Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Rob wasn’t going to stand there with his back to the door, angsting over the fact he’d just turned down the sexiest man he’d seen in, possibly, his entire life. That wasn’t his style. He could have said yes right there and then, got the itch out of his system, and be done with it. But he had a list of priorities, and hot sweaty sex was way down after getting the children out.

Not to mention Aaron was connected to the ranch, and Rob didn’t want to complicate matters. He just wished his libido understood the priorities because he was as hard as freaking iron. He could almost imagine the taste of Aaron, the scrap for control, the tussle they would have, and he groaned.

“Uncle Rob.” Bran made him snap out of thoughts he had no right to think.

Bran seemed as if he was going to cry. Or laugh. Or pee his pants. Or something that Rob had no idea how to handle. He was so serious, his face scrunched up, and hair in a wild, spiky mess around his head. He had his hands on his hips, and the stubborn expression reminded him so much of his sister at that age that Rob rubbed at the quick pain which tightened in his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Rob asked, placing his empty mug on the back of the counter, and even though his back protested, he crouched to Bran’s level. Of course, then he was eye to eye with Bran, and he seemed even harder to read when he was at this angle.

“Toby is locked in the bathroom.”

Okay. This he could handle. “You can turn the lock on the outside, let him out.”

“I can’t.” A single tear rolled down Bran’s face, and Rob felt desperate. Bran hadn’t cried once since he picked them up and had no idea what he’d do if he did it for real. “He said I had to go away. He doesn’t want me.” He hiccupped a sob, and Rob reached out to touch a small shoulder, but Bran shrunk away from him.

He didn’t need Rob touching him or offering comfort, and that was good because it would all be pretense anyway. He couldn’t love the boys or keep them. He had to keep his heart hard.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean that.”

“ You need to help him,” Bran said. “It’s uncle stuff now.”

Rob nodded. Just because he opened the door didn’t mean he’d have to talk to Toby or help him in any way. He didn’t want either kid to get used to him being around, and helping them in the bathroom was a step too far. But unlocking a door? He could do that, professionally and effectively.

It took him a few seconds to work out that the lock was jammed, to use his penknife to ease the screw, and then jiggle it to get in. He was an expert at breaking into places that people didn’t want him entering.

The door swung in, and he couldn’t see Toby at first. Then he heard the sobbing. Inside the bath, behind the shower curtain, a little boy was crying hard.

Now what?

“You need to check he’s okay,” Rob told Bran and waited for him to run to his brother’s aid.

“No, you should,” he countered.

Bran looked up at him as if Rob had suggested chopping the head off Toby’s Bunny.

“He’s upset,” he informed Rob. “And he doesn’t want me. He said so.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He’s your brother.”

“I’m not making him cry more.” He crossed his little arms over his chest. The implication was that it was Rob’s job to make Toby cry.

“But…” Rob wished he had an answer to that one. Then he sighed internally. What would it hurt to see what was upsetting the little man? Just because he fulfilled some small fatherly duty, didn't mean that Toby would form a secure attachment to him. The plan was to form zero attachments, which would make everything so much easier when he left them there and vanished.

Bran watched him, probably expecting him to fail miserably. Which he likely would.

Cautiously Rob walked in, his observation skills cataloging everything. The towel on the floor, Bunny dripping wet and covered in something very green. That would be shampoo, he thought, because there was a trail of the green stuff to a shampoo bottle, and it was smeared over the side of the bath. Then there was the fact that the towel rail was hanging on its side. How had one small boy done this much damage? He felt the burn of Bran’s stare at his back and pushed the door closed a little to block the judgment. Then he sat on the side of the bath and gently pushed back the curtain.

Toby was curled in a little ball on his side, and the crying had stopped, but he had his arms over his head, and he was still in his pajamas.

“Hey Toby,” Rob began, with what he hoped was his best considerate, don’t-think-of-me-as-your-dad uncle voice. “What’s up, buddy?” He waited for a detailed explanation, and one that would make sense of everything that was happening here.

