Cocky F@#ker (Tangled Desires #3) (7 page)

I’m breathless. Shell-shocked from the sudden loss of closeness. It leaves me weak-kneed and shaky.

“What you’ve always done to me.” His voice is gravelly, quiet. Then he’s gone and the bathroom door swings quietly into place.

Fuck.
My ass finds the edge of the counter as I take a couple unsteady breaths. What the hell am I doing? What is he doing?

What we’ve always done. He’s right about that. My jaw clenches involuntarily, as his words echo in my ear. Nothing is different. He’s still an asshole. He’ll be gone at the first opportunity. Shaking up my world and leaving me to pick up the pieces is what he does. And I’m an idiot for forgetting it, even for a moment.

Insanity. That’s the definition of my attraction to Mace and why I try so hard to break it. That’s why I asked Rush to lie to him after our mistake of a marriage, after he cut and run without so much as one word to tell me why.

***

I’m sitting at one of the tables at Sam Bucca, waiting for my half-sister, Gaby. We’re having lunch because we barely see each other despite technically living in the same house. But between work, college, and the amount of time I spend with the Hadleys, we’re both rarely home.

People would probably think it’s odd that I spend more time with my pseudo-adoptive family instead of my real one, but my family was never very close. Mom did the best she could for us, raising us girls on her own until we were old enough to give her the freedom to enjoy the single life she never could when we were young.

I don’t really remember my father. I have fragments of a picture in my head. Blond hair, green eyes, like mine. He left when I was three. I guess he couldn’t hack the responsibility. Or at least that’s what I figured out when I learned to read between the lines of what my mother said.

Gaby’s dad left, too. But at least he didn’t cut her out of his life the way mine did.

“Hey, sis.” Gaby waves as she enters Sam Bucca and scurries between the tables. “Sorry I’m late. Deni and I were studying and I kind of lost track of the time.”

“What were you studying?”

She plunks down in the chair opposite and gathers her corkscrew hair in her fist before securing it with an elastic band. “Boys, of course.” She laughs, picking up the menu. “Which reminds me, when was the last time you went on a date?”

She’s staring at me over the top of the menu, her brown eyes solemn. As though I’m not able to handle my own love life, which apparently I’m not, since I can’t get Mace Hadley out of my head. He’s seriously ruining my life, or at least, my ability to be a rational human being. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Because you should.” She drops the menu on the table and leans over it. “Deni’s brother is
hot
, in a drop dead gorgeous kind of way, and he’s your age.”

“Oh my God, are you trying to set me up?” I stage whisper.

Slumping back in the plastic seat, she rolls her eyes. “I’m only trying to do my sister a favor. You’ve been crabby lately. Maybe you need to clear out the cobwebs in your hoo-ha.”

I cannot believe the words coming out of my little sister’s mouth. She’s barely nineteen. Six years younger than me. When the hell did she turn into this? “Oh my God, shut up. I don’t need to clear out any cobwebs. I don’t have cobwebs.”

“Fine,” she says. “But, if you change your mind, Dean said he’d be happy to take you out.”

“Did you tell him you wanted him to deal with my cobwebs?” My face is flushed. I must be freaking radiating heat. I can’t believe Gaby would embarrass me like this.

“No.” She purses her lips. “We didn’t tell him you need to get laid. Neither of you have a lot of time for meeting people. We just suggested that maybe you two could have a couple drinks.”

“The answer is no, Gaby. Honestly, I don’t need my little sister organizing my love life.”

“What love life?” She smirks, getting up from her seat and thrusting out her hand. “Do you want your usual?”

“Yeah. Sure.” I take cash out of my wallet and hand it to her.

What the hell is the world coming to where my little sister thinks she can do a better job of managing my personal life than me?
I watch her get into line. Truth is maybe she could. I certainly haven’t got any game. I haven’t dated since high school, not that I’m willing to tell her that. And I’m definitely crabby.

But I think that’s because I haven’t been getting enough sleep. It has absolutely nothing to do with being around Mace. So what if every time I’ve stayed there since he came home I’ve been unable to sleep, knowing he’s right down the hall. Probably awake. Imagining him thinking about me, his hand wrapped around his cock, stroking it.

I grind the heels of my palms to my eyes, trying to block him out of my head. I’ve become one-track-minded since he came back and being close to him isn’t helping.

