by J. R. Ward
“Is that you, Danny?” the bride called out from the kitchen.
“Yeah. Hey, Deandra.”
He walked through to the back. The lady of the house was at the stove, a pair of pink hot pants upholstering her ass, her silver lamé blouse so tight the only more revealing option would have been body paint.
As she turned around, he realized she’d gotten breast implants. And from the way she arched her back and pushed those bags of saline out at him, it was clear she wanted him to notice.
“Long time, no see.” She smiled, showing off caps. “Can I make you a drink?”
“Where’s Moose.”
“Out back. Where else would he be. It’s not like all of his friends are coming over and he’s expecting me to do all of the work by myself. Hey, why don’t you help me in here? I’ve got lasagna made with gluten-free noodles, and gluten-free bread, and I was just cutting up organic vegetables. You could toss my salad.”
Her hair was lighter by a couple of shades, and he wondered, if this trend kept up, whether she’d have a triple-H chest and Daenerys Targaryen’s coloring by Easter. And he knew exactly what she was playing at.
Danny shook his head. “I’m not good in the kitchen. Sorry.”
Deandra’s heavily lashed lids lowered, her smoky eye going down right stinky. “Anne’s not coming, you know. I spoke with her this afternoon.”
Ah, yes, all the charm I remember so fondly, he thought.
“She’s really busy.” He turned for the back door. “Let us know when the food’s on.”
If it had been anybody else, he would have stayed and helped because it was rude to have only one person cooking for five or six. But considering it was Deandra? He was going to follow Moose’s example.
Opening the slider, he stepped out into the unseasonably warm night. The back porch was half-finished, the planks stopping partway across the frame—and the project was going nowhere until after the winter, Danny was willing to bet.
Ah, yes, the sprawl was starting.
The back acreage was all cleared meadow circled by a ring of forest, and Moose was starting to fill it with crap. The two-car garage had been turned into a workshop and there was a commercial dumpster, a transport box trailer, two rusted-out cars, and half a dozen drums full of God only knew what metastasizing outward.
No doubt the guy was going to gradually fill the field to the property’s tree line with that kind of stuff.
Danny got to walking, closing in on the glow of the lights as Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” got louder.
“Dannyboy!” Moose’s voice boomed from the garage. “My man!”
The guy ducked out from under a raised, rusted-out Shelby Mustang that was about as structurally complete as his porch and far, far older than he was. With a Bud in one hand and a wrench in the other, grease was his middle name: the stuff was on his UMass T-shirt and his old Levi’s, and his work boots were black from gunk.
Danny clapped palms with him, nodded at Duff and Duff’s cousin T.J., and gave Deshaun a bear hug. And he was surprised, in a good way, to see Jack, his supposed roommate.
“Where you been, asshole?” Danny gave Jack at hard embrace. “I keep thinking I hear you coming in at night, but nope.”
“At least I’m still paying rent.”
“Good point.”
“Beer?” When Danny nodded, Jack went over to the red-and-white cooler. “Coors Light?”
“You remembered. I’m touched.” As the longneck came flying at him, he caught it and cracked the thing open. “How’s your sister?”
Everyone got quiet, and Danny wanted to curse. Some things were best not asked about. On that note, he was hoping no one else brought up Anne.
“She’s the same. You know . . . the same.”
“I’m sorry.” He took a swig and looked at the car carcass. It had been blue once, and the engine as well as all four tires had been removed and were off in the corner. “So, Moose, what’s this mess?”
“Mess? Can you not see the potential?” The guy banged on the steel frame. “Come on, she’s a ’66 Shelby GT350, bitch—one of the first two hundred and fifty-two that were ’65 Mustang K-Code Fastbacks before Shelby American converted them.”
“Jesus Christ, Moose, how’d you get a hold of her?”
“I bought her out of Ohio and just shipped her in today. She’s gonna be gorgeous.”
“After a lotta plastic surgery.”
