No Laughing Matter: Lennox Brothers Romantic Comedy Read online

  The officer grabbed one of my wrists and jerked it roughly behind my back. Cold hard metal clamped around my wrist, then he yanked the other hand down too.

  He pulled me up onto my feet, and I saw Frankie, Santino, and a whole lot of other men were on their knees with their hands also handcuffed behind their backs. There were far more of them than I’d realized were in the house.

  It had seemed like dozens of cops had streamed in, but my terrified brain must have conjured some of them, because there were only about ten cops in the living room standing over Santino and his friends. Still, the place was full.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. My voice was hoarse and raspy, and I was trembling. My legs felt too weak to support me.

  “You’re under arrest,” growled the policeman.

  “I haven’t done anything, I swear. I just work for him.” Talking was an effort.

  “You admit working for him?”

  “I don’t do anything illegal. Just some office work and picking up soap ducks.”

  “Picking up what?”

  Before I could answer, the front door flew open and a big man burst in, his boots thundering over the floor. “Carlotta! What the hell are you doing here?”

  My jaw dropped and I gaped at the man, sure my eyes had to be playing tricks. Mason was here? Mason was wearing a bulky bulletproof vest and carrying a gun?

  Mason was a cop?

  He turned to the officer who’d cuffed me. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She’s the courier.”

  Mason’s eyes widened, then he drilled a thunderous frown into me. “You’re the courier? You’ve been trafficking drugs?”

  I tried to answer, but no words came out. This was why Mason was in San Dante. He wasn’t a bodyguard. He’d been lying to me.

  A wave of dizziness made me sag. Was this even real? Could I be lost in one of Mom’s fantasies? Was I having some kind of hallucination?

  “How the hell did you get mixed up with that scumbag?” Mason sounded angry. Spots of red had formed on his cheeks.

  My breath hitched. The handcuffs were hurting my wrists and the cop was gripping my arm too hard, his rough fingers digging into my flesh. Turning my shoulder, I tried to show Mason that my hands were cuffed behind my back.

  “Please, get me out of here,” I begged.

  He hesitated for a moment, and I could read his expression like one of Mom’s books. He was weighing his feelings for me against his job.

  The job he was married to. The job that meant everything to him.

  A muscle ticked in his jaw and his eyes darkened with regret. “I wish it were that easy.”

  Something closed in my chest like a door slamming shut.

  The cop’s fingers dug harder into my arm. “I’m taking you to the station.” He tugged me forward, dragging me toward the door. “You’re being charged with trafficking narcotics. Do you understand?”

  I couldn’t answer. I was too busy trying to keep myself upright on legs that had turned to water.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Carlotta

  Being in jail was nothing like I’d expected.

  Not that I’d actually expected to do time. But if I’d ever wondered what it might be like behind bars, I wouldn’t have guessed how endless the hours would seem.

  If I had a tin cup, I’d rattle it against the bars. If I had a ball, I’d throw it against the wall to wile the long, slow day away.

  Last night I hadn’t even bothered to close my eyes. All I did was count the cracks in the cold, gray ceiling. And this morning I was still counting them. In jail, it was too bright and loud to sleep. The stench of the toilet was only slightly more offensive than my thin mattress and blanket, and my cellmate snored.

  I’d never imagined I could be so miserable.

  Somehow I hadn’t run out of tears yet. If a regular human body usually consisted of eighty percent water, my body must have been down to at least half that.

  After counting every ceiling crack a million times over, I started to sing. There was only one song that suited this place: The Folsom Prison Blues. Only I changed the lyrics.

  “…I killed a girl in lockup. Because she set me up.”

  “Enough,” groaned my cellmate, putting her hands over her ears. “Would you stop already?”

  I sat up and looked over at her. All this time I’d assumed if I ever went to jail, the scariest part would be becoming someone’s prison bitch and being threatened with a shanking. But I was so angry with my cellmate, she was the one who should be afraid. She should count herself lucky I had no idea how to make a shank.

  “I didn’t set you up,” Faith said petulantly. “Blame Santino.”

  “Oh, I do blame Santino. He’s mostly at fault, but you deserve your share.” I put on a falsetto voice, mimicking the way she spoke. “Just pick up some ugly raccoon balls and soap ducks that smell like puke, Carlotta. Nothing illegal going on here, Carlotta.”

  “I had bills to pay.” Faith sounded defensive. “And I didn’t know how big the operation was. I thought they were only bringing in a small amount of drugs.”

  “Oh well, in that case, I’ll only shank you a little bit.”

  Faith’s sarcasm detector must have been broken, because she looked hopeful. “You get it, right? It was easy money.”

  “Easy?” I let out a bitter laugh. “You think this is easy?”

  She let out a groan and rolled over onto her back. “How much time do you think they’ll give us?” Without gel, her hair flopped over her eyes. And they’d made her take out her piercings. She looked younger and more vulnerable than when we’d worked together, and I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for her.

  But unlike me, she’d known what she was doing.

  “Drug traffickers get life,” I snapped.

