Versions (The Blacklist Series Book 1) (2 page)

H
uman remains
? Nate coached a championship football team. He taught kids on a roller-coaster-cocktail of pubescent hormones how to handle a car without killing themselves. Occasionally—and even more dicey than dodging head-on collisions—he talked reproductive systems while subbing in health class. Not even college-level health classes discussed cremated bodies.

Playing house? With who? Her? Someone else?

No. No to all of it. Rin pulled in a shaky breath. This was obviously a wrong number. The lingo sounded cop-ish. They lived in the capital, where the crime rate kept pace with the ever-expanding population. Surly a cop’s fat fingers dialed the wrong number.

Weird. Just weird.

A shiver wracked Rin’s body. She chaffed her arms to ward off the chill, but couldn’t. She stumbled back from the phone and into the closet. She clutched the stand of shelves to the right of the door, steadied her wobbling legs, and perused half her wardrobe without actually seeing it.

The shower cut off. She almost jumped out of her heels. He hadn’t been in there long at all…because they were going to have dinner with their friends and they were running late…because they’d just fucked like feral beasts. Rin’s pulse lurched despite her mental pep talk.

The bathroom door creaked and Nate’s footsteps padded out, all high-pitched traces of the trilling annoyance gone. Rin didn’t dare turn around. He’d call her a crazy fool for getting worked up over a text that had nothing to do with him plowing another woman. Then he’d laugh all night, sharing the story with their friends at her expense.

She was curious to see his reaction to the text though.

He passed behind her in the suddenly too-small closet. She swallowed an impossible knot.

“It’s five-hundred degrees outside; why are you looking for a jacket, babe?”

She cleared her throat. “Restaurants are always cold.” Where had that come from? In a confrontation she usually stammered like an idiot and thought of the perfect retort the next day.

He shifted through some clothes and then tossed his towel into the hamper. His stubbly chin grazed her shoulder. “That’s why you bring me along, to keep you warm.” The deep rasp of his voice usually drove her to the corner of hot and horny, but now the nearness only coagulated her blood.

She watched from her periphery as Nate left the closet with a pair of slacks and a button down slung over his bare shoulder, his phone in hand and his thumbs flying over the keys.

She waited for him to laugh. To tell her about the wacko who sent him a crazy message and the bullshit he’d put him through with his series of replies. She waited while he dressed, while he corralled her into a Jaguar coupe he shouldn’t have been able to afford, while he weaved them in and out of traffic. But it never came.

The fancy car slid into an elusive end slot on the storefront’s block on 14th. He shut off the engine and kicked his head to the side. “Babe, you’re quiet as a corpse over there.”

“Am I?” she replied. His phrase sank into her overburdened brain and she squinted to keep from going bug-eyed. “Guess you just screwed the sense out of me.”

A smirk settled on his lips. “We’re here. So, get your mind out of the gutter.” When he got out and closed the door his chuckle dissipated. He sauntered around the front, his husky frame eating the space between the two cars like a midnight snack. Her door opened under his hand.

Rin forced a smile, planted her feet on the asphalt, stood, and sidled out of the way. But he shut the door and reeled her in close, banding his arms around her shoulders. Automatically, her arms encircled his middle as far as they could reach. Nate tugged her closer still, smothering her with a kiss.

Her fingers bumped hard metal at the small of his back—if anything about his bulkily muscled back could be considered small. The rigidity in her stance doubled. In the early days of their relationship, he’d packed a pistol everywhere they went. With staunch Republican views, Rin embraced his right to carry, but honestly she liked guns better in theory than reality. The longer they’d dated the less often he’d carried the thing—in deference to her, she’d thought.

“Why the pistol?”

“Because you’ve got me starched again.” He ground his hardening length against her core.

“Very funny.” Rin turned and tried to side-step out of his arms. She found herself barred in his arms, trapped between the car and his equally immovable chest. She should have like it, would have liked it…before…

“I have it to keep you safe, babe.”

Only she didn’t feel safe at all. A pervading sense of isolation gnawed on her nape like a starved animal, as if the ground had opened up and swallowed everyone else in the world. Her swollen tongue wouldn’t allow her to speak, but Nate didn’t look to her to say anything. He snagged her hand and pulled. “Come on, hot stuff. Let’s go have some fun.”

