Chapter 17

Branna

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It’s just tit for tat. I’m just settling the score, because O’Sullivans don’t owe anyone favors. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I find myself standing in front of the stove with a full carton of eggs, frying them sunnyside up for Cooper for breakfast.

Hey! I have to eat, too. I’m being a good roommate. I’m -

“Something smells delicious.”

That sexy growl makes me jump half a yard in the air, like a bubble brained teenager. For God’s sake, I’m nineteen and I grew up in the heart of the Irish mafia in Boston. I didn’t have lullabies, I had gunshots putting me to sleep. I’ve cleaned out bullet wounds, thrown dinner parties for my dad’s crooked associates in the BPD, and seen a new recruit with sloppy gunwork lying with his brain splattered half across the tar after a run-in with the Armenians. I don’t frickin’ jump like a little girl because of some blue-eyed man.

“Lost in your thoughts there, sweetheart?” He rests his hands against the edges of the stove, his arms fencing me in and his cock hard against my ass. Whoa. I was not expecting that. Even less so, my body’s responding jump somewhere south of my belly button.

“I didn’t realize you were up” I say, coolly. We’re playing a game of attraction chicken and I’m not going to be the first to crack and acknowledge the heat. What heat?

“Mmm,” his mouth is right by the side of my face, his breath hot on my ear. “Can’t sleep when I’m hungry.” He growls the last bit and I don’t think he’s talking about food.

“Well, if you’d back off, I could get this ready much faster.” That’s the Branna that I know — defensive, ten foot barbed fence around my heart, and sharped-tongue. My damp panties, clinging to my body from the sudden moisture, betray that my body hasn’t caught up to my mind yet. What the fuck is this.

“Maybe I need to show you how I like my eggs.” Cooper reaches for an egg from the carton, grinding his rock hard cock further into my ass. If we weren’t dressed, I’d be half a virgin already. He puts the egg in my right hand and his hand over mine. If this were any other guy, mansplaining how to cook an egg to me, he’d have a knee to the groin already. But Cooper’s hot breath against my skin intoxicates me and I’m powerless to stop him. I don’t like this. This is danger.

I don’t stop him. He guides my hand to tap the egg against the edge of the pan and pulls my fingers back to separate the eggshell and let the translucent and yellow insides spill out into the hot oil with a sizzle.

“You like that?” Cooper growls, taking a hand off the counter and drawing it along my face, from my forehead down to trace my jaw.

“I —” I can hardly keep my knees from buckling and I hope his hand doesn’t keep going down to my throat, or my heartbeat will betray the cool facade I’m barely maintaining as is. I clear my throat. “I know how to make eggs, thank you.” I shrug him off, pushing him back with my shoulder. He falls away, though I know I couldn’t move him even if I wanted to. I’m glad he’s off of me and I can think again. But there’s also a yearning for the heat from a second ago. Damn.

I fry up the rest of the eggs and make some buttered toast on the side.

“Grab some plates” I tell Cooper as I bring the food over to the table.

“You think you run the show here, sweetheart?” Cooper asks, grabbing plates.

I shrug. “I didn’t suggest it, but if it feels right...”

Cooper sits down at the table and looks at me with that piercing gaze that feels like it goes straight through all my walls and right into me. “I could teach you a thing or two about ‘feels right,’ pretty girl.”

My heart hammers in my chest. I sit down across from him and take a big bite out of a piece of toast. What did I get myself into?

“I’m not a sweet guy and I don’t roll over for the new girl,” Cooper says, his tone serious and his face straight.

“I’m not asking you to kow-tow to me,” I shoot back, cocking an eyebrow at him. “I can hold my own without kiddie wheels, thank you.” I don’t know what has gotten into me.

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Cooper growls.

“Do you?” I ask. Ha. Like he could.

“I’m not going to mess around with you, sweetheart,” Cooper says. “If you’re mine, there are no take-backs.”

My breath catches in my throat. I can’t do this. This is not the plan. I can’t bring Cooper into my world. He thinks he’s so tough with his jacked muscles and hard exterior, but he’s a human and the mafia is so much more. When it’s a man against the mob, no man stands a chance. A bullet will end a muscle-bound warrior just the same as a soft skinny boy, no discrimination.