“All women want that,” Moose muttered.
No, not all, Danny thought as he pictured Anne on that climbing wall. Some recognized they were perfect just the way God made ’em.
“So lemme help,” Danny said. “I like getting my hands dirty.”
* * *
As Anne parked her Subaru at the end of the lineup in Moose and Deandra’s front yard, there was only one truck that she saw. Getting out, she took a minute to pull up her jeans and make like she was checking out the property: good bit of cleared acreage surrounded by a loose fringe of trees and underbrush, a.k.a. Mother Nature’s version of a chain-link fence.
Wow, nice cars, she thought as she headed for the front walkway.
Moose’s eyesore of a Charger was next to a brand-new BMW. Wedding present? she wondered. Then what was the house—the honeymoon?
Knocking on the screen door, she waited. When there was no answer, she backed up and went around to the rear. It turned out to be a good guess. In the gloaming, the lights in the open garage were intensifying and illuminating a classic male-bonding scene: dudes with beers around a car on a lift.
Of course Bruce is playing, what else would be? she thought.
And then it was a case of double takes on the part of the menfolk. Jack and Moose saw her first. Deshaun, second. Duff and T.J., his cousin, third. Danny had his head shoved into some part of the undercarriage, and it wasn’t until he stuck his hand out and no tool smacked into his palm that he glanced out from under and saw her.
His face showed no reaction. His eyes went up and down her body.
“Hi,” she said to everybody. “Sorry to crash, but I decided to change my mind.”
“This is great!” Moose said. “Come here, lemme hug ya.”
She got wrapped in a big embrace, and then she was greeting the others, starting with Danny’s old roommate, Jack. The SWAT team leader was as military-looking as ever, his dark hair buzzed so tight on the sides you could see his scalp, the top like a trimmed hedge. He was wearing an NBPD T-shirt that stretched over his heavy, tattooed arms and camos on the bottom. Even his treaded shoes looked like the kind you could climb Mount Kilimanjaro with.
“Jack, I haven’t seen you in forever.” As she hugged him, it was like trying to throw her arms around a house. “How you doing?”
“Same ol’, same ol’ .” The guy forced a smile. “Everything’s great.”
So his sister had fallen off the wagon again. Poor man. He was more determined than that woman was to keep her alive and on track—and that was the root of his problem.
“Duff,” she said. “T.J., God, it’s been a while, too.”
And then there was Danny.
He was back under the car again, his torso and legs emerging from the bottom like he’d mutated into the Transformers’ old grandpa.
“Hey, Danny,” she said. Back in the old days, whenever she’d been around the crew with him, she’d called him Dannyboy. But you could only do that if you were a member of the club and that was not her anymore.
“Can you hand me the five-eighths wrench?” he said.
“Yeah, sure.”
She went over to the beat-up built-in table, and of course, Moose’s tools were as organized as he was, everything in piles that made no sense. She weeded through, found what she was looking for, and went back over to the Shelby Mustang Fastback.
“Here.”
Danny’s dirty hand stuck out from under, and man, she liked the looks of a calloused male palm. There was something erotic about the strength, the utility, the competence for p
ractical things.
The speculation about how it would feel across her naked skin.
She gave him the tool, but before she could get out of range, he said, “I need another hand in here.”
As he looked out at her, his eyes were not flirtatious. They were factual, and she ignored a flush of pride that came with being asked to help him.
“Yeah, sure.”
Under the car, she was able to stand up all the way, and she inspected the automotive anatomy. They were stripping everything so that the rusted undercarriage and crappy floor pan could be cleaned with a wire wheel and drill, then resealed to form a stable, healthy foundation for the restored car. Danny was having trouble removing one of the corroded brackets.
“Here,” he said. “You hold, I torque.”
“Not going to work.” She leaned out from under the car. “Moose, you got a spot welder? We’ll be here ’til next week with this. Cutting it is the right call.”
“Yeah.” The guy nodded toward the table. “It’s there somewhere.”
