Marine Brother Read online

  Marine Brother

  A Christmas Novel

  Melrose Lane Series

  Book 2

  MK Dwyer

  A Marine is a Marine. I set that policy two weeks ago - there's no such thing as a former Marine. You're a Marine, just in a different uniform and you're in a different phase of your life. But you'll always be a Marine because you went to Parris Island, San Diego or the hills of Quantico. There's no such thing as a former Marine.

  —General James F. Amos, 35th CMC

  To the real-life Blake. You left us too soon.

  Never

  Forgotten

  Marine Brother: A Christmas Novel

  Copyright © 2018 by MK Dwyer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  If this novel is found available from any source other than Amazon, it is a stolen copy. Thank you for being a fan of my books, but please do not support illegal pirating of an author’s hard work.

  Cover designed by MK Dwyer

  Cover Art elements

  © Leigh Prather | Dreamstime.com

  © Vladimirs Poplavskis | Dreamstime.com

  Cover Fonts

  © Jayde Garrow | dafont.com

  © Youssef Habchi | dafont.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  MK Dwyer

  Visit my website at www.AuthorMKDwyer.com

  Published in the United States of America

  First Electronic Publication: Dec 2018

  Southern Canuck Press

  Table of Contents

  Melrose Lane Series

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Social Media

  Melrose Lane Series

  Previous Books

  Marine Brother is the second book in the Melrose Lane series. While Marine Brother can probably be read as a stand-alone, follow the link below to start with Book One.

  Book One: Marine Firefighter on Amazon

  Book Two: Marine Brother: A Christmas Novel

  Chapter One

  Theresa

  She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling fan as it cast moving shadows on the stark white ceiling. The room was nearly empty except the bed they slept on and two bedside tables, one on each side of the bed. She looked over at the man still asleep next to her and rolled her eyes in disgust.

  Mark Banner slept like the snarling wolf he was. His snores sounded more like growls than any noise a human would make. When she’d first met him, she thought he was handsome. A little cocky, but she’d always been attracted to confident men. What she learned later though was that Mark had nothing to back his confidence up with. A cocky man with a reason to be cocky was a turn on. A cocky man without a reason was just an asshole, and Mark was an asshole with a capital A-S-S.

  He started out charming, and before she knew it, they were spending every day together. Then he practically moved in and that’s when he started to change. No—not change—started to show his true colors. At first, he asked her to do things for him, and then he expected her to do things for him. It wasn’t long before he demanded she do things for him, and with those demands came punishments for not obeying or not fulfilling his needs fast enough. Instead of an equal partner in their relationship, she became his cook, maid, and sex toy. Basically, his slave.

  To top it off, he got a sick thrill out of manhandling her. He pretended he didn’t know his own strength, but it didn’t take long for her to see past that charade. She broke up with him after the first time he outright threw her to the ground. But he came back and apologized and pushed and pushed until he wore her down, and she took him back.

  She tried to break up with him again after he pushed her over the ottoman and she hit her head on the coffee table, but that time he wouldn’t accept it. He completely refused to hear what she was saying or leave her house, insisting that she would just take him back anyway. She’d never been so mad at anyone in her entire life.

  Thankfully, Joe was at his dad’s house when it happened because she got loud and cursed at him and told him to get the fuck out of her life. She would never forget how he watched her scream while sitting eerily calm, before he got up quicker than she’d ever seen him move. He had his hand around her throat before she could blink and her back against the wall before she realized he’d moved her. As he held her there with her feet barely touching the ground, he whispered one word into her ear. “No.”

  When he finally let her go, she fell to her knees in a heap, her eyes wet with tears that she wouldn’t let fall. He walked away, but the threat remained. That was the day the fear began, but it was also the day she vowed to figure a way out. She knew she would never survive a man like that, mentally or physically. She was loud by nature with an in-your-face personality. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Mark enjoyed “taming” her. He’d even used that exact word one night as she dutifully took his plate to the kitchen after dinner.

  Ten deep breaths later the urge to break the plate over his head subsided enough that she could wash the dishes without her hands shaking in rage. Keeping her raging thoughts to herself was going to be the death of her.

  She was wary of leaving town with him, but the asshole had promised a long weekend in Las Vegas. To his credit, he had brought her to Vegas, but instead of a swanky hotel on the strip, they showed up unannounced at his brother’s apartment way off the strip.

  The brother was decent enough and offered his unexpected visitors his spare bedroom. But they’d caught him leaving for the night, so she kept her misgivings to herself, showered, and went to bed. She had no idea what time Mark came to bed but based on the amount of drool pooling on his pillow, he wasn’t waking up any time soon.

