No Strings Attached
No Strings Attached
Susan Andersen
Some mistakes are worth repeating…Tasha Riordan's one night with Luc Bradshaw was the best of her life. The following two–when he left her to be thrown into a Bahamian jail on bogus charges–were her worst. Now, seven years later, the undercover DEA agent is back. Invading her town. Her restaurant. Her fantasies. She can't trust a man who lied to her. Yet neither can she trust herself–not when their chemistry burns even hotter than before.Learning he has two half brothers shocks Luc. Discovering they live in the same town as Tasha–that's a different kind of thrill. Their mutual lust is still off the charts, but he can't get her to listen to his side of what happened on that long-ago night. Good thing he's got powers of persuasion that go deeper than words. Because nothing has ever felt this right….
Some mistakes are worth repeating…
Tasha Riordan’s one night with Luc Bradshaw was the best of her life. The following two—when he left her to be thrown into a Bahamian jail on bogus charges—were her worst. Now, seven years later, the undercover DEA agent is back. Invading her town. Her restaurant. Her fantasies. She can’t trust a man who lied to her. Yet neither can she trust herself—not when their chemistry burns even hotter than before.
Learning he has two half brothers shocks Luc. Discovering they live in the same town as Tasha—that’s a different kind of thrill. Their mutual lust is still off the charts, but he can’t get her to listen to his side of what happened on that long-ago night. Good thing he’s got powers of persuasion that go deeper than words. Because nothing has ever felt this right….
No Strings Attached
Susan Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This is dedicated to girls who wear glasses,
and to all the readers who’ve taken the time
to leave reviews and let me know you enjoy my work.
Thank you!
Contents
Cover (#u542adcde-e22a-595c-8c47-4a74fd728909)
Back Cover Text (#u6d128b12-cb77-5d26-9872-8604a13de805)
Title Page (#u0dbaf06e-12b1-5c51-9a2f-bdb5fd7628f2)
Dedication (#ub16bf19b-cdb3-5092-a662-7f6246c51685)
PROLOGUE (#u381a4c57-5da8-5dc4-94d6-c1c2b3bd7f1b)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1ce6b26d-9316-571b-b579-8bcf5ef2e911)
CHAPTER TWO (#u8c8aa3bc-6b77-57d9-a421-87f9f428919f)
CHAPTER THREE (#u62395c68-6c0b-5e98-9213-170df09deca4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ue8839e5d-7958-52af-91d7-9ba8031dfe26)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u47dc52a1-a54a-5bb2-adc1-1b5dce9ecf05)
CHAPTER SIX (#u75357fbd-2884-5424-83a9-fada6a5e2d00)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_22e24bae-70fb-51bb-873a-0c50a90c2698)
Seven years ago. Andros Island, Bahamas
A HOT, MOIST BREEZE, perfumed by the sea and the faintest exotic whiff of an unidentifiable flower, wafted through the hut’s open window just as Tasha Riordan collapsed atop Diego. Her nose squashed into the damp curve where his neck flowed into a muscular shoulder, and as she silently breathed in his salty, slightly spicy scent, it occurred to her she hadn’t once asked what his last name was during the thirtysomething hours since they’d met. Waiting for her heart to cease its thunderous reggae beat, however, she didn’t dwell too closely on that just-met-yesterday thing.
Okay, you would think, given she’d spent a good part of her life keeping her chin up while living her mother’s reputation down, that she’d sort of welcome a little soul-searching. After all, diving into bed with a virtual stranger was a big departure for her.
A big, big departure. Huge. And she ought to be a little concerned about it, right?
Tough-skinned fingertips ran down her naked spine, sparking back to life nerve endings that by rights should have been incinerated to cold, dead ash. “You okay, cariño?” Diego asked, his voice a rumbling vibration beneath the ear she had pressed to his throat.
And just like that, her half-assed inclination to whip herself into a lather of self-recrimination melted away as her lips curved into a little smile against his skin. She didn’t know what it was about this guy, but one thing was for certain: he possessed an undeniable magic. In spades. From the instant he’d approached her on the beach yesterday morning, he’d kept her pretty much swept off her feet.
That was no small accomplishment. Ask anyone back home in Razor Bay, and damn few would hesitate to tell you—Tasha Riordan’s feet were always firmly, pragmatically planted on the ground.
But she merely murmured, “Oh, yeah” and kept her heartfelt And then some to herself.
This was probably par for the course for him. God knew he made her feel things she’d never felt before, and she was usually a hard sell. She could only imagine how many women already geared up for a vacation lover had thrown their room keys at him. The fact that she’d managed to keep her undies on until today was downright brag-worthy. She’d been tempted to shed them from the instant she’d laid eyes on him.
And considering the orgasm he’d just given her, perhaps she should have. It had been the most phenomenal, amazing one of her life.
She swallowed a snort. Like you’ve had so many to compare it to. But she shrugged the thought aside as unimportant. Yeah, yeah, she hadn’t experienced a plethora of non-self-induced climaxes in her twenty-two years. Still, neither was she a virgin, so she’d certainly had enough to know she’d never felt anything close to this. “How are you?” she asked softly.
He went so still she thought he’d suddenly quit breathing. She found herself doing the same. As several heartbeats passed in silence, her euphoria leaked away. Oh, God, she thought. Like you could rock his world. A person only had to look at Diego to understand his experience was galaxies beyond her own.
Then his hands tightened against her back, and he said in a low, gritty voice, “You wanna know how I am?” An exhalation of amusement, which just perhaps wasn’t amusement at all, huffed out of his lungs. “I’m so blown away it’s not even funny.”
“No,” she said on a disbelieving laugh, pushing up to look down at him. She had no illusions about herself. She was tall and skinny and had decent boobs, but hips and a booty that could belong to a twelve-year-old boy. She knew men found her reasonably attractive, but in no man’s universe was she close to being in this guy’s league.
Her mass of strawberry-blond curls, by now scary-crazy-frizzy from air that was still humid from an earlier, short-lived downpour—not to mention Diego’s demanding hands tangling in them—fell forward to intertwine with his sleeker black curls. She looked down at her hands where they splayed against the ebony fan of hair on his deep golden-brown chest. After nine days in the tropics, her skin was the tannest it had ever been. Unfortunately, all that meant was that, instead of its usual 2-percent-milk hue, it was the color of anemic toast.
Diego brought both hands up to smooth her hair away from her face, gathering it into a fat ponytail at the base of her skull. Holding it in one fist, he looked into her eyes, and his own were free of laughter for perhaps the first time since he’d sauntered up to where she’d been dipping her toes in the surf and introduced himself. “Yes,” he refuted, as the fingertips of his free hand brushed up and down the side of her throat. His thumb left a streak of fire in its wake as it briefly swept her jawline. “You blew me right out of the ballpark.” His full mouth developed a wry slant, and his broad shoulders performed a minute shrug against blindingly white sheets. “I didn’t see that coming.”
It was probably a line, but if so, it was a good one. Lord knew it was working on her—her heart felt gooey as a chocolate truffle left out on a hot tropic night.
Diego stared up at her. “I love your mouth.” His voice was rough, his dark eyes hot, and Tasha’s heart pounded as he crunched up from six-pack abs with the clear intention of kissing her. Before he could, however, his cell phone rang.
He swore and glanced at the nightstand where it rested. Then swore again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “I have to get this.” He gently levered her off of him and onto the middle of the mattress. Then in one smooth, unbroken movement, he pushed to his feet, swept the phone off the stand and, thumbing the green button, brought it to his ear. “Yeah,” he said. “This better be important.”
Watching him, Tasha realized he didn’t look charming in that moment. He looked dangerous: big and dark and unselfconsciously naked, his eyes hard and his mouth grim. Untangling the sheet from the bed, she pulled it up, covering herself and tucking it under her armpits. She glanced at her watch.
Oh, God. She needed to think about getting dressed if she wanted to catch the last plane back to Nassau.
Dragging the sheet with her, she climbed off the bed. Suddenly, what had seemed so daring and exciting several hours ago—impulsively agreeing to accompany Diego to the big island of Andros—felt reckless and so not smart. She began gathering her scattered clothing.
She slid into her panties, pulled on her sundress and was digging through her purse in search of something to pin her hair up with when warm, hard arms slid around her waist and pulled her back against a warmer, even harder chest. “Heyyyy.” Diego hunched to breathe in her ear. He’d pulled on the shorts and muscle tee he’d worn earlier. “What are you doing?”
It was hard to think with his heat and scent and feel all around her, and she cleared her throat. “My plane leaves in an hour and a half. I need to get to the airport.”
“Stay here with me another night. I’m supposed to be on vacation but my boss tracked me down and I have to go out for a bit to talk to him. But I’ll only be gone an hour, tops, and then we can have the rest of the night.”
“Oh.” Temptation beckoned, and for a minute she thought she could give in to it. Then reason and her usual pragmatism resurfaced. She pulled her e-ticket out of her purse and wagged it in front of their faces. “I don’t think so. I have a reservation.”
He kissed the side of her neck. “I’d really, really like to spend the rest of the night with you,” he murmured in that low, deep voice of his. “I’ll get you back to Nassau tomorrow, I promise, even if I have to charter a seaplane.” He moved his lips to the vulnerable hollow behind her ear.
And both Tasha’s reservations and her spine melted. “Well, maaaaybe that would be okay.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He swung her around to face him and kissed her long and hot and deep. Her purse fell from nerveless fingers, and the next time she managed to locate two semi-functioning brain cells to rub together, Diego was pushing off of her as she once more lay flat on her back on the bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at her. “I don’t like to leave either of us hanging this way, but my boss is an impatient sonuvabitch, and I told him I’d meet him in—” he looked at his watch “—shit, two minutes.” He bent down and planted another fast, hard kiss on her lips before straightening again. “I’ll be back just as soon as I can, okay?”
She nodded; he groaned. Then with a muttered “I will not kiss her again. I will not kiss her,” he turned on his heel and strode from the hut.
She’d barely dragged herself upright, repaired her lipstick and finally located a couple of clips to deal with her hair when the pounding on the door of the little hotel hut commenced. Grinning, she whirled from the mirror and raced on bare feet to open the door. “Hah! Forgot your key, didja?”
But it wasn’t Diego on the lanai. Several dark-skinned men in the light blue uniform shirts and black berets of the Royal Bahamian police pushed past her into the one-room hut. Not one of them offered her the usual friendly smiles she’d become accustomed to seeing since her arrival in the islands. These men, wrapped in Kevlar vests, were grim-eyed and grimmer-mouthed.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, only to find herself herded to a chair, where all she could see was the red tuxedo stripe that ran up the leg of the officer’s black slacks as he and the curve of the hut blocked her view of most of the activity going on around her.
But she could hear them dragging the mattress from the bed and opening and slamming drawers. Then suddenly the officer in front of her stepped aside, and an older man in a khaki shirt stood in his place, one hand folded at the small of his back, the other hanging loose at his side, a black dress hat with a red band and white bill tucked under his arm.
“I am Inspector Rolle of the DEU,” he said in a deep, melodious voice.
“DEU?” she squeaked. “What’s that?”
“Drug Enforcement Unit. Your name, please?”
“Tasha.” She swallowed, wondering what the hell was going on. It couldn’t have anything to do with Diego...could it? “Tasha Riordan.”
“Where is your accomplice, Ms. Riordan?”
Panic punched harder. Oh, God, oh, God, this was so not good. “Accomplice to what? I don’t have an accomplice!”
“This is your room?”
“No. No, I’m a guest.”
“A guest of whom?” he demanded sternly.
“Diego...?” She stumbled to a halt, and the austere-faced inspector raised bushy brows at her.
“I never actually got his last name,” she stammered. “I know that sounds—” Then her brain finally kicked in. “It should be on the registration, though. Ask the man who checked us in.”
Inspector Rolle pointed to an officer, who strode briskly from the hut. Then they sat in nerve-twanging silence, during which she could only conclude that Diego had done something horrible, criminal...unforgivable. Something he’d skated from free and clear—while leaving her holding the bag.
When the officer returned, he came straight over to the inspector, murmured something, then moved a discreet distance away. The inspector turned to her.
“The man who checked you in said the room was paid for in cash. He described you quite accurately, Ms. Riordan, but has no recollection of this Diego.”
“No! That’s not true. I didn’t even go up to the counter with Diego. I stayed on the deck while he checked us in. Take fingerprints or something! I wasn’t anywhere near the check-in desk!”
He studied her for a moment before shrugging. “That may turn out to be true—”
“It is true!”
“But what we have here—” he brought his hand out from behind his back and dropped a large ziplock bag filled with what looked like powdered sugar, but which she had a sick feeling was not, on the little table next to her elbow, where it settled with a heavy thud “—is this kilo of heroin—and you. No mystery man named Diego. Just you. So, Tasha Riordan, you are under arrest for possession with intent to sell.”
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_9fdac73f-5ad1-5f77-b58c-b2d2372d4a2c)
Present day
“CRAP,” TASHA WHISPERED as she pulled up behind the other cars in Max’s driveway. She was beyond late.
And this comes as a big surprise to you? her inner smart-ass demanded.
Well, no. But not seeing the men hanging out on the porch, grilling up a storm as usual, and knowing they likely weren’t out back, either, since it had been raining off and on all day, just drove the truth of her tardiness home. Because that could mean only one thing, couldn’t it? Everyone was either in the midst of dinner or—an even worse possibility—were already cleaning up.
She climbed out of the car and went around to the trunk to haul out her contributions to Harper’s mom’s going-away party. Dammit, not only had she not meant to be so late, she’d fully intended to get here early to help with the preparations. She certainly hadn’t counted on the new man she’d hired for her pizzeria turning out to be a lush. A freaking on-the-job lush.
You had to appreciate the irony here. She’d thought she had it all figured out. With the drop in business now that Labor Day was behind them and most of the tourists gone, her big plan had been to hire another cook to work part-time. She really could have used help with the summer rush this year, yet with it over, they were spared the crazy thrown-in-the-deep-end, sink-or-swim pressure. Now the new hire could take his time getting up to speed, and she’d add to his hours as he progressed. Stress-free had been her aim, the end goal to be sitting pretty by the time next summer’s rush began.
She snorted. In theory it was such a lovely, proactive idea and one that should eventually provide her some honest-to-God days off. And who knew, maybe it’d even give her a shot at an actual life. That was certainly something she’d had damn little of this summer. Once she got accustomed to the luxury of occasional free days, she might go totally hog wild and build her way up to treating herself to an actual vacation.
Okay, so the mere idea made her heart pound with anxiety and left a coppery taste in her mouth. But wasn’t it way past time she got over that?
Not that it mattered now. At this point the question was purely rhetorical. Her new cook, who had interviewed brilliantly, had in all likelihood already been drunk when he’d shown up for work. And if he hadn’t arrived with a good head start down Knee-walking Avenue, he’d definitely been fall-on-his-face hammered by the time she’d thrown his sorry ass out of Bella T’s. On her own house wine, no less, which just added an abundance of salt to the wound.
But the final straw, what truly and royally most pissed her off, was the way the bastard had tried to blame the wine theft on Jeremy, the Cedar Village boy who’d started bussing for her just the other week. The Village was a group home outside of town that helped troubled boys get their lives together, which was precisely what Jeremy was doing. The last thing he needed was for some ass to come along and falsely accuse him of larceny.
She climbed the porch steps but stopped before she reached the door. Setting down her goodies, she did her best to brush lint off her shorts, then reached into her purse for her lipstick.
One of the first things she’d noticed about Harper when the elegant mixed-race woman had come to Razor Bay was that, no matter what the occasion, she was always dressed perfectly for it. And clearly her mad style skills were directly inherited from Gina, because that went double for Harper’s sophisticated mother.
She, on the other hand, had been so rattled by the time she’d gotten the drunk cook out of Bella T’s, locked up and run upstairs to change that she’d pretty much grabbed the first thing to come to hand. That had turned out to be this linty pair of black walking shorts and—more fortunately—one of her nicer tank tops in a rich blue that almost, if not quite, gave her more-gray-than-blue eyes a hint more blue. After topping it with her little black cardigan and grabbing the foodstuffs she’d put together for the party, she’d dashed back out again.
Without a speck of makeup on, aside from the mascara she’d applied this morning so people would know she really did have eyelashes—even if they were so pale one might be excused for thinking otherwise.
She swiped on some lipstick, knocked on the door and let herself in. “Hey,” she called out over the laughter and voices coming from near Max’s unfinished kitchen. “Sorry I’m so late. But I brought a couple bottles of red to make up for it. And some homemade guacamole and veggie-tray fixings.”
She strode in sight of the long table full of people and spotted her bestie, Jenny, first, sitting next to Jake. “Hey, girlie,” she said, then greeted the Damoths and Mary-Margaret, who headed the Village, and their hosts Max and Harper and Harper’s mom. But she stopped dead in full-out shock as her eyes met the velvety dark gaze of a golden-skinned, chiseled-faced man. Images of a younger face flashed across her mind’s screen with lightning speed even as the heat of remembered kisses, caresses, sizzled through her veins, and she blinked, certain she was seeing things.
But, no. Dear God. It wasn’t, shouldn’t be possible, but it really was Diego NoLastName, the rat bastard who’d landed her in a Bahamian jail cell back when she was younger and stupider—or at least stupidly naive—and the last person she’d ever expected to see again. Yet there he sat at Max and Harper’s table, all black hair, black eyes and dark stubble, looking muscular, vital and bigger than life.
Her brain began buzzing with the staticky sound of a radio dialed half a notch off its station, and her hand went lax. The reusable cloth bag she’d stuffed full of wine and party food dropped to the floor, then tipped on its side.
She barely noticed when its contents scattered in all directions.
* * *
HOLY SHIT. THE SCENE unfolding around him went into slo-mo, and Luc Bradshaw came half out of his chair along with every other person around the table. Everyone seemed to be exclaiming and generally making a commotion in their desire to help the long-legged woman who’d stooped to gather the bottles of wine and plastic containers that rolled and skittered across the floor.
To him it was muffled white noise. He stared down at her bent head and unconsciously rubbed his diaphragm over the lower lobe of his left lung. When had all the air in here turned the consistency of Jell-O?
Jesus. It was Tasha.
Like he hadn’t known that the instant she’d blown into the room. Still, how many times this week had Jenny, his newly discovered half brother Jake’s fiancée, mentioned her BFF Tasha? His damn heart had seized a little every time he’d heard the name, even knowing Jenny was talking about someone other than the Tasha he’d known. It wasn’t until maybe two hours ago that he’d finally reached the point where it didn’t start up a chain reaction in his chest. So you’d have to excuse the hell out of him if for a second there he’d actually believed he was imagining things. Because what were the odds?
Damn good, it turned out. For this was his Tasha. Of all the women in his past he would have been perfectly content to see disappear without a trace, she had never been among their ranks.
He watched her vivid blue tank top beneath the cropped hem of a little sweater pull free from her shorts’ waistband, exposing a slice of pale satiny skin as, sitting on her heels, she stretched to grab one of the runaway bottles. Then he gave her a comprehensive survey from head to toe, concentrating for a moment on her round rump. She was quite a bit more...womanly now than the barely legal girl he remembered.
He swallowed a snort. Well, big surprise; it had been seven years since he’d seen her. So, yeah, she had a little more curve to her. But she still had no hips, and by no stretch of the imagination would anyone call her voluptuous.
Those riotous curls of hers were different, too: more sleekly defined than he recalled. But her long-lidded pale blue-gray eyes and that pillowy mouth with its fuller upper lip hadn’t changed a bit.
So screw the minor differences. She could have grown a mustache, sprouted a hairy mole and packed fifty pounds on her long frame, and he would still know her anywhere. He hadn’t the slightest doubt in his mind that this was the girl he’d spent two days and one memorable night with in the Bahamas.
“Tash!” Jenny moved to squat alongside the tall strawberry blonde, and it was as if the speed and sound of a movie had been switched back on. “Are you okay?”
Strawberry blond. He’d discovered after his night with her that that was what people called the pale red-gold color of her hair. Staring at her, he felt his entire face light up with a delighted smile.
It died an abrupt death when she suddenly raised her gaze and looked straight at him. His entire body recoiled as if a fireball were hurtling straight toward his head, and he dropped back into his seat. Because those eyes, that expression.
If looks could kill, he’d be sliced and diced into tiny bite-sized bits of steak tartare. What the fuck?
She glanced back at Jenny and apparently didn’t level that scary look on her as well, because there was no recoiling on Jenny’s part.
“No,” Tasha said in answer to the are you okay? question as she handed the little brunette first one wine bottle, then another. She must have gathered the rest of the containers as well, for she rose to her feet and extended the cloth sack to Gina, an elegant, slightly darker version of her daughter, Harper, who was Luc’s other half brother Max’s woman.
Christ. All these relationships were making his head hurt.
“I’m so sorry,” Tasha said as the older woman accepted the bag. “I hate the thought of both you going back to Winston-Salem and me missing your party, but I don’t feel so hot.”
“Yes, you look quite pale, dear,” Gina agreed, reaching out to give Tasha’s forearm a soothing rub. “You go home and go to bed. Hopefully you can sleep off whatever this bug is.”
“It’s not the flu, but bug sure seems like an appropriate word for it.” Tasha shot him another lightning-fast malevolent glare, then said a touch grimly to the older woman, “I suddenly feel like a hairy, nasty spider is crawling up my spine. I haven’t felt this awful in almost a decade, and what I’d like to do is shoot the bastard between his beady little eyes.”
Twisting to set the wine on the table, Jenny narrowed a thoughtful gaze on Luc, then turned back to study Tasha for a second. “Poor baby. You want me to drive you home? Jake can bring your car back in the morning.”
Luc watched a look perilously close to panic flash across Tasha’s face. Or maybe he only thought that was what he’d seen, because when he blinked, she appeared perfectly calm.
Tasha patted Jenny’s hand. “No, I’m fine to drive. I’ve just been burning my candle at both ends since tourist season started, and I guess it’s finally caught up with me. I desperately need some sleep.”
“Good thing you’ve got an extra helper in the works,” Jenny said.
An edgy laugh escaped Tasha. “Ah, yeah, about that. It turns out that’s not going to happen.” She suddenly seemed ready to wilt as she shoveled long, pale fingers through her hair. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” She looked away from the little brunette to the rest of the company gathered around the table.
Well, except for him. Now that she’d finished eviscerating him with her death-ray stare, she evidently had no desire to even glance his way again.
“I’m sorry for the drama,” she said to the group at large, then focused her attention on Gina once more, bestowing on her the sweet, generous smile that had been branded on Luc’s brain for seven long years. “Have a safe journey home,” she said, giving the other woman a hug. When she pulled back, she gazed at Gina with warm-eyed affection. “I’ve just loved getting to know you. I really hope you’ll come back soon.”
“Oh, I intend to, darling,” Gina said. “My favorite daughter lives here now.”
“Uh, Mom?” Harper said dryly. “I’m your only daughter.”
Gina gave an elegant shrug. “But you’re still my one and only Baby Girl.”
Harper’s olive-green irises all but disappeared behind the lashes-fringed crescents her eyes became as she grinned. “That’s true.”
Tasha exchanged a few more pleasantries with the guests. Then between one moment and the next, she’d said her goodbyes, strode out through the kitchen and was gone.
Luc pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. “Okay if I grab myself a beer?” he asked Max.
“Help yourself,” his half brother invited even as Harper said, “Here, let me get it for you” and started to rise to her feet.
No! his mind snarled. But he hadn’t spent more than a decade in deep cover for the DEA for nothing. He flashed her the friendly charmer’s smile that years of practice had rendered second nature and merely said, “Please, Harper, you don’t need to wait on me.”
“Yeah, Harper,” Jake said. “He’s family. Which means he can do the dishes, too.”
“Or at least fetch my own drink. Anyone else want anything while I’m in there?”
No takers chimed in, and he left the room with an unhurried stride that nevertheless ate up the distance between the table and the back door. Silently letting himself out, he spotted Tasha heading toward the end of the attached garage, with the obvious intention of making a beeline for the parking apron around front. Clouds the color of a day-old bruise hung low in the sky, but for the moment at least, it was dry, and ignoring the few back steps, he dropped directly to the lawn, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.
He could move fast and silent as ground fog when the need arose, and he came up on Tasha’s flank just as she rounded the end of the garage. He moved into its shadow one step behind her and reached out, his fingertips brushing her arm. “Hey, Tasha, wait—”
With a gasp, she whipped around. Wild panic flared in her clear gray eyes, and watching her suck in a breath and open her lips, Luc knew she was about one second away from screaming down the house. Snaking a hand around her nape, he clamped his free palm over her mouth to keep her from cutting loose with a screech that would bring everyone inside stampeding to her rescue.
Not that there was anything she needed rescuing from—Jesus, he would never hurt her. All the same, he really didn’t want his deputy sheriff half brother thundering down on him. He didn’t doubt for an instant that if Max heard a woman scream, he would be out here in a red-hot hurry, his big-ass service pistol drawn.
“I’m sorry,” he said in the most soothing, nonthreatening voice he could summon. Her lips were soft and her skin warm beneath his hands.
