With Good Behavior [Conduct Series #1] Read online

  “That about sums it up,” Sophie nodded. “I never intended for things to go so far, but at some point, I felt helpless to stop them. And when I finally realized what had happened and tried to put a stop to it all, it was too late. I was in too deep. And the only way to try to climb back up the slope was to pay the consequences by going to prison.”

  “You were starting to tell me about a session five months into treatment,” Hunter prompted. “Was that the top of the slope?”

  She sat pensively for a moment and then replied sadly, “I had already started slipping down the slope by that point, I guess.” She closed her eyes and remembered that September day almost two years ago.

  The clock ticked loudly as they stared at each other in her sparsely furnished office. Logan wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans that showcased his lower body nicely. Sophie could not help but stare at that hard, gorgeous ass when he had crossed in front of her to sit on the sofa. The muscles of his forearms rippled each time he fidgeted, rubbing his solid thigh or scratching his thick neck nervously.

  He had been letting his hair grow out from his summer buzz-cut, and the short, black spikes framed his tanned face handsomely. His mouth worked on a piece of gum, drawing Sophie’s attention to his perfectly shaped lips—full, luscious lips surrounded by the black stubble of five o’clock shadow lining his square jaw. Sophie was occasionally rewarded for her vigilant adoration of those lips when he would flick his tongue out to lick them slowly.

  “How did you spend your Labor Day?” she inquired.

  The thirty-three-year-old client chomped his gum. “You got any kids?” he shot back.

  Sophie hesitated. “No.”

  “Well, I do. I spent the day with my son.”

  “You have a son?” she asked incredulously. “You never mentioned him before. How old is he?”

  More chomping. “Thirteen. No, fourteen. He just had his birthday in July.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You and all your questions,” he replied derisively. “Why do you need to know that?”

  “What’s the big deal, Logan?” She was becoming frustrated. “I just asked you your son’s name, not the secret formula for cold fusion. Have you neglected to tell me that you’re married too?”

  He frowned. “No, I’m not married. Just incredibly stupid. This chick I was dating back when I was nineteen told me she was on the pill. What a damn lie.”

  Sophie was beginning to understand his difficulty with trust. “So, what did you do with your son on Labor Day?”

  “You know, just hung out. Went to a barbecue. At my Uncle Ange’s.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  He grunted in response.

  Sophie bit her lip. “What kind of parent are you, Logan?”

  “Dunno. Don’t get to see my kid much. He’s usually with his mom. I know I’m better than my parents at least.”

  “Oh? You think you had bad parents?”

  He exhaled with disgust. “Do you think I’d be here if the answer to that question was no?”

  “Probably not,” she conceded. “How do you try to treat your son differently from the way your parents treated you?”

  His jaw muscles flexed as he worked furiously on the gum, and he avoided her gaze. Apparently he was clamming up once again. Sophie sighed and re-crossed her legs, pulling self-consciously on her short skirt. The black skirt had seemed long enough when she put it on that morning, but the material kept riding up when she was seated.

  They again sat in discomfited silence. Eventually Sophie offered, “Lots of people disagree with how they were raised. I hated how my parents fought all the time when I grew up. My mother is overbearing, and my father can be a complete jerk.”

  He took the bait. “No father is more of a jerk than mine.”

  Sophie tried to stay quiet, silently willing him to continue speaking.

  After a beat, his deep voice added, “He’s a prick of the highest order.”

  When he was not more forthcoming, Sophie prodded, “You want to be a better father to your son, then?”

  His face clouded over with an unreadable emotion. “I know this much: I’m never going to rule by fear, like that prick did.”

  It was a curious phrase. Ruled what? “Your father ‘ruled by fear’?”

  Sophie tilted her head to one side, watching the alpha male across from her change his body posture right before her eyes. He seemed to shrink, his commanding presence shifting into a more submissive stance, the deep blue of his eyes growing stormy, a glint of fear floating in their deep-blue pools.

  Suspecting she knew what was happening, Sophie took some calming breaths. She had worked with many trauma survivors at the VA hospital during her internship—men who had endured gruesome, life-threatening experiences while serving their country. When they began to tell their combat stories, some of them had displayed the same body language as Logan now did. Her voice was soft and gentle as she questioned, “Your father hurt you?”

  The troubled eyes bore into her, stealing her breath away with their vulnerability.

  “He tried to hurt me,” Logan responded with feigned bravado, enraged by the tremor in his voice. “But I didn’t let him.”

  She swallowed slowly, attempting to figure out a nonthreatening way to question him. “How old were you?”

  “I was a kid, like nine or ten. He came home all pissed off about something. The littlest thing could set him off. Who knows what the hell had happened.” Logan gave an involuntary shudder, then started muttering, “Fuck.”

  “It’s okay, Logan. You can tell me.”

  “Why?” he challenged angrily. “Why talk about this shit?”

  “Because talking about the past makes it have less of a hold over you.”

  She thought he had closed himself off again, and was surprised when he said quietly, “He started hitting my mother … slapping and punching her.”

