All a Man Is

Is this reward worth the risk?

Big risks hold no appeal for Julia Raynor after losing her husband to his high-danger career. And his vice cop brother, Alec, doesn’t seem much different—although he is there for her and the kids. So when her son is headed for big-city trouble, Alec voluntarily becomes police chief in Angel Butte, Oregon, to remove him from temptation.

But temptation stalks more than her son. Living close to Alec, the long-denied attraction Julia harbors won’t be ignored. And Alec’s actions say it’s not one-sided. Can she believe in another Raynor man? Yet, when a threat catches up with her family, Julia knows Alec is the only one she can trust!

Alec’s eyes met Julia’s, his expression rueful, but he kept quiet

It was miracle enough that he was willing to do as much as he did. Even to completely uproot and move. When she’d asked Josh to choose between his family and his dangerous, high-adrenaline job, he’d chosen the job. It scared her to think Alec might hate it here in Angel Butte, so far from the high-adrenaline job he’d loved. From what he’d said, he was now stuck behind a desk, probably the last thing he’d ever wanted to do with his life.

I didn’t ask him, she argued with herself. He offered.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t blame her if he began to chafe at a life shaped by his sense of duty.

He kept insisting they were his family, but they weren’t really, were they?

The fact that she wished they were would remain her secret.

Julia’s attraction to Alec might not remain secret for long…especially if her son can’t keep out of trouble! Read on for an exciting, emotional tale in this latest book in Janice Kay Johnson’s The Mysteries of Angel Butte series.

Dear Reader,

Forget The Taming of the Shrew. What I love writing about is the taming of a rebellious teenager! Truthfully, I’ve always had a soft spot for teenagers, maybe because I have way more vivid memories of the year when I was thirteen than I do the younger years. Emotions are all so extravagant. I hated my mother! My life would be ruined if that boy didn’t notice me, or my mother refused to let me date an eighteen-year-old! How dare she? Ah, well. How your attitudes change when you become a parent instead.

In All a Man Is, thirteen-year-old Matt Raynor is positive he hates his mother, but in his case it isn’t all teenage angst. My hero—and Matt’s uncle—Alec Raynor thinks of his nephew as being tamped gun powder. This boy is hurting, but until he finally blows up, his mom and uncle won’t know what’s really wrong. Poor kid. I’m almost ashamed to tell you how much fun I had writing about him!

Best of all, All a Man Is includes one of my favorite themes—forbidden love. Sister- and brother-in-law, in this case. Not really taboo, but…touchy. This pair have banded together to raise Julia’s two kids. Yes, her husband died a year and a half ago, but does that make these feelings they’re having for each other okay? What if one of them makes a move and finds out the other one is still in the brother/sister mode? Do you dare risk a relationship that is essential for the kids’ sakes in hopes of having something sublime? What if it all goes wrong?

I’ve had a great time writing these The Mysteries of Angel Butte books. Such a good time, in fact, that I’ve written another one. Jane Vahalik is a strong character in all three of the stories. The balance between being a woman and being a tough cop who has risen to the rank of lieutenant is a perilous one, and I found I kept thinking about her.

So look for her story coming in July 2014.

Thanks for visiting Angel Butte. Please come back!

Janice Kay Johnson

PS—I enjoy hearing from readers! Please contact me on Facebook, or through my publisher, at Harlequin, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, ON M3B 3K9, Canada.

All a Man Is

Janice Kay Johnson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Mills & Boon Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

This one is for Pat, a great friend when times get tough, and an unbeatable plotting partner

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

HALF A DOZEN MEN and three women sat around the conference room table. Some had laptops open, others notebooks.

Lieutenant Alec Raynor found his attention kept wandering to the five red pins stabbing a map on a display board propped on an easel. Each pin represented a particularly brutal rape and murder, all similar enough for detectives to have linked them to a single perpetrator. One of those pins was within his jurisdiction, his responsibility, the Los Angeles Police Department. Two belonged to the county sheriff’s department, one to Beverly Hills P.D. and the most recent to Santa Monica P.D.

This killer liked his victims to be upscale.

The task force had been formed after the third murder. Unfortunately for the detectives working the crime, the killer was smart and clearly well educated in the collection of trace evidence. Result: they had next to nothing to go on.

Alec’s phone vibrated and he barely glanced at it, intending to let it go to voice mail. The name displayed, though, had him rising to his feet.

“Excuse me for a minute. I need to take this.”

He answered as he left the room. “Julia?”

Unless it was prearranged, his sister-in-law never called him during normal working hours. Certainly not in the middle of the afternoon like this.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Alec.” The stress in her usually melodic voice ratcheted up the worry that had gripped him the minute he saw her name on the call display. “I should have waited. If you’re tied up—”

“I can take a minute. Something’s wrong.”

She laughed, a sharp sound. “As usual, it’s Matt.”

