Cora
The “grand room” of the rent-by-week apartments was, in Cora’s opinion, anything but grand. It was a single room that tried to be a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room all at once. It was only the linoleum that separated one area from the other. It came pre-furnished with a couch, a dinette set, and a recliner, all in shades of brown.
“Awesome,” she muttered as she moved past the kitchen, which she hadn’t bothered inspecting just yet, and to the larger of the two bedrooms. Her suitcase was already camped out on the bed ready for her to give it the time of day. She really didn’t feel like unpacking right now. She wanted to go back in time to where she’d never taken her mother’s call.
No, she decided, that wasn’t fair. Her mother hadn’t been the reason she had come here. Oliver was. Cora was sure, deep down, Oliver was a good kid. He was just young and frustrated and acting out. She understood.
“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 it was eight-thirty. Most places would be closed, but she was sure something was still willing to seat the pair of them.
“Hey, Oliver?” she asked, knocking on his partially closed door. He had a cellphone to his ear, chatting quietly to whomever was on the other line. She had a sneaking suspicion it was that Finn guy.
She had known exactly who and what Finn Marks 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?” Oliver 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. Cora 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 Oliver tapped on her door.
“Hey, Cora?”
“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. Cora found herself wondering which “friends” were going to be at the pool hall. Hadn’t that Finn criminal called himself Oliver’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 Cora 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. Cora was guessing 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. Cora wasn’t sure 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.”
Oliver’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 Carl’s Pool Table, but no one had called it that since the original Carl had declared 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 Cora 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 Cora’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,” Oliver 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.
“Cora? Cora, is that you?”
Cora 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.
“Wes?”
“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 Wes, 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 Violent Spawn. 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 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 Bobby 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 escorted 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 weirdoes 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 Tommy 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 Cora’s misspent youth, the inside was an homage to Wes’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.
Oliver 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 Finn…Oh look…he was here.
Finn 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 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 it made them look tough. It didn’t. It made them look foolish. But Finn’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 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, Cora silently admitted to herself, Finn is the kind of attractive that would look at home on the front of a magazine.
“You wanna get a table?” Wes asked, looking just a little hopeful.
“Wes, 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, Speed.”
Wes gave a little jump and turned toward the voice. It was Finn.
“Did he just call you Speed?”
Wes shrugged in embarrassment, flashing her a grin. “Well, yeah, you know. It is my name.”
“What, your super-secret criminal name?”
Wes 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.”
Cora’s brows knitted across her forehead. She could feel the furrow lines all the way up to her hair. “I don’t think Power Rangers have nicknames.”
Finn 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. Cora liked to believe 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 Oliver 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,” Wes said. “Hey, Finn.”
“What’s like an X-man?” Finn asked.
“My name.”
“Speed?”
“His name is Wes,” Cora retorted. “He’s not an X-man.”
“Sure he is.” Finn slung an arm around Wes’s shoulders in a companionable maneuver. His sleeve rolled up and she saw 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 Speed.”
He said it like it was a fantastic joke and she ought to be laughing. Cora just blinked at him until his smile faltered.
Wes slapped a hand on Finn’s chest in that tough-guy motion that some guys enjoyed. “Finn, this is Cora. She’s an old friend of mine and—”
“And Hawk’s brother.”
Cora 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 she wasn’t trying to be attractive. “Hawk? Really?”
Wes gave an apologetic shrug. “It just sorta stuck with him. He does sorta…you know…go off on his own when the night creeps in…and he’s smart, too!”
Cora 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 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.
Cora glanced up and found herself looking into a handsome face the color of wet terra cotta. He 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?”
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 Titan. 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 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 ever 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,” Titan 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 Hawk’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 my boss man is eyeing you like you were a lollipop he’d like to taste, right?”
“Who, Wes?”
“Naw.” Titan shook his head. “The other boss.”
Cora tilted her head until she could see Finn, who was still standing with Wes. 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?” Titan 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, Titan?”
“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 Finn. 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 Finn’s smile. It was the smile of a man who was very confident in himself. He slapped Wes on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Wes shook his head but wandered off anyway to do whatever it was he had just been instructed to do. It bothered Cora that Finn had just bossed around her friend inside Wes’s own business.
Her pizza arrived about a minute before Finn did. He slid onto the stool next to hers, positioning himself so their knees 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 carb-less 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 having to bail my kid brother out isn’t reason enough?”
“Oh no, not for you,” he said, raising his finger so Titan 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 Finn’s shoulder toward the booth where Oliver sat with one arm slung around a pretty blonde.
“Okay, so you think 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 Finn 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 Oliver’s ass out of the proverbial fire. You sweep him up and want to make sure 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 chance to be Aunt Cora.”
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 Oliver 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 Oliver 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 Samantha Anderson.
“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, Cora was forced to admit, high and well-formed. Under different circumstances he could be a model.
“She hit on me,” Finn admitted.
“She did what?” Cora didn’t know why she was surprised. Her mother desperately sought attention—good, bad, or otherwise. Cora 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 Oliver 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 Titan 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 Titan came over.
“I’ve got it.” Finn 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 Titan hesitated.
The small amount of soft feelings he had gained by being legitimately apologetic vanished. Cora 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 Finn looking up at her. She handed Titan 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?”
Titan brought the receipt back, and she signed off on it.
Finn made a strangled sound. “Did you just give him a five-hundred-dollar tip for two glasses of wine?”
“I also paid for Oliver’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 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. Marks?”
“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 Oliver. The other time was when you talked about Oliver. You legitimately care about him. Fine, I can respect that. But I also know you think Oliver should stay here and join up with your little club. So I think 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, Cora, 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.
Cora 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?
“Finn’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 Wes does very well.”
She turned on her heel and called to Oliver. 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.