She shuffled behind him on the neat sidewalk lined with buildings that were none too spectacular when considering the hype this street saw from droves of her peers. Nate hit his stride and her legs scissored in a quick flutter. The tight leather of her shoes rubbed the beginning of a blister onto her delicate skin. “Can you slow down a bit?”

“Yeah, sorry.” He dropped back and wrapped her arm in the crook of his elbow. “Got a little overexcited I guess. It’s been a hell of a day. I’m ready for a drink or ten.”

“We should have taken a cab,” she whispered.

“Nah. I want ten. I’ll have one.”

“Then maybe I’ll have ten.”

“That’s my girl.”

At the most swank eatery until Le Diplomate a few blocks up, they passed an outcropping of glass framed in thick rustic metal and then turned right. Through the concrete entrance the hostess’s practiced hands ushered them across the stone floor to their waiting friends.

“Rin!” Jen squealed, hopping from her smooth wooden chair. “Get out. I freaking love your hair. And that dress. Oh my God, are those Choos?” The exuberant brunette fanned herself with Barcelona’s extensive drink menu.

The crowd around them didn’t skip a beat, caught in the din of their own merriment. This place did that and Rin was ready for some indulgence of her own.

“Perfect timing.” Zach’s green eyes shifted behind her, toward the kitchen.

Jen’s breath caught and she leaned to the side, peering around the outfit she’d just gushed over. “Forget your Choos and get a load of our waiter. Please be our waiter. Please be our waiter.”

“They’re called servers,” Gregory chimed with his charismatically crooked grin. He stood, leaned forward, and planted a big one square on Rin’s lips. She released Nate and wrapped Gregory in a fierce hug. “And these days they tend to sue when ogled too forcibly. So, no groping.” He winked and set her back next to Nate.

“Lawyers,” Rin mirrored her best friend’s lopsided grin. “Always spoil the fun.”

She and Nate laughed for the first time since the text, but none of their friends noticed. They all stared in unabashed awe at the person coming to take their order.

“I’m ready to pick a team and erect my flag in the dirt. This guy seals the deal. Gay all the way. Sorry, ladies, but this nugget of manliness has finally made a decision.” Gregory smoothed his hand over the cream cable-knit sweater that hid his leanly muscled physique.

“Erect your flag or your dick? In the ground or our server?” Jen asked. “I have zero qualms about calling him a server, because I’d let him service me any day.”

“I prefer the latter.” Gregory sat wide-eyed.

“Something’s wrong with you two,” Zach announced.

“But I don’t see you looking away,” Nate noted. “And I hope y’all know what you want to drink. Jen and Greg, your prayers are answered in three, two…”

Rin couldn’t get over her friends’ reaction to this guy enough to turn and look for herself. She needed this camaraderie to ease the sting of loneliness, even though Nate’s beefy hand wrapped securely around her upper arm. The realization of the superficiality of their relationship—crazy text or not—raised the curtain and left her standing on stage in nothing but her sparkling personality.

“Evening, gentlemen. Ladies.” The silken honey of the unfamiliar voice coated her nakedness in a soothing balm. The waiter cleared his throat. The low rumble vibrated very near her ear. “What can I get you, miss?”

She canted her head in his direction. Surprise smacked her square in the face. Smoldering bedroom eyes gazed into hers. The crystal blue orbs pierced through a strong brow and straight into her soul. Rin stepped back, stumbling over Nate’s feet. A thud sounded her landing against her boyfriend’s hard chest.

“Whoa, there,” the waiter said, maintaining an invisible grip on Rin that made it impossible to look away.

Blond hair only a shade darker than her own sat in disarray across his forehead, but was shorn close around his ears. The hint of a beard hugged the strongest jaw she’d ever seen. Lips the perfect shape and fullness for hours and hours of kissing would have softened the blow his appearance delivered, if he’d only smile.

“You startled me,” she said by way of explanation for her odd behavior.

“Wasn’t my intention.” He said the words, but his head ticked to the side and his eyes flared in a way that opposed them.

“What’s your name, gorgeous?” Jen asked.

“Call me Luck,” the waiter said, holding Rin’s befuddled gaze.