He shoved the tactile sensations into a far corner of his mind where they could just wait to be examined when his concentration wasn’t demanded elsewhere. “I didn’t mean to scare you—I just want to talk to you for a minute. I’m going to let go of you now, okay?”
He obviously didn’t follow through with the promised action quickly enough to suit her, for she narrowed her eyes at him as if to say, Then get on with it! Wondering if they’d be right back where they started, he gave her a hard-eyed stare back. “And you won’t scream, either, am I right?” It was a command, not a question, and he stared into those crystalline eyes without blinking.
She hesitated a second, then dipped her chin in a slight nod.
Slowly, he released his light grip on the back of her neck and lifted his hand from her mouth.
Tasha promptly knocked his hand aside and scrubbed the back of hers over her lips as if they’d come into contact with hazardous waste. Pushing past him, she marched back into the rear yard before turning to face him. “If you want to talk to me, you can damn well do it out here, where people can see us,” she said.
He nodded. But what the hell—why was she so mad? He wasn’t the one who—
Being on the business end of another of her eat-shit-and-die glares chopped the thought in two, and he was still regrouping when she demanded, “So who are you pretending to be today, Diego?”
He kept his wince strictly internal, but...hell. She had him on the ropes with that one, since he could hardly say he hadn’t been pretending to be someone else when they’d met. So he simply gave her a level look and said calmly, “My real name is Luc Bradshaw. I’m Max and Jake’s half brother—”
“Oh, please,” she said in disgust.
He blinked, baffled by her. “What do you mean, oh, please? At least give Max some credit. Don’t you think he had me thoroughly checked out?”
She made a rude noise, and his brows came together. “I’m not sure what your problem is. All you have to do is look at the three of us together—the general consensus here seems to be that there’s a strong family resemblance. So why would you doubt that I’m—”
She got all up in his grill—and it didn’t say much for him that he found it kinda hot. “Look,” she said, eyes narrowed to burning slits and her long, narrow nose mere centimeters from his own. “I don’t know who you are, buddy, or what your game is. But you stay the hell away from me, you hear? How dare you come here impersonating Jake and Max’s brother?” She poked him in the chest—but before he could grab her finger, she dropped her hand to her side and took a large step back.
“Tell you what,” she said with a calmness that didn’t match those eyes. “I’m feeling pretty generous, so if you pack your bags and get out of town—tonight—I’ll let bygones be bygones.” She gave him the slitty-eye-of-death look again and said, “If you’re smart, you’ll take that offer and go, because it runs counter to everything my gut’s telling me to do.”
Trying to reconcile this woman with the sweet, laughing girl he remembered—and failing miserably—he shook his head. “Say what?”
“You have trouble understanding English, Diego?”
Apparently so, because he didn’t have the first idea what she was talking about. Rather than telling her that, however, and demanding to know what her problem was and exactly what it was she thought she knew, he instead heard himself say, “My name is not Diego. I know I told you it was, but I was undercover with the DEA at the time, and my continuing good health precluded telling anyone my true identity. But I am Luc Bradshaw, son of Charlie Bradshaw. Half brother to Max and Jake.”
“Oh, good, you stick to that story. In fact, I really hope you do. Because if you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll enjoy nothing more than going to Max and telling him you’re nothing but a lousy drug dealer named Diego Who-the-hell-knows-what. And then, Dee-A-Go, he will haul your skeevy butt off to jail.”
He froze. He’d spent most of their short time together mining for every piece of her story he could get—while keeping his own to himself. He hadn’t told her much more than that he was on vacation and didn’t want to spend it talking about work. The one time she’d pushed for details, he’d turned on the charm and steered the subject in another direction. So how the hell had she tumbled to his cover story?
He didn’t have time to figure it out before she stepped back and shook that pretty cloud of hair behind her shoulders. “And if that happens,” she said in a voice edged in tungsten, “trust me, I’ll have only one regret.”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he stared down at her. Taking in the flushed cheeks and electric eyes, he thought it was a damn shame that he was still so attracted to such an obvious head case.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “What would that regret be?”
“That unlike the tiny hundred-and-two-degree black hole of a Bahamian jail cell where I spent the two most terrifying nights of my life, thanks to you,” she said flatly, “American jails are probably downright plush.”
Then, before he could ask so much as one question, she whirled on sandaled feet and stalked back into the murky shadows thrown by the side of the garage.
Leaving him wondering what the hell had happened the night they’d spent together.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_fd7ae60c-d89a-55a0-a366-3ec9e42be114)
“TASHA RENEE RIORDAN, you’ve been keeping secrets from me. When the hell did you get the chance to meet Luc Bradshaw and why do you dislike him so much?”
Tasha stared at her friend openmouthed. She had barely opened her door to Jenny’s knock before the question knocked her back a step as if it were an honest-to-God battering ram catching her squarely in the chest. Jenny crossed the threshold at the same time that Tasha remembered to breathe. And breathing was good, if a bit tricky around the ragged rhythm her heart was banging out. But she tried her best to sound calm and collected when she said, “What? I met him yesterday. You were right there, Jen.”
“Don’t kid a kidder, sweetie. You looked at him as if you knew him. So when on earth? I didn’t think you’d come up for air long enough to leave Bella T’s.”
She tried to keep it to herself; she really did. But this was Jenny, to whom she told everything, and she simply caved. “I met him seven years ago.” She shoveled her fingers through her hair and stared at her friend. “It knocked me for a loop when I walked into Max’s last night and saw that Max and Jake’s so-called brother is the Diego I told you about from my Bahamas trip.” Admitting it out loud was both scary and a relief. There was no taking it back now, but neither was it a secret any longer, pooling its corrosive acid in her stomach.
Assuming more importance than it should warrant.
Jenny’s face promptly went serious, showing why she was Tasha’s best friend. “Oh, crap, Tash. How is that possible? And yet...you were too...not you, with all that bug stuff and shooting it between the eyes and the I-hope-you-die-from-a-raging-case-of-herpes looks you gave him.”
“Oh, God.” They reached the breakfast bar dividing the small galley kitchen from the body of her living area just as her leg muscles turned to pudding. She sagged onto one of the stools and stared at her best friend as the petite brunette climbed onto the stool next to her. “It shocked the hell out of me to see him sitting there cool as you please at Max’s table. But...dammit, Jenny. I hate that I was so obvious.”
“You weren’t, sweetie. Or, okay, you were—but only to me.” Jenny leaned forward to give her a quick, fierce one-armed hug, then straightened back on her stool. “And I’ve known you damn near half our lives.” She shot her a sly smile. “And now that I know, I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out for myself. Because it makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s the only man you’ve ever reacted that passionately to.”
Tasha ignored that, since the last thing she wanted to talk about in conjunction with that man was passion. “I told him he had until today to get the hell out of town. But how do I break the news to the Bradshaw men that he isn’t their half brother if he doesn’t leave?”
“Tash. Sweetie.” Jenny rubbed the back of her hand. Gave her sympathetic but firm eye contact. “You only have to look at him to see that he is.”
“No,” she insisted—even though the truth of it had been rattling the cage she’d locked it in from the moment Diego—Luc—had said the same thing. She slid her hand out from under Jenny’s and used it to shove her hair out of her face. “He’s not gonna just go away, is he?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Crap.” She sucked in a breath. Then blew it out again in resignation. And said what she’d been thinking all night long. “What were the damn chances that the one man I never wanted to clap eyes on again as long as I lived would turn out to be Max and Jake’s half brother?”
“I know, right?” Jenny agreed. “It really is a freaking small world.”
* * *
LUC HAD JUST finished packing up his duffel bag when an authoritative fist pounded on his motel room door. Old habits died hard, and silently he unzipped the bag’s end pocket and pulled out his SIG Pro. Pistol at his side, he kept to the wall as he approached the door and stopped just this side of it. Craning around, he peered through the peephole.
And saw his half brother Max in his khaki deputy uniform shirt.
He tucked the gun in the small of his back, covered it with his shirttail and opened the door. “What brings you to Silverdale?” he asked curiously. “And how the hell did you get my room number?” As if he didn’t know.
“It’s amazing what a badge can get you,” Max said in his usual unsmiling, straightforward manner. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah, sure.” He stepped back to allow him by. “So you came to Silverdale just to see me?”
“Yep.” The bigger man gave the room a quick, comprehensive examination that Luc was damn sure took in everything there was to take. Then Max focused his attention on him. “Can you shed some light on why Harper heard Tasha say you’re not Luc Bradshaw but some guy named Diego?”
Luc had been expecting the question in one variation or another, but now that it was asked, he realized he didn’t know how to address it. That wasn’t like him. He was the master of improvisation and deflection, killer charm his go-to line of defense. But there was something about looking into the steady, uncharmed eyes of a man who was still a virtual stranger while the knowledge that they were brothers punched him in the damn solar plexus the way it had every damn time he’d seen Max or his other half bro, Jake, this past week. He found he couldn’t lie to those eyes.
And that sure as hell threw him off his game.
This brotherhood gig might be tougher than he’d anticipated. Having grown up an only child, once he’d located Max and Jake he’d been kind of excited at the prospect of getting to know them. But he hadn’t really figured where he would fit in this new family dynamic when the other two had a lifelong history with each other. His sole excuse was he had only recently discovered that his late father, Charlie—a man he’d thought he knew inside out—had two other sons Luc had known nothing about until the day he’d cleaned out his dad’s desk and come across the information.
But thinking about it wasn’t getting the question answered, and he blew out a breath. “You want a cup of coffee? The story has background that might take a little time to explain.”
“Sure. That would be good.” Max made himself at home on the small couch in the sitting area of the narrow suite.
Luc made a cup of coffee at the amenity counter and brought it over to his sibling. “Look,” he said, standing in front of Max with both hands held easy but away from his body. “I’m going to take my SIG out of the back of my jeans real slow now, okay?” It had been stupid of him not to put it away the minute he’d seen who was there.
Max’s hand came to rest on his own pistol. “Wanna tell me why the hell you’re packing a gun?”
“I thought you did a background check on me. Shouldn’t you know I’m DEA?”
“You bet. If you really were.”
“I’m gonna let that pass, since this relationship between you and me and Jake is only—what?—ten days old. I’m currently on a leave of absence, but I’ve been with the agency for thirteen years.”
His half brother merely looked at him with watchful eyes. “I’d just as soon not pull my weapon on you, so do us both a favor and don’t reach for your gun until you’ve shown me the ID.”
“You got it.” He indicated the duffel resting on the end of the bed. “It’s in my bag over there.”
Max climbed to his feet, his right hand still on the butt of his pistol. “On second thought, pull the gun out real slow like you said and put it on the table. Then I’ll get the ID for you.”
Luc felt a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It was ridiculous and probably misplaced to feel proud of his half brother, but he kinda did anyhow. Because Max was clearly nobody’s fool. You never, but never, let an unknown quantity paw through a bag that for all you knew could be bristling with weapons. “Good plan.”
He did what the bigger man instructed and slowly retrieved his gun from the small of his back. Keeping his finger away from the trigger, he made no abrupt movements as he bent to place it on the table between them. Max swept it up.
Luc waved a help-yourself hand at the duffel. “ID’s in the end pocket.”
Max didn’t pat him down but he clearly suspected the possibility of a backup piece, for he kept an eye on him as he crossed to the bed, then turned sideways to keep him in sight when he reached for the pocket zipper. Luc linked his hands behind his head to alleviate some of the tension in the room and watched in satisfaction as Max’s wide shoulders relaxed a fraction.
His half brother felt around in the pocket for a moment, then made a little wordless sound of discovery deep in his throat. A second later, he pulled out Luc’s leather badge wallet and flipped it open. He glanced down at it and the rest of the tension flowed from his big body. He took his eyes off Luc long enough to give the gold-and-black eagle-and-circle insignia a closer inspection. Slapping it shut, he turned to give him a penetrating look. “Undercover?”
“Yeah.” Dropping his hands to his thighs, he sat up. “How’d you know?”
“Please,” Max said. “Diego? Plus, I doubt most field-office agents on leave feel compelled to answer a knock on their motel room door packing a semiautomatic.”
“It was a pretty aggressive knock.”
The smile Max gave him was so small as to barely be present, but Luc had been around him enough by now to recognize it for what it was: his version of a big grin.
“Then there’s the not showing up in my background check,” Max said. “My guy does very good background checks.” But he quickly sobered and pinned Luc in the beams of his hard-eyed heard-every-excuse-so-don’t-even-try-to-bullshit-me cop’s gaze.
“The question is, how did Tasha come to know?”
Thrusting his fingers in his hair, Luc scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then he blew out a breath and lowered them to his sides, tucking his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. “She doesn’t know about the DEA part—she believes I’m a drug dealer named Diego and I honest to God don’t have a clue where she got that idea.” He gave an impatient jerk of one hand. “Not the name part—I introduced myself as Diego. But how the hell did a twenty-two-year-old on vacation cop to my cover?”
“Maybe you had something she found?”
“No, I wouldn’t live long if I was that sloppy.”
Max looked at him over the lip of his coffee mug. Nodded. “Where and when did you meet?”
“In the Bahamas seven years ago. Spanish is my first language, so most of the cases I’m assigned to tend to be in South or Central America. The one I was on at the time concerned a cartel in Colombia, but I was on temporary R & R a continent away from the action, so all I told Tasha was my first name. My cover first name, not my real one, because you just never know when you might run into the wrong person at the wrong time, y’know? Even thousands of miles away. And before our relationship could get much deeper than that, I got called away. I thought it was just going to be a quick check-in, but that turned out not to be the case.”
Christ, there was an understatement. And for a moment he was plunged back seven years to Andros Island.
* * *
“WHAT’S SO URGENT?” he demanded the minute the door to the safe house was opened by a silent agent who appeared barely old enough to have completed his training. Dammit, this was a too-rare R & R for him and he wasn’t happy about being summoned by Special Agent in Charge Jeff Paulson. But he had six years in with the DEA and duty first had been drummed into his head from day one.
So he spared the other agent the briefest scan before looking past him to his superior, who was seated in a comfortable-looking chair situated deeper in the room. Without glancing up from the sheaf of papers he was going through, Paulson indicated the much less comfy-looking chair across from him. “Come in and take a seat.” When Luc complied, the older man set aside the papers, locked Luc in his sights and wasted no time coming to the point. “Intel gatherers have been picking up chatter about you.”
“What kind of chatter?” He’d been an undercover operative for too many years to be caught flat-footed by much, but this sent a little punch of shock through his system.
“The word they’re hearing is that you’re gonna get yours while you’re in the Bahamas.” Paulson gave him a half smile. “Someone clearly doesn’t like you.”
And he knew exactly who. “Hector Alvarez.”
Paulson sat forward. “Morales’s second lieutenant Alvarez?”
“Yes, sir. He doesn’t like that Morales appreciates my sense of humor, because Alvarez is the original Mr. Grim. And he really doesn’t like that his girlfriend likes to flirt with me. He refuses to see that her actions have more to do with the fact that I treat her with respect while he treats her like shit than it does with any burning desire for me as a man.” He’d spent the past fifteen months with the Morales cartel and ordinarily he was all about the case. Right now, however, only one thought kept intruding during his recitation of the facts. “Tasha.”
The SAC frowned. “Beg pardon?”
“This trip was supposed to be a short break for me and I left a friend at my room when I came to meet with you. If Alvarez is bragging about ‘getting’ me while I’m here, it’s not a stretch to assume he knows where I’m staying by now.”
“I thought your SOP was to bribe the desk clerk to disavow any knowledge of you checking in.”
“Yes, sir, and I did that. But Alvarez could offer a bribe as well for ten minutes in my room and who’s to say the guy won’t double-dip in that bowl of guacamole? Shit.” He surged to his feet. “I need to get Tash out of there.” She had told him her best friend called her that shorter version of her name—and he’d thought at the time how much it suited her.
“Sit down,” Paulson said in a voice that brooked no argument. “The only thing you have to do is board the helicopter that’s going to be here in—” he glanced at his watch “—seven minutes and get your ass to D.C. for debriefing and reassignment.”
“Not gonna happen until I get her out. Sir.” He headed for the door, surprised at his own adamance. He loved his work, particularly the thrill of relying on his wits and the adrenaline rush of having to stay on top of his game at all times. New cases were usually right up his alley since beginnings were inherently more dangerous and exciting due to his lack of familiarity with the players’ quirks. Plus, as much as he enjoyed the company of women when he had a little downtime to spend with them, once he was back on the job he pretty much forgot them. If it had been any other female, he likely would have been perfectly comfortable leaving Tasha’s extraction to a DEA team.
The young agent stepped in front of him, blocking his way out, and Luc went chest to chest, nose to nose, with him. “Get out of my way, kid.”
“Sorry, sir. I can’t do that.”
Luc had to admit that putting his professionalism on the line for a woman—especially one he’d known for only two days—was unlike him. Yet he found himself compelled to do exactly that and he was fully prepared to go toe-to-toe with the guy in his way.
“Stand down, Bradshaw,” Paulson said, coming up behind him. His voice softened. “I’ll extract her myself,” he promised. “But you are getting on that chopper.”
He stepped back from the young agent, but his willingness to argue must have shown on his face as he turned around, for Paulson’s hardened. “This is not up for discussion, Lucas. I’ll call you in D.C. to let you know she’s okay. But you are leaving in—” he consulted his watch again, then looked up at the sound of a helicopter coming in low “—now.”
“No, sir. I’m not.”
“Then turn in your badge, Bradshaw. Because I won’t tolerate an agent who refuses orders from his superior officer.”
He didn’t have his badge with him, of course, but he opened his mouth to say Paulson could have it. Then he thought about what he was doing. His SAC had just told him he’d personally take care of Tasha himself and Luc sure as hell had no reason to doubt he’d do exactly that. “Fuck.”
And the next thing he knew he was running, hunched against the strong wash of the rotor blades, toward a chopper that was lightly settling on the back lawn. Minutes after that, he was winging away from his old case, headed for a new one.
But instead of his usual anticipation over the prospect of a new case, his thoughts were back with the woman he’d left behind.
By the time Paulson called late in the evening two days later, Luc was climbing the walls. “Hey,” he barked into his satellite phone when he saw his SAC’s name on the readout. “What’s going on with Tasha? Is she okay? Did she understand why I didn’t come back when I told her I would?”
“First things first,” his SAC said. “You were set up. The Bahamian DEU raided your hut not long after you left to meet with me and found a kilo of heroin.”
His blood iced over as he thought of the only person besides himself who had been in his beach hut. He didn’t want to believe it but— “Do you think it was Tasha?”
“No—although we thought that when we got there and found her gone.”
“Gone?” He sat down hard. “As in not there?”
“Generally what that means, son. Sources reported she flew out on the last plane to Nassau that night. We ran her through all the databases, but she’s not in any of them.”
“So she just fucking left, when she said—”
Paulson’s impatient voice cut him off. “You think you can focus on the case here, Bradshaw?”
He shoved aside his disappointment over Tasha’s defection as well as another emotion that felt suspiciously like hurt. “Yes, sir. I’m just trying to figure out when the hell Alvarez had the opportunity to plant anything. Tasha and I had just gotten there that morning.” He’d already had reservations on Andros and had talked Tasha into going with him because he’d heard the tiny resort was very private—and because he’d just wanted her to come with him.
“And you stayed in the whole day?”
“Yes.” Then he shook his head. “No. Shit. We went snorkeling that afternoon.”
“So he had a window of opportunity.”
“Yes.” Then his brain kicked in. “Jesus, he’s not the brightest star in the galaxy. If I were actually the drug dealer he thinks I am, I’d likely give up somebody a lot higher up the food chain than me to save my own ass. I doubt Morales would be happy to hear Alvarez set that scenario in motion.” His adrenal glands began pumping juice into his sytem over the thought of what he could do with this situation. Because... Oh, yeah. This could work. “Can you get your hands on a replacement kilo?”
“Huh?” There was a moment of silence. Then, “You can’t possibly be thinking about taking it back to Morales—can you?” The words were negative, but the tone...
Yeah, baby. His SAC was considering it.
“I am thinking that. It’s a fucking twofer, sir. Think about it. Alvarez will be gone the minute Morales learns what he’s done.” One way or the other, unfortunately, but the guy should have thought about all the potential consequences before he tried framing him. “More than that, it’ll likely cement my position in the cartel, which gives us the opportunity to close the case faster than we thought we could. We need to do this.”
They disconnected a short while later after Paulson promised he’d check with the director about another kilo—with the caveat that it was by no means guaranteed they’d get one. But Luc refused to entertain the idea, because he was deadly determined to see this case through.
Unfortunately, it didn’t keep him from gnawing over Tasha’s defection. What had made her decide to catch the night flight back to Nassau after all, when she’d assured him she would wait?
He went around and around on it but eventually had to shelve the whole damn mess. “Get over it, chump,” he said, his mood black. Chicks dumped guys—it happened all the time, even if he’d only rarely experienced it himself. There sure as hell wasn’t anything he could do about it. She clearly hadn’t been as into him as he had been into her.
“Well, your loss, sweetheart,” he finally growled aloud. And shoving his wallet into his back pocket, he went off to find something to distract him from the pointless what-ifs pinballing around in his brain.
* * *
“SO WHAT WAS THE CASE?”
“What?” But he shook his head to bring himself back to the present and told his half brother a condensed version of what had gone down that day. Then he simply stared at the big deputy for a moment.
“Christ, Max,” he finally said. “I was blown away to see her in your dining room last night. Then when I followed her out to the backyard, she was beyond pissed, which I don’t get, ’cause like I told you, I thought she’d run out on me. Yet she was furious with me.” Remembering her parting words, he rolled his shoulders. “And maybe with reason.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “What reason?”
“Last night she said that thanks to me, she’d spent two nights in a Bahamian jail.”
“So either there was a failure to communicate between the two countries’ drug enforcement agencies, a clerical screwup—or somebody lied to you, Slick. I don’t know the players, but I know Tasha. And I gotta tell you, if there was any lying going on, I doubt it was her.”
“Yeah.” Luc doubted it, too, because she knew just enough about his cover to get things wrong—and they were things she shouldn’t know at all. Plus, she was crazy furious with him, which she’d have no reason to be if she had taken off.
He met Max’s eyes and didn’t doubt his own eyes were every bit as hard as his half brother’s. “And you can take it to the bank that I will get to the bottom of this. But first,” he admitted, “I have to convince Tasha that I’m not a drug dealer. Then I need to get her to talk to me long enough to learn exactly what happened that night so I can figure out where to go from there.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_cd04fa9e-2857-5208-8600-781ca54c6aae)
TASHA HEARD THE street door to Bella T’s open while she was scrubbing down the kitchen. “We’re closed,” she called, which everyone and their brother should already know because—hello!—Razor Bay. Monday. Labor Day weekend now behind them.
On the other hand, it hadn’t even occurred to her to lock the door while she was back here cleaning. So on the off chance it was some out-of-towner looking for a slice, she came out to give him/her the bad news. But seeing Tiffany, the young woman who had worked for her since the day she’d opened the restaurant’s doors, Tasha frowned in bewilderment. “Hey, girl. What are you doing here on your day off?”
“I parked in my spot behind Bella’s to run some errands,” the plump, flawlessly-made-up brunette with the sunny smile, even sunnier disposition and easy way with people said. “But when I was cutting between the buildings to the street I saw...” Her words trailed away, and for a second she appeared unusually hesitant. Then she tipped her head inquisitively, gave Tasha a penetrating look and suddenly asked, “Do you and that good-looking new Bradshaw brother have something going on that I should know about?”
“What? No!” Oh, God, was it written on her forehead that she and Dieg—Luc—had had crazy wild sex one night a hundred years ago? “Why would you think so?”
“Because I saw him heading upstairs a minute ago,” Tiffany said with a vague wave toward the end of the building where the outdoor staircase ran up to the living quarters. “And he was carrying a big duffel bag like he’s moving in.”
“What the hell—?” Tasha peeled off her rubber gloves, tossed them on the service counter and headed for the door. “Lock up for me, will you?”
“You got it, boss.”
Her heart pounded with an emotion she didn’t want to examine too closely, but she was never so rattled that she forgot to give her aqua-white-and-green-painted building a ritualistic pat as she rounded its corner. Bella T’s was the realization of a dream she’d held since she was twelve years old—except better, because not only was the pizzeria a reality, but she owned the building that housed it, as well. Well, okay, she and the bank owned it, but one day it would be hers alone. And she never, but never, failed to show her appreciation when she transitioned from her work space on the street level to her home upstairs. This was likely the most well-loved inanimate object in Razor Bay.
And she intended to find out what the hell Luc Bradshaw was doing in it.
She took the solid wooden stairs up to the second floor two at a time and burst through the unlocked exterior door, but then stopped dead and stared down the narrow hallway that ran along the building’s back wall as the door bounced off the inside wall. Down near the far wall, Luc stood in front of the studio apartment that her longtime renter, Will, had recently vacated, the aforementioned duffel bag at his feet. At the sound of her less-than-subtle entrance, he spun away from fitting a key in the door lock, his right hand reaching toward the small of his back before suddenly freezing.
