by Stacy Gail
Her sleepy amusement vanished under a wave of shock. “What?”
“Yeah.” At last he lifted up on an elbow to stare down at her, and something in her stomach dipped and flew all at the same time when she saw the softness of his eyes. “It’s kind of cliché, but when you think you’re about to check out, your life really does flash in front of your eyes. For eight days I had that whole life-review shit rolling around in my head to keep me company, and the one thing that stood out the most was you, and how I’d treated you.” He shook his head. “Let’s just say I didn’t like what I saw.”
“I almost feel like I should apologize for that.”
“That was what I wanted to do. You were a loose end that I couldn’t stand leaving undone. There I was, a world away from you, and all I wanted was to see you one more time. That was all I wanted—just to have a chance to look you in the eye and tell you that I’d basically sucked as a human being when I was a kid and that I was sorry. I had to stay alive long enough to get back and make peace with you. That motivation kept me alive, Sassy. I don’t think I would’ve made it without you.”
An invisible hand clenched around her chest, and she stared up at him while she tried to figure out why that clenching hurt in such a beautiful way. “While I’m glad it gave you focus in order to stay alive, I don’t want to be a regret for you, or anyone. Life is too short for things like that.”
“Don’t I know it.” For a moment his eyes were clouded with something so terrible it hurt her to see it. Then he lifted a broad shoulder and gave her a lopsided smile. “You stopped being my regret and started being my X-rated fantasy around the time I saw you in Michaela’s birthday party video that Frankie posted.”
She remembered the birthday party Frankie threw for her middle child Michaela, but she didn’t remember anything special about it. “It was an eight-year-old’s birthday party in the backyard. Nothing remotely X-rated happened.”
“It wasn’t so much the content as it was you.”
“I was X-rated? Funny, you’d think I’d remember that, especially at an eight-year-old’s backyard birthday party.”
“Ah, that sassy mouth. Turns me on so fucking much.” He caught her chin and held her still for a hot kiss that ended much too soon to satisfy her. “I’d been stateside for a few months, and one of my docs recommended that I go online to try to reconnect with the clean, unsullied, everyday life that I’d had before—a life that I no longer felt I had a right to be a part of. Up to that point, I was having a hard time focusing on anything that didn’t have to do with the guilt of still being alive while the rest of my team had been torn to pieces. Going online seemed kind of a lame-ass thing to do to counteract all that darkness, but I figured, what the hell? Nothing else was working. So I sat down, turned on the tablet, and I found… you. The woman who’d dragged me through the worst time of my life—or at least the thought of you had. And then suddenly there you were, the first person I saw. It was like magic.”
Sass stared up at him, staggered. “I had no idea you even remembered me at that point. We hadn’t seen each other in years.”
“Oh, I remembered you,” came the drawling reply. “And while I’d seen snippets of you online from parties in the past, it didn’t hit me until right then that you were all grown up. That’s when the X-rated shit came in.”
“What was I doing?”
“Decorating cookies.”
She remembered the activity she and Frankie had planned for the kids to decorate their own cookies with whatever they wanted, and shook her head in bewilderment. “Newsflash, pal. Decorating cookies isn’t an X-rated act.”
“I swear you were doing it in a sexy way. You had your tongue between your teeth, and then you got some frosting on your finger and you put it in your mouth… Goddamn, Sass, I was so fucking jealous of your finger, I could barely stand it. Then I got a hard-on that wouldn’t quit, the first one I’d had since I got back, and I knew then that I didn’t just want to make peace with you. I wanted a piece of you, and I wasn’t going to rest until I got the piece I wanted.”
“So that’s what Operation Sassy Pants is all about.” She should have known it all boiled down to getting laid. When it came to an Italian stallion like Rude, it couldn’t have been anything else. “Well, congratulations, soldier. Mission accomplished. How do you want to celebrate?” As she spoke, she trailed a hand down his flank to his ass. Like the rest of him, it was spectacular.
