Yeah, yeah, he’d done that. It had been a moment, seeing the kid and thinking he had Tommy’s eyes. He’d had a kneejerk reaction. Mick hunched his shoulders, trying to shake off the emotions hanging on him. “You offered up the small-town angle.”
“Not willingly. You knew I wasn’t on speaking terms with my family. All these years, you and Blake take off for dinner with your mom, spend the weekend or Christmas, and you never once ask if I’m hanging with my family for the holiday. Well, news flash, asshole, I don’t visit family.”
The truth smacked him upside the head. He was an asshole, because he’d never put two and two together, never wondered what happened to Dez when he and Blake went home. He’d treated her like a prop in the ongoing war with Sully, and forgotten about her when it didn’t suit his needs. “Your aunt was thrilled to see you. What were you running from?”
“None of your business.” Dez grabbed a shopping bag Peg had brought for her. “If this puts your panties in a twist, I can play the single mom angle and look damn good doing it. You’re in or you’re out, but my personal life is off the table.”
“The hell it is.” The more he thought about it, the more Mick realized he’d fucked up. As a friend. As a partner. Dez knew about his past, about Tommy, and the way it had altered his life. He and Blake figured she should know, because they didn’t always work on the straight and narrow. Blake had joined the police force because he believed in justice. Mick had stayed on the outside, because he didn’t. At least not the kind administered by the courts. He practiced his own brand of justice. He worked with Blake because they’d been friends for as long as it had mattered. They had one goal. Put the fucker away, by any means fair or foul. So they laid it on the line when Dez joined the team, and she’d been all in. Why? It was a huge mark against him that he didn’t know dick about her personal life. “We’re partners. When something screws with the operation, something screws with your head. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Funny how that clause comes into effect now that we’re here, neck deep in my past. You never gave a flying fuck before, Mick, so let it go. Go bury your head until this mood of yours passes. Better yet, get in your truck and leave.”
He leaned back as the verbal slap hit home. He could go, head back to the city, and resume his mission, but as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—leave Dez. She wasn’t just a pawn in his fight against Sully. “I fucked up.”
“Which time, because the tally you’re keeping in your head keeps getting longer.”
“What is wrong with you?” It stung that she was right, that he tallied his life in wrongs he’d committed.
“You’re the one who crawled up my ass about family. It’s just a cover, Mick, no different than when I’m playing a hooker and you’re the pimp, except I’m showing a lot less skin.”
“Okay.” He stuffed his hands in his jean pockets. “I overreacted. You know why.”
“No. I really don’t. Not a mind reader here, and I’m sick of your moods. Spell it out or leave me alone.”
She was pummeling him. Back at the club, he’d blow her off, go downstairs, work it out of his system, but neither of them had space to run. “Fine. The family thing hit a nerve. I don’t do commitment.”
“You’re a dumbass.” Dez hit him with the plastic bag she was holding. The clothes were soft, but she was angry, so she swung a second time. “You and Blake are tight. More than brothers. You think that isn’t commitment?”
“Not the same. I don’t do the wife and kid thing.”
The look on her face went from outrage to surprise. Finally, she busted out laughing. “No one asked you, idiot. Have I ever done or said anything to make you believe I’m looking for two point three kids in the ’burbs? Because let me tell you, if I was, I could do better than you.”
She was right. His problems were his, and he didn’t need to throw it on her. “Like I said, I screwed up.”
“Yeah, you did.” She wiped her eyes as the laughter trickled. “One kiss and you’re picking out china patterns.”
Heat burned up his face. The kiss had screwed with his focus. It was just like Dez to get right up in his grill rather than back off. “Let’s finish it, then.” It was time for full disclosure. He wasn’t just with Dez in this little mountain town for the mission, and he was done letting his messed up emotions go hot and cold on her. They’d started something last night. “Now that you made the move, I’m not backing down. There’s heat here. More than. As long as we both know the score—”
“Goes both ways. I’m not looking for forever, Mick.”
