Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (40 page)

              Paul slid onto the stool beside her, and the déjà vu took hold of her lungs again, tightened around her ribs. His eyes seemed colorless in the dim light. There were more lines streaking from their corners than there had been before; he had a new scar along his jaw, and she didn’t want to imagine how he’d acquired it on the inside.

              It would have been so easy to allow herself a backward fall into memory. Dark rooms, and muttered curses, and the sense of urgency; the high of hiding. But she clamped down hard and refused to go back to that place in her mind.

              “Get your hand off me,” she said.

              He obliged, but did so slowly, letting his fingers run down her spine and skip over her bra clasp before pulling away. “I didn’t think you’d be angry with me, love,” he said, quietly.

              “I was never angry about you going to prison.”

              “Ah. Well…you know how it was. We had to–”

              “How it was? You were never doing anything but playing with me. And you were scared shitless you might ruin your whole friendship with Albie. That’s
how it was
.”

              He braced an elbow on the bar and leaned into her; too close, closer than was casual. “I wanted to say something. You have no idea how much I wanted to. But it was
wrong
, Chelle. Surely you’re old enough to know that now.”

              She felt like she’d been slapped. It hurt – shit, those words hurt – but they hurt for all the right reasons. Reasons that loosened the bands around her chest and made it easier to breathe.

              “You’re right, it was wrong. Because it was never love. I know what that feels like now, Paul, and it sure as hell doesn’t have anything to do with hiding and keeping quiet.”

              “Michelle–”

              “I’m not a single woman these days, I might remind you.” She snatched her drink up and slid off her stool, turning away from him–

              And there were Albie and Candy, sitting in a booth, watching her.

              Candy looked disgruntled…but only that, not furious, or about to go on a killing spree. Just irritated.

              Albie, though, was so carefully blank that she knew he was piecing things together in his mind, and she hated that.

              Candy patted the spot on the booth next to him and she slid in, because there was no way to avoid any of this. “Well,” she said. “Don’t either of you look at me like that.” When they didn’t say anything, she said, “Paul–”

              “Is a goddamn dead man,” Albie finished. His face was still blank, but she saw the throb of his pulse in his throat.

              “No, no he isn’t.” Visions of a chair-tossing, bottle-breaking pub fight whirled through her head. Even though, with Albie, it wouldn’t be anything as uncivilized and unprecise as that. No, Albie would stalk up silently behind the man, tangle a hand in his hair, yank his head back and slit his throat. She had to swallow. “Ancient history, Albie. Please don’t. Please. No one knows, and he never meant for you to find out.”

              “Because he knew I’d–”

              “Just don’t even say it!” she pleaded. “Once you say something, it’s halfway to done. So just keep it to yourself.”

              She turned to look at Candy. “Say something!”

              He shrugged. “I don’t care what happens to the guy.”

              She glared at him.

              He sipped his whiskey.

              She threw back her own and said, “Ugh.”

~*~

Dinner was tasteless soup and too-hard bread. After, they went up to find their room for the night on the third floor. It was close-walled, but had high ceilings, and a window that overlooked the city, its indistinct nighttime shape stamped against the black of the night, smeared with yellow light from windows and streetlamps.

              Candy let her have the first shower, and while she waited for him, she sat on the side of the bed, finger-combing her hair, studying London through the glass.

              She heard the door open and close, but Candy was very quiet when he came back into the room. She twisted around and saw that he was in nothing but a towel, skin still flushed from the shower.

              It hit her hard, the sight of him, a sudden wild press of heat behind her breastbone, and something deeper, aching, clawing at her insides.

              He’d been reaching for the clothes he’d left sitting on top of the hope chest, but paused, hand poised above his sweatpants, fingers open. “What?”

              “You didn’t ever want to hide from it. Keep it secret.”

              She expected him to ask what she meant, but something in her face must have filled in the blanks.

              “No,” he said, straightening slowly. “It was never like that for me. I never wanted it to be.”

              “I was never in love with him,” she said, because she needed him to know that. She couldn’t just let him hope or wonder, but needed him to hear it straight from her lips. “I was really young, and stupid, but it was never real.”

              His mouth twitched, and she thought he was holding back a smile. “Well, you’re still really young…”

              She lifted her brows.

              “…end of sentence.”

              “Yeah.” She snorted. “That’s what I thought.”

              But the feeling was still spreading through her veins, warm and fizzy, like stolen champagne.

              A complicated expression flickered across his face as he came to sit beside her. He was big, and solid, and radiating heat that might have been from the shower, but might have just been him. He looked at her, very serious, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat when he swallowed. “You know,” he said, “when we were packing to come, I made a promise to myself. I decided that if we got back here, and you were happy, and you were glowing, and you wanted to be back here – back home – I’d leave you in London when this was done.”

              An awful sensation, her stomach dropping out from under her, like at the top of a roller coaster. “What?”

              “Not sneak off. Not leave you like that,” he clarified, eyes deep and sad. “But I would have let you stay here, if that’s what you really wanted.”

