32
“What time is your flight, darling?” Nana Boo asked, shattering the quiet enveloping the sitting room.
“We need to be at the airport in a few hours,” Kat answered from her seat at Carter’s side. She drew invisible circles on the back of his hand encased in hers on her lap.
Eva, seated in the large, plush chair opposite, glared as though Carter had asked her to give up her only virgin daughter for a public human sacrifice. He simply looked back, strong and patient, waiting for her to combust with everything he knew she wanted to say.
Fleetingly, Carter wondered what she saw as she glowered at him.
Did she see the love he had for her daughter? Did she see what conflict he’d gone through to be at her side? Did she see how he would lay down his life to keep her safe? Or did she see his list of crimes? Did she see him as a poster boy for the major fuckups of society? Did she regard him in the same way she regarded the animals who’d stolen her beloved husband?
Yeah, he thought pessimistically. That’s exactly how she saw him.
“I know you have a lot to say,” he muttered. “I know you have strong opinions of me.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’d rather you tell me so that maybe I can change them.”
“That won’t happen,” Eva hissed back.
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I do and do not know. I know exactly who and what you are.”
Carter held Kat’s twitching hand fast. “Could you explain to me?” He sat forward. “Everyone deserves a chance to plead their case.”
“You’d be fairly practiced at that,” Eva remarked smarmily.
“Eva.”
Everyone’s head snapped toward Nana Boo, who was gaping at her daughter in a way that made Carter sink farther into his seat. Eva glanced at her mother before her eyes dropped deferentially.
“Yes,” Carter said. “I’ve done time.”
“More than once,” Eva countered. She shook her head, bewildered. “Do you truly believe that I want my daughter with a man who considers spending time in prison an extended summer vacation?”
“I don’t see it that way.” Carter was resolute. “I’m not proud of my past.”
“Maybe so,” Eva snapped. “But the past did happen.”
“Like Dad’s past?” Kat interjected sharply.
Eva stared at her daughter for a beat, tears filling her eyes. “Don’t you dare compare him to your father,” she growled. “Your father … your father …” She bit her lip, and wrapped her arms around herself. “He may have done things he wasn’t proud of,” she continued before her eyes landed back on Carter, “but he did something to make up for it. He became someone who people admired, respected, loved—”
“Carter’s done things I admire and respect,” Kat seethed. “You have no idea what he’s overcome, what he’s fought against his entire life. You have no idea about the night that Dad died, about how Cart—”
“Kat,” Carter interrupted.
He didn’t want Eva to know about his role on the night the senator died. Not yet, anyway. This wasn’t about winning points. A muffled sob came from across the room. Carter turned from Kat to see Eva’s devastated face and Harrison stroking her hair.
“You think I have no idea about the night your father died?” she repeated breathlessly. “How can you … Katherine, that night …” She shook her head, at a loss for words. “The night your father passed was the worst night of my life,” Eva said. Tears fell down her face. “I have no idea?” she repeated, giving a harsh snort of laughter. “I have never felt fear like I did when I received that phone call: debilitating fear that grips your very core, Katherine.”
Kat dropped her chin to her chest and closed her eyes. “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“And it wasn’t just because I’d lost my husband,” she choked, “as much as I adored him, loved him. No.” She stared at Kat with shimmering eyes and the devastating memories lining her face. “The time when I was most scared, Katherine, was when I thought I’d lost you.”
Kat squeezed Carter’s hand, chewing the inside of her mouth.
“I knew your father would never let anyone hurt you, Katherine,” Eva continued. “He would have destroyed anyone who tried. But when the doctor at the hospital looked at me … with those sympathetic eyes, I was sure you were …” She clutched her teacup. “I was sure those monsters had taken you from me, too.”
“They didn’t,” Kat murmured, wiping at her left eye. “I’m here.”
“Yes, you are,” Eva countered. “With him.”
“It’s different. Carter isn’t a murderer!” Kat snapped.
“No, he’s a drug dealer. I’m so relieved,” Eva replied, disdain dripping from every word. Before Kat could respond, she continued, “Do you think your father would be happy that you took a job in a prison, working with the type of men he died saving you from? Do you think he’d be sitting here giving you two his blessing? If you do, you’re wrong.”
Before Carter could stop her, Kat shot up from her seat, eyes blazing, the tears and gentle words forgotten. “He gave me his blessing, Mom! He gave me his blessing the day we visited his grave.”
