Whenever I was about to blow something out of proportion, I thought of that day. Joshua’s accident had been the most defining moment of my life. Thinking of him lying there helped me realize that whatever was upsetting me wasn’t important in the grander scheme. Remembering how I’d survived the loss of the boy I’d loved for two years helped me stay strong.
The Butter Crisis paled in comparison.
Perspective in place, I walked to the back of the kitchen, stopping short for the dishwasher hurrying by with a stack of platters. Sidestepping him, I turned and nearly ran into the guy at the fryer dropping a batch of soft-shell crabs into a basket.
I will survive this night if it kills me.
And it might.
A broad, well-dressed chest rounded a wall without the helpful call of “Corner!” they’d taught me on my first day. Had I not been seeing red, I might have recognized the blur for what it was—a tie. I didn’t put “tie” and “Devlin” together until after I’d growled, “Excuse me!”
I craned my head, locking eyes with him. His dark eyebrows shot to his hairline, then lowered over his nose.
“Yes. Excuse you.” This might’ve been the first time he’d spoken to me. I swallowed thickly, displaced attraction flooding my chest.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I—butter.” I stepped past him, wincing as I ducked into the walk-in refrigerator. Hopefully the temperature in here would cool my flaming face.
I butter? Really? That’s what I’d replied?
I scanned the plastic bins on the shelves. Some were filled with soaking potatoes soon to be fries, others held fillets of fish on ice, and still others, cut vegetables. As I searched, I muttered “Diet Coke” to myself. That’s why I’d come in the kitchen to begin with. To put in the order and take the woman at table 29 a refill. How many minutes had I been back here now? “Shoot.”
I started to give up and rush from the fridge, but stopped short when Devlin entered, the door whispering shut behind him. The space was large enough for two people, three or four actually, but him in that cool space made it shrink.
The several feet separating us crackled with awareness, and my breaths went shallow again. I hadn’t been aware of a man in four years. Part of my self-imposed penance for leading Joshua astray, for leading the golden boy down the road of ruin, had been to avoid men altogether.
Devlin came deeper into the cooler and I backed up, my ass hitting the shelf behind me. He penetrated my personal space, leaning over me without touching me, his heat blanketing my side. He pulled down a stainless steel bowl wrapped with cellophane, his eyes on mine as he handed it over. I took it, allowing a brief inventory of my helper. Charcoal suit, red patterned tie, shiny shoes. Every inch of him smacked of warmth and power and…
Danger.
My earlier thoughts of Joshua scattered in the wake of Devlin’s presence like a flock of birds spooked by a sound. Joshua’s smile, abandoned for the full set of Devlin’s unsmiling lips. Joshua’s jovial laugh for Devlin’s silence. Joshua’s cold, still body, the color of clay, for Devlin’s sun-kissed skin and thick black lashes.
“What table?” he asked.
My forehead pulled in confusion.
His nostrils flared, his beautiful face hardening like stone. “Diet Coke. What table?”
Oh. Right. “Twenty-nine.”
He left while I remained, metal bowl filled with whipped butter in my hand, my jaw slack. Maybe tomorrow would be better. I yanked the door open and headed into the bustle of the kitchen, nearly plowing into one of the servers yelling for butter.
Then again, maybe not.
Chapter Two
Devlin
The Wilson residence stood on a tree-lined portion of Linney Avenue, the only blue house on the right side. When I’d lived here as a delinquent teen, I mowed the yard and trimmed the shrubs and restacked the bricks around the lush Japanese maple out front—bricks that now lay in a haphazard stack around the neglected tree.
Pulling my leather coat tighter to keep from being pelted by the light rain that would soon turn into snow, I sidestepped several waterlogged newspapers scattered across the drive.
The hedges I’d once perfectly squared were scraggly, their leafless arms clawing at the filthy windows. The formerly manicured home that had been my refuge for almost two years now looked more like a place I’d take the long way home to avoid.
