by Cara McKenna
She pursed her lips. “I never said I did.”
“You’ve been way different, since last night.”
“Of course I have. Everything is different. The baby’s making everything—every last part of my life—totally fucked and weird and stressful and . . .” She trailed off, breaths coming quick and frantic.
“Hey, sit down. Chill. Of course the baby’s fucking everything up. That’s what babies do. Haven’t you ever watched Maury?”
She wiped at her welling eyes, and Casey angled his body to keep most of the patrons’ views blocked, to give her a little privacy.
“It’s not even here yet,” she sniffed, “and already I can’t cope with anything. How awful is it going to be after it’s born?”
“You got family in town?”
“No.”
“Where’s your parents?”
“My mama’s back home in Texas. But we don’t talk. I hardly talk with any of my family.”
“Texas, huh? You from Abilene, Abilene?”
“No,” she said simply.
“Well, I was living in Lubbock the past couple years.”
“Doing what?”
“Oh, things. Anyhow,” he said, nodding to her belly, “a kid’s a pretty powerful trump card against moms. You might be surprised how quick bridges get mended when grandparenthood’s at stake. Old people fucking love that shit.”
She cracked another little smile at that.
From behind them, somebody shouted, “Pitcher.”
Casey ignored him. “You’ll get through this. You know how many dumb-asses give birth without ever even realizing they’re pregnant? You’re smart. And hardworking. You’ll be fine—”
“Pitcher!”
Casey turned to glare at the guy. “Would you hold your fucking horses?”
“Would you do your fucking job?”
Casey cocked his head. “You feel like comforting the poor girl? She’s fucking pregnant. She’s got hormones and shit, making her crazy.” He circled a finger beside his ear. “Two fucking minutes, okay?”
The guy glared but wandered back into the crowd.
Casey turned to Abilene, finding a hand plastered over her eyes in mortification.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Everyone’s gonna find out soon enough. Rip the bandage off.”
“Someone’ll tell Raina her bartender was crying. I’ll probably get fired, and there’s only, like, two jobs I’m even qualified for in this whole stupid town.”
“She won’t fire you. You have no idea the shit that woman pulls when she’s on the clock herself.”
She smiled weakly, and after a pause, she gave him a little shove on the shoulder. “You really thought I was a virgin?”
“I dunno. Seemed likely, the way you were avoiding saying yes to me and everything.”
“You think your charms are that irresistible, huh?”
“No, I think my charms are about as smooth and subtle as a cinder block. I couldn’t figure out how you kept managing to ignore them.”
“Go fill some orders,” she said. “I’ll use the bathroom and be out in a minute.”
“I’m giving you all my tips,” he said firmly. “You need ’em more than I do.” Casey actually had a pretty healthy chunk of change to his name at the moment. He got a funny rush, imagining doing what his brother sometimes did—helping out people who needed it. Helping Abilene, if she’d let him. God knew he didn’t need the money himself, especially now that he wasn’t paying rent.
Abilene shook her head. “I don’t want your tips.”
“You’re getting them anyhow. Like a special bonus, for putting up with me.”
She smiled. “We’ll fight about this later.”
She headed for the back, and Casey’s heart felt all warm at those words. Fight about it later. As a couple would do—bicker over doing each other favors.
He caught himself, and quickly conjured the imaginary mug shot he’d assigned her ex. He had no clue what James Ware really looked like, but his brain had composited a hulking brute with ink on his shaved, scarred head, and fists like cantaloupes.
Yeah, knock that shit off, thinking like she’s anything more than your coworker. And giving her money? Yeah, right. Only thing a violent con must hate worse than not being told about his unborn kid was hearing that some shiftless scam artist had been paying for the girl’s upkeep.
Casey focused on the orders, focused on his job. Not on responsibilities and urges that were a million percent not his business. Focused on keeping his nose out of other people’s drama, and keeping all his bones unbroken.
Chapter 11
“Important decision time.” Raina stood beside Duncan before her open cabinet, a wide variety of spirits lined up. “You’ve got your own personal bartender for the night. What are we drinking?”
“What did your father drink?”
Oh dear, was this going to be some kind of overdue-mourning sad sacks’ party? “Middle-shelf whiskey.”
“That’ll do, then.” He shut the cabinet and headed to the guest room, where Raina had left the bottle in question atop her dad’s dresser. Her dresser. Or perhaps Duncan’s dresser, if only temporarily.
“TV?” she asked when they met in the den.
He shook his head. “Music.”
“No opera.”
“Perish the thought. Fetch us two glasses.”
He left the bottle on the coffee table and came back with the turntable. Raina cast it a nervous glance and set tumblers beside the bottle.
“I’ll let you pick the album.” He took a seat on the couch. Astrid immediately claimed his lap, then meowed irritably when he crowded her, leaning forward to fill the glasses.
Raina cued up a John Denver LP. She joined her tenants after changing into soft cotton lounge shorts, officially off duty for the evening.
