Beyond the Rules. Doranna Durgin

boundaries. We want them to understand that this is our home, too.”

      Kimmer looked. She found him unfazed by her scrutiny…possibly even slightly amused. She made a grumbling noise and settled deeper in her chair. “So when—?”

      “The end of the week. Give the chief a call first thing tomorrow.” He tossed a business card across the desk—one of his own, but he’d scrawled a phone number on the back. A real high-tech moment.

      Kimmer stretched forward to scoop up the card…and then she sat there, deep in the chair, flipping the card back and forth in her fingers.

      After a moment, Owen raised his eyebrows. “This isn’t about the new assignment.” When she shot him an annoyed look, he just grinned. “You know, the rest of us are able to make observations and deductions, too. I know you well enough for that. More than well enough, for all you don’t like to hear it. So spit it out—what’s bothering you?”

      Kimmer hesitated as something on his flat screen computer monitor caught his attention. He turned to type in a few quick words and then turned back to her, expectant.

      Damn. Maybe she should have run while she had the chance.

      But she hadn’t, so she took a deep breath. “You have a family…”

      “A rather large one.” Owen smiled a compressed and crooked smile.

      “Then…when you get bad news about one of you…”

      After she’d hesitated long enough, he prompted, “Bad news as in ‘Dave’s breaking away to do his own thing instead of following the family business,’ or bad news as in someone’s dead?”

      “Jeez, Owen, you’ve got to let that thing with Dave go,” Kimmer said. “He’s still in the family business. He’s just doing it differently.”

      “Excellent use of distraction,” he said. “Two points. And minus two points for evading the question.”

      Kimmer gave him a sulky look, just because she knew she could get away with it. “As in bad news, someone’s sick. Someone old is sick. Someone who means a lot to the whole family.”

      “Got it. What about it?”

      “What’s…someone else supposed to do? Oh, screw it. Me. I. What am I supposed to do? I don’t get the whole family thing. I don’t get hanging together through thick and thin. I don’t get how you drop everything and try to make things right even if you know you can’t. I don’t get any of it! How am I supposed to do the right thing?”

      Owen cleared his throat. “Rio has had some bad news, I take it.”

      Kimmer nodded. “I feel like I’m supposed to do something about it. But I can’t fake it. I can’t even truly believe it—that his family could be that close.”

      Owen hesitated for a long, long moment, looking at Kimmer until she felt uneasy. He thought she should have this answer. And at last, he gave it to her. “What if it were your mother?”

      She almost jumped right to her feet. To prevent herself, she froze, stiffening enough that she thought she might even creak. “That’s not fair, Owen. It’s not the same, not the same at all.” She and her mother had been bonded by abuse and adversity. They’d never had a normal relationship—just an intense one. “My mother taught me how to survive. But she also married my father in the first place…and then she left me with him. I don’t have a relationship with her, I have a memory of her. And I learned the very hard lesson that even the people who might love you still end up leaving you.” A long speech for her, especially when it came to this topic.

      Owen shook his head. “You can’t truly believe that. Or why invite Rio down here?”

      That was easy. “Because he was willing to take the chance.” She relaxed slightly; it was either that or turn into one giant body cramp. “Don’t get me wrong. What we have is…something I’d never even considered for myself. But that doesn’t mean it’s forever. As soon as he sees an advantage in being elsewhere…” She stopped herself. She hadn’t meant to say that much. Not nearly that much. In fact, she hadn’t even realized she believed it possible of Rio until she heard her own words.

      Maybe she was just afraid of it.

      Owen regarded her for a good long while—one of the few people comfortable enough with himself that he could do that, knowing of her knack. Most people fidgeted, wondering what she saw. Owen held himself quietly, with the unusual dignity he carried around like an extra jacket. “As to your original question,” he said finally. “Think of your mother in those days when she was the most important to you. When she could still protect you. And then think what would have made you feel better when you were frightened for her.”

      Not to wonder if my damned father would come for me next. But that was the easy answer, the smart-ass answer that while perfectly truthful, also didn’t plumb the question as deeply as could be done. So she nodded. “You think I don’t have to get the whole family thing in order to…be there…for Rio.”

      “I think you don’t,” he agreed, and then, totally unexpectedly, reached into a drawer for a set of keys and tossed them her way. “These belong to Hank’s Suburban.”

      “It’s fixed already?” Kimmer eyed the keys in disbelief.

      “Consider it a favor,” Owen said dryly.

      “I cannot imagine you wanting to do my brother a favor after all of this.”

      Owen snorted, as coarse a response as he ever made. “The favor was for you,” he said. “And come to think of it, for me, too. I need your head on straight next week.”

      “My make-nice week,” she murmured, and reached for the keys. “Don’t worry, Owen. From the way Hank’s acting, he’s had enough of me, too.”

      Chapter 4

      T he house clanged with the sound of free-weights landing on the thin, cheap basement carpet over the concrete floor. Kimmer hesitated just inside the doorway, tossing her girly red ostrich tote on the nearest chair and her matching red driving cap on top of it. Otherwise her outfit was demure enough: black stovepipe jeans with elaborate stitching on the calves, a black silk turtleneck and a gauzy vest over it all. Just the red at her wrist—her watchband—and the red detailing on her flat, open-toe sandals.

      Just enough to peek out at the world in a sassy way, and to leave her brother in the position of snatching surreptitious looks when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. For his mouth to open as though he might say something as she drove him to Full Cry Winery to pick up the Suburban, and then to close again on those words unspoken.

      She’d pulled into the employee parking lot near the back end of the Suburban, and she hesitated without turning off the engine—without even putting the vehicle in Park. “Look, Hank,” she said as he reached for the door handle. “Now you’ve seen me. Now you can go back and tell the others that I’m up here, but I didn’t turn out the way you wanted and I can’t be convinced to change and I don’t want anything to do with you. Any of you. Whatever power you once had over my life is long gone.”

      Hank grunted in an unconvinced way. “Maybe not. But you didn’t turn me away.”

      “I didn’t have the chance.” Kimmer kept her tone flat. “Don’t make the mistake of bringing trouble to my home twice.”

      Hank shook his head. “You’ve got your nice car and your house and you think you’re better’n all of us now, but you still haven’t learned the first thing about what it means to be a family.”

      “Wrong.” She smiled at him, showing teeth. “I know what it means to you, and I want none of it.”

      With that he’d gotten out of her car, hauling his cheap nylon duffel from the backseat. He threw her a sarcastic, half-assed salute and headed for his own vehicle, and Kimmer laid down a satisfying strip of rubber on the way out.

      And