“I peed on the floor,” Toby said really quietly.

“That’s okay, buddy. We’ve all done that in our time.” There. That was the right thing to say. A mom might well make a joke about boys and missing the toilet, but Rob took this brotherhood of men thing very seriously, so no jokes.

“Then I put Bunny down, tried to wipe the pee with the towel, and it got stuck, and I yanked it, and the bar fell off, and I tripped, and the bottle fell over, an’ it’s all on Bunny, and I threw it…” His words grew slurred with new tears. Rob wondered if he should mention that Toby shouldn’t really have wiped up pee with a towel, but what was the point. Bringing the kids up the right way wasn’t his job.

“You want to know something? Once I peed on the floor, and I slipped in it and fell over," Rob lied.

Actually, it had been blood that had pooled on the floor after a particularly vicious takedown of a trio of men determined to bomb an office block in Fort Lauderdale. But, the falling over part was real.

“Did you break anything?” Toby asked after a small pause. At least he’d stopped crying, although he was snotty and wiped his face on his pajamas.

“What?”

“When you fell over.”

“The sink, the towel rail, and my wrist,” Rob said, and all of that was true. It was the only bone he’d ever broken, and Justin had had to make up an elaborate cover story to take him to the hospital for X-rays and help.

Sometimes on cold, damp mornings, his wrist ached. A reminder of better times when the pain was something he could manage by sheer willpower alone.

“I shouted at Bran,” Toby admitted, “but I didn’t want him to see me make all this mess ‘cos he would think we’d get in trouble.”

“He knows you didn’t mean it, Toby. So how about we get you in the shower, and I’ll tidy up a bit.”

“You’ll fix it?”

“Of course.” He should add something cute, like maybe mentioning that fixing things was what uncles did best. He didn’t, because that would be stupidly dangerous.

“What about Bunny?”

“Maybe Bunny needs a shower,” he said helpfully. More like a cycle in a washing machine, which he’d need to add to the list of things the boys would need from their new parents after he left.

Give them a homegrown family.

Get them into school.

Keep them happy.

Wash Bunny.

Then he tugged the curtain closed, assuming that Toby actually knew how to run the shower, waiting for it to begin. Only when Toby threw out his PJs and the scent of strawberry shower gel filled the bathroom did Rob relax into clearing up the mess. The towel rail was wrenched from the wall, so it would need fixing correctly, but who needed a rail for a towel anyway? That was why chairs and doors had been invented. So he eased out what remained of the second screw holding it and slid the rail down behind the toilet where it was out of the way.

After clearing up, he hovered just outside, his dormant uncle instincts poking at him, making him concerned about the little boy who might need him.

“I said he wanted you and not me. Told you,” Bran said.

He could have meant anything, but Rob assumed Bran was commenting on how he’d done dealing with the situation. It was weird how good it felt getting a gold star from Bran Grady.

Wait, was Grady their last name? He’d never checked. Had the two of them kept his sister’s last name, or were they something else? He opened the pack of information that Protection Services had given him, flicked through to find birth certificates. Both gave the father’s name and the death certificate in there for his sister didn’t mention a married name.

Okay, so they were both Grady, at least he knew that because hell, both of them were of school age, right? Maybe he wouldn’t push it now. He’d wait until just before he left. Someone else, Justin maybe, would have to deal with the schooling side of things. He wouldn’t have any choice when Rob faded into the night.

Since their arrival, things had moved fast. Justin had said one night, but Rob wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon, and they were at day two now. The cabin was big; a kitchen, a sitting area with huge sofas, and four bedrooms, the kids in the back rooms and him between them and the front door.

Old habits die hard.

A routine of eating breakfast at the table, then lunch and dinner up at Branches was set. They didn’t talk a lot, the three of them, but he’d learned things about the kids in their silence. Bran was the one who did all the thinking, and Toby was the emotional one who couldn’t vocalize his pain. Not that Bran was that good at expressing pain as such, but he was an open book when he did have emotions. They didn’t talk about their mom much, a few passing comments was all, and even though Rob had a few questions, he wasn’t sure how to word them.

