He laughed and opened the bottle. With an easy catlike grace that you didn’t usually see on bigger men, he poured it into a tall glass and slid it across to her. “We did. My name’s Hulk. I’m surprised you remember, seeing as how you were rarely there.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t a lot of humor in it. “Yeah, but you were. I remember that you could solve algebra in your head without a calculator. It was fairly impressive.”
He shrugged, but his smile was pleased. “It helps when working the bar.”
She supposed it would. Still, she couldn’t help but say, “If you every want to switch up in the job department, I run my own company. I’m sure I could find a place for someone who can handle numbers like you can.”
“Your own business? What do you do?”
“Communications and Employee Satisfaction Coordination Specialist.”
There was a brief pause. “What exactly does that mean?”
“I help companies keep the people they pay happy.” She took the glass and enjoyed a long sip. It might not have been expensive, but it wasn’t bad. “Can I put in an order for a personal-sized pizza too?”
“Yeah,” Hulk said. “Pepperoni?”
“Lots of pepperoni,” she said, bringing the wine to her lips again. The sip was long and made her feel warmer than she had since her conversation with her mother. Did snapping at one another until her head was about to explode qualify as a conversation? Probably not, but it was as close as they were likely to get.
“You are Maverick’s sister.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “That’s what they keep telling me. Yeah, I’m his sister.”
“It was really good of you to bail him out. He’s a good kid.”
“They keep telling me that too.” She shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“You know that my boss man is eyeing you like you were a lollipop he’d like to taste, right?”
“Who, Jerry?”
“Naw.” Hulk shook his head. “The other boss.”
Donna tilted her head until she could see Cody, who was still standing with Jerry. His arm wasn’t around the other man anymore, and his eyes were fixed firmly on her.
“I see.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Hulk asked.
“Nothing,” she answered, picking up the glass to swirl the dark burgundy liquid inside. It sloshed around the cup, and she watched the patterns that it made. “I’m not here to make friends.”
“I don’t think he wants to be your friend.”
She smirked. “Are you trying to set us up, Hulk?”
“No, but he’s been waving at me to get you another glass of wine. I’m wondering if I should bother pouring it, or if I should just charge him and pretend like I did.”
She sighed. On the one hand, she really wanted a second glass of wine. On the other, she did not want to be beholden to Cody. Men liked to think that a woman accepting a drink was equivalent to promising sex. It wasn’t.
“How about you pour me a drink and charge me for it? I’ll make sure there is a very good tip in it for you.”
“Deal.” He poured and smiled. “I like you.”
She watched the arc of wine as it spilled out of the dark green bottle. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Cody’s smile. It was the smile of a man who was very confident in himself. He slapped Jerry on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Jerry shook his head but wandered off anyway to do whatever it was he had just been instructed to do. It bothered Donna that Cody had just bossed around her friend inside Jerry’s own business.
Her pizza arrived about a minute before Cody did. He slid onto the stool next to hers, positioning himself so that their knee bumped. She could feel the warmth through his jeans.
“So,” he said easily, “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Do you?” she asked, pulling a slice of pizza away. “I mean, I’m having a problem thinking of a better way we could have started this.”
“Well, we could have started off like this,” he said, waving his hand toward the bar. “With me buying you a drink, and splitting a pizza.”
She pulled the pizza closer to her. “I have been on a carbless diet for three weeks before today. Get your own pizza.”
He smirked. “Has it been that kind of day?”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve got like… five sisters. Three of them like to try out all of those diet fads. They usually go pretty well for at least the first few weeks, and then something will happen that makes them slip up and eat what they aren’t supposed to. Usually binge eat.”
She savored her first bite of cheese and bread and grease. It was heavenly. It was almost worth going on a diet just so she could break it and really relish the best of the worst-for-you foods. “You think that having to bail my kid brother out isn’t reason enough?”
“Oh no, not for you,” he said, raising his finger so that Hulk would bring him a beer.
“Oh, so you know me?”
“A little. Breaking your brother out of jail isn’t the thing to stress out over. That’s you rescuing him—you feel good about that kind of thing. It was a battle that you won. Chicks like you love winning.”
“Chicks like me?” she asked, raising her brow.
“Hardcore ladies who bust balls and don’t take no for an answer. I mean it in a good way, I promise.”
“Then maybe don’t compare me to a fluffy baby chicken.”
He took a long swig and slapped his thigh. “All right, that’s fair. Ladies like you like fixing problems.”
Is that what her brother was? A problem? She glanced past Cody’s shoulder toward the booth where Kyle sat with one arm slung around a pretty blonde.