Despite Harrison’s hand and urging not to, Eva stood. “Don’t be ridiculous, Katherine. Your father wouldn’t stand for it. I am not going to stand for it! You are so much better than this.”
“You don’t have any say in my life, Mom. I’m twenty-five years old!”
“You are my daughter, and I want you safe!”
“I. AM. SAFE!”
“How can you say that?” Eva shoved an accusatory finger toward Carter. “He’s a convict, put inside for possessing cocaine, stealing cars, carrying dangerous weapons. He is not safe, and he is not who I want you with!”
“Enough!”
The room rattled with the deep, booming voice of Harrison. Carter gaped at him, speechless that he’d shouted as loud as he had, even though he’d been damn near doing the exact same thing himself. Harrison moved from his spot, behind Eva’s chair, looking pissed. “That is enough from both of you.”
Eva sighed. “Harrison, I don’t think—”
“No, Eva,” he interrupted. “Enough is enough.” He rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “I’m so tired of seeing the two of you argue and fight. It breaks my heart.” He looked at Kat. “I’ve never seen you like this. Either of you, and I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer.”
“I agree,” Nana Boo muttered from her seat in the corner of the room. “Eva, I love you, but you need to back off.”
“Back off?” Eva repeated. “Your granddaughter is ‘in love’ with a man whose wardrobe is filled with nothing but prison-issue coveralls.”
Carter almost snorted at that one.
“That may be so,” Nana Boo retorted angrily. “But what you seem to be oblivious to, is that the more you shout and dig in your heels, the more you will push them together. And if you’re not careful, you really will lose her.”
Eva blinked. Kat turned to Carter with an apologetic grimace. He took her hand and kissed her knuckles.
“Kat, come with Harrison and me,” Nana Boo instructed in a tone that denied argument. “Eva and Carter, you two stay here.” Her eyes softened when she caught Carter’s eye. “I’m sure it will be easier for you to talk without an audience.”
Eva blanched. “I am not staying in here with him.”
“Why?” Nana Boo shot back. “You afraid he’ll try to sell you an eight ball?”
Eva was rendered wide-eyed and mute while Carter smirked.
“Stay here,” Nana Boo ordered. “Talk.”
She ushered Kat and Harrison out of the room, never taking her eyes from Eva. Carter couldn’t deny he was surprised Kat hadn’t argued, but remained quiet. He fixed his eyes on Eva while she paced up and down the room like a caged animal. He glanced at the large mahogany drinks cabinet across the far side of the room and the decanter of what he prayed to Jesus was whiskey.
Bingo.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” he said with an exhausted groan. He stood and made his way over to it. “But I need a drink.”
Eva watched him pour two fingers into a crystal glass. He gestured toward her with it.
“No, thank you,” she bit back, dropping back into her seat. “It’s a little early for me.”
Carter sipped the bourbon and closed his eyes. Dutch courage never tasted so damned good. Eva avoided his stare, looking anywhere but him, staying annoyingly but not surprisingly silent. Fifteen minutes passed in the same manner until Carter couldn’t take it anymore.
“Kat’s a lot like you, ya know.”
Eva cocked an unimpressed eyebrow.
“She is,” he continued. “Caring, determined, passionate. Stubborn as all hell.”
“If this is your way of getting into my good books,” Eva said firmly, “believe me: it isn’t working.”
“Oh, I know that,” Carter agreed. “Like Kat, you don’t back down when it comes to things you believe in.”
“Katherine doesn’t know what she believes in.”
“Bullshit. Kat is the most strong-minded person I know. You don’t give her enough credit. What she believes in, she does without equivocation.”
“Impressive language,” Eva scoffed.
“Thanks. I had a good teacher.”
Eva sat back and crossed her legs. “Yes, you did. As I understand it, you had an upstanding education, which you threw away without thought so you could run around dealing drugs and boosting cars.”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” Carter remarked, sipping his drink.
“Semantics. The point is you’ve been in prison more times than most people in this country go on vacation, including your most recent stint for cocaine possession.”
The corners of Carter’s mouth pulled down impressed. “You’ve done your homework.”
“I love my daughter. Of course I’ve done my homework.” She eyed him. “I also know that you’re the main shareholder in one of the biggest companies in the continental US, worth millions, and yet you continue to live this insignificant life of crime.”