Was she a good mom? Had she ever wondered if he was still alive? Or was this thing where she’d wanted him to have the boys her way of saying that she’d known he was still out there? He’d cut all ties out of necessity, but had she been unhappy that he hadn’t been there for her?

Am I sad I didn’t see her? Was it worth missing out on having a sister just to save other people’s families?

He pushed the questions aside and poured another coffee, checked the kids who were both sitting in front of the television, and then sauntered out to the back porch, part of him expecting Aaron to be there still.

Of course, he wasn’t.

Justin had always talked about home, during their downtime when they’d run out of things to do and realized they weren’t attracted to each other enough to even bother having sex. He described mountains and valleys and the river that ran through them. He talked about the lake he and the children had walked up to. Blue Lake? Green Lake? Something like that.

No, Silver. Silver Lake.

And horses. Justin had rambled on about horses one time when he’d had a post-op fever, about how he missed the horses and the ranch, and how much he hated himself for how his best friend had died and it was his fault.

It turned out he was wrong. Justin’s best friend, Adam, hadn’t died at all, but that didn’t stop the guilt he could see consuming Justin at times. In their line of work, they couldn’t feel guilt. They couldn’t see the shades of gray at all. Things were black and white and had to stay that way. The bad guys were going to hurt innocent people, and he had been the good guy who cut out cancer before it hurt anyone else.

He didn’t regret a single kill.

Not when it kept much better people than him safe. Suzi had been safe, so had Bran and Toby, because of him and Justin.

“Food!” he announced.

Watching Bran with Toby made him think back to what Aaron had hinted at, that Bran was maybe too concerned about his brother. All this time he’d thought his sister was safe, that the kids he knew she’d had were growing up happy. But was he wrong? He needed to talk to Justin or whoever finally agreed to take them, and tell him that Bran had to understand he wasn’t Toby’s parent. He had to be a little boy and stop worrying.

Something else to add to the list.

The three of them headed for Branches and only reached the bridge before Rob spotted his first target.

“Hi,” he said and stepped in front of a tall, slim woman with long, dark blonde hair, who came to an abrupt halt and blinked at him. “Rob Brady, Justin’s friend, and these rug rats are my nephews Bran and Toby. You’re Ashley, right?”

She smiled at him and took his extended hand. “I am. Sorry I haven’t been down to see you, but,” she patted her swollen belly, “five months, and I'm on bedrest for blood pressure. Don’t tell Gabe I’m out here.”

Rob mimed zipping his lips, and she laughed. It was a nice laugh, and when she leaned over to talk to the children, he felt this overwhelming warm fuzziness that she would probably love to take them on and be their mom. Second choice after Justin and Sam, but still, a definite possibility.

“We’re just going up to Branches to get food.”

She frowned thoughtfully and glanced up at the restaurant, then brightened. “Try the chocolate fudge cake. It’s a new recipe of mine. Let me know what you think.”

“We sure will.”

See, I can do the polite stuff.

“Do you like Crooked Tree?” she asked the children.

“It’s cool for a holiday,” Bran said, and Toby stayed quiet.

“It sure is,” she said.

But all Rob heard was that Bran thought this was a holiday, and he needed to start building up the idea that this was a forever home for them, if he could work it all out. Ashley winked and moved away, and Rob carried on up the hill, following the kids.

“Did you like Ashley?” he asked in a special tone that didn’t imply they had to like her.

“She has pretty hair,” Toby murmured.

“It’s really long.”

“I bet it’s soft.”

“Like Mom’s,” Bran said.

Then they fell quiet again, and both of them stopped dead, right in front of him. He wondered if they were going to cry. He should hug them, and tell them everything was going to be okay. Only he couldn’t, because it wasn’t going to be okay for them, not yet.