“Cheers,” Duncan said, and they tapped tumblers.
After a taste, she asked, “Which one of us is all this drinking for, anyhow? The grieving daughter or the man on the brink of professional ruin?”
He shrugged and took a sip, wincing as he set the glass primly back on the wood. And not just who—she wanted to know what the ultimate aim of all this was. For one or both of them to sob or laugh their guts out? For Duncan to get Raina drunk enough to share some dirty laundry he could use to counterextort her and get his freedom back? Good luck to him—small-towners knew better than to bother getting attached to their secrets. Raina had precisely two that she preferred to keep quiet, and no way in hell she was sharing either with Duncan, wasted or not.
Though, thinking about it, Raina suspected there was a very good chance this vice-fest was just a means for them to wind up surrendering to a different kind of debauchery. One that had been growling at both of them for weeks, demanding indulgence.
“Tonight,” Duncan said, taking another sip, “is merely about two wrecks getting drunk enough to find their troubles amusing—instead of depressing—for an evening.”
She nodded. “Cheers, then.” The whiskey was already working, reigniting her faded buzz. She curled into the corner of the couch and propped her feet on Duncan’s thigh. It might’ve been a flirtatious move, except she wasn’t sure how distasteful he found feet. He seemed unbothered, casting her toes a curious, passing glance, before returning his attention to the purring cat.
“Sooo,” Raina sighed, the liquor making her feel warm and slow and lazy; easy, just like John Denver’s voice, crooning about country roads. “I want to know things about you.”
“Such as?”
She swirled her drink and sat up a little straighter. “I dunno, everything. I mean, two days ago I thought you were one thing. Now I know you have OCD, and a cat. And you like opera. And you won’t talk about your parents.” He stiffened in an instant, and she waved her hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t bother
asking. But man . . . What do I want to know? Everything. Like . . . how old were you when you got laid for the first time?”
“Will you be answering all of these questions yourself?”
She smiled. “Will you be admitting you want to hear my answers?”
He nodded.
“Okay, then.”
“Okay, then,” Duncan agreed. “I lost my virginity when I was seventeen.”
“OCD doesn’t keep you from getting your rocks off, then?”
His smile was slow and wicked. “Sex is one of a very few things in this world that I prefer dirty, Ms. Harper.”
His words flushed her, and she held her own smile back, licking her lip. “Call me Raina.”
He shook his head.
“Too personal?” she asked. “Too close to acknowledging that maybe we’re friends?”
“I believe you owe me an answer to your own question.”
“Fine. I was fifteen.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction.
She laughed. “There’s not much to do in Fortuity. Most of us start fucking just to pass the time before we can get our drivers’ licenses.”
“Who was it?” he asked. “Anyone I know?”
“Anyone you know, meaning what? Miah? Or one of the Grossiers? No. A boy I went to high school with. He moved away ages ago to work on an oil field.”
“And how was it?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “It was . . . efficient.”
He laughed—the second of those rich, thrilling chuckles she’d been gifted. Christ, she’d pay five bucks a pop to keep hearing that noise.
“He got better,” she offered.
“Did you love him?”
“No, probably not. But when you’re fifteen, lust will pass for it.”
“What about Miah?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, I loved Miah. I still love Miah.”
“But you’re not with him.”
“And you’re sneaking way too many questions in, Mr. Prosecutor. Who was your first?”
“A woman from my apartment block.”
“A woman?”
He shrugged. “She seemed like a woman, anyway. Older than me, but not scandalously so. Maybe twenty.”
“How very statutory.”
“She was a clerk at the liquor store across the street. She seemed very . . . dangerous.”
“And dangerous is your type? I find that surprising.”
“My life hasn’t always looked as it does now.”
She sipped her drink and waited, feeling as if she was on the cusp of something interesting and not wanting to scare it away. When he didn’t go on, she prompted, “How so?”
He spoke to the cat, stroking its rising back. “I wasn’t raised posh. I grew up in East London, which isn’t what you’d call genteel.” He met Raina’s eyes. “Though I wouldn’t say my grooming and manners are a lie—I worked very hard for them. But I wasn’t born into my inflated sense of entitlement. I earned it.”
“Huh. So your parents aren’t Lord and Lady Welch of Snobbington-upon-Thames?”
He shook his head. “Unless I’ve been greatly deceived, no.”
“When did you decide to better yourself, or however you think about it?”
“When I was young—ten or so. I threw myself into my schoolwork. Then when I was accepted to Cambridge, I put the next phase of the plan into motion. Refined my accent, began investing in my appearance.”
She smiled. “Very calculating. Very you.”
“I thought of it as a reinvention, not a deception.” He smiled back.
“And when did you come to the States?”
“For law school, when I was twenty-one.”
“That seems young.”
“I finished both secondary school and university early. I saw little attraction in lingering in England any longer than I needed to.”
“And you’re a U.S. citizen?”
“I have been for twelve years, yes.”
“Why California?”