His heavy-lidded eyes began to smolder in a way that made her burn in all the right places. “I think I have a few ideas.”
Come to find out, his ideas were the same as hers.
Chapter Fourteen
“I can’t believe my idiot brother left his phone at your place,” came Frankie’s exasperated voice over Sass’s cell. “I thought he was surgically attached to that thing.”
“It must have slipped out of his pocket when he stopped by last night.” Sass winced at the teensy fib as she unlocked her car and slid behind the wheel. The last she’d seen of his phone had been right before she’d panicked, and it had obviously been dropped on the living room floor where she’d found it on her way out the door this morning. Rude had dashed out an hour earlier after they’d lost track of time, so it was no wonder he’d forgotten to pick it up in his race to get to work.
“Well,” Frankie’s voice came through loud and clear, “I think you’re a sweetheart for getting it to him.”
“I’m just grateful you had his work address. I’ll drop it off there before heading out to the grocery stores. I’ve been inspired by the anniversary party’s theme, so I’m making several authentic Italian dishes this weekend.” It was going to be a big weekend food-wise, especially since several dishes on her list were slated to appear in her next cookbook. She just wasn’t sure what she was going to do with all the food once she’d made it and photographed it. Usually she packed it off to Scout, Mama Coco and Papa Bolo and Tonya’s family, but everyone was either out of town or still recovering from the stomach flu. She also gave Frankie some, as well as her next door neighbor, but that meant she’d still have a ton of leftovers to deal with. Maybe Rude could act like a human garbage disposal and she could pour it down his gullet.
Then the memory of his fabulous abs flashed before her eyes. On second thought, no. Those beautiful babies were going to be well taken care of by her.
“Ooh, yummy. Are you going to make Mom’s gnocchi? If you do, Rudy will be yours forever.”
Sass rolled her eyes before starting the engine. “Then I guess it’s a good thing it’s not on the menu.”
“Oh, come on, Sass, you can’t fool me. Not after this phone thing.”
“Rude’s forgotten phone? What does that have to do with anything?”
“You said he must have accidentally dropped it last night, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, I know my brother. Rudy would have noticed his phone missing immediately after leaving your place, because he’s always on that thing for one reason or another. The way I see it, he obviously had better things to do last night than phone-surf. Since his phone wasn’t missed until this morning, I’m thinking that the so-called better thing he had to do was you.”
Huh. Frankie was clearly way more observant than Sass had given her credit for. “Aren’t you even remotely embarrassed to be speculating about your baby brother’s sex life?”
“Honey, I’m just glad he still has one.”
She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know… “What do you mean?”
Okay, so maybe she wanted to know a little.
“I mean that before he went on that mission that went so horribly wrong and he dropped out of our lives, he used to be a player. He had that orange girlfriend for almost a year—oh, the car chick, from Georgia. What was her name?”
“Rita.” Apparently being orange made a person memorable.
“Ugh, that’s the one. Then he dated some news reporter when he was doing specialized training in California. Nic
ola. That was her name. She had the fakest British accent I’ve ever heard. I mean, I sound more British than she did. And this isn’t even counting all the Facebook pics he’s posted of Lycra-encased, Louboutin-wearing bimbos hugging on him—bimbos I don’t even know the names of. Rudy probably doesn’t know all their names either, because even though he’s my brother, he’s a man, and all men at some point in their lives act like dogs.”
“I don’t follow him on Facebook.” And considering that her mood turned sour at the mention of Rude with a stable of women, she wasn’t about to. A man with his killer looks probably had to beat the ladies off with a stick, and his mind-blowing prowess in bed had to have been learned from somewhere. So, yeah. It didn’t surprise her to hear the man had never been at a loss for female companionship.
She just wasn’t in the mood to hear about it.
“On the rare occasion when he was in town, all he had to do was pick up the phone and he’d be gone for the night,” Frankie blithely chatted on, clearly deaf to the repressive note in Sass’s voice. “But ever since he’s been back home, he’s been totally different.”