  Unable to lay around feeling sorry for herself, she climbed out of the bed as quiet as possible—not to be courteous—but because she needed coffee before she dealt with any of Mark’s shit that morning. She padded into the kitchen in just the cami and boy-shorts she’d slept in, letting her red hair hang free to her waist. Still sleepy-eyed, she didn’t notice the other person in the kitchen until she almost ran into him.

  Looking up and clearing the sleep from her eyes she saw Mark’s brother—Mark’s large, tattooed and bearded brother—smirking back at her. “Sorry. Didn’t see you there.”

  He huffed. “Obviously. Coffee?”

  “Oh God, yes.” She was relieved the coffee was already brewed, but realizing how she must’ve sounded, her eyes darted to his as his eyebrow quirked at her response. They stood in the kitchen a minute facing each other and sipping from their coffee mugs. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but she was never very good with silence. “So, we didn’t get a chance to meet yesterday. I’m…”

  “I know who you are.�
��

  “Well, I don’t know who you are.”

  “And yet, here you are. Standing in my kitchen. Sleeping in my bed.”

  She shivered. Not from freight or cold. Something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on—or wanted to examine—about her boyfriend’s brother. The man unnerved her, but she still desired to know his name. If she’d asked Mark, he would have taken that to mean she was interested in fucking his brother. Any reason to punish her was a good reason for him.

  The whole mess agitated her. How she’d been persuaded to come to Vegas for fun on the strip, guilted into paying for gas because he was paying for the room, and even convinced that they were just making a quick detour from the strip when they pulled into the apartment complex. She felt stupid. It hadn’t been a quick detour which meant there wasn’t a room which meant there wouldn’t be any fun on the strip. All that, and to top it off, that fucker, Mark, hadn’t even made introductions between the two of them like she didn’t rate that courtesy.

  “What the hell was I thinking? Drinking my boyfriend’s brother’s coffee in my boyfriend’s brother’s kitchen after sleeping in my boyfriend’s brother’s spare bedroom next to, oh yeah, my boyfriend!” She slammed her cup still half-full of coffee onto the counter and stormed back towards the spare bedroom to get dressed. He’d flinched every time she’d said “boyfriend”, and though she didn’t know why he reacted to the word, it hadn’t been a picnic to say it either. In fact, she rarely used that word anymore to refer to Mark. Most days he felt more like her keeper than her boyfriend.

  Just as she reached the door, she heard him say, “Blake. My name is Blake Banner.”

  She smiled because she felt like she won. She only regretted leaving the coffee behind, but she could brew a new pot after she got dressed. She’d felt incredibly vulnerable speaking to that man in her pajamas. In the back of her mind, she knew her discomfort had nothing to do with what she was wearing, but she chose jeans and a plain green t-shirt to cover herself without dying of a heatstroke in the Nevada desert. Then she added a little mascara and lip gloss. She wasn’t a fan of makeup unless it was a special occasion. At twenty-eight, she felt she looked just fine without it, and until that changed, she would enjoy one less worry in her life.

  ∞∞∞

  Blake

  That girl with the long red hair and light green eyes in the skimpy little outfit sauntered into his kitchen half-asleep like she owned the place. She clearly didn’t expect anyone to be up as early as she was. Blake had felt the same way. He was always the first one up. Looked like he had some competition while his brother, and the hot number he called his girlfriend, were in town.

  He’d loved his brother once upon a time because he was his brother, but Mark was a loser. He somehow always made the wrong decisions, angered easily, and walked around with a permanent chip on this shoulder. How a guy like that landed a girl like her was anyone’s guess.

  She was a beautiful firecracker with a sarcastic, silver tongue. He had no idea why he goaded her when she asked his name, but it was fun to watch her get riled up. He’d expected the outburst but the shiver of awareness that came before it was surprising. He’d liked it and wondered what that said about him.

  He also could have done without the multiple reminders that she was there with his brother. He didn’t want to examine why that bothered him either. Then he’d told her his last name like she didn’t already know that part—except—maybe she didn’t. Maybe Mark didn’t even tell her they were brothers or maybe she didn’t know Mark’s last name. He chuckled at that thought. Surely, she at least knew that much.

  He knew her name, but only because he’d pried it out of his brother the night before. After she’d gone to the spare room in a huff, he and Mark had talked for a few minutes before he had to go to work. He couldn’t get much out of him, but he figured Mark would tell him what he needed, or how much he needed, later that day.

  He finished the coffee in his cup as he stared at the cup she left behind. He readied the coffee machine for another pot and hit the “brew” button before he went to his own room to get dressed. Mark would be awake eventually and he needed to mentally prepare for whatever hairbrained scheme or trouble Mark had found for himself. He knew Mark came to get help from him, probably monetary, but really, he had no idea exactly why he was there.

