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Sal Castro pushed away her coffee and the untouched chocolate chip cookie. She looked across the diner at Noel seated alone in a corner booth. Peering over an open newspaper in his fedora and trench coat, he looked like a 1940s government agent from central casting staking out the mob.
Noel had refused to let Sal meet her brother on her own. Sal thought he might as well be wearing a sign saying, “Don’t look at me. I’m inconspicuous.”
Billy entered the café and slouched toward her, a walk he had perfected in his teens that said, “You can’t make me do anything.” He pulled a chair out from the small table where she sat and turned it around so he could sit astride it. His back was to Noel, whom he appeared not to have noticed.
“You going to eat that?” Billy asked as he lifted the cookie off Sal’s plate and took a large bite.
Sal watched him, saying nothing. Billy kept eating.
“I’m getting married,” he finally said, mouth still full. Billy looked straight at her, no hesitation, no fumbling. He seemed to Sal to be working from a script in his head. “I’ve changed. I’m clean.”
Sal had heard it before.
Billy smiled—that smile that had charmed so many women—one lopsided dimple in his even, tanned face. “I want to see my kid. I want her with me.”
Sal’s stomach tightened. Noel couldn’t hear, but he could see Sal’s expression. He set his paper down.
Sal laid both her palms flat on the table and leaned toward Billy. “You can’t do that. Bethany is my daughter;. I’ve raised her. I love her.” Then added, “You have to think of what’s best for her.”
“I have rights.” “You don’t.”
Billy looked down. “I’ve seen a lawyer.” He reached over as he said it, taking Sal’s coffee now, too.
At Billy’s movement toward Sal, Noel stood.
“Did you tell this lawyer that you fathered this child through rape?” Sal said, her voice even.
“Tamara’s gone, rest her soul,” he said, his jaw clenched. “We were a couple. That’s our child, not yours.” Then Billy went all in. “You will let me spend time with her or I will tell Bethany that I’m her father.”
Sal paled. She leaned back, away from the threat.
Billy didn’t see Noel coming, didn’t feel Noel once he was standing behind him. “Where do you think Tamara Barnes went that last night after you left her?” Noel said. He spoke softly, almost intimately.
Billy turned his upper body, a hard maneuver while astride the chair.
When he succeeded, it took him a minute, but he recognized Noel.
Billy turned back to Sal, sounding every bit the little brother. “What’s he doing here? You said just us. You said Marilyn couldn’t come.”
Noel took another two steps, moving into Billy’s line of sight. “Tamara Barnes went to the emergency room that night. What you did to her without consent left a physical record.”
Billy stared hard at Noel, then pushed himself off the chair, standing so he could face him. They were both tall men, but Billy packed muscle on his frame from construction work and must have outweighed Noel by fifty pounds.
Noel spoke firmly. He was used to outsized college boy-men whose size gave them confidence even as their brains trailed behind. Reading the confused, even frightened look on Billy’s face, Noel was secure his bluff would hold. “You have twenty-four hours to leave town or I will turn Tamara’s medical records and her sworn statement that you are responsible for her rape over to the district attorney. As a tenured member of the scientific faculty, I expect they will give my involvement in the case significant weight.”
Billy’s mouth turned down. His shoulders drooped. He looked back at Sal. “C’mon, sis. It’s Marilyn. She’ll be good to the kid.”
Sal had been processing what Noel said. Did that really happen? Did Tamara go to the hospital and were there records? But at the mention of Marilyn, Sal realized what was at the heart of her brother’s plea.
Billy would never have come back for Bethany if his girlfriend hadn’t wanted to play mommy.
“You will tell that young woman that you were mistaken,” Sal said as she stood, a head shorter than Billy and Noel. “You will tell her that Bethany is not your child, that you’ve seen a DNA test I produced from the real father. Tell her Tamara Barnes lied to you about you being her baby’s father. I don’t care how you do it or what new lies you spin, you will undo the damage you’ve done by leading Marilyn into thinking you had a ready-made family for her.”
The sibling resemblance was increasingly clear. Both Billy and Sal looked ready to break something, preferably over the other one’s head.
Noel put his hand on Billy’s shoulder and started to speak a word of caution, but Billy had had enough of being lectured to by this fop. He pulled back his right arm, hand in a tight fist, target in sight.
It was over in seconds as Noel Kane swiftly ducked and kneed Billy in the groin before Billy’s punch could connect. Billy collapsed, moaning, knees to his chest on the ground.
Sal smiled. The pain her little brother was now feeling would subside, and it was nothing compared to what she would have felt had he succeeded in tearing Bethany from her. In fact, Sal would have cheered, if she weren’t conscious of the few other patrons in the restaurant watching them. Instead, she eyed Noel appraisingly. And couldn’t resist teasing him. A little.
“I’m impressed. Although I would think Spock’s death grip would have been your first choice to incapacitate him.”
“A common misconception,” Noel responded, calm but serious. “Humans don’t have sufficient tensile hand strength to execute that—it only works if you’re Vulcan.”