Chapter TWO
MONDAY AFTERNOON, AUSTIN waited in his truck for Leah Reece to return to her apartment. His plan was simple. Bump into her, start a conversation, eventually get her to trust him enough to tell him about her long-lost, piece-of-shit brother. If that didn’t work, he’d move to plan B.
Problem was, plan B was slightly illegal and could get his ass thrown in jail. He didn’t like jail.
He’d concluded that in the first fifteen minutes of his sixteen-month stay.
But it was worth the risk to get to DeLuna—the man who’d put him there.
He frowned. How late did vets work?
According to Roberto’s description, the woman was petite, young, and pretty. Which sounded almost as bad as “a good personality.” Even if she wasn’t some hot babe, she had the young part going for her, so what was she doing working twelve-hour days?
Hell, maybe she left work and went straight to some date. He could be here until midnight. He groaned. Patience had never been his strong point.
A white Honda pulled in a spot across the way. Right color, wrong car, and parked in the wrong spot. Still, Austin paid attention.
A young, small brunette exited the car. Was it Leah? He should’ve done a better upfront investigation. Tyler always accused him of not being a Boy Scout and being unprepared, and maybe this one time, his partner had a point.
Roberto had sent some surveillance images when he’d done his own Leah Reece investigation, but, pissed when the report stated Roberto had struck out, Austin deleted them.
He continued to study the Honda’s driver. She snatched a baby from the back. Damn! Leah Reece wasn’t a mom.
Another car engine roared close by. The brunette with the baby stepped away from her bumper at the same time a red Ford Focus came hauling ass down the parking lot. He slapped one hand on the horn and bolted out of his car. The woman, clutching her baby, jumped back.
“Slow down,” he yelled at the fleeing car, but he doubted the driver heard him over the music vibrating the windows. The woman nodded a thank-you. He nodded back and crawled back in his truck.
He’d arrived in the town of Heartbroke yesterday and got settled into the apartment. Not that it required a lot of settling. He’d hired a rental company to furnish the apartment on Friday. All he’d brought with him were a few clothes, his laptop, his phone, some basic tools, and Marilyn.
Some guys named their boats, their vehicles, or their dicks. Austin had named his Glock.
Never leave home without Marilyn. He pulled out his gun from the glove compartment. He’d cleaned the weapon twice yesterday to pass time.
Another car engine roared through the parking lot. He set his gun on the passenger seat. When a silver Toyota passed, he flopped back against the seat.
Call him optimistic, but he’d hoped to connect with Leah yesterday—and to have already scheduled a coffee date or something. But she’d stayed locked up in her place. He knew because his apartment was next to hers and he’d kept an ear to the wall half the time.
She’d watched TV and talked on the phone. Not knowing if perhaps she was chatting with her half brother, Rafael DeLuna, frustrated the hell out of him. Hence plan B.
When he’d woken up at six a.m. and didn’t hear anything, he’d run to the parking lot, only to find her white Chevy Cruze gone.
On the way to get plan B supplies, he’d driven by her office. Her car was parked in the back. Why couldn’t she have been a regular vet? He really liked his original plan of getting a dog. Partly because he was thinking about getting one. He liked Bud, Dallas’s dog. Well, everything but the gas bombs he dropped.
Leaning back, he stared at the roof of his Chevy pickup. Boredom already had him by the neck and threatened to choke him. If at home, he’d be working a case or shooting the shit with Tyler and Dallas. They shot a lot of shit.
At first Austin worried about how the two of them getting married might change things. It hadn’t. Oh, they didn’t joke so much about getting laid, but he respected that. He’d even found a soft spot for his partners’ wives. They, of course, were always threatening to fix him up…“with a good girl.”
He told them not to bother. He wanted the bad ones.
Another car’s engine sounded, and he bolted up. He was ready to give plan A a shot before risking plan B. He’d brainstormed a few approaches to Leah, but they felt forced, so he decided to wing it.
With women, he could wing it. He might not be the genius like Tyler, or have the diplomatic skills that Dallas had, but Austin Brook had charm. The kind women loved.
