a sweet, sad sigh fluttered from her lips. “And your son.”

  Her throat hitched on those last three words, and she met his gaze. Her eyes said everything—those were the words that mattered most. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  There were a million more things he could say, and yet there was nothing more to talk about. He had to tell her good night. He ran his thumb over her bottom lip then pressed his mouth to hers. Brushing his lips over hers. Tasting her. Savoring everything about the way they came together.

  Wanting to linger tonight in their last kiss.

  And he did, for a too-brief moment.

  Until it ended, and he walked her to the lobby, hailed a cab, and sent her home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Michael eyed his brother and in a nanosecond guessed what Colin had been up to. “You look like you just booked a room for a quick lay.”

  “Whoa.” Colin held up his hands.

  “Am I right or am I right?” Michael asked as he knocked back a beer at the blackjack table. Ryan had taken off with his bride-to-be, Shannon had hopped on the back of Brent’s bike and headed home with her husband, and the detective had gone off to do whatever detectives did. Solve cases, hopefully. Arrest bad guys. Deal with the shit on the streets.

  “You’re wrong. Wish you were right,” Colin said. Michael’s youngest brother—wait, make that second-to-youngest-brother—settled in next to him for another round of cards as the clock ticked closer to midnight.

  “What’s the story?”

  Colin sighed. “It’s a long one.”

  “Looks like you got all night, buddy,” Michael said, then pushed some chips into the center of the green felt. “Hit me,” he said to the dealer, who doled out another card.

  “There was a girl. There was a guy. There was some trouble,” Colin said, summing it up.

  Michael raised his beer and quirked up his lips. “Tell me about it.”

  “What about you?”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “You know me,” he said, keeping it vague because his romantic life was…well, it was just fine and fantastic, except for that little problem of Annalise.

  “You’re still hung up on her, aren’t you?”

  Michael scoffed, dismissing the idea that he was mooning over a girl. “Who?”

  Colin cracked up and pointed at him. “That’s a good one. That’s the best. How long did you practice to make that ‘who’ sound convincing?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Michael said as the dealer laid down an eight of hearts. His hand busted. The house scooped up all the chips.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You should just look her up. Find her.”

  “Yeah? That’s your advice? This from the guy who’s having his own woman trouble?”

  Colin nodded vigorously. “You’ll always wonder ‘what if.’ Better to try than to keep asking. Better to find your what-if woman than to wonder if she’s asking the same questions.”

  It must be obvious she’d been on his mind, even though he hadn’t seen her in years. Not since he’d bumped into her at the airport in France, and they’d had an hour together on a layover. He didn’t think he’d hear from her again, and then she’d reached out to him last week.

  He pushed her out of his mind as his brother-in-law’s friend Mindy walked toward them—he’d invited the cute blonde to join him for cards. He wanted to talk to her about something he’d heard the other day when he’d visited his dad’s old friends. Something about trouble at his dad’s company from way back when, and some details he recalled his father sharing with him at the time. He wanted to see if it added up to anything. Plus, he liked spending time with Mindy. She was a straight shooter, and he liked that in a woman. Liked the way she looked, too, in that little skirt she wore. She waved when she spotted him, and he tipped his chin and patted the stool next to him.

  “What about you? How are we going to get you out of the girl trouble you’re in?” he asked his brother before Mindy arrived.

  Colin sighed heavily. “That is the million-dollar question, and I don’t know that I have the answer. About the only one who might is John Winston.”

  Then Mindy joined them, giving him a quick hug, and doing the same for Colin. Time to set thoughts of other women aside.

  * * *

  When Colin woke up at dawn, the sun streaming through the open window in his house, he didn’t embark on his usual Saturday morning routine. The mountains called to him, but he ignored them. The lake wanted his company, but it would survive without him today. No gym, no workout, and no quiet contemplation.

  There was one thing he had to do, so he lobbed a call to his youngest sibling and suggested a road trip.

  Marcus was game. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

  Colin suspected this was why Marcus had wanted to get to know his siblings. Not necessarily for a trip like this, but to be invited. To be included.

  Two hours and one hundred miles later, they were drinking Slushees and arguing over whether rock music was better than hip-hop. Marcus kept trying to take control of the radio, tuning in to stations Colin didn’t want to listen to. Colin gave Marcus a hard time because that was in the how-to-be-a-brother handbook, and the hazing made the kid laugh.

  At the next gas station, they added Doritos to the haul. Colin ripped open the bag. “I think this might make my system go into shock. It’s the first true junk food I’ve had in ages.”

  Marcus scoffed. “Dude. You drink soda all the time. Your body’s not a temple twenty-four-seven.”

  “Touché. I just can’t give up the hard stuff, I guess. Me and Diet Coke—we’re like this,” he said, twisting his index and middle finger together. “Diet Coke has gotten me through many moments of temptation.”

