BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Callie Pierce

  “Okay,” she told herself. “You can do this.”

  She unzipped the suitcase and popped the lid open. She had only packed a few things in case she had needed to do an overnight trip. A trip into a local store was added to the mental list of everything she needed to accomplish over the next few days. She moved her clothes for tomorrow into the three-drawer dresser and laid her pajamas on the end of the bed.

  “Now what?” she asked no one in particular.

  Her stomach responded with a growl.

  A glance at the digital clock on the nightstand told her that it was eight thirty. Most places would be closed, but she was sure that something was still willing to seat the pair of them.

  “Hey, Kyle?” she asked, knocking on his partially closed door. He had a cell phone to his ear, chatting quietly to whomever was on the other line. She had a sneaking suspicion that it was that Cody guy.

  She had known exactly who and what Cody Bannik was the moment she had laid eyes on him. It wasn’t just the leather vest he wore with the “Enforcer” patch plastered over his chest. It was the way he carried himself. Like he should have bad boy tattooed all over him.

  There had been tattoos, she remembered. Some were across his hands, blank ink symbols that she hadn’t understood or recognized. Others had been just visible beneath the cuff of his shirtsleeve. The arms had been worthy of a look, defined without being gym-happy muscular. The eyes had been nice too. There was always something about a guy who had rich dark hair and blue eyes.

  All right, she admitted inwardly, he had been cute. Very cute. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. A lot of guys who weren’t worth her time were attractive.

  “What’s up?” Kyle asked, putting the phone to his shoulder.

  “Dinner?” she offered.

  “Sure, I guess. But, uh, could I maybe go down to the pool hall? Some of my friends are going to be there, and they wanna hang out.”

  She remembered the pool hall. God, did people still go to that place? It was pretty much a pub, with a full bar and a kitchen. It had a large segment of the back room designated to pool tables. The knee-jerk reaction was to tell him no, that he had just been bailed out of jail and he didn’t deserve to go hang out with his friends, but the fact was there weren’t going to be a lot of other places open right now.

  “All right, but I’m going with you.” She stood up and straightened out her suit.

  His eyes went a little wide as if she had suggested some sort of human sacrifice. “Are you serious?”

  “Ninety-nine percent of the time.” She wondered if she ought to freshen her makeup before they headed out. Why bother? It wasn’t as if anyone at the pool hall was going to care if her eyeliner was perfect.

  “Are you going to like, sit with me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. That would be the end of the world.”

  He chewed on his lip for a moment and then nodded, apparently deciding his older sister tagging along was worth being able to hang out with his buddies. “Yeah, all right, but I want pizza.”

  “Deal.”

  He informed the person on the other end of the line that he’d be there in a bit. Donna decided to fix her makeup anyway. There might not be anyone to impress, but that didn’t mean that she should look half put together. A good businesswoman always looked her best.

  She was applying a fresh layer of mascara when Kyle tapped on her door.

  “Hey, Donna?”

  “Yeah?” she asked, plunging the mascara wand back into the tube. “What’s up?”

  “You ready?” He hopped from one foot to the other in youthful earnestness. Donna found herself wondering which “friends” were going to be at the pool hall. Hadn’t that Cody criminal called himself Kyle’s friend?

  “What’s the rush?” She pulled a dusty-rose lipstick out of her travel-sized makeup bag. With a practiced motion, she had the lid off and the stick protruding just enough to rub it on her lower lip.

  “No rush,” he promised too quickly for Donna to believe him. He ran his fingers through his red-brown hair and shook his head. His eyes were a little on the bright side. Donna was guessing that there was a girl at the pool hall. That was healthy, right? “I just wanna get there. You know, soon.”

  She popped the cap back on and rubbed her lips together to smooth out the color. “Yeah, I’ll be out in a second.”

  There was a distinct pause. “You aren’t wearing that, are you?”

  She glanced down at her plum-colored business suit. It was a little rumpled from her drive, but it was serviceable. “Yeah. Why?”

  He sighed. “Because you are going to stick out.”

  He was right, but there wasn’t a whole lot to be done about it now. The only other outfit she had brought with her was similar to this one in everything but color, and the purple definitely went better with her hair. “Sweetie, I hate to tell you this, but no matter what I wear I am going to stick out at the pool hall.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “How would you know?”

  “I’ve been there.”

  He eyed her dubiously. “When?”

  “God, like… a decade ago, thanks for reminding me.” She debated telling him more and decided against it. Now wasn’t the time. Donna wasn’t sure that there was a good time to tell her little brother what an epic screw-up she used to be, but now wasn’t it. Never seemed like a good option. “It’s not like there are a lot of places for teenagers to hang out in Carson.”

  Kyle’s hands disappeared into his pockets as he went back to shifting from foot to foot. “Yeah, okay, but you are still going to get looked at.”

