Emily

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“I’d love to help you, honey,” my mother said, “but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I sighed and swiveled in my chair, watching through the office doorway as the stylists in the salon swept the floor and gossiped. We had a small lull with no customers, and things were under control. I needed to go pick up my car, which Luke had texted me was now fixed. The problem was, I needed a ride.

“Why isn’t it a good idea?” I asked Mom. “You just need to take me to Riggs Auto and drop me off. I’ll take it from there.”

“It just isn’t,” Mom said. She added tightly, “You couldn’t get your car fixed at any other place in town?”

Right. Mom was a cop, Mike Riggs was in jail, and everyone assumed Luke was a dirtbag just like his father. And no one—least of all my mother—knew that three days later, I was still riding high from the night of orgasms I’d had in Luke’s bed. I’d snuck home at four in the morning that night, tiptoeing into my bedroom while Mom was still asleep. God, I still couldn’t believe I was twenty-six. One of these days I’d grow a spine.

“Luke isn’t so bad,” I heard myself say. “I went to high school with him. He’s giving me a deal.”

“I recall perfectly well that you went to high school with the Riggs boys,” Mom said. “I wouldn’t take a deal from any of those kids.”

“He’s not a kid, Mom. And why are we having this conversation? It’s already done, and my car is already fixed. If you won’t take me to pick it up, I guess I’ll call Dad.”

Mom snorted. “He won’t do it. He always relied on me to take care of details like this.”

Right. My family was cracking up. I tried Dad anyway, getting him at the office a few minutes before he left work.

“I can’t do it, Emily,” he said when I explained. “I just ordered a new sofa and I’m told it’s coming in an hour.”

“A new sofa?” Lauren had said Dad had a reading chair and a box of Jell-O. “That sounds permanent.”

Dad sighed. “I have to have somewhere to sit. Just stop worrying, okay?”

No. I was going to worry, because Dad had bought a sofa. You buy a sofa when you don’t plan on moving back into your house with your maybe ex-wife. “Mom already said no,” I complained before I remembered who I was talking to.

“She did? Why?”

“Because my car is at Riggs Auto, and she said it wasn’t a good idea.”

“Yes, that’s probably true,” Dad said, adding to my bafflement. “What else did she say? Anything about me?”

Oh, Jesus. “Dad, I’m not playing this game.”

“She hasn’t called me in days. Tell her I need my black dress shoes for work. I forgot them because they’re in the closet in the spare room.”

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “Tell her yourself.”

“I would if she’d answer the phone when I call. I even tried a text. I don’t even know if it went through. Just tell her when you see her, okay? I have to go meet the furniture guys.”

I hung up and swiveled on the office chair again. I actually didn’t mind working for Lauren’s salon. I had the hang of it now, and it wasn’t that bad. Every day was different, there were people coming and going, and I got to be the boss and make decisions. Also, going through the books showed me that the place was nice and profitable. Lauren had picked a good location, with lots of car and foot traffic, and she’d spent years building up a good reputation, making sure she hired the best and friendliest stylists, making sure the place was clean and inviting. The result was a hard-core group of regulars who wouldn’t go anywhere else and told their friends.

My sister had done a kickass job, and she was making money, but I could see why she was stressed out. Being the boss meant doing the stylists’ schedules, handling things when they were sick or late, and juggling a hundred different questions a day. It meant taking complaints from the customers who couldn’t be pleased and handling the hard stuff. Just yesterday the credit card system had gone down for three whole hours, most of which I’d spent on hold, trying to get an answer to when it would be back up again.

But I could handle it. I’d gone to college for business, and since then I’d only had internships where no one let me do a damn thing except sit in meetings and look pretty. I wanted to be in the trenches, making a business run, making money. It helped that I maybe had a natural talent for bossing people around. It also helped that during the down times, like now, I got to get my hair cut and my nails done. You took your perks where you could get them.