  “Then you need to keep worshiping the almighty beverage,” he said.

  They returned to his car and plowed through Doritos, Peanut M&Ms, and more Diet Coke as they drove.

  By one p.m., they pulled into the lot at Hawthorne. Colin froze momentarily at the gate as he showed his ID. It was as if all his systems simply stopped functioning for a few seconds. Not because he was nervous. Not because he was scared.

  He didn’t feel either of those emotions.

  Instead, astonishment gripped him.

  He was amazed that the woman who had given birth to him had lived eighteen years behind this fence, past that barbed wire, beyond the concrete walls.

  Ryan had told him that today was a visiting day, but Dora Prince wasn’t expecting them. Colin wasn’t here for her, though, or for the investigation. He didn’t come to question her, or obtain evidence. He had nothing to ask her. That wasn’t his job. That wasn’t his role.

  He was here for the healing.

  As much as he’d tried to dismiss Elle’s suggestion, it had hovered at the front of his brain for the last week. To keep moving forward in his life, whether with Elle or without her, he had another step to take.

  Recovery was a daily practice. It didn’t end.
He would always be unfinished, but this was part of coming to peace with his unfinished self.

  Before they entered the visiting room he turned to Marcus and said, “Bet you didn’t think you’d be here with me visiting our mom today, did you?”

  Marcus shook his head. “Nope. But is it weird to say I’m glad we’re here?”

  Colin managed a small smile. “It’s not. Let’s go see her.”

  “Let’s do it,” Marcus echoed as they entered the cold, concrete visiting room.

  A minute later, a woman in orange walked through the door, a corrections officer at her side.

  Colin felt nothing and he felt everything.

  She was the woman who’d raised him for thirteen years, and she was the woman he’d hated for eighteen years. She was the murderer and the mother. She was everything he never wanted to be, and then he’d become like her in ways he never wanted.

  She was a prisoner, and she was a human being. One who still felt emotions, because oceans poured from her eyes, and they were tears of joy, as if all she’d ever wanted was to see her kids.

  Despite all his efforts to remain stoic, a lump rose in his throat.

  “My babies,” she said, crossing the distance in a nanosecond and wrapping her two youngest kids in the strangest hug Colin had ever experienced. That was no small feat for her to hug two men, considering both towered over her tiny frame. “My babies, my babies, my babies,” she sobbed.

  She couldn’t stop weeping, or saying their names.

  Eventually, the corrections officer made her let go. The front of Colin’s shirt was wet from her tears.

  “Colin,” she said with a crazed kind of joy as she looked at him. Then, she shifted her gaze. “Marcus.”

  “Hi,” Marcus said, and his voice seemed horribly dry as he added, “Mom.”

  Colin couldn’t bring himself to call her that. But he had something else to say to her. He clapped Marcus on the shoulder and met his mother’s eyes.

  “You don’t have to worry about Marcus anymore, because he has brothers and a sister who will look out for him. He has a good family on the outside. And I want you to know we’re going to do everything we can for him. He’s part of us.” He swallowed, and raised his chin up high, girding himself for the hardest part of the visit. For the reason he drove to the prison for the first time in years.

  A piece of his heart had been metal, an alloy of shame and guilt. With words like a scalpel, he cut it from his body. “Because I’m a good man,” he said, letting go of the hate, letting it crumble to the ground. It couldn’t weigh him down any longer. “I had a good father, and you have good kids. All of them.”

  Then, because it was the compassionate thing to do, he sat down with her and spent the next hour listening to her talk.

  On the ride home, he and Marcus stopped for a burger, then John Winston called to give him the news he’d been waiting for.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Elle’s heart still raced furiously. That had been a hell of a game of laser tag. It was made all the better by Colin’s news.

  She hung up and turned to her son as they walked toward the rental counter to return the laser tag equipment. “My text message stalker was arrested this morning.”

  Alex punched the air. “Yes! That is awesome.”

  “The cops got him on grand larceny. He stole two dozen iPhones.”

  Alex scoffed. “Androids are way better phones. Better games on them,” he said, and Elle smiled because her son hadn’t spiraled. He hadn’t returned to the silent boy he was before. In fact¸ his temporary sullenness had ended last night when she arrived home—before she’d even told him she’d broken it off with Colin. She was glad that he’d come around before this news because it meant he was stronger than he’d been before—that he was finding the internal resources to deal with the highs and lows of life.

  “Anyway, he’s in jail now. Colin just talked to the detective who has been working on his father’s case,” she said, before they reached the counter.

  Alex stopped in his tracks. “You said in the car the other day, when you were talking about the messages, that Colin was ‘working on it.’ What did you mean?” he asked, his voice softer now. He hadn’t let her explain the other day; he hadn’t wanted to listen. He wanted to now.