  Sophie closed her eyes. “Did he do that a lot?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, he was a fucking asshole.” He breathed out disgustedly. “The kicker of it was that I hated my mother more than him. Hated her for being too weak to stand up to him, hated her for …”

  “For failing to protect you?” Sophie asked.

  Logan’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I sure didn’t protect her. I got my brother the hell out of there and we went and hid like total chickenshits.”

  “You were nine! Of course you hid.”

  She watched him tremble as he stared off into space, numbly reporting, “But my dad found us anyway. He, uh, he … he dragged us down the hallway … and he threw us in the closet. For all we knew our mom was lying dead in the family room. It didn’t sound good.”

  He took a ragged breath, and Sophie kept quiet. “That’s when he came at us with his belt. He was just whaling on us in the closet, and it stung like a bitch … it was so dark, and my brother was crying … and when I tried to cover my brother so he wouldn’t get hit, my dad started screaming at me.”

  Logan clenched both fists and continued. “He yanked me off and threw me into my room. He kept coming after me with the belt until finally he got tired or something, and then he left me alone.”

  Logan held his head in his hands and rocked back and forth on the sofa.

  “Your brother?” Sophie asked tremulously. “How old was he?”

  “Four.”

  “Where was he that whole time?”

  Logan stopped rocking and sat completely still, frozen in the past. She watched his body start to shake while he kept his head down.

  “Logan?” she questioned gently. Then she noticed a tear fall to the floor, followed by another and another. Sophie almost gasped. It was so bizarre to see this pillar of strength break down into sobs. He tried valiantly to hide his crying. Not knowing what to do, she stood up, hesitated, fidgeted with her hands worriedly, then finally crossed the room and sat next to him on the sofa.

  “It’s okay,” she encouraged, wringing her hands in her lap.

&
nbsp; “Fuck,” he said in a strained, tear-filled voice. He radiated intensity in the small office.

  “Where was your brother?”

  Logan cried quietly, his head bowed. When he finally spoke, his voice was hitched and raspy. “He was in that closet the whole damn night. My dad wouldn’t let my mom get him out. He was in the dark, all alone, scared shitless. He was only four!”

  Logan’s fists clenched tightly once again. “The next morning my dad finally hauled him out of there. When he found out that my brother, uh, that h-he had peed in his pants … he started … he … fuck! Uh, he started beating the shit out of him.”

  Sophie realized she was holding her breath. Not only was a four year old treated like an animal, but a nine year old was forced to witness that treatment and experience brutality himself. Involuntarily she reached out and rested her hand on his forearm, steadying and stilling him beneath her warm, caring touch.

  Suddenly Logan was kissing her. It happened so fast, so uncontrollably, so head-spinningly fervently, that she didn’t have time to think. Those perfect lips were caressing her own, and she felt she had no choice but to accept his desperate, passionate advance. He had flayed himself open in front of her, he had prostrated himself, and now he needed comfort—comfort she was more than willing to provide. His kiss comforted her, too. She closed her eyes and melted into him, his strong arms grasping her and his tear-stained cheeks transferring wetness to the smooth skin of her face.

  “And things were never the same between you,” Hunter surmised, bringing her back to the present.

  “What?” Sophie continued to feel disoriented by the wounded, haunted blue eyes burned into her memory.

  “That was the first major boundary-crossing. There was no going back after you let him kiss you like that.”

  She tried to remember to breathe. “I guess not.”

  “Did you think about telling someone? Consulting with a colleague?”

  “I thought about it. I thought about consulting. I thought about referring him.” She averted her eyes. “I could have done any number of things, but I think I didn’t want it to end. But it did finally end. With me in prison.”

  Hunter listened to her guilty confession and gave silent thanks that he’d never fallen in love with a client.

  “I almost went back to prison today,” Sophie informed him ruefully.

  “What happened?”

  “You know how I was supposed to get a job by today? Well, I didn’t find one. My PO had me cuffed and ready to go. We were waiting for the police officers when he decided to give me another chance, as long as I, um, begged my father for a job. But then I lucked out and a man I met, another parolee, got a job for me on an architectural cruise. He was incredibly kind.”

  Hunter frowned slightly. “We are out of time, Sophie, but it sounds like we have a lot to discuss in our next session.”

  “You probably want to know about my father,” she said.

  “Yes. And this man that you met—it doesn’t seem like such a good idea to be fraternizing with another parolee. I want to talk about this further.”

  She rose, silently disagreeing with his warning about Grant. Of course it was a good idea to “fraternize” with a man as handsome and kind as Grant Madsen. Her psychologist didn’t realize that yet, but he would.

  As she left the office, she mulled over the session in her mind. Boundary violations, self-disclosure, hot kisses, Logan, Grant. If Hunter ever had Logan or Grant as a client, perhaps he would be heading down the slippery slope as well. Those particular men just seemed irresistible.

  11. Taking a Gamble

  From the ship’s bridge, Grant gazed at the pitter-pattering raindrops splashing into the river as the architectural cruise made its way through increasingly choppy waters. He loved the suspended hush at the start of a storm, the skies emitting tiny drops of condensation before unleashing a torrent of water.