But then the nights I stay at home, I have these fragmented dreams, bits of the past and our current situation slicing together, that leave me staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’s sleeping. Knowing he probably isn’t, since he doesn’t sleep much.

I guess it has something to do with what he told me about his not being able to do his job anymore. I want to ask him about it. There’s a couple times I’ve caught him staring into space, this look in his eyes that makes me he think he’s hurting far deeper than he’ll ever let on. It tears me up.

It’s only because we’re family. We grew up together. We were close once. It has nothing to do with the fact that I still to this day wonder what our lives would be like if he hadn’t left me in Vegas.

Maybe I should date again. Perhaps getting out there is exactly what I need to stop focusing on him. But probably not with someone my sister sets me up with. And not, I realize, until I file the annulment. I dig through my handbag to find it’s still there. Why the hell can’t I do it already? It doesn’t mean anything. It never did.

“What have you got there?” Gaby slides the tray of food and sodas onto the table before dropping into her seat.

“N-nothing. Just some paperwork I forgot to deal with.”

Her brow furrows, and she narrows her gaze on me. “Are you lying? You know I can always tell when you’re lying.”

“Of course not.” I close my bag and hang it over the back of my seat before picking up my wrap. The garlic and lamb smells like heaven, and my stomach growls as I bite into it. “So tell me about Dean.”

Mace

I’m sick of this house. Of not having a routine in place, or a plan in action. It’s doing my head in, especially since it gives me way too much fucking time to go over every mistake I’ve ever made. It’s funny how most of them revolve around one girl. I fucked up. I’ll own it, but I was ready to forget, to forgive, if she’d asked it of me.

It was probably best that things went the way they did. I pour my second, or perhaps it’s my third cup of coffee of the morning. I’m way too fucking edgy and running isn’t cutting it anymore. More miles hasn’t made the difference I’d hoped they would.

And something is going on in this house. Between my siblings. I can fucking feel it. There’s an undercurrent, but I don’t know what of. I press my fingers to my temples as Razer joins me, grabbing the juice from the fridge and pouring himself a glass. “Didn’t sleep?”

“Never fucking do.” I swirl the tan liquid around in my cup, watching it circle. “What are you up to?”

“Thought I’d take Claire out for a ride on my bike.”

“She’s got you wrapped around her little finger.” I’ve been back for a week, and I’ve barely seen my best friend. Little Bit’s monopolizing his time, and I get that she needs him right now. She’s been through hell with that bastard she was engaged to. I have half a mind to find him and let loose some of this irritability on him. But she doesn’t want that. For some reason she’s perfectly content to let karma knock him on his ass. I wish I thought the world worked like that. “She still not doing well?”

“Claire’s stubborn and strong. You know that.” There’s something about the way he’s talking that gets my attention. And when I glance at him he’s got that look on his face, the one where he’s got something to say, but he’s keeping his mouth firmly shut. “She’s moving on with her life.”

He exhales sharply, his brow furrowing as he taps his fingers against the glass he still has his hand wrapped around. He seems jittery. It’s almost the same way he behaved the last time he and Lil Bit were under the same roof when he fantasized himself in some sick kind of love with her. Falling for our sister was ridiculous in the first place. Not that he knows I know. But, doing it again, screwing around with her, that would be fucking depraved.

Sure, they’re not blood related, but they may as well be. He’s been part of our family so long now I don’t see any difference between him and my other brothers. I’d have to knock him on his ass. He has to know that. But then I’m not much better, am I?

Fucking Chelsea.

The girl I shouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, any pole, my dick. And yet I still want to, still want the girl who’s practically family and still considered my brother’s. I’d get my ass handed to me if my family knew about us. Hell, Rush would come home for no other reason than to put me in my place. But I don’t think he knows. I didn’t get the impression she ever told him exactly what happened between us. Maybe I should tell him. At least it would bring him home and the rest of my family would be happy to see him.

No, nothing’s going on with Razer and Little Bit. It’s just me. Transferring my shit on to other people. “Good. Then she won’t mind giving you up for the day. We can go blow shit up like we used to.”

“Missing it already?” He bumps a hip against the counter. “To be honest I never thought I’d see the day you weren’t in the action.”

“Yeah, well, what do you know, fucker?” I blow out a breath. “Maybe I’ve changed.”

“Maybe.” He stares at me intently. I doubt he believes me. I wouldn’t believe me. “Let me tell Claire and we’ll go.”