“How are the eggs?” I ask. It’s a non-sequitur to end all non-sequiturs, but to my relief, Cooper looks more amused than pissed off.

“They’re good eggs,” Cooper says. But he’s still looking at me, hungrily.

As soon as he leaves for the gym, I do the only logical thing that I can do.

I set about doing all that I can to move out of the apartment, and get far, far away from Cooper, as soon as possible. Finding a second job that would accommodate my job at the tattoo parlor, with its variable shift end times, proves impossible. I don’t give up, though, since I know that this place was an absolute steal and I can’t afford another place, or to move back into motels, unless I make more money. Luckily, Tamryn talks a lot and I have an ear for business.

One evening, the parlor is almost empty, except for a last client getting some body work in the back room, and I’m washing tools while Tamryn is going through the appointment book.

By which I really mean, spinning around in her wheeled office chair and gossiping.

“Karma’s a bitch,” she starts.

“Oh?” I say.

“Uh huh,” she nods, vindictively. “My cuz, Julie, is such a little slut. Do you know what that skank did to me?” 

Of course not. “No, but I would love to hear all about it.” I smile. Tamryn and I have developed a fun, joking relationship.

“You’re damn right, you would!” Tamryn’s eyes light up, the way they do only when she has a particularly juicy piece of gossip. “Well, I was dating this guy in high school, Bobby. He was cute enough, but not my best-looking boyfriend, and he was such a slacker that I eventually dumped him. He’d just drink beer and game on his computer all day. I’d have to practically climb in his lap with my boobs out to even get his attention!” Tamryn definitely wasn’t the most delicate or prudish of girls, as I had quickly learned. “Anyway, I cut the loser loose when I realized that I’d be taking myself to prom if I didn’t. I needed someone who wanted to do something. Anything!”

“Okay, so Julie is involved how...?” I have to prompt her, if I want to get to the meat of the story before the parlor closes. Tamryn also has a tendency of going off on tangents—and long ones.

“Well, lo and behold, my cousin starts dating him a few years later. Dating my boyfriend!”

“Your ex-boyfriend,” I point out.

“Girl code!” Tamryn wags a finger at me. “Once a boyfriend, always off limits. Anyway, after Julie starts dating him, Bobby decides to clean up, grab his life by the nuts, and go off to medical school. Who knew the guy had the brains for that? I sure didn’t!”

“Mmm.” I nod, agreeably.

“Now Julie’s the yoga-doing, soap opera-watching, stay at home wife of a doctor in a big ol’ house with over three hundred channels on her cable plan, a big mutt, and the kind of fancy wine that you can’t even get in a box.” That last part seems to really irk her.

“It sounds like it worked out well for her,” I say, staying neutral in tone.

“Ha!” Tamryn snorts. “I’m telling you that Bobby was always a two minute flop in the sack. Anyway, here’s the best part—Julie’s now almost eight months pregnant, huge as a whale, and has such high blood pressure that she’s on bed rest. She says it’s from the baby, but my money says it’s all the Ho-Ho’s and Ding-Dongs she must have been eating lately. Ha, good luck getting that little wasp waist she was so proud of back!”

Suddenly, I have an idea.

“You said she has a dog?” I ask.

“Yeah, so?” asks Tamryn.

I’ve always been good with animals, especially dogs. I always wanted one, but Dad didn’t have the time and, since the only kind of dog he would consider acceptable for him to own would be a rottweiler, didn’t think I was up to the task of handling the dog by myself. If Tamryn’s cousin is on bed rest and her husband works all the time as a doctor, that means there’s no one to walk her dog.

“Can I ask you for a favor?” I ask.

“What?” Tamryn looks at me suspiciously.

“I really need some more money and I love dogs. Can you ask your cousin if she needs a dog walker and recommend me for the job? Please?” 

Tamryn brushes the question off with a wave of her hand. “The skank owes me that much. Consider it done.”

“Aw, thank you!”

Sure enough, the very next day I get a call from Julie asking when I can start. And just like that, I have a daily morning jog with Maxie, her slightly overweight mutt, lined up.

Good. The sooner I get out of the apartment and away from Cooper, and temptation, the better. I don’t know how much more I can take.