Just like your daddy. Tensing to the point his shoulders hurt, he remembered the words of the woman who had the nerve to call herself his mother.
As if fate knew he needed a distraction, a white Chevy Cruze pulled past. Showtime. His heart raced as the car turned into the parking spot next to him. The space designated for apartment 212.
He grabbed his phone and pretended to be talking in case she noticed him. She never glanced his way. And he never took his eyes off her. A curtain of thick, dark hair hid her face as she pulled into the spot.
She parked and brushed her hair back. Lots of soft-looking dark hair. He studied her feminine profile, a small nose, best described as perky, and lips that were… pouty. Most women accomplished that sultry, seductive look with the right lipstick.
He could be wrong, but he didn’t think she was wearing lipstick.
She pulled her hair on top of her head and shoved something in there to keep it up. With her arms up, he got a glimpse of her upper torso, which included her feminine swell of breasts straining against a pink shirt. He wasn’t sure if it was the breasts or the soft cut of her jawline, but it hit. Recognition. She was… familiar. But from where? She turned and glanced toward her backseat, offering him the frontal view of her face.
Shit! His grip on the phone tightened while his other hand locked around the steering wheel. She looked just like the Victoria’s Secret model. The one brunette who had him overlooking the blondes. Hell, he’d spent more nights with this woman—in his mind—than he could count.
Was that her? Was she moonlighting as a model? He’d heard some models did that. She exited her car and walked around the passenger side. She wasn’t the model.
As Roberto had implied, Leah Reece was petite. The angel he adored from afar who posed in sexy underwear was five feet and eleven inches. He knew ’cause he’d surfed her website—fuel for his fantasies.
He mentally measured Leah as she opened the back passenger door. Maybe five-three. He liked them tall, he reminded himself, when he felt the initial stirring of male interest.
She leaned forward to grab whatever it was in her backseat, presenting him a good view of her backseat—a very nice, rounded ass covered in soft denim. The view had his jeans feeling crowded.
“She’s not the model,” he muttered to chase away the stirring in his boxers. It didn’t work. She’s DeLuna’s sister, damn it!
His crotch listened to the second point.
She raised up with grocery bags hanging from each hand. His gaze stayed fixed on her as she started walking.
That’s when he remembered he was supposed to be bumping into her.
She was already in the front of his car. If he didn’t do this now, it wouldn’t work. He twisted for the door, and bumped the horn with his elbow. When he looked up, Leah Reece had her arms in the air, and raining down on her were the bags’ contents.
Oh, hell. This was not a smooth, charm-her-into-trusting-him approach.
Improvise, his gut told him as he reached for the door. Wing it. Hadn’t he just admitted being good at that?
The horn blew. Leah’s breath hitched in her throat. Her arms shot up and her groceries went up with them, some escaping from the bags, others crashing to the pavement inside the thin white plastic.
“I’m sorry,” a deep voice said at the same time her bottle of cheap Cabernet landed with a resounding crack.
Panic still biting her stomach, she took two big backward steps. When her startled gaze spotted the man hurrying toward her, her need to escape vanished. Blond, apologetic blue eyes, clean-cut. Not Rafael, a calming internal voice whispered. Not Cruz. And not someone who looked like one of her half brother’s homeys, either.
She hadn’t realized it until now, but the call from her half brother had put her on edge. The alarm tensing her insides faded, replaced with grief—grief for her bottle of Cab.
“Really sorry.” He stepped closer. All six-foot-plus of him.
“It’s okay.” She knelt beside her discarded groceries, embarrassed at how she’d overreacted. She stared at his cowboy-booted feet and not his handsome face. It wasn’t this stranger’s fault she’d jumped out of her own skin at the sound of a horn. She glanced at the plastic bag holding the wine and saw the red liquid slowly filling the plastic bag. After the day she’d had, she could have used a couple of glasses.
The stranger knelt beside her. His muscled thighs straining against his jeans filled her view. Not wanting to get caught crotch staring, she gazed up at him re-bagging the undamaged goods.
