A scalding shower might help marginally, he decided. Walking by Mike’s bedroom, he heard the snores emitting and, not feeling kind, made the house shake when he slammed the bathroom door. It brought a sliver of grim satisfaction.

The hot shower did not, as it brought more thoughts of Mia.

Next time she came knocking, wearing only thin silk, dripping wet, eyes large and luminous, mouth full and wanting his, he wouldn’t open the door.

Yeah, right.

But he sure as hell wouldn’t dream about her all night. He had other things to be thinking about. Such as his job and how he’d been given every troubled kid in the entire school because he was the new guy. But he’d deal with that, and his resident pot smoker. He’d deal with a boneheaded principal who only cared about the bottom line and not which kids were slipping through the cracks.

And he’d deal with his brother, who was too old to still be slipping. He’d deal with all of it and be fine, like always.

He turned off the water only when it ran out of hot. Deal with that, Mike. He’d just reached for his towel when he heard it. Or felt it, rather. The heavy, rhythmic boom of a low bass so loud it hit in tune with his every heartbeat.

This street was mostly fancy white-bread, so the music, sounding like rap now that he opened his bathroom window and stuck his head out, wasn’t the typical music for the crowd that lived here.

Interesting.

More interesting, the music came from the direction of Mia’s house. He pulled on his clothes and walked into the kitchen.

Mike had gotten up and sat at the table with a pad of paper and a pencil. Shocking, as Mike didn’t usually rise before noon. His back to Kevin, he was hunched over the paper, erasing something and making a low-pitched sound that from a hearing person would have been frustrated muttering.

Kevin peeked over his shoulder.

To do, Mike had written.

Whatever he’d written beneath that he was now desperately erasing. The page ripped and he growled, tearing the piece of paper off the pad, crumpling it up, and tossing it in the corner with a grand gesture.

When he saw Kevin, he went still for a startled beat, then put on a lazy smile. Morning.

What was that? You making a to-do list?

Mike’s smile faded. So?

So you’ve never been organized before. What was on it?

A reminder to pick up your no-more-nosy pills.

Funny. Kevin went for the piece of paper, but Mike shoved him back, hard enough that he plowed into the refrigerator. The bag of potato chips on top of it hit him in the head, raining chips all over him.

Mike smirked.

Kevin smirked back, then dove for the paper.

Mike dove, too, and they landed in a heap on the floor, crunching chips into dust beneath them.

Specifically beneath Kevin, who was on the bottom, damn it. “Get off, you lug—oomph,” he said, seeing stars when Mike landed his elbow in his ribs.

Taking advantage of Kevin’s pain, Mike grabbed for the paper, but Kevin flipped him, then inched forward for the paper just out of reach.

Mike put a knee in his back, let out a huff that Kevin knew was a laugh, and while Kevin gaped for air like a fish, Mike snatched the paper, tearing it into little bits.

They both got to their knees, breathing like lunatics, crumbs of chips falling off of Kevin.

You still fight dirty, Kevin signed, then brushed himself off.

Mike grinned. Thank you.

Kevin shook his head, disgusted with the both of them. What the hell is wrong with you?

Mike looked at him but ultimately shook his head and turned away.

Kevin pulled him back around, half braced for another wrestling session.

Mike tried a smile, but it failed to reach any real wattage. You ever get tired of rescuing me?

Hell, yes!

So why do you?

Well, if that wasn’t the question of the hour. He’d been doing it for so long it had become second nature, ever since that terrifying morning when their mother had gone out shopping and said to Kevin, “Watch over Mikey.” Kevin would never forget standing there in the ER waiting room, just a little kid himself, his mother sobbing as she yelled at him, “You were supposed to watch Mikey!”

No sane person would blame the kid, but sometimes guilt had nothing to do with being sane.

Now Mike was waiting for an answer, and the only one Kevin had couldn’t be uttered. So he shrugged. Don’t make me look at that too closely or I’ll remember how pissed off I am at you.