The fist gripping his chest loosened its greedy fingers. “There’s one thing settled. Here’s the other. I’m a piss poor partner, even if I’m not a cop. I work just as hard to get drugs off the streets as you do, but in my own way. Blake considered me his partner until you came along. Now it’s the three of us. We lay it all on the table, that’s the way we work, but I never pushed with you. I’m pushing now. Why did you leave town? What has you strung so tight?”
“I told you I hadn’t been back in years. What was I supposed to say, ‘hey, by the way, I left home a pregnant teenage runaway and they consider me the town skank?’”
“You weren’t the town skank.” He knew it to the soul; the same way he knew Blake had his back. Dez was the best. “And if you were, you’d own that shit, not run from it.”
She tossed the bag on the floor and shoved at Mick. It wasn’t unusual. Dez was a physical being. She loved and hated, laughed and cried, and did it all 100 percent. He’d bet she was an animal in bed. Which was the wrong damn direction for his mind to head, but her hands were on him, and he’d been dreaming about her touch for longer than he could remember. So he grabbed hold of her, and he didn’t plan to let go until they had this out once and for all. “You want to get up in my space, fine by me, sweetheart, but now it’s your turn.”
…
“Why did you pick now to get all perceptive on me?” Dez didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to dredge up the past where she’d buried it years ago.
“Your fault. The kiss changed things.”
“Doesn’t have to change things. Shouldn’t.”
“That’s just stupid and you know it. What’s in your head is screwing with your focus. That could get one of us killed. Spill it.”
He was right, which pissed Dez off more. She’d never told anyone her past. She’d jumped at a chance to work undercover. To work with Blake. He had an axe to grind; everyone knew it. His axe became her beard, the place she hid to cover her issues. Blake and Mick never asked. They pulled her into the group, into their mission, and she’d hidden there ever since.
The way Mick wrapped his arms around her made Dez feel trapped. Panic flushed her system. She pushed against him, but he was an immovable object. The exception to Newton’s Law of Motion. “What do you want to hear? I’m ashamed of who I am and what I come from to the point I changed my name. That ought to give you a big fucking clue about how I feel about family.”
“I’m getting that,” Mick said, his voice reasonable. Too damned reasonable. “But that doesn’t tell me why. Peg doesn’t seem the type to shame you, even as a sixteen year old.”
“She didn’t.” Dez thunked her head to Mick’s solid chest. “It was too much acceptance, just too much after—”
He grabbed a hunk of her soft blond hair and yanked her head back to stare into her eyes. “Quit it. Just quit the waffling. That’s not you. That’s not how you deal.”
What did he know? She’d run before, she just got better at hiding. But he had a point. Time to pull off the freaking Band-Aid. “My dad was a cop, hence my birth name. Justice. As if he even knew what the word meant, but it made him look righteous. Appearances were everything. What did the neighbors think? How did other cops view him? Wasn’t he the perfect family man sitting in the front pew at church? That’s all that mattered. We lived in a neighborhood just like the one Nate comes from, and hidden behi
nd one of those classy front doors, he did whatever the hell he wanted to my mother. To me. Control freak doesn’t begin to cover it. He hit my mother, pushed me around. She let him.”
That’s the one that hurt. Bruises healed, but letting it happen, year after year, left a seeping wound. She swallowed against the knot in her throat. “Good old dad was dirty, taking kickbacks to look the other way, which got him killed. Funny thing. The family doesn’t get the benefits when a cop is dirty. DEA took all his assets, too. The house, the cars, everything my mother had sold her soul to keep, and she couldn’t handle losing them. After Dad went down, she put his service revolver to her head and pulled the trigger. I came to live with Peg.”
Her heart pounded at the admission. Tears of shame threatened. The first memory she had was sitting at the breakfast table before church. She couldn’t remember what provoked her father’s outburst, or if anything had. He’d slapped her face—unprovoked and unexpected—and fifteen minutes later he sat in the front pew at church. Her mother hadn’t defended her. As she’d gotten older, she put a name on it. Evil. When he died, she said her last prayer, one of thanksgiving. Saying Nate’s prayers last night had made her feel like a hypocrite.
