The Taming of Reid Donovan

By Marilyn Pappano

Southern Knights

Trouble with a capital T

THE ORIGINAL BAD BOY

Reid Donovan had heard himself described that way so many times that it was impossible to think of himself as anything but. Then he met Cassie Wadea woman who believed in him, and whose love made him almost believe in himself. Everything he had never dared to dream of was within reach. And then he was asked to walk away from it all .

Should he do it? Could he do it? Did he even have a choice? And when it was all over, would he have Cassie to go back to? Or would he once again find himself on the outside looking in?

Southern Knights. James, Reid and Nicholas: They came home expecting to find dangerbut love took them by surprise!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781459272620

Marilyn Pappano

Author of 80+ books, Marilyn Pappano has been married for thirty+ years to the best husband a writer could have. She's written more than 80 books and has won the RITA and many other awards. She blogs at www.the-twisted-sisters.com and can be found at www.marilyn-pappano.com. She and her husband live in Oklahoma with five rough-and-tumble dogs.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Cassie Wade walked into the freshly painted classroom and gave a great sigh of relief. Everything was finished. The walls had been painted, the windows washed, the blackboards hung. Low tables in geometric shapes were scattered around the room, with child-size plastic chairs drawn up close. A sunny yellow bulletin board was hung near one corner, opposite a bright red one, and held a gaily decorated banner welcoming the kids to school. Whimsical animals spelled out the alphabet on the walls, and painted numbers danced across the tile floor. Against all odds, the work was done right on schedule.

The school’s remodeling budget hadn’t allowed for hiring professionals, not that any carpenter, painter or plumber she knew of would have been willing to come to Serenity Street for a job. It was all strictly amateur work, shared by Cassie, her boss, Karen, and husband, Jamey, his son, Reid, and the female staff and clients of Kathy’s House, the neighborhood women’s center. Cassie hadn’t been convinced that they could pull it off in time for Monday’s opening, but Karen had insisted they could. Once again, her boss’s cockeyed optimism had paid off. The grant had come through, the two classrooms were ready, the teachers had been hired and the schoolbooks had arrived. In two more days at eight o’clock, the Serenity Street Alternative School would open right on schedule.

And Cassie was one of the lucky teachers.

The school had room for only fifty students, which was fine since not even half that number had registered. Besides, there weren’t fifty school-age kids on Serenity or the two sister streets, Divinity and Trinity, that made up its neighborhood. Most of the families who could afford to move away—like her own—had done so long ago, taking their children to safer neighborhoods. The only ones left behind were those too poor, too defeated or too stubborn to leave their homes. The stubborn ones had been the first to sign up their kids. They understood the importance of education. Most of the poor ones had come with their children once they’d heard about the tuition plan. Hours of volunteer work translated into tuition waivers, work they were eager to do if it meant a better life for their kids. As for the defeated ones who’d given up under the weight of their burdens... Well, Karen believed that someday they would come around, and she was usually right.

Wandering over to the windows that lined one wall, Cassie looked out on what remained of the old crushed-shell drive. The school’s small size was ideal for its location: a detached garage that had long ago housed horses and buggies, followed by more-modern means of transportation. It filled one corner of the yard behind the three-story Victorian that accommodated Kathy’s House on the first floor and the O’Sheas on the second. Someday Karen had plans for the third floor...but someday would have to wait for time and money, something always in short supply at the center.

Cassie was willing to wait for someday, willing to work for it. After all, starting Monday, her career would be tied up with Serenity Street, and soon after, so would the rest of her life. Like Karen before her, she had decided that the neighborhood would be more than just a job. She was making a commitment to the school and the center, to the kids, their families and their neighborhood, by moving to Serenity Street.

She hadn’t told anyone yet. To say her family would be dismayed was like saying that traditional Cajun cooking was a tad flavorful. After all, her parents had worked hard for years, raising thirteen kids on practically nothing, so that they could move away from Serenity. They had wanted to raise their children someplace safer, someplace not so defeating. They had wanted better for them than poverty, gangs and street crime. They wouldn’t understand how any one of them could even consider visiting Serenity, much less working or living there. They would be bewildered and confused by her decision.

