Cavanaugh Heat. Marie Ferrarella

want people to start talking, saying that my little brother is going crazy. Might not reflect well on the rest of the family. Or the police force for that matter, having a chief of d’s who talks to himself.”

      He couldn’t care less what people at the station gossiped about. People always found something to talk about. All he cared about was what his family thought of him—and what he thought of himself. “Why don’t you let me worry about what people say about me?”

      To his surprise, Andrew shook his head. “Can’t. I’m the patriarch of the family, remember? That’s what patriarchs do, they worry about the family’s reputation.”

      Brian didn’t have any experience with so-called patriarchs, but he knew Andrew and what was important to his older brother. It wasn’t necessarily reputation, but seeing to it that everyone was fed. Well fed. “And cook.”

      “If they’re exceptional,” Andrew deadpanned. “And speaking of food,” he continued, “that leads me to what I’m doing here.”

      Brian crossed his arms before him, his affection for his brother more than slightly apparent. “I figured you’d get around to it, sooner or later.”

      “I’ve come to take you to dinner.”

      He’d wondered when Andrew would finally swoop down on him. It was very important to his older brother to have family members turn up at his table on at least a semi-regular basis and he’d been absent of late.

      Still, he couldn’t resist giving Andrew a hard time. “I don’t remember you asking.”

      Andrew looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses. “It’s a standing invitation. That means I don’t have to ask.”

      Brian parried to Andrew’s thrust. “That also means if I don’t show up, no one’s nose is supposed to be bent out of joint.”

      “Yours might be if you give me a hard time,” Andrew informed him. “Rose told me not to come home without you.”

      Brian knew better. Although he and his sister-in-law got along very well, it was Andrew who insisted on meal attendance, Andrew who found any kind of an excuse to throw an immense family party. Andrew who insisted that the family that ate together, stayed together.

      “Or what,” Brian asked, amused, “she’ll give you a time-out?”

      Andrew ignored the question, getting down instead to the reason he’d come to fetch his brother. “You haven’t been around for a couple of weeks.”

      He knew families who only saw one another over the holidays, if then. But to Andrew, that was unthinkable, and now that he reflected on it, Brian had to admit that he was grateful that he was a part of this family rather than the other kind.

      But he did enjoy giving Andrew a hard time. “Maybe I’m on a diet.”

      Andrew never missed a beat. “I’ve got carrots sticks. You can gnaw on a few while the rest of us eat.” Looking around the house, Andrew frowned. “You spend too much time alone.”

      Amen to that. But he wasn’t about to make noises like a grieving woman after the last of her children had moved out. It just wasn’t manly. “Ever think I might want to be alone?”

      Andrew shook his head. “No. You’re too much like me. Let’s face it, we’re family men, not lone wolves.”

      The description struck a chord. “Like Mike?” Brian asked.

      Their middle brother, killed on the job years ago, had been the different one, the one who had been out of step with the rest of them. A policeman, as well, he spent his life living in the shadow of both his older brother and his younger one, never finding a place for himself other than in a bottle. And never learning to appreciate the two young souls he’d help bring into the world. Andrew’d had more to do with raising Patience and Patrick even when Mike was alive than Mike did.

      “Mike couldn’t help being what he was.”

      There, they had a difference of opinion. Andrew was being too lax. “Everyone can help being what they are. You can’t help being tall, or right-handed, but you can do something about what you feel inside.”

      “Fascinating,” Andrew declared with feeling as he slipped his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Why don’t you elaborate on that, say, over dinner? Really,” he added seriously, “I hate thinking of you rattling around in this place night after night, standing over the sink or sitting in front of the TV, eating out of a can—”

      “Take-out,” Brian corrected. “I eat take-out food.”

      Andrew shuddered. “Even worse.” He played his ace card. “I’ve got a pot roast waiting. It’s got your name on it.”

      Brian laughed. “You know, the sad thing is, I don’t doubt that. I can just see you carving my name into it.”

      “Why would I bother to lie, especially since I outrank you?”

      “You can’t outrank me. You’re the ‘former’ police chief, remember? You retired.”

      Andrew hit the back of Brian’s head with the flat of his hand, as if to knock some sense into him. “I’m talking about in the family hierarchy.”

      Brian rubbed the back of his head more for show than out of any sense of injury. “You always did have a way with words.”

      “And pot roast.”

      “And pot roast,” Andrew agreed, following his brother out the door.