Mike looked at his feet, huffed out a breath, then looked up again. I don’t want to be this guy anymore.

What guy?

The happy-go-lucky f**king loser.

Kevin’s heart squeezed, and he shook his head. You’re not a loser.

I don’t have any money, I mooch off my brother for a place to live, and I don’t have a job.

You’re going to get that job you interviewed for.

I didn’t get the f**king job, all right? They cancelled the interview. They went with someone with a better resume, someone who’s kept a job longer than a week.

Ah, hell. I’m sorry.

Yeah, and I was looking so forward to sitting at a computer for ten hours a day typing my fingers to the bone entering data processing info. He moved toward the door.

Kevin had promised himself no more interfering, no more rescuing. And yet he still rushed to get in front of his brother, putting his back to the door so Mike couldn’t slam out. I’ve been thinking.

Mike lifted a brow. Don’t hurt yourself.

Shut up and listen. I need help at the teen center.

Mike’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. I thought the teen center’s up for sale, and that once the building sells, the teen center is goners.

Right. But until that happens, I need someone.

I don’t want a pity job.

Ah, come on. You know damn well there’s no such thing as a “pity” job. A pity fuck, maybe, but not a pity job.

Mike wouldn’t take the job. He wouldn’t, because deep down, Kevin was convinced, Mike liked being unemployed, liked the handouts, the free ride.

The pity.

But it was just as hard to turn his back on the guy now as it had been when Mike was a little kid, not hearing the shouted warning of some danger coming from behind…

I have no experience, Mike pointed out.

It’s organizing sports and events. Easy stuff.

Mike let out a snort that didn’t have any humor in it and shoved his fingers through his hair.

Kevin waited.

When Mike finally nodded, he looked extremely defenseless.

So you’ll do it? You’ll interview?

I’ll think about it. Mike pushed Kevin clear of the front door and opened it.

Kevin held him back. You’ll interview? he repeated.

Jesus, you don’t need to shout. Mike smiled at his own joke, showing a shadow of his old self. I said I’ll think about it.

Four o’clock. I’ll have the board members come. Be there.

Nodding, he turned to the door, then looked back. You have a potato chip in your ear.

And then he was gone.

Kevin shook his head and more chips fell. He gathered his keys and helmet and headed out, too.

The rap was still booming. The house immediately to his left was Mr. and Mrs. Dickenson. They were a couple in their fifties who enjoyed cruises to Mexico, morning walks through the hills, and opera. Not rap.

“Turn that crap down!” boomed a female voice through the morning air.

He felt the grin split his face, and he eyed the second house on his left.

Mia’s.

Seems she and Hope were at least communicating. He headed down the walk toward his bike, then stopped when he heard the click-click-clicking of heels. This was accompanied by a low grumbling in one Mia Appleby’s soft, silky voice as she walked to her car.

More like strutted. She was dressed to the hilt in some soft blue silky business suit and do-me heels, muttering, “I’m going to kill myself if I have to listen to that track one more time.” At the sight of him, she stopped.

Before his eyes, she drew herself up to her full height, summoning a smile that didn’t come even close to her eyes. “Hey.”

“Wow,” he said. “I’ve now seen more fake smiles this morning than I have all week long.”

Her smile congealed, then vanished altogether. She pressed a finger to her eye. “Twitching again. Damn it.”

“Going well in there, huh?” He nodded back toward her house, from which the ear-splitting rap still came.

“Define ‘well.’”

“In this case, I’d say that it meant no one had been murdered.”

“Well, then, yes, it’s going well. Have you ever actually lived with a teenager? They’re like—”

“Aliens?” he suggested helpfully, thinking of his brother.

“Exactly.” She opened her car door, tossed in her briefcase, then glanced back at the house.

The music still blared from the cracks.

With a gritting of her teeth, she stalked halfway back up the walk, put her hands around her mouth, and yelled, “Your two minutes are gone! Now get your—”

The music shut off.