  “Please, no. That can’t happen.” She closed her eyes. “Can you imagine doing life in jail? It’s been, what? Twenty-one hours? And they won’t even let me have my phone. Being locked up is driving me crazy.”

  “It’s only been twenty-one hours?” I let out a long sigh. “It feels like twenty-one years.”

  For at least two of those hours, I’d been in an interview room answering questions. I’d spent at least fifteen hours in tears. And for the entire twenty-one hours, there hadn’t been a single sign of Mason.

  In spite of the fact he’d let the policemen drag me away from Santino’s without so much as a single protest, I’d still found myself hoping Mason would sweep in and rescue me. But that hope had slowly died. Though he’d said he couldn’t resist helping a damsel in distress, it turned out he was no knight.

  I was on my own.

  And I’d been going over and over everything that had happened, remembering how Mason had mysteriously turned up outside Santino’s the evening I went to his party and fell in the pool. Then Mason had shown up at my house the next day. In fact, he’d popped up over and over again. And when he’d asked all those questions about the night of the party, how had I not realized he was pumping me for information?

  Had it all been a game to him? Was he using me to get to Santino and Frankie the whole time?

  Once again, I was forced to go back through my past and adjust the way I remembered everything to line up with the facts instead of the lies I’d been fed. It felt even worse than when I’d found out about Mom’s affair and saw my childhood in a whole new light.

  All I’d wanted from Mason was honesty. But he hadn’t just tricked me. He’d made me feel important. He’d made me believe he cared about me. Then he’d jerked reality out from under my feet, and made me doubt everything.

  That was what hurt most of all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mason

  Griffin sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him.

  “What the fuck happened, Lennox?” he growled. “I heard you’re screwing one of the cartel’s couriers, and you charged into the middle of the bust. Tell me it’s not true.”

  My hands were fists, the phon
e clenched so tightly my knuckles were white. But I kept my voice calm, channeling Asher’s level of cool. “It wasn’t that bad. The targets were cuffed and on the ground. I stayed out of their line of sight.” At least, I hoped so, but I couldn’t be a hundred percent certain. If they’d seen me, my cover could have been blown, but at the time I hadn’t cared.

  “First you pass up a chance to bring down Diamond, and now this? You were my best agent. The golden fucking star of the agency. What’s got into you?”

  “I’m calling to offer you a deal. I’ll come to Houston and bring down Diamond, however long it takes. And in return, the DA will drop all charges against Carlotta Watson. She was the courier, but she had no idea there were drugs in the car. She was a patsy who didn’t know what she was getting into. If her case went to court, the prosecutor would have their work cut out to get a conviction.”

  “You think I can convince the DA to let off a drug trafficker?”

  “I know you can.”

  He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, the anger was gone from his voice. “I’ll need you to get your ass to Houston tomorrow morning.”

  “Promise me she’ll walk free, and I’ll catch an early flight.”

  I couldn’t believe I was committing myself back into the nightmare of Houston. Months or years of constant lies, of looking over my shoulder, of becoming one of the scumbags. My stomach was full of bile. But I’d already spent hours on the phone with every big shot I knew, pulling strings, making promises, trying every other way I could think of to get Carlotta out of this mess. Griffin was my last chance.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  “I’ll be at the lockup in an hour. Make sure Carlotta’s out by then so I can drive her home.”

  “Jeezus wept, it’ll take more than an hour. You realize the fast talking I’ll have to do?”

  “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  He huffed out a loud breath. “For fuck’s sake, Lennox. I’ll tell them to call you when they’re letting her out.”

  “Tell them to make it quick.”

  “You’d better be in my office tomorrow morning, ready for briefing.” Griffin hung up.

  I found Asher and Kade sitting out on Asher’s back deck, drinking sodas and talking.

  My heart was hurting, but I grabbed a soda and sat down with them as though I didn’t have a care in the world. I even managed to force a smile onto my face. This would be my last drink with my brothers. No point in spoiling it by making them worry.

  Asher seemed lighter and more relaxed since the drug bust. Putting Santino behind bars had eased some weight from his shoulders. But he took one look at me and put his drink down.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean?” My forced smile faded.

  Kade frowned. “Tell us what happened.”

  Should have known I couldn’t hide anything from them.

  “I’m going back to Houston in the morning.” I stared out at the ocean, pretending to be fascinated by the surfers riding waves.

  “For how long?” demanded Kade.

  “I don’t know. A year. Probably more. Maybe less, if I get a lucky break.”

  “I thought you’d decided to stay in San Dante,” said Asher.

  “I changed my mind.”

  “You cut a deal.”

  I said nothing. They’d been watching the arrest with me from the window when we saw Carlotta being pulled to her feet in handcuffs, right in the middle of it. I’d rushed over without a second thought. Funny how she was able to do that to me.

  Kade rocked back on his chair. “I guess you had to agree to go back? If only you’d known Carlotta was working for those guys, you could have stopped her.”

  “Yeah,” I said glumly. “I would have stopped her. Only that could have tipped off Santino to the fact we were watching him. And Frankie might not be behind bars right now.” I pointed my soda bottle at Kade. “Remember how it felt when we were locked in the apartment and Mom didn’t come home? Frankie was responsible for that.” Then I swiveled the bottle toward Asher. “You broke your arm to get us out of there. Now Frankie won’t get to screw up any more lives. He’s in jail where he belongs.”

