Smart, Sexy and Secretive (28 page)

Are. You. An. Ass? Yes. You. Are. An.
Ass.

But he is an ass who is now living with
my girl.

The curtain shakes. It’s how
people ask me for permission to enter in the private area of the
shop. I call out, “Come on back.” Emily pops her head around the
curtain.
You busy?
she asks, signing to me. I like it when she does
that.

Despite what happened
earlier, I’m so fucking happy to see her. She walks across the room
slowly and then kisses me softly. I want to linger over her lips
all day and all night.
Never too busy for
you.
I’m glad the woman on the table has
her shirt back on.

“
What about me?” my
so-called customer asks.

“
I think you should put the
tattoo on your side. Or below your breast, rather than at the top,”
I suggest.

She shimmies her unbound boobs at me
under her shirt. “Are they too big for a tattoo?”

I’ve seen it a million times. After a
few years and a couple of kids, her boobs will be looking down at
her belly button. That’s not a bad thing—all women are
beautiful—it’s just bad for tattoos.

“
I think it would maintain
better if we put it below your breast. It’s for your boyfriend,
right?” I look down at the tattoo. It’s a man’s name. She nods.
Poor schmuck might have no idea she’s a whore who would do me as
fast as I could blink. I’m going to run it really lightly because I
have a feeling she’s going to be covering it up before
long.

She nods, and I get out my equipment.
“Can you wait for me to finish?” I ask Emily.

Emily and I have to talk. I have to
find out what happened today after I left. I couldn’t sit there. I
just couldn’t. Not while her father held Matt’s treatment over her
head again. Had she consulted me I probably wouldn’t have let her
do it the first time, and I’ll be fucked sideways before I let her
do it again. She’s not cattle that can be traded. She’s a fucking
person, and I love her to death.

“
I can wait,” she says. She
goes out to sit with Friday, the girl who runs the front of the
shop, while I work on the tattoo, and a half hour later, she’s
laughing at something Friday is saying as I walk out with the newly
tattooed girl. Emily looks up at me, blinking her pretty brown
eyes. I have missed her so much, and I’m so glad she’s back. But
I’m a little apprehensive.

The girl goes to pay Friday and slips
her number in my pocket as she strolls by me. I toss it into the
wastebasket after she’s gone. Emily’s eyebrows go up. “Should I be
worried?” she asks, but she’s grinning.

I don’t feel like grinning.
“Should
I
be?” I
toss back. I motion for her to follow me to the back of the shop.
She lets me help her to her feet and follows me.

“
Are you done for the day?”
she asks as I clean up my supplies.

I nod. “What happened after I
left?”

She sobers. Her gaze skitters around.
Fuck. That’s not good. “Not much,” she hedges, wincing.

I tip her chin up with my finger and
force her to look at me. “I won’t let you trade yourself for Matt’s
treatment again.”

She waves a breezy hand in the air.
“Don’t worry about that. My mother told him she would pay for it
herself if it came down to it. She loves you already.” She grins at
me. “Something about those tall, tatted white boys. Older women
love them.”

A laugh bursts out of my throat. Emily
grins, but then she winces again.

“
Tell me,” I coax. “It can’t
be worse than what I’ve been imagining all day.”

“
Trip’s going to stay at my
place while he looks for an apartment of his own.” She waits for me
to react. I draw in a deep breath, trying not to. “Are you
angry?”

I set her back from me. “Are you
fucking kidding me?” I ask. I’m so angry that I can barely see
straight. She takes a step back from me, and I realize she’s never
really seen me angry. She saw me irritated at the diner when she
asked me about fucking someone else. She’s seen me cry. She’s seen
me hurt, like when we thought Matt was going to die. But she’s
never really seen me angry. I work to soften my stance. “I’m angry
at them. And if I ever have to see Trip again I’ll probably flatten
him.”