  “He took it upon himself to find out who the guy was. He studied the texts, and he researched a number of possibilities as to who was sending them, and he used every tool at his disposal. Instagram, Facebook, and then good old-fashioned elbow grease. He pulled together clues from things people had said, from pictures he had seen, and when Lee Stefano posted again, Colin was ready, and he was able to track him down and give the info to the police.”

  Alex whistled in admiration. “That’s impressive. That’s some serious detective work.”

  She smiled, a burst of pride surging inside her over what Colin had done. “Yes. Yes it is.” She shifted gears. She needed to talk to her son, to let him know that they were going to have to learn to roll with the punches and not always retreat. “I made a decision to stop seeing him when this got too complicated. I made a choice because you’re my top priority and you always will be. But I also want you to know that I won’t always be able to step back. In this case, it was a choice I could make. But there will be other times when we have to go into the fire. When we have to face it and walk through it and be strong. I know you have it in you,” she said, wrapping her hand around his arm and squeezing.

  He nodded solemnly. “I can handle it. I’m sorry I flipped out.”

  “There’s no need to be sorry. You did nothing wrong. But I want you to know, too, that whatever challenges come our way, we’ll tackle them together.”

  “Hmmm,” Alex mused as they headed to the arcade gallery.

  “Hmmm what?”

  “That’s pretty cool,” Alex said, like an admission. His voice was deeper now; it had officially changed.

  She furrowed her brow. “What’s cool?”

  “That Colin did that for you. That he didn’t stop until he’d solved the problem. Dad was never like that. He didn’t solve problems. He only caused them.”

  She looped an arm around him, her heart lighting up. “Colin didn’t just do it for me. Or for us. He did it because it was the right thing to do. He’s that kind of a guy.”

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  She gave him a noogie. “You’re too observant for your own good.” She pointed to the motorcycle game. “Let’s go kick some ass on the road.”

  * * *

  John Winston removed his shades when he spotted the young man waiting at a picnic table in the park. Though it was a Sunday morning, the park was quiet, and the picnic tables were far enough away from the playground for a private conversation. Marcus had said he didn’t want to meet at his apartment or at the store where he worked, and not anyplace where someone might see him. John had chosen a park thirty minutes outside of Vegas.

  The teen sat on the table itself, head down, tapping away on his phone. When John reached him, he noticed the kid was swiping pages in a book.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” John said.

  “Thanks for meeting me here.”

  John took a seat next to him on top of the green slatted wood of the table.

  “So you arrested Lee Stefano yesterday?”

  John nodded. “My guys found him Saturday morning at his place. Same place that was tagged in the photos,” he said. It was almost as if the thief wanted to be taken in. Or more likely, that he wanted his “Sinner Stripes,” as they were called. Stefano’s son wanted to be able to say he served time, like his dad. Now that John had him in custody, he was hoping Lee would talk. Would tell him more about T.J. and Kenny. Tell him where to find them. John Winston wanted nothing more than to see those two men behind bars for the rest of their lives, and Stefano’s son might very well be the linchpin to making that happen. Lee’s mother was the one who’d tipped off the cops in the first place about the role T.J. and Kenny had played in
the murder of Thomas Paige two decades ago.

  That was their first accessory to murder.

  Didn’t seem to have been their last.

  John’s blood boiled over the evidence he’d amassed linking those two men to other crimes, and more unsolved murders. By all accounts, T.J. Nelson had embraced his job as the broker of Stefano’s hits, working with other gunmen over the years that followed, taking his role as the planner and plotter to a new level. He was the man pulling the strings on hits for the Sinners, and Kenny was his right-hand guy. John was determined to find them, especially since he’d learned that T.J. had had words with Thomas Paige several weeks before the man was killed. John was talking to other witnesses later today who knew more about that encounter, and he fiercely hoped he’d be able to link all the details together and track down the Nelson cousins.

  They were tough to nab. Harder to find. They’d earned some kind of protection from their brothers in the gang. Some of that protection had come in the form of Lee Stefano trying to keep Marcus quiet by intimidating the social worker he’d been confiding in. John wasn’t one hundred percent sure why those men wanted Marcus’s mouth zipped, but he had a few good leads. Marcus was untouchable; they’d never hurt him. But they needed him to keep their secrets quiet, so they’d tried to shut him down.

  John, however, needed Marcus to talk. He believed that Marcus knew more than he’d told him when they met a week ago.

  “Is Lee going to leave Elle alone now?” Marcus asked.

  Maybe the threat to someone he cared about would push him into talking finally. “Yes, we’ve got him. And I think we can get him to give up some info on Kenny and T.J.”

  “What about my stepmom, though? Will they leave her alone?”

  John arched an eyebrow. This was news to him. “Someone sending her harassing messages, too?”

  Marcus nodded, his young eyes etched with worry. “I saw her a few days ago, at Baskin Robbins with my little sisters. I overheard her talking on the phone. I think she’s worried that those guys are going after her.”