She took a shaky breath and leaned into Mick’s embrace. Laying it all out there deflated her ego. Her energy. She was done, physically and emotionally done. Mick wasn’t trapping her there anymore; he was holding her up.
He smoothed a big hand over her hair. “Peg know all that?”
“No. She might have guessed some of it, but not all.” This was the most Dez had ever said on the subject, and she didn’t plan to discuss it again, so she let it all out. “To say I had daddy issues doesn’t begin to cover it, but Peg didn’t know. I moved here and got involved with the wrong people. Not hard in a small town. People think small towns are pure.”
“People are wrong,” Mick said in a voice that rumbled in his chest, vibrated against her cheek. “So you ended up pregnant, and the father took a step back.”
“A step back?” She laughed, low and bitter. “The prick denied it was his kid and then led the charge that I was the town whore.”
“The prick have a name?”
The tone of Mick’s voice wasn’t one she often heard. He was level headed, calm, at least on the outside. Inside he had a truckload of anger burning in his gut, but he kept it contained behind tight abs. Dez leaned back. His eyes narrowed and his jaw was tight.
“Long time ago,” she said. “I changed my name and moved on.”
His chest rose and released on a big breath. “Sorry I brought you back here.”
“Can’t run forever.” But she’d given it a good try.
They stared at each other for a long moment before a teasing grin transformed his chiseled face. “Your name really Justice?”
“Was.”
“Were you really a stripper?”
Heat flushed up her face. There was no end to the humiliation today. “You heard me tell Peg?” She thought he’d been too far down the sidewalk to hear, but Mick nodded. Yeah, he’d heard. In the giant puzzle of her past, this wasn’t the worst piece. She shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Peg thinks I’m joking, but stripping paid my way through college. That’s where I met Blake. He was undercover. I tossed him information on the resident drug dealers, and he tossed me enough money that I only had to take my clothes off onstage. Never had to—” The words caught in her throat. She’d never had to turn tricks. She wasn’t an angel, but she wasn’t stupid.
“There’s no shame in working your way through college.”
Shame washed her skin anyway. Not usually, her past was a fact of life, but Mick made her feel raw and open, and it was a place she didn’t want to be. She pushed back from his warm body, but he didn’t give an inch.
“All those times undercover, playing a stripper or the like, had to hurt.”
“The first time, when the assholes from vice made a comment or five about my natural talent, but then we took down a mid-level dealer. I did that, made the bust happen because I was the one with power.”
“The more I know about you, the deeper you pull me in.” He didn’t sound happy about it, either. “You’re the strongest, smartest, toughest woman I’ve ever known.”
He dropped a chaste kiss to her lips, to her cheek, down her jaw, and the gentleness eased the panic and the pain beating in her pulse. He didn’t make the obvious jokes, didn’t ask for a private show. Deep down, Mick wasn’t the rough guy he portrayed. Leather and tattoos, they were his cover, and she wondered what she’d find when she unwrapped him.
Chapter Eight
Mick had seen Dez dressed as a hooker, a dancer, and a ditzy college girl, all part of undercover operations, but he’d never seen her quite as tempting as she looked right now. This look sent need shooting through his blood like a drug. Dark skinny jeans hugged her curves before getting tucked into boots that climbed to her knees. A soft, gray sweater smoothed over her chest and narrowed at a waist so tiny he could nearly span it with his hands. He bunched his hands into fists to keep from laying them on her. She wore little makeup, so she seemed fresh and innocent; a small town all-American girl. Not her usual style.
The drive over was silent with everyone wrapped in their own bubbles. Mick was wrapped up in thoughts of Dez. Should he or shouldn’t he? The heat between them was off the charts, and he’d wanted her for longer than he cared to admit, but neither of them did long term, so what happened when they quit it? Did it jack with the work dynamic?