“Sure.” I finish my coffee while I wait. I’m going to need to find a way to deal with this ever present agitation if I’m truly planning on staying here, because being an asshole to my family isn’t fucking on. I need to find a way to blow off some steam, or maybe a way of avoiding things that rile me up. My mind wanders to Chelsea, and our last conversation in the bathroom. Or rather, how wound up she made me, because it’s not like I can remember anything I actually said to her while she was standing there in a T-shirt and those sexy-as-fuck panties. It has an almost identical effect on me now, my cock straining at the button of my pants. She’s probably why I’m so agitated now, and not because Razer is hiding something. The urge to hunt her down and convince her to spend an afternoon riding me is intense. Yeah, I bet if I found her she could help me blow off some steam. I’m almost ready to ditch Razer for exactly that purpose when he comes back into the kitchen.

Scooping up his helmet from the pile of motorcycle gear near the door, he grins. “Let’s go.”

We don’t actually blow stuff up. Instead we ride. No conversation. No bullshit and lies. Just cruising the open road with the occasional competitive moment of speed.

We end up on Red Dog Hill. It’s this lookout that gives panoramic views of the entire town. We used to come up here sometimes when we were bored, or we wanted to get shit-faced, or stick our dick in a girl. Well, that was mostly Rush and Raze. Not that I didn’t make out with my fair share of pretty girls, but I was more interested in drinking and smoking than the girls who thought one bang would make them girlfriend material.

“Should have brought some beers,” I say, climbing off my bike and hiking down one of the smaller rocky paths that lead to an old picnic table surrounded by grass.

“Got a hankering to reminisce?” Raze takes a seat on the graffiti covered wooden planks that make up the tabletop. A whole lot of the artwork is new, but the etched lines, where the wood has been dug away, that was us.

I run my fingers over the spot where I used to sit. The lines are still there, though not as sharp as they once were. I consider taking my pocketknife out and redoing them. Instead, I sit. “Nah. Time to move on.”

And it is. It should be. That’s exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. Putting the action behind me. Finding a way to block that kid’s face from my mind, to stop blaming myself for the things I can’t do anything about, that are on record as an accident. But, that doesn’t stop me from coming up with every possible scenario that would change every damn one of my fuck ups.

“So are you going to tell me why?” Raze asks. He has this calmness, this stillness inside him that used to balance out my edginess. I think it’s because his life was so shitty before he became part of our family that once he had us he was able to just be. We had his back, and that was enough for him.

“Nothing to tell.” I shrug. “I wanted a change. Now I’ve got the opportunity.”

I’ve been talking to a couple companies about doing security gigs here in town, and I’m trying to convince Tommy boy he could do with some help. Perhaps even expand that business of his. There’d be enough work for the three of us if Razer wanted to stay put. I’m finally starting to feel like I’m making inroads. If only it was that easy to shake off what happened to send me home, but that’s not something I want to get into with him.

“I’m just waiting for a few things to fall into place.”

“You’re full of bullshit. Claire and Tom, they might believe you, but I don’t.”

I jump off the table. The thing is, I did my time talking about this. And being talked at about this.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
That’s what the shrink said as she peered at me over the glasses that made her appear owlish. The lack of sleep, the nightmares, and the sudden outbursts of anger all tied in to watching that girl die. Of course I already knew that. I didn’t need some woman with a Ph.D. to tell me what was wrong with me. Or why I got the shakes every time I picked up a rifle. And I was handling it.

I am handling it. I’m not falling apart. I’m not doing drugs or engaging in dangerous behaviour. Unless I count trying to get close to Chelsea at every possible chance, which is probably far more dangerous than I want to admit. I just can’t get a grip on things yet.

I rub the back of my neck. I need to shake off this buzz of energy that creeps over my skin, this intense restlessness in the pit of my gut.

And I want to ask him if there’s something going on with him that I don’t know about. I’m dying for some confrontation. But I don’t. Razer’s had flings, one-night-stands. Nothing but fun since high school. And if he’s trying to get into bed with my sister, I don’t know how I’m going to handle that. She doesn’t deserve to be another notch on any guy’s bedpost, let alone a man who’s my brother. I don’t want to be the one to enforce the pact us boys swore to when it came to our sister. Not like this, not with him.