“Okay, so you think that bailing my brother out is a rescue.” She finished her first slice of pizza and steadfastly moved on to the next. She silently promised herself that she would make use of the gym first thing in the morning.
“Isn’t it?” he asked. “I mean, you come riding in like Guinevere—”
“Guinevere wasn’t a knight,” she cut in.
His eyes sparkled as he plopped one thick fingered hand on the bar. “Okay, you come riding in like Owain.”
“Not Lancelot?”
“Do you frequently sleep with married women?”
“You just called me the married woman who has an extramarital affair.”
“Woman, am I allowed to get to my point?” He didn’t sound angry, more amused and perhaps a tad bit tipsy. She wondered how many beers he had poured into himself before she arrived. He shifted his legs on the rungs of the barstool until his knees were spread wide. The movement swept his knee across her leg, hitching her skirt up a few inches. His zeroed in on the extra bit of leg it exposed. The heat of his gaze made her skin tingle.
In another life, she might have taken him home. She was a grown woman with a healthy sex drive and enough of an independent streak to enjoy an attractive man when the mood suited her. The problem with Cody was that he was too wrapped up in her brother’s life and represented everything that she didn’t like in a man. He was cocky rather than confident, and he liked to break the law rather than have a real job. No, she decided, no matter how hard he tried, and she was well aware of the fact that he was trying, she wasn’t going to get naked with him.
She took another long sip of her wine and tugged her skirt back into place. “I guess I should let you.”
He tapped his fingers against the bar in quick succession. “I’ve forgotten what I was saying.”
“Something about me coming to the rescue.”
“Ah, right! Okay, so you come riding in and you pull Kyle’s ass out of the proverbial fire. You sweep him up and want to make sure that he’ll get to school and to his court date, and you want to help put him on the straight and narrow in the hopes that he might go to college and get a forty-hour-a-week job with a boring business suit. Maybe give you a chan
ce to be Aunt Donna.”
He had a good voice, she realized. It was smooth and he enunciated clearly. It was not the kind of voice you got when you went to a shabby public school. He had a lot of sisters. She found herself wondering how many brothers he had and if they had all been homeschooled. How many high schoolers knew who Owain was?
“It is, of course, my greatest desire to become a favorite aunt.”
“You said it, not me. Still, the point is, helping Kyle is not enough to push a stubborn lady like you to break a promise to yourself.”
“All right, that’s a fair point. It wasn’t my brother that drove me to pizza.”
He finished off his beer and motioned for a second as his own dinner arrived. “So what was it?”
“My mother,” she said. It cost her nothing to tell him, and there was a fair chance that Kyle was going to be bitching about it, or had been already. “Have you met her?”
“Twice,” he said. “She’s a…” He couldn’t seem to think of the right way to describe Elizabeth Mason.
“Greedy, attention-stealing, grade A bitch.”
His eyes flicked back down to his partially finished food. A blush formed on his cheeks, turning them a dusky olive. He had nice cheekbones too, Donna was forced to admit, high and well-formed. Under different circumstances he could be a model.
“She hit on me,” Cody admitted.
“She did what?” Donna didn’t know why she was surprised. Her mother desperately sought attention—good, bad, or otherwise. Donna had seen the woman start an argument with a cashier because she had said “have a nice day” rather than “thank you for your business.” “When?”
“First time I met her. I was dropping Kyle off after his shift at the drugstore because it was raining, and she started off all pissy with me. Comes storming out of the house like a great big momma bear, with her arms waving and everything. And then, when she saw I wasn’t going to start a shouting match with her, she starts apologizing and pushing herself up against me. It was… well… weird.”
“That’s my mother.”
“I’m sorry.” For the first time tonight, he sounded sincere. It suited him.
“You should do that more often.” She finished her glass of wine, and when Hulk held up the bottle at the other end of the bar she shook her head.
“Do what?”
“Be honest.” She held up her card and Hulk came over.
“I’ve got it.” Cody started reaching into his pocket, but the jeans were tight enough that he had to stand up for it. Watching him wiggle was a good show, but she already had her card out. “I got it,” he said again. There was enough of a command in it that Hulk hesitated. The small amount of soft feelings that Cody had gained by being legitimately apologetic vanished. Donna may have been a difficult woman, but she didn’t like treating the people who served you like they were, well, servants.
“No,” she said with enough finality to have Cody looking up at her. She handed Hulk the card, and he swept away. “I can pay for it myself.”
“That’s not the point.” He swept his hand through his dark hair with enough force to disrupt the neat style. “That’s not the point at all.”
“Then what is?” she asked. “Was this your grand plan for this evening? Ply me with drinks until I fell into your arms and begged you to take me? I’m sure that freshman tactic works for you on the average college girl, but I have a little more experience.”