Both her kids had been named to honor Alec and his brother’s mother and her Italian family. Matteo had recently turned thirteen. Alec kept hearing that girls were hell on wheels at thirteen, but boys had to mature for a couple more years before they were ready to rebel. Not Matt.

Thank God Matt’s sister, Emiliana—Liana for short—was, at not quite eleven, still a little girl.

Alec’s niece and nephew had both been slammed by their father’s death a year and a half ago. Liana’s grief and bewilderment seemed normal, while Matt’s original shock had come to more closely resemble a bomb packed with gunpowder. It was dangerous to handle and had so many explosives tamped down inside, Alec expected the worst when it blew. Some days, he had trouble recognizing the boy he loved in the sneering, foulmouthed shit he’d become.

What bothered him most was that he had no idea what was going on in the kid’s head.

Julia didn’t call after every one of his escapades, and certainly not in the middle of the day.

“What happened?” Alec asked.

“He was caught stealing a bottle of whiskey from the Grove Street store. From Mr. Santana.”

Mr. Santana had to be seventy-five if he was a day. He’d had cataract surgery recently on one eye but the other remained clouded. He’d continued running the store after his son was killed in an armed robbery and he was left to care for his daughter-in-law and her three children. The oldest boy, Javier, was an earnest seventeen-year-old who helped his grandfather every minute he wasn’t in school. Sweet Mr. Santana was known throughout the neighborhood for his kindness to children.

Matt had very likely gone there to shoplift because he knew Mr. Santana’s vision was poor.

“It gets worse,” Julia warned, and now Alec could hear fear along with anger in her voice. “He was already drunk.”

Son of a bitch. His thirteen-year-old nephew had gotten wasted? “Where is he?”

“Oh, his room.” She sounded hopeless. “But you know how much good putting him on restriction does.”

Alec knew.

“I’ve done some thinking today, Alec. I’d...like to talk to you if you can come over whenever you get off. Or—it can wait until tomorrow if you’re tied up.”

“No,” he said roughly. “I’ll be there after dinner sometime.”

“Thank you.” All the grief he’d begun to believe she was letting go of was there again, so heavy he could feel the weight. “Tonight,” she said, and was gone.

* * *

ALEC STOOD IN Julia’s kitchen, leaning one hip against the edge of the tiled counter, and tried to conceal his shock at Julia’s announcement.

He couldn’t help watching her as she busied herself pouring them both cups of coffee. Julia—his brother’s widow—was a beautiful woman. Elegant, but not flashy. He remembered being surprised the first time he met her, because Josh usually went for buxom blondes, and the girl he was suddenly serious about was neither. Petite, no more than five foot three or four, she had the fine-boned build of a dancer. Alec learned later that she actually had taken dance classes for years, without being serious enough to consider it as a career. Her straight brown hair was a rich color with a warm cast, more like maple than mahogany, he had decided. And then there were eyes of a witchy green-gold she had passed on to her daughter but not her son.

When he’d first arrived this evening, he’d spent a few minutes with Liana. Skinny and small for her age, she had darker hair than her mom. He heard about her fascination with the algebra her fifth-grade advanced math group was currently studying.

“There’s this boy who likes me,” she had added shyly, pink tingeing her thin cheeks. “I mean, I guess he does. His name’s Tyler. He told Jose, who told Brooke.” Brooke, Alec knew, was Liana’s best friend. “He wants me to be, like, his girlfriend or something.”

Girlfriend! He’d had damn near as much trouble grappling with the concept of this little girl having some guy after her as he did with the idea of Matt boozing. They were turning into teenagers before his eyes.

They had been at just about the worst possible age to lose their father.

Alec hadn’t trusted himself to talk to Matt yet. Instead, he’d left Liana instant messaging with friends and retreated to the kitchen.

“What happened to playing with Barbie dolls?” he asked plaintively.

Amusement lightened Julia’s distress, if only for a moment. “What’s she doing?” When he told her, she laughed. “Oh, she still has her Barbies and plays with them, too, but mostly by herself. She’s not sure which friends will think it’s totally uncool and childish.”

“She’s ten.”

“Almost eleven. Sixth grade is in the middle school, you know. There’ll be dances.”

“Older boys,” he said with the voice of doom.

He expected her to laugh again, but she didn’t. “Alec, I think I need to take the kids away from L.A. You’re so important to them.” She bit her lip. “To me, too. That’s why I’ve been so reluctant to do this. But you know my parents would like to have me close, and I have to believe Matt would do better in a small town.”

The small town where she’d grown up was on a lake somewhere north of Minneapolis. Half the country away. More than half.

Alec felt sick. He had the impending awareness of devastation. In a distant part of his mind, he’d known he loved his niece and nephew, and, sure, Julia, too, as much as he dared let himself. When Josh had been killed in Afghanistan, Alec had naturally stepped in, assuming some of his brother’s responsibilities. Julia and the kids were family. That was what a man did.