“I’ll get it,” Danny said. “Hold this just in case?”
“Sure.”
Anne braced her hand where his had been, and when he shuffled out, their bodies brushed. Sexual attraction, fickle, subversive, and unwelcome, rippled through her.
Don’t get all hot and bothered, she told herself. This is only an excuse to get out of the house and nothing more.
chapter
34
Deandra was actually not a bad cook, Danny decided. It was her ingredients that were for shit.
Okay, fine, maybe it was a case of both a crappy chef and weird components.
As he sat with a plate on his lap in the living room, he picked around the sweaty mess of lasagna with his fork . . . separating the “noodles” from the watery sauce and the cheese that somehow managed to be crumbly even after it had melted.
Across the way, Anne was in an armchair, and everyone else was in the kitchen at the table. Deandra had insisted that people eat inside even though it was one of the last warm nights of the year. Then again, Danny had the feeling she was showing off her furniture—which was why she’d insisted Anne and he go in here.
Jack entered with a second plateful and sat down next to Danny. “Man. What a meal.”
“Do not tell me you like this stuff?”
“Oh, no. I’m just starved. The ‘man’ was for what’s doing in there.”
Anne’s head nodded in that direction. “Awkward?”
“You could fry an egg on Deandra’s forehead, and meanwhile Moose is hammering beer, Deshaun has his coat on like he’s already out the door, and Duff and T.J. look like they want to kill themselves.”
Danny kept his wince to himself on that one. “I don’t get why Moose puts up with it.”
“Have you seen the way she’s built?” Jack glanced at Anne. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Anne smiled. “And she was not built like that at the wedding.”
“Too right.” Jack methodically took forkfuls and put them in his mouth, chewing only once before the swallow like he was on Fear Factor. “So what are you working on at Fire and Safety, Anne? I like arson investigation. It’s fun.”
Anne laughed. “Only you would put it like that.”
Danny gave up on eating and set his plate down on the coffee table. At this point, he was hankering for a cigarette, but there was no way he was giving Jack a chance to sweet-talk his Anne.
Not that Anne was his. And not that Jack was sweet.
Anne started to talk about the warehouse fires she was investigating, and Danny watched everything about her under the guise of paying attention to what she was saying. He didn’t hear a word. He watched her lips move. Her breathing. The way she fiddled with the thumb of her prosthesis.
Her legs as they crossed and uncrossed.
All he could think of was getting inside of her again. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair and he didn’t care. Except this time, he wanted her totally naked. And like, not on his couch for a quickie that she was determined to pretend hadn’t happened.
He wanted memorable that lasted a lifetime.
From out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone lingering just outside the room.
Deandra was in the shadows, and she was staring at him in the same way he’d been looking at Anne.
* * *
The funny thing about Jack was that he was so easy to talk to.
Anne had to force herself to stop speaking. “Anyway, yeah, so I went up and saw Ripkin and he was bizarre.”
“What do you mean ‘bizarre’?” Jack asked.
Even though she’d been addressing the man, Danny was the one she was really aware of, and given the intense way he was looking at her, she decided it was best not to go into too many specifics. Especially about the threat against her mother.
Danny was liable to do something stupid. Like go up to Ripkin’s office and throw the bastard out of a window: One thing you could be sure of when it came to Danny Maguire? He stood up against what was wrong, no matter what it cost him.
“Ripkin’s used to getting his way,” she said. “He’s a successful businessman, and I think he believes the world and everyone in it is his for the taking. But it was nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“Did he come on to you?” Danny asked in a low voice.
“Not in the slightest.” Anne shrugged. “He just did a lot of posturing, none of which impressed me.”
Jack put his clean plate down—which made him worthy of a medal, as far as she was concerned. The lasagna had been like an MRE.