But it was a drag, not having a car. Lauren dropped me off in the mornings and picked me up at night, and now that I was up to speed, I didn’t bother her for the hours in between. I let her deal with her shit instead. I wasn’t planning to break the rule now—I’d probably call a cab to pick up my car—but the phone rang in my hand with Lauren’s number.

“Everything is fine,” I told her when I answered the phone. “You’re not missing anything. It’s all under control.”

“If you say so,” Lauren said. “Listen, it’s five o’clock and I’m going nuts in this house. Vic is supposed to be home any minute. Want to go out for dinner?”

I glanced out into the salon again. We were open until seven. A customer had come in, and Bettie, one of the stylists, had taken her. Shonda, the junior stylist, was prepping to wash the customer’s hair. Darlene, the manicurist, was sitting at her station texting on her phone—she had a customer coming in ten minutes. “It looks pretty calm here,” I said to Lauren. “We can eat, and I can come back and help close. And my car is fixed, so you can take me to pick it up and you don’t have to drive me around anymore.”

“I like driving you around,” Lauren argued. “It keeps me away from my almost ex-husband.”

This was my life now, listening to two ex-couples complain. Christmas was going to be just dandy. “Well, I want my car back. Come get me.”

“Say please, beeyotch,” Lauren said, which was what we used to call each other when we were fifteen, but she hung up and twenty minutes later we were in her car. “Are we going to Riggs Auto?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, pressing my hands into my lap so I wouldn’t double-check my hair and my makeup. I was wearing shorts, a boho top, and leather sandals, because June was in full swing and it was starting to get hot. I really could not care if Luke Riggs thought I looked good, especially under Lauren’s eagle eye. “Why did Mom tell me that having her drop me off was a bad idea?” I asked to change the subject.

Lauren shrugged. She was wearing big sunglasses and a wrap dress, and she looked like a Hollywood star had just decided to start driving around Westlake. “Probably because Mom has been investigating Mike Riggs for, like five years,” she said.

My spine went cold, then hot. “What?” I said, but my voice cracked so I tried again. “What do you mean?”

She glanced at me. “I keep forgetting how long you were away,” she said. “Mike Riggs is involved with organized crime. Mom was trying to nail him for it.”

“Organized crime?” My voice went up. “Like the mafia?”

“No, not the mafia,” Lauren said. “Like stolen cars. Mom doesn’t say a lot of details, but she told me that much.”

I thought of Luke’s father, a big tall guy with brown hair he’d always kept in a man bun. He had some of his sons’ looks, but years of drinking, smoking, and pot made him look like a faded older version. I didn’t know him very well, but I’d never seen him do anything except sit around Riggs Auto, smoking and shooting the shit with his mechanics. The man didn’t say crime kingpin to me, but there was no chance Mom was wrong.

I wondered if Luke knew. I wondered if I should tell him or keep my mouth shut.

What if he knew? What if he’d always known, and he’d never told me?

“Mike Riggs is already in jail,” I pointed out to Lauren, hoping I was wrong as hell to even think that about Luke.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The shop is still open, so the investigation is still on. Whatever’s going on will probably go on without him, and Mom plans to stamp it out. I’m sure Mike and his buddies are aware the cops are after them. That’s why it’s not a good idea for Mom to be driving to Riggs Auto and dropping you off.”

Yes, that would be weird. It would also be extra weird if Nora Parker’s daughter was, say, sleeping with Mike Riggs’ son. Ha ha. Wouldn’t that be something?

Whatever’s going on will probably go on without him. That meant Luke taking over. But there was no way Luke was taking over his father’s criminal business. Was there?

Was there?

I kept my gaze on the road until Lauren pulled in to the parking lot of Riggs Auto. When I moved to open the door, my fingers ached from how tightly I’d been squeezing them in my lap. Play it cool, Emily, for God’s sake.