“
Can I watch?” she asks. But
she’s grinning. “See, here’s the thing,” she says hesitantly.
“While Trip’s looking for a place to stay, I was hoping maybe you
would let me stay at your apartment.” She holds her breath, waiting
for my response.

“
Are you fucking kidding
me?” I ask again. But this time I wrap my arms around her while I
do it and spin her around. She giggles against me, and I can feel
the movement of it in her belly. She doesn’t try to push me away
the way she did with Trip earlier when he tried this move on her.
Of course, he wasn’t the happiest man in the whole fucking world
when he did it. I guess that matters.

“
Of course you can stay with
me.” I tweak her nose. “Silly woman.”

I want her with me every minute of
every day.

“
Your brothers won’t mind?”
she asks.

“
They’ll be ecstatic,” I
say. I tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “They’ve missed
you.”

“
Does your apartment smell
like sweat socks and stale pizza?” she asks.

I grimace. It probably does. I hold my
finger and thumb an inch apart. “Maybe a little bit.”

She cuddles into me, wrapping her arms
around my waist. She says something against my chest, but I can’t
see her lips. I tip her face up. “What?” I ask.

“
I love you,” she says. Then
she says it again and again and again, and my heart swells. I kiss
her like there’s no tomorrow, until we’re both breathless. The
lights turn off.

“
I think that’s our cue to
leave,” I say. I shove the curtain back, and Friday glares at us,
her purse over her shoulder.

“
Did you just have sex back
there?” Friday asks, deadpan.

“
Oh my God, no,” I
say.

I shove Friday’s shoulder gently, kind
of like I would one of my sisters if I had any.

“
That’s so unsanitary,” she
warns.

Emily covers her mouth, trying not to
laugh.

“
If you did, go spray
something back there, will you? Some antiseptic or something.” She
scrunches up her nose.

“
We didn’t,” I say, growling
as I reach for Friday. She hates it when I give her noogies. She
screams and ducks outside my reach.

“
Well, when you do, don’t
get germs all over the place. Put down some paper or something.”
She’s serious about this, but it still makes me laugh. Now I won’t
be able to get the idea of having sex with Emily out of my head
when I’m at work.

“
I’ll be sure he sanitizes,”
Emily says. I wrap my arm around her, pulling her into my side. I
kiss her, and if we don’t get out of here soon, I’ll have no choice
but to take her back behind the curtain and then
sanitize.

We follow Friday out the door, and she
turns and locks it. “Good night,” she calls to us. It’s still early
on a Saturday evening, so I don’t offer to walk her home. She turns
away but then spins toward us again. “I’m glad you’re back, Emily,”
she says, cupping her hands around her mouth as she yells. Then she
walks away.

“
She’s something, isn’t
she?” Emily asks.

She’s definitely something. We just
don’t know what.

“
Do you want to go and get
something to eat?” she asks. I realize she has her black canvas bag
over her shoulder. I take it from her and put it over my
own.

“
You came prepared, huh?” I
ask.

“
I had a feeling you
wouldn’t send me away.” She grins up at me. I couldn’t send her
away even if I wanted to.

“
Let’s go home and order a
pizza,” I suggest. I look down at my watch. “Hayley will still be
up. I’m sure she wants to see you.”

“
Take me home,” she says. So
I do.

Emily

We step through the door of the
apartment Logan shares with his four brothers, and I jump back when
they all yell, “Surprise!”

I look up at Logan who
shakes his head and signs the word
sorry
. Then he pulls me to him,
wrapping his arms tightly around me, but it’s not for more than a
moment. His brothers rush at me. Sam and Pete, the youngest
brothers in the family, get to me first. The twins attack me from
both sides, squishing me between them like I’m the filling of a
sandwich. They squeeze me, and they press their lips against each
of my cheeks.

“
If you lick me,” I warn.
Sam already has his tongue out, but he sucks it back in really
quickly and grins at me.