Paul Wilson, chronic gambler, might not seem the best father figure, but since he was my dad’s gambling buddy (as close to a best friend as my dad ever had), he’d been the only one left to offer me a place to stay. Unlike my father, who gambled and scammed his way through most of his life, Paul had a career as an accountant. He was an honest one, as far as I knew. He and his then-wife gave me a place to stay when Dad died, and they let me stay even after I’d been busted gambling shortly after.
I was a good gambler, thanks to a fail-safe memory for facts and figures, but I hadn’t been so good at not flaunting my wins at the restaurant. Sonny quickly put a stop to my bad habit. If saving me had been a two-part plan, he was the other half of what Paul had started.
An interior light was on inside the house, and a shadow passed in front of it. It had to be Paul. Joyce had divorced him last year, and his son, Cade, was away at college. The only current resident of the Wilson place was the man who used to make sure he always had Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the kitchen cabinets for me. Sucked that I was here to squeeze money from him.
I knocked. “Paul!”
He knew better than to run from me when I needed a payment. And he was late. He hadn’t shown at Oak & Sage for a week. A week. He’d never been a week late before. I didn’t typically collect money in person. Sonny had guys who did that part of the job. Big guys with baseball bats. My job was maintaining the restaurant—my future—and acting as drop-off point for Sonny. There were a few reasons for this.
One, I owed Sonny a lot of money since my dad died indebted to him; and two, Sonny had stepped in and helped me run the restaurant when I’d been left in charge. He likely stepped in at first to ensure he’d get the money Dad owed him, but I liked to think I grew on him.
Either way, our paths merged, and bettors began frequenting Oak & Sage to place bets and meet with him. They still frequented, but the betting was now done via Sonny, and I played the role of collector in addition to owner. Since I was familiar with the business and had no need to write down who owed what, it worked out well for both of us. Plus, Sonny knocked a percentage off my dad’s debt for the exchange, which allowed me to make a profit while still paying what Dad owed.
That part was important. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything. If I ever had a kid, I wouldn’t want him to be responsible for my debt when I died.
Wet, chilled, and aggravated, I knocked again. Over the last several months, Paul’s demeanor had changed. It’d been a while since I’d seen him at “his” table, ordering the cordon bleu and peach iced tea, either dropping off a payment or picking up his winnings. Since Joyce left, he’d become more reclusive and had visited the restaurant less and less. Where he used to be a straitlaced numbers guy who enjoyed betting on sports more for fun than profit, now he reminded me of a twitchy chipmunk on the lookout for the neighborhood cat.
At first I thought he was depressed because of the divorce. His wife had left and, as far as I knew, hadn’t contacted him at all. Paul had mentioned she’d taken her dream job as a flight attendant, but I suspected she stayed in touch with Cade. Joyce was a great mom. She mommed Cade, she mommed me—and hell, I hadn’t even deserved it.
Now, though, I’d begun suspecting Paul was on the lam, or had developed a substance-abuse problem. I hoped it wasn’t the latter. The thought of the man I’d once admired throwing his life away for a hit made me sick.
I’d seen the decline of many a man in this business, my father included. Gambling had a way of dismantling lives piece by piece. Not surprising, considering that most bettors were degenerates to start with. Wasn’t like they had far to
fall.
I glanced around at the jaunty Christmas lights dangling from some of the homes in the neighborhood, already hung despite Thanksgiving being a week away. Luxury cars were parked in every other driveway, and giant blow-up cartoony Grinches, Rudolphs, and Santas decorated the yards.
The rain shifted to sleet. I changed my knock to a bang, slamming my fist into the door and shouting Paul’s name with more urgency. He opened the door.
Fucking finally.
“I’m freezing out here, man,” I let him know.
Paul was my dad’s age, or the age my dad would have been if he was still alive. He was a few inches shorter than my dad and had a potbelly from too much Heineken. Tonight, his belly was prominent beneath a hideous patterned sweater. His normally round cheeks were sunken, his eyes dark underneath.
Heroin? Cocaine? Meth? My stomach flipped. Sonny dealt with bettors who used. If a bettor came to him strung out, Sonny turned him away. Sonny and I ran a respectable illegal gambling ring. Everyone knew we didn’t mess with guys who couldn’t handle themselves. Especially guys who knew better—like Paul.