That got her moving again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded as she strode up to him. She thrust out a hand. “Give me that key!”
“Taking your questions in order,” he said dryly, “I’m moving in, cariño. And no.”
She stepped up until they stood nearly nose to nose. “What do you mean, no?”
“It’s a fairly self-explanatory word, princesa mia. I’m not giving back the key. I signed a contract that says I’m the proud owner of this studio apartment for the next ninety days.” He flashed that charming white smile of his that creased his cheeks into not-quite-dimples. Seven years ago its power had rendered her stupid.
She was neither charmed nor made stupid by it this time around, however—not by the smile or his damn Spanish endearments. Back in another lifetime she’d made him explain what those sweet nothings meant, but she’d long since put them out of her mind. And she assured herself firmly that hearing them now left her cold.
Luc himself, unfortunately, did not. From the moment they’d met on that long-ago dawn-cooled beach, she’d felt the heat of the sexuality he exerted with such apparent ease. And much as she might wish otherwise, she still did. He was just so damn...male. And so flipping effortlessly carnal and attractive in his plain navy T-shirt and worn Levis that she spared a second to regret the sullied white apron she had tied around her hips and her old, faded, shapeless T-shirt that stuck messily to her skin in the all places where she’d splashed herself. Which, face it, in her zeal to clean the kitchen, were many. And once again she didn’t have on a speck of makeup. She had to quit letting him catch her looking so undone all the time.
Seriously? Are you listening to yourself? She stepped back and stood tall. Luc Bradshaw was nothing to her. It didn’t matter what he thought of her appearance.
Then, belatedly realizing what he’d just implied, she addressed the real issue here. “You’re Will’s college roommate?” That couldn’t be right; he had to be a good five years older than her former tenant.
“Okay. Sure.”
Oh! He didn’t even try to make her believe it. “You so are not. How did you get him to tell me that you were?”
He rolled his muscular shoulders in an unrepentant shrug. “I may have flashed my badge and told him it was a matter of national security.”
She gaped at him in disgust. “God. You just lie as naturally as the rest of us breathe, don’t you?”
It wasn’t a question, but he took a large step forward that somehow had her backing against the end wall. Propping his arm above her head, he leaned close and looked down at her, making her aware of the heat that pumped off his body, even though they weren’t actually touching.
“The idea, before I thought better of it, was to check out my half brothers without them knowing who I am. And I had no idea you owned the joint—I just liked that it wasn’t a hotel room and it was in Razor Bay. But as for lying,” he said in a low, rough voice, “I’ve got a job that takes me to places where I sure as hell better be good at it. Being fond of staying alive and all.”
She made a rude noise. “Of course—oh, silly me to have forgotten for a moment that you’re a low-life drug dealer.”
He blew out a breath that wafted across her face, and damn his hide, it smelled minty fresh, when by rights it ought to carry the stench of brimstone and lies. “I’m not a drug dealer, Tash,” he said in the mellifluous voice she remembered, the one that was almost as deep as his half brother Max’s. “I’m undercover DEA.”
Cold fury pumped through her veins, and, slapping her hands to his chest, she shoved him back. “You do not get to call me Tash as if you and I are friends,” she said through gritted teeth. “And do me a favor and skip the I’m-really-just-a-poor-misunderstood-good-guy routine, because I’m not buying it.” She thrust out a hand. “Let’s see that contract,” she said, conveniently ignoring the fact that she had a copy filed in her own place.
He turned back to the door and manipulated the key still stuck in the dead bolt. The lock clicked softly, and Luc opened the door and waved her in.
“I’m not going in there with you,” she said—and watched something in his face change that gave her another quick glimpse of the dangerous, determined man she had seen before in a faraway thatched-roof hut nestled on a white-sand beach.
“You are if you want to see the contract,” he said flatly, his right biceps flexing even rounder and harder than it already was as he lifted his bag and hauled it inside. “Everything I own is in my duffel—I’m damned if I’ll empty it out in the hallway.”
“Fine,” she said ungraciously, and, folding her arms over her breasts, she followed him into the studio.
Both apartments above Bella T’s opened onto a narrow veranda that ran the width of the building and looked down on Harbor Street. They boasted sweeping views of the bay and Hood Canal, plus the Olympic Mountains that made it not a canal at all but rather a spectacular fjord. Luc struck Tasha more like a leather than a wicker kind of guy, and he looked big, dark and out of place, too tough to take up residence among the cheerful white furniture and the beachy blues, greens and beiges she’d used to decorate the compact studio.
He dropped his duffel on the end of the bed in the alcove and reached for its zipper. A moment later he pulled out the contract and carried it to her. “Have a seat,” he invited, waving a lean long-fingered hand at the grouping of an overstuffed love seat and two wicker rockers.
She carried it instead over to the tiny drop-leaf table in front of the big window and took a seat on one of the two chairs tucked in on either end.
She cursed her stiff-necked pride and the impulse to follow him in here to try to make him as uncomfortable as she felt. It had been a mistake. The truth was she already knew that Washington State favored tenants in contract disputes, that basically if she as landlord tried to evict, even with a good, solid reason, the tenant could stay in her rental free of charge until the dispute was resolved—which would take a helluva lot longer than ninety days. And she didn’t have a good reason to evict Luc. She sure wished now that she hadn’t allowed Will to find his own replacement and then exacerbated the mistake by leaving him to fill in the contract. She really regretted barely even glancing at the thing before scrawling her signature across it. Her only excuse was that she’d been so relieved at the prospect of three months’ rent money coming in while she worked to find a more permanent tenant.
Bella T’s had just concluded its second summer in business, and for a new restaurant in an industry where the majority of new ventures closed before their second year, it was doing remarkably well. But the pizza parlor was in a resort town that garnered most its income in the summer months. She was fortunate that she got quite a bit of local business, which helped her to escape many of the seasonal issues. But there were still definite lull periods. So until she had a couple more successful years under her belt and was confident she’d nailed down the most efficient ways to stretch her income throughout the entire year, not just in the months that she made good money, she appreciated the added security of collecting rent.
A small brown leather folder landed on the table next to the contract, and she looked up at Luc. “What’s this?”
“My DEA badge.”
She made a rude noise and nudged over the top flap, exposing a mostly gold badge of a spread-winged eagle with Department of Justice written in gold on a black ribbon across its torso and Drug Enforcement Administration and Special Agent circling the U.S. in the body of the badge beneath the bird of prey. It looked very official, but she shrugged and pushed it back toward him with one finger. “Big deal. People fake these things all the time.”
The short gritty noise that came from deep in his throat sounded suspiciously like a dog’s growl. “Jesus, you’re a hard sell. It’s the real deal. Here.” He shoved a driver’s license–sized photo ID toward her. “Here’s my ID.”
She yawned. “Again. Could be forged. How would I know the difference?”
He thrust his fingers through his hair and stared at her. “Look, we need to have an honest heart-to-heart about that night. There are a number of discrepancies and I’d like to figure out what the hell happ—”
“I have nothing to say to a man who lied to me about who he was.” She scooted her chair back from the table and rose. “The contract is solid,” she said smoothly. “But I’d like you to reconsider and find yourself another place.”
“Not gonna happen.”
She blew out a quiet breath. It wasn’t as if she’d really believed it might. “Whatever. Just stay the hell out of my way.”
“Sure,” he said with the oughtta-be-patented smile that had likely left a trail of discarded undies in its wake.
And she knew that probably wasn’t going to happen, either. “I expect first and last months’ payment by 5:00 p.m. today,” she said and left through his veranda slider.
Seconds later she had stalked down the decking to her own slider and let herself into her apartment. She closed it firmly behind her. Then, as an afterthought, locked it tight.
She needed a few minutes to pull herself together before she went downstairs and finished polishing up Bella’s kitchen. But as she paced from room to room trying to burn off the head of steam she had going, she had a nasty feeling it was going to take her a lot longer than a few minutes to work this itchy nervous energy out of her system.
Because how on earth was she going to survive three months of having Luc Bradshaw living right next door?
“Shit,” she whispered, scraping her hair away from her face as she stopped in front of the window to stare blindly out at the water and mountains. “ShitshitshitshitSHIT!”
Then she blew out a breath and tried to think. Swearing and wearing a path in her painted wooden floors weren’t doing jack on the make-me-feel-better front. Only one thing could do that, and she headed for the kitchen counter, where she’d dropped her cell phone.
Screw the cleanup—she’d get it done before opening time tomorrow or, who knew, maybe even later today if she could get a handle on this awful restlessness. But that was something to worry about later.
Right now, she was in dire need of the moral support that only girlfriends could supply.
* * *
LUC HEARD MUTED sounds coming from the apartment next door. After about fifteen minutes, Tasha’s front door slammed, followed seconds later by the outer door closing and the faraway clatter of footsteps growing even fainter as they progressed down the exterior staircase. He ambled out onto the veranda, leaned casually on the railing—and watched as she appeared on Harbor Street below and strolled toward his end of the building. She glanced up, and his heart gave a hard thump as their gazes clashed.
Ah, man. Scrubbing his knuckles over the sudden tightness in his chest, he stared down at her. It hadn’t been enough that she’d stood in front of him in her work clothes, her gorgeous skin all flushed from her obvious exertions and her thin T-shirt clinging to her breasts and diaphragm in little peekaboo patches transparent enough for him to see that she wore a blue lace bra beneath it? The girl knocked his socks off without even trying.
She had sure as hell put some effort into her look for someone now. Her pale eyes were made up all smoky-sultry, and her mouth—God, that lush, siren mouth with its top-heavy upper lip—was painted a soft, sheer red. She had on a short flirty skirt and a next-best-thing-to-spray-paint little girlie tee that clung to her and had a neckline cut low enough for him to see the upper curves of her pale breasts.
Her eyes narrowed. Then she looked away as if he were invisible and sashayed down the block.
Luc leaned farther over the railing, possessiveness sounding low in his throat. Who the hell was she dressing up for?
He pulled himself up short. “Jesus, get a grip.” Really, it was no skin off his dick if she had a boyfriend. It had been a million years since she and he had—
Best not to go there, man. Anyway, it wasn’t as if he weren’t anxious to get back to his own life, to his work. He should probably avoid civilized company altogether. Hell, he’d nearly pulled his gun, which he likely shouldn’t even be carrying here in Razor Bay, when Tasha had crashed the outer door against the wall. He was a guy who needed the buzz of living by his wits, of playing the game right up to the final rush of taking down the bad guys, of putting one more power-happy drug kingpin out of business.
Not that there didn’t seem to be dozens more in the wings just waiting to take up the mantle. Still, he could only do what he could do—and he was ready to take them down, too. So whoever Tasha was or wasn’t doing shouldn’t matter.
Which didn’t explain why he was leaning so far over the railing trying to keep her in sight that he was in imminent danger of tumbling over it and landing on his head on the street below.
“Shit.” He straightened away from the balustrade and took a giant step back to drop into one of the chairs, his eyes narrowing as it creaked beneath his weight. Tasha sure did have a thing for wicker furniture.
He wasn’t what you’d call an avid view guy, but he had to admit that this one was pretty damn sweet. Yesterday’s rain squalls had apparently blown out to sea, for the rugged mountain range across the narrow band of water etched its craggy peaks against a cloudless blue sky. Some kid on a Sea-Doo was rrrEAR-rrEAR-rrEARing in relentless loops out in the canal, and Luc caught a glimpse of one corner of the local inn’s float that he and Jake had rowed out to the evening that Tasha and both of his half brothers’ women went skinny-dipping from it. If he’d known then that it was his Tasha—or okay, not his-his, but at least the Tasha he’d once known—he would have tried a helluva lot harder to see through the shadowy night and stygian waters. Short of X-ray vision he would’ve failed, but he’d have tried. Now a group of kayakers paddled past the area down toward the state park.
He felt restive. Edgy. Tired of his own company. Climbing to his feet, he slapped his jeans pocket to make sure his room key was still there. Retrieving it, he let himself out of the room, then locked up. He might as well walk down to the inn and see if Jake was around. It beat the hell out of this little memory-lane jaunt his mind kept wanting to take off on.
It didn’t occur to him that he probably should have called first until he crossed the porch of The Sand Dollar, the largest of the cottages scattered around the evergreen-dotted grounds of The Brothers Inn. Then he rolled his shoulders and knocked on the front door. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, man. He was here now, wasn’t he? He rapped out another rhythm.
“Keep your shorts on,” he heard Jake’s irritated voice say from the other side of the door. Footsteps approached, and the door whipped open. “There better be a fucking fire, because I’m in the middle of someth—” He blinked at Luc. “Oh, hey, it’s you.” Stepping back, he opened the door wider. “C’mon in. You, I actually wanna talk to.”
“Yeah?” It was stupid to feel the warm fuzzies because some guy he hadn’t even known existed six months ago maybe wanted to get to know him as much as he wanted to get to know both his recently discovered half brothers. As a newly orphaned only child, he envied their obvious closeness and the way Jake had jumped to Max’s defense, especially when it came to their mutual father, more than once now.
“You want a beer?” Jake asked. He glanced down at his pricey watch, which, along with his green silk T-shirt, honest-to-God pressed cargo shorts—who did that?—and razor-cut sun-streaked brown hair, screamed well-put-together-rich-guy. “It’s not too early for a brew, is it?”
“Hell, no. A beer would be good.” Surreptitiously checking his own plain cotton tee to make sure it was still clean, he followed his half brother into a small galley kitchen.
Jake fished a couple of Fat Tires out of the fridge and handed one to Luc. “So,” he said, popping his bottle’s top and snapping his fingers to send it winging toward the sink, “I hear you and Tash have a lurid past.”
He started. “Where the hell did you hear that?”
“Jenny is Tasha’s best friend, remember? She went over this morning to find out what was with her yesterday, because she claims Tash wasn’t acting like herself.”
It was small of him, but he gritted his teeth over Jake’s casual use of Tasha’s nickname when she’d forbidden him to use it.
“I hear Tasha claims you’re a drug dealer and that she got arrested for drugs you had in your vacation rental.”
“Fuck.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his shield for the third time this day, flipping open its wallet and holding it out to the other man. “I was undercover, and I didn’t even know she’d been arrested until yesterday.”
Jake took the badge out of his hand and studied it. “DEA, huh? Max will be interested in this.”
“He already knows—he came to see me at my hotel in Silverdale earlier.”
A slight smile crooked Jake’s lips. “That’s our boy. Not much gets past him.” He returned the shield. “Why don’t you just show this to Tash?”
“I did! She said IDs could be faked.”
Jake laughed. “Yeah, she was pretty hot under the collar when she called Jenny about getting together at the Anchor for some girl time.”
“She’s at the Anchor? With your fiancée?” It wasn’t as if he was relieved or anything. He merely had a new resolve, and he took a step back. “Well, listen, I’ll let you get back to that middle-of-something thing you were working on.”
“So you can go to the Anchor without me?” Jake demanded. “Screw that.” He disappeared into another room, but almost immediately returned. Shoving a wallet into his back pocket, he said, “You do get that she’s there to trash your good name to her girls, don’t you? You’re not exactly gonna be welcome.”
A corner of his mouth ticked up. “Yeah, why can’t they be levelheaded like us?”
“I know, right? Women are a mystery, but it’s some esoteric female thing, the logic of which only they understand.” He sobered. “Just be prepared, bro. You’re already on shaky ground.” They stepped out onto the porch, and Jake locked up. “Where’s your car?”
“On Harbor Street. I walked over.”
Jake shrugged. “I’ll drive, then.” He led Luc to his SUV. Opening the doors with his remote, he paused to look at Luc over the top of the car. “You know, you really oughtta move into the inn so you don’t have to do so much backing-and-forthing between the Bay and Silverdale.”
“I don’t need a place at the inn. I just moved into the studio above Bella T’s.”
“No shit?” Jake shot Luc a big-ass grin. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ac197fae-d340-51a0-baf9-3ded0315d183)
“AW, HELL,” TASHA said morosely, “it’s not like I didn’t know better than to hook up with Diego/Luc/whatever-he-wants-to-call-himself in the first place.” She knocked back a long swallow from her glass of the house red, then looked at Jenny and Harper seated on the other side of their booth at the Anchor. “I knew not to go there. But instead of paying attention to my instincts, I went ahead and hooked up with him anyway.”
“How would you know better?” Harper asked with the near-British inflection that made her sound so boarding-school refined. “Did he have Lying Drug Dealer written all over him?” Her black ringlets shivered and swayed as she tipped her head to study Tasha. “And what, precisely, does such a person look like?”
“Beats me. I only meant that I hadn’t intended to hook up with anyone on that vacation. It was just my bad luck that the one time I broke my own hard-and-fast rule, it was with a guy who landed me in a Bahamian jail.”
It felt odd to have told yet another person about that time in her life. Her imprisonment in the dark, cramped cell had been the single most terrifying forty-eight hours of her life—its minutes stretching like dog years as she’d wondered if she would ever see the light of day again. When they finally did let her go, she’d wanted only to forget and had kept the incarceration a closely guarded secret, relating her experience to no one but Jenny. Now, after maintaining a stony silence for seven years, in less than twenty-four hours she had not only blurted it to Luc last night but had just told Harper, as well.
But although she may have known Harper for only a couple of months, her new friend was fast becoming important to her. And she’d deserved to hear about her prior relationship with Luc if she was ever to understand why Tasha was so furious with him now.
Raucous male laughter exploded from a table over by the window, but Harper didn’t spare so much as a glance in the group’s direction. She leaned into their own table. “You were on vacation,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you want to meet a hot-looking man?” She gave Tasha a knowing look. “And I think we must admit that Luc Bradshaw is that, yes?”
Oh, yeah. He is definitely that. Not that she intended to say so aloud. She did, however, dip her chin in the tiniest acknowledgment.
“It all stems back to her mama,” Jenny said and raised a hand to hail the cocktail waitress. Catching the woman’s eye, she circled an index finger over their glasses, indicating refills all around.
“Your mother wouldn’t approve of you having a vacation fling?” Harper inquired. “Is she quite strict, then?”
Both she and Jenny laughed. “No,” Tasha said. “Quite the opposite, actually. My mom was known around here as the whore of Razor Bay. She moved to Olympia almost six years ago, yet there are still a few people who like to throw her reputation in my face every now and then.” She shrugged. “Of course, they’re morons. And don’t get me wrong, I love my mom. But she and I are nothing alike.”
“No fooling,” Jenny said and turned to Harper. “Nola, Tash’s mom, lives strictly in the moment—I don’t think I’ve ever seen her give a microsecond’s thought to what might happen tomorrow. Tash, on the other hand—she’s a whole nother animal. She is the most goal-oriented person I’ve ever met.”
Harper gave Tasha a bright olive-green-eyed gaze, then turned in her seat to study Jenny. “I know you two have been friends for a long time. But I don’t believe I’ve ever heard exactly when or how you met.”
“It was my second day at Razor Bay High School when we were sixteen,” Jenny said with a fond smile at Tasha. “I was new in town, and Tash stepped in when some kids started giving me shit about my father’s well-publicized incarceration for a Ponzi scheme—which we will talk about another time,” she added with a little grin when she saw the light of curiosity in her biracial friend’s eyes. “I just loved her from the start, because she had even less standing in that school than I did, yet instead of covering her ass and walking on by like any right-thinking individual would have done—”
Tash snorted and Jenny flashed her a grin.
“—she just jumped right into the fray. We went from that to bonding over the pizzas she made in her mama’s single-wide and a mutual determination to move beyond our circumstances.” Shaking her head, Jenny smiled ruefully. “I thought I had plans at the time. But Tash already had a full-fledged, neatly typed business plan for Bella T’s in her underwear drawer.”
It was true, so Tasha merely shrugged. But then she slapped a hand against the scarred wooden tabletop and straightened in her seat. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while and it seems to me that calling my mother a whore is kind of unfair.” She made a waving motion as if to erase her words. “Oh, not that she hasn’t slept with an astounding number of men. But I can tell you that it was never for money. I’m not even convinced it was because she loved sex all that much.
“I didn’t understand for the longest time why she constantly slept around the way she did, and God knows I had to live down her reputation from the day I was old enough to understand what people meant when they said Nola Riordan was a slut. But not long before Jenny came to town, I began to realize that Mom views each new sexual encounter as a potential love match. And I’m talking Luuuv with a capital L.” Her tone leaned toward the sardonic, but it couldn’t be helped. “Against all evidence to the contrary, my mother sincerely, consistently and faaar too optimistically believed—”
“Believes,” Jenny interrupted.
“Right, and I have no doubt always will believe that each new relationship is going to be the real deal. She’s convinced that this time the prince will ride in on his white charger to sweep her off her feet. That this new lover will be The One.”
Harper propped her chin in her hand and sighed. “She’s a romantic.”
“No kidding.” Tasha made a rude noise. “Mom is definitely all about the fantasy.” She had a sudden flash of Nola coming back to the trailer late at night, lipstick smeared and hair mussed, smelling of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Her mom would wake her up and pull her out of bed to whirl her around the room. “He’s going to take us away from this rattrap, baby,” she’d promise. “Just you wait and see.” God. How many times had she heard a riff on that tune?
Enough that she’d quit believing by the time she was nine or ten. Or younger.
“You don’t believe in romantic love?” Dropping her hand, Harper sat back. “Please, tell me it isn’t so.”
“Okay,” Tasha agreed amiably. “It isn’t so. At least to the extent that I’ve watched you and Jenny fall in love and can see a genuine magic to your relationships with the Bradshaw boys. I just don’t think it’s in the cards for the Riordan women.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jenny said. “Of course it is.”
“Excuse me if I don’t find it all that silly, Jen,” she snapped. “But not everyone’s as lucky as you.” She took a deep breath, gave her best friend a grimace of apology and said in a more moderate tone, “I’m sorry. That was stupid. But how many years did I watch Mom’s crazy quest for her prince and not believe? All of them, right? When I decided to unclench my grip on a bit of my hard-saved pizzeria money to take that trip to the tropics, all I was looking for were some white sand, blue sky memories of sipping mai tais in the shade of a palm tree. And, okay, maybe a few good photographs to lord over you.”
“You know I was crazy jealous, too,” Jenny said. “I hated that I couldn’t spare the money from my college tuition to go with you.”
Reaching across the table, she gave Jenny’s hand a squeeze, because she did know, and she had been way too crazy defensive just now. Then she got back on subject. “So, I wasn’t a believer. Then I met Diego. And for a few brief days I got it, you know? Finally, I understood what Mom had been chasing all those years with her perpetual search for love. From the moment we met, it was just so...effortless. He made me feel smart. Beautiful. And, God, so, so golden.”
Which had simply made the crash that much more devastating. And diligently as she tried now to prevent it, she felt her expression harden as she met her friends’ gazes. “It’s pretty clear I have my mother’s crappy taste in men. So, no, I’m not looking for love. Ever.” Seeing her friends’ distress, she tried to lighten the mood. “I wouldn’t mind having hot sex once in a while, though. My brushes with that have been pitifully few and far between.”
“Guys find you hot, and you know it,” her best friend disagreed mildly. “So I’m thinking that if you really wanted to, you could have sex a lot more often than you do.”
“Okay,” she conceded slowly, “maybe.”
“Men do seem to stare at you as if you’re a Playboy foldout,” Harper said.
“I know. It’s weird, right? I don’t get it.” She grinned at Harper. “My ego’s quite healthy, so I’m not saying that because I consider myself a dog. Heck, at times like this afternoon when I’ve put a little effort into it, I think I look pretty damn hot, too. But except for my boobs, which are very nice, if I do say so myself, my body is a long way from sexpot-curvy. Plus, I’ve got this head of crazy-ass hair.” She grasped a couple of handfuls and gave them a tug, then gave Harper’s equally curly mop a rueful smile. “Well, I hardly need to tell you about that. And thank God I’ve finally found some great products for it. But then there’s my damn upper lip.”
“Which men seem to find fascinating,” Harper said.
I love your mouth, Luc’s voice whispered in her head. She shut it down fast. And sighed. “Yeah, a lot of them do. And I’ve made my peace with it. I took a lot of grief for my lips when I was a kid, so it took me a long time to realize they aren’t actually freakish.”
Harper opened her mouth as if to protest, but Jenny suddenly straightened on the bench seat beside her.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Don’t look now, but Jake and Luc just walked in.”
Tasha’s heart gave a solid thump against the wall of her chest. For a good half hour after she and her friends had settled into their booth at the Anchor, she had half expected Luc to show up hot on her trail. Which was ridiculous when she actually thought about it, but she had seen the look in his carbon-dark eyes when he’d stared down at her from the veranda above Bella T’s, and the seed had been planted. Away from his presence, however, her tension had relinquished its grip on her shoulders.
Each new bit of her story that she’d related to Harper had also helped her to unwind. Growing up in a town the size of Razor Bay, it was a given that everybody knew everybody else. It had been kind of nice to share a little of herself with someone who didn’t already know nearly every blessed thing about her.
Now, curse Luc Bradshaw’s hide, she was tense all over again. “Dammit, why did he have to come in here and ruin everything? Are they coming over?”
