Outlaw’s Sins

by Sophia Gray

  “Aww, that’s totally sweet.”

  “Right? But she deserves it, so there’s that. But with the rest of it, I bought half of this place. I was sharing it with Tommy right up until he went into the Navy last year. Then I bought it out so the whole place is mine.”

  He stopped and motioned around the inside of the pool hall. If the outside was a time capsule to Cora’s misspent youth, the inside was an homage to Wes’s business sense. The old red booths made of sagging shiny plastic had been updated to rich dark leather tacked in place with bronze studs. The old tables had been swapped for handcrafted wood with a light lacquer finish.

  It looked good.

  Oliver was already tucked into a booth with several teens around his age. That made her feel a little better about everything. If he had just jumped into going to meet Finn…Oh look…he was here.

  Finn was perched on a barstool near the very end. He had swapped the dirty blue jeans he had been wearing at the station for a pair of fitted black ones she knew had to be a recent purchase. Black jeans didn’t stay that dark for that long. Still, he looked good in them. Too many men bought baggy jeans thinking it made them look tough. It didn’t. It made them look foolish. But Finn’s jeans fit. They clung to the slimness of his hips and the muscular lines of his outer thigh.

  The rest of him was good, too. He’d left his hair down so it was a sheet of inky black around his face. It looked better than when he pulled it back, softening the lines of his high cheekbones. Yes, Cora silently admitted to herself, Finn is the kind of attractive that would look at home on the front of a magazine.

  “You wanna get a table?” Wes asked, looking just a little hopeful.

  “Wes, are you flirting with me?”

  “Only for old time’s sake,” he promised. “I mean, we did have that one kiss.”

  She laughed and his grin brightened a few degrees.

  “Hey, Speed.”

  Wes gave a little jump and turned toward the voice. It was Finn.

  “Did he just call you Speed?”

  Wes shrugged in embarrassment, flashing her a grin. “Well, yeah, you know. It is my name.”

  “What, your super-secret criminal name?”

  Wes scratched the back of his neck in an exaggerated show of his musculature and then puffed out his chest. “Aw yeah, like a Power Ranger.”

  Cora’s brows knitted across her forehead. She could feel the furrow lines all the way up to her hair. “I don’t think Power Rangers have nicknames.”

  Finn was sauntering over. In this lighting his eyes weren’t just blue. They were sapphires at midnight. The steady gaze packed a punch that would have turned a lesser woman into a slobbering mess. Cora liked to believe she was anything but lesser. She had no desire to pant after some bad-boy biker. All she wanted was a glass of wine and a slice of the pizza that Oliver had probably already ordered. Maybe two slices. There was a miniature gym at the apartments they were staying at and a pool she could work off any extra carbs in.

  “Fine, like an X-man,” Wes said. “Hey, Finn.”

  “What’s like an X-man?” Finn asked.

  “My name.”

  “Speed?”

  “His name is Wes,” Cora retorted. “He’s not an X-man.”

  “Sure he is.” Finn slung an arm around Wes’s shoulders in a companionable maneuver. His sleeve rolled up and she saw he did, indeed, have tattoos. She could see the bottom of a fin; she was guessing it was a mermaid. He didn’t look like a Japan enthusiast who would go out and get a koi fish. “He’s Speed.”

  He said it like it was a fantastic joke and she ought to be laughing. Cora just blinked at him until his smile faltered.

  Wes slapped a hand on Finn’s chest in that tough-guy motion that some guys enjoyed. “Finn, this is Cora. She’s an old friend of mine and—”

  “And Hawk’s brother.”

  Cora felt her lips form into a frown that matched the furrows on her forehead. It wasn’t an attractive look. It was a good thing she wasn’t trying to be attractive. “Hawk? Really?”

  Wes gave an apologetic shrug. “It just sorta stuck with him. He does sorta…you know…go off on his own when the night creeps in…and he’s smart, too!”

  Cora couldn’t argue that. On the one hand, she didn’t know her little brother well enough to say what he would and wouldn’t do with his free time. The last time they had spent more than thirty minutes together, his world had revolved around Lucky Charms and some monster fighting show she couldn’t remember the name of. Still, that was not what she wanted people to think of when they thought of her brother.

  “Fine, whatever.” She walked past the pair of them and took a seat at the end of the bar. Suddenly she wasn’t feeling particularly nostalgic or sociable.

  It hadn’t been a good day, she mused. It had, in her opinion, been one of the worst days of her adult life. That was after comparing it to the time she’d found her longtime boyfriend with his current boyfriend. It was not a great comparison, but she needed a drink just as badly.

  “Can I get you something?” a voice as deep as a mountain was tall rumbled at her.

  Cora glanced up and found herself looking into a handsome face the color of wet terra cotta. He was attractive and familiar. “Wine. Red if you have it.”

  He nodded and gave her a slight grin. “It’s not fancy.”

  She shrugged. “If this were a five-star restaurant I’d care. As it is? I just had a long talk with my mother and I need wine.”

  He bent, plucked a dark green bottle of wine that had a layer of dust over the glass from behind the bar, and plunked it down in front of her. “If you say so, hon.”

  It was the way he tucked the toothpick in his mouth that made her remember. “Didn’t we have math class together?”

  He laughed and opened the bottle. With an easy catlike grace that you didn’t usually see on bigger men, he poured it into a tall glass and slid it across to her. “We did. My name’s Titan. I’m surprised you remember, seeing as how you were rarely there.”

  She laughed, but there wasn’t a lot of humor in it. “Yeah, but you were. I remember you could solve algebra in your head without a calculator. It was fairly impressive.”

  He shrugged, but his smile was pleased. “It helps when working the bar.”

  She supposed it would. Still, she couldn’t help but say, “If you ever want to switch up in the job department, I run my own company. I’m sure I could find a place for someone who can handle numbers like you can.”