Her eldest sister, Jolie, would be most vocal. Jolie had spent seventeen hard years on Serenity, until a scholarship to the University of Mississippi had provided her with a way out. Her husband would be outspoken, too. Smith Kendricks knew little enough firsthand about Serenity, but what he knew came from his job. As an assistant U.S. Attorney for eastern Louisiana, many of the cases he’d prosecuted in the past few years somehow had ties to Serenity Street. As the recently appointed U.S. Attorney, he wasn’t likely to support this decision.

Even Karen, who had faced the same opposition from her friends and family, was likely to protest. It had been one thing for her to leave her home four hours away, buy that great big dilapidated old house, sink everything she had in the world into it and make a new life for herself. She would still advise Cassie to stay right where she was, eighteen stories above the crime and the grime of the city, and commute each day, traveling with locked doors and rolled-up windows, coming after the sun rose and scurrying away like a frightened rabbit before it set again.

But that wasn’t how Cassie wanted to live. She couldn’t spend her days teaching the kids that they could succeed, that they didn’t have to let the despair and depression of their neighborhood hold them back, and then return to her safe, luxurious home every night. She wanted to be a part of this community. She wanted to show them by example.

So she didn’t intend to tell anyone until it was a done deal. Once she’d moved out of the high-rise condo Smith had made available to her rent-free upon graduation, once she’d gotten settled in her new place and made a home for herself, then she would come clean. Until then, she wouldn’t exactly lie to anyone. She would merely avoid being truthful.

Circling the tables and pint-size chairs, she stopped in front of a cinder-block wall. It had been painted bright blue, with a remarkable rendition of the tiny park down the street in the center. Bright flowers bloomed along the iron fence, and happy kids played in the grass and on the swings. Along the outer border, in bright yellow paint, were the signatures of everyone who had worked on the school project. Cassie’s own name was in the lower right corner. Karen and Jamey shared the lower left corner. There were Susannah and Elly, their nurses; Viola, the dietician; Dr. Pat, the psychologist; and Shawntae, Marina, Becca, Nicole, Irene, Mandy, Opal, Ruth and Berta.

The artist’s name was missing.

She wasn’t surprised. Once Reid had decided to cross over to the law-abiding side of the street, he’d done little to draw attention to himself. In the beginning, she supposed, it had been safer that way. Some of his former partners in crime hadn’t wanted to let him go. Along with everyone else, they had been convinced that his attempt at walking the straight and narrow was just a temporary aberration, that sooner or later he would find honesty and respectability too impossible a goal and would return to his old pursuits with his old gang. It had been more than six months, though, and while Karen had faith in him, not many others did. Everyone was waiting for him to slip up, fall down and give in.

But not Cassie. She admired the changes he’d made. It couldn’t be easy to turn your back on the only life-style you’d ever known, especially when the people who should be encouraging and supporting you were simply standing back and waiting for you to fail. She was surprised that he hadn’t said to hell with them all and gone back to his old life. When he’d been running the streets with Ryan Morgan, people had feared him. People had respected him—for all the wrong reasons, admittedly, but wasn’t that better than no respect at all? Wasn’t that better than the wariness and suspicion he got now?

Obviously he didn’t think so. He was still making the effort. He was working mornings at Scott’s Garage just outside the neighborhood and evenings at O’Shea’s Bar across the street. In the past month and a half, he’d spent every weekend over here, helping Jamey build partitions to divide the garage into the needed spaces, sanding and painting, repairing the roof, building cabinets, tiling floors. Everyone else had volunteered their time for various reasons—the staff because they were do-gooders, the residents because the quality of their children’s lives was important to them. Reid’s reasons for volunteering had had little to do with the school, she suspected, and everything to do with Jamey. He hardly knew his father, and their relationship, at best, was strained. There was so much bitterness and guilt between them that at times they could barely carry on a conversation.

None of which stopped either of them from wanting more. Reid wanted to be a good son, and Jamey wanted to be the father he’d never been, but neither of them knew how. So Reid tried to earn his father’s respect, and Jamey tried to forget his son’s past, and neither was succeeding very well.