Nate steadied her and shifted to place himself between her and the…her and Luck, but a massive party of suits poured in to their left. They crowded the walkway with banter and briefcases. The man screwing with her head—more than her shrink ever had—could have stepped to the side of the table toward Zach. Instead, he stepped forward, crowding her with his sharply muscled chest tucked neatly into a waiter’s white button down. Chiseled forearms and lightly sun-kissed skin shown at his rolled sleeves.

Whether someone shoved him or he took a dive she wasn’t sure, but his sinewy chest suddenly plastered her front. One arm wrapped around her waist, catching her in a subtle dip. His other shot out to the chair back to steady them. She swore she heard Gregory moan. Luck’s muscles in action did something sinful to her psyche.

“Jackass, I’m not into threesomes,” Nate blustered just behind her head. She’d see him, if she’d tear her gaze off Luck. But she couldn’t.

Luck lifted his heavy blue gaze from her for the first time and squared it on Nate. “Me neither.”

Until that moment, she’d been sure Nate could have defended her honor or his ego against any man. He probably outweighed Luck by fifty muscle-dense pounds. Luck had a foot of height on him, but his calm voice and confident demeanor had her more than second guessing the outcome. Then again, Nate had a gun.

For the oddest reason, she didn’t think that would matter if the two got into it.

“Luck,” Rin said, “how about you tip a girl upright and bring her a Peroni, a glass of Casarena cabernet, a Goose Island, a Bourbon Spice Rack, and a Hot Delilah…make that two Delilah’s.” The first impression of a smile lightened the corner of his mouth. He straightened and released her, his hand sweeping firmly over the sway of her waist. The touch lingered for far too long. “Anyone else feeling a double?”

Whether they wanted it or not, her friends declined. Luck nodded and sauntered off as though he had not a care in the world. As though Nate didn’t blow smoke from his ears behind her.

Rin pulled out the chair across from Gregory and sat.

“A double? Shit, I need a bottle
and
a cigarette after that.” Jen gave her fan another workout.

“Shut up,” Zach chided with a finger-shove to her shoulder, but he only spurred her giggles.

“Sit, babe.” Rin pulled out Nate’s chair and tugged his hand.

He sat with a huff. “That bastard better not show his face over here, if he knows what’s good for him.”

She rubbed her hands together and hoped she never saw him again. Luck. His name should have been Misfortune because he was the only person who’d ever looked at her and seen everything she struggled to hide every hour of every day. Add him to the heap of crap she didn’t understand about tonight.

“Here you are,” another unfamiliar voice rumbled several minutes later.

In unison all the heads at their table snapped up, except hers. Rin already knew it wasn’t
him
. Slowly she turned to a wide-smiling guy with chin-length brown hair. He deposited the drinks they’d ordered on the table in front of the person whose eyes lit up at the raising of their drink of choice. Good for the waiter that he got to Nate’s last, because the surly sourpuss only glared at the tumbler of whiskey.

“I’m Pete and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I get you guys started off with an appetizer or are you ready to hear our specials? Oh, by the way,” he added with a shake of his finger, “the drinks have been taken care of.”

Gregory and Jen’s mouths gaped and they nearly clapped, while the other two only groaned.

“We’ll need a few minutes, Pete. Thank you.” Rin nodded.

“I’ll check back with y’all in a few.” He smiled and retreated to a table across the way.

Everything lulled for several beats. Rin looked off without seeing anything but the demons in her mind. Under the table a shoe tapped her own, bringing her head around. Gregory’s high cheeks flushed and his eyes widened in question. She gave an imperceptible shrug. She didn’t know the question and she sure as hell didn’t know the answer.

“You think the Skins will cover the spread on New Orleans this weekend?” Zach asked Nate, knowing well enough—from coaching together—to ease the tension.

“Only if Griffin’s ankle can stand the action.” Nate’s response was half-hearted, but it only took two more questions about offense and turnovers before the men blazed down the He-Man-football path.

Jen sidled close to Gregory and mouthed, “Wow. That guy was
fucking
hot.”

Rin’s blonde locks tickled her shoulders as she shook her head in mock disgust.

“So, tell me,” Gregory demanded, “what brought out the swan in our little duckling?”

Happy for the distraction, Rin launched into the deets of retail and salon therapy with Gregory and Jen pitching in their own tails through the ordering, the drinking, and the noshing of their exquisite meals. Having worked for years in a men and women's high-end boutique in the Northwest District, Gregory had plenty of ammunition for the best stories.