“Woman, what is your problem?”
Hulk brought the receipt back, and she signed off on it. Cody made a strangled sound.
“Did you just give him a five-hundred-dollar tip for two glasses of wine?”
“I also paid for Kyle’s pizza and the drinks he bought for his friends.” She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “But ultimately? Yes, I did. He was nice to me. He was honest. I greatly applaud honesty. I don’t play these high school games of chatting a girl up and showing off your Arthurian knowledge because you have ulterior motives.”
“What motive?” He flinched just enough that she knew that she was right.
She narrowed her eyes at him and stuffed her card into her purse. “Do you know what I do for work, Mr. Bannik?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I spend my days talking with employees and managers about their work environments. It is my job to find out what is going on, why people are upset, and how to remedy that situation. It means that four days out of the week, I have thirty to fifty conversations with people. I’ve learned to figure out exactly when someone isn’t being completely honest with me. You? You aren’t hitting on me because you like the way my legs look. You would still be hitting on me if I had rotten teeth and leaking skin infections. So I was forced to ask myself why. And you wanna know what I discovered?”
“What?”
“You were genuine twice in this conversation.” She held up one finger to count her first point. “One, where you apologized for my mother being hell on wheels. From that I can assume your own mother is a real piece of work too. Maybe that’s why you bonded so well with Kyle. The other time was when you talked about Kyle. You legitimately care about him. Fine, I can respect that. But I also know that you think that Kyle should stay here and join up with your little club. So I think that you hitting on me is a byproduct of that. Weirdly enough, I am not turned on by that.”
She took a step back, and he wrapped his hand around her wrist, tugging her close to him. She was shocked to feel that he was rigid beneath those tight jeans. She could feel it plastered against her belly. The shock of it drew her breath out of her body in a short gasp. She looked up into his face. He was gritting his teeth hard enough that she could see the tiny motions of his jaw, but his eyes were dilated with desire.
“I might have reasons for hitting on you, Donna, but that doesn’t make the lust any less real.” His hand slid down her back. There were shocks everywhere that his fingers touched. It felt good. Another woman might have gone weak in the knees or fluttered her lashes. Donna shook her head.
She placed a single hand on his chest and pushed him back. “I’m going to say this as clearly as I can. I know you aren’t used to that, but try to keep up with me. You aren’t going to get anywhere with me, so stop trying.”
He shoved his hand through his hair again and sighed. “Fine. Can I give you my number?”
“What? Why?”
“Because that kid you are taking care of? He’s a handful and you may find yourself needing a little help.”
He shoved a card from his pocket into her hand. What kind of criminal had business cards?
“Cody’s Auto and Bike Repair?” she read.
“What? Did you think you were the only one to run a successful business in here?”
She shook her head. “No, I happen to know that Jerry does very well.”
She turned on her heel and called to Kyle. He shot her a glance and motioned to the nearly finished pizza. She frowned at him hard enough to make his eyes roll. Slowly the kid extricated himself from his friends and followed her out looking more like a belligerent puppy than a little brother.
Chapter Six
Cody
“Man, she shut you down!” Twitch was laughing a few hours later. The pool hall was closed, officially, but Hulk, Twitch, and Cody were cleaning up. “It wasn’t even, like, a soft letdown or anything. You know? Like girls do sometimes because they don’t want to be mean. That was a hard shutdown. Man, she was all like, ‘No, I happen to know that Jerry does well.’”
“Shut up, Jerry,” Cody snapped back.
Twitch just continued to laugh. His eyes were sparkling, and he wrapped his slim arms around his middle as if his ribs hurt. Maybe they did. He’d been going on like this for the better part of an hour. “Oh man, I could have told you that she wasn’t easy to get to if you had just come to me first.”
Cody picked up a chair, turned it over, and plopped the newly cleaned seat down on a recently scrubbed table. “Did you two ever
date?”
Twitch shrugged his shoulder. His laughter slowly subsided into giggles and then a lopsided grin. “Not exactly, man. I mean, check this. Like, we grew up close to one another, like three doors away, right? I knew her when she was just a little thing, all freckles and scraped knees. Back when she thought bugs and mud were cool. Those were good times.”
Cody had a hard time picturing Donna playing with bugs and mud. She wore a business suit like she was born in it. Who was this woman? She had all the markings of an upper-crust woman. The elegant way she moved. The cool way she had pushed him off her. She flashed her money easily and never seemed to lose her cool. All of it added up to a privileged woman. Yet, according to everyone who had known her way back when, she had been a tomboy with a bad-girl streak.
BARE SKIN: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 29