Mia huffed and adjusted her jacket. In her gravity-defying, towering heels, she whirled back to her car. “Have a good day,” she said tightly and got behind the wheel, sliding on mirrored sunglasses that looked as expensive as the rest of her.

“You, too,” he said to one of the biggest mistakes he’d ever made, straddling his bike, not missing the fact that she watched him do so.

He drove off, still feeling her gaze on him. He wasn’t sure what to do with that, or with the fact that it turned him on, though his erection shriveled quick enough when he got to the school and Mrs. Stacy looked at him over her spectacles as if he was a bug on her windshield.

“You have a visitor,” she said in her snooty, holier-than-thou voice. “A…” She consulted the sign-in-clipboard. “A Beth Moore.”

Ah, hell. Just what he didn’t need, Beth chewing him out this early in the morning. They’d been married once, for a whole week, and he still cringed when he thought of it. Maybe it wasn’t too late to sneak out, maybe—

“Kevin,” Beth said behind him.

With a grimace, he turned and faced another of his biggest mistakes.

Chapter Eight

You always keep your clients waiting?” Beth asked coolly as she followed Kevin out of the school to the teen center, where he’d left his lesson plan for the day.

“Clients?” He shook his head. “You’re not my client.”

“My daughter is.”

“Amber’s a kid, Beth. And, no, I don’t keep the kids waiting.”

She followed him into his office, which was the size of a postage stamp and held a beat-up old desk and a file cabinet with drawers that didn’t shut all the way.

Beth tapped her foot, dressed to kill in a bloodred suit that showed off her assets, which had only improved with time and her surgeon’s help. Deciding to display those assets, she perched prettily on the corner of his desk, crossing her legs to optimize the effect of their length.

Once upon a time he’d loved those legs, but he was eighteen and extremely stupid. “What do you need?” he asked.

“Amber’s going to be here for a few weeks.” She patted her perfectly coiffed blond hair and pulled out a small compact from her pocket to check her makeup, also perfect. But Kevin knew beneath that cool exterior beat a self-aware, needy, high-maintenance heart.

“God knows why, but the girl loves you,” she said, sounding a little baffled.

Amber was Beth’s daughter from her third—or was it fourth?—marriage. A Beth clone, Amber often found trouble simply because she felt lost in the shuffle.

“Just a warning—keep her away from the boys. She’s smitten.”

“By who?”

“By all of them.” Beth pushed away from the desk and sauntered close, running a finger over a pec. “You’re looking good, Kevin. Why is it men age so fine and women sag?”

He wasn’t going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

“Want to come over tonight?”

“So you can have my ass kicked again?”

“Oh, honestly.” She huffed out a breath and waved a hand. “You’ve got to let bygones be bygones. I no longer have Daddy’s bodyguards looking for your blood. I fight my own battles now.”

“Uh huh.” He rubbed the phantom ache in his ribs from that long-ago beating. “You got a cool mil out of husband number two, right? Or was that husband number three?”

“It was four, if you’re counting.” She batted her lashes at him.

“Then don’t sell the teen center.”

“It’s too much trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“The pipes are failing.”

“I’ll fix the pipes, I’ll—”

“Oh, no,” she said with a low laugh. “If you want to discuss it, come over.” She smiled. “For old times’ sake.”

“Old times’ sake.” He put his hands on her arms and held her back from him. “Would that have been when you married me simply to piss off your father, or when you took what little savings I had and ran off to Paris for a shopping trip with your sister?”

At that moment Mike poked his head in the door. When he saw Beth, his eyes went flat.

“Well, look at you,” Beth purred at him, cocking her head. “Haven’t seen you in years.”

Mike smiled grimly, relating in that one small gesture how well he read lips. It’s been a pleasure to go so long without seeing you, he signed.

Beth shrugged and looked away, the ultimate rude gesture to the hearing-challenged. “Sorry, no comprendo.”