  “At what cost?” Asher frowned. “Now you have to sacrifice yourself again.”

  “I couldn’t be more glad Frankie’s going to jail,” added Kade. “But you deserve to be happy. You shouldn’t have to give that up.”

  “Going back to Houston will be good. My work’s important, and I can do a lot of good there. Save some lives.”

  Kade’s mouth twisted. “How can you work undercover when you’re such a bad actor? It’s obvious you don’t want to go. Stop pretending.”

  “If you insist on going, at least ask Carlotta to wait for you,” said Asher.

  I shook my head, wiping condensation from the side of my soda bottle with intense concentration.

  “Why not?” asked Kade. “After all, you’re sacrificing yourself for her.”

  “You can’t tell her anything.” I glared at my brothers. “Promise me. Not a word.”

  “We won’t,” said Asher. “As long as you tell her how you feel about her before you go.”

  “I can’t. That wouldn’t be fair on her.”

  This operation was so dangerous, I might come back in a body bag. Not that I’d admit that to my brothers. And no matter how shitty it felt, I had to keep lying to Carlotta.

  “Stop being stubborn, and just be honest with her,” Kade said, as though it were really that easy.

  I stared at the surfers, riding the waves without a care in the world. The setting sun was spectacular, the sky almost as beautiful as when Carlotta and I had sat on the beach and eaten ice cream after her rehearsal. My chest ached at the memory of licking ice cream from her cheek. The sensation of happiness had been so strong, I could still feel its echo.

  I’d made a serious mistake trying to create perfect memories with Carlotta that I could take back to Houston. It had only made things harder. I had to stop thinking about her. Stop dreaming about her. Stop being reminded of her every damn time I saw a sunset, or heard a woman laugh, or smelled peanut butter. Because everything in the damn world seemed to make me think of her.

  My phone rang and Griffin said, “They’re letting her out now.”

  I didn’t waste any time getting to the jail where Carlotta was being held. But when I pulled up outside, she was already walking out with her mother. Trixie had an arm around Carlotta, and with a jolt I realized it was the first time I’d ever seen her mother hug her.

  Carlotta was pale, with dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted and miserable. Getting out of the car, my chest tightened so it was hard to breathe.

  “What are you doing here?” snapped Trixie. “My daughter doesn’t want to see you.”

  I ignored her, meeting Carlotta’s gaze. “I need to talk to you. Please.”

  Carlotta had no reason to trust me, no reason to agree. My name would have been left out of any deal Griffin might have made, so she’d have no idea why the DA had decided to drop the charges and release her. As far as she knew, I was the asshole who’d walked away when she needed me most.

  But maybe she saw the pain in my eyes, because she nodded and stepped away from her mother.

  “Give us a moment, Mom.”

  In spite of her mother’s angry protests, Carlotta followed me to a quieter spot that wasn’t in the shadow of the large, depressing jail.

  When I turned to face her, all I could say was, “I’m sorry.”

  She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Okay.” Her tone was flat. Like she was too exhausted to care.

  “I had no idea you were working for Santino.”

  “You’re a cop.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I really do work as a bodyguard, but I also work for the DEA. The part about me being an agent is a secret. Nobody can know.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, her expression pained.
“I’m sick of secrets.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, hating myself for what I was about to ask. “But I need you not to tell anyone. Not Natalie, or your mother, or anyone. Can you do that for me?”

  “You’re asking me to lie for you?”

  “I’m asking you not to say anything.”

  She looked up at the sky, her hands twisting in front of her. “Mason, I’m tired. I just want to go home.”

  I had to touch her. More than anything, I ached to put my arms around her, pull her against me, and promise never to let anything bad happen to her again. Instead, I rested one hand lightly on her arm, so she could pull away if she needed to.

  “If I’d known you were working for Santino, I would never have let this happen.”

  She stared down at my hand with a blank, detached look, as though it was something foreign and unwelcome, but she didn’t care enough about it to push it off.

  I took a breath, trying to stop my throat from closing. “I lied to you about my job. But nothing else was a lie. The way I feel about you is true. It’s real. More real than anything I’ve ever felt.”

  Her eyes lifted to mine. They were glistening. She was fighting tears, but her expression was tight. As though she just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry herself to sleep.

  “Carlotta,” snapped her mother. “It’s time to go.”

  “I have to leave for Houston in the morning,” I said.

  “What are you going to do in Houston?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You still can’t be straight with me? Even now?”

  I wanted to ask her to wait for me. To tell her that I loved her, and I would give anything, do anything, to keep her safe. That I wished with all my heart we could be together.

  But that wouldn’t be fair. I couldn’t pretend I was coming back for her when I might never be able to.

  Still, it was impossible to fight my urge to hold her. Putting my arms around her, I drew her to me. Her body stiffened as I pressed my lips against her forehead, even as I closed my eyes so I would always remember the feel of her skin and the scent of her hair.