“Maybe. I think so.” Jenny exhaled sharply. “No. I know they saw us, or at least Jake did. But they’re headed toward the back.”
Since they’d just passed into her line of vision, she nodded. “I can see that. Oh. Looks like they’re going to play some darts.”
She didn’t want to watch Luc, and she didn’t mean to. But she was facing that end of the tavern, and as Harper had said, it was hard to deny he was one hot-looking man.
She couldn’t seem to look away.
“For God’s sake, what is this, the official Bradshaw family rendezvous or something?” Jenny suddenly demanded, and her tone had Tasha finally tearing her gaze away from Luc, who was flashing those soft creases in his lean cheeks at the cocktail waitress serving him and Jake their beers. Pig.
Not that she gave a great big rip if he flirted with someone else or anything.
Preferring not to examine the validity of that claim too closely, she craned around in time to see Max pausing a few steps inside the Anchor, no doubt to let his vision adjust to the change in lighting. He looked around, and it was obvious when he spotted the guys. Then he located the three of them in their booth.
And, weaving his way through the half-filled tables, he strode over to them. “Ladies,” he said to Tasha and Jenny, giving them each a nod. Then he turned his attention to Harper. “Hey there, sweetheart.” Bracing his knuckles on the tabletop, he gave her a tender smile, then leaned down and kissed her. Straightening back up, he glanced over at Tasha. “I have some information on Luc for you,” he said. “You want to step outside with me?”
She considered it for maybe two seconds, then shook her head. “You can say what you have to say here. I’ll just tell them anyway.” Her voice was cool, but her pulse was tripping like Timothy Leary at the height of the psychedelic Sixties. Curious, she studied him. “How would you even know I wanted information on him?”
“I noticed last night that you were upset with him,” he said. “And Harper mentioned that you said something about him not being Luc at all but someone named Diego. It set off my spidey senses.” Faint color washed across his sharp cheekbones when they all looked at him, and he hitched his massive shoulders. “I’m a cop,” he said with what for Max was near-defensiveness. “My suspicions tend to be raised when somebody I know says a newly discovered relative isn’t who he’s told me he is. So I paid Luc a visit in his hotel room this morning to find out what was going on.”
“At last,” she said. “Someone who doesn’t simply take him at face value.”
“Yeah, well, you might not be as happy about this. Or, hell, maybe you will. I don’t know. But he’s not a drug dealer. He’s with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
“Oh, please,” she said dismissively. “Did he show you his badge, too? I’m kind of disappointed in you. You must realize that anyone can buy anything on the internet these days.” But her stomach had begun to roil. Because if Max thought it was genuine—
It probably was.
“Anyone can maybe buy a knockoff that fools the general public,” he agreed easily, but in that deep, no-nonsense voice that just seemed to carry more authority. “But I’ve seen my share of badges in both the Marines and my time in the sheriff’s department and his looks legit. Besides, I called an old Marine buddy who’s now with the DOJ. He ran Luc and confirmed it. Guy’s DEA, Tash.”
“Thank you for letting me know. You’re a good friend.” She climbed out of the booth with stiff gracelessness. “I’ve gotta go.”
“No,” Jenny protested, but something in Tasha’s face when she turned her head to stare at her best friend must have warned Jenny off, for the petite brunette merely said quietly, “Must you?”
She couldn’t help herself; she glanced down the room to where the other two Bradshaw brothers were. Luc stood with his back to the dartboard and, even as she watched, sent a dart flying over his shoulder. It stuck in the fat above the double ring. She couldn’t hear Jake, but she was fairly sure he’d informed Luc of his score from the way Luc laughed.
Then he suddenly looked at her.
She started and jerked her attention back to Jenny. “Yes, I really must. When I found out that Luc was the one who’d rented Will’s apartment, I left the kitchen at Bella’s half cleaned. It needs to be finished before I open tomorrow.”
“I’ll help you.” Jenny started to slide out of the booth.
“No.” Tasha took an abrupt step back. “No. I love you for offering, but stay. Have a glass of wine with your fiancé.”
She was so happy that her best friend had found happiness with Jake. Glad for Max and Harper, as well. But she didn’t think she could bear to be around all that happiness right now. Not when she was so steeped in misery.
Her gaze glanced off Jenny’s, and she hoped her smile didn’t look as frozen as it felt. “I’ll talk to you soon,” she whispered. Then she whirled on her heel and made her getaway.
* * *
LUC GRABBED MAX by the arm as the other man made his way to the bar. “What the hell did you say to her?”
Max glanced down at the hand on his biceps, then transferred his gaze to Luc’s face. The you-don’t-wanna-be-doing-that cop look in his eye, coupled with the size and heft of his half brother’s muscle beneath his fingers, made Luc reconsider, and he dropped his hand to his side.
“Good to see you, too, bro,” Max rumbled, then met his gaze with the straight-shooter directness it hadn’t taken Luc long to figure out was Max’s default mode. “I told her I was damn near a hundred percent certain your DEA badge was real.”
“But...isn’t that a good thing?”
“You’d think so, right? But I guess not, because she looked like she’d just been kicked in the stomach. Maybe you being legit makes it somehow worse in her eyes. Because if you were the supposed good guy, how did she end up in jail—and why didn’t you lift a finger to help her?”
“I didn’t know about it! I gotta go talk to her.” He started to push past his half brother, but Max stepped more fully into his path. The guy was big and solid, so Luc had no option but to stop. That didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. “What?”
“You need to take a big step back here. Just think about this for a minute—and try to look at it through Tash’s eyes. Something damn traumatic happened to her seven years ago, but she’s had time to put it behind her and move on.”
Realizing he’d been doing more reacting than thinking, which wasn’t his usual M.O. at all, Luc shook out his hands. “Then I show up.”
“Not only show up but are related to her best friends’ men. Which means there’s going to be no avoiding you. And Tasha just said something about you moving into her studio apartment? How the hell did you swing that?”
“I didn’t have a clue about Tasha when I sublet it from Will—I actually arranged it last month when I discovered you lived in Razor Bay. From the time I found out I had brothers, I’d been looking for you and Jake. I didn’t know when I found you, though, that Jake lived here, too.
“My original plan was to take some time to scope you out. I wasn’t sure how that was gonna work, but I figured if you didn’t want anything to do with me, I’d have a more private place than a motel room to kick back in while I looked for Jake. I put in for a sabbatical when I learned Dad died while I was on a job and figured I’d have a while before I was assigned to a new one. Worst-case scenario seemed to be that I’d be forced to relax for a while.”
Max shrugged. “But you can see how Tasha might be overwhelmed by all these surprises, right?”
He gave a terse nod.
“Then take my advice and back off a little. You can’t fix everything in twenty-four hours. Give her some space and yourself a little maneuvering room.”
He slipped on his Laid-Back Luc persona, doing everything except calling Max “Dude” as he agreed that was a good idea. And in all honesty it was.
Everything Max said rang true for him. He did need to give Tasha some breathing space.
But he realized he had another truth, as well. He intended to spend time with his half brothers. And that meant spending time with their women.
Which meant spending time with Tasha.
So, for however long he ended up being here, he needed to put some serious thought into figuring out how to get back into her good graces.
For everyone’s sake.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_96039e64-8723-5aa0-8ca0-5c6a4cf2b78f)
“I’M REALLY SORRY, TASHA,” Tiffany said as they walked out of Bella T’s kitchen the following Friday afternoon. “I hate that I’m letting you down.” Her normally cheerful face was etched in misery, causing Tasha to stop in her tracks to stare at her waitress.
Then she reached out and grasped Tiffany’s plump shoulders, giving them a squeeze as she bent her head to pin the younger woman with a no-nonsense look. “Tiff. Honey. No. You have nothing to be sorry about, and you haven’t let me down at all. I didn’t really think you’d be happy in the kitchen. But you’ve been with me since I opened this joint, and I thought I should at least give you the right of first refusal before I go outside again for help.” She grinned at the plump brunette. “Just in case you’ve been harboring a secret hankering all these years to be a cook.”
“Gawd, no.” Tiffany shivered. “Even with it half-open to the dining room, I’d go nuts in the kitchen all day. Not to mention mess up my mani. I like being around people.”
“And that’s where you shine, so don’t give it another thought.” Dropping a hand, she slid her other around Tiffany’s shoulders and pulled her in for a quick one-armed hug. Then she stepped back and automatically gave the dining room a swift perusal. “Looks like the after-school rush is kicking in, so get your tush out there and hustle some orders.”
“Aye, aye, boss.”
Tasha took up her customary station behind the counter, where she could keep an eye on the growing crowd until the orders started coming in. She watched Tiffany sashay from table to table, laughing and joking with the students as she wrote down their orders, then turned her attention to Jeremy, the Cedar Village boy who bussed dishes for her.
She’d originally hired him as a favor to Max and Harper, who were both very involved in the boarding school for troubled boys. Yet it turned out they had done her the favor, because Jeremy was working out great. He was a tall, built, good-looking eighteen-year-old, and when she’d first agreed to take him on she had half feared that he’d spend his entire time flirting with the high school girls. But no matter how many of those girls tried to get him to do exactly that, he refused to be sucked in. He wasn’t a social creature like Tiff. He did his work but kept to himself. She could only assume the loner trait made him even more attractive to the young females, because God knew they didn’t let up in their attempts to get his attention.
And when they weren’t trying to flirt with him, they watched him.
She saw Peyton Vanderkamp doing exactly that right now. The pretty fair-skinned, black-haired girl shared a table with Davis Cokely, but she kept shooting covert glances Jeremy’s way as he cleared a table a short distance away. Davis was a handsome kid himself, but as far as Tash was concerned, his smug air of entitlement took the shine off his nice looks.
Peyton, she didn’t know that much about. The Vanderkamps were relatively new in Razor Bay, but they were immensely wealthy, from all accounts, and the girl ran with Davis’s posse, so Tasha didn’t expect a lot from her in the way of character. She knew that prejudices born of her own high school experiences likely colored her opinion, and she freely admitted that wasn’t very grown-up of her. But since she doubted she’d ever have an intimate relationship with the girl, she didn’t see the point of spending a lot of time worrying over her lack of maturity.
She was about to turn away when Davis turned so he was facing her more fully. The calculating look that crossed his face caught her notice, so she was watching when he, oh, so casually stretched out a foot just as Jeremy passed his table.
Her employee stumbled over it and went down like a felled tree. The bus tub in his hands bounced on the floor before tipping onto its side and spilling half its load of crockery out onto the floor with a resounding clatter.
Like field crickets at a predator’s approach, all the kids went stone silent. Davis laughed.
Incensed, Tasha reached for her Ping-Pong ball gun under the counter. Bringing it up, she fired off a shot. The ball bounced off Davis’s temple and stopped that annoying guffawing.
He spun to face her. “What the hell?”
She came out from behind the counter and strode over to his table. Planting her knuckles on the tabletop, she leaned down until she was nearly nose to nose with him. “Nobody messes with my people in my restaurant,” she said flatly. “You wanna be a lowlife, kid, go home and trip your dog.”
“Not the dog!” one of the girls from a nearby table protested. “Go home and trip yourself,” she suggested alternatively and her friend nodded in earnest agreement.
Tasha stooped to scoop up a pizza pan whose lazy elliptical spin on the floor was rapidly losing steam. She put it back in the tub. “You okay?” she asked Jeremy in a low voice.
Muscles jumped in his jaw, and his pale blue eyes burned with outraged pride. She thought he was going to come up swinging, thus starting a bare-knuckles brawl with Davis—and wondered what it said about her that she intended to let him get a shot in before she intervened.
But Jeremy merely nodded in answer to her question and pushed back to sit on his heels. Silently, he helped her gather the other plates and glasses that had escaped.
She couldn’t help but be impressed. Not many eighteen-year-old males would have reined themselves in the way he was doing.
A sudden idea made her pause mid-stretch for the plastic soda glass she’d intended to nab before it rolled out of reach. Letting it go, she sat back on her heels and contemplated him for several heartbeats while she silently debated the merit of her brainstorm.
Then leaving him to deal with the tub, she rose and turned her attention to Davis. “As the sign on the wall clearly states, I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. I’m exercising that right. If you want to come back and play nice another time, you’re welcome to do so. But you’ve lost your pizza privileges today.”
“Big deal,” he said, shoving back his chair and standing. “Your pizza’s only so-so.”
Jeremy surged to his feet as if that, of all things, was the final straw.
But before he could say anything, a football player named Sage from a few tables down demanded, “Have you and me been eating the same pizza, Cokely? ’Cause Bella T’s makes the best damn slices in the county.” He gave Tasha a guilty look and held up his hands. “Sorry, Miz Riordan—don’t shoot. Best darn slices, I meant to say.”
She merely grinned, and red crept up Davis’s neck at the reprimand from one of his teammates. Ignoring everyone else in the restaurant, however, he gave Peyton an imperious jerk of his chin. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t budge from her chair. “You go ahead,” she said coolly, making Tasha wonder if she ought to reevaluate her original impression of the girl. “I’m going to stay. I like the pizza here.”
He swore under his breath and stomped over to the door. A moment later it slammed closed behind him.
“We’ve got a number of orders stacking up, boss,” Tiffany called, and Tash nodded.
“You might want to take the meat lover’s slice off mine,” Peyton said in her I’m-much-too-cool-to-ever-get-rattled way.
“Will do,” Tiffany said, then grimaced apologetically. “I’m afraid you’re stuck paying the tab for the two pops.”
With a haughty lack of concern, Peyton hitched a slender shoulder. “Not a problem.”
“Then I guess I’d better get back to the kitchen so no one has to wait too long for their pizza,” Tasha said and turned toward the kitchen.
Only to find herself looking straight at Luc’s amused face.
Her heart gave a hard thump. Oh, perfect. He’d been in here at least once a day every day this week to grab himself something to eat. Sometimes he tried to talk to her, and other times he didn’t. But always, she caught him watching, watching, watching her. He’d already been in earlier for a cup of coffee to go, so she’d mistakenly thought she could relax for the rest of the day.
More fool she, clearly, for here he was once again, this time lounging bonelessly at one of the tables, his long jeans-encased legs stretched out and one elbow hooked over his chair back—watching her once more. She’d chew her tongue off before admitting this out loud...but his constant scrutiny was disconcerting.
When their gazes met, he gave her a one-sided smile and a thumbs-up—the latter presumably for her handling of the tripping altercation. Without acknowledging either, she looked away and turned back to Jeremy. And acknowledged the decision she’d come to several minutes ago as a really good idea. “Bring the tub to the kitchen,” she said a bit more brusquely than she’d meant to. “I’d like a word with you.”
* * *
JEREMY FOLLOWED SO CLOSELY behind Tasha he came within centimeters of tromping on her heels. Crap. He should have known the past few weeks were too good to be true. Now she was probably going to fire his ass for losing her Richie Rich’s business. He wasn’t stupid; he knew the after-school crowd was a big part of her low-season profits—and growing bigger all the time, from what he’d heard Tiffany say.
He liked working here. It was...cheerful. Except for Cedar Village in a lesser way, that wasn’t an environment he’d had much experience with. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize it when he was surrounded by it. People tended to laugh and smile in Bella T’s. It made for some nice working conditions.
Even nicer was the way Tasha had stood up for him just now. My people, she’d said, as if she considered him a part of her team. But not only wasn’t he a Razor Bay native, he was from the Village, which probably already put a black mark next to his name. Tasha ran a tight ship around here. She didn’t tolerate even mild swearing in Bella T’s, though he had heard her swear like a sailor—but never when clients were in the restaurant. Even after having been here only a short while, he could point out several kids who’d testify to her lack of tolerance, having seen them run afoul of Tasha’s Ping-Pong ball gun the same way Cokely had. He was surprised she’d let the football player get away with saying damn, even if it had been in defense of her kick-ass pizza.
If he lost this job, he didn’t know what he would do. Right now he still had a roof over his head, but he was graduating the Village’s program on the thirtieth, so he knew he was on borrowed time being able to live there. He sure as hell didn’t want to go back to his White Center neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Seattle. Not when he couldn’t say with any certainty—even given all the coping skills he’d learned from his counselors—that he wouldn’t go back to his old bad habits. If he took up again with his old friends—and face it, they were the only people he knew outside of the few friends he’d made at the Village—it was pretty much guaranteed that he’d fall back into the same old pattern.
A pattern that spelled L-O-S-E-R.
He was so engrossed in the What Ifs that he didn’t realize Tasha had stopped until he bumped up against her back. Rattled, knowing he was probably gonna get it for not watching where he was going, he jumped back. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Then, clearing his throat, he added, “I’m sorry about out there, too. I didn’t—”
“Don’t you apologize for something that was not your fault,” Tasha said fiercely. “You have zip to be sorry about in the Cokely incident—that one is all on Davis. Actually, watching the mature way you handled yourself when I’m sure you would’ve preferred smacking him silly made me want to talk to you about something else.”
He wasn’t in trouble? His counselor Jim had said he had to stop blaming himself for everything that went wrong in people’s lives, but when you grew up the way he had, it was a hard habit to break. But he took a breath, crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a jerky nod. “Okay.”
She pulled the orders from the wheel Tiffany had clipped them to and went over to the industrial-sized fridge to get out two round dough balls and several triangular ones. Swiftly, she began rolling out the full pizza crusts atop pizza stones. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You want a Coke?”
He nodded. His throat was drier than Mr. Mitchell’s math class back at his old school.
“Go pour yourself a nice tall one, then, and come back here. I have a proposition for you.”
He didn’t have a clue what that might be, but it sounded a helluva lot more positive than, oh, say, being fired. He strode out into the restaurant, loaded up a tall cup with ice at the machine, then filled it with Mountain Dew from the fountain. He drank down half of it in one long gulp, then topped it off again. After a brief hesitation, he filled another one with a different beverage. He took both back to the kitchen and offered Tasha the second cup. “I’ve noticed you sometimes like a Diet Dr Pepper in the afternoon.”
She took it, gulped down a large sip, then grinned at him as she lowered the container. “You see, this is exactly what I like about you. You’re a hard worker and you pay attention to the details.” She studied him for a moment. “You’re graduating at the end of the month with a high school diploma, right?”
He nodded.
“Do you have plans to go to college?”
He wished. But he merely shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less. Yet he found himself answering honestly. “I’d like to go, but I can’t afford it. I’m not even sure where I’m gonna live after graduation.”
“Do you plan to stay in Razor Bay or are you chomping at the bit to go home?”
“I’d totally like to stay. I like it here.”
He’d noticed before that she possessed the same kind of genuine interest in people that Harper Summerville did when she interacted with him and the other guys at the Village. Except for during his interview, however, Tasha had never focused it on him quite the way she did now. Her gray-blue eyes seemed to bore straight into his mind. “What, exactly, do you like about it?”
“It’s so...clean here. And quieter than anywhere I’ve ever been. Every time I look at the mountains and water, they just—I don’t know—give me this...still feeling. Like they’re smoothing my insides all out or something.”
She simply stared at him for a moment, and he wanted to kick himself. Where had that crap come from? Now she was going to think he was a complete ass.
“Oh,” she finally said, and he was shocked to see tears rise in her eyes. She dashed them away. “Good answer.”
His heart lightened, and a rare smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah?”
“Definitely. Drink,” she said, nodding to the mostly untouched cup in his hand. She took a sip of her own soda. “Is there a particular thing you’d take in college if you could?”
“Nah.” He shrugged. “I don’t really have a clue what I wanna do with my life—but I’d like to get my AA while I’m figuring it out. No one in my family has ever gone to college. It’d be beyond dope to be the first.” His mom wouldn’t give a shit, but his dad would sure be proud.
“Okay.” She set aside her drink and, with quick, efficient movements, used her fingers on the triangular dough to shape the slices. “This is my proposition. You know I tried to hire a cook.” Grimacing, she waved a flour-covered hand before saying dryly, “Forget I asked that—it’s a stupid question, considering he tried to blame you for all that house wine he knocked back. Of course you remember.”
“Yeah, kind of hard to forget that.” He’d thought for sure his ass would have been out the door that day, too, but Tasha had looked the hammered cook in the eye, said that he was a stone liar in the hardest voice Jeremy had ever heard out of her and told the man to get the hell out of her restaurant. Then she’d turned to him and apologized that the lying sack of slime had dragged Jeremy into his lies. As if that were somehow her fault.
He would have done anything for her that day.
But he gave himself a mental shake now and tried to concentrate on this conversation, not the one almost a week ago. “What does a drunk cook have to do with your mystery proposition?”
“I’d like to make you my new cook.”
He froze. “Huh?” His hand made a totally spastic movement, and he shoved his fingers into his back pocket to keep from looking like an oversized puppet being jerked around by a three-year-old. “I mean, I heard you, I just...” He shook his head. “Why me?”
“Because you’re smart, you’re levelheaded and, as I said before, you pay attention to details. I have a feeling you’d be good at it. I admire the way you’re not easily shaken—admire more that even when you are, you control your temper. That’s a rare quality in anyone of any age. In an eighteen-year-old guy it’s downright golden.”
He no doubt looked as stunned as he felt because she stepped closer and gave his forearm a comforting there-there pat as if she were an old Italian auntie.
“I’m not asking you to commit to it as your life’s work,” she said softly, as if maybe she was worried he felt trapped or something. “But it could be a bridge to get you through the next few years. I can help you find a place to live and pay you a livable wage.” Her lips developed an ironic slant. “Well, livable by Razor Bay standards, anyhow. And Jenny and I—and I bet Mary-Margaret, as well—can help you find funding for a community college to get your AA. Jenny, in particular, is brilliant at finding tuition money. She put herself through school without help from anyone and got her bachelor’s in hotel management in large part by hunting down a number of scholarships that were offered by Rotaries, clubs and other organizations. None of them tend to be huge, but if you put the work into getting enough of them, they can really add up.
“Which is all a long way of saying I can work around a school schedule if you’re up for both working and studying.” She tipped her head to thoroughly inspect his expression. “Are you interested? Don’t be afraid to say no if you’re not. It won’t affect your current job, and I know cooking isn’t for everyone.”
He finally shook off his shock and regained his power of speech. “No. Are you kidding me? That would be great.” He laughed out loud and didn’t even notice when most of the teen girls on the other side of the service counter turned to stare. “You wanna pay me to play with knives and fire.” He looked at the red wood-fired pizza oven with its brick-arched opening, at the gleaming stainless-steel and butcher-block work spaces, industrial appliances and the black-and-white tiled floor.
Then he looked at Tasha again. “I get to learn the secret of making the best pizza in the county—and maybe even the world,” he said in amazement, then smiled at her and shook his head. “Man. I can’t believe it. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_c48af3ef-116f-5e22-a6bc-62456984fe9b)
THE SUN WAS a spectacular flaming ball minutes shy of sinking behind the rugged peaks of the Olympic Mountains Sunday evening when Luc let himself into his studio. Tossing his keys into the wooden bowl on the coffee table as he passed by, he strode over to admire the panoramic scenery through the slider. Before he could lock on to it, however, a movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention, and turning his head, he spotted Tasha out on their shared terrace.
Or more accurately, he spotted her feet. Within hours of his move-in, she had thrown up a screen of live plants to divide the veranda, lining them up to march from the wall that connected their two units to within three feet of the balcony railing. Even with a little space between each one, it made a surprisingly effective barrier between her part of the deck and his.
So all he could see now was the end of a white wicker chaise lounge and its cushion in the same cheery blue-and-green patterned fabric she’d used to furnish a good part of his studio. Atop the cushion, he caught a glimpse of the long pale-skinned bare feet he still remembered as clearly as if seven years hadn’t passed since he’d last seen them.
He stared in bemusement, for they appeared to be performing a complicated seated dance, clearly the movement that had grabbed his attention in the first place. Her feet heel-toed across the cushion, bopping from one side to the other. Her toes pointed toward the fabric one moment, then arced back toward her shins the next as she segued into differing rhythms. Within the ever-changing patterns he caught here-and-gone glimpses of the candy-bright polish decorating her toenails, the color of which he couldn’t determine from inside his studio.
Suddenly it seemed important that he learn what that color was, and he opened the sliding door.
Laughter and voices floated up from the street. In the bay, several boat engines rumbled softly while boaters followed the five-miles-an-hour restriction in the protected inlet as they steered toward the marina to put up for the night. This town had a laid-back, feel-good vibe that Luc could appreciate after all the cartel hot spots he’d lived in.
The terrace ran the width of the building, but wasn’t very deep, and since Tasha’s apartment was larger than his studio, so was her share of the outdoor space. It didn’t take Luc more than a few long strides to reach the improvised plant divider, and he rounded the end of it, only to stop dead at his first full-on sight of her. For a moment he simply stood there and stared.
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Susan Andersen
Some mistakes are worth repeating…Tasha Riordan's one night with Luc Bradshaw was the best of her life. The following two–when he left her to be thrown into a Bahamian jail on bogus charges–were her worst. Now, seven years later, the undercover DEA agent is back. Invading her town. Her restaurant. Her fantasies. She can't trust a man who lied to her. Yet neither can she trust herself–not when their chemistry burns even hotter than before.Learning he has two half brothers shocks Luc. Discovering they live in the same town as Tasha–that's a different kind of thrill. Their mutual lust is still off the charts, but he can't get her to listen to his side of what happened on that long-ago night. Good thing he's got powers of persuasion that go deeper than words. Because nothing has ever felt this right….