Sometimes she found herself foolishly wishing that someday Reid would want her respect. She would give it, along with just about anything else he wanted to accept.

The acknowledgment made her laugh out loud. She sounded just like a schoolgirl with a crush. That would explain why, after a long week at her old job, along with hours of volunteer work at the center, she had always looked forward to the weekend work in here. It would explain why she, with her fear of heights, had volunteered to help repair the roof, why she had spent hours on aching knees helping Reid lay tile, why, after hearing that he liked blueberry muffins, she’d gotten up at four in the morning three Saturdays running to bake a double batch of them to bring to the work site with her.

A crush. It would be embarrassing if it were true, but, of course, it wasn’t. She had outgrown crushes before she’d ever been old enough to have one. They were childish, and she had never indulged in things childish.

Sometimes she wished she had. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so grown-up now.

I thought I would find you in here.

Cassie turned from the mural to face Karen. Everything looks great.

Are you excited?

Of course, she replied, well aware that her voice gave no hint of it. She had no problem expressing emotion. She was the youngest of thirteen children born to parents blessed with wild Irish passion. She simply expressed everything in the same even tones. Serene, people called her. She would rather be fiery like her sister Meg, passionate like Jolie or vibrant like Allison.

Have you looked over the textbooks yet?

I have the first two weeks’ lesson plans all ready. You’ve accomplished a lot, Karen. You should be proud of yourself.

The older woman smiled modestly. I haven’t done anything on my own. I’ve had tons of help along the way—from you and Jamey, the staff, the people who live here....

Reid, Cassie supplied when her list trailed off. At Karen’s curious look, she gestured toward the mural. I just noticed that he didn’t sign the mural with the rest of us.

Sure, he did. He just wasn’t as obvious about it as we were. Karen moved around to the wall, studying the scene intently before finding what she was looking for. There. R.D. Reid Donovan.

Cassie bent to look closely just above Karen’s pointing finger. It was a tree inside the park, and carved into its trunk, visible only if you knew to look, were indeed his initials. They were unobtrusive, barely noticeable—exactly the way he tried to be. As if the best-looking six-foot-tall blue-eyed blonde this side of the Mississippi could ever go unnoticed.

I see you brought a few things.

Turning, she saw that her boss’s attention was on the boxes sitting on one of the tables. Just a few odds and ends.

Paid for with your own money? Karen’s tone was chiding, and it made Cassie laugh.

Don’t worry. This is the last time it’ll happen. I’m going to work Monday for poverty-level wages. I’ll need every penny I earn to keep myself going.

Maybe someday the school will actually show a profit and you’ll get a raise.

Maybe. But showing a profit wasn’t what the Serenity Street Alternative School was about, and they both knew it. Giving intensive one-on-one instruction to kids who badly needed it was their goal. Helping kids succeed when they started kindergarten with two strikes against them. Undoing the negative messages they were bombarded with from society, the media and their own neighbors. If the school ever began to show a profit, the money would be diverted from raises into hiring more teachers and providing more services, as it should be.

I’m going to track down my husband before he goes to work. If you need anything, I’ll be around the house or at O’Shea’s.

I’ll find you. She had always managed before. Last August, when she’d barely known the woman, she had come looking down here and had found Karen, something to believe in and a prospective job. Now the job was reality, she believed in what they were doing more strongly than ever and Karen was still—always—there for her.

With a wave, her boss left, leaving the big door open so the warm March air, fragrant with honeysuckle, could drift in. Cassie breathed deeply, dispelling the lingering, faint odor of paint, then picked up the first box and carried it to the front. Rolling the creaky wooden chair away from the teacher’s desk—from her desk, she thought with delight—she sat down on the floor, opened the deep bottom drawers on either side and began unpacking lesson plans, grade books, textbooks and other teacher’s supplies.

When she’d gotten her teaching degree, she had known that jobs could be scarce, and she hadn’t been convinced that it was even what she wanted to do. She had considered applying to graduate school and earning her master’s degree. She had thought about studying abroad, preferably in Paris, since she spoke the language fluently and loved all things French. She had even contemplated joining the Peace Corps and traveling to some exotic corner of the world, helping others, broadening her horizons, learning new things.

