All a Man Is. Janice Kay Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ truth, there are times I’d like nothing better than being able to lay ideas out or vent to someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race.”

      “Unbiased.”

      He dipped his head without taking his gaze from her. “Yeah.”

      “Then I won’t do.” She felt her smile wobble. “Because I am biased. I’m on your side.”

      “God, Julia.” His voice was hoarse, his emotions momentarily unguarded.

      Her heartbeat did some wobbling, too.

      The waitress appeared with their entrées, probably a fortunate interruption. Julia noticed that Noah Chandler and his fiancée were leaving, Noah pausing only to nod at Alec, who did the same. She wondered what they’d conveyed with that very restrained exchange.

      “Men don’t always understand what women need,” Alec murmured, momentarily confusing her. Then she saw the amusement that lightened the depth of emotion they’d both been feeling.

      “I have noticed,” she responded.

      He laughed, although she sensed he might be forcing it. “When you need something from me, tell me. Otherwise, I won’t know.”

      Your heart. I need you to love me.

      He would tell her he did. Like a sister.

      “Anything,” he added, sounding husky.

      They looked at each other for an uninterrupted stretch that had warmth rising in her cheeks as she wondered crazily what he meant.

      Anything.

      “I never suspected,” he said after a moment.

      “Suspected what?” She didn’t sound quite like herself, but if he noticed he gave no indication.

      “I assumed you and Josh were completely happy.”

      “Don’t you think any marriage has tensions?”

      “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

      “Why not?” she asked. “Have you ever come close?”

      He shook his head. “I love my parents, but I wouldn’t want what they have.”

      She nodded her understanding. Norman Raynor was a tense, rigid, demanding man who both dominated and dismissed his wife. Even Josh, not often given to self-reflection, had talked some about his father’s expectations for his boys and his contempt for women. At the time, Julia had thought to be grateful that Alec and Josh didn’t have a sister. She had blamed Norm for his sons’ choice of careers, too; he had been a firefighter who thought men should be men. Mostly he and Rosaria had been great with the kids, but Julia hadn’t been enthusiastic about her children spending a lot of time with their grandfather as they got older and more conscious of things like gender roles.

      “I feel sorry for your mother.”

      “She made her bed.” Apparently realizing how harsh that sounded, Alec shook his head. “I don’t mean that. No matter how bad the marriage is, she’d never leave him. If nothing else, her faith wouldn’t let her. But it’s more than that. I’m not sure she even notices how he treats her anymore. I remember from when I was little how happy she was. Laughing and singing all the time.” His mouth crooked up and his expression softened. “Good smells from the kitchen, fresh flowers from her garden on the table, an Italian tenor bellowing from the stereo.” He grimaced. “Of course, the music went off when Dad walked in the door, and if Mama was lucky, he’d grunt his appreciation for amazing food. The change in her was gradual. She’d listen to music less and less often, smile less. By the time Josh and I were in high school, she’d lost any gift for happiness. I don’t know if she’d recover it even if he dropped dead of a heart attack tomorrow.”

      Julia couldn’t help herself. She touched him, only fleetingly, her fingertips to the back of his hand, but it was enough to draw a startled, somehow riveted stare from him.

      “Were their feelings hurt that we moved away?” she asked, as much to distract him as anything. His parents hadn’t said much to her, but she’d never been sure how they felt about her anyway.

      As a distraction, her question worked. Alec gave a grunt of his own. “Couldn’t tell with Mama. Dad thought me quitting my job was asinine. I’d be a captain before I knew it, maybe rise to chief of the LAPD. He knew how to bring Matt into line, and it didn’t involve pampering the kid or uprooting the whole damn family. ‘My belt’s still good for something,’ he said.”

      Julia shuddered. They were both silent for a moment.

      “I always thought I might be more like him than Josh was,” Alec said unexpectedly. “Josh was more...happy-go-lucky, for lack of a better term. I internalize everything.”

      Yes. She’d seen that.

      “I was thinking something like that,” she admitted. “The only thing is, Josh was only happy when he was in motion. Eventually I started wondering if he had an attention deficit disorder, but surely he’d have had to be patient, I don’t know, crouched somewhere waiting for the bad guys to make a move. I know he was smart, but he almost never picked up a book. Even TV bored him. He could sit down for about the length of a meal, then he’d get twitchy and leap up and need to do something.”

      “Yeah, he had some trouble in school. Far as I know, he was never diagnosed, but—” He put down his fork and seemed to mull that over. “Actually, I don’t know if that’s true or not. Dad would probably have given hell to any teacher or school administrator who tried to lay the blame for Josh’s issues on some problem in his brain when obviously they were lacking. He limped through graduation, but he enlisted the minute he graduated. Never crossed any of our minds that he might go on to college.”

      Somehow the conversation drifted after that. First Alec and she exchanged their own experiences in higher education. She shook her head over her idiocy in dropping out before getting her degree, Alec telling her his father had belittled his own determination to get his.

      “‘Why waste your time?’ he’d say. ‘You should have gone straight to the police academy. Think of the street experience you’d have by now.’ He’d shake his head. ‘You’ve been to school for thirteen years already. Why would you want to write a paper about Robert E. Lee’s military mistakes or the fact that some damn philosopher tried to prove himself wrong?’”

      “Some damn philosopher?” she queried.

      “Descartes. He was determined not to be smug in his beliefs.”

      “So he tried to prove he was wrong.”

      “Right.” Alec shook his head. “Funny Dad should have chosen that paper to disparage, because I take Descartes’s theories about self-doubt seriously. Whenever I go too far out on a limb, I think, hold on, remember Descartes, and take the other side. Sometimes I actually do convince myself I was wrong.”

      “I’m impressed,” she said, smiling. “You actually demonstrate the value of those college classes on a day-to-day basis.”

      He smiled, too. “I told you, I internalize everything.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