by Emilia Finn
“Yay.” I smile wide and swing my front door open. “I’m so glad you’re coming. Once you get to know my family, you’re going to love them. Truly you are.”
“Mmhm.” Low on enthusiasm, he moves into the hall and waits for me to lock up.
There are no keys required for my apartment. No triple locks and multiple cussing as I work on getting things open. There’s just Checkmate Security, a thumbprint scanner, and dozens of cameras set up throughout this building with facial recognition software that begins the unlock process the moment I step into the building.
In a scary hacker film, the logical step to gain access to my apartment would be to chop my thumb off and press it to the scan pad, thus rendering the rest of my body – and my life – unnecessary. But Checkmate is a little more advanced than a weird movie from the nineties, so they monitor my actual body as I walk the halls; is she crying, is she being followed, has her head been chopped off and mounted on a stick? All very sensible questions my father made certain to have built into my security system the moment I announced I was moving out and trying my hand at this thing they call being an adult.
I asked him what the guys at Checkmate were supposed to do if a man did so happen to walk in with my head skewered to a parking meter… he scowled in that way he does and sent me to my room, only to rescue me again a few minutes later, but scold me for my weird-ass dark humor.
My building is four stories high and has a functioning elevator, but I use the stairs anyway, despite Brenten’s perturbed sigh, and smile at the slap-slap-slap of my flipflops on the concrete steps.
I’m going to the lake today, to spend the day with family, to lay in the sun, and maybe to read a book. I’m going to swim in the lake I grew up in, and frolic with cousins who aren’t actually my cousins, so it’s not weird if I look at their six-pack abs and broad shoulders.
Hello, Devil Twins. Twice as many abs to look at, twice as much fun.
But best of all, I’m going to have a day off, and I so rarely take those.
Exiting the building and stopping in the blistering hot sun, I swallow my groan at the sting from the penetrating rays. I will definitely regret this tonight when my skin is red, and my face has brand new wrinkles. But I don’t show my concern, and when Brenten steps out of the building and expels the same groan I had to swallow, I turn away and continue toward my car.
Will
A Damsel, or a Devil?
It’s Saturday, I’ve been in town a week, the sun is hot enough to melt the skin off my bones, and I’m the lucky son of a bitch who got here earlier than everyone else, and chose the best tree to take shade beneath.
Children frolic in the shallows of the lake just thirty feet from where I lay on a towel on the grass. A freshly opened, icy cold can of soda rests by my elbow, my hat is pulled low, and my sunglasses provide the best sleuthing cover a guy can ask for.
Because am I looking at people? Am I even awake? I haven’t moved a muscle in twenty minutes, so people stroll past to set up their own little patch of shade and settle in for a day of relaxation, but no one speaks to me. Fighters set up shelters for their kids and their dozens of toys, and dogs race through the water, making children squeal. Women congregate in their own little section and sip cold drinks, while the men lug coolers from the cars parked fifty feet back behind little barricades to keep wheels off the grass.
This past week has been something completely new and foreign for me. It’s been a week of almost boredom. As in, no running from police, no stealing things to make rent, no eating tinned protein and still going to bed with a grumbling stomach, no threatening guys because they look at my sister – well, except for Jamie, but that’s a fun new routine in itself. My life has been easy, my sleep patterns are starting to settle in, and except for one close call last week when the cops almost ruined a meet I was taking part in, my pulse has remained blissfully normal.
I could get used to this shit.
I left the house before Jamie and Quinn this morning so I could scout out the best shade, which means despite the fact I’ve been laying here for a while, they’re only now pulling in to a free parking space. The sound of Jamie’s truck is easily distinguishable to my ears, not because it has a weird click or scrape, but because I make it a point of knowing where my sister is at all times.
I’ve studied the sound that truck makes every single time it starts and stops, the squeak of the doors when opened, the thud of the doors when closed. Which means I don’t even have to look up to know which Great Dane, of the half dozen or so in attendance today, is the one sniffing the top of my head.
