finger slipped under her chin and tilted it upward, so that she had to meet his eyes. “Well?”
His voice was so close it was as if he’d climbed inside her head. She wet her lips. “I—”
The blaring ring of her cell phone jolted her from her haze. Reid frowned down at her purse and shoved away from the wall.
She dug through her bag with shaking hands and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”
“Brynn, it’s me.”
She sighed. Late-night calls from her sister usually meant one of two things: she needed money or she was in some kind of trouble. “Hey, Kelsey. What’s going on?”
“Are you busy? I know it’s late, I’m sorry, I just… I need to talk with you and I couldn’t wait until morning, and I… Can you talk?”
Shit. A rambling Kelsey—never a good sign. Brynn glanced at Reid, who was now sitting on the railing of the handicap ramp, watching her intently. She turned her back to him and faced the wall. “I have a minute, what’s up?”
“No, I mean, like, talk in person. Something’s going on, and I… well, I may need to get out of town for a while. But I want to talk to you first.”
“Hold up. Leave town? What are you talking about?” She lowered her voice. “Kels, are you on something?”
“No. It’s, I… Can you just meet me at my apartment? It’s important.”
Brynn pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off the sudden pounding in her head. The last thing she felt like doing was traipsing across town at midnight to go deal with what would surely be unfounded drama, but what else could she do? Her sister had been making slow progress toward bettering her life. If she was having a bout of paranoia or had slipped up and gotten high again, Brynn had to help her through that. Plus, Kelsey had no one else to go to—never had. “Sure, I can be there in half an hour.”
Kelsey breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, B. Hurry, okay?”
“Will do. Just hold tight.” Brynn clicked her phone shut and tucked it back in her bag. She didn’t want to turn around. She could feel Reid’s stare burning into her back. God, why had she let him get so close before? She needed to institute a five-foot rule with him—anything closer than that and her hormones could not be trusted. He’d probably seen the arousal written all over her flushed face.
“Your sister okay?” he asked.
She straightened her shoulders and turned around. “Eavesdrop much?”
He shrugged, unapologetic as usual.
“She’s fine. She just wants me to stop by,” Brynn said, rummaging through her purse for her keys.
“Right now?” He looked down at his watch.
She threw him a what’s-it-to-you look, grabbed her keys, and headed in the direction of her car. His hand caught her upper arm when she passed him. “We need to talk.”
She wiggled out of his grip, the skin-to-skin contact too much for her frazzled nervous system to handle. “I don’t have time for this tonight. My sister needs me and it’s not a short drive to Quincy Heights. So this little come-to-Jesus is going to have to wait.”
His frown dipped deeper. “Quincy Heights? You can’t go there at this hour. That neighborhood’s a war zone.”
She snorted. “I grew up in neighborhoods like that. I’ll be fine.”
She started walking again, but he hopped off the railing and caught up with her. “I’ll drive you. I promise not to speak… much.”
“Yes, because a hotshot lawyer in a Brooks Brothers suit is really going to scare off the bad guys.” She halted her step and turned to face him. “Look, Reid. The last time I asked for help, you told me no. I don’t plan on asking again. So, go home. Stop acting like there is some discussion we need to have. There isn’t. Everything’s been said. Just come to work on Monday and pretend like we’ve never met. ’Cause that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He eyed her, his jaw visibly flexing, but didn’t say anything else.
Good. She’d take his broody silence as agreement. She spun on her heel and didn’t bother to look back. Reid Jamison might’ve been able to bend her to his will when she was twenty, but if he thought his sexy smile and whispered commands would get him anywhere with her now, he was more delusional than her clients.
Brynn turned her car onto her sister’s street. The apartment complex was the last residential holdout on a street littered with pawnshops, bail bondsmen, and strip clubs. Reid hadn’t been off base in his assessment of the neighborhood. The Quincy Heights area probably had more hookers, drug addicts, and shootings than any other part of the city. Unfortunately, that type of area was more familiar to Brynn than the middle-class suburb she now called home. The part of Fort Worth she’d grown up in hadn’t looked much different than this.
She parked along the curb, then opened her glove compartment to grab her mace. She may have told Reid she could handle it alone, but she wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to go out on these streets this late at night with only a few self-defense training classes under her belt. Weapons were better. She tucked the mace in her purse and climbed out of the car.
Besides a woman in stilettos and spandex standing on the corner a few yards away, the sidewalk was empty. Brynn clicked the alarm on her car and hurried to the stairwell of the three-story apartment complex. She had tried to convince her sister to move closer to her—even offered to help with the costs—but Kelsey had been dancing at the club down the street and said she was perfectly fine here.
Brynn suspected Kelsey’s reluctance had more to do with her fear of being under Brynn’s watchful eye than commuting convenience, but Brynn hadn’t pushed. Her sister was making baby steps in the right direction, and she didn’t want to scare her off by being overbearing.
Her feet ached by the time she reached the top floor. Strappy black pumps were not meant for hiking up three flights of stairs. The 3B label on her sister’s door was peeling off around the corners. She smoothed her fingers over it, but the ends curled back up again. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for whatever state her sister was in, and knocked on the door.
No answer.
She knocked again, but got the same response. With a huff, she pulled out her cell phone and called her. It went straight to voice mail. Terrific. Kelsey had probably gotten over whatever crisis she had called her about and now had gone out.
Or.
Anxiety crawled up her spine. She’d had nightmares of getting that call in the middle of the night—the one that would say something had happened to her sister. She’d received a call like that about her mother three years ago, and she’d sworn to herself at the time that she would do all she could to make sure she never got that kind of call about Kelsey. Unfortunately, Kels hadn’t always been so cooperative in helping Brynn keep that promise.
Brynn sorted through the keys on her key chain and found the one for her sister’s apartment. If nothing was wrong, Kelsey would be pissed that she’d