One of the mechanics was having a smoke outside the shop’s front door, a tall guy with a beer gut and a scraggly beard. He watched both of us with undisguised greed as we walked by. We stepped inside, blinking as we came out of the sunlight, Lauren taking off her sunglasses. Before I could help it, my gaze found Luke.

He was sitting on a wooden chair placed just outside the front reception, wearing jeans and a navy tee, his inked bicep in full view. He was wearing his ball cap again, the brim pulled down and somehow offsetting his gorgeous cheekbones and the scruff on his jaw. He was leaned back in the chair, one arm slung over the back, one black boot resting against the front of a battered old filing cabinet. He was using the foot to leverage himself as he tilted the chair back, balancing it on its back legs. One of the other mechanics was standing next to him, saying something, and Luke was looking down at his lap, listening, the bill of his cap hiding his eyes.

How anyone looked so good while he was doing something as simple as sitting on a chair, tilting it back and listening, I had no idea—but I ate him up. Basically devoured him with my eyes, from his flexing boot straight up his sexy legs to his flat stomach and those shoulders and arms, the tilt of his chin. It occurred to me that I’d taken him for granted eight years ago, because right now I didn’t understand why there wasn’t a flock of eager women following him around like baby geese.

His chin tilted up and he looked at us, his gaze on me for a hot second before he righted the chair and stood, ignoring the other mechanic and walking toward us. Like last time, he pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands with it. “Emily,” he said in greeting. “Lauren.”

“I hear you fixed my sister’s shitty car,” Lauren said while I stood there with no words in my mouth. Had I ever been around Luke when Lauren was there? Not that I remembered, unless it was in the halls or in class in high school. That final summer, the summer of Luke, Lauren had been wrapped up in her own relationship with Vic, which had been headed for marriage already. She hadn’t paid much attention to me or my love life.

“Yeah,” Luke said to my sister. “I fixed it the best I can. At least it runs, and will for a little while.”

“Uh huh,” Lauren said, narrowing her eyes at him. “How much does she owe you?”

He lifted his ball cap, scratched a thumb over his forehead, then put it on again. “We already worked that out,” he told her smoothly, his brow rumpled like he was confused she was asking the question. “There’s a payment plan.”

Lauren looked at me, and I nodded.

“Follow me,” Luke said, and turned toward the big garage doors in the back.

We followed, me greedily watching Luke’s ass, then cutting my gaze to Lauren to see if she was doing the same thing. She’d never expressed any interest in him, but she was getting divorced now, and come on—hot dirty bad boy mechanic. Lauren was separated, not dead. But her face gave nothing away.

At the back wall of the shop, Luke hit a button and one of the bay doors started to rise. And my sister surprised me by asking him, “How are your brothers doing, by the way?”

“All right, I guess,” Luke said as we waited for the door to go up. “Jace is out of prison now and at a halfway house. Ryan is in Detroit, too. He has a son.”

“I think I heard about that,” Lauren said. If either of them noticed I wasn’t taking part in this conversation, they didn’t let on. “I’m trying to picture Ryan with a kid.”

“No one can picture it,” Luke agreed. “Least of all him. We weren’t big on parenting in my family.”

There it was, Luke’s dad, the elephant in the room. But Lauren didn’t even seem to notice. “What about Dex?” she asked. “How is he?”

Something trickled up my spine, knowledge that ran deep in my psyche. No one, literally no one, would have heard the subtle note in my sister’s voice when she asked that question. But I’d shared a uterus with her, and eight years away or not, I knew Lauren like I knew myself. Holy shit, I thought, forgetting my own problems for a second. Lauren and Dex Riggs?

Luke shrugged, oblivious to my thunderstruck shock. “Dex is still an asshole,” he said. “No surprise there.” The bay door was open now and he led us through to the back lot, where my car was parked.