Smiling, I reach back with slow, lazy movements and scratch Giselle’s flopping ears. “Hey, girl.” I give her a small tug and bring her closer. “Come lay with me, beautiful.”
“Is that what you say to all the girls?” Quinn stops behind me and looks down until I see her eyes through my sunglasses. “Come lay with me, and bam! You got yourself a new victim?”
“Where’d you get all this bad attitude, huh?”
I remain stretched out on my towel in nothing more than boardshorts and my hat. My feet are bare, my toes being singed by the rays of sun that sneak through the tree’s foliage. My stomach is uncovered, my chest on full display. I’ve worked my ass off my entire life to build my body the way it is today, so laying here with no shirt is something I enjoy doing.
Even married women take a second look, so here’s hoping an unmarried woman stops and chats.
“Can we sit with you?” Quinn asks in a low tone. “You got the best shade, but you’ve also got your pervert sunglasses on, so if you’re planning to make a move on a certain Conner, then I’d rather not be in the splash zone when Ben cleaves your head off.”
“And you’d just let him, huh?” I reach up and grab my sister’s hand, then I yank her down until her legs buckle and she drops down to sit beside me. “Ben Conner will throw a tantrum because I’m looking at his sister, and you’re saying you’d just stand aside and let him swing?”
“Yup. He’s stronger than me.”
I turn my face just in time to catch her playful smile.
“Plus, it’s not like you weren’t warned. Not only is she protected by a whole heap of people with weapons, but she also has a boyfriend. So if you make a move, we all know you read the terms and conditions, and you accepted anyway. I’m not getting in the way of that.”
“Zero loyalty,” I grumble. “And to think, I spent twenty-some years with you, thinking you’d die for me.”
“Eh.” Exhaling and leaning back to rest on her hands, Quinn crosses her ankles and grins. “Dying is just so permanent, ya know? And I finally found a shampoo that makes my hair soft and not frizzy. I’m not ready to go yet.”
I grunt when Giselle lays down between Quinn and me, and slams her head to my stomach like I totally agreed to be her pillow. “You know who I haven’t seen since I’ve been back?” I turn just my head and look up at my sister. “That black dog. The Labrador. I liked her.”
“Oh. She… uh…” Quinn nibbles on the inside of her cheek, then simply shakes her head. “She’s gone. Probably don’t bring her up in mixed company.”
I frown and shoot a look over my shoulder to the family who owns her. Jack Reilly, former heavyweight champion of the world, sits by his wife and their kids. Dog-less, but they smile when one of the smaller kids trips and falls on his face in the grass.
“Gone… like, dead?” I whisper. “That sucks.”
“It was time,” Quinn murmurs. “She was old, Jack had said his goodbyes, and then she just… ya know.” She shrugs. “She went to sleep.”
“You guys talking about Annie?” Jamie stops behind us with a cooler and a pile of towels stacked on top. He looks over at his uncle Jack, then back to us. “Don’t talk too loud.”
“We weren’t,” Quinn murmurs. “Will asked where she was.”
“She’s in doggy heaven now.” Jamie puts his things down, kicks his flip-flops off, and drops down to rest his head on my
sister’s lap much the same way Giselle rests on mine.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I get a dog, when he gets a real woman.
“Uncle Jack is mostly at peace about it,” Jamie adds quietly. “But she was a massive part of his life during some really horrible times, which kinda made her his raft in a really tumultuous sea. If he brings it up, any one of us are happy to sit around and remember her, but we don’t bring it up first. That would just be cruel.”
I glance back to the young family and watch them settle in for a day of swimming and fun. Jack kisses his wife, and his brute son knocks him back in a power move much like how his father used to compete in the octagon.
Move the fuck out of my way, or I’ll make you regret ever being born.
The kid with a dark cap of hair and broad shoulders despite his age, drops down to sit between his mom and dad, and though he’s made them separate to save his mother’s reputation, his attention is caught when another little girl wanders by. While he watches her, Jack leans around his kid and grabs his wife once again.
“He’s gonna be okay,” I murmur. “His dog delivered him to this place in his life, but now he no longer needs his raft.”
