All a Man Is Read online

  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 Harlequin 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.

  Books by Janice Kay Johnson

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1454—SNOWBOUND

  1489—THE MAN BEHIND THE COP

  1558—SOMEONE LIKE HER

  1602—A MOTHER’S SECRET

  1620—MATCH MADE IN COURT

  1644—CHARLOTTE’S HOMECOMING*

  1650—THROUGH THE SHERIFF’S EYES*

  1674—THE BABY AGENDA

  1692—BONE DEEP

  1710—FINDING HER DAD

  1736—ALL THAT REMAINS

  1758—BETWEEN LOVE AND DUTY**

  1764—FROM FATHER TO SON**

  1770—THE CALL OF BRAVERY**

  1796—MAKING HER WAY HOME

  1807—NO MATTER WHAT

  1825—A HOMETOWN BOY

  1836—ANYTHING FOR HER

  1848—WHERE IT MAY LEAD

  1867—FROM THIS DAY ON

  1884—BRINGING MADDIE HOME***

  1897—EVERYWHERE SHE GOES***

  SIGNATURE SELECT SAGA

  DEAD WRONG

  *The Russell Twins

  **A Brother’s Word

  ***The Mysteries of Angel Butte

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  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 durin
g 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 open
ings. 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.