I followed them, my brain working feverishly backward, trying to remember if I’d ever seen Lauren even talk to Dex Riggs. I couldn’t recall a single time. Lauren had been with her boyfriend, Vic, since they were sixteen, and she’d married him right before her twentieth birthday. She’d really loved Vic, enough to spend years trying to have a baby with him, enough that she’d needed my help when it fell apart. No way had my sister looked at someone else during her marriage.

But I hadn’t imagined that. What about Dex? How is he? The divorce wasn’t the only secret my sister was keeping from me. I’d bet every last penny I’d ever earn on it.

I was pulled out of my thoughts when we reached my car. Luke opened the driver’s door, leaned in to the dashboard—a sliver of his lower back showing as he reached—and stood again, handing me my keys. “Here it is,” he said to me. “Get the oil changed once in a while.”

“I got the oil changed,” I lied outrageously. I never had, because when I went to those places they always tried their hardest to upsell me a bunch of repairs I didn’t need. It was probably because of my blonde hair, and I’d hated that I didn’t know what was really needed and what wasn’t.

So, okay, I sometimes avoided things. Important things.

Luke’s expression told me he didn’t even consider believing me. “Bring it to me for tune-ups,” he said. “Don’t bring it to that fuckface Carmichael over on Fifth. He’ll charge you three times what I do.”

“We don’t even know what you are charging her,” my nosy sister interjected.

But I had it under control now. “Don’t worry,” I said calmly to Lauren, thinking of the crumpled pile of fives and tens I’d given him. “Luke’s rates are very reasonable.”

Call me psychic, but I knew he was amused, even though he didn’t smile. “Like I say, we worked out a deal,” he said.

I took my keys and smiled sweetly at him. “Thank you, Luke,” I said. “Maybe I’ll give you a tip.”

“Always appreciated,” Luke said, touching the brim of his ball cap. His eyes beneath the brim lit on me for a hot, incandescent second, and I was amazed the air between us didn’t go up in flames. Then he looked away again. “You should go,” he said. “Probably best if not many people see you here.”

What did he think? That I was going to go straight home and report on the entire encounter to my mother? I started to protest. “I’m not—”

“We’ll go,” Lauren said, putting a hand on my wrist and squeezing. But the smile she gave Luke was polite and genuine. “Thanks, Luke. Say hi to your brothers for us.”

Luke nodded. “Not likely,” he said. “See you later.”

“Okay,” Lauren said when we were at the Thai restaurant and our dishes were being put on the table in front of us. “You can tell me the truth. Are you giving Luke Riggs sex to fix your car?”

I gaped at her. Even though I’d seen him naked three days ago, I was still shocked at the suggestion. “Excuse me? No, I’m not.” I picked up my chopsticks. “Thanks for basically calling me a prostitute, by the way. Love you too, sis.”

She shrugged, picking up her own chopsticks. “Em, he just fixed your car for free.”

“Like we both told you, we worked something out.”

“Something that doesn’t include you giving him any money or your credit card when he gives you your car back,” she pointed out.

This was why I’d avoided coming back to Westlake for eight years. Eight years of lovely, nosy-family-free privacy. Right now, I missed those lonely years. “I gave him a deposit, not that it’s any of your business,” I told her, probably futilely. “I am not giving him sex for car repairs.”

It wasn’t a lie—I’d given him a hundred bucks, I planned on giving him more, and I wasn’t giving him sex for car repairs. I was giving him sex one hundred per cent for free. Frankly, I’d be giving him sex if he’d left me on the side of the road that day. And with the look of him burned on my brain right now, I was wondering when I could give it to him again. I’d thought it might be a one-time thing, but I decided not to fool myself. If Luke didn’t have a woman, I was going to go there again.

If he didn’t have a woman.

Luke better not have a woman.

“Well, he was giving you a look,” Lauren said, poking through her pad thai noodles to find a shrimp. “And he sure grew up hot. Good lord.”