              She swallowed. The heat was still there inside her, unbearable at this point, and that terrible sense of falling, too. “Derek–”

              “But I think that was a really stupid thing to promise myself, because I know I can’t do that now.”

              There were a dozen things she wanted to say to him; she wanted to agree that he was incredibly stupid for thinking such a thing. But she said, “Oh,” and reached for him the same moment he leaned into her.

              He urged her down onto the bed and she went, hands passing up the heavy muscles of his arms, his shoulders, finding the tender places at the back of his neck. He smelled like soap, his clean skin soft and warm. She melted when his kissed her; shut her eyes and opened her mouth to him, arching up into the shelter of his body.

              He propped up on one arm and pushed her shirt up with his free hand, broke the kiss just long enough to pull it over her head, hair rustling as it settled around her shoulders and ears again. She dug her nails into the knob at the top of his spine, caught her lip between her teeth when he skimmed his palm down the flat of her stomach and then between her legs.

              She spread for him, locked her thighs around his waist and tugged at the knot in his towel, until she had all of him naked above her. “Please.” She didn’t want the long teasing foreplay; she just wanted him inside her.

              He made sure she was ready, fingers sure, breath unsteady against her throat. And then he entered her, working in slowly, almost sweetly, until he was buried to the hilt.

              Michelle held the back of his head, held him close to her, his ragged breaths against her skin, the steady roll and surge of his hips tortuous and perfect.

              This, she thought. Not London, not Texas, not a flat, or a clubhouse, or a room, or a street, or an address of any kind. This. Love wasn’t secret, wasn’t forbidden, wasn’t an obstacle or a weakness. It was home.

Thirty-Eight

Albie

The thing was, he’d never given a damn about what society thought was “acceptable.” He was an arm’s dealer, for Christ’s sake – in London, no less. The law was something to work around, and it had nothing to do with morality.

              But within the brotherhood, there was an honor code, and Paul was in violation.

              That was the basic fact of the matter. But in a not-at-all-basic sense, the betrayal went much, much deeper. Paul had gone away when Michelle was eighteen, which in Albie’s mind spelled “too young.” All those times Paul had been loitering at the shop, and Michelle had come in, fresh-faced and delicate as the first spring flowers. And Paul had…

              He couldn’t allow himself to play it out in his head. He would be too murderous if he did.

              As it was, though…

              He waited until Candy and Michelle were gone, and then he waited just a little longer, nursing his whiskey. Paul was still at the bar, working on his third drink when Albie slid out of the booth and approached him. “Brother,” he greeted, as he took the stool next to Paul.

              Paul nodded in response, head hung low over his glass, fingers too tight around it.

              The prospect passed, brows lifted in inquiry. Albie shook his head; no, no more drinks for him. His head was clear and he wanted it to stay that way.

              Paul lifted his tumbler and threw down the rest of whatever he’d been working on, finally turning to Albie with a half-hearted smile. “So. In the morning.”

              “In the morning, yeah.”

              Paul looked devastated. “Why do I have the feeling I’ll be right back where I came from by the time it’s over?”

              “That’s always the risk.”

              “Spoken like a man who’s never been kept in a cell,” Paul said, with no small amount of bitterness.

              Albie sighed. “Guess that’s fair.”

              He could see it – for a brief flash that made him hate himself – why Paul had put himself on that stool beside Michelle earlier. A drowning man who’d just been given a lifeboat…and then a storm kicks up the waves and he thinks he’s going back in the drink again. So even though there were groupies ready for the taking, all set for a quick fuck, Paul had wanted something familiar and comforting instead.

              Even if, in this case, it was fucking disgusting.

              “Come take a walk with me,” Albie said, and squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll show you what we’re taking with us tomorrow.”

              “Yeah. Okay.”

              They walked down to Maude’s, and the scents of leather and hewn wood had an instant focusing effect on Albie; there was no room for sentiment here. He flicked on the lights and silently locked the door with a turn of the key, pocketed it afterward as Paul preceded him deeper into the shop, heading for the back.

              Down in the vault, Paul braced his hands on the workbench, swaying a little. Too much whiskey. He whistled appreciatively. “Shit, look at your stash. Little bit of everything down here.”

              “Yeah. You should see the Škorpions I just got. Gorgeous.” It was easy as anything to step up behind his friend. The knife slipped soundlessly from his sleeve, the hilt filling his palm. It was a wicked, smooth length of steel, and it caught the light when Albie moved.

              One hand in Paul’s hair, the other on the knife, and he had the man bent back awkwardly at the waist, blade pressed against his carotid.

              Paul gasped and flailed.

              “Stop moving,” Albie said in his ear, and dug in a little with the knife, so he could feel its bite.

              Paul stilled.

              “Now,” Albie said, “I’m going to ask you some questions, and it’s going to be very important that you answer honestly on the first try, because there isn’t going to be a second try. Understand?”

              “I – I…” But he and Paul had been friends too long for him to misunderstand. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

              “Good. First question: How old was Michelle when you first touched her?”