  “That’s the price I pay for trying to be a good sister. Come on, let’s get going. I’m starved.”

  # # #

  The pool hall was actually called Andy’s Pub and Pool, but no one had called it that since the original Andy had declared that the Nevada temperature didn’t sit well with him and decided to head up the west coast to Washington state. He had sold the pub to a man whose name Donna couldn’t actually remember, but after that it had just been called the pool hall.

  It was little more than a long rectangle of brick, with a few scarce windows located too high on the walls to see out of, and too darkly crafted to allow for any real light. The sound of music leaked out into the otherwise empty street and through Donna’s rolled-down window as the hall’s door swung open. It, like nearly everything else in this town, hadn’t really changed.

  “I’m gonna head in,” Kyle said as soon as the BMW came to a stop. His seat belt was already unfastened, and he was halfway across the minuscule parking lot when she pulled her key out of the ignition. Oh, how nice it must be to move that fast. Then again, he was almost half her age and he wasn’t wearing heels. She tugged her purse over her shoulder, bumped the door closed, and hit the alarm button on her keys. It chirped merrily back at her as she sauntered inside.

  Once upon a time she had known everyone who came here. It had been her and her crowd who would stroll in after seven to hang out until the wee hours of the night. It hadn’t mattered if it was a school night. It hadn’t mattered if people gave them looks for being too loud at a particular table. They were kings and queens of their tiny kingdom, and they didn’t have a clue about the world.

  “Donna? Donna, is that you?”

  Donna whirled as she heard her name called. A tall slender man with a mop of messy blond hair and a round face was walking toward her. For a moment, she thought she was caught up in a mirage of nostalgia. The face had barely changed, and he was still dressed like he just rolled out of bed.

  “Jerry?”

  “Hey!” He threw his arms open and swept her up in a spinning hug. “Holy shit, girl, it’s good to see you.”

  He laid a loud kiss on both of her cheeks and another one on her mouth. When he pulled away his lips were Passion Plum and smiling.

  She laughed. If it had been anyone else she would have been offended enough to slap him, but it wasn’t. This was Jerry, and he
had been her best friend through a good portion of her childhood. He stepped away to get a better look at her and wiped his mouth clean. “You look good.”

  So did he. He had that long lanky build that would have looked at home on the range or in a business suit, depending on how he was feeling. Apparently, what he was feeling was criminal, because there plastered on a denim vest was the symbol for the Wild Tigers. She reached out and plucked it. “I’d say the same for you… but…”

  He slapped his heart against his chest as if she had shot him. “Ouch.”

  “You know how I feel about it.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know. And if you were my girlfriend or my Ol’ Lady, I’d feel like I have to explain myself to you. Lucky for us both that never worked out.”

  It was lucky. Oh sure, there had been a couple of summer nights when they had tested the bounds of their friendship. It had ended with awkward laughter and a roll of the eyes as they split a pizza and realized that they would never be more than platonic.

  “I don’t know why I’m surprised to see you here,” she said. “But I am.”

  He rolled his shoulders. “Hell, tonight’s my night off. Usually I’m working the bar, but I have minions for that kind of thing now.”

  She blinked. “You own the pool hall?”

  He laughed and dipped his head in embarrassment. “Well, yeah, I mean. So about three years ago, my uncle Ricky died.”

  “The creepy one?” she asked, having a vague memory of a guy with a huge collection of guns, and a face that had once been the battlefield for acne.

  “Yeah, man, that’s the one. Anyway, he died, right? And no one was really broken up about it because, like you said, he was a little creepy or whatever. But check this out.” He linked his arm companionably with hers and escort her farther inside. “Apparently, I was the only one who ever visited him, right? I mean, sure he was weird, but he always had candy. So he ended up leaving everything to me. At first I was like, cool, man, I got a trailer that’s already paid off, which was cool. But turned out he was one of those weirdos who didn’t believe in banks. So he kept all of his money in a jar.”

  “A jar?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Well, more like fifty jars. Like those really big ones that you get from Costco? With the pretzels and stuff? Yeah, he had rows of them hidden behind those blankets he hung up.”

  “I thought he was just protecting himself from the CIA with those.”

  “Well, yeah, that too. But when it was all counted up, it was like, a hundred thousand bucks. It was insane. So I went and put my momma in a nice retirement home up near Tahoe. It’s a nice place, like totally legit. They do activities and she Skypes with me every day.”

  “Aww, that’s totally sweet.”

  “Right? But she deserves it, so there’s that. But with the rest of it, I bought half of this place. I was sharing it with Danny right up until he went into the Navy last year. Then I bought it out so the whole place is mine.”

  He stopped and motioned around the inside of the pool hall. If the outside was a time capsule to Donna’s misspent youth, the inside was an homage to Jerry’s business sense. The old red booths made of sagging shiny plastic had been updated to rich dark leather tacked in place with bronze studs. The old tables had been swapped for handcrafted wood with a light lacquer finish.