Unbidden came the memory of Rude’s admission that he’d been fantasizing about her for a year. “Different how?”
“Girl, he went from Don Juan to Don Non. His social life has gone MIA. That’s not good for him, or the people who love him and want to see him happy. Just wait until I tell Mom you guys have hooked up. They’ll be back on Sunday, so be prepared for a squee-fest.”
“Whoa.” In the process of backing her car out of its slot, Sass instinctively put her foot on the brake. “That escalated quickly, jumping from a forgotten cell phone to a big-time hook up. Has it occurred to you that you might be overreacting?”
“Am I wrong?”
Shit. “Before I answer that, I need your definition of a hook-up. You’ve been gone from the dating scene for well over a decade, so you might not know what that means anymore. Are you talking about a one-night stand, or entering into a serious relationship?”
“I don’t care, just as long as you two are getting it on.”
“This might be the creepiest conversation I’ve ever had,” Sass remarked, and finished the task of backing out. “Look, I’m not going to discuss what’s going on between me and Rude with his freaking sister. I have a fairly high weird-threshold, but that’s too much even for me.”
“It’s not like I’m asking for details, because that would gross me out no end,” came the amused retort. “But I am going to ask when you’re going to see Rudy again.”
“Since I’m about to return his phone to him, I’d say in a few minutes, unless I wear a blindfold.”
“You know what I mean.”
Sass sighed and made her way toward the parking garage’s exit. “I also know that you take after your mother and believe that happily-ever-after can happen for everyone, and that’s sweet of you, Frankie. Really, it is.”
“I hear a but coming on.”
“But,” she added, smiling at how similar the siblings could be, “I’m not built for long-term relationships. I’m a… a stray.”
Funny, how that term made her stumble, when she had always been so comfortable with it before. But with Rude’s assertion that the term no longer applied to her, she had to admit that there were parts of her that seemed to have outgrown it.
But if she was no longer a stray, what the hell was she?
“Sass,” Frankie said patiently. “You’re built for whatever you want to be built for.”
“I’m happier on my own, mainly because I can’t stand sharing my personal space with anyone else.” Though, she had to admit, she’d fallen asleep with surprising ease with Rude right there in bed next to her. A week ago she would have thought sleeping with a man in the same bed would have been impossible. But now, everything was different.
Because of Rude.
She heard Frankie’s long-suffering sigh. “So, you guys aren’t together?”
“Other than enjoying each other’s company for the time being, I can’t say that we are.” But she wasn’t sure that was completely true, Sass thought when she hung up to concentrate on pulling out into traffic. She hadn’t lied to Frankie; she didn’t do long-term. There were too many parts of her life that were boarded up so that no one could get in. Offering to share her life with someone while keeping parts of herself off-limits was a recipe for disaster.
Therefore, long-term was out of the question.
But she could enjoy Rude while they had this time together. And then…
Then she’d let him go.
Private Security International was housed in an unassuming corner building that looked like it had been a warehouse at one point, but had since been broken up into several separate storefronts. Rude’s place of work was by far the largest on the lot, with a white-washed brick façade and high, industrial-style windows that caught both eastern and southern exposure. The main entrance was impressive, with a semi-circular eaves built over the entrance and held in place by steel buttresses. The architectural embellishment gave a twenty-first century look to a building that had probably been around since the turn of last century.
Sass rounded the dozen or so thick concrete planters fronting the entrance—heavy-duty vehicle blockades that were currently filled with yellow daisies, red chrysanthemums and orange sunset-hued zinnias—and entered the lobby, looking around with interest. She knew very little about where Rude worked, but she’d gotten the impression that he was some kind of mercenary who carried out super-secret, have-gun-will-travel missions. Because of that, she’d been expecting dim lighting and dangerous looking, grizzled warhorses, sitting at rickety card tables as they cleaned their machine guns or counted out how many bullets they had in the armory.
