“Harcourt, you coming to lunch, or what?”
Glancing up from my curled fists, I settled a hardened glare on one of the prosecuting attorneys from the fourth floor. Dressed in a crooked blue tie and a missing suit jacket, he held my office door open as if I’d extended an invitation. His sloppy appearance grated on my last nerve, and my fingers twitched, searching my desk for another pencil to break.
“Too much work to do,” I mumbled, rearranging the papers on my desk. “Get out.”
Glancing up from surfing the web on his phone, he lifted a dark eyebrow and smirked. “Who pissed in your corner office?”
I leaned back, crossing my arms over my chest in a defensive gesture. On edge and in no mood for idle conversation, the last thing I wanted was to spend an hour trading locker-room stories and weekend plans with the subordinate assholes. I wasted little time under the illusion they were my friends. Every one of them had eyes on my job and only kissed my ass to stay in my good graces for when I became district attorney.
“No time for lunch. I’ve got press releases needing to go out. Some of us work for a living, Todd.”
“Ted.”
I honestly didn’t give a shit. I’d wasted half the day trying to figure out a way out of the hole I’d gotten into with the Mexicans. I’d never been shady in my life, much less illegal. Everyone knew about the Carreras, but just like any sane person, I ignored them when they came calling. I sure as hell rebuked their offers of help. Their golden ticket came attached with strings tied to a lifetime of misery.
Then the stress of the upcoming primary resulted in a moment of weakness that solidified a hell I’d regret for the rest of my life. A fifth of Jack on a night she’d decided to grow a set of morals and a standard, and I found myself in the backseat of an Escalade signing my name in blood.
“If there’s nothing else,” I grumbled, sending a flat expression his way, “I trust you can see yourself out.”
He answered with an eye roll. “Whatever.” He laughed, nodding to a herd of fellow fourth-floor assholes as they grumbled about being late. “Maybe you need to take off early and get some ass, man. Might make you less of one, and you may have a few friends.”
I waved his suggestion away as he laughed and joined the other hopefuls down the hall. Scowling at his audacity, I slammed papers onto the desk and swiveled my chair to stare out the wall of windows onto the city below. My city. The city that depended on me to keep them safe from the very people who bent me to their will and owned the next breath I took. How in the hell could I walk into a courtroom and look a jury in the face knowing I was no better than the criminals I prosecuted?
Rubbing my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, I mulled his words around in my head, letting them sink in. Dropping my hand, I stared down at the passing cars and congested lunchtime pedestrian traffic, the bright June sun reflecting harshly off the roofs of the buildings below my tenth-floor window. Closing my eyes, I cursed a string of late nights and insomnia, causing the attorney’s words to make too much sense.
I didn’t need more friends, but getting more ass sounded like the best suggestion I’d heard all day. Spinning back around, I picked my phone off my desk and hit the speed dial button, knowing the risk I took in calling her before two o’clock in the afternoon. The woman had two moods—ready to fuck, and ready to slice my balls off. At half past noon, I was just glad my boys were safely across town.
Five rings later, her throaty voice groaned along thinly held patience. “Somebody better be dead.”
“I had a thought.”
“Good for you. It’d better be about someone who’s dead, or I swear to God, I’ll rip your balls off, Brody.”
“What do you say I come over tonight?” I continued, ignoring her threat.
She half yawned, half groaned my name. “You know I have to work.”
Reaching for the metal nameplate, I polished it with the sleeve of my white dress shirt and moved it to the center of my desk. “I was thinking I’d swing by the cantina for a drink before you get off. I don’t like you closing all alone that late, especially with the crime in that part of town. I can walk you to your car and come over afterward.”
“Brody…”
“Come on, Eden,” I argued, determined to win my case. “Do you have a better offer?” I held my breath as silence filled the line. Drumming my fingers on the arm of my chair, I waited for her response, only to be met with the typical stubbornness that kept me wondering why I kept coming back to a woman who opened her legs to me but kept her heart and mind closed.
“Fine.” She reluctantly gave in, her sigh holding much more meaning than simple agreeability. That sigh was deadly. That sigh meant for the first hour after arriving at her townhouse, I’d need to cover my dick with a pillow and watch all sharp objects with a keen eye.
After disconnecting the call, I stared at the phone in my hand, flipping it over and over until the screen became foggy with fingerprints. I had no fucking idea what Eden Lachey and I were doing, but it wasn’t a normal relationship that had any future—regardless of what I wanted. Eden had made that painfully clear on multiple occasions. After four months of sleeping together, I’d been the fucking girl in the relationship, wanting exclusivity and some sort of commitment out of her.
All I’d gotten was an eye roll and a warning to stop being a little bitch.
I lived in marked unreality when it came to Eden. I should’ve known better than to get involved with a friend’s ex, but I’d known the woman before the scorn. She hadn’t always been hardened. Once upon a time, Eden Lachey was rather demure, although she’d deny it with her dying breath. Somewhere underneath that cracked shell the woman who used to love to laugh and try to tell a bad joke still existed. For some reason, I seemed determined to find her. Something inside of me cared about her, even though the Eden that wore a perpetual scowl these days swore she was dead and gone.