“Hey, Dev.” He fidgeted, rubbing his fingers together as he continued looking around nervously.
“Five hundred,” I stated. Lost causes weren’t my specialty. Whatever problems he had were his own.
His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed. I stuck my hands in my pockets and watched as his eyes followed the movement, probably wondering if I had a gun or not. I let him wonder.
His nostrils flared. “Go away, Dev.”
What the hell? We were friends… or used to be, anyway. Even if we weren’t, he knew better than to challenge me. Saying no to me was saying no to Sonny. But it was hard to intimidate the guy who’d seen me as a scrawny teen.
Simple solution: I’d remind him who sent me. “If you don’t have it, I’ll have to call Sonny. I don’t want him to take you down, man, but…”
Voices rose in the house, then two goon-sized men were towering in the doorway behind him. I widened my stance in preparation for trouble, giving the pair of bozos a meaningful glance as I lifted my phone to dial.
Showing weakness would only get my ass kicked. Thanks, but no thanks.
One of the guys was bald, the other had a mop of messy brown hair and a cleft upper lip. They outweighed me. Hell, both of them together could probably lift my SUV. The back of my neck prickled with premonition, or good old-fashioned instinct.
Paul was in trouble.
If I didn’t stand a chance in a fight against Dumb and Dumber, he was screwed. He had pudding where there should have been muscle.
I lowered my voice and leaned in so only Paul could hear me. My thumb was still on the phone, ready to dial Sonny if it came to that. “Look, man, if you need help, just—”
A blinding light resembling a nuclear blast bloomed behind my eyelids as my head snapped back on my neck. I staggered backward from the punch, hearing a splash as my phone dropped into a puddle on the pockmarked driveway.
Hand on my throbbing jaw, I glared at Paul. He’d sucker punched me. My swelling lip curled as I stumbled to my feet. I surged toward him, latching onto his sweater with two fists. He was about to find out what that chicken-shit sucker punch cost him. Then I’d let the goons do whatever they damn well pleased to him.
I drew back a fist, and heard Paul wail, “Take him out!”
And then my world went black.
Rena
My best friend, Tasha, handed me a vodka cranberry and shouted so I could hear her over the music. “Then what happened?”
Then nothing happened, that’s what. I’d just shared the walk-in-refrigerator tale, leaving out the part where I turned into a tongue-tied twit. A college party wasn’t exactly the place for an intimate discussion, but I had to talk to someone.
I briefly debated how to answer her question. Devlin hadn’t spoken another word to me since the walk-in incident two nights ago. He’d done a pretty decent job of ignoring me altogether.
“Then I jumped him,” I shouted back to Tash. “Wrapped my legs around his waist and stuck my tongue down his throat.”
She threw back her head full of honey-blond curls and laughed. My brain knew I was joking, but my body didn’t differentiate real from imagined. At the thought of Devlin’s tongue on mine, my nipples tightened, my thighs clenched. The idea of kissing him, of feeling his wide, warm hands clasp my bottom as he held me against him, was a fantasy I had entertained more than once. In the shower this morning, for instance.
Damn my barren love life.
But it was my fantasy. And in my fantasy, he had stood behind me and skimmed his hands up the front of my shirt, his fingers teasing my breasts as they peaked in the cold air in the fridge, while his hot tongue licked a trail down the side of my neck. When I lifted to my toes, he’d ground against me as I grasped a shelf in front of me for support.
“Ohmygawd, look who’s here!” Tasha exclaimed.
I blinked out of my sex fantasy and took a generous swallow of my drink. I couldn’t believe I’d slipped into la-la land in public. Men didn’t often draw me into waking dreams of them. No, that wasn’t true. Men never drew me into waking dreams of them. Joshua died and my daydreaming had died with him. I’d slotted myself into the asexual column and had done my best to ignore my hormones.
Until Devlin. What was it about him?
I pictured his round, suited shoulders. Ink-colored hair slicked away from carved cheekbones. Full, firm lips and a jaw made of granite.
