Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(8)
“You know,” his sister, Kelsey, said at his side, also watching their parents, “when people find out they’ve been married twenty-five years, I still get weird looks.”
Alec snorted as he watched his father pull the newest member of the McClane family, Thomas, to his side and introduce the gangly teenager to the group of adults around him. “Only from the chumps who don’t know we were all adopted.”
Dressed in a sleek black cocktail gown she’d designed herself, Kelsey smiled up at Alec with warm brown eyes while wisps of curly blonde hair floated around her face from her stylish updo. “And those who don’t know how old we all were when we were adopted.”
That was true. Alec lifted his soda and sipped, wishing it were Jim Beam more with every passing second. He hadn’t been a whole lot younger than Thomas when the McClanes had adopted him, six months or so after they’d adopted Ethan. Alec and Ethan had known each other briefly at Bennett, the juvenile detention center where Michael McClane had occasionally counseled troubled youth. Ethan had been at Bennett on a murder charge pled down to assault. Alec had been there on repeat drug trafficking charges.
His gaze strayed to Michael’s salt-and-pepper hair, strong jawline, and warm smile as he chatted with his guests. It took a saint to adopt two kids from such fucked-up backgrounds, but Michael and Hannah had done so because they believed everyone deserved a second chance. Alec had found that second chance with them. A chance to get away from John Gilbert, and a chance to start over. No matter how he continued to fuck up his life, he owed Hannah and Michael for that. Owed them more than he could ever repay.
Kelsey leaned close. “Look at Rusty over there. Who’s the girl he’s talking to?”
Alec’s gaze strayed to the corner of the second-floor dining room where their other brother Rusty stood in the shadows in black slacks and a long-sleeved black sweater that covered his scars and matched his hair, conversing with a brunette Alec vaguely remembered meeting once or twice. “I think she’s the Kleins’ daughter.”
“The senator’s daughter?” Kelsey harrumphed. “Ten bucks says her parents don’t know she’s flirting with the dark side.”
Alec’s gaze narrowed as he watched the two. The girl seemed to be extremely invested in the conversation, talking animatedly with her hands and smiling in abundance. Rusty, on the other hand, sported that same detached look he always had when he was itching to get out of an uncomfortable situation.
You and me both, buddy.
Alec caught Rusty’s dark gaze as he lifted his drink and shook his head. Rusty clenched his jaw and glanced toward the ceiling in a get me the hell out of here look only an idiot could miss. One side of Alec’s lips twitched.
It was good for Rusty to get out, even if he was stuck talking to some chick he wouldn’t normally look twice at. The youngest McClane brother spent most of his days alone on his fledgling vineyard in the hills outside the city, and Alec often wondered how he didn’t go nuts from the isolation. But Rusty had always preferred solitude to company. Even after he’d joined the McClane family, about a year after Alec, he’d spent most of his time alone, and Alec knew that had a lot to do with his own fucked-up background. Unlike Ethan and Alec, Rusty hadn’t been a resident at Bennett. Hannah McClane had found him in her ER, taken one look at his bruised and battered body, and decided he needed a home too.
Rusty had gotten his second chance. As had Kelsey when the McClanes had adopted her at ten a few years later. Their family was the proverbial melting pot, but Alec wouldn’t have it any other way. And it was only because of them that he wasn’t at the bar right now tossing back shots. He didn’t want to let any of them down again, not when they’d done so much to raise him up.
Alec’s gaze strayed to Ethan, dressed in a suit, standing with an arm around his fiancée, Samantha, who was wearing a green dress, the pair smiling and chatting with friends of their parents’. Though he didn’t want it to, his chest pinched with another bite of bittersweet longing. He was happy for his brother, happy Ethan had found someone and that the someone was Sam, but he couldn’t stop the burst of jealousy coursing through him when he looked at the happy couple. Especially not today, when his interaction with Raegan was still tumbling through his mind.
He took another sip of his soda, cursing the fact it wasn’t alcohol and that he hadn’t brought a date tonight. He always brought dates to family functions because they distracted him from looking around and seeing everything he was seeing now. And tonight he could have used that distraction because what he was seeing was everything he didn’t have and wouldn’t ever find again.
Kelsey tensed at Alec’s side. “Julian’s here.”
Alec tore his gaze from Ethan and Sam and glanced toward the stairs where Kelsey’s shit of a husband shrugged the dark hair out of his eyes, waved, and headed in their direction.
Every muscle in Alec’s body contracted, ready for a fight. He and his brothers all suspected Julian Benedict was hitting Kelsey behind closed doors, but she denied it every time they tried to talk to her, and whenever she showed up with a new bruise she blamed it on being clumsy. “I thought you said he was in Seattle on business.”
“He’s supposed to be.”
Kelsey plastered on the fake smile she used on all her fashion customers and awkwardly moved toward Julian’s side. “I thought you weren’t going to make it.”