Cherish & Blessed (2 page)

Evan hung up, still enthusiastically cursing under his breath. Matt held out a cold open bottle of beer without commentary.

He could wait. It wouldn’t take long.

“His name is Kent and he’s in her business class and they met in July. July! How can you make that sort of decision in that short amount of time? Not to mention, not to mention—she’s twenty-one!”

Matt wisely chose not to point out how young Evan and Sherri had been when they met and fell in love and married, and hell, they had two kids by twenty-two. He imagined it was going to be brought to Evan’s attention later, when he and Miranda entered the steel cage match of their conversation.

Evan didn’t wait for a response and clearly didn’t need one. He drank half the beer, still walking circles around the kitchen as he wound down.

“She’s crazy—crazy—if she thinks I’m going to support this. She hasn’t even introduced him to me! To us. What kind of person is he? Is she hiding something? Is he? Do you know why she hasn’t introduced us?”

“Because she knows the second you have his name, you’re going to make me run a background check on him?” Matt asked dryly.

Evan leaned against the counter next to Matt’s seat with a dramatic sigh. “Yes.”

“It’s okay, baby,” Matt soothed, rubbing his hand up and down Evan’s back. “I was going to do it anyway. She knows that too.”

With a snort, Evan rested his head on his folded arms. His voice was muffled, but the rage had clearly died down. “I blame myself.”

“Of course you do.” Matt pushed Evan’s shirt up with one hand, pressing his palm against Evan’s overly warm flesh. “Because you love her and you’re scared you won’t be able to protect her.”

“She’s afraid to talk to me.”

“Only because she clearly doesn’t have a good argument to go up against you yet.”

They shared a knowing laugh at that. Miranda looked like Sherri, but she had Evan’s temper and personality. She wasn’t going to fight Evan until she thought she could win.

“I’m scared.” Evan lifted his head to look at Matt.

“Understandable. I was hoping for the nunnery, for all three girls. But the fact is, she’s smart and beautiful and an adult. It’s going to happen.”

With that, Matt wrapped his arm around Evan’s trim waist and hauled him onto his lap. Evan squirmed for a second. Matt knew stuff like this made Evan uncomfortable, but there was no one around, and damn it, he was going to get cuddled.

“So you think the nunnery is entirely off the table?” Evan sighed, leaning back against Matt’s broad chest.

“Pretty sure. And just think—you just have to get through this time and then Katie and then Elizabeth. Plus, you know, Danny and his future parade of pink-haired girls who ride motorcycles.”

“Not helping.”

“Wanna go to bed and fuck your problems away?”

Evan gave him an elbow, but he didn’t get up. “Yeah, but first I need to talk to Elizabeth. I don’t want her to feel bad about this.”

Matt kissed the side of Evan’s neck. “Bring her a brownie—I promised.”

“You’re a nice man.”

“The nicest.”

Evan turned. The chair beneath them creaked a bit, but Evan wasn’t deterred, apparently. He twisted until their mouths pressed together.

A flood of warmth flowed through Matt’s body, and it wasn’t entirely composed of lust.

Just another day of family drama and taking the recycling out and loving Evan with every fiber of his being.

E
VAN
COLLECTED
his bag from the floor of the front seat and exited the car. His mind careened from one thing to another—the day ahead, Miranda ignoring his phone calls, meetings about his promotion…. He dodged cops entering and exiting the station house, smiling or nodding to ones he knew.

He had passed his tests for the lieutenant’s promotion two years ago. In a few months, he would take the captain’s test; at this point, it felt like a formality before he was promoted. It was an amazing honor, a huge boost to his career, and a PR nightmare, at least to him.

To the powers that be? It was a bonanza.

He still wasn’t comfortable with being “out” at work. He wasn’t entirely on board with the PTB and their spin on the trajectory of his promotions. A gay captain. The captain who lived with an ex-cop.