Some mistakes are worth repeating…
Tasha Riordan’s one night with Luc Bradshaw was the best of her life. The following two—when he left her to be thrown into a Bahamian jail on bogus charges—were her worst. Now, seven years later, the undercover DEA agent is back. Invading her town. Her restaurant. Her fantasies. She can’t trust a man who lied to her. Yet neither can she trust herself—not when their chemistry burns even hotter than before.
Learning he has two half brothers shocks Luc. Discovering they live in the same town as Tasha—that’s a different kind of thrill. Their mutual lust is still off the charts, but he can’t get her to listen to his side of what happened on that long-ago night. Good thing he’s got powers of persuasion that go deeper than words. Because nothing has ever felt this right….
No Strings Attached
Susan Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This is dedicated to girls who wear glasses,
and to all the readers who’ve taken the time
to leave reviews and let me know you enjoy my work.
Thank you!
Contents
Cover (#u542adcde-e22a-595c-8c47-4a74fd728909)
Back Cover Text (#u6d128b12-cb77-5d26-9872-8604a13de805)
Title Page (#u0dbaf06e-12b1-5c51-9a2f-bdb5fd7628f2)
Dedication (#ub16bf19b-cdb3-5092-a662-7f6246c51685)
PROLOGUE (#u381a4c57-5da8-5dc4-94d6-c1c2b3bd7f1b)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1ce6b26d-9316-571b-b579-8bcf5ef2e911)
CHAPTER TWO (#u8c8aa3bc-6b77-57d9-a421-87f9f428919f)
CHAPTER THREE (#u62395c68-6c0b-5e98-9213-170df09deca4)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ue8839e5d-7958-52af-91d7-9ba8031dfe26)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u47dc52a1-a54a-5bb2-adc1-1b5dce9ecf05)
CHAPTER SIX (#u75357fbd-2884-5424-83a9-fada6a5e2d00)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_22e24bae-70fb-51bb-873a-0c50a90c2698)
Seven years ago. Andros Island, Bahamas
A HOT, MOIST BREEZE, perfumed by the sea and the faintest exotic whiff of an unidentifiable flower, wafted through the hut’s open window just as Tasha Riordan collapsed atop Diego. Her nose squashed into the damp curve where his neck flowed into a muscular shoulder, and as she silently breathed in his salty, slightly spicy scent, it occurred to her she hadn’t once asked what his last name was during the thirtysomething hours since they’d met. Waiting for her heart to cease its thunderous reggae beat, however, she didn’t dwell too closely on that just-met-yesterday thing.
Okay, you would think, given she’d spent a good part of her life keeping her chin up while living her mother’s reputation down, that she’d sort of welcome a little soul-searching. After all, diving into bed with a virtual stranger was a big departure for her.
A big, big departure. Huge. And she ought to be a little concerned about it, right?
Tough-skinned fingertips ran down her naked spine, sparking back to life nerve endings that by rights should have been incinerated to cold, dead ash. “You okay, cariño?” Diego asked, his voice a rumbling vibration beneath the ear she had pressed to his throat.
And just like that, her half-assed inclination to whip herself into a lather of self-recrimination melted away as her lips curved into a little smile against his skin. She didn’t know what it was about this guy, but one thing was for certain: he possessed an undeniable magic. In spades. From the instant he’d approached her on the beach yesterday morning, he’d kept her pretty much swept off her feet.
That was no small accomplishment. Ask anyone back home in Razor Bay, and damn few would hesitate to tell you—Tasha Riordan’s feet were always firmly, pragmatically planted on the ground.
But she merely murmured, “Oh, yeah” and kept her heartfelt And then some to herself.
This was probably par for the course for him. God knew he made her feel things she’d never felt before, and she was usually a hard sell. She could only imagine how many women already geared up for a vacation lover had thrown their room keys at him. The fact that she’d managed to keep her undies on until today was downright brag-worthy. She’d been tempted to shed them from the instant she’d laid eyes on him.
And considering the orgasm he’d just given her, perhaps she should have. It had been the most phenomenal, amazing one of her life.
She swallowed a snort. Like you’ve had so many to compare it to. But she shrugged the thought aside as unimportant. Yeah, yeah, she hadn’t experienced a plethora of non-self-induced climaxes in her twenty-two years. Still, neither was she a virgin, so she’d certainly had enough to know she’d never felt anything close to this. “How are you?” she asked softly.
He went so still she thought he’d suddenly quit breathing. She found herself doing the same. As several heartbeats passed in silence, her euphoria leaked away. Oh, God, she thought. Like you could rock his world. A person only had to look at Diego to understand his experience was galaxies beyond her own.
Then his hands tightened against her back, and he said in a low, gritty voice, “You wanna know how I am?” An exhalation of amusement, which just perhaps wasn’t amusement at all, huffed out of his lungs. “I’m so blown away it’s not even funny.”
“No,” she said on a disbelieving laugh, pushing up to look down at him. She had no illusions about herself. She was tall and skinny and had decent boobs, but hips and a booty that could belong to a twelve-year-old boy. She knew men found her reasonably attractive, but in no man’s universe was she close to being in this guy’s league.
Her mass of strawberry-blond curls, by now scary-crazy-frizzy from air that was still humid from an earlier, short-lived downpour—not to mention Diego’s demanding hands tangling in them—fell forward to intertwine with his sleeker black curls. She looked down at her hands where they splayed against the ebony fan of hair on his deep golden-brown chest. After nine days in the tropics, her skin was the tannest it had ever been. Unfortunately, all that meant was that, instead of its usual 2-percent-milk hue, it was the color of anemic toast.
Diego brought both hands up to smooth her hair away from her face, gathering it into a fat ponytail at the base of her skull. Holding it in one fist, he looked into her eyes, and his own were free of laughter for perhaps the first time since he’d sauntered up to where she’d been dipping her toes in the surf and introduced himself. “Yes,” he refuted, as the fingertips of his free hand brushed up and down the side of her throat. His thumb left a streak of fire in its wake as it briefly swept her jawline. “You blew me right out of the ballpark.” His full mouth developed a wry slant, and his broad shoulders performed a minute shrug against blindingly white sheets. “I didn’t see that coming.”
It was probably a line, but if so, it was a good one. Lord knew it was working on her—her heart felt gooey as a chocolate truffle left out on a hot tropic night.
Diego stared up at her. “I love your mouth.” His voice was rough, his dark eyes hot, and Tasha’s heart pounded as he crunched up from six-pack abs with the clear intention of kissing her. Before he could, however, his cell phone rang.
He swore and glanced at the nightstand where it rested. Then swore again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “I have to get this.” He gently levered her off of him and onto the middle of the mattress. Then in one smooth, unbroken movement, he pushed to his feet, swept the phone off the stand and, thumbing the green button, brought it to his ear. “Yeah,” he said. “This better be important.”
Watching him, Tasha realized he didn’t look charming in that moment. He looked dangerous: big and dark and unselfconsciously naked, his eyes hard and his mouth grim. Untangling the sheet from the bed, she pulled it up, covering herself and tucking it under her armpits. She glanced at her watch.
Oh, God. She needed to think about getting dressed if she wanted to catch the last plane back to Nassau.
Dragging the sheet with her, she climbed off the bed. Suddenly, what had seemed so daring and exciting several hours ago—impulsively agreeing to accompany Diego to the big island of Andros—felt reckless and so not smart. She began gathering her scattered clothing.
She slid into her panties, pulled on her sundress and was digging through her purse in search of something to pin her hair up with when warm, hard arms slid around her waist and pulled her back against a warmer, even harder chest. “Heyyyy.” Diego hunched to breathe in her ear. He’d pulled on the shorts and muscle tee he’d worn earlier. “What are you doing?”
It was hard to think with his heat and scent and feel all around her, and she cleared her throat. “My plane leaves in an hour and a half. I need to get to the airport.”
“Stay here with me another night. I’m supposed to be on vacation but my boss tracked me down and I have to go out for a bit to talk to him. But I’ll only be gone an hour, tops, and then we can have the rest of the night.”
“Oh.” Temptation beckoned, and for a minute she thought she could give in to it. Then reason and her usual pragmatism resurfaced. She pulled her e-ticket out of her purse and wagged it in front of their faces. “I don’t think so. I have a reservation.”
He kissed the side of her neck. “I’d really, really like to spend the rest of the night with you,” he murmured in that low, deep voice of his. “I’ll get you back to Nassau tomorrow, I promise, even if I have to charter a seaplane.” He moved his lips to the vulnerable hollow behind her ear.
And both Tasha’s reservations and her spine melted. “Well, maaaaybe that would be okay.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He swung her around to face him and kissed her long and hot and deep. Her purse fell from nerveless fingers, and the next time she managed to locate two semi-functioning brain cells to rub together, Diego was pushing off of her as she once more lay flat on her back on the bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at her. “I don’t like to leave either of us hanging this way, but my boss is an impatient sonuvabitch, and I told him I’d meet him in—” he looked at his watch “—shit, two minutes.” He bent down and planted another fast, hard kiss on her lips before straightening again. “I’ll be back just as soon as I can, okay?”
She nodded; he groaned. Then with a muttered “I will not kiss her again. I will not kiss her,” he turned on his heel and strode from the hut.
She’d barely dragged herself upright, repaired her lipstick and finally located a couple of clips to deal with her hair when the pounding on the door of the little hotel hut commenced. Grinning, she whirled from the mirror and raced on bare feet to open the door. “Hah! Forgot your key, didja?”
But it wasn’t Diego on the lanai. Several dark-skinned men in the light blue uniform shirts and black berets of the Royal Bahamian police pushed past her into the one-room hut. Not one of them offered her the usual friendly smiles she’d become accustomed to seeing since her arrival in the islands. These men, wrapped in Kevlar vests, were grim-eyed and grimmer-mouthed.
“What’s going on?” she demanded, only to find herself herded to a chair, where all she could see was the red tuxedo stripe that ran up the leg of the officer’s black slacks as he and the curve of the hut blocked her view of most of the activity going on around her.
But she could hear them dragging the mattress from the bed and opening and slamming drawers. Then suddenly the officer in front of her stepped aside, and an older man in a khaki shirt stood in his place, one hand folded at the small of his back, the other hanging loose at his side, a black dress hat with a red band and white bill tucked under his arm.
“I am Inspector Rolle of the DEU,” he said in a deep, melodious voice.
“DEU?” she squeaked. “What’s that?”
“Drug Enforcement Unit. Your name, please?”
“Tasha.” She swallowed, wondering what the hell was going on. It couldn’t have anything to do with Diego...could it? “Tasha Riordan.”
“Where is your accomplice, Ms. Riordan?”
Panic punched harder. Oh, God, oh, God, this was so not good. “Accomplice to what? I don’t have an accomplice!”
“This is your room?”
“No. No, I’m a guest.”
“A guest of whom?” he demanded sternly.
“Diego...?” She stumbled to a halt, and the austere-faced inspector raised bushy brows at her.
“I never actually got his last name,” she stammered. “I know that sounds—” Then her brain finally kicked in. “It should be on the registration, though. Ask the man who checked us in.”
Inspector Rolle pointed to an officer, who strode briskly from the hut. Then they sat in nerve-twanging silence, during which she could only conclude that Diego had done something horrible, criminal...unforgivable. Something he’d skated from free and clear—while leaving her holding the bag.
When the officer returned, he came straight over to the inspector, murmured something, then moved a discreet distance away. The inspector turned to her.
“The man who checked you in said the room was paid for in cash. He described you quite accurately, Ms. Riordan, but has no recollection of this Diego.”
“No! That’s not true. I didn’t even go up to the counter with Diego. I stayed on the deck while he checked us in. Take fingerprints or something! I wasn’t anywhere near the check-in desk!”
He studied her for a moment before shrugging. “That may turn out to be true—”
“It is true!”
“But what we have here—” he brought his hand out from behind his back and dropped a large ziplock bag filled with what looked like powdered sugar, but which she had a sick feeling was not, on the little table next to her elbow, where it settled with a heavy thud “—is this kilo of heroin—and you. No mystery man named Diego. Just you. So, Tasha Riordan, you are under arrest for possession with intent to sell.”
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_9fdac73f-5ad1-5f77-b58c-b2d2372d4a2c)
Present day
“CRAP,” TASHA WHISPERED as she pulled up behind the other cars in Max’s driveway. She was beyond late.
And this comes as a big surprise to you? her inner smart-ass demanded.
Well, no. But not seeing the men hanging out on the porch, grilling up a storm as usual, and knowing they likely weren’t out back, either, since it had been raining off and on all day, just drove the truth of her tardiness home. Because that could mean only one thing, couldn’t it? Everyone was either in the midst of dinner or—an even worse possibility—were already cleaning up.
She climbed out of the car and went around to the trunk to haul out her contributions to Harper’s mom’s going-away party. Dammit, not only had she not meant to be so late, she’d fully intended to get here early to help with the preparations. She certainly hadn’t counted on the new man she’d hired for her pizzeria turning out to be a lush. A freaking on-the-job lush.
You had to appreciate the irony here. She’d thought she had it all figured out. With the drop in business now that Labor Day was behind them and most of the tourists gone, her big plan had been to hire another cook to work part-time. She really could have used help with the summer rush this year, yet with it over, they were spared the crazy thrown-in-the-deep-end, sink-or-swim pressure. Now the new hire could take his time getting up to speed, and she’d add to his hours as he progressed. Stress-free had been her aim, the end goal to be sitting pretty by the time next summer’s rush began.
She snorted. In theory it was such a lovely, proactive idea and one that should eventually provide her some honest-to-God days off. And who knew, maybe it’d even give her a shot at an actual life. That was certainly something she’d had damn little of this summer. Once she got accustomed to the luxury of occasional free days, she might go totally hog wild and build her way up to treating herself to an actual vacation.
Okay, so the mere idea made her heart pound with anxiety and left a coppery taste in her mouth. But wasn’t it way past time she got over that?
Not that it mattered now. At this point the question was purely rhetorical. Her new cook, who had interviewed brilliantly, had in all likelihood already been drunk when he’d shown up for work. And if he hadn’t arrived with a good head start down Knee-walking Avenue, he’d definitely been fall-on-his-face hammered by the time she’d thrown his sorry ass out of Bella T’s. On her own house wine, no less, which just added an abundance of salt to the wound.
But the final straw, what truly and royally most pissed her off, was the way the bastard had tried to blame the wine theft on Jeremy, the Cedar Village boy who’d started bussing for her just the other week. The Village was a group home outside of town that helped troubled boys get their lives together, which was precisely what Jeremy was doing. The last thing he needed was for some ass to come along and falsely accuse him of larceny.
She climbed the porch steps but stopped before she reached the door. Setting down her goodies, she did her best to brush lint off her shorts, then reached into her purse for her lipstick.
One of the first things she’d noticed about Harper when the elegant mixed-race woman had come to Razor Bay was that, no matter what the occasion, she was always dressed perfectly for it. And clearly her mad style skills were directly inherited from Gina, because that went double for Harper’s sophisticated mother.
She, on the other hand, had been so rattled by the time she’d gotten the drunk cook out of Bella T’s, locked up and run upstairs to change that she’d pretty much grabbed the first thing to come to hand. That had turned out to be this linty pair of black walking shorts and—more fortunately—one of her nicer tank tops in a rich blue that almost, if not quite, gave her more-gray-than-blue eyes a hint more blue. After topping it with her little black cardigan and grabbing the foodstuffs she’d put together for the party, she’d dashed back out again.
Without a speck of makeup on, aside from the mascara she’d applied this morning so people would know she really did have eyelashes—even if they were so pale one might be excused for thinking otherwise.
She swiped on some lipstick, knocked on the door and let herself in. “Hey,” she called out over the laughter and voices coming from near Max’s unfinished kitchen. “Sorry I’m so late. But I brought a couple bottles of red to make up for it. And some homemade guacamole and veggie-tray fixings.”
She strode in sight of the long table full of people and spotted her bestie, Jenny, first, sitting next to Jake. “Hey, girlie,” she said, then greeted the Damoths and Mary-Margaret, who headed the Village, and their hosts Max and Harper and Harper’s mom. But she stopped dead in full-out shock as her eyes met the velvety dark gaze of a golden-skinned, chiseled-faced man. Images of a younger face flashed across her mind’s screen with lightning speed even as the heat of remembered kisses, caresses, sizzled through her veins, and she blinked, certain she was seeing things.
But, no. Dear God. It wasn’t, shouldn’t be possible, but it really was Diego NoLastName, the rat bastard who’d landed her in a Bahamian jail cell back when she was younger and stupider—or at least stupidly naive—and the last person she’d ever expected to see again. Yet there he sat at Max and Harper’s table, all black hair, black eyes and dark stubble, looking muscular, vital and bigger than life.
Her brain began buzzing with the staticky sound of a radio dialed half a notch off its station, and her hand went lax. The reusable cloth bag she’d stuffed full of wine and party food dropped to the floor, then tipped on its side.
She barely noticed when its contents scattered in all directions.
* * *
HOLY SHIT. THE SCENE unfolding around him went into slo-mo, and Luc Bradshaw came half out of his chair along with every other person around the table. Everyone seemed to be exclaiming and generally making a commotion in their desire to help the long-legged woman who’d stooped to gather the bottles of wine and plastic containers that rolled and skittered across the floor.
To him it was muffled white noise. He stared down at her bent head and unconsciously rubbed his diaphragm over the lower lobe of his left lung. When had all the air in here turned the consistency of Jell-O?
Jesus. It was Tasha.
Like he hadn’t known that the instant she’d blown into the room. Still, how many times this week had Jenny, his newly discovered half brother Jake’s fiancée, mentioned her BFF Tasha? His damn heart had seized a little every time he’d heard the name, even knowing Jenny was talking about someone other than the Tasha he’d known. It wasn’t until maybe two hours ago that he’d finally reached the point where it didn’t start up a chain reaction in his chest. So you’d have to excuse the hell out of him if for a second there he’d actually believed he was imagining things. Because what were the odds?
Damn good, it turned out. For this was his Tasha. Of all the women in his past he would have been perfectly content to see disappear without a trace, she had never been among their ranks.
He watched her vivid blue tank top beneath the cropped hem of a little sweater pull free from her shorts’ waistband, exposing a slice of pale satiny skin as, sitting on her heels, she stretched to grab one of the runaway bottles. Then he gave her a comprehensive survey from head to toe, concentrating for a moment on her round rump. She was quite a bit more...womanly now than the barely legal girl he remembered.
He swallowed a snort. Well, big surprise; it had been seven years since he’d seen her. So, yeah, she had a little more curve to her. But she still had no hips, and by no stretch of the imagination would anyone call her voluptuous.
Those riotous curls of hers were different, too: more sleekly defined than he recalled. But her long-lidded pale blue-gray eyes and that pillowy mouth with its fuller upper lip hadn’t changed a bit.
So screw the minor differences. She could have grown a mustache, sprouted a hairy mole and packed fifty pounds on her long frame, and he would still know her anywhere. He hadn’t the slightest doubt in his mind that this was the girl he’d spent two days and one memorable night with in the Bahamas.
“Tash!” Jenny moved to squat alongside the tall strawberry blonde, and it was as if the speed and sound of a movie had been switched back on. “Are you okay?”
Strawberry blond. He’d discovered after his night with her that that was what people called the pale red-gold color of her hair. Staring at her, he felt his entire face light up with a delighted smile.
It died an abrupt death when she suddenly raised her gaze and looked straight at him. His entire body recoiled as if a fireball were hurtling straight toward his head, and he dropped back into his seat. Because those eyes, that expression.
If looks could kill, he’d be sliced and diced into tiny bite-sized bits of steak tartare. What the fuck?
She glanced back at Jenny and apparently didn’t level that scary look on her as well, because there was no recoiling on Jenny’s part.
“No,” Tasha said in answer to the are you okay? question as she handed the little brunette first one wine bottle, then another. She must have gathered the rest of the containers as well, for she rose to her feet and extended the cloth sack to Gina, an elegant, slightly darker version of her daughter, Harper, who was Luc’s other half brother Max’s woman.
Christ. All these relationships were making his head hurt.
“I’m so sorry,” Tasha said as the older woman accepted the bag. “I hate the thought of both you going back to Winston-Salem and me missing your party, but I don’t feel so hot.”
“Yes, you look quite pale, dear,” Gina agreed, reaching out to give Tasha’s forearm a soothing rub. “You go home and go to bed. Hopefully you can sleep off whatever this bug is.”
“It’s not the flu, but bug sure seems like an appropriate word for it.” Tasha shot him another lightning-fast malevolent glare, then said a touch grimly to the older woman, “I suddenly feel like a hairy, nasty spider is crawling up my spine. I haven’t felt this awful in almost a decade, and what I’d like to do is shoot the bastard between his beady little eyes.”
Twisting to set the wine on the table, Jenny narrowed a thoughtful gaze on Luc, then turned back to study Tasha for a second. “Poor baby. You want me to drive you home? Jake can bring your car back in the morning.”
Luc watched a look perilously close to panic flash across Tasha’s face. Or maybe he only thought that was what he’d seen, because when he blinked, she appeared perfectly calm.
Tasha patted Jenny’s hand. “No, I’m fine to drive. I’ve just been burning my candle at both ends since tourist season started, and I guess it’s finally caught up with me. I desperately need some sleep.”
“Good thing you’ve got an extra helper in the works,” Jenny said.
An edgy laugh escaped Tasha. “Ah, yeah, about that. It turns out that’s not going to happen.” She suddenly seemed ready to wilt as she shoveled long, pale fingers through her hair. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” She looked away from the little brunette to the rest of the company gathered around the table.
Well, except for him. Now that she’d finished eviscerating him with her death-ray stare, she evidently had no desire to even glance his way again.
“I’m sorry for the drama,” she said to the group at large, then focused her attention on Gina once more, bestowing on her the sweet, generous smile that had been branded on Luc’s brain for seven long years. “Have a safe journey home,” she said, giving the other woman a hug. When she pulled back, she gazed at Gina with warm-eyed affection. “I’ve just loved getting to know you. I really hope you’ll come back soon.”
“Oh, I intend to, darling,” Gina said. “My favorite daughter lives here now.”
“Uh, Mom?” Harper said dryly. “I’m your only daughter.”
Gina gave an elegant shrug. “But you’re still my one and only Baby Girl.”
Harper’s olive-green irises all but disappeared behind the lashes-fringed crescents her eyes became as she grinned. “That’s true.”
Tasha exchanged a few more pleasantries with the guests. Then between one moment and the next, she’d said her goodbyes, strode out through the kitchen and was gone.
Luc pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. “Okay if I grab myself a beer?” he asked Max.
“Help yourself,” his half brother invited even as Harper said, “Here, let me get it for you” and started to rise to her feet.
No! his mind snarled. But he hadn’t spent more than a decade in deep cover for the DEA for nothing. He flashed her the friendly charmer’s smile that years of practice had rendered second nature and merely said, “Please, Harper, you don’t need to wait on me.”
“Yeah, Harper,” Jake said. “He’s family. Which means he can do the dishes, too.”
“Or at least fetch my own drink. Anyone else want anything while I’m in there?”
No takers chimed in, and he left the room with an unhurried stride that nevertheless ate up the distance between the table and the back door. Silently letting himself out, he spotted Tasha heading toward the end of the attached garage, with the obvious intention of making a beeline for the parking apron around front. Clouds the color of a day-old bruise hung low in the sky, but for the moment at least, it was dry, and ignoring the few back steps, he dropped directly to the lawn, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.
He could move fast and silent as ground fog when the need arose, and he came up on Tasha’s flank just as she rounded the end of the garage. He moved into its shadow one step behind her and reached out, his fingertips brushing her arm. “Hey, Tasha, wait—”
With a gasp, she whipped around. Wild panic flared in her clear gray eyes, and watching her suck in a breath and open her lips, Luc knew she was about one second away from screaming down the house. Snaking a hand around her nape, he clamped his free palm over her mouth to keep her from cutting loose with a screech that would bring everyone inside stampeding to her rescue.
Not that there was anything she needed rescuing from—Jesus, he would never hurt her. All the same, he really didn’t want his deputy sheriff half brother thundering down on him. He didn’t doubt for an instant that if Max heard a woman scream, he would be out here in a red-hot hurry, his big-ass service pistol drawn.
“I’m sorry,” he said in the most soothing, nonthreatening voice he could summon. Her lips were soft and her skin warm beneath his hands.
He shoved the tactile sensations into a far corner of his mind where they could just wait to be examined when his concentration wasn’t demanded elsewhere. “I didn’t mean to scare you—I just want to talk to you for a minute. I’m going to let go of you now, okay?”