It was his everything.
“Asshole,” Tasha grumbled. She directed her sneer and upturned nose to a guy in a screen-printed T-shirt. A symphony of tattoos tracked down his left arm. He sipped beer from a Solo cup and when he licked the foam from his lip, a dimple sliced into one side of his face.
“The cute guy?” I blinked at my friend.
“He’s not cute.”
I took a second look. “Uh, sorry, hon, but yeah, he is.”
“Well, he’s an asshole, so that sort of eradicates the cute.” She crossed her arms and sipped her drink.
“What’d he do?” I asked, curious. Tasha preferred preppy boys. The well-bred smooth talkers over tattooed bad boys, but I’d never known her to dislike any boy. Especially a boy as attractive as the one across the room talking animatedly to his buddy.
“We were at a frat party last weekend and he hit on one of my friends. She shot him down then he turned to me.” She touched the beaded necklace at her throat. “His eyes wandered all over me.” She sounded more interested than offended, but I kept that to myself. “And then he was like, ‘You’ve been smilin’ at me for a while, darlin’,’ in this annoying drawl.”
I was pretty sure by “annoying” she meant “sexy.”
“Then,” she continued, “he said, ‘What do you say, kitten? Care to take a ride on the Cade train?’”
I laughed. Mistake. Tasha’s jaw dropped open in offense.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling myself together. “That’s a terrible line. I am laughing at its epic badness.”
“He called me ‘kitten’ like I’m a tramp or something. And the ‘Cade train’ thing? Disgusting.” Her gaze cut to him again. I knew Tasha. Part of her wanted everyone to like her. And the possibility of this tattooed, T-shirted bad boy not liking her bothered her all the way down to her ballet flats.
A cacophony of male whoops lifted on the air. Across the sorority-house living room, Tasha’s ex-boyfriend, Tony—a taller version of Bruno Mars with the same pretty quality to his face—strolled through the door. Now, Tony? Him I could hate. He had no business being within twenty yards of Tasha after last weekend. He high-fived a few guys for who-knew-what as he entered. Cade’s lip curled with disgust, which made me like him more.
“He said he wasn’t coming tonight,” she mumbled, her eyes glued to her ex-boyfriend’s ambivalent expression. Mine were glued to Tony’s rich-boy prep-wear. Tasha’s kryptonite. Oh, how she loved a well-pressed pair of khakis.
/> I grabbed my friend’s arm and forced her to look at me. “You talked to him?”
“Of course not!” She bit her lip, then added, “Text.”
“Tasha! Tell me you’re not this drunk!” I took her cup away and she snatched it back.
She was my best friend… my first real friend. We were always honest with each other. She and I had become friends in the ninth grade, and she was the only person from high school who hadn’t avoided me after Joshua’s accident.
My world had dwindled down to two people back then: Tasha and my smother. And, yes, the “s” was there intentionally.
“He texted me to apologize.” She waited for my objection.
I pursed my lips and stayed silent.
“Admit it. It’s possible he’d mistaken Jamie for me, right?”
“How dark was this party?” I asked, my tone flat.
“He was drunk, Reen. He kissed her, sure, but she was the who dragged him into the closet.”
I ruminated on this new bit of intel. “How do you know?”
“Tamara and Casey told me. They saw the whole thing.” Her defending her “friends” made me question her sanity. Is that what sorority girls did? Sat idly by while Tasha’s boyfriend made out with another girl? “I’m lucky to have them. They’d never make out with Tony.”
“What great friends.”
She nodded, ignoring my sarcasm.
Tony lifted his chin at her and she gave him a huge smile. Then he saw me, seemed to debate, and wisely opted to keep his distance.
“Maybe I was too harsh,” she said, contemplatively sipping her drink.
“You don’t have to settle for him. You could find someone else. Someone better.” I looked for the dimpled brown-haired guy again but he must have relocated. “Someone who doesn’t make out with college freshmen while you’re studying for your physiology test.” I gave her the kindest smile I could muster.
“You don’t know what college is like,” she shot back.
Daring Devlin Page 2