“You know, I have a case you might be interested in.” The guy sat back on the enormous white couch that was big as a river barge. “You talked about finding a lot of office equipment in those fires? Well, we served an arrest warrant on a guy with previous offenses and gun felonies, and found an entire room full of cords, chargers, and parts of monitors and computers—as if he’d been storing a Best Buy’s worth of phones and PCs there, but had to move them quick. He was obviously a black market dealer, and the timing is interesting, is all. I mean you’re talking about office equipment in these fires—and he’s been up on so many charges over the past two years that I wonder if he didn’t burn evidence a number of times.”
Anne was unaware of having sat up straight until she nearly slipped off the slick cushion. “I want to talk to him. And see the case file.”
“You got it.” Jack took out his phone. “Come to our HQ Monday morning. I’ll show you everything, and then you can work your channels to interrogate him.”
“That’s great. Thanks, Jack.”
“My pleasure. I’ll text you tomorrow after I get it all set up.”
Danny got to his feet. “Hey, Anne, come help me with that pan out in the garage? I think we can get it out if we work together.”
“Sure. No problem.”
As she followed him into the kitchen with her plate, she felt like she was walking into a brick wall. The vibe was tense at the table, Duff and T.J. playing eyeball ping-pong, Deandra sitting with her arms crossed over her chest, Moose cracking open another beer. Deshaun was getting up with that coat of his on.
“We going back out?” Moose said with all the hope and anticipation of someone about to be called up from the DMV line.
“There’s dessert, you know,” Deandra said. “But fine. It’s not like you ate anything.”
“I’ve got to go,” Deshaun interjected. “Thanks for dinner.”
Duff stood up and T.J. was a split second behind. “We’ve got to head out, too. Sorry. But we’re on shift tomorrow, which was why we weren’t drinking.”
“Aw come on, you guys can stay a little longer.” Moose looked back and forth between them. “You got to stay. It’s frickin’ eight o’clock.”
But there was no stopping the tide, and Anne was glad to be on the forefront of the evac, even if she was arguably heading deeper into Moose and Deandra’s territory instead of away from it.
She a
nd Danny were quiet as they walked back to the garage, and as she entered its cool confines, he stayed by the open bay and lit a cigarette with his Bic. The sun had long since set, and it was dark out, but the lighting from the rafters shone down on him, making him seem even bigger.
As he exhaled over his shoulder, she went across to Moose’s tool zoo. Working through the tangle, she started to make piles of screwdrivers, wrenches, vises.
“You’re a huge help, you know. With the car.”
She looked over at him. “It feels good to be doing something with my hands. Hand.”
“Yeah.”
“Deandra is a god-awful cook.”
“Moose could stand to lose some pounds.”
“He’ll be lucky if that’s the only thing she takes off of him.” Anne shook her head. “I knew they were making a mistake at that wedding. I just didn’t expect it to get this bad this soon.”
“It’s their bed. They gotta lie in it.” He turned his cigarette around and stared at the lit tip. “Listen, I got a favor to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
“Talking about hands and all. I could use an extra set out at the farm tomorrow. I don’t have many good working days left on the property, and I could finish what I started if I had another hauler for the debris, another person on the saw.”
Anne followed his example and inspected the star-shaped tip of a Phillips-head. The idea of being outdoors, conquering a tangle of brush, having something with an easy start and finish, was exactly what she needed. But Danny was always a complication.
“I’d really appreciate it,” he said.
She thought of her mother. For Nancy Janice, Sundays were church, lunch with her girlfriends, and usually a movie and tea. Lots of people, places, busy, busy. There was a chance that she might feel compelled to stay home to be polite, though.
“Can I bring Soot?” Anne asked abruptly.
chapter
35
To Vic Rizzo, fall Sundays were sacred, and not because he was religious. He was as lapsed a Catholic as a man could be, much to his mother’s disgust and heartbreak. No, if he was lucky enough to get the Lord’s day off rotation, he worshipped at the altar of ESPN, prepared to do nothing but veg in front of the TV and work the remote around college and pro ball games.