There was the inevitable moment last year, when his supporters discovered Matt’s past—the esteemed career, the whistle-blowing, the disgrace. Subtle talk about “how to handle it” that resulted in Evan storming out of a meeting and threatening to quit, which then became Matt suggesting they move to San Francisco and open up a sex-toy shop.

That had been a long, long week.

But now it was happening, and Evan had only a few months left before his career changed forever.

“Morning.” He walked through the squad room. More nods and businesslike smiles as he approached his desk. Helena, his partner and friend, was already at her desk, directly across from his.

She was trying out another new hairstyle. He was actively trying to notice that sort of thing. She’d called it a pixie cut, which he thought meant fairy, but honestly, who the hell knew.

“Good morning. I bought you coffee since Swindall was making it this morning,” Helena said, flipping through some files in front of her.

“Wow.” Evan sat down, eyeing his partner. “What do you want?”

Helena gave him a cool violet-eyed stare of annoyance. “Excuse me?”

“You never bring me coffee.”

“Yes, I do! All the time.”

“No, only when you want something.” Evan began to unpack his bag with his usual efficiency; he could argue with Helena while doing just about anything.

“Ugh, hateful.” She pouted for a few minutes, then cracked. “Okay.”

“Ha!” He looked up from where he was putting a box of energy bars in his bottom drawer.

“Shane and I need a place to go for Thanksgiving that isn’t my mother’s in Florida.”

Helena and her boyfriend, Shane, had been together for more than two years, a fairly serious length of time for both of them. And as Evan and Matt were technically the reason they had met, they were involved on a level that included Evan having to listen to the goods, the bads, and the speculation about the future.

And also apparently helping her out on holidays.

“Why don’t you want to go to Florida? The weather’s nicer.”

“Because it’s too early in the relationship for Shane and I to be grilled by my mother about when she’s getting grandchildren.” Helena sighed dramatically. “We’re not even engaged. Or talking about being engaged.” Her voice quavered slightly. “We’ve only been living together for a year. It’s just too soon.”

“Uh-huh.” He gave her a glance, noted the lip bite, then busied himself with his coffee. “So Thanksgiving….”

“I’ll bring stuff. Swear.”

“It’s just me and Matt and the kids,” Evan warned, his brain shifting back to the problem at hand—confronting Miranda about her new boyfriend. And the M-word.

“Sounds perfect.” A smile bloomed on her face. “Really.”

They clicked into gear pretty quickly after that, getting into the rhythm that had served them well over the years. They had calls to make, paperwork to process, and new cases finding their way across their desks. It was a constant stream of activity, and in spare moments of mental space, Evan knew he would miss this.

Six o’clock rolled around, and Evan had an encouraging moment when he thought he might be home before seven.

Then his cell rang.

Each of his children had a different ringtone, and the techno beat playing meant Miranda. His stomach tightened with stress as he pressed the screen. “Miranda.”

There was a dramatic pause, and then his eldest said coolly, “Hi, Dad. You left a message?”

Evan scowled. He’d left several. “We need to talk.”

She sighed. “I’m really busy—”

Evan cut in. “Not too busy for this. Either I come to you now or you meet me at home. Choice is yours.”

Miranda let the moment drag out until Evan was convinced his brains were actually going to explode out of his ear, but finally she offered a begrudging “You can come here.”

“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

“Fine.”

Evan hung up, desperately missing the days when a phone weighed five pounds and slamming it into the cradle felt satisfying.

“Do I want to know? No, wait, of course I want to know.” Helena parked herself on the corner of his desk. “Miranda.”

“Yeah, Miranda.” Evan sighed as he leaned back in his chair, hearing the reassuring creak. “She’s got a secret boyfriend, and apparently it’s serious.”

“Oh, ouch.”

“Yeah.”

Helena patted his shoulder. “You going over there without reinforcements?”