“That’s about the gist of it,” Jamie nods. “She was his touchstone for a long time, but he’s at peace, which means she can be too.”
“Jamie?” Quinn runs her fingertips through her man’s shaggy hair. “Jack’s wife… that’s the aunt you had a crush on, right?”
She squeals and bounces in place when he reaches up and tickles her ribs.
“That was a secret, Q. Fuck!”
I turn away from my sister, and instead study Jack’s wife. Trim, toned, pale, with long, black hair and a distinct skater-girl look with the nose ring and makeup. “Don’t be ashamed,” I say after my appreciative study. “Mrs. Jackhammer is smokin’. Is she into polygamy? Because maybe I’m looking for a Mrs. Robinson. We could strike a deal.”
Jamie only snorts and holds onto Quinn’s hand; not a caress, but a command. “She could be into that kind of arrangement, but I can assure you, you won’t live long enough to test it out.”
I turn away from her and meet Jamie’s gaze, so he continues.
“Uncle Jack will skin you and beat you to death with a bag of bricks if you even mutter those words to her.”
“Not worth the risk?”
He snorts. “Definitely not. And speaking of being beaten to death.” He nods over my shoulder, so I look that way and swallow down the bone-deep fucking hunger that rears its feral head when I get everything I came here today hoping for.
Olivia Conner slides out of a silver Mercedes with sunglasses covering half of her beautiful face, and long hair covering just a little bit more. She clutches an oversized, silver and yellow bag to her side, and a gallon of water in her hand. But apart from a hat and a frilly bikini, she wears next to nothing, which is damn near fucking perfect, because I was hoping all week I’d see a whole heap of something.
“You go near her,” Jamie says, “and you’re asking for that bag of bricks. You don’t see her daddy over there? Fifty feet to her left?”
I look in that direction and find the cop with his cop friends. Oz Franks sits on a beach chair, relaxed back with his wife in his lap and a cold drink in his hand, but his eyes are on his daughter, his knuckles white around the drink he holds.
Beside him, Chief Turner sits with his lawyer wife, and I guess the protectiveness is shared between them, because X – short for Alex, I guess – watches too. There are other cops who sit in that little huddle; a chick cop, and a guy with a bionic leg who used to be a cop, but is one no longer. And since the chick cop and the bionic guy have ties to Checkmate, the cop group spreads out to the Checkmate group.
For a whole minute or two, all of those eyes are on Olivia as she closes the door to the Mercedes and meets her boyfriend at the front of the car. They clasp hands, and Olivia swings her long hair over her shoulders. Then they start forward.
It’s like a slow-motion fucking clip from a runway.
And then, like it was choreographed, all of those eyes that were on Olivia now slide to me.
Every. Single. Pair.
I remain laying back on the grass with my hat and sunglasses on, but despite being a guy who’s stood up under a lot of heat in my life, my heart races just a little faster at the dozens of eyes on the side of my face. Every single one of those men regularly carries a gun. The women know how to use them. The cops know how to run me in their computers, and the Checkmate folks know how to simply make me disappear.
“Look away, Will.” Quinn’s voice is like an ominous foreshadowing. “Look away now, and you might live.”
And yet, knowing I may lose my life, my eyes remain glued to Olivia’s succulent hips. Her tiny waist. Her rounded tits, larger than her shirts let us guess. Her collarbone juts forward and supports a cute silver necklace, and I guess when she knows the moment is exactly right and she commands the eyes of a hundred people, Olivia laughs at something her boyfriend says, turns to him and lifts to her toes so her calves bulge and tease the muscle beneath, then she plants a fast kiss on the guy’s stunned lips.
Ben Conner has a sixth sense of sorts, because he wasn’t one of the starers before. He was seemingly unaware his sister had arrived, because he’s in the water with Evie and their baby. He has his own love story to enjoy, his own slice of heaven to be distracted by. But the moment Olivia’s lips touch Pierce’s, his head snaps up, and his gaze stops on his sister until it burns her more than any sun will today.