But she had been tired of school and had already used up enough of her parents’ and Jolie’s money, in addition to her scholarships. As for living abroad—even in Paris—the inevitability of homesickness had stopped her. She had always been extraordinarily close to her family and couldn’t imagine being more than a few miles away from them. With an entire ocean separating them, she would be too lonely to find pleasure in whatever she was doing.

That was how she’d wound up working in an office in the city’s Central Business District. The pay had been sufficient, particularly since Jolie and Smith had offered her use of the riverside condo where he’d lived before their marriage. But the work hadn’t been very fulfilling, and she had found herself all too soon dreading going to the office, daydreaming about other, better jobs. More satisfying jobs.

Now she had one of those better jobs. Granted, the pay was significantly less, and the hours promised to be significantly longer, but it was going to be a great job. She believed it in her heart.

And she always trusted her heart.

She was back.

From his vantage point at the living-room window above O’Shea’s, Reid Donovan could see a fair portion of Serenity Street in either direction and the buildings across the street.

He had a good view of Kathy’s House and the old garage set off to one side behind it and an especially good view of the woman standing outside the garage.

Cassie Wade had been coming down here since last August, when she’d shown up at Karen’s first neighborhood cookout and volunteered her services. She was the only member of the Kathy’s House staff who had ventured onto Serenity before the women’s center opened, the only one besides Karen who had spent all her free time working on the house. She was one of only two staff members who were paid a salary—or would be as of Monday. And she was the only one of them all who got under his skin.

It wasn’t just that she was a pretty woman. He’d known plenty of pretty women, some beautiful enough to make Cassie look plain, but none of them had ever bothered him the way she did. Maybe it was because she was different. All the women he’d known had come from Serenity or someplace just like it. Most of them were bold and brash. Some were trashy. All of them were hard around the edges. Coming from a neighborhood like this, they had to be. Weak people didn’t survive on Serenity.

Cassie came from Serenity, too, but her family had been one of the lucky ones. They’d gotten out when she was just a kid. She probably remembered little about the place, and her few years in the neighborhood certainly hadn’t left their mark on her. No one could ever look at her today and guess that she came from here. She was too self-assured. Too well educated. Too elegant. Too optimistic by a mile. Too foolish.

His scowl deepened. Last summer another do-gooder who was self-assured, well educated, overly optimistic and foolish had come to Serenity and knocked Jamey right off his feet. Reid didn’t intend to let that happen to him. He wasn’t going to be a case of like-father-like-son.

With an uneasy feeling tickling down his spine, he turned away from the window. There wasn’t much chance of him following Jamey’s lead in anything. They were father and son only through the mistake of birth. Jamey had been an absent father, and Reid had been a lousy son. After more than twenty-five years of anger and resentment, hostility and contempt, they were trying to build some sort of relationship, something they could both live with, but it wasn’t coming easy. Sometimes he thought they were making progress. After all, hadn’t Jamey given him this apartment and a part-time job in the bar downstairs? Didn’t they have dinner together every Sunday? Weren’t they able to keep a halfway civil tone to their conversations?

Other times he knew it was a lost cause. They’d been enemies too long. Some sins were too hard to forgive. Some things were never meant to be. Maybe Jamey and Reid as father and son was one of them.

Maybe an honest and trustworthy Reid was another.

Still scowling at the thought—at the possibility—he gazed around the living room for something to do, but there was nothing to occupy his mind. With a mother who had never quite grasped the concept of picking up after herself, he had learned at an early age that he would have to do whatever cleaning would be done. It was second nature to throw away the newspaper when he finished reading it, to make his bed as soon as he got out of it, to sweep the floor whenever it showed dirt. Sometimes he wished he were more of a slob. At least then he would have something to do. He wouldn’t have an entire weekend stretching ahead of him with nothing to fill the hours. He wouldn’t have time to brood over the sorry state of his life. He wouldn’t have time to brood over Cassie Wade.