Worrying about a woman didn’t sit right on Mick’s shoulders, so he shrugged it off when they walked into the restaurant. His gaze swept the room, looking for trouble. Habit, plus the tension that rode him ever since someone had taken shots at Dez. The restaurant was a cross between family eatery and tavern. The area to the left was a small bar with several cocktail tables and to the right were booths for families, several of which were filled. In between the two areas stood several pool tables and two dartboards in the back.
It was hopping for a weeknight, but the drive over showed few places to let loose in a town the size of Mayberry. Lots of cars parked outside on the main street. Lots of bodies warming the seats inside. The smack of pool balls and lousy radio kept the conversations lively. Beer flowed freely all around the joint. They sat side by side in the booth. Dez rocked slightly against the padded back. Her nerves were sizzling, unsettling everyone within a three-booth radius. Across the booth, Peg and Nate started coloring pictures on the paper placemats.
“Hey.” The waitress was a pretty blonde with a slight overbite. Bubbly in a not-too-bright way. She shared a few words with Peg. They knew each other the way people did in small towns. What’s new? How are your folks?
Peg motioned across the table at Dez. “Lily, you remember my niece, Justice.”
Dez flinched at the name but managed to pull off a convincing smile. “Hey, you were a couple years behind me in school, right?”
Mick wrapped an arm over Dez’s shoulders, a subtle reminder that he had her back.
“Sure, I remember. Long time. Wow, this must be your family.” She looked from Mick, to Nate, and back to Mick. Her eyes went wide. “You did alright for yourself.”
Tension built in Mick’s gut at the family comment, but the waitress didn’t push. She took their orders and moved on, brought back beers for the adults, root beer for Nate. For his part, Nate kept his head down coloring and stayed out of the conversation. They ate without interruption, but Mick could almost feel the curiosity grow as the waitress buzzed around the tables spreading gossip like pollen. Eyes turned their way enough to make Mick twitchy. The whole point of an undercover operation was to remain in the background, not the main stage, and they failed.
Lily came back, a knowing glint in her eyes. “Can I get you another round or some dessert?”
Mick shook his head. He’d had enough. “We’re good.”
“Sure. Before you go, Justice, you might want to say hey to a few people from your class. V
alerie’s tending bar now.” She tore off the check, set it on the table next to Mick. “Oh, and Derek’s in back playing darts.” She glanced pointedly at Nate. “If I remember, you and Derek were tight, way back.”
“Won’t that be fun?” Dez’s leg bounced against the booth. Mick reached over, clasped a hand over her thigh to keep it still. The long muscle down her thigh flexed in his hand.
Lily flew off after her nasty sting hit its mark. Mick lifted his hand to massage the back of Dez’s neck. “You okay?”
“Peachy.” She rubbed her hands over her thighs. “Might as well get this over with. It’s what they’re waiting for.” She nodded at the gossipy little groups who were looking their way.
“Want company?” he offered.
A cloud passed over her normally electric blue eyes. “I’d rather be humiliated in private, thanks.”
“Dez.” Peg’s voice held pain. “I didn’t know he’d be here. He spends most of his time at the airstrip. They’ve got a hole in the wall bar down there now. Nothing says you have to go talk to him. He was a mean little shit back then, and he ain’t any better now. Bar fights and petty harassment to people who won’t press charges. Nobody in this room will stand up to him, but they can’t wait to watch what will happen if you walk over there.”
Just what Mick figured. Derek at the dartboard was Dez’s old boyfriend, or whatever you wanted to call the little prick. An anger pounded inside that had him wanting to take a few pounds out of Derek’s flesh, but he knew Dez. She wanted to face this on her own, so he nodded his understanding. “They want a show; let’s give them something to talk about before you go.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Peg prompted.
“What did you have in mind?” Dez asked.
He slid out of the booth and gave her a hand out, pulled her in tight before she got her feet under her. She tilted into him to keep her balance, and he held her there, staring down until the light came back to her eyes, until a strong dose of desire had her eyelids flicker low. “Wanna dance?” He shifted so one leg pressed between hers, as if they’d already started slow dancing.
Unstoppable (The Untouchable Series) Page 7