I dug my own chopsticks into my rice, stabbing it. I hadn’t thought about this aspect of Lauren being single. She’d been off the market so long, I forgot that when it came to Lauren versus me, men usually picked Lauren. “The Riggs brothers are all hot,” I said. “At least they used to be.”

“Yeah, they were,” Lauren said, taking the bait. A little smile crossed her lips. “Remember Ryan in that baseball uniform? We used to go watch his games just so we could look at his ass.”

Ryan had been pretty spectacular. “Jace had that broody intellectual thing happening,” I said. “That tortured bad boy-poet vibe. You just wanted him to recite something dirty.”

“I never thought Jace was as bad as the teachers made him out to be,” Lauren said. “He just seemed sort of shy, unlike the others. Like he got a bad rap. Luke had that wickedly cool car, remember?”

I remembered. As soon as he’d turned sixteen, Luke had gotten his hands on an old Mustang that he’d fixed up and painted forest green. The engine had been as loud as a freaking Metallica concert, and he’d roared in and out of the school parking lot every day, leaving a cloud of choking smoke. It drove adults nuts. Even at the time, it had been kind of funny.

I couldn’t help prodding for my sister’s reaction, so I lied: “I always thought Dex was the hottest Riggs brother, though. I mean, if you like the bad boy thing? He had it in spades.”

While Ryan was an athlete and Jace was smart and Luke was just outrageously cool, Dex really was a bad boy. He had the slouch down to perfection and his looks were sleepy and dangerous, like he’d just come from a wild all-night party. No one had any idea how he passed high school, because he was rarely witnessed actually in class. If there was an award for “Most Likely to Snort Drugs Off a Woman’s Ass,” Dex Riggs would have won the vote. The fact that he became a cop surprised everyone, and the fact that he was later rumored to be dirty surprised no one at all.

Lauren just looked sad, though, as she looked down into her plate. “Dex isn’t redeemable,” she said. “He never was.”

I stared at her for a long minute, but she didn’t elaborate. Okay then. Dex Riggs and my sister—there was something there. I just didn’t know what.

“Why did we do it?” I asked her.

Lauren looked at me. “Why did we do what?”

“Treat the Riggs brothers like dirt. Like trash. Like everyone told us to.” I put my chopsticks down, the thought making something uncomfortable rise in my throat. “Why didn’t we just talk to them? Treat them like anyone else instead of like the plague? Make friends with them?” I looked at her. “Why didn’t we rebel?”

We hadn’t. We’d been good girls, Lauren and me. Cop’s daughters. Straight A students. I’d never even gotten a haircut my mother disapproved of, let alone something crazy like a tattoo. Lauren and I were girls who would never date guys like Luke or Dex Riggs—but also girls who would never talk to guys like Luke or Dex Riggs.

Until one night, during a big football game, I’d run into Luke Riggs at the Fire Pit.

Even then, I hadn’t admitted I’d ever touched him. I still didn’t.

And suddenly, that really fucking bothered me.

Lauren didn’t know about me and Luke, but she knew what I meant. She still looked sad, and she shook her head. “They didn’t want our friendship, Em,” she said. “If we’d offered it, they would have laughed.”

“We don’t know that,” I argued.

“Yes, we do.” Anger flitted across her expression, and for some reason I knew she was thinking about Dex. “They would have laughed in our faces. We were at the same school as the Riggs boys, but we were on different planets. And it seems like it should be different now, but now it’s worse.”

She meant Mom investigating Mike. Mike being in jail. Organized crime. Organized freaking crime. In Westlake.

I bit my lip. Maybe it was noble to think that the differences between Luke and me didn’t matter anymore, because we weren’t in high school. But I was a realist, and the fact was that by sleeping with Luke, I was still crossing a line.

Chances were, he knew something about what his father was up to. Or he was taking over the operation entirely.

He was still on the wrong side of the tracks after all this time.

And I still wanted to cross it if it meant seeing him. I just didn’t know what the consequences would be.