  It was the five o’clock Wednesday cruise, and the sunshine of the morning had morphed into a cloudy afternoon. Grant hoped the storm would pass through completely before Sophie’s first day at work tomorrow. Storms meant sparse crowds and meager drink tips.

  “Straight ahead is the Trump International Hotel and Tower,” Roger’s gruff voice explained to the few passengers huddled amidships on the lower deck, seeking cover from the impending weather. The captain sat just a couple of feet from where Grant stood, and his ridiculous microphone headset continually made Grant chuckle. He looked like Madonna in concert, and Grant kept waiting for Rog to Vogue.

  “Construction of the tower began in 2005, and they’re making the finishing touches as we speak. The hotel portion opened in January.

  “Initial designs for the building were not well received, but they finally agreed on the stacked boxes concept, which evokes an image of a commerce ship steaming through the city. The various tiers were designed to match the height of neighboring buildings, helping the new building fit in nicely with the skyline.”

  As expected, the rain began falling harder, partially obscuring visibility from the bridge. Grant powered down the engines to a safer speed in the storm.

  Sensing the change in knots, Roger, ever the adept performer, stretched out his commentary. “As I was saying, the level of each tier in the Trump Tower matches the height of neighboring structures. That’s probably one of the first times in his life that the shark, Donald Trump, has tried to get along with his neighbors.”

  It was a lame joke, and Grant was glad he was unable to hear the groans from the passengers. Some of Rog’s jokes hit the mark, but others fell flat with a resounding thud.

  They continued their journey on the Chicago River, and Grant was mesmerized by the sound of steady drizzle and water lapping on the ship’s hull. Entering a melancholy trance, the sound drew him back to a summer day when the rain had similarly cascaded down on Chicago.

  He had knelt beside her grave numbly, barely aware of the pelting raindrops on his shoulders and back. His khaki Navy uniform had become drenched, but the military forbade the use of umbrellas. Not that he cared anyway. It seemed fitting to match his emotional misery with the physical discomfort of getting soaked to the bone.

  Grant placed a bouquet on the wet grass—jasmine, a flower that signified grace and elegance. There was no better way to describe Karita Ann Madsen. His mother had a noble air about her, carrying herself with poise and refinement.

  Karita’s parents had immigrated to the States from Denmark, and they had been thrilled when their children immersed themselves in American life—their son joining the Navy and their daughter attending an American university. Karita’s bachelor’s degree in education parlayed nicely into a job teaching history in a Chicago high school, where she met her dashing future husband.

  She had surrendered many of her dreams upon discovering the brutality and manipulation inherent in Enzo’s character, but one thing she had insisted upon was the naming rights for her sons. Instead of Italian monikers, Karita had demanded they celebrate Illinois history by naming their sons after two influential Civil War generals from the prairie state: John A. Logan and Ulysses S. Grant.

  Karita’s fair Scandinavian coloring stood in sharp contrast to the dark Italian features of Grant’s father’s side of the family. Grant recalled watching her brush her long, silky blond hair with fascination. He also remembered that same hair matted with blood after his father came at her one night. Soon tears mixed with the raindrops sliding down his face as he knelt by her tombstone in the cemetery north of Chicago.

  Grant wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, quietly mourning, before he heard a rustling behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he gasped. Standing in the pouring rain was a tall, chiseled man with cropped black hair and a scowl.

  Logan.

  Grant rose and turned to face his brother, whom he had not seen since he was twelve, at their mother’s funeral. That was fifteen years ago.

  “How did you know I was here?” Grant asked.

  Logan grimaced. “We
had some guys staking out the airport, looking for somebody, and they saw you come in. You’re kind of hard to miss in that uniform.”

  Grant would rather not know who the Mafia henchmen were stalking … probably an informant they wanted to kill. His eyes narrowed as he glared at his older brother. “Have you been tailing me since yesterday, then?”

  “Nope. Shit-for-brains Carlo lost you in the airport shuffle. But I figured you’d show up here at some point.”

  Grant nodded sadly, stealing a glance at the delicate white-and-pink flowers drooping and wilting in the rain. “You live in Chicago. Do you visit her grave much?”

  Logan swallowed hard. “No.”

  The younger brother sighed. They’d always been very different people. Grant was quiet and thoughtful, whereas Logan was loud and ill-tempered. They had inevitably chosen sides, one going to their mother and one to their father. Grant hated himself for thinking Logan might actually care about their mom. Of course he wouldn’t visit her grave. He hated himself for that need deep within him, the need for his brother’s love—a need that would obviously never be fulfilled.

  “Why are you back in town?” Logan asked.

  “I have to do some fitness testing at Great Lakes,” Grant said. If all went well, he would be promoted to lieutenant, though he was not about to share that with a brother who couldn’t care less. Growing weary of their forced conversation, Grant asked, “What do you want?”

  Logan looked taken aback. “Who says I want anything?”

  Grant looked at Logan with disdain. “Let’s drop the pretense, Lo. I know you don’t care about Mom. And you certainly don’t care about me. What do you want?”