He obviously didn’t follow through with the promised action quickly enough to suit her, for she narrowed her eyes at him as if to say, Then get on with it! Wondering if they’d be right back where they started, he gave her a hard-eyed stare back. “And you won’t scream, either, am I right?” It was a command, not a question, and he stared into those crystalline eyes without blinking.
She hesitated a second, then dipped her chin in a slight nod.
Slowly, he released his light grip on the back of her neck and lifted his hand from her mouth.
Tasha promptly knocked his hand aside and scrubbed the back of hers over her lips as if they’d come into contact with hazardous waste. Pushing past him, she marched back into the rear yard before turning to face him. “If you want to talk to me, you can damn well do it out here, where people can see us,” she said.
He nodded. But what the hell—why was she so mad? He wasn’t the one who—
Being on the business end of another of her eat-shit-and-die glares chopped the thought in two, and he was still regrouping when she demanded, “So who are you pretending to be today, Diego?”
He kept his wince strictly internal, but...hell. She had him on the ropes with that one, since he could hardly say he hadn’t been pretending to be someone else when they’d met. So he simply gave her a level look and said calmly, “My real name is Luc Bradshaw. I’m Max and Jake’s half brother—”
“Oh, please,” she said in disgust.
He blinked, baffled by her. “What do you mean, oh, please? At least give Max some credit. Don’t you think he had me thoroughly checked out?”
She made a rude noise, and his brows came together. “I’m not sure what your problem is. All you have to do is look at the three of us together—the general consensus here seems to be that there’s a strong family resemblance. So why would you doubt that I’m—”
She got all up in his grill—and it didn’t say much for him that he found it kinda hot. “Look,” she said, eyes narrowed to burning slits and her long, narrow nose mere centimeters from his own. “I don’t know who you are, buddy, or what your game is. But you stay the hell away from me, you hear? How dare you come here impersonating Jake and Max’s brother?” She poked him in the chest—but before he could grab her finger, she dropped her hand to her side and took a large step back.
“Tell you what,” she said with a calmness that didn’t match those eyes. “I’m feeling pretty generous, so if you pack your bags and get out of town—tonight—I’ll let bygones be bygones.” She gave him the slitty-eye-of-death look again and said, “If you’re smart, you’ll take that offer and go, because it runs counter to everything my gut’s telling me to do.”
Trying to reconcile this woman with the sweet, laughing girl he remembered—and failing miserably—he shook his head. “Say what?”
“You have trouble understanding English, Diego?”
Apparently so, because he didn’t have the first idea what she was talking about. Rather than telling her that, however, and demanding to know what her problem was and exactly what it was she thought she knew, he instead heard himself say, “My name is not Diego. I know I told you it was, but I was undercover with the DEA at the time, and my continuing good health precluded telling anyone my true identity. But I am Luc Bradshaw, son of Charlie Bradshaw. Half brother to Max and Jake.”
“Oh, good, you stick to that story. In fact, I really hope you do. Because if you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll enjoy nothing more than going to Max and telling him you’re nothing but a lousy drug dealer named Diego Who-the-hell-knows-what. And then, Dee-A-Go, he will haul your skeevy butt off to jail.”
He froze. He’d spent most of their short time together mining for every piece of her story he could get—while keeping his own to himself. He hadn’t told her much more than that he was on vacation and didn’t want to spend it talking about work. The one time she’d pushed for details, he’d turned on the charm and steered the subject in another direction. So how the hell had she tumbled to his cover story?
He didn’t have time to figure it out before she stepped back and shook that pretty cloud of hair behind her shoulders. “And if that happens,” she said in a voice edged in tungsten, “trust me, I’ll have only one regret.”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he stared down at her. Taking in the flushed cheeks and electric eyes, he thought it was a damn shame that he was still so attracted to such an obvious head case.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “What would that regret be?”
“That unlike the tiny hundred-and-two-degree black hole of a Bahamian jail cell where I spent the two most terrifying nights of my life, thanks to you,” she said flatly, “American jails are probably downright plush.”
Then, before he could ask so much as one question, she whirled on sandaled feet and stalked back into the murky shadows thrown by the side of the garage.
Leaving him wondering what the hell had happened the night they’d spent together.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_fd7ae60c-d89a-55a0-a366-3ec9e42be114)
“TASHA RENEE RIORDAN, you’ve been keeping secrets from me. When the hell did you get the chance to meet Luc Bradshaw and why do you dislike him so much?”
Tasha stared at her friend openmouthed. She had barely opened her door to Jenny’s knock before the question knocked her back a step as if it were an honest-to-God battering ram catching her squarely in the chest. Jenny crossed the threshold at the same time that Tasha remembered to breathe. And breathing was good, if a bit tricky around the ragged rhythm her heart was banging out. But she tried her best to sound calm and collected when she said, “What? I met him yesterday. You were right there, Jen.”
“Don’t kid a kidder, sweetie. You looked at him as if you knew him. So when on earth? I didn’t think you’d come up for air long enough to leave Bella T’s.”
She tried to keep it to herself; she really did. But this was Jenny, to whom she told everything, and she simply caved. “I met him seven years ago.” She shoveled her fingers through her hair and stared at her friend. “It knocked me for a loop when I walked into Max’s last night and saw that Max and Jake’s so-called brother is the Diego I told you about from my Bahamas trip.” Admitting it out loud was both scary and a relief. There was no taking it back now, but neither was it a secret any longer, pooling its corrosive acid in her stomach.
Assuming more importance than it should warrant.
Jenny’s face promptly went serious, showing why she was Tasha’s best friend. “Oh, crap, Tash. How is that possible? And yet...you were too...not you, with all that bug stuff and shooting it between the eyes and the I-hope-you-die-from-a-raging-case-of-herpes looks you gave him.”
“Oh, God.” They reached the breakfast bar dividing the small galley kitchen from the body of her living area just as her leg muscles turned to pudding. She sagged onto one of the stools and stared at her best friend as the petite brunette climbed onto the stool next to her. “It shocked the hell out of me to see him sitting there cool as you please at Max’s table. But...dammit, Jenny. I hate that I was so obvious.”
“You weren’t, sweetie. Or, okay, you were—but only to me.” Jenny leaned forward to give her a quick, fierce one-armed hug, then straightened back on her stool. “And I’ve known you damn near half our lives.” She shot her a sly smile. “And now that I know, I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out for myself. Because it makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s the only man you’ve ever reacted that passionately to.”
Tasha ignored that, since the last thing she wanted to talk about in conjunction with that man was passion. “I told him he had until today to get the hell out of town. But how do I break the news to the Bradshaw men that he isn’t their half brother if he doesn’t leave?”
“Tash. Sweetie.” Jenny rubbed the back of her hand. Gave her sympathetic but firm eye contact. “You only have to look at him to see that he is.”
“No,” she insisted—even though the truth of it had been rattling the cage she’d locked it in from the moment Diego—Luc—had said the same thing. She slid her hand out from under Jenny’s and used it to shove her hair out of her face. “He’s not gonna just go away, is he?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Crap.” She sucked in a breath. Then blew it out again in resignation. And said what she’d been thinking all night long. “What were the damn chances that the one man I never wanted to clap eyes on again as long as I lived would turn out to be Max and Jake’s half brother?”
“I know, right?” Jenny agreed. “It really is a freaking small world.”
* * *
LUC HAD JUST finished packing up his duffel bag when an authoritative fist pounded on his motel room door. Old habits died hard, and silently he unzipped the bag’s end pocket and pulled out his SIG Pro. Pistol at his side, he kept to the wall as he approached the door and stopped just this side of it. Craning around, he peered through the peephole.
And saw his half brother Max in his khaki deputy uniform shirt.
He tucked the gun in the small of his back, covered it with his shirttail and opened the door. “What brings you to Silverdale?” he asked curiously. “And how the hell did you get my room number?” As if he didn’t know.
“It’s amazing what a badge can get you,” Max said in his usual unsmiling, straightforward manner. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah, sure.” He stepped back to allow him by. “So you came to Silverdale just to see me?”
“Yep.” The bigger man gave the room a quick, comprehensive examination that Luc was damn sure took in everything there was to take. Then Max focused his attention on him. “Can you shed some light on why Harper heard Tasha say you’re not Luc Bradshaw but some guy named Diego?”
Luc had been expecting the question in one variation or another, but now that it was asked, he realized he didn’t know how to address it. That wasn’t like him. He was the master of improvisation and deflection, killer charm his go-to line of defense. But there was something about looking into the steady, uncharmed eyes of a man who was still a virtual stranger while the knowledge that they were brothers punched him in the damn solar plexus the way it had every damn time he’d seen Max or his other half bro, Jake, this past week. He found he couldn’t lie to those eyes.
And that sure as hell threw him off his game.
This brotherhood gig might be tougher than he’d anticipated. Having grown up an only child, once he’d located Max and Jake he’d been kind of excited at the prospect of getting to know them. But he hadn’t really figured where he would fit in this new family dynamic when the other two had a lifelong history with each other. His sole excuse was he had only recently discovered that his late father, Charlie—a man he’d thought he knew inside out—had two other sons Luc had known nothing about until the day he’d cleaned out his dad’s desk and come across the information.
But thinking about it wasn’t getting the question answered, and he blew out a breath. “You want a cup of coffee? The story has background that might take a little time to explain.”
“Sure. That would be good.” Max made himself at home on the small couch in the sitting area of the narrow suite.
Luc made a cup of coffee at the amenity counter and brought it over to his sibling. “Look,” he said, standing in front of Max with both hands held easy but away from his body. “I’m going to take my SIG out of the back of my jeans real slow now, okay?” It had been stupid of him not to put it away the minute he’d seen who was there.
Max’s hand came to rest on his own pistol. “Wanna tell me why the hell you’re packing a gun?”
“I thought you did a background check on me. Shouldn’t you know I’m DEA?”
“You bet. If you really were.”
“I’m gonna let that pass, since this relationship between you and me and Jake is only—what?—ten days old. I’m currently on a leave of absence, but I’ve been with the agency for thirteen years.”
His half brother merely looked at him with watchful eyes. “I’d just as soon not pull my weapon on you, so do us both a favor and don’t reach for your gun until you’ve shown me the ID.”
“You got it.” He indicated the duffel resting on the end of the bed. “It’s in my bag over there.”
Max climbed to his feet, his right hand still on the butt of his pistol. “On second thought, pull the gun out real slow like you said and put it on the table. Then I’ll get the ID for you.”
Luc felt a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It was ridiculous and probably misplaced to feel proud of his half brother, but he kinda did anyhow. Because Max was clearly nobody’s fool. You never, but never, let an unknown quantity paw through a bag that for all you knew could be bristling with weapons. “Good plan.”
He did what the bigger man instructed and slowly retrieved his gun from the small of his back. Keeping his finger away from the trigger, he made no abrupt movements as he bent to place it on the table between them. Max swept it up.
Luc waved a help-yourself hand at the duffel. “ID’s in the end pocket.”
Max didn’t pat him down but he clearly suspected the possibility of a backup piece, for he kept an eye on him as he crossed to the bed, then turned sideways to keep him in sight when he reached for the pocket zipper. Luc linked his hands behind his head to alleviate some of the tension in the room and watched in satisfaction as Max’s wide shoulders relaxed a fraction.
His half brother felt around in the pocket for a moment, then made a little wordless sound of discovery deep in his throat. A second later, he pulled out Luc’s leather badge wallet and flipped it open. He glanced down at it and the rest of the tension flowed from his big body. He took his eyes off Luc long enough to give the gold-and-black eagle-and-circle insignia a closer inspection. Slapping it shut, he turned to give him a penetrating look. “Undercover?”
“Yeah.” Dropping his hands to his thighs, he sat up. “How’d you know?”
“Please,” Max said. “Diego? Plus, I doubt most field-office agents on leave feel compelled to answer a knock on their motel room door packing a semiautomatic.”
“It was a pretty aggressive knock.”
The smile Max gave him was so small as to barely be present, but Luc had been around him enough by now to recognize it for what it was: his version of a big grin.
“Then there’s the not showing up in my background check,” Max said. “My guy does very good background checks.” But he quickly sobered and pinned Luc in the beams of his hard-eyed heard-every-excuse-so-don’t-even-try-to-bullshit-me cop’s gaze.
“The question is, how did Tasha come to know?”
Thrusting his fingers in his hair, Luc scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then he blew out a breath and lowered them to his sides, tucking his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. “She doesn’t know about the DEA part—she believes I’m a drug dealer named Diego and I honest to God don’t have a clue where she got that idea.” He gave an impatient jerk of one hand. “Not the name part—I introduced myself as Diego. But how the hell did a twenty-two-year-old on vacation cop to my cover?”
“Maybe you had something she found?”
“No, I wouldn’t live long if I was that sloppy.”
Max looked at him over the lip of his coffee mug. Nodded. “Where and when did you meet?”
“In the Bahamas seven years ago. Spanish is my first language, so most of the cases I’m assigned to tend to be in South or Central America. The one I was on at the time concerned a cartel in Colombia, but I was on temporary R & R a continent away from the action, so all I told Tasha was my first name. My cover first name, not my real one, because you just never know when you might run into the wrong person at the wrong time, y’know? Even thousands of miles away. And before our relationship could get much deeper than that, I got called away. I thought it was just going to be a quick check-in, but that turned out not to be the case.”
Christ, there was an understatement. And for a moment he was plunged back seven years to Andros Island.
* * *
“WHAT’S SO URGENT?” he demanded the minute the door to the safe house was opened by a silent agent who appeared barely old enough to have completed his training. Dammit, this was a too-rare R & R for him and he wasn’t happy about being summoned by Special Agent in Charge Jeff Paulson. But he had six years in with the DEA and duty first had been drummed into his head from day one.
So he spared the other agent the briefest scan before looking past him to his superior, who was seated in a comfortable-looking chair situated deeper in the room. Without glancing up from the sheaf of papers he was going through, Paulson indicated the much less comfy-looking chair across from him. “Come in and take a seat.” When Luc complied, the older man set aside the papers, locked Luc in his sights and wasted no time coming to the point. “Intel gatherers have been picking up chatter about you.”
“What kind of chatter?” He’d been an undercover operative for too many years to be caught flat-footed by much, but this sent a little punch of shock through his system.
“The word they’re hearing is that you’re gonna get yours while you’re in the Bahamas.” Paulson gave him a half smile. “Someone clearly doesn’t like you.”
And he knew exactly who. “Hector Alvarez.”
Paulson sat forward. “Morales’s second lieutenant Alvarez?”
“Yes, sir. He doesn’t like that Morales appreciates my sense of humor, because Alvarez is the original Mr. Grim. And he really doesn’t like that his girlfriend likes to flirt with me. He refuses to see that her actions have more to do with the fact that I treat her with respect while he treats her like shit than it does with any burning desire for me as a man.” He’d spent the past fifteen months with the Morales cartel and ordinarily he was all about the case. Right now, however, only one thought kept intruding during his recitation of the facts. “Tasha.”
The SAC frowned. “Beg pardon?”
“This trip was supposed to be a short break for me and I left a friend at my room when I came to meet with you. If Alvarez is bragging about ‘getting’ me while I’m here, it’s not a stretch to assume he knows where I’m staying by now.”
“I thought your SOP was to bribe the desk clerk to disavow any knowledge of you checking in.”
“Yes, sir, and I did that. But Alvarez could offer a bribe as well for ten minutes in my room and who’s to say the guy won’t double-dip in that bowl of guacamole? Shit.” He surged to his feet. “I need to get Tash out of there.” She had told him her best friend called her that shorter version of her name—and he’d thought at the time how much it suited her.
“Sit down,” Paulson said in a voice that brooked no argument. “The only thing you have to do is board the helicopter that’s going to be here in—” he glanced at his watch “—seven minutes and get your ass to D.C. for debriefing and reassignment.”
“Not gonna happen until I get her out. Sir.” He headed for the door, surprised at his own adamance. He loved his work, particularly the thrill of relying on his wits and the adrenaline rush of having to stay on top of his game at all times. New cases were usually right up his alley since beginnings were inherently more dangerous and exciting due to his lack of familiarity with the players’ quirks. Plus, as much as he enjoyed the company of women when he had a little downtime to spend with them, once he was back on the job he pretty much forgot them. If it had been any other female, he likely would have been perfectly comfortable leaving Tasha’s extraction to a DEA team.
The young agent stepped in front of him, blocking his way out, and Luc went chest to chest, nose to nose, with him. “Get out of my way, kid.”
“Sorry, sir. I can’t do that.”
Luc had to admit that putting his professionalism on the line for a woman—especially one he’d known for only two days—was unlike him. Yet he found himself compelled to do exactly that and he was fully prepared to go toe-to-toe with the guy in his way.
“Stand down, Bradshaw,” Paulson said, coming up behind him. His voice softened. “I’ll extract her myself,” he promised. “But you are getting on that chopper.”
He stepped back from the young agent, but his willingness to argue must have shown on his face as he turned around, for Paulson’s hardened. “This is not up for discussion, Lucas. I’ll call you in D.C. to let you know she’s okay. But you are leaving in—” he consulted his watch again, then looked up at the sound of a helicopter coming in low “—now.”
“No, sir. I’m not.”
“Then turn in your badge, Bradshaw. Because I won’t tolerate an agent who refuses orders from his superior officer.”
He didn’t have his badge with him, of course, but he opened his mouth to say Paulson could have it. Then he thought about what he was doing. His SAC had just told him he’d personally take care of Tasha himself and Luc sure as hell had no reason to doubt he’d do exactly that. “Fuck.”
And the next thing he knew he was running, hunched against the strong wash of the rotor blades, toward a chopper that was lightly settling on the back lawn. Minutes after that, he was winging away from his old case, headed for a new one.
But instead of his usual anticipation over the prospect of a new case, his thoughts were back with the woman he’d left behind.
By the time Paulson called late in the evening two days later, Luc was climbing the walls. “Hey,” he barked into his satellite phone when he saw his SAC’s name on the readout. “What’s going on with Tasha? Is she okay? Did she understand why I didn’t come back when I told her I would?”
“First things first,” his SAC said. “You were set up. The Bahamian DEU raided your hut not long after you left to meet with me and found a kilo of heroin.”
His blood iced over as he thought of the only person besides himself who had been in his beach hut. He didn’t want to believe it but— “Do you think it was Tasha?”
“No—although we thought that when we got there and found her gone.”
“Gone?” He sat down hard. “As in not there?”
“Generally what that means, son. Sources reported she flew out on the last plane to Nassau that night. We ran her through all the databases, but she’s not in any of them.”
“So she just fucking left, when she said—”
Paulson’s impatient voice cut him off. “You think you can focus on the case here, Bradshaw?”
He shoved aside his disappointment over Tasha’s defection as well as another emotion that felt suspiciously like hurt. “Yes, sir. I’m just trying to figure out when the hell Alvarez had the opportunity to plant anything. Tasha and I had just gotten there that morning.” He’d already had reservations on Andros and had talked Tasha into going with him because he’d heard the tiny resort was very private—and because he’d just wanted her to come with him.
“And you stayed in the whole day?”
“Yes.” Then he shook his head. “No. Shit. We went snorkeling that afternoon.”
“So he had a window of opportunity.”
“Yes.” Then his brain kicked in. “Jesus, he’s not the brightest star in the galaxy. If I were actually the drug dealer he thinks I am, I’d likely give up somebody a lot higher up the food chain than me to save my own ass. I doubt Morales would be happy to hear Alvarez set that scenario in motion.” His adrenal glands began pumping juice into his sytem over the thought of what he could do with this situation. Because... Oh, yeah. This could work. “Can you get your hands on a replacement kilo?”
“Huh?” There was a moment of silence. Then, “You can’t possibly be thinking about taking it back to Morales—can you?” The words were negative, but the tone...
Yeah, baby. His SAC was considering it.
“I am thinking that. It’s a fucking twofer, sir. Think about it. Alvarez will be gone the minute Morales learns what he’s done.” One way or the other, unfortunately, but the guy should have thought about all the potential consequences before he tried framing him. “More than that, it’ll likely cement my position in the cartel, which gives us the opportunity to close the case faster than we thought we could. We need to do this.”
They disconnected a short while later after Paulson promised he’d check with the director about another kilo—with the caveat that it was by no means guaranteed they’d get one. But Luc refused to entertain the idea, because he was deadly determined to see this case through.
Unfortunately, it didn’t keep him from gnawing over Tasha’s defection. What had made her decide to catch the night flight back to Nassau after all, when she’d assured him she would wait?
He went around and around on it but eventually had to shelve the whole damn mess. “Get over it, chump,” he said, his mood black. Chicks dumped guys—it happened all the time, even if he’d only rarely experienced it himself. There sure as hell wasn’t anything he could do about it. She clearly hadn’t been as into him as he had been into her.
“Well, your loss, sweetheart,” he finally growled aloud. And shoving his wallet into his back pocket, he went off to find something to distract him from the pointless what-ifs pinballing around in his brain.
* * *
“SO WHAT WAS THE CASE?”
“What?” But he shook his head to bring himself back to the present and told his half brother a condensed version of what had gone down that day. Then he simply stared at the big deputy for a moment.
“Christ, Max,” he finally said. “I was blown away to see her in your dining room last night. Then when I followed her out to the backyard, she was beyond pissed, which I don’t get, ’cause like I told you, I thought she’d run out on me. Yet she was furious with me.” Remembering her parting words, he rolled his shoulders. “And maybe with reason.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “What reason?”
“Last night she said that thanks to me, she’d spent two nights in a Bahamian jail.”
“So either there was a failure to communicate between the two countries’ drug enforcement agencies, a clerical screwup—or somebody lied to you, Slick. I don’t know the players, but I know Tasha. And I gotta tell you, if there was any lying going on, I doubt it was her.”
“Yeah.” Luc doubted it, too, because she knew just enough about his cover to get things wrong—and they were things she shouldn’t know at all. Plus, she was crazy furious with him, which she’d have no reason to be if she had taken off.
He met Max’s eyes and didn’t doubt his own eyes were every bit as hard as his half brother’s. “And you can take it to the bank that I will get to the bottom of this. But first,” he admitted, “I have to convince Tasha that I’m not a drug dealer. Then I need to get her to talk to me long enough to learn exactly what happened that night so I can figure out where to go from there.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_cd04fa9e-2857-5208-8600-781ca54c6aae)
TASHA HEARD THE street door to Bella T’s open while she was scrubbing down the kitchen. “We’re closed,” she called, which everyone and their brother should already know because—hello!—Razor Bay. Monday. Labor Day weekend now behind them.
On the other hand, it hadn’t even occurred to her to lock the door while she was back here cleaning. So on the off chance it was some out-of-towner looking for a slice, she came out to give him/her the bad news. But seeing Tiffany, the young woman who had worked for her since the day she’d opened the restaurant’s doors, Tasha frowned in bewilderment. “Hey, girl. What are you doing here on your day off?”
“I parked in my spot behind Bella’s to run some errands,” the plump, flawlessly-made-up brunette with the sunny smile, even sunnier disposition and easy way with people said. “But when I was cutting between the buildings to the street I saw...” Her words trailed away, and for a second she appeared unusually hesitant. Then she tipped her head inquisitively, gave Tasha a penetrating look and suddenly asked, “Do you and that good-looking new Bradshaw brother have something going on that I should know about?”
“What? No!” Oh, God, was it written on her forehead that she and Dieg—Luc—had had crazy wild sex one night a hundred years ago? “Why would you think so?”
“Because I saw him heading upstairs a minute ago,” Tiffany said with a vague wave toward the end of the building where the outdoor staircase ran up to the living quarters. “And he was carrying a big duffel bag like he’s moving in.”
“What the hell—?” Tasha peeled off her rubber gloves, tossed them on the service counter and headed for the door. “Lock up for me, will you?”
“You got it, boss.”
Her heart pounded with an emotion she didn’t want to examine too closely, but she was never so rattled that she forgot to give her aqua-white-and-green-painted building a ritualistic pat as she rounded its corner. Bella T’s was the realization of a dream she’d held since she was twelve years old—except better, because not only was the pizzeria a reality, but she owned the building that housed it, as well. Well, okay, she and the bank owned it, but one day it would be hers alone. And she never, but never, failed to show her appreciation when she transitioned from her work space on the street level to her home upstairs. This was likely the most well-loved inanimate object in Razor Bay.
And she intended to find out what the hell Luc Bradshaw was doing in it.
She took the solid wooden stairs up to the second floor two at a time and burst through the unlocked exterior door, but then stopped dead and stared down the narrow hallway that ran along the building’s back wall as the door bounced off the inside wall. Down near the far wall, Luc stood in front of the studio apartment that her longtime renter, Will, had recently vacated, the aforementioned duffel bag at his feet. At the sound of her less-than-subtle entrance, he spun away from fitting a key in the door lock, his right hand reaching toward the small of his back before suddenly freezing.
That got her moving again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded as she strode up to him. She thrust out a hand. “Give me that key!”
“Taking your questions in order,” he said dryly, “I’m moving in, cariño. And no.”
She stepped up until they stood nearly nose to nose. “What do you mean, no?”