She could argue with me and be pissed all she wanted. Until I won, I’d enjoy hatefucks while we battled. What was the worst that could happen? Great sex?
“Mr. Harcourt?” My heart rate sped up as my assistant’s voice boomed unexpectedly from the desk phone intercom.
Pressing the two-way button on the phone, I dropped my cell in my pocket. “Yes, Nancy, what is it?”
“The jury has reached a verdict in the Salinas case, sir.”
I raised an eyebrow. Already? Jesus. I hadn’t expected them to reconvene for at least a few days. This could go either way for me depending on how sympathetic the women on the jury were to the tears that man had managed to squeeze out on the stand.
Fucking tears. Gets women every time.
Straightening the knot in my tie, I hit the button again. “I’ll be right there.”
With both palms flat against my desk, I stood over it, sweat beading on my forehead. One verdict. One man’s life hung in the balance, and once his fate was sealed, I could end this miserable week and not think about mine.
Chapter Four
EDEN
Staring at the bare white walls of my bedroom, I held onto my pillow as the same thought ran in my head for over an hour. No one got ahead in life by bucking the system. I never bought into that crap, although Dad drilled it into my head my whole childhood.
I suppose my vehement dislike for rules played a role in the clusterfuck I awoke to as my steady friend-with-benefits faced the opposite direction in my bed. Forcing myself to remain quiet, I squinted the eye not squished into my pillow to verify I wasn’t dreaming or, even worse, still drunk.
Nope—sober as a judge.
After meeting me at work as he promised, the lump of man snored softly as if he had every right to occupy my sheets in the daylight. His dirty blond hair twisted haphazardly behind his head, which I assumed was from a repeated invasion of my impatient fingers.
Hell if I remember.
It must’ve been good though, because his back looked like an exotic trash panda nailed him. One corner of my mouth lifted in amusement but
quickly faded as my hands dove for the alarm clock.
9:00 A.M.
“Shit!” I gathered as many discarded pieces of clothing as I could find and pulled them on, not caring if my shirt was backward or my shorts were buttoned incorrectly. They wouldn’t be on long anyway.
The lump on my bed grunted as a ball of his clothes hit him in the face with laser accuracy. “Babe,” he mumbled, shaking his jeans off his cheek and burying his head into the pillow. “Why’re you up so damn early on a Saturday? Go back to sleep.”
This shit wouldn’t do. He knew the rules.
This time his cell phone bounced off his forehead. “Jesus!” He shot straight up, rubbing the red mark it left behind.
I shrugged and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom, turning on the shower full blast. When I reentered my room, he sat up glaring at me, but he’d at least put on his pants.
Good boy.
“Now that I’ve got your attention,” I said, collecting his shoes and depositing them on the foot of the bed, “I’m going to shower, and you can get the hell out.”
He stared at me with a blank look. “You’re kicking me out?”
“Nothing gets by you, does it?”
I was being a bitch, maybe more so than necessary. But I had no illusions about what had happened last night or in the past few months. I wasn’t an idealistic teenage dreamer who held onto some fantasy of love and happily ever after. I’d lived life enough to know happily ever after existed only in fairy tales and cheesy rom-com movies.
Once you’ve danced close enough to the fire to get licked by the flames, you learned to adapt to the darkness.
He grasped my arm in a firm hold, smirking as if he didn’t believe me. “C’mon, let’s hit round two. I’ll even get you there first.”
What he got were his car keys flung right between his eyes.
“Fuck!” His head snapped back against the headboard with a thud. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
For the first time since waking, a conflicted smile broke across my cheeks, and a twinge of regret pulled at my stomach. Turning away, I paused at the bathroom door and glanced over my shoulder. “I know,” I said, the corners of my mouth gravitating downward.
“What’s wrong with you, Eden?”
My mind drifted as I closed the bathroom door. “Everything.”
* * *
“I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again—yadda-yadda—you know the drill.” I tore through the back door, throwing the dusty brown apron over my head in the middle of my usual apology.
“I know that look.” Nash shook his head as I double wrapped the tie around my waist.
Furrowing my brows, I busied myself unpacking the new shipment of paint thinners that had arrived during the morning delivery. “What look? I don’t have a look. There’s no look.”
Well, that doesn’t sound suspicious at all.
“Uh-huh.” My brother smirked, his trademark platinum blond hair falling in a chunk over his left eye. He leaned in front of me, pressing his hands over the box I frantically emptied. “That, dear sister, is the freshly-fucked look. It’s a blinking neon light all over your face.”
“Nash!” My mouth dropped open, heat staining my cheeks.
He chuckled and reached into the paint box to help me unload. “Not that I want to hear about my little sister’s sex life.” His face twisted into a grimace as if he’d just smelled something rotten. “Actually, keep the details to yourself. But can you please send the booty calls home half an hour earlier? It’s impossible to sign for deliveries and man the counter at the same time.”
Guilt washed over me as we worked in silence. I wanted to say something to ease the tension, but anything I said would sound like hollow promises. If I was honest with myself, that’s exactly what they were anyway. Every time I rolled into the hardware store late for my shift, I’d apologize and swear it wouldn’t happen again. Every time, Nash would nod, knowing damn well I was full of shit. The one consistent thing my family could rely on was my unreliability.