  It looked good.

  Kyle was already tucked into a booth with several teens around his age. That made her feel a little better about everything. If he had just jumped into going to meet Cody… Oh look… he was here.

  Cody was perched on a barstool near the very end. He had swapped the dirty blue jeans he had been wearing at the station for a pair of fitted black ones that she knew had to be a recent purchase. Black jeans didn’t stay that dark for that long. Still, he looked good in them. Too many men bought baggy jeans thinking that it made them look tough. It didn’t. It made them look foolish. But Cody’s jeans fit. They clung to the slimness of his hips and the muscular lines of his outer thigh.

  The rest of him was good too. He’d left his hair down so that it was a sheet of inky black around his face. It looked better than when he pulled it back, softening the lines of his high cheekbones. Yes, Donna silently admitted to herself, Cody was the kind of attractive that would have looked at home on the front of a magazine.

  “You wanna get a table?” Jerry asked, looking just a little hopeful.

  “Jerry, are you flirting with me?”

  “Only for old time’s sake,” he promised. “I mean, we did have that one kiss.”

  She laughed and his grin brightened a few degrees.

  “Hey, Twitch.”

  Jerry gave a little jump and turned toward the voice. It was Cody.

  “Did he just call you Twitch?”

  Jerry shrugged in embarrassment, flashing her a grin. “Well, yeah, you know. It is my name.”

  “What, your supersecret criminal name?”

  Jerry, code name Twitch, scratched the back of his neck in an exaggerated show of his musculature and then puffed out his chest. “Aw yeah, like a power ranger.”

  Donna’s brows knitted across her forehead. She could feel the furrow lines all the way up to her hair. “I don’t think that power rangers have nicknames.”

  Cody was sauntering over. In this lighting his eyes weren’t just blue. They were sapphires at midnight. The steady gaze packed a punch that would have turned a lesser woman into a slobbering mess. Donna liked to believe that she was anything but lesser. She had no desire to pant after some bad-boy biker. All she wanted was a glass of wine and a slice of the pizza that Kyle had probably already ordered. Maybe two slices. There was a miniature gym at the apartments they were staying at and a pool she could work off any extra carbs in.

  “Fine, like an X-man,” Jerry said. “Hey, Cody.”

  “What’s like an X-man?” Cody asked.

  “My name.”

  “Twitch?”

  “His name is Jerry,” Donna retorted. “He’s not an X-man.”

  “Sure he is.” Cody slung an arm around Jerry’s shoulders in a companionable maneuver. His sleeve rolled up and she saw that he did indeed have tattoos. She could see the bottom of a fin; she was guessing it was a mermaid. He didn’t look like a Japan enthusiast who would go out and get a koi fish. “He’s Twitch.”

  He said it like it was a fantastic joke and she ought to be laughing. Donna just blinked at him until his smile faltered.

  Jerry slapped a hand on Cody’s chest in that tough-guy motion that some guys enjoyed. “Cody, this is Donna. She’s an old friend of mine and—”

  “And Maverick’s brother.”

  Donna felt her lips form into a frown that matched the furrows on her forehead. It wasn’t an attractive look. It was a good thing that she wasn’t trying to be attractive. “Maverick? Really?”

  Jerry gave an apologetic shrug. “It just sorta stuck with him. He does sorta… you know… go off on his own and does whatever he wants.”

  Donna couldn’t argue that. On the one hand, she didn’t know her little brother well enough to say what he would and wouldn’t do with his free time. The last time they had spent more than thirty minutes together, his world had revolved around Lucky Charms and some monster fighting show that she couldn’t remember the name of. Still, that was not what she wanted people to think of when they thought of her brother.

  “Fine, whatever.” She walked past the pair of them and took a seat at the end of the bar. Suddenly she wasn’t feeling particularly nostalgic or sociable.

  It hadn’t been a good day, she mused. It had, in her opinion, been one of the worst days of her adult life. That was after comparing it to the time she’d found her longtime boyfriend with his current boyfriend. It was not a great comparison, but she needed a drink just as badly.

  “Can I get you something?” a voice as deep as a mountain was tall rumbled at her.

  Donna glanced up and found herself looking into a handsome face the color of wet terra cotta. H
e was attractive and familiar. “Wine. Red if you have it.”

  He nodded and gave her a slight grin. “It’s not fancy.”

  She shrugged. “If this were a five-star restaurant I’d care. As it is? I just had a long talk with my mother and I need wine.”

  He bent, plucked a dark green bottle of wine that had a layer of dust over the glass from behind the bar, and plunked it down in front of her. “If you say so, hon.”

  It was the way he tucked the toothpick in his mouth that made her remember. “Didn’t we have math class together?”