“It’s a fairly self-explanatory word, princesa mia. I’m not giving back the key. I signed a contract that says I’m the proud owner of this studio apartment for the next ninety days.” He flashed that charming white smile of his that creased his cheeks into not-quite-dimples. Seven years ago its power had rendered her stupid.
She was neither charmed nor made stupid by it this time around, however—not by the smile or his damn Spanish endearments. Back in another lifetime she’d made him explain what those sweet nothings meant, but she’d long since put them out of her mind. And she assured herself firmly that hearing them now left her cold.
Luc himself, unfortunately, did not. From the moment they’d met on that long-ago dawn-cooled beach, she’d felt the heat of the sexuality he exerted with such apparent ease. And much as she might wish otherwise, she still did. He was just so damn...male. And so flipping effortlessly carnal and attractive in his plain navy T-shirt and worn Levis that she spared a second to regret the sullied white apron she had tied around her hips and her old, faded, shapeless T-shirt that stuck messily to her skin in the all places where she’d splashed herself. Which, face it, in her zeal to clean the kitchen, were many. And once again she didn’t have on a speck of makeup. She had to quit letting him catch her looking so undone all the time.
Seriously? Are you listening to yourself? She stepped back and stood tall. Luc Bradshaw was nothing to her. It didn’t matter what he thought of her appearance.
Then, belatedly realizing what he’d just implied, she addressed the real issue here. “You’re Will’s college roommate?” That couldn’t be right; he had to be a good five years older than her former tenant.
“Okay. Sure.”
Oh! He didn’t even try to make her believe it. “You so are not. How did you get him to tell me that you were?”
He rolled his muscular shoulders in an unrepentant shrug. “I may have flashed my badge and told him it was a matter of national security.”
She gaped at him in disgust. “God. You just lie as naturally as the rest of us breathe, don’t you?”
It wasn’t a question, but he took a large step forward that somehow had her backing against the end wall. Propping his arm above her head, he leaned close and looked down at her, making her aware of the heat that pumped off his body, even though they weren’t actually touching.
“The idea, before I thought better of it, was to check out my half brothers without them knowing who I am. And I had no idea you owned the joint—I just liked that it wasn’t a hotel room and it was in Razor Bay. But as for lying,” he said in a low, rough voice, “I’ve got a job that takes me to places where I sure as hell better be good at it. Being fond of staying alive and all.”
She made a rude noise. “Of course—oh, silly me to have forgotten for a moment that you’re a low-life drug dealer.”
He blew out a breath that wafted across her face, and damn his hide, it smelled minty fresh, when by rights it ought to carry the stench of brimstone and lies. “I’m not a drug dealer, Tash,” he said in the mellifluous voice she remembered, the one that was almost as deep as his half brother Max’s. “I’m undercover DEA.”
Cold fury pumped through her veins, and, slapping her hands to his chest, she shoved him back. “You do not get to call me Tash as if you and I are friends,” she said through gritted teeth. “And do me a favor and skip the I’m-really-just-a-poor-misunderstood-good-guy routine, because I’m not buying it.” She thrust out a hand. “Let’s see that contract,” she said, conveniently ignoring the fact that she had a copy filed in her own place.
He turned back to the door and manipulated the key still stuck in the dead bolt. The lock clicked softly, and Luc opened the door and waved her in.
“I’m not going in there with you,” she said—and watched something in his face change that gave her another quick glimpse of the dangerous, determined man she had seen before in a faraway thatched-roof hut nestled on a white-sand beach.
“You are if you want to see the contract,” he said flatly, his right biceps flexing even rounder and harder than it already was as he lifted his bag and hauled it inside. “Everything I own is in my duffel—I’m damned if I’ll empty it out in the hallway.”
“Fine,” she said ungraciously, and, folding her arms over her breasts, she followed him into the studio.
Both apartments above Bella T’s opened onto a narrow veranda that ran the width of the building and looked down on Harbor Street. They boasted sweeping views of the bay and Hood Canal, plus the Olympic Mountains that made it not a canal at all but rather a spectacular fjord. Luc struck Tasha more like a leather than a wicker kind of guy, and he looked big, dark and out of place, too tough to take up residence among the cheerful white furniture and the beachy blues, greens and beiges she’d used to decorate the compact studio.
He dropped his duffel on the end of the bed in the alcove and reached for its zipper. A moment later he pulled out the contract and carried it to her. “Have a seat,” he invited, waving a lean long-fingered hand at the grouping of an overstuffed love seat and two wicker rockers.
She carried it instead over to the tiny drop-leaf table in front of the big window and took a seat on one of the two chairs tucked in on either end.
She cursed her stiff-necked pride and the impulse to follow him in here to try to make him as uncomfortable as she felt. It had been a mistake. The truth was she already knew that Washington State favored tenants in contract disputes, that basically if she as landlord tried to evict, even with a good, solid reason, the tenant could stay in her rental free of charge until the dispute was resolved—which would take a helluva lot longer than ninety days. And she didn’t have a good reason to evict Luc. She sure wished now that she hadn’t allowed Will to find his own replacement and then exacerbated the mistake by leaving him to fill in the contract. She really regretted barely even glancing at the thing before scrawling her signature across it. Her only excuse was that she’d been so relieved at the prospect of three months’ rent money coming in while she worked to find a more permanent tenant.
Bella T’s had just concluded its second summer in business, and for a new restaurant in an industry where the majority of new ventures closed before their second year, it was doing remarkably well. But the pizza parlor was in a resort town that garnered most its income in the summer months. She was fortunate that she got quite a bit of local business, which helped her to escape many of the seasonal issues. But there were still definite lull periods. So until she had a couple more successful years under her belt and was confident she’d nailed down the most efficient ways to stretch her income throughout the entire year, not just in the months that she made good money, she appreciated the added security of collecting rent.
A small brown leather folder landed on the table next to the contract, and she looked up at Luc. “What’s this?”
“My DEA badge.”
She made a rude noise and nudged over the top flap, exposing a mostly gold badge of a spread-winged eagle with Department of Justice written in gold on a black ribbon across its torso and Drug Enforcement Administration and Special Agent circling the U.S. in the body of the badge beneath the bird of prey. It looked very official, but she shrugged and pushed it back toward him with one finger. “Big deal. People fake these things all the time.”
The short gritty noise that came from deep in his throat sounded suspiciously like a dog’s growl. “Jesus, you’re a hard sell. It’s the real deal. Here.” He shoved a driver’s license–sized photo ID toward her. “Here’s my ID.”
She yawned. “Again. Could be forged. How would I know the difference?”
He thrust his fingers through his hair and stared at her. “Look, we need to have an honest heart-to-heart about that night. There are a number of discrepancies and I’d like to figure out what the hell happ—”
“I have nothing to say to a man who lied to me about who he was.” She scooted her chair back from the table and rose. “The contract is solid,” she said smoothly. “But I’d like you to reconsider and find yourself another place.”
“Not gonna happen.”
She blew out a quiet breath. It wasn’t as if she’d really believed it might. “Whatever. Just stay the hell out of my way.”
“Sure,” he said with the oughtta-be-patented smile that had likely left a trail of discarded undies in its wake.
And she knew that probably wasn’t going to happen, either. “I expect first and last months’ payment by 5:00 p.m. today,” she said and left through his veranda slider.
Seconds later she had stalked down the decking to her own slider and let herself into her apartment. She closed it firmly behind her. Then, as an afterthought, locked it tight.
She needed a few minutes to pull herself together before she went downstairs and finished polishing up Bella’s kitchen. But as she paced from room to room trying to burn off the head of steam she had going, she had a nasty feeling it was going to take her a lot longer than a few minutes to work this itchy nervous energy out of her system.
Because how on earth was she going to survive three months of having Luc Bradshaw living right next door?
“Shit,” she whispered, scraping her hair away from her face as she stopped in front of the window to stare blindly out at the water and mountains. “ShitshitshitshitSHIT!”
Then she blew out a breath and tried to think. Swearing and wearing a path in her painted wooden floors weren’t doing jack on the make-me-feel-better front. Only one thing could do that, and she headed for the kitchen counter, where she’d dropped her cell phone.
Screw the cleanup—she’d get it done before opening time tomorrow or, who knew, maybe even later today if she could get a handle on this awful restlessness. But that was something to worry about later.
Right now, she was in dire need of the moral support that only girlfriends could supply.
* * *
LUC HEARD MUTED sounds coming from the apartment next door. After about fifteen minutes, Tasha’s front door slammed, followed seconds later by the outer door closing and the faraway clatter of footsteps growing even fainter as they progressed down the exterior staircase. He ambled out onto the veranda, leaned casually on the railing—and watched as she appeared on Harbor Street below and strolled toward his end of the building. She glanced up, and his heart gave a hard thump as their gazes clashed.
Ah, man. Scrubbing his knuckles over the sudden tightness in his chest, he stared down at her. It hadn’t been enough that she’d stood in front of him in her work clothes, her gorgeous skin all flushed from her obvious exertions and her thin T-shirt clinging to her breasts and diaphragm in little peekaboo patches transparent enough for him to see that she wore a blue lace bra beneath it? The girl knocked his socks off without even trying.
She had sure as hell put some effort into her look for someone now. Her pale eyes were made up all smoky-sultry, and her mouth—God, that lush, siren mouth with its top-heavy upper lip—was painted a soft, sheer red. She had on a short flirty skirt and a next-best-thing-to-spray-paint little girlie tee that clung to her and had a neckline cut low enough for him to see the upper curves of her pale breasts.
Her eyes narrowed. Then she looked away as if he were invisible and sashayed down the block.
Luc leaned farther over the railing, possessiveness sounding low in his throat. Who the hell was she dressing up for?
He pulled himself up short. “Jesus, get a grip.” Really, it was no skin off his dick if she had a boyfriend. It had been a million years since she and he had—
Best not to go there, man. Anyway, it wasn’t as if he weren’t anxious to get back to his own life, to his work. He should probably avoid civilized company altogether. Hell, he’d nearly pulled his gun, which he likely shouldn’t even be carrying here in Razor Bay, when Tasha had crashed the outer door against the wall. He was a guy who needed the buzz of living by his wits, of playing the game right up to the final rush of taking down the bad guys, of putting one more power-happy drug kingpin out of business.
Not that there didn’t seem to be dozens more in the wings just waiting to take up the mantle. Still, he could only do what he could do—and he was ready to take them down, too. So whoever Tasha was or wasn’t doing shouldn’t matter.
Which didn’t explain why he was leaning so far over the railing trying to keep her in sight that he was in imminent danger of tumbling over it and landing on his head on the street below.
“Shit.” He straightened away from the balustrade and took a giant step back to drop into one of the chairs, his eyes narrowing as it creaked beneath his weight. Tasha sure did have a thing for wicker furniture.
He wasn’t what you’d call an avid view guy, but he had to admit that this one was pretty damn sweet. Yesterday’s rain squalls had apparently blown out to sea, for the rugged mountain range across the narrow band of water etched its craggy peaks against a cloudless blue sky. Some kid on a Sea-Doo was rrrEAR-rrEAR-rrEARing in relentless loops out in the canal, and Luc caught a glimpse of one corner of the local inn’s float that he and Jake had rowed out to the evening that Tasha and both of his half brothers’ women went skinny-dipping from it. If he’d known then that it was his Tasha—or okay, not his-his, but at least the Tasha he’d once known—he would have tried a helluva lot harder to see through the shadowy night and stygian waters. Short of X-ray vision he would’ve failed, but he’d have tried. Now a group of kayakers paddled past the area down toward the state park.
He felt restive. Edgy. Tired of his own company. Climbing to his feet, he slapped his jeans pocket to make sure his room key was still there. Retrieving it, he let himself out of the room, then locked up. He might as well walk down to the inn and see if Jake was around. It beat the hell out of this little memory-lane jaunt his mind kept wanting to take off on.
It didn’t occur to him that he probably should have called first until he crossed the porch of The Sand Dollar, the largest of the cottages scattered around the evergreen-dotted grounds of The Brothers Inn. Then he rolled his shoulders and knocked on the front door. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, man. He was here now, wasn’t he? He rapped out another rhythm.
“Keep your shorts on,” he heard Jake’s irritated voice say from the other side of the door. Footsteps approached, and the door whipped open. “There better be a fucking fire, because I’m in the middle of someth—” He blinked at Luc. “Oh, hey, it’s you.” Stepping back, he opened the door wider. “C’mon in. You, I actually wanna talk to.”
“Yeah?” It was stupid to feel the warm fuzzies because some guy he hadn’t even known existed six months ago maybe wanted to get to know him as much as he wanted to get to know both his recently discovered half brothers. As a newly orphaned only child, he envied their obvious closeness and the way Jake had jumped to Max’s defense, especially when it came to their mutual father, more than once now.
“You want a beer?” Jake asked. He glanced down at his pricey watch, which, along with his green silk T-shirt, honest-to-God pressed cargo shorts—who did that?—and razor-cut sun-streaked brown hair, screamed well-put-together-rich-guy. “It’s not too early for a brew, is it?”
“Hell, no. A beer would be good.” Surreptitiously checking his own plain cotton tee to make sure it was still clean, he followed his half brother into a small galley kitchen.
Jake fished a couple of Fat Tires out of the fridge and handed one to Luc. “So,” he said, popping his bottle’s top and snapping his fingers to send it winging toward the sink, “I hear you and Tash have a lurid past.”
He started. “Where the hell did you hear that?”
“Jenny is Tasha’s best friend, remember? She went over this morning to find out what was with her yesterday, because she claims Tash wasn’t acting like herself.”
It was small of him, but he gritted his teeth over Jake’s casual use of Tasha’s nickname when she’d forbidden him to use it.
“I hear Tasha claims you’re a drug dealer and that she got arrested for drugs you had in your vacation rental.”
“Fuck.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his shield for the third time this day, flipping open its wallet and holding it out to the other man. “I was undercover, and I didn’t even know she’d been arrested until yesterday.”
Jake took the badge out of his hand and studied it. “DEA, huh? Max will be interested in this.”
“He already knows—he came to see me at my hotel in Silverdale earlier.”
A slight smile crooked Jake’s lips. “That’s our boy. Not much gets past him.” He returned the shield. “Why don’t you just show this to Tash?”
“I did! She said IDs could be faked.”
Jake laughed. “Yeah, she was pretty hot under the collar when she called Jenny about getting together at the Anchor for some girl time.”
“She’s at the Anchor? With your fiancée?” It wasn’t as if he was relieved or anything. He merely had a new resolve, and he took a step back. “Well, listen, I’ll let you get back to that middle-of-something thing you were working on.”
“So you can go to the Anchor without me?” Jake demanded. “Screw that.” He disappeared into another room, but almost immediately returned. Shoving a wallet into his back pocket, he said, “You do get that she’s there to trash your good name to her girls, don’t you? You’re not exactly gonna be welcome.”
A corner of his mouth ticked up. “Yeah, why can’t they be levelheaded like us?”
“I know, right? Women are a mystery, but it’s some esoteric female thing, the logic of which only they understand.” He sobered. “Just be prepared, bro. You’re already on shaky ground.” They stepped out onto the porch, and Jake locked up. “Where’s your car?”
“On Harbor Street. I walked over.”
Jake shrugged. “I’ll drive, then.” He led Luc to his SUV. Opening the doors with his remote, he paused to look at Luc over the top of the car. “You know, you really oughtta move into the inn so you don’t have to do so much backing-and-forthing between the Bay and Silverdale.”
“I don’t need a place at the inn. I just moved into the studio above Bella T’s.”
“No shit?” Jake shot Luc a big-ass grin. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ac197fae-d340-51a0-baf9-3ded0315d183)
“AW, HELL,” TASHA said morosely, “it’s not like I didn’t know better than to hook up with Diego/Luc/whatever-he-wants-to-call-himself in the first place.” She knocked back a long swallow from her glass of the house red, then looked at Jenny and Harper seated on the other side of their booth at the Anchor. “I knew not to go there. But instead of paying attention to my instincts, I went ahead and hooked up with him anyway.”
“How would you know better?” Harper asked with the near-British inflection that made her sound so boarding-school refined. “Did he have Lying Drug Dealer written all over him?” Her black ringlets shivered and swayed as she tipped her head to study Tasha. “And what, precisely, does such a person look like?”
“Beats me. I only meant that I hadn’t intended to hook up with anyone on that vacation. It was just my bad luck that the one time I broke my own hard-and-fast rule, it was with a guy who landed me in a Bahamian jail.”
It felt odd to have told yet another person about that time in her life. Her imprisonment in the dark, cramped cell had been the single most terrifying forty-eight hours of her life—its minutes stretching like dog years as she’d wondered if she would ever see the light of day again. When they finally did let her go, she’d wanted only to forget and had kept the incarceration a closely guarded secret, relating her experience to no one but Jenny. Now, after maintaining a stony silence for seven years, in less than twenty-four hours she had not only blurted it to Luc last night but had just told Harper, as well.
But although she may have known Harper for only a couple of months, her new friend was fast becoming important to her. And she’d deserved to hear about her prior relationship with Luc if she was ever to understand why Tasha was so furious with him now.
Raucous male laughter exploded from a table over by the window, but Harper didn’t spare so much as a glance in the group’s direction. She leaned into their own table. “You were on vacation,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you want to meet a hot-looking man?” She gave Tasha a knowing look. “And I think we must admit that Luc Bradshaw is that, yes?”
Oh, yeah. He is definitely that. Not that she intended to say so aloud. She did, however, dip her chin in the tiniest acknowledgment.
“It all stems back to her mama,” Jenny said and raised a hand to hail the cocktail waitress. Catching the woman’s eye, she circled an index finger over their glasses, indicating refills all around.
“Your mother wouldn’t approve of you having a vacation fling?” Harper inquired. “Is she quite strict, then?”
Both she and Jenny laughed. “No,” Tasha said. “Quite the opposite, actually. My mom was known around here as the whore of Razor Bay. She moved to Olympia almost six years ago, yet there are still a few people who like to throw her reputation in my face every now and then.” She shrugged. “Of course, they’re morons. And don’t get me wrong, I love my mom. But she and I are nothing alike.”
“No fooling,” Jenny said and turned to Harper. “Nola, Tash’s mom, lives strictly in the moment—I don’t think I’ve ever seen her give a microsecond’s thought to what might happen tomorrow. Tash, on the other hand—she’s a whole nother animal. She is the most goal-oriented person I’ve ever met.”
Harper gave Tasha a bright olive-green-eyed gaze, then turned in her seat to study Jenny. “I know you two have been friends for a long time. But I don’t believe I’ve ever heard exactly when or how you met.”
“It was my second day at Razor Bay High School when we were sixteen,” Jenny said with a fond smile at Tasha. “I was new in town, and Tash stepped in when some kids started giving me shit about my father’s well-publicized incarceration for a Ponzi scheme—which we will talk about another time,” she added with a little grin when she saw the light of curiosity in her biracial friend’s eyes. “I just loved her from the start, because she had even less standing in that school than I did, yet instead of covering her ass and walking on by like any right-thinking individual would have done—”
Tash snorted and Jenny flashed her a grin.
“—she just jumped right into the fray. We went from that to bonding over the pizzas she made in her mama’s single-wide and a mutual determination to move beyond our circumstances.” Shaking her head, Jenny smiled ruefully. “I thought I had plans at the time. But Tash already had a full-fledged, neatly typed business plan for Bella T’s in her underwear drawer.”
It was true, so Tasha merely shrugged. But then she slapped a hand against the scarred wooden tabletop and straightened in her seat. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while and it seems to me that calling my mother a whore is kind of unfair.” She made a waving motion as if to erase her words. “Oh, not that she hasn’t slept with an astounding number of men. But I can tell you that it was never for money. I’m not even convinced it was because she loved sex all that much.
“I didn’t understand for the longest time why she constantly slept around the way she did, and God knows I had to live down her reputation from the day I was old enough to understand what people meant when they said Nola Riordan was a slut. But not long before Jenny came to town, I began to realize that Mom views each new sexual encounter as a potential love match. And I’m talking Luuuv with a capital L.” Her tone leaned toward the sardonic, but it couldn’t be helped. “Against all evidence to the contrary, my mother sincerely, consistently and faaar too optimistically believed—”
“Believes,” Jenny interrupted.
“Right, and I have no doubt always will believe that each new relationship is going to be the real deal. She’s convinced that this time the prince will ride in on his white charger to sweep her off her feet. That this new lover will be The One.”
Harper propped her chin in her hand and sighed. “She’s a romantic.”
“No kidding.” Tasha made a rude noise. “Mom is definitely all about the fantasy.” She had a sudden flash of Nola coming back to the trailer late at night, lipstick smeared and hair mussed, smelling of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Her mom would wake her up and pull her out of bed to whirl her around the room. “He’s going to take us away from this rattrap, baby,” she’d promise. “Just you wait and see.” God. How many times had she heard a riff on that tune?
Enough that she’d quit believing by the time she was nine or ten. Or younger.
“You don’t believe in romantic love?” Dropping her hand, Harper sat back. “Please, tell me it isn’t so.”
“Okay,” Tasha agreed amiably. “It isn’t so. At least to the extent that I’ve watched you and Jenny fall in love and can see a genuine magic to your relationships with the Bradshaw boys. I just don’t think it’s in the cards for the Riordan women.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jenny said. “Of course it is.”
“Excuse me if I don’t find it all that silly, Jen,” she snapped. “But not everyone’s as lucky as you.” She took a deep breath, gave her best friend a grimace of apology and said in a more moderate tone, “I’m sorry. That was stupid. But how many years did I watch Mom’s crazy quest for her prince and not believe? All of them, right? When I decided to unclench my grip on a bit of my hard-saved pizzeria money to take that trip to the tropics, all I was looking for were some white sand, blue sky memories of sipping mai tais in the shade of a palm tree. And, okay, maybe a few good photographs to lord over you.”
“You know I was crazy jealous, too,” Jenny said. “I hated that I couldn’t spare the money from my college tuition to go with you.”
Reaching across the table, she gave Jenny’s hand a squeeze, because she did know, and she had been way too crazy defensive just now. Then she got back on subject. “So, I wasn’t a believer. Then I met Diego. And for a few brief days I got it, you know? Finally, I understood what Mom had been chasing all those years with her perpetual search for love. From the moment we met, it was just so...effortless. He made me feel smart. Beautiful. And, God, so, so golden.”
Which had simply made the crash that much more devastating. And diligently as she tried now to prevent it, she felt her expression harden as she met her friends’ gazes. “It’s pretty clear I have my mother’s crappy taste in men. So, no, I’m not looking for love. Ever.” Seeing her friends’ distress, she tried to lighten the mood. “I wouldn’t mind having hot sex once in a while, though. My brushes with that have been pitifully few and far between.”
“Guys find you hot, and you know it,” her best friend disagreed mildly. “So I’m thinking that if you really wanted to, you could have sex a lot more often than you do.”
“Okay,” she conceded slowly, “maybe.”
“Men do seem to stare at you as if you’re a Playboy foldout,” Harper said.
“I know. It’s weird, right? I don’t get it.” She grinned at Harper. “My ego’s quite healthy, so I’m not saying that because I consider myself a dog. Heck, at times like this afternoon when I’ve put a little effort into it, I think I look pretty damn hot, too. But except for my boobs, which are very nice, if I do say so myself, my body is a long way from sexpot-curvy. Plus, I’ve got this head of crazy-ass hair.” She grasped a couple of handfuls and gave them a tug, then gave Harper’s equally curly mop a rueful smile. “Well, I hardly need to tell you about that. And thank God I’ve finally found some great products for it. But then there’s my damn upper lip.”
“Which men seem to find fascinating,” Harper said.
I love your mouth, Luc’s voice whispered in her head. She shut it down fast. And sighed. “Yeah, a lot of them do. And I’ve made my peace with it. I took a lot of grief for my lips when I was a kid, so it took me a long time to realize they aren’t actually freakish.”
Harper opened her mouth as if to protest, but Jenny suddenly straightened on the bench seat beside her.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Don’t look now, but Jake and Luc just walked in.”
Tasha’s heart gave a solid thump against the wall of her chest. For a good half hour after she and her friends had settled into their booth at the Anchor, she had half expected Luc to show up hot on her trail. Which was ridiculous when she actually thought about it, but she had seen the look in his carbon-dark eyes when he’d stared down at her from the veranda above Bella T’s, and the seed had been planted. Away from his presence, however, her tension had relinquished its grip on her shoulders.
Each new bit of her story that she’d related to Harper had also helped her to unwind. Growing up in a town the size of Razor Bay, it was a given that everybody knew everybody else. It had been kind of nice to share a little of herself with someone who didn’t already know nearly every blessed thing about her.
Now, curse Luc Bradshaw’s hide, she was tense all over again. “Dammit, why did he have to come in here and ruin everything? Are they coming over?”
“Maybe. I think so.” Jenny exhaled sharply. “No. I know they saw us, or at least Jake did. But they’re headed toward the back.”
Since they’d just passed into her line of vision, she nodded. “I can see that. Oh. Looks like they’re going to play some darts.”
She didn’t want to watch Luc, and she didn’t mean to. But she was facing that end of the tavern, and as Harper had said, it was hard to deny he was one hot-looking man.