I could handle most anything, except for Nash’s silence.
He chewed on his lower lip, concentrating on holding as many paint cans as he could in each hand, as his forearms strained with the weight. The unruly chunk of hair fell into his eyes again, and he attempted to blow it away with a harsh breath. I laughed as it flopped right back down.
“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Licking my palm, I reached across the box and slicked the pale chunk across his forehead. It was a move I’d done hundreds of times when we were kids.
Old habits die hard.
“You need a haircut, toe head.”
He narrowed his eyes. “That’s disgusting. Keep your spit to yourself, Cherry Pop.”
Insulting each other’s hair had been our thing since my ex-husband sent me running to the hair dye aisle, half-crazed. I smiled to myself, remembering the moment Nash first saw my shocking, bright red hair. He’d laughed himself to tears, claiming I looked like a cherry popsicle. The name stuck, and for the better part of a year, I’d been Cherry Pop. Siblings were just assholes like that.
Everyone around me swore I’d lost my mind, going from a natural blonde to a very unnatural stop sign redhead. Nash just smirked and left a twelve pack of melting red popsicles in my mailbox the next day.
The morning passed into afternoon and while the hardware store saw enough foot traffic to break even, hoping for a profit seemed laughable.
Watching my brother repeatedly rearrange a wall of washers, I drummed my nails on the register. “Have you heard from Dad?” I asked, my eyes trained on his methodical movements.
He paused as if contemplating the weight of my question, then resumed straightening the impeccably straight packages. “He’ll be in later this evening.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
A hint of irritation seeped into his voice. “Let it go, Eden.”
Tap, Tap, Tap.
I continued drumming my nails. “I have let it go. I let it go when you worked fourteen hour shifts all week. And the week before that…and the week before that.” Nash’s back stiffened as I pushed away from the counter and took a few steps toward him. “I let it go when you left the community center for a couple weeks until Dad could find some help to ease the load. How long ago was that, Nash—three weeks? A month? Or has it been so long that you can’t remember?”
“I said, stop.”
My brain heard him. It sent a clear message to my mouth to shut up. However, my insatiable need to push the envelope informed my mouth that it was clear for takeoff, and it barreled down the runway on a suicide mission.
“And I let it go when that second job he’s been so tired from working all the time called and asked why he hadn’t bothered to show up for the past four days.”
A growl rose from the depths of my brother’s chest as his fist tightened around an entire row of washers. His knuckles whitened and the metal bar ripped from the display wall as he twisted toward me. “Goddamn it, Eden, I said that’s enough! He’s tired, all right? The man spent our entire lives doing right by us, by himself. Do you think you could stop acting like you’re the only one that’s ever had something bad happen and grow the fuck up?”
He’d might as well have slapped me across the face. I stared at him, my mouth opening and closing like a beached fish gasping for breath. Struggling for words, I reached out a tentative hand to him. “Nash, I…”
The chime of the bell over the door rang and a swoosh of air sucked the tension out of the room. Anger faded from Nash’s face, and the consummate professional took over. I fell in line behind him as he made a sweeping welcome gesture with open hands.
“Welcome to Lachey Hardware, gentlemen. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?” He approached the two Latino men and engaged them in deep conversation, parading them from aisle to aisle.
I busied myself with counting out the money in the register, catching pieces of Nash’s conversation
with the two men. Their voices elevated as they argued about cable ties, rope, and duct tape.
I barely held in a snicker. It wasn’t the first time men had come in with that supply list since Fifty Shades of Grey hit the big screen. It wouldn’t be the last. They all pretended we didn’t know exactly what freaky-ass games they were playing in the sack, and we indulged them until they walked out with their bags of sin.
Glancing at my watch, I blew out a frustrated breath and untied my apron, knowing Emilio would kick my ass for being late for my shift at the bar. I hated leaving so soon, but my job at the hardware store didn’t keep my lights on.
Before I got a chance to lift the apron over my head, four hands shoved a bounty of rope and duct tape on the counter in front of me. Jumping, I gasped as I covered my chest with my hand.
“Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.” My shock suddenly turned to unease as the taller one with scarred fingers and a long black ponytail leaned in close.
“Many apologies, señorita.” Something seemed off as he bared his yellowed, stained teeth. “Señor Lachey said you’d ring us up.”
Hesitating at first, my fingers finally found the keys on the register. After bagging the merchandise, a shiver shot down my spine when his fingers lingered over mine as he took the bag.
“Gracias,” he said, indulging himself in a slow perusal up and down my body. I swallowed slowly while the man laughed low in his chest.
As he turned, I nodded to the bag, and the words tumbled out of my mouth in a rush of impetuous nerves. “Big DIY project?”
Throwing a sharp and predatory look over his shoulder, he sneered with a wink that had my skin crawling. “I always do it myself, Eden. Otherwise, you have to go in and clean up someone else’s messes.”
I opened my mouth for a rebuttal, closed it, then opened it again. “Do we know each other?”
Blurred Red Lines: A Carrera Cartel Novel Page 3