The buzz increases until I can hear it in my ears along with the steady thump of my pulse. I can’t lose it. I can’t let this paranoia get the better of me. So I don’t ask. I don’t want to know.

“Time to go back,” I say, marching away from him, back up the incline to where our bikes are, hoping that by the time we get back to the house the ride will have cleared my head again.

Chelsea

“Has Henley stopped sending you those emails?” I ask Claire as we sit on the steps to the deck, soaking up the afternoon rays. There’d been a few nasty missives this past week that had sent the boys into a tizzy, though Claire wasn’t particularly bothered. Mace has been a cantankerous bear. Stalking around, glaring, like he wants to kill the bastard. Which, I totally get. She’s his baby sister, and I’d be the same if it was Gaby. Razer and Tom seem to be less aggravated but they made her take a refresher course in self-defense.

I wonder if that’s because of whatever happened to bring Mace home. When I think about him I get this feeling of emptiness, or like I’m not sure what to do with my hands. It’s like a muscle memory that has me wanting to touch him. Or, I don’t know. Hug him, as if that’s what he needs to sooth him.

“He has.” She’s slathering on sunscreen in an attempt to keep her pale skin from burning. The oversized sunglasses perched on her nose hide most of her face, but she gives a tight smile. “At least something is going my way.”

“I thought you and Razer were—”

“I don’t know.” She puts the sunscreen bottle down and picks up the tall glass by her feet. “We’re not exactly talking at the moment. He thinks I don’t know my own mind.”

I roll my eyes. It’s such a man thing, especially with her brothers. Thinking they know everything, that they’re the only ones who could be right. But I’m guessing she’s not seeing the funny side right now. “So Gaby wants to set me up on a date.”

“What?” Claire turns to face me, her eyes probably bugging out behind her sunglasses. “Isn’t she still in high school?”

“Are you?” I ask pointedly. “Everyone grows up, eventually.”

“Sorry. I didn’t think.” She lifts the glass to her mouth and takes a sip. “I’m going to like this story, aren’t I? How exactly did this happen?”

“She said I needed someone to clear the cobwebs out of my hoo-ha, and she knew the perfect guy to do it. Her best friend’s brother. Apparently he’s my age and drop dead gorgeous.”

“Oh my God.” Claire squeals. “I can’t even imagine your sister saying something like that.”

“Believe me, I was flabbergasted.” And I have no intention of letting her set me up with Dean, or anyone. I’d indulged her over lunch that day, but the truth is I’m not interested in dating anyone. I wish I were, but my head is filled with Mace, and until I find a way to move on, I’m not going to be good for anyone. Not even a pity date. “She says he’s a really sweet guy.”

“So are you going to?”

I jump when I hear Mace’s voice. It’s deep and rumbling and it sends a shiver straight down my spine.

“Are you going to let him clear out your cobwebs?”

I don’t know how long he’s been standing there, and by the way Claire’s eyebrows shoot up she didn’t realize he was there either. “Eavesdropping, dickhead? Is that your new hobby now that you have all this spare time?”

“You learn a lot by listening, Little Bit. The things I know.” He taps the bridge of his nose and winks at her.

“Skulking around in the shadows is creepy even for you. You’re not freaking Batman.”

I press my lips together to hold in laughter as I roll my eyes and end up snorting. “I don’t know. Batman was a cocky fucker too.”

“Yeah, but I don’t need a bat signal to know when I’m wanted.” He stares at me pointedly.

“Well you’re not wanted now. Can’t you go away?” Claire sighs audibly.

“Now where would the fun be in that when Hells was about to tell us whether she was going to let some guy clear out her cobwebs?”

“You’re such a pain in the ass.” She says.

My cheeks are heated and I bow my head so my hair hangs in my face. Normally, I’m not like this. It takes a lot to make me flush, but he manages it at every turn. “What’s it to you?”

“It’s nothing to me.” Mace’s feet come into view, stopping right beside me. “You should go on a date with the guy. Maybe a good rogering is what you need.”

“Rogering?” I glance up at him.

“Yeah. You know, a good fuck. It’d bang the stick up your ass right out of place.”

“Seriously, Mace? Do you have to be so freaking rude?” Claire says, getting up. “Sometimes I can’t believe I’m related to you.”

“You know you love me,” he brags, but he isn’t looking at her. He’s staring down at me with this intense focus, this I’m-the-only-man-you-want-and-I-know-it look that has my skin prickling.