He usually spent his weekends away from here, doing nothing special in no place special. He wandered around the Quarter, watched the tourists and the street performers and listened to the music. He ate in some of the city’s lesser-known restaurants, spent hours in darkened movie theaters and occasionally bought a few drinks in someone else’s bar. His wanderings were aimless, his hours wasted. But what were the alternatives? Stay here with no television, no radio and nothing to read? Go downstairs and watch the TV mounted on the wall while Jamey tended bar? Hang out on the street and risk running into his old friends and former partners? See if there was any work to do at Kathy’s House and risk running into Cassie?

A day alone and away from Serenity sounded better with each suggestion.

Even if he was damn tired of spending his life alone.

He went into the bedroom, pulled on a shirt, then laced on his sneakers. Yesterday had been payday at the garage, giving him another hundred dollars in his savings account and a hundred in his pocket. With no one to spend it on but himself, the hundred bucks would buy two weeks’ worth of groceries and cover his out-of-pocket expenses until next payday. He didn’t make much working the two part-time jobs, but with his lack of education and his reputation, he wasn’t complaining. He was lucky to have either job. Most people around here would hear his name, lock up anything that wasn’t nailed down and throw him out the door. Most people wouldn’t trust him to do anything but rob them blind.

And he had no one to blame but himself. He had spent the better part of his life building a reputation as a punk, a thief and a thug, one of Ryan Morgan’s boys—which meant he was also one of Jimmy Falcone’s boys. Intelligent people were afraid of Jimmy Falcone. Honest people were scornful of him. Everyone was suspicious of him and the losers who worked for him. Reid had earned every bit of the fear, scorn, suspicion and distrust directed his way.

Sliding the money into his pocket, he left the apartment and locked the door behind him. There were two identical units on the second floor of the building, each with a living room and bedroom and sharing the bathroom in back and the kitchen downstairs. After their friendship had been shot to hell last summer and Reid had no longer been welcome at the apartment he’d shared with Ryan Morgan, Jamey had offered him this place. Reid had moved in soon after Jamey had moved out of the second apartment and into Karen’s house across the street.

The building was old and wore an air of neglect. The furnishings were shabby and sparse—a sofa, chair and a couple of tables in the living room, a bed, night table and bureau in the other room. Still, it was the nicest place he’d ever lived. Tattered and worn though it was, it was comfortable, and it was private. He had no roommates to contend with, no neighbors to disturb him. For the first time in his life, he had a place that was his alone, off-limits to anyone he didn’t invite in.

In the six months he’d lived there, he hadn’t invited anyone in. Turning his back on the Morgans had meant turning his back on his only friends. As for girlfriends, the kind of women he knew how to be with weren’t the kind of women he wanted to be with. They were the easy kind, the kind who didn’t mind getting intimate with someone like him, the kind who reminded him too strongly of the life he’d lived for so long, who might tempt him to return to that life.

They weren’t like Cassie.

Scowling again, he took the narrow stairs two at a time. He’d spent enough time in the past six months obsessing over Karen’s pretty young friend. Now that the school was about to open, now that Cassie would be here every day, five days a week, it was time to get that obsession under control. They lived in different worlds. She was everything he wasn’t. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever known, and it was damn certain that he wasn’t like any man she’d ever known. He wasn’t respectable. Educated. Trustworthy. Dependable. His own father had probably already warned her away from him, the way he’d warned Karen last summer to keep her distance, the way he would soon warn off Reid himself. Punk. That had long been Jamey’s favorite way of describing him. Punk, with special emphasis, with particular derision.

Punk. Reid hated the word. He hated that he’d earned such a description, hated that he would probably never live it down, no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried.

The stairs ended in a short hall. Straight ahead was the bar. On the left a swinging door led into the kitchen, easily twice the size of his apartment and fully equipped for the restaurant O’Shea’s had once been. The equipment was ancient, older than Jamey, though the six-burner stove, one oven and the industrial-size refrigerator were all in working order. Reid didn’t use any part of it but the refrigerator and the microwave, the only addition in recent memory. Cooking