“Oy,” Jamie groans. “Whose fucking idea was this? Having Liv at the lake has always been an event. But now we’re inviting her boyfriend and a guy who can’t keep his eyes to himself? At the same fucking time? Were we planning to live past today, or…?”
“I’ve never met a more dramatic family in my life.” I turn to my stomach, and rest my face on my arms. It’s not my fault that awards me with a perfect view of lily-white hips. Of toned thighs. Of a curved ass that begs for my hands to squeeze. “I swear, your lives would be easier if you relaxed a little.”
“Says the guy who tried to knock me the fuck out for looking at his sister.”
I lick my dry lips and let my eyes scour Olivia’s muscular thighs. Her pointy knees. Her cute ankles – ankles? Who the fuck am I? – and when she turns to pat Fuckface’s tiny man-chest, the wide swell of her ass.
“I didn’t knock you out because you looked at my sister,” I counter. “I knocked you out for so much more, and you damn well know it. So stop acting like the victim.”
“It was because I touched her butt,” Jamie snickers and does things to my sister while I’m not looking. “It was totally worth it, by the way.”
“Yeah,” I grumble. “And I guess now you know why I don’t look away from Olivia. Totally worth whatever clip to the jaw is coming my way.”
Olivia steps up to the cop crowd – henceforth known as the Gun-Toting Psychos – and presses a kiss to Oz’s forehead. Her hand remains wrapped around Brenten’s like she’s worried he’ll bolt the second she lets go, but she works through the group. A kiss for her dad, a kiss for her mom. The chief, then the chief’s wife and a sneaky grin when the woman lifts her brows at Pierce’s pasty legs. She arrows next for the chick cop, and the chick cop’s Checkmate husband. And between each hug, Olivia risks a fast peek over her shoulder to scope out who else is here today.
“Does anyone else feel like they’re watching a soap opera?” Quinn relaxes back and exhales. “There are a million women in the world. Will should know; he’s slept with most of them. But now we’re all checking out the one chick who isn’t available.”
“She’s available,” I argue on a quiet growl. “Pierce doesn’t count.”
“He counts if she wants him to count,” Quinn inserts. “It doesn’t much matter if we hate him. She likes him, which means he counts.”
“So does that reasoning stand when it’s my turn?” I push up to my elbows and look to my sister an
d Jamie. “When she likes me, but the rest of the family don’t, do I still count, since she chooses me?”
Jamie flashes a crooked grin and slides his hand along my sister’s thigh. He’s testing me, risking his life and letting his fate hang on how much I’m willing to tolerate all for the sake of not blowing up in front of the Gun-Toting Psychos. “No matter the drama or overprotectiveness,” he says when my eyes come away from his hand, “at the end of the day, I suspect whatever Livi wants, Livi will get. I’m just here to watch the show.”
“Yeah, well…” I push to my hands and knees, then to my feet, and draw dozens of eyes as I move. “I’m going for a swim before I’m forced to rip your fucking arms off. It’s hot as hell out here today.” I leave my hat and sunglasses in place, then fix my shorts on my hips and lose my bad mood when Olivia’s eyes inevitably track my way.
She might be a princess, and she might be involved with someone else, but if nothing else, she’s intrigued by the new guy in town. And hell, that might not be much to go on, but it’s something, so I’ll take it.
I head toward the water when the Gun-Toting Psychos decide not to shoot me simply for standing, and when Giselle bumps my thigh with her shoulder and announces she’s coming for a swim too, I pat her ears and lead her to the water’s edge.
“What do you think, girl?” I walk into the water, slow steps, testing the temperature, even as the sun sizzles my shoulders. “How well do you know this Snow princess? And who are her Seven Dwarfs?”
I smile when Giselle doesn’t make a big deal about the water being cold. She strides on in and keeps pace with me. Kids splash and screw around only ten feet to my left, and dogs sit nearby to watch their humans; Giselle was a puppy in a litter of seven. All seven of those dogs are here today, each allocated to their own family, and all are on guard like they think the parents aren’t watching.