  Blake dressed and returned to the kitchen just in time to catch Theresa pouring out the cold coffee that remained of her first cup and refilling the mug with the fresh coffee he’d just brewed. She had on more clothes, damn it, but not even her misshapen jeans could hide her slender curves. She turned and spotted him over the brim of her cup. She looked like a deer caught in headlights, but he enjoyed getting a better look at her light green eyes that were even more vibrant than before thanks to the green shirt she was wearing.

  “Uh… Thanks for restarting the pot. I usually need at least two cups before I feel human in the mornings.”

  “And yet you abandoned your first one.” She narrowed her eyes and huffed. He didn’t know why he brought it up, but he enjoyed the reaction he got.

  “You’re infuriating.”

  “Thank you. I try.” He smirked, and she bristled.

  “Clearly.”

  He smiled but changed the subject. “My bum of a brother still out cold?”

  She was quiet for a moment. No doubt trying to decide if she was even going to answer. “Yeah, dead to the world as usual. Probably another couple of hours before he shows his face.”

  “Some things never change.”

  “I get the feeling you and he don’t get along.”

  “We used to get along fine, but years and choices have changed things. It would help if we heard from him more often than just when he needed something.”

  “We?”

  “We. Me, our parents and our sister.”

  “Oh.”

  “He didn’t tell you about any of us. Did he?”

  She suddenly found the carpet very interesting and didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. He knew the answer.

  “Typical. I’m not surprised at all.”

  He walked around her, poured the last of the freshly brewed coffee into a mug and turned back to Theresa.

  “I’m going to take this onto the balcony while we wait for the man of the hour to rise and tell me why you’re really here. You’re welcome to join me if you like.”

  She looked around the room, and then shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, but don’t try to pump me for information. Seems I know even less than I thought I did.”

  Chapter Two

  Theresa

  She followed Blake out the sliding glass doors and sat on the patio chair next to him. Like in the kitchen earlier, they sipped their coffee in companionable silence while taking in the cool, crisp morning air and mountain view from his balcony. Surprised by the ease of being in his presence, she was at a loss for words. That didn’t happen to her very often. She had a scathing or sarcastic comment for every situation—at least, when Mark wasn’t around—but she didn’t feel the need to fill the silence either. Weird.

  She finished her coffee and set the cup on the patio table between their chairs without taking her eyes off Blake’s spectacular view.

  “So, what do you do?” His apartment was sparse, but nice, in a great neighborhood with a beautiful view. Plus, from his balcony, she could see the spectacular pool, next to a large clubhouse and fitness center within the complex.

  “If I told you that then I’d have to kill you.” He winked at her.

  “Okay. Fine. Don’t tell me.” She guessed he wasn’t a fan of talking about himself, but maybe he would talk about Mark and their family. “Are you and Mark originally from Vegas?”

  He gave her a disbelieving look. “You don’t know where Mark is from? How long have you two been together?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. How did she explain that she and Mark didn’t discuss things like a normal couple? Her goal, until she could figure something else ou
t, was to just stay off Mark’s radar as much as possible. She had no idea why she—Theresa, who had something to say about everything—couldn’t think of a plausible lie in the presence of the man next to her. So, she went with a half-truth. “A few months. Like you, he doesn’t like to talk about himself.”

  He was quiet for a moment while they both continued to stare at the skyline. “Touché.” He sighed. “Yes. We grew up here in the city. Our little sister, Amber, is a junior at UNLV and our parents moved to Henderson when she graduated high school to get out of the city. The four of us have dinner together once a month. Mom invites Mark every time, but he hasn’t been home in two years. Until now. That’s how I know he needs something. The last time he came home, Mom and Dad gave him a loan for ten-grand because he was about to lose his house in Yuma.”

  Her eyes cut to Blake at that comment. “But Mark rents an apartment.”

  He met her eyes, and she thought he looked a little sad. “I know that now, but at the time, he was very convincing. The sad truth is, Theresa, that my brother is a conman, and he is enough of an asshole to con his own family.”

  She couldn’t hold his eye contact anymore and see the pain there. She knew Mark was slimy. She saw more of his true self with every passing day, but if he could con his own family, then he was capable of anything in her mind and that made him even more dangerous to her and her son.

  Adjusting to the new information, she jumped when the sliding glass door was ripped open and Mark barreled on to the balcony.

  “What’s going on here?” He looked back and forth between the two of them before his eyes landed on her.

  Still stunned at his abrupt entrance, she appreciated that Blake answered. “Coffee, brother. And a relaxing, silent morning until you graced us with your presence. Sleep well?”

  Mark finally tore his eyes away from Theresa to answer his brother. “Uh. Yeah. Great. Thanks.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No. I don’t drink the stuff.” Theresa thought that Blake had to know that but asked to keep Mark’s attention on him instead of her, and she appreciated it.