              Paul took a breath, hesitated.

              Albie pressed until the first pearls of blood welled up against the knife’s edge.

              “Sixteen,” Paul said on a deep exhale. “But you know she was never mentally sixteen–”

              “Next question: Did you break her heart?”

              “I broke things off with her.”

              “That’s not what I asked.”

              “I don’t think so, no. She never loved me.”

              “What did you think would happen if I ever found out?”

              Paul’s eyes closed, and when he swallowed, the knife jumped in Albie’s hand. “This. I knew this would happen.” Tears beaded beneath his lashes, shiny in the glare of the overhead light.

              Albie pulled the knife away and gave a hard yank on Paul’s hair, throwing him down flat on his back on the concrete floor. He was shaking, he realized, as he reached for a cloth to wipe the knife. “Fuck you,” he whispered. “Fuck you, fuck you,
fuck you
.”

              In a clumsy scramble, Paul sat up and put his back to the gun case behind him, reaching up to press a hand to the wound at his throat. It wasn’t deep, but the blood rolled down his neck in thin trails. “How is it any different now?” He sounded hurt. “Why aren’t you threatening to slit Candyman’s throat?”

              “Because she’s Candy’s queen. And not some dirty betrayal behind his friend’s back.”

              Paul didn’t respond, and Albie twisted around to look at him.

              “We’re done, by the way. Me and you. Don’t ever speak to me as a friend again.”

~*~

Albie stayed down in the vault longer than he needed to, after Paul was gone. He opened up the case where he’d stored his new Škorpions, just to offer himself a distraction. Checked them needlessly.

              When he was sufficiently calm, he went back up and locked up. Stepped through to the front of the shop and –

              Paul was laid out flat in front of the desk. Fox was sitting on a stool, legs crossed, the picture of calm, blackjack in one hand, bottle of vodka in the other.

              “What the shit?” Albie asked him.

              Fox shrugged and raised the frosted glass bottle to his lips. “Figured you were going to give him a talking-to. And I had a few things to say, too.”

              On the floor, Paul groaned and started to come to, reaching to cover the lump forming at the base of his skull.

              Albie sighed. “This is why you and me don’t need to live in the same city.”

~*~

Jenny

“What do you think?” she asked.

              Beside her, Colin stared at the house and nodded. “I like it.”

              “You do?”

              He glanced over at her, smile more of a smirk. “Baby, I’ve been living with your brother for over a year. You could show me a house made outta cardboard boxes and I’d like it.”

              She laughed. “Point taken.”

              The house she’d driven them out to see was a ranch, wind-scrubbed desert stone skirting around the base, brick-red wood siding above, with white window trim, white door, white flowers in big ceramic urns on the porch. She’d liked the split-rail fence in the online photos, and in person, she liked the gentle slope of the yard, and the substantial three-sided carport that would shelter her Jeep and his bike.

              Those were the practical things, though. Not so practically, she loved the sunlight that came through the kitchen windows, the black flecks in the white granite counters, the claw-foot tub in the master math. Imagine that – a master bedroom and bathroom, all to themselves, a wall between their room and Jack’s. An incredible luxury.

              “The colors make me think of a barn,” Colin said, squinting at the house again.

              “In a bad way?”

              “No, just in a way.”

              “You want to put in an offer?”

              “Yeah. I do.”

              Happiness, she thought, tasted like fresh strawberries, and Colin’s kiss, and felt like the kind of dizzying drunk that never made your head hurt.

              “Well, y’all?” the realtor, Kim, asked, too-white professional smile splitting her face in half as she finished locking the house up and clipped toward them in her pumps.

              “We want to make an offer,” Colin said.

              “Oh, wonderful!”

              Jenny heard the car approaching while Kim whipped out a zippered folder full of paperwork, and she twisted to glance back over her shoulder.

              A dark blue Kia pulled to a halt at the curb, and Agent Elijah Riley climbed out from behind the wheel.

              A stomachache slammed into her immediately. Oh shit, what was this? What did he want? How had he even found them here?

              Jenny walked toward him, not wanting Kim to hear whatever he might say, not wanting Colin to get in any sort of physical altercation with the man.

              Riley halted a few steps from the car and shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis. His polo shirt was rumpled and looked slept in. His face looked even worse.

              Jenny folded her arms and squared off from him. “Are you stalking me?”

              He gave her a humorless smile. “I just wanted to come say goodbye.”

              “Right. Because I’ll miss you so much.”

              His expression didn’t change. He was deeper in his own head than he was here in the moment, she thought, watching the sun strike his glazed eyes. “I’ll be riding a desk the rest of my career. Fleming got the cartel bust. I’m just…I’m just done.”

              “Are you expecting sympathy?”

              He shrugged. “No. You did ruin my family, though.”

              “Your brother ruined himself. And then you followed. Don’t ever expect a shred of remorse from me, Elijah.”

              “No. No, I wouldn’t expect it.”

              Slowly, like a broken man, he climbed back into his car and started the engine.