Until this moment, he hadn’t understood that they were the three people he loved most in the world. He didn’t know how he could survive without them.

“Your mother drives you crazy,” he heard himself say hoarsely.

“I wouldn’t move in with them. I’d get us our own place.” Her face was pinched as she searched his face. “What would you suggest? That I close my eyes and stab a pin into a map, pick someplace to go at random?”

For a second he had double vision, those red pins floating before his eyes, and he thought with an astonishing burst of anguish, Julia. What if somehow, someway, that creep came across her? Los Feliz, the part of L.A. where she and Alec both lived, was upscale. She was pure class and beautiful. He—whoever he was—would like her. Want her. Hate her.

She and the kids would be better off, safer, away from overcrowded, smoggy, crime-ridden Southern California.

This was the moment when Alec realized he would do anything at all for her, Matt and Liana. Anything for them, and to keep them in his life even if he was painfully aware he was destined to remain on the outside looking in.

“We’ll pick somewhere,” he said. “I should be able to get a job running a police department in a peaceful small town somewhere. Don’t go home to your parents. Let’s stay together.”

The shock in her green-gold eyes was such that, for a terrifying instant, he thought he’d blown it. And then those eyes filled with tears. “I can’t ask you—”

“I’m offering.” He couldn’t let himself touch her, so he didn’t move. “I’m ready for a change, Julia.”

She pressed fingers to her lips, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, God. If you mean it...”

All the fear left him in a rush. “I mean it. I’ll go online and start looking tonight. I’ll let you know where I find possible job openings. You can research the towns. We’ll find the perfect one. I promise.”

There was a minute there when he thought she wanted to throw herself into his arms. But, as always, she turned away. Snatching up a dish towel, she began mopping her face.

“Do you think this is what Josh would want us to do?”

She always did that, produced his brother’s name as if she were lighting a candle at his altar.

And I’m pathetic to feel jealous. Worse than pathetic, he thought in disgust. Why wasn’t he glad she’d loved his brother so much?

“Yeah.” He pulled a smile from the hat. “Josh would say go for it.”

CHAPTER ONE

“EW, GROSS! MO-OM! Mattie just spit on the floor,” Liana whined.

“Tattletale,” her brother snarled. “And don’t call me Mattie again or I’ll make you sorry!”

The dull throbbing in the left side of Julia Raynor’s skull sharpened until she felt as if a drill bit was viciously driving through her forehead. She stole a glance in her rearview mirror to see her children glaring at each other.

She should have separated them by letting one ride in front, but she’d lost her temper this morning when they started fighting about whose turn it was.

“Both of you,” she’d snapped, “backseat. No argument. We’re not doing this.”

She’d wonder why Matt wanted to ride up front, given how thoroughly he seemed to detest her, except she knew. Keeping his sister from getting what she wanted seemed to be one of his few pleasures.

Julia’s only consolation was that she was pretty sure the sibling warfare was normal, no matter how aggravating it was from her point of view. So little about Matt seemed normal now, she’d take what solace she could.

The entire trip had been the closest thing to hell she could imagine. A step beyond purgatory. It should have been fun, an adventure. Not that long ago, it would have been.

Before Josh died. Before Matt became so angry.

Silence simmered behind her. It was like driving with a feral animal in a trap on the backseat right next to a fluffy, cheerful Maltese terrier now getting whiny and snappy out of fear, and Julia was beginning to wonder if the trap door was secure.

We could have flown. Been here in a few hours instead of the longest two days of my life.

Clenching the steering wheel, she wished she’d followed Alec’s example and sold the damn car and bought a new one when they arrived. She’d been worrying about how much life her eight-year-old Volkswagen Passat still had in it anyway. Clinging to the familiar was one thing; clinging to a cantankerous car that would not like cold winters was something else again.

“We’re almost there,” she said, hoping to stir some tiny remnant of excitement. Not that Matt had ever felt any. He was bitterly resentful about the move.

So what else is new? she asked herself wearily. For the past year and more, her son had bitterly resented every word she spoke, every decision she made.

“You keep saying that,” Liana said sulkily. Even Julia’s good-natured daughter was wearing down.

“Because we are getting closer. The sign we just passed said eighteen miles.”

“Oh.”

This time, a glance in the mirror assured her that they were both at least looking out their respective windows, as if some curiosity had surfaced.

The landscape was intriguing and very different from the brown hills and canyons of their most recent home. No ocean beaches here in central Oregon, either, although Alec assured her there were countless clear, cold lakes. The highway had been following a beautiful, tumbling river for some miles now. This stretch of Highway 97 was wooded and...knobby. Those lumps couldn’t all be volcanic cinder cones, could they? If so, they’d become overgrown with pine trees.