She couldn’t seem to look away.
“For God’s sake, what is this, the official Bradshaw family rendezvous or something?” Jenny suddenly demanded, and her tone had Tasha finally tearing her gaze away from Luc, who was flashing those soft creases in his lean cheeks at the cocktail waitress serving him and Jake their beers. Pig.
Not that she gave a great big rip if he flirted with someone else or anything.
Preferring not to examine the validity of that claim too closely, she craned around in time to see Max pausing a few steps inside the Anchor, no doubt to let his vision adjust to the change in lighting. He looked around, and it was obvious when he spotted the guys. Then he located the three of them in their booth.
And, weaving his way through the half-filled tables, he strode over to them. “Ladies,” he said to Tasha and Jenny, giving them each a nod. Then he turned his attention to Harper. “Hey there, sweetheart.” Bracing his knuckles on the tabletop, he gave her a tender smile, then leaned down and kissed her. Straightening back up, he glanced over at Tasha. “I have some information on Luc for you,” he said. “You want to step outside with me?”
She considered it for maybe two seconds, then shook her head. “You can say what you have to say here. I’ll just tell them anyway.” Her voice was cool, but her pulse was tripping like Timothy Leary at the height of the psychedelic Sixties. Curious, she studied him. “How would you even know I wanted information on him?”
“I noticed last night that you were upset with him,” he said. “And Harper mentioned that you said something about him not being Luc at all but someone named Diego. It set off my spidey senses.” Faint color washed across his sharp cheekbones when they all looked at him, and he hitched his massive shoulders. “I’m a cop,” he said with what for Max was near-defensiveness. “My suspicions tend to be raised when somebody I know says a newly discovered relative isn’t who he’s told me he is. So I paid Luc a visit in his hotel room this morning to find out what was going on.”
“At last,” she said. “Someone who doesn’t simply take him at face value.”
“Yeah, well, you might not be as happy about this. Or, hell, maybe you will. I don’t know. But he’s not a drug dealer. He’s with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
“Oh, please,” she said dismissively. “Did he show you his badge, too? I’m kind of disappointed in you. You must realize that anyone can buy anything on the internet these days.” But her stomach had begun to roil. Because if Max thought it was genuine—
It probably was.
“Anyone can maybe buy a knockoff that fools the general public,” he agreed easily, but in that deep, no-nonsense voice that just seemed to carry more authority. “But I’ve seen my share of badges in both the Marines and my time in the sheriff’s department and his looks legit. Besides, I called an old Marine buddy who’s now with the DOJ. He ran Luc and confirmed it. Guy’s DEA, Tash.”
“Thank you for letting me know. You’re a good friend.” She climbed out of the booth with stiff gracelessness. “I’ve gotta go.”
“No,” Jenny protested, but something in Tasha’s face when she turned her head to stare at her best friend must have warned Jenny off, for the petite brunette merely said quietly, “Must you?”
She couldn’t help herself; she glanced down the room to where the other two Bradshaw brothers were. Luc stood with his back to the dartboard and, even as she watched, sent a dart flying over his shoulder. It stuck in the fat above the double ring. She couldn’t hear Jake, but she was fairly sure he’d informed Luc of his score from the way Luc laughed.
Then he suddenly looked at her.
She started and jerked her attention back to Jenny. “Yes, I really must. When I found out that Luc was the one who’d rented Will’s apartment, I left the kitchen at Bella’s half cleaned. It needs to be finished before I open tomorrow.”
“I’ll help you.” Jenny started to slide out of the booth.
“No.” Tasha took an abrupt step back. “No. I love you for offering, but stay. Have a glass of wine with your fiancé.”
She was so happy that her best friend had found happiness with Jake. Glad for Max and Harper, as well. But she didn’t think she could bear to be around all that happiness right now. Not when she was so steeped in misery.
Her gaze glanced off Jenny’s, and she hoped her smile didn’t look as frozen as it felt. “I’ll talk to you soon,” she whispered. Then she whirled on her heel and made her getaway.
* * *
LUC GRABBED MAX by the arm as the other man made his way to the bar. “What the hell did you say to her?”
Max glanced down at the hand on his biceps, then transferred his gaze to Luc’s face. The you-don’t-wanna-be-doing-that cop look in his eye, coupled with the size and heft of his half brother’s muscle beneath his fingers, made Luc reconsider, and he dropped his hand to his side.
“Good to see you, too, bro,” Max rumbled, then met his gaze with the straight-shooter directness it hadn’t taken Luc long to figure out was Max’s default mode. “I told her I was damn near a hundred percent certain your DEA badge was real.”
“But...isn’t that a good thing?”
“You’d think so, right? But I guess not, because she looked like she’d just been kicked in the stomach. Maybe you being legit makes it somehow worse in her eyes. Because if you were the supposed good guy, how did she end up in jail—and why didn’t you lift a finger to help her?”
“I didn’t know about it! I gotta go talk to her.” He started to push past his half brother, but Max stepped more fully into his path. The guy was big and solid, so Luc had no option but to stop. That didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. “What?”
“You need to take a big step back here. Just think about this for a minute—and try to look at it through Tash’s eyes. Something damn traumatic happened to her seven years ago, but she’s had time to put it behind her and move on.”
Realizing he’d been doing more reacting than thinking, which wasn’t his usual M.O. at all, Luc shook out his hands. “Then I show up.”
“Not only show up but are related to her best friends’ men. Which means there’s going to be no avoiding you. And Tasha just said something about you moving into her studio apartment? How the hell did you swing that?”
“I didn’t have a clue about Tasha when I sublet it from Will—I actually arranged it last month when I discovered you lived in Razor Bay. From the time I found out I had brothers, I’d been looking for you and Jake. I didn’t know when I found you, though, that Jake lived here, too.
“My original plan was to take some time to scope you out. I wasn’t sure how that was gonna work, but I figured if you didn’t want anything to do with me, I’d have a more private place than a motel room to kick back in while I looked for Jake. I put in for a sabbatical when I learned Dad died while I was on a job and figured I’d have a while before I was assigned to a new one. Worst-case scenario seemed to be that I’d be forced to relax for a while.”
Max shrugged. “But you can see how Tasha might be overwhelmed by all these surprises, right?”
He gave a terse nod.
“Then take my advice and back off a little. You can’t fix everything in twenty-four hours. Give her some space and yourself a little maneuvering room.”
He slipped on his Laid-Back Luc persona, doing everything except calling Max “Dude” as he agreed that was a good idea. And in all honesty it was.
Everything Max said rang true for him. He did need to give Tasha some breathing space.
But he realized he had another truth, as well. He intended to spend time with his half brothers. And that meant spending time with their women.
Which meant spending time with Tasha.
So, for however long he ended up being here, he needed to put some serious thought into figuring out how to get back into her good graces.
For everyone’s sake.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_96039e64-8723-5aa0-8ca0-5c6a4cf2b78f)
“I’M REALLY SORRY, TASHA,” Tiffany said as they walked out of Bella T’s kitchen the following Friday afternoon. “I hate that I’m letting you down.” Her normally cheerful face was etched in misery, causing Tasha to stop in her tracks to stare at her waitress.
Then she reached out and grasped Tiffany’s plump shoulders, giving them a squeeze as she bent her head to pin the younger woman with a no-nonsense look. “Tiff. Honey. No. You have nothing to be sorry about, and you haven’t let me down at all. I didn’t really think you’d be happy in the kitchen. But you’ve been with me since I opened this joint, and I thought I should at least give you the right of first refusal before I go outside again for help.” She grinned at the plump brunette. “Just in case you’ve been harboring a secret hankering all these years to be a cook.”
“Gawd, no.” Tiffany shivered. “Even with it half-open to the dining room, I’d go nuts in the kitchen all day. Not to mention mess up my mani. I like being around people.”
“And that’s where you shine, so don’t give it another thought.” Dropping a hand, she slid her other around Tiffany’s shoulders and pulled her in for a quick one-armed hug. Then she stepped back and automatically gave the dining room a swift perusal. “Looks like the after-school rush is kicking in, so get your tush out there and hustle some orders.”
“Aye, aye, boss.”
Tasha took up her customary station behind the counter, where she could keep an eye on the growing crowd until the orders started coming in. She watched Tiffany sashay from table to table, laughing and joking with the students as she wrote down their orders, then turned her attention to Jeremy, the Cedar Village boy who bussed dishes for her.
She’d originally hired him as a favor to Max and Harper, who were both very involved in the boarding school for troubled boys. Yet it turned out they had done her the favor, because Jeremy was working out great. He was a tall, built, good-looking eighteen-year-old, and when she’d first agreed to take him on she had half feared that he’d spend his entire time flirting with the high school girls. But no matter how many of those girls tried to get him to do exactly that, he refused to be sucked in. He wasn’t a social creature like Tiff. He did his work but kept to himself. She could only assume the loner trait made him even more attractive to the young females, because God knew they didn’t let up in their attempts to get his attention.
And when they weren’t trying to flirt with him, they watched him.
She saw Peyton Vanderkamp doing exactly that right now. The pretty fair-skinned, black-haired girl shared a table with Davis Cokely, but she kept shooting covert glances Jeremy’s way as he cleared a table a short distance away. Davis was a handsome kid himself, but as far as Tash was concerned, his smug air of entitlement took the shine off his nice looks.
Peyton, she didn’t know that much about. The Vanderkamps were relatively new in Razor Bay, but they were immensely wealthy, from all accounts, and the girl ran with Davis’s posse, so Tasha didn’t expect a lot from her in the way of character. She knew that prejudices born of her own high school experiences likely colored her opinion, and she freely admitted that wasn’t very grown-up of her. But since she doubted she’d ever have an intimate relationship with the girl, she didn’t see the point of spending a lot of time worrying over her lack of maturity.
She was about to turn away when Davis turned so he was facing her more fully. The calculating look that crossed his face caught her notice, so she was watching when he, oh, so casually stretched out a foot just as Jeremy passed his table.
Her employee stumbled over it and went down like a felled tree. The bus tub in his hands bounced on the floor before tipping onto its side and spilling half its load of crockery out onto the floor with a resounding clatter.
Like field crickets at a predator’s approach, all the kids went stone silent. Davis laughed.
Incensed, Tasha reached for her Ping-Pong ball gun under the counter. Bringing it up, she fired off a shot. The ball bounced off Davis’s temple and stopped that annoying guffawing.
He spun to face her. “What the hell?”
She came out from behind the counter and strode over to his table. Planting her knuckles on the tabletop, she leaned down until she was nearly nose to nose with him. “Nobody messes with my people in my restaurant,” she said flatly. “You wanna be a lowlife, kid, go home and trip your dog.”
“Not the dog!” one of the girls from a nearby table protested. “Go home and trip yourself,” she suggested alternatively and her friend nodded in earnest agreement.
Tasha stooped to scoop up a pizza pan whose lazy elliptical spin on the floor was rapidly losing steam. She put it back in the tub. “You okay?” she asked Jeremy in a low voice.
Muscles jumped in his jaw, and his pale blue eyes burned with outraged pride. She thought he was going to come up swinging, thus starting a bare-knuckles brawl with Davis—and wondered what it said about her that she intended to let him get a shot in before she intervened.
But Jeremy merely nodded in answer to her question and pushed back to sit on his heels. Silently, he helped her gather the other plates and glasses that had escaped.
She couldn’t help but be impressed. Not many eighteen-year-old males would have reined themselves in the way he was doing.
A sudden idea made her pause mid-stretch for the plastic soda glass she’d intended to nab before it rolled out of reach. Letting it go, she sat back on her heels and contemplated him for several heartbeats while she silently debated the merit of her brainstorm.
Then leaving him to deal with the tub, she rose and turned her attention to Davis. “As the sign on the wall clearly states, I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. I’m exercising that right. If you want to come back and play nice another time, you’re welcome to do so. But you’ve lost your pizza privileges today.”
“Big deal,” he said, shoving back his chair and standing. “Your pizza’s only so-so.”
Jeremy surged to his feet as if that, of all things, was the final straw.
But before he could say anything, a football player named Sage from a few tables down demanded, “Have you and me been eating the same pizza, Cokely? ’Cause Bella T’s makes the best damn slices in the county.” He gave Tasha a guilty look and held up his hands. “Sorry, Miz Riordan—don’t shoot. Best darn slices, I meant to say.”
She merely grinned, and red crept up Davis’s neck at the reprimand from one of his teammates. Ignoring everyone else in the restaurant, however, he gave Peyton an imperious jerk of his chin. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t budge from her chair. “You go ahead,” she said coolly, making Tasha wonder if she ought to reevaluate her original impression of the girl. “I’m going to stay. I like the pizza here.”
He swore under his breath and stomped over to the door. A moment later it slammed closed behind him.
“We’ve got a number of orders stacking up, boss,” Tiffany called, and Tash nodded.
“You might want to take the meat lover’s slice off mine,” Peyton said in her I’m-much-too-cool-to-ever-get-rattled way.
“Will do,” Tiffany said, then grimaced apologetically. “I’m afraid you’re stuck paying the tab for the two pops.”
With a haughty lack of concern, Peyton hitched a slender shoulder. “Not a problem.”
“Then I guess I’d better get back to the kitchen so no one has to wait too long for their pizza,” Tasha said and turned toward the kitchen.
Only to find herself looking straight at Luc’s amused face.
Her heart gave a hard thump. Oh, perfect. He’d been in here at least once a day every day this week to grab himself something to eat. Sometimes he tried to talk to her, and other times he didn’t. But always, she caught him watching, watching, watching her. He’d already been in earlier for a cup of coffee to go, so she’d mistakenly thought she could relax for the rest of the day.
More fool she, clearly, for here he was once again, this time lounging bonelessly at one of the tables, his long jeans-encased legs stretched out and one elbow hooked over his chair back—watching her once more. She’d chew her tongue off before admitting this out loud...but his constant scrutiny was disconcerting.
When their gazes met, he gave her a one-sided smile and a thumbs-up—the latter presumably for her handling of the tripping altercation. Without acknowledging either, she looked away and turned back to Jeremy. And acknowledged the decision she’d come to several minutes ago as a really good idea. “Bring the tub to the kitchen,” she said a bit more brusquely than she’d meant to. “I’d like a word with you.”
* * *
JEREMY FOLLOWED SO CLOSELY behind Tasha he came within centimeters of tromping on her heels. Crap. He should have known the past few weeks were too good to be true. Now she was probably going to fire his ass for losing her Richie Rich’s business. He wasn’t stupid; he knew the after-school crowd was a big part of her low-season profits—and growing bigger all the time, from what he’d heard Tiffany say.
He liked working here. It was...cheerful. Except for Cedar Village in a lesser way, that wasn’t an environment he’d had much experience with. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize it when he was surrounded by it. People tended to laugh and smile in Bella T’s. It made for some nice working conditions.
Even nicer was the way Tasha had stood up for him just now. My people, she’d said, as if she considered him a part of her team. But not only wasn’t he a Razor Bay native, he was from the Village, which probably already put a black mark next to his name. Tasha ran a tight ship around here. She didn’t tolerate even mild swearing in Bella T’s, though he had heard her swear like a sailor—but never when clients were in the restaurant. Even after having been here only a short while, he could point out several kids who’d testify to her lack of tolerance, having seen them run afoul of Tasha’s Ping-Pong ball gun the same way Cokely had. He was surprised she’d let the football player get away with saying damn, even if it had been in defense of her kick-ass pizza.
If he lost this job, he didn’t know what he would do. Right now he still had a roof over his head, but he was graduating the Village’s program on the thirtieth, so he knew he was on borrowed time being able to live there. He sure as hell didn’t want to go back to his White Center neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Seattle. Not when he couldn’t say with any certainty—even given all the coping skills he’d learned from his counselors—that he wouldn’t go back to his old bad habits. If he took up again with his old friends—and face it, they were the only people he knew outside of the few friends he’d made at the Village—it was pretty much guaranteed that he’d fall back into the same old pattern.
A pattern that spelled L-O-S-E-R.
He was so engrossed in the What Ifs that he didn’t realize Tasha had stopped until he bumped up against her back. Rattled, knowing he was probably gonna get it for not watching where he was going, he jumped back. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Then, clearing his throat, he added, “I’m sorry about out there, too. I didn’t—”
“Don’t you apologize for something that was not your fault,” Tasha said fiercely. “You have zip to be sorry about in the Cokely incident—that one is all on Davis. Actually, watching the mature way you handled yourself when I’m sure you would’ve preferred smacking him silly made me want to talk to you about something else.”
He wasn’t in trouble? His counselor Jim had said he had to stop blaming himself for everything that went wrong in people’s lives, but when you grew up the way he had, it was a hard habit to break. But he took a breath, crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a jerky nod. “Okay.”
She pulled the orders from the wheel Tiffany had clipped them to and went over to the industrial-sized fridge to get out two round dough balls and several triangular ones. Swiftly, she began rolling out the full pizza crusts atop pizza stones. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You want a Coke?”
He nodded. His throat was drier than Mr. Mitchell’s math class back at his old school.
“Go pour yourself a nice tall one, then, and come back here. I have a proposition for you.”
He didn’t have a clue what that might be, but it sounded a helluva lot more positive than, oh, say, being fired. He strode out into the restaurant, loaded up a tall cup with ice at the machine, then filled it with Mountain Dew from the fountain. He drank down half of it in one long gulp, then topped it off again. After a brief hesitation, he filled another one with a different beverage. He took both back to the kitchen and offered Tasha the second cup. “I’ve noticed you sometimes like a Diet Dr Pepper in the afternoon.”
She took it, gulped down a large sip, then grinned at him as she lowered the container. “You see, this is exactly what I like about you. You’re a hard worker and you pay attention to the details.” She studied him for a moment. “You’re graduating at the end of the month with a high school diploma, right?”
He nodded.
“Do you have plans to go to college?”
He wished. But he merely shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less. Yet he found himself answering honestly. “I’d like to go, but I can’t afford it. I’m not even sure where I’m gonna live after graduation.”
“Do you plan to stay in Razor Bay or are you chomping at the bit to go home?”
“I’d totally like to stay. I like it here.”
He’d noticed before that she possessed the same kind of genuine interest in people that Harper Summerville did when she interacted with him and the other guys at the Village. Except for during his interview, however, Tasha had never focused it on him quite the way she did now. Her gray-blue eyes seemed to bore straight into his mind. “What, exactly, do you like about it?”
“It’s so...clean here. And quieter than anywhere I’ve ever been. Every time I look at the mountains and water, they just—I don’t know—give me this...still feeling. Like they’re smoothing my insides all out or something.”
She simply stared at him for a moment, and he wanted to kick himself. Where had that crap come from? Now she was going to think he was a complete ass.
“Oh,” she finally said, and he was shocked to see tears rise in her eyes. She dashed them away. “Good answer.”
His heart lightened, and a rare smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah?”
“Definitely. Drink,” she said, nodding to the mostly untouched cup in his hand. She took a sip of her own soda. “Is there a particular thing you’d take in college if you could?”
“Nah.” He shrugged. “I don’t really have a clue what I wanna do with my life—but I’d like to get my AA while I’m figuring it out. No one in my family has ever gone to college. It’d be beyond dope to be the first.” His mom wouldn’t give a shit, but his dad would sure be proud.
“Okay.” She set aside her drink and, with quick, efficient movements, used her fingers on the triangular dough to shape the slices. “This is my proposition. You know I tried to hire a cook.” Grimacing, she waved a flour-covered hand before saying dryly, “Forget I asked that—it’s a stupid question, considering he tried to blame you for all that house wine he knocked back. Of course you remember.”
“Yeah, kind of hard to forget that.” He’d thought for sure his ass would have been out the door that day, too, but Tasha had looked the hammered cook in the eye, said that he was a stone liar in the hardest voice Jeremy had ever heard out of her and told the man to get the hell out of her restaurant. Then she’d turned to him and apologized that the lying sack of slime had dragged Jeremy into his lies. As if that were somehow her fault.
He would have done anything for her that day.
But he gave himself a mental shake now and tried to concentrate on this conversation, not the one almost a week ago. “What does a drunk cook have to do with your mystery proposition?”
“I’d like to make you my new cook.”
He froze. “Huh?” His hand made a totally spastic movement, and he shoved his fingers into his back pocket to keep from looking like an oversized puppet being jerked around by a three-year-old. “I mean, I heard you, I just...” He shook his head. “Why me?”
“Because you’re smart, you’re levelheaded and, as I said before, you pay attention to details. I have a feeling you’d be good at it. I admire the way you’re not easily shaken—admire more that even when you are, you control your temper. That’s a rare quality in anyone of any age. In an eighteen-year-old guy it’s downright golden.”
He no doubt looked as stunned as he felt because she stepped closer and gave his forearm a comforting there-there pat as if she were an old Italian auntie.
“I’m not asking you to commit to it as your life’s work,” she said softly, as if maybe she was worried he felt trapped or something. “But it could be a bridge to get you through the next few years. I can help you find a place to live and pay you a livable wage.” Her lips developed an ironic slant. “Well, livable by Razor Bay standards, anyhow. And Jenny and I—and I bet Mary-Margaret, as well—can help you find funding for a community college to get your AA. Jenny, in particular, is brilliant at finding tuition money. She put herself through school without help from anyone and got her bachelor’s in hotel management in large part by hunting down a number of scholarships that were offered by Rotaries, clubs and other organizations. None of them tend to be huge, but if you put the work into getting enough of them, they can really add up.
“Which is all a long way of saying I can work around a school schedule if you’re up for both working and studying.” She tipped her head to thoroughly inspect his expression. “Are you interested? Don’t be afraid to say no if you’re not. It won’t affect your current job, and I know cooking isn’t for everyone.”
He finally shook off his shock and regained his power of speech. “No. Are you kidding me? That would be great.” He laughed out loud and didn’t even notice when most of the teen girls on the other side of the service counter turned to stare. “You wanna pay me to play with knives and fire.” He looked at the red wood-fired pizza oven with its brick-arched opening, at the gleaming stainless-steel and butcher-block work spaces, industrial appliances and the black-and-white tiled floor.
Then he looked at Tasha again. “I get to learn the secret of making the best pizza in the county—and maybe even the world,” he said in amazement, then smiled at her and shook his head. “Man. I can’t believe it. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_c48af3ef-116f-5e22-a6bc-62456984fe9b)
THE SUN WAS a spectacular flaming ball minutes shy of sinking behind the rugged peaks of the Olympic Mountains Sunday evening when Luc let himself into his studio. Tossing his keys into the wooden bowl on the coffee table as he passed by, he strode over to admire the panoramic scenery through the slider. Before he could lock on to it, however, a movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention, and turning his head, he spotted Tasha out on their shared terrace.
Or more accurately, he spotted her feet. Within hours of his move-in, she had thrown up a screen of live plants to divide the veranda, lining them up to march from the wall that connected their two units to within three feet of the balcony railing. Even with a little space between each one, it made a surprisingly effective barrier between her part of the deck and his.
So all he could see now was the end of a white wicker chaise lounge and its cushion in the same cheery blue-and-green patterned fabric she’d used to furnish a good part of his studio. Atop the cushion, he caught a glimpse of the long pale-skinned bare feet he still remembered as clearly as if seven years hadn’t passed since he’d last seen them.
He stared in bemusement, for they appeared to be performing a complicated seated dance, clearly the movement that had grabbed his attention in the first place. Her feet heel-toed across the cushion, bopping from one side to the other. Her toes pointed toward the fabric one moment, then arced back toward her shins the next as she segued into differing rhythms. Within the ever-changing patterns he caught here-and-gone glimpses of the candy-bright polish decorating her toenails, the color of which he couldn’t determine from inside his studio.
Suddenly it seemed important that he learn what that color was, and he opened the sliding door.
Laughter and voices floated up from the street. In the bay, several boat engines rumbled softly while boaters followed the five-miles-an-hour restriction in the protected inlet as they steered toward the marina to put up for the night. This town had a laid-back, feel-good vibe that Luc could appreciate after all the cartel hot spots he’d lived in.
The terrace ran the width of the building, but wasn’t very deep, and since Tasha’s apartment was larger than his studio, so was her share of the outdoor space. It didn’t take Luc more than a few long strides to reach the improvised plant divider, and he rounded the end of it, only to stop dead at his first full-on sight of her. For a moment he simply stood there and stared.
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Susan Andersen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Some mistakes are worth repeating…Tasha Riordan′s one night with Luc Bradshaw was the best of her life. The following two–when he left her to be thrown into a Bahamian jail on bogus charges–were her worst. Now, seven years later, the undercover DEA agent is back. Invading her town. Her restaurant. Her fantasies. She can′t trust a man who lied to her. Yet neither can she trust herself–not when their chemistry burns even hotter than before.Learning he has two half brothers shocks Luc. Discovering they live in the same town as Tasha–that′s a different kind of thrill. Their mutual lust is still off the charts, but he can′t get her to listen to his side of what happened on that long-ago night. Good thing he′s got powers of persuasion that go deeper than words. Because nothing has ever felt this right….