“She won’t talk if Matt’s around.” Miranda and Matt still did not have the level of closeness Matt had with the other kids. It bothered Evan, but he didn’t know how to change it. “And I figure I’m the one she wants to scream at, so….”

“You think this is a revenge boyfriend?”

“Well, Elena thinks so, and I’m inclined to believe her.” He frowned a little. His former sister-in-law didn’t have children, but he mentally deferred to her because of her gender. He wasn’t sure if that was logical or a skewed sense of gender politics. Either way, it made his head hurt. “She’s acting out because of Matt and I.”

“Could be, though that’s sort of closing the barn door after the horse… something. You know what I mean,” she said. “Or maybe she likes this boy.” Helena laughed. At him. “Why don’t you ask her?”

Evan gave her an eye roll in return as he leaned forward. He shut down his computer, then began to gather things together on his desk.

“And maybe don’t start off with that stern accusatory thing you do,” she continued breezily. “Ease into the screaming match.”

“Thank you for your advice. I’ll take it under consideration,” he said. He was being sarcastic, but Helena knew him well. She knew his tendency to blow up first and ask questions later. She also knew when to kick him in the shins.

“Good luck.” She gave him a sarcastic head pat.

And then she was gone in a wave of expensive perfume and heels a good three inches higher than the ones she had worn when she came in. Helena’s nights had gotten progressively more exciting and glamorous since she got involved with popular Broadway playwright Shane; suddenly pizza and late-night television had become theater and parties and gallery openings as his notoriety on the scene increased.

Evan hadn’t even realized gallery openings were a real thing. He thought they only happened in movies.

But Shane was hot right now, and Helena loved shedding her cop’s mantle and shaking off the horrible things they saw every day in Vice—and walking into a beautiful world where a person drank champagne and admired pretty things.

He envied her ability to step out of her skin. He’d never learned how.

M
IRANDA
LIVED
in a tiny walk-up on the lower West Side, sandwiched between a pet store and an Indian restaurant. Five floors up the twisting, cramped stairway, Evan huffed with annoyance. Her share of the rent was an occasional drain on his finances, but the neighborhood was decent, and her roommates were all as reassuringly afraid of their parents as he hoped his daughter was.

Evan held a bag of Chinese food in one hand and knocked with the other, hearing the muffled sound of a television.

“Coming!” someone called, and Evan shifted his weight, subconsciously moving his body to one side. The shooting was a few years in the past, but one never entirely got past a shotgun blast through a closed door.

He assumed, however, that Miranda didn’t have quite that strong a temper.

Locks were unhooked, and finally the door opened, Miranda standing expectantly in the doorway.

“Dad,” she said loftily, chin lifted with a regal tilt, looking as imperious as someone could, wearing pajamas with kittens on them.

“Miranda.” Evan leaned down to kiss her cheek, brushing aside her dark blonde hair.

She sighed, then pulled him into the apartment.

They managed to put off the arguing and instead indulged in heavy silence while setting the teeny-tiny table Miranda and her roommates ate on. Two bedrooms, four girls; two chairs at the table, one love seat—he assumed they existed in shifts.

“Where’s everyone else?” Evan asked as he dug into his Kung Pao chicken. With a fork.

Miranda twirled sesame noodles on her chopsticks. “Sonya has a night class, Naib is at the movies with her boyfriend, and Rae’s at the gym.” She gave her father a serious stare down. “We have about an hour for our discussion.”

In his head,
discussion
had air quotes around it.

“I just want some information, Miranda. I don’t like being the last person to know something so… important. And personal.” That was the rub—under all the anger simmered the sad fact that his daughter hadn’t come to him about something so big.

She poked at her white box and noodles, scowling. “Fine. His name is Kent. He’s going for his master’s in international business after he graduates in January. He’s an only child. He’s from Connecticut, and he’s… wonderful.” She peeked up at him with Sherri’s eyes, and he found himself missing his wife with a profound ache. She would be so much better at this than he was.