“What?” she said, glancing at him.
“I asked how old were you when you first realized you could borrow other people’s abilities by touching them?” he said patiently, as if realizing she’d been lost in thought.
She turned to gaze out at the water, a smile curving her lips. “Remember that family friend I told you about? The one who let me work in his grocery store.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, one night he was doing the store’s inventory when his wife called and told him she needed him at home. I knew he was stressed about getting the inventory done, but I couldn’t offer to help because I didn’t even know how to use the computer program. He was in such a hurry that he almost left without his coat and when I handed it to him, my hand brushed his and all of a sudden, I knew how to do the inventory. I finished the whole thing in a few hours, which surprised the heck out of him. Especially since I could barely remember how to even start the program the next day.”
“That must have freaked you out,” he murmured as they slowly started walking down the broad stairs.
“Not really.” She stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I wasn’t even fifteen years old at the time and so focused on everything going on in my life that this one weird moment barely registered on my radar. It wasn’t until a year or so later, after the same scenario played over and over with different people, that I finally figured out what was happening. And yeah, at that point, it did freak me out.”
“Did Julian ever figure out what you could do?” Caleb asked, pausing with her on one of the steps to watch a big cruise ship sail into the harbor. “I mean at some point before you helped him escape from that Turkish prison.”
She nodded, standing close enough to Caleb that she could feel the heat his big body generated in the cold night air. “Julian can be a bit slow sometimes—and since I’m his sister, I’m allowed to say that—but he noticed after I slipped up and borrowed someone’s martial arts skills to fend off a mugger as were walking home. After that, he wanted me to use my abilities all the time, while I went out of my way never to use them.”
“Why don’t you like to use your abilities?” he asked as they started walking again. Whereas before she’d been warm and toasty, the temperature must have dropped five degrees when he put a couple feet between them. “I would have thought they’d come in handy considering how things were so difficult for you at that point in your life.”
“You sound like my brother.” She sighed. “He always wanted me to use my abilities to take advantage of people. He saw it as nothing more than a way to make money and was jealous that I had these abilities when he didn’t. Whenever I refused to use them the way he wanted, we’d end up arguing.” She swallowed hard at the memory. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought my abilities would be the thing that finally pushed us apart.”
Caleb moved a little closer, his shoulder so near her arm that she could feel his warmth again. “Would using your abilities to make your lives easier have been so bad?”
She shrugged as they continued down the steps. “It’s hard to explain, but I never felt right about using my abilities for something so cheap. It made me feel like I was misusing it.”
Brielle expected Caleb to laugh at her and call her silly like Julian had done so many times. Instead, he grinned.
“I’m impressed,” he said. “It’s definitely not the way I would have handled the situation had I been in your shoes. If I had gotten your gift at that age, I probably would have used it to rob a bank or something. The fact that you resisted the urge to go the super villain route says a lot about you.”
She laughed. She had to admit it was nice to hear Caleb say something like that. She’d certainly never gotten praise like that from Julian. “You should probably refrain from being too impressed. Because while I didn’t ever want to use my abilities, that doesn’t mean I never did. Mostly because my brother had his own unique ways of forcing my hand.”
“What do you mean?” Caleb asked as they reached the wide street at the base of the stairs and started across. “Because I gotta tell you, that sounded a little ominous.”
She couldn’t help but laugh again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. It’s just that Julian has always been good at getting into trouble and usually left it up to me to find a way to get him out of it. Unfortunately, that usually meant I had to use my abilities, whether it was finding ways to get money to bail him out of jail or fighting to keep someone from killing him. Once I even had to break into a jewelry store to return the stuff he’d stolen before they realized it was missing. And yeah, there was other stuff, too. Sometimes, it scares me to think about how many times I broke the law for my brother.”
Brielle wasn’t ashamed of what she’d had to do for Julian, but that didn’t keep her from looking away into the darkness out on the water, wishing she hadn’t been quite so honest with her criminal confession. Did Caleb honestly need to know about the jewelry store thing?
He stopped and put his hand on her sleeve, gently turning her to look at him. “Before you start worrying that I’m going to judge you for your wayward youth, I should probably let you know that I have more than a passing knowledge of what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the law. And for reasons not nearly as noble as saving a sibling’s ass.”
She gazed up at him, wondering if he was making that stuff up to make her feel better. Then she thought about the way she’d seen him fight, both on this mission and the previous one, and how he’d always seemed on the ragged edge of control or well beyond it.
“Yeah, I can see you having problems with the police.” She smiled. “You definitely have that proverbial bad boy vibe going on.”
Most guys would have preened at least a little at that description. In her experience, men liked to think of themselves as dangerous. Caleb didn’t seem to notice the label. Probably because he really was dangerous.
“I’d like to be able to blame my inner omega for all the trouble I’ve gotten myself into over the years,” he said casually, taking her hand and guiding her out onto one of the concrete piers leading out into the bay. “But since I’ve been getting into trouble since I was old enough to walk—and the werewolf thing didn’t happen until much later—I guess I can’t use that as an excuse.”
They stopped halfway down the pier to lean against the metal railing and look out over the dark water. Brielle wanted to ask Caleb about his formative years and where he’d grown up. She got the feeling he’d gotten into as much trouble as Julian. And yet, he had ended up completely different than her brother. Then again, Caleb was different from any man she’d ever met.
“If you got in so much trouble, how did you end up working for STAT?” she asked, moving closer to him, telling herself it was the heat rolling off him in waves that she was seeking. “I mean, I’m sure they wouldn’t have recruited you if they thought you were that much of a troublemaker.”