The sunlit, airy lobby with its trendy exposed brick walls, pendant lighting over a comfortable waiting area and white-fronted reception desk flanked by thriving fuchsia bougainvillea was oddly disappointing.
“Good morning. May I help you?”
Sass stared at the woman manning the desk. Like the rest of the business’s interior, she was completely unexpected—a wholesome, smiling woman with curly, toffee-colored hair, bright bottle-green eyes and a smattering of freckles on her pert nose. She looked like the girl next door… if next door was a Wisconsin dairy farm, and she was the one who bottle-fed all the baby cows in her loving arms.
“Yes, I was wondering if Rude… sorry, if Rudy Panuzzi is available? I have something of his that I need to return to him.” At the last second she chose to be discreet, not at all sure if he’d get in trouble for leaving something as potentially vital as a phone behind.
“Name?”
“Sass Stone.”
The woman’s brows inched up as she reached for her desk phone. “I know the guys have been in a meeting for the past hour, so I’m not sure if he’s available. Let me check—”
“Oh, I don’t want to bother him if he’s busy with something.”
“Trust me, this is no big deal. I’ll just give him a quick call…”
The phone in Sass’s pocket began to ring.
The woman looked to her, eyes wide.
Crap.
“Three guesses what I’m returning to Rude, and the first two don’t count.” With a sigh, Sass pulled the phone out of her pocket, along with a white cord. “I guess I can just leave this here with you, then.”
“Rudy’s having one hell of a time lately.” With a laugh, the woman hung up her phone and shook her head. “Forgetting his phone. Shame, shame, shame.”
Sass figured it was her morning to lie. “It must have fallen out of his pocket at some point, since it was on the floor when I found it. He’s actually one of the most aggravatingly meticulous men I know.”
“They all are,” came the eye-rolling reply. “That’s why I like to bust the chops of anyone around here whenever they have a minor screw-up like this, and they prove themselves to be just as human as the rest of us.”
Which meant this chick was goin
g to bust Rude’s chops the first chance she got. Ugh. Well, at least she’d tried to be discreet. “While you’re taking the lumber to Rude, would you also point out to him that this is my power cord that I brought out of the goodness of my heart, because his phone’s almost dead? If he loses my cord, that automatically gives me the right to strangle him.”
“I’m sure that’s a law somewhere.” With a quick laugh, the woman held out a manicured hand. “I’ll make sure he gets—”
“Sass?”
Sass glanced up and saw Rude leading the way down the hall, with what looked like a line-up of models for a total hottie beefcake calendar—a calendar that she wanted to buy, pronto. To Rude’s left was a blonde jarhead of a guy, dressed in camo cargo pants and a form-fitting, long-sleeved compression shirt that seemed a size too small around muscle-sculpted arms. To his right was an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and wire-rimmed glasses that gave him a studious look. Behind him stalked a man who wore a permanent smirk on his hard face, thanks to a scar that went from the edge of his mouth up toward the outer corner of his eye, with another smallish scar bisecting his coal-black eyebrow. Unlike the other men, his hair was on the longish side, waving to a point just above his chin. His glance moved over her before he and another man veered down a connecting hall, but not before his companion—with dark mahogany hair as short as almost everyone else’s, a healthy amount of scruff and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen—gave her a once-over that felt more detailed than an MRI.
Holy crap, there wasn’t a dud in the bunch.
“Hey.” It took all of her strength not to self-consciously smooth her hair. When confronted with an overabundance of nuclear-hot testosterone, a woman could only pray to any goddess watching that her hair wasn’t a rat’s nest and her makeup hadn’t gunked up in the corners of her eyes. “I was just dropping something off for you. I’ll be out of here in a few seconds.”
Understanding instantly bloomed in his eyes. Before she could move an inch, he came right around the desk to wrap her up in a bone-cracking embrace. “Babe, you’re a friggin’ lifesaver. I realized I didn’t have my phone with me about the time I got to work. I was going to call you to ask if you could drop it off.”