The fact that she was moving her children to a spot in the heart of volcano country made her a little nervous, especially now that they were here and she could see the evidence of it all around. Earlier they’d passed signs pointing to Crater Lake, which was the water-filled caldera of a truly monstrous volcano that had wrapped the entire world in black ash when it erupted 7,700 years before. She was already planning a trip back to the park in the next few weeks. Even Matt would be impressed, surely.

To the east was Newberry National Volcanic Monument, which was described in the literature as “potentially active.” The smaller cinder cones in the area—including Angel Butte—were like pimples scattered on the edges of Newberry Volcano, which didn’t rear into the sky like Mount Rainier or Saint Helens. It was a shield volcano, she’d read, primarily made up of lava flows.

Julia had educated herself about volcanoes before agreeing to this move. In the end, she’d decided that her family was in more danger from earthquakes in Southern California than they would be from the unlikely event of a volcanic eruption.

Of course, Minnesota didn’t have either. But it also didn’t have Alec, which was the deciding factor.

The truth was, she would admit only to herself, she’d have gone anywhere he’d chosen.

Not because she needed him, although she did, but because Matt needed him, too.

“It’s kind of pretty,” Liana said timidly.

“There’s nothing here.” Matt sounded stunned. “It’s, like, the middle of nowhere.”

Short of moving to a village in Alaska accessible only by fishing boat or small plane—and, oh, how tempting that idea was—Angel Butte was the closest she and Alec had been able to find to the middle of nowhere. Or so they’d convinced themselves. Alec was discovering this town had considerably more crime and corruption than he’d imagined. She could only pray it didn’t reach the middle school, where Matt would start eighth grade this fall.

The silence in the car had a different feel when they saw the sign for the turnoff to Angel Butte. They really were only minutes away from their new home. Julia was only sorry they’d have to wait a few days for their furniture and other possessions to catch up with them. Although Alec had bought the duplex where they were going to live, she and the kids would have to stay in a motel until their beds arrived.

The narrower two-lane highway swept through forestland that gradually became more open. To each side were Old West–style ranches with split-rail fences and a few horses drowsing in the midday heat. Horse-crazy Liana gazed in delight. More houses appeared, closer together, and finally a Shell gas station. With startling suddenness after that, Julia felt as if they could be back in Southern California. Alec had said a little drily that she’d be able to buy anything she needed when she got here, but he hadn’t mentioned that their small town in the middle of nowhere had Target and Walmart stores, a Petco, Staples, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s and Red Robin.

“I’m hungry,” her daughter whined, predictably.

How could she be, after snacking all day long?

“You know Uncle Alec is eager to see us. He said he’d take us to dinner.”

Matt didn’t say anything. His respect for Alec was the only hope keeping Julia going, but he’d even been sullen with Alec during the occasional weekend visits he’d managed these past few months. Julia wasn’t sure whether Matt was afraid Alec was trying to ditch them or whether he was mad at Alec, too, because he’d conspired with Julia to move him away from his new and not-so-savory friends.

Maybe she should have stayed in San Diego after Josh died instead of uprooting the kids to Los Angeles almost right away so that she could lean on Alec.

As exhausted as she was, she wasn’t going to let such a well-worn worry take root. It was too late. She and the kids had moved, and the truth was she hadn’t wanted to stay in San Diego when all of her friends were the wives of navy SEALs. As a widow, her very presence would cast a shadow on them, and she hadn’t liked thinking about what Josh had done for a living.

“There really is an angel up there,” Liana said suddenly. “I can see her.”

“Where?” her brother demanded.

Julia, too, lifted her gaze to the top of the small butte with steep sides made up of rusty red cinders partially masked by clusters of small pine trees. Yes, there it was. She, too, caught a glimpse of white, almost a gleam, although she couldn’t make out details, not without taking her eyes from the road longer than she dared.

“Weird,” Matt pronounced. Occasionally he forgot his angry persona and still sounded like the thirteen-year-old boy he was.

“Get Uncle Alec to tell you the story of how the angel came to be there,” Julia suggested.

“You mean, she didn’t fly down from on high?” her charming son sneered, having recollected himself.

Poor Liana, stuck back there with him.

Poor me, stuck with him.

Immediately Julia felt guilty for the unmaternal thought.

Julia spotted the sign for the hotel where Alec had made reservations. She found a parking spot, set the emergency brake and reached for her phone.

Alec answered on the first ring. “Julia?”

“We’re here,” she said simply, with vast relief complicated only a little by her apprehension and guilt.

* * *

ALEC USED THE EXCUSE of steering her through the restaurant door to lay a hand on Julia’s back. Feeling the small flex of muscles beneath his fingertips filled him with exultation. He was embarrassed by the strength of it. He felt like an idiot teenager whose crush had finally agreed to go out with him. This was ridiculous. Nothing had changed between them.