Tongue-tied, she refocused on the plastic bag filling up with wine. Turning her head, she looked to see if the garbage can was still located between the parking spaces. It was.
She reached for the bag with the broken wine, but the good-looking stranger got to it first.
“Let me.” Obviously having seen her eyeing the garbage, he picked up the bag and straightened. A piece of broken glass must have poked through the plastic because wine began to squirt out in a steady stream. Bright red Cabernet hit her pink shirt, across her boobs.
She squealed.
“Shit!” He yanked up the bag.
Up, which meant the stream got her in the face. Her eyes started burning. She blinked.
“Damn,” he muttered.
She slammed her eyes shut, lost her balance, and plopped back on her butt. She fanned her face, hoping to cool the sting in her eyes. The wine bottle hit the ground again.
She heard him shuffling around. “Here. Take this.” Fabric came against her face. “Wipe your eyes?”
She buried her face in the cotton and kept blinking.
“Friggin’ hell,” he gritted out at the same time the roar of a car’s engine and blaring music vibrated the pavement. “That car again!”
Leah felt herself being swooped up. Up into the man’s arms at the same time she heard a car zoom closer.
“Slow the hell down! It’s a damn parking lot, not a racetrack!” the man bellowed out.
Catching her breath, her body cradled against a warm masculine chest, she pulled the cotton fabric from her face and turned her watery eyes to him. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Probably because she didn’t have a clue what to say. It wasn’t every day she was doused in wine and swooped up by a hot guy whose crotch she’d just stared at.
He scowled. Yet somehow she understood it was targeted toward the driver of the car and not her.
“Are your eyes okay?” Concern tightened the corners of his mouth.
She nodded and tried to blink away the Cab-induced tears. The fruity smell of berry and oak tannins filled her nose, but beneath that she caught the scent of male aftershave.
Spicy.
Earthy.
Nice.
She took another deep breath. Was the wine going to her head? She looked at the bunched-up cotton she used as a towel and realized it was the man’s shirt. And that’s when she realized all the warmth surrounding her was skin.
Warm naked skin. Yup, the wine had gone to her head.
She cut her eyes to his bare shoulder. Then, aware of the feel of his arms holding her, his muscled chest, she remembered Sara asking, Don’t you miss it? “It” referring to a man’s touch and all the sinfully wonderful sensations that came with it.
Like how warm his solid, slightly bulging muscle in his left arm felt pressed against the side of her breast. Like the tingles his other arm sent pressed to the back of her thighs. Even through her jeans, she felt his corded muscles.
Her heart beat to a tune of romance—well, not romance, she didn’t know this man; this wasn’t romance. This was pure lust. She drew in a gulp of air to sober her thoughts. Aftershave and wine filled her nose, a combo that reminded her of lusty romantic evenings.
“Uh. Can… you put me down?” she managed to say.
“S-sorry.” He set her on her feet. “You’re so light, I barely noticed I was holding you.”
Barely noticed? Just the impression a woman wanted to make.
She glanced at his wine-stained shirt and then down to her wine-stained blouse, which had come unbuttoned and exposed her once white, now Cab-pink, bra. She looked up. His eyes dropped to her chest. She slapped his wine-soaked shirt over her wine-soaked boobs and bra. Well, he did seem to notice that.
He swung around as if offering her privacy. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
She buttoned her shirt. After a few awkward seconds, he looked over his shoulder and then turned around.
His blue eyes—baby blue, sky blue—met hers and stayed there for several heartbeats.
“Here.” She handed him his shirt. “I… don’t know if the wine will come out, but if you wash it now, it might.”
“It’s not important.” He hung the shirt over his shoulder and knelt to collect her scattered groceries. Of course, most of them, like the flattened loaf of bread and the carton of eggs oozing yellow yolks, were toast.
“I should say thank you,” she said.
He stood up. “For what? Accidentally blowing my horn and scaring the shit out of you, squirting wine on you and in your eyes, or almost getting you run over?” He laughed.