Carter cleared his throat, too unnerved to fill in the blanks. “Well, at least Kat won’t go hungry, right?”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
Obviously not.
He wound his index finger around the lip of his glass and closed his eyes. “Look, would you understand what I meant if I said that my last time in lockup, the cocaine, was my pound of flesh?”
Eva frowned. “What?”
“A pound of flesh,” he repeated, lifting his eyes to hers. “Do you know what that means?”
Bewildered, Eva answered, “A debt that must be paid?” She paused. “You dealt cocaine to pay off a debt?”
“No,” he replied. “I was caught with the cocaine to pay off a debt.”
Eva rubbed her forehead in annoyance. “I’m completely confused.”
Carter exhaled and fingered the top of the cigarette box in his jeans pocket, needing the nicotine in his blood. He sighed and leaned his elbows on his knees, detailing the story of Max and Lizzie, from the moment Max pushed him out of the way of a bullet, to the day Lizzie left.
Eva waved her hand dismissively. “And you’re telling me this because …”
Christ, she was a tough one to crack. “Because sometimes things aren’t always what they appear to be.”
“And sometimes they are exactly as they appear to be. One act of stupidity does not change a damn thing.”
“Granted,” Carter conceded. “I know I’m an asshole, I’ll be the first one to admit it.”
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she asked. “Have you any idea about the amount of sleep I lost when she began working in that … prison?”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t!” Eva snapped. “You have no idea. Being a mother is not easy, especially when your daughter insists on making everything so damned difficult.”
“Kat didn’t take the job at Kill to make your life difficult,” Carter refuted. “She took the job to overcome her fears, to overcome what terrified her and kept her awake at night.”
“And what do you know about that?” Eva spat.
“Enough.” Carter pursed his lips in an effort to reel himself in. “Look, I know about her father. I know what happened. Her teaching criminals—”
“Animals.”
“—is her pound of flesh.”
“To whom?”
“To her dad.”
Eva’s face softened and her voice dropped in volume. “What do you mean?”
“The night he passed, she promised him she would give something back. She promised him she would become a teacher and help people, the way he’d done as a politician.” Carter glanced toward the door his Peaches had gone through. “She just wanted to keep her promise. To pay her debt.”
Eva sat back in her seat and stared out the window. The snow had started falling again. “I didn’t know that.”
“Like I said,” Carter murmured. “Things aren’t always as they appear.” He took a deep breath. “I’m in love with your daughter, ma’am. I’m doing this because I want to do everything right. I’m doing this because she wants to be with me, and I want to be with her.”
Eva’s back straightened. “You barely know each other! You think because she’s told you a few secrets, that you know her?”
“I know her better than you think.”
“Oh, please! You’ve known her, what, four, five months?”
A heartbeat passed. “Try sixteen years.”
Eva’s eyes flickered, fierce yet puzzled.
Carter stared right back, waiting for the penny to drop.
Yeah, it was a big ask, but, hell, at this point what did he have to lose? He hadn’t wanted his role in saving Kat to be the deciding factor as to whether or not Eva would accept him with her daughter, but the damn woman had driven him to it with her incapacity to see him without a list of misdemeanors and felonies tacked to his fucking forehead.
Jesus, he’d even brought up the fact that he went to prison for Max. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, if not for having his ass against a wall with no way out. Desperate for Eva to see past his mistakes, he had nothing else to lay on the table.
“How have you known her for sixteen years?” Eva asked slowly. “There’s no possible way. No way.”
Despite her words of conviction, her eyes told Carter the pieces were falling into place. Her stubbornness was the only thing stopping her from seeing what was right in front of her.
“We met … in the Bronx,” Carter said quietly. “She was nine. I was eleven.”
Horror washed across Eva’s features, but it changed swiftly to emotions that were as indiscernible as they were fleeting. She was warring with herself now, battling with what she believed—he was a hardened, dangerous criminal—and the actual truth—he’d saved her daughter’s life.
“The news,” Eva stammered. “It was all over the news. Everyone knows where they were that night. Everyone knows what happened.”
Carter carried on, ignoring her accusation that he was a liar. “I heard a scream.”
Eva closed her eyes.
“I was across the street and I saw everything: the punks with the bat, Kat, your husband. Christ—it happened so damned fast. He … Your husband was on the ground. They hit him with the bat, kicked him. He tried to fight back, but there were too many of them for one man.”
