The Darkest Sunrise (The Darkest Sunrise #1)

“You okay?” she asked, stepping out of my embrace.

“I’m fine.”

She kept her hands on my biceps and studied my face for any sign of a lie.

If she found any, she had the graciousness to let it go.

I wasn’t fine. And I hadn’t been in a long time. She’d hated it, but over the years, she’d had no choice but to accept it. The happy and carefree Charlotte Mills she’d raised had died on that fated September morning.

She slid her assessing gaze to the side. “You know, Tom. You do carry a gun. It wouldn’t have killed you to take care of that situation before I got here.”

He lifted his head from his phone, a small—and entirely handsome—smile pulling at his lips. “Not fond of spending my retirement in the slammer, Susan.”

She grinned and then batted her eyelashes. (Legit Betty Boop–style.) “No. I guess we can’t have that, now can we?”

I flicked my eyes between the two of them as they stood there staring at each other, the blatant chemistry damn near suffocating me.

God. I wanted that. With someone. Anyone. Though that would have probably required me to let someone in and allow them to get to know me. In a lot of ways, that insurmountable task seemed harder than finding out who had taken my son.

“Anyway,” I drawled to break their invisible current.

Mom shook her head to snap herself out of it. “I hear it’s time for cake.”

My shoulders tensed. When would it stop hurting so damn much? I read in a book about grief once that it was all about baby steps, focusing on each individual day. It had been ten years and I still felt like I was living frozen in time, not necessarily waiting for him to come home but still unable to figure out how to move forward.

Maybe it was time for big steps. Giant, even. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. One day, I was going to wake up and realize that, in my desperate escape from the pain in the present, I’d let the future pass me by.

Hell, I’d already allowed a decade to slide into past tense.

What if I never got to meet someone who loved me the way my dad had loved my mom?

Or even experience the way Tom looked at her as though she were the only woman he’d ever seen?

If I kept on the same path, taking baby step after baby step, working myself to the bone to avoid reality, I was going to die on that path—miserable and alone.

But how do you move forward when all you really want is to go back?

“Charlotte,” Mom prompted. “It’s time.”

She’d never been more right.

Sucking in a deep breath, I linked my arm with my mom’s and then looked back at Lucas’s picture above the fireplace. “Happy Birthday, baby.”

And then, together, the three of us walked outside to have cake.

Tom stood at my side, doing his best to deflect Brady’s glares, and my mom held my hand as I sobbed while singing the saddest rendition of “Happy Birthday” to ever be sung. Less than an hour later, I excused myself and headed home, where the pity party was just getting started.





* * *





“Uhhh ohhh,” Tanner drawled behind a pot of bubbling red sauce, a giant shit-eating grin pulling at his lips. “I spilled it on my shirt.”

Gripping the back of my neck, I made a U-turn and continued to pace a path behind the row of cameramen and sound engineers.

Quietly, I mumbled to myself, “You always spill it on your shirt, asshole. Learn to lift a damn spoon to your mouth.”

The idea of watching Tanner flirt with a camera while making vongoli was very low on my day’s priority list. It was only slightly above being waterboarded and hung by my toenails. Sure, the day had been shitty, but that was pretty much the permanent order of my priority list when it came to watching my brother strip his shirt off for his adoring fans.

Yes. He was a chef. Not the star of Magic Mike, though if you asked the president at The Food Channel, the ratings were surprisingly similar.

“And cut!” the director yelled before turning a seriously scary glower my way. “You have got to stop talking!”

“I didn’t say anything!” I defended—and lied.

I’d been grumbling under my breath for at least a half hour. She’d already threatened to throw me off the set once. But, really, the first time had been totally warranted. I wasn’t a TV director and I knew beyond nothing about cooking, but even I could tell that he was stirring an empty pot.

“I can hear you! We can all hear you.” She waved her arms around my brother’s kitchen, motioning to a team of cameramen nodding in agreement.

Defiantly crossing my arms over my chest, I feigned ignorance. “Sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Must have been someone else.”

Her eyes bulged and her lips started doing this crazy twitching thing that made it look like she was having a seizure.

“Okay, okay,” Tanner interjected, peeling the half apron from around his hips. “Andrea, can you give us a minute?”

She sliced her gaze over to me, but her words were aimed at my brother. “Absolutely, as long as you promise to get rid of him when you’re done.”

“Get rid of me? Are you kidding?” I stabbed a finger toward Tanner then hooked my thumb at my chest. “We share strands of the same DNA. And you want him to—”

Tanner gave my shoulder a hard shove before stating, “I’ll get rid of him.”

“The hell you will!” I shot back, but only because I was pissed. I wanted to leave more than she wanted me gone.

Shaking his head, he dug a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and led me out to the porch. “Let’s go. Spit it out. I’ve only got a minute to sort your shit, so talk fast.”

“She’s a witch,” I grumbled, jutting my chin at the woman barking orders to someone on the other side of the sliding glass doors.

After flicking his lighter to life, he hovered the orange flame over the tip of the cigarette dangling between his lips and talked around it. “Amazing director, decent in bed, but crazier than a tiger on acid. I suggest you don’t piss her off any more than you already have.”

Raking a hand through my thick, blond hair, I asked in all seriousness, “Should I be concerned that you’ve seen a tiger on acid?”

He chuckled. “Probably. But let’s deal with your shit first. Tell me what’s got you ranting and pacing around like Dad the day we accidentally scratched his Vette?”

I scoffed. “Please. I’m nothing like Dad.”

His baby-blue eyes, which matched my own, danced with humor. “That’s probably because you’d never have the balls to buy a Vette. A ding on the ol’ Tahoe just isn’t the same.” He grinned and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke through his nose.

I waved the smoke away from my face. “You’re a dick. But I need a favor.”

His smile grew. “Reeeeaaaalllly?”

I mentally groaned. I hated asking him for shit. It was always the same song and dance, but as much as I would have liked to handle this thing with Dr. Mills on my own, I needed Tanner.

“What are you doing on Saturday?”

He tipped his head to the side and eyed me warily. “Probably not whatever you’re about to ask me to do.”