A really nice laugh. She smiled—especially when she saw what he had in his hands. “How about for saving me from being run over and for… attempting to rescue my tampons.” She took the box of smashed feminine protection. His look of embarrassment came and then went when he laughed again.
She moved and tossed the squashed package in the garbage.
When she faced him again, her gaze shifted from his sexy smile to his bare chest. Needing a distraction, she started picking up the other remnants of her purchases to toss in the garbage. She grieved slightly over her flattened, frozen mushroom pizza, oozing out of the box and wearing a tire track down the middle.
Avoiding his gaze, she grabbed the few items that weren’t complete roadkill: a can of corn, some soup, and a pack of toilet paper.
He held out a plastic bag.
“Thank you.” She took the bag.
Another smile lit up his eyes. “My name’s Austin Brook… shire.”
He seemed to stumble over his name, telling her he wasn’t nearly as confident as she’d originally thought. That made him more likable. She’d had her fill of overconfident, cocky playboys who thought they were God’s gift to women. Guys who made you feel complete and loved until you spent a few years married to them. Guys you were trying to start a family with, and then, bam, you realize they were charging phone sex calls on your credit card and having sex with your neighbor. Yup, she’d had enough of that kind.
Then again, she’d had her fill of all men. And she needed to nip this… cute, funny conversation, which entailed thank-yous, apologies, and a mention of tampons, in the bud before he assumed she was interested.
Of course, he hadn’t really shown any interest in her. Well, other than sneaking a peek at her boobs; but she couldn’t blame him. She’d sneaked a peek at his chest, too. She wasn’t counting the crotch stare. He’d put it in her line of vision.
Ahh, but she didn’t fool herself. Men like him, even the uncocky ones, with his body and blond hair and blue eyes, could snap their fingers and have any woman they wanted. Women like models, superstars, or high-brow types who wore fancy high heels, worked at their six-figure-income jobs, and drank expensive wine.
Not that she considered herself a bad catch. But she wouldn’t trade in her career for anything highbrow. She was good at her job. Even if most of her income derived from removing testicles.
Someday, when her school loans were paid off and her brother’s education was taken care of, she’d be able to afford a pair of Christian Louboutin high heels. God knew she could use a few inches. Maybe she’d even find the means to buy something better than a screw-top bottle of Cab.
Realizing his gaze had returned to her chest with interest, she stepped back. It was good-bye time.
She cleared her throat.
He gazed up, looking a tad guilty, and focused on her face. “That’s odd,” he said.
“Odd?” She glanced down and didn’t see anything odd about her boobs. They were perfectly good, wine-doused, small size-C boobs. Well, one was a little bigger than the other, but that was normal. “What’s odd?”
He bit back a smile. “Not your…” He almost laughed. “I meant, usually when someone tells you their name, the other person responds by telling you their name. I told you my name. And your name is…?”
She hesitated. “Leah.” She sat her salvaged bag of goods at her feet and picked up the last of her run-over groceries. A couple of egg yolks slipped from the bottom of the demolished egg carton. One plopped on her jean-covered thigh, and another made its way down to the toe of her tennis shoe.
Yellow goo ran down her leg and the sides of her right shoe. She realized she was pretty much feeling that way inside. Gooey.
And it was his fault. His smile. His naked chest.
“Just Leah?” he asked.
“Yes.” She cringed, realizing how silly she sounded. “No. I mean…” You won’t need to know my name. “Leah Reece.” Ignoring the mess on her jeans and shoe, and the mess that was called her life, she stepped away to toss the items. Moving back to where he stood, she snatched up her bag. “And… I should be… need to get going. I have… calls to make.”
“You live in the apartments?” He inched closer.
She nodded, a car eased past and the driver stared at them, and she realized how odd they looked, him shirtless, her covered in wine and eggs.
“Can I help with your groceries?” he asked.
She held up her one bag and tried not to let her gaze go to his bare chest. “I got it. But… thanks.”
Offering him her best smile, because that was all she could offer, she walked away.
Don’t you miss it? Sara’s question echoed in her head again.
Hell, yes, she missed it. But what she didn’t miss was the pain that always followed the pleasure.