Eva made a strangled sound and clapped a palm to her mouth.
“Kat was on the ground about two feet away,” Carter continued, lost in the memory. “One of the assholes had hit her.”
“Stop.”
“She was wearing a blue dress. It was dirty from the sidewalk, ripped at the sleeve. Your husband screamed at her to run. He begged her over and over, but she didn’t listen. And I knew that if those fuckers got hold of her, they’d kill her.”
Eva looked up at him finally, tears spilling down her face.
Carter put his hand on his stomach. “Something in here, deep in here, told me to help her. I just couldn’t watch them hurt her. It was so damned wrong.”
“You—you,” Eva hiccoughed, unable to form a full sentence.
“I ran to her,” Carter said. “Grabbed her arm and ran. But I had to drag her most of the way; she was small, but she fought, ya know? She was so strong.”
Eva wrapped her arms around herself, listening to him describe how he’d tackled Kat to the cold, wet ground.
“There was gunfire and she screamed, and all I could do was hold her and make sure that she didn’t run back. I figured I was doing what her old man wanted. I was doing something good.” He ran his hands across his hair. “Saving Kat’s the only good thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
Then they stared at each other for the length of two heartbeats, and he hoped they finally understood each other. They’d found their common ground. They both existed for the same reason, and, with that realization, he found it easier to breathe.
“Where did you take her?” Eva croaked.
“A doorway a couple of blocks down. Once she stopped fighting me, she cried until she fell asleep.”
“Then you left her?”
“No,” he replied. “I held her. Stroked her hair, talked to her until help came.”
“But … you disappeared.”
Carter gave a wry smile. “I already had a name with the police because of shit Max and I had done, and I knew if they caught me I’d have to answer questions. So …”
“You ran.”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you go?”
“Back to my friend’s place. Max calmed me down, helped me through the shock of what happened.”
Eva cast her eyes toward the doorway. “She knows?”
“Of course. I had to tell her.”
“How did she take it?”
Carter smiled. “In her own way. But I’m here, right?”
“Yes, you are.”
Carter exhaled and rubbed his face with a weary hand. “Look. I know we’re never going to be the best of friends. I know you’ll never see me as good enough for her, because I know that myself. And I didn’t tell you this to win points. I told you because I wanted you to see I would never ever hurt her. She’s everything to me. I want to give her everything she wants or needs. And I want you and Kat to go back to the way you were before I got involved. I hate that I caused this.”
Eva’s face glimmered with hope of the same thing. “It wasn’t just you. We’re all to blame in some part.”
“I need you to know that I’m not here to do anything but love and take care of your daughter.”
A timid smile played across Eva’s mouth. “You know,” she said wistfully, “you sound like Kat’s father when you talk like that. He had to convince my dad he was good enough for me.”
“And did he?”
“I think so.”
“Have I convinced you?”
Eva stood and walked across the room to the large window. The silence and anticipation caused Carter’s heart to race like a fucking V12 engine.
“My daughter is too much like me for her own good,” she began. “You were right about that, and I can see how much she loves you.” Her cheeks washed with an embarrassed pink. “I didn’t want to see it, but it’s clear as day. Still, having said that, I can’t overlook the fact that Kat’s putting a lot at risk by being with you.”
Carter opened his mouth to protest, but Eva held up her palm, halting his words.
“I need you to know that Kat is the most precious thing in my life. She always has been. If anything happened to her, I don’t know how I’d survive.”
He knew exactly what she meant. If Kat ever ceased to be, so would he.
“But you saved her, didn’t you?”
Carter swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You saved her when her father couldn’t. And if you hadn’t been there, then I’d have lost them both.”
“Yeah.”
“So where does that leave us?”
Carter shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s a start, right?”
Eva’s face gave nothing away.
Carter peered toward the doorway again before slowly getting to his feet. He pushed his hands into his pockets and gestured with his head in Kat’s direction.
“I’m—I’ll go and see if she’s okay.”
Eva didn’t reply, but kept her eyes on him as he walked across the room.
“Wes.”
Carter stopped and clenched his eyes shut for a brief moment, then turned back to her, a rock in his gut and a desert in his throat. “Yeah?”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “From the bottom of my heart, Wes, thank you for saving Katherine’s life.”