“
Welcome home,” Sam says. He
steps back, and Pete’s arms fall around me. He squeezes me tightly,
clutching my head against his chest as his hands tumble through my
hair.

“
Would you cut it out?” I
grouse, trying to flatten my hair back down. Pete laughs and steps
to the side.

“
Welcome home,” Paul says
before wrapping me up in his arms. He really is a big guy, even
bigger than Logan, and I think he could wrap around me
twice.

“
Thanks,” I murmur against
his chest. I can barely breathe, but it’s worth it.

Then there’s Matt. He leans against the
kitchen counter with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He
doesn’t smile. His eyes are wet, and he blinks really
quickly.

“
Come here, big guy,” I say,
making a come hither motion with my fingers. He pushes off the
counter and starts toward me.

“
I’m going to kiss your
girl, Logan,” he warns. Logan’s eyebrows shoot up, but he doesn’t
complain. He smiles and shrugs his shoulders.

Matt stops in front of me and tips my
face up to his. He looks directly into my eyes and holds my gaze.
“Thank you,” he says.

I gulp past the lump that’s suddenly in
my throat and try to sound flippant. “For what?” I ask with a
breezy wave. He won’t let me look away though. He holds my face
between his palms and stares into my eyes.

“
For saving my fucking
life,” he says. “Thank you.”

He leans down and kisses me on the
cheek with a loud smack.

“
Oh, I didn’t do anything,”
I start.

He looks down at me, and his gaze is so
serious that my insides quiver. “Yes, you did,”
he says. “I’ll never forget it.” He looks over at Logan. “I’m not
the only one you saved,” he whispers to me. That lump in my throat
grows ten times its size. “You ever need anything at all, you come
to me, all right? I’d do anything for you.”

“
Could you kill a guy for
me?” I ask. He could at least bust Trip’s kneecaps.

His eyebrows scrunch together. “There’s
probably a story there. I hope you’ll tell it to me
later.”

I nod. “You’re better, right?” I ask. I
hold my breath while I wait for the answer.

He smiles. “I’m not dead.”

“
Well, there’s a start,”
Paul says, jumping in. “We should have written that on the cake.”
He takes the top off a small cake box and
Welcome Home
is written across the
icing. “For the guest of honor,” he says with a
flourish.

“
Can we eat the pizza now?”
Sam whines. “Or do we have to keep doing the reunion
thing?”

Paul smacks the back of his little
brother’s head. “She saved his fucking life, dickwad.”

Pete mimics Sam’s whine. “Can we eat
the pizza now?”

I laugh and pick up a piece, shoving it
into my mouth.

“
Thank God,” Paul moans as
he reaches for a piece for himself. He smacks at Sam’s hands as he
gets in his way. “I was starving.”

I’m so touched by their impromptu party
that I can’t stop smiling. I have this stupid perma-grin on my
face, but I’m just so happy to be here. Logan pulls out a chair at
the table and motions for me to sit. But I suddenly feel little
fingers tugging on the legs of my jeans. I look down at Hayley, who
blinks her pretty blue eyes at me. Hayley is three, and we spent
some time together when I was here before.

“
Welcome home,” she says. I
set my pizza on the counter and reach for her. “Oh my goodness,” I
breathe as I bend down and pick her up. She wraps herself around me
and holds me close. She lets me go and whispers in my ear. “Are you
staying for good?” She chews on her finger as she waits.

“
I’m staying forever and
ever.” I am. I’m never leaving again, no matter what. Anything else
we need, we can work out as a family. This ragtag bunch of boys and
Hayley are as much a family to me as my parents are right
now—they’re home.

I set Hayley on the edge of the counter
and cut a piece of cake for her. Her eyes gleam, and she smiles
sheepishly at her father.

“
Food first,” Paul warns. I
stick a fork in the cake and take a big bite, and then hold a
smaller forkful out for her. Paul scrunches his brow and says,
“Fine.
One
bite.”
He holds up a finger in warning.