He shrugged. “The weather, primarily. The ocean.”
The distance from your past, Raina mused, wondering if she had it right. “Do you miss England?”
“Not for a moment.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“It’s clammy, and gloomy, and terrifically classist.”
“You seem pretty classist.”
“I am. But that doesn’t mean I want to surround myself with a load of miseries like me.”
She smiled. “And that’s not your real accent?”
“I’ve been speaking this way since university. I’d say it’s mine.”
“But what did your old one sound like? Tell me you’re a Cockney, please.”
He sipped his drink. “No comment.”
“You get more British when you’re angry, or wasted. Do you sound like a cabbie when you’re, like, about to come or something?”
“Good God, you’re crude.”
Raina threw her head back and laughed, officially drunk. She sighed giddily, grinning at him. “Yes, yes, I am. But apparently that can be overcome. You want to be my Henry Higgins? Train this wayward bar owner to pass for royalty? Dress me up all frilly and respectable?”
He didn’t reply right away, sipping and looking pensive.
“What?”
He spoke to the cat again. “There was a time when . . . There was a time when I did want that. To dress you.”
Her eyebrows rose. “What in? An evening gown? A leather catsuit and nipple clamps?”
“Something classic.” He eyed her thoughtfully, assessing. “A sheath, perhaps. Knee-length. Black, maybe lace. Tame that hair. Tone down the eye makeup.”
“You want to give me a makeover?”
“Wanted to, yes.” He drained his glass. “But I’ve since grown accustomed to you, to paraphrase a certain professor of phonetics. Tattoos and bra straps and all.”
She sat up straight, bracing her elbow on the back of the couch. “You wanted to Pretty Woman me.”
“They were passing impulses.”
“Yeah, they better be. I should be insulted . . . except that sounds exhausting just now, so I don’t think I’ll bother.”
“Good. I appreciate the pardon.”
She studied him. “Did you ever get around to taking off my fancy new clothes, in these daydreams of yours?”
He studied her right back, then leaned forward to refill his glass. Raina held hers out and he topped it off as well. “Would you like the honest answer to that question?”
“Yes.”
He cleared this throat. “No, I didn’t take your fancy new clothes off, in my fantasies.”
Disappointment cooled her like a cloud. “Oh.”
Duncan smiled. “I fucked you on a barstool, with the dress pushed up around your hips.” He sipped his whiskey while lust snaked the length of Raina’s body like a sizzling fuse. She wouldn’t have expected such a reaction, given the image, but overthinking things wasn’t her bag.
“Did you, then?”
He nodded, a glimmer of that very un-Duncanish grin still curling one side of his lips.
“I guess you didn’t bother putting panties on me, then.”
“They’d only leave a line.”
“I bet you watch, like, the classiest porn there is. Does Masterpiece Theatre make skin flicks?”
His smile was tight, demure. “I don’t watch pornography.”
She snorted.
He took a drink. “You don’t believe me?”
“Well, you’re a human, A. And B, you’re a male human. That makes it a two hundred percent probability.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“What do you jerk off to, then? Do you have a better imagination than I’d guessed?”
“I’m touched you bothered guessing.”
She squinted at him. “No, really. You must use something.”
For a split second’s pause, she could read his thoughts: What do you use? But he simply said, “I don’t masturbate.”
She didn’t even laugh. “Bull. Shit, you don’t.”
“Very, very rarely.”
“Do your meds make you not care, or . . . ?” Oh shit, did his meds make him impotent?
“I suppress those urges.”
Thank fuck for that.
“The energy’s better spent on practical pursuits,” he added.
It sounded nuts, yet she’d never once suspected this man would waste said precious energy on lying. “Good God, when’s the last time you came?”
“I’m not a nun, Ms. Harper. But weeks, easily.”
Weeks. How many? Since before you met me? Christ, she wanted to imagine she’d inspired him to give in to those needs.
“Better you than me,” she said with a shrug. “I bet I’d make it three days before I murdered somebody.”
He didn’t reply, silence reigning for half a minute. And with every second that ticked by, Raina’s body seemed to warm by a degree.
“Something’s going to happen,” she said slowly, narrowing her eyes at his mouth. A handsome set of lips, wide, with a deep and dignified bow in the upper one. On the lower one he had a scar, from Tremblay’s pistol-whipping. Usually it was a smudge of lighter skin, but now it was dark. Those lips, normally the subtlest pink, flushed . . . From the sting of the liquor? Or a spike in this stoic man’s pulse?
“Happen?” he prompted, too innocently.
“Something’s going to happen between us. Something biblical. Tonight.”
Pale eyes regarded her calmly above the rim of his glass. “Such as?”
She shrugged. “Fucking.”
“You make it sound like a storm we ought to prepare for.”
“Time will tell.”
He took a drink. “Shall we simply commence said fucking at an appointed time, or would you like to progress via the usual protocol?”
“Protocol?”
“Kissing. Petting.”
She snorted. “Petting?”