  “Your own business? What do you do?”

  “Communications and Employee Satisfaction Coordination Specialist.”

  There was a brief pause. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “I help companies keep the people they pay happy.” She took the glass and enjoyed a long sip. It might not have been expensive, but it wasn’t bad. “Can I put in an order for a personal-sized pizza, too?”

  “Yeah,” Titan said. “Pepperoni?”

  “Lots of pepperoni,” she said, bringing the wine to her lips again. The sip was long and made her feel warmer than she had since her conversation with her mother. Did snapping at one another until her head was about to explode qualify as a conversation? Probably not, but it was as close as they were likely to get.

  “You are Hawk’s sister.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “That’s what they keep telling me. Yeah, I’m his sister.”

  “It was really good of you to bail him out. He’s a good kid.”

  “They keep telling me that, too.” She shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “You know my boss man is eyeing you like you were a lollipop he’d like to taste, right?”

  “Who, Wes?”

  “Naw.” Titan shook his head. “The other boss.”

  Cora tilted her head until she could see Finn, who was still standing with Wes. His arm wasn’t around the other man anymore, and his eyes were fixed firmly on her.

  “I see.”
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  “What are you going to do about it?” Titan asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered, picking up the glass to swirl the dark burgundy liquid inside. It sloshed around the cup, and she watched the patterns that it made. “I’m not here to make friends.”

  “I don’t think he wants to be your friend.”

  She smirked. “Are you trying to set us up, Titan?”

  “No, but he’s been waving at me to get you another glass of wine. I’m wondering if I should bother pouring it, or if I should just charge him and pretend like I did.”

  She sighed. On the one hand, she really wanted a second glass of wine. On the other, she did not want to be beholden to Finn. Men liked to think that a woman accepting a drink was equivalent to promising sex. It wasn’t.

  “How about you pour me a drink and charge me for it? I’ll make sure there is a very good tip in it for you.”

  “Deal.” He poured and smiled. “I like you.”

  She watched the arc of wine as it spilled out of the dark green bottle. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Finn’s smile. It was the smile of a man who was very confident in himself. He slapped Wes on the shoulder and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Wes shook his head but wandered off anyway to do whatever it was he had just been instructed to do. It bothered Cora that Finn had just bossed around her friend inside Wes’s own business.

  Her pizza arrived about a minute before Finn did. He slid onto the stool next to hers, positioning himself so their knees bumped. She could feel the warmth through his jeans.

  “So,” he said easily, “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.”

  “Do you?” she asked, pulling a slice of pizza away. “I mean, I’m having a problem thinking of a better way we could have started this.”

  “Well, we could have started off like this,” he said, waving his hand toward the bar. “With me buying you a drink, and splitting a pizza.”

  She pulled the pizza closer to her. “I have been on a carb-less diet for three weeks before today. Get your own pizza.”

  He smirked. “Has it been that kind of day?”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got like…five sisters. Three of them like to try out all of those diet fads. They usually go pretty well for at least the first few weeks, and then something will happen that makes them slip up and eat what they aren’t supposed to. Usually binge eat.”

  She savored her first bite of cheese and bread and grease. It was heavenly. It was almost worth going on a diet just so she could break it and really relish the best of the worst-for-you foods. “You think having to bail my kid brother out isn’t reason enough?”

  “Oh no, not for you,” he said, raising his finger so Titan would bring him a beer.

  “Oh, so you know me?”

  “A little. Breaking your brother out of jail isn’t the thing to stress out over. That’s you rescuing him—you feel good about that kind of thing. It was a battle that you won. Chicks like you love winning.”

  “Chicks like me?” she asked, raising her brow.

  “Hardcore ladies who bust balls and don’t take no for an answer. I mean it in a good way, I promise.”

  “Then maybe don’t compare me to a fluffy baby chicken.”

  He took a long swig and slapped his thigh. “All right, that’s fair. Ladies like you like fixing problems.”

  Is that what her brother was? A problem? She glanced past Finn’s shoulder toward the booth where Oliver sat with one arm slung around a pretty blonde.

  “Okay, so you think bailing my brother out is a rescue.” She finished her first slice of pizza and steadfastly moved on to the next. She silently promised herself that she would make use of the gym first thing in the morning.

  “Isn’t it?” he asked. “I mean, you come riding in like Guinevere—”

  “Guinevere wasn’t a knight,” she cut in.

  His eyes sparkled as he plopped one thick fingered hand on the bar. “Okay, you come riding in like Owain.”

  “Not Lancelot?”

  “Do you frequently sleep with married women?”

  “You just called me the married woman who has an extramarital affair.”

  “Woman, am I allowed to get to my point?” He didn’t sound angry, more amused and, perhaps, a tad bit tipsy. She wondered how many beers he had poured into himself before she arrived. He shifted his legs on the rungs of the barstool until his knees were spread wide. The movement swept his knee across her leg, hitching her skirt up a few inches. His zeroed in on the extra bit of leg it exposed. The heat of his gaze made her skin tingle.

  In another life, she might have taken him home. She was a grown woman with a healthy sex drive and enough of an independent streak to enjoy an attractive man when the mood suited her. The problem with Finn was that he was too wrapped up in her brother’s life and represented everything that she didn’t like in a man. He was cocky rather than confident, and he liked to break the law rather than have a real job. No, she decided, no matter how hard he tried, and she was well aware of the fact that he was trying, she wasn’t going to get naked with him.

  She took another long sip of her wine and tugged her skirt back into place. “I guess I should let you.”

  He tapped his fingers against the bar in quick succession. “I’ve forgotten what I was saying.”

  “Something about me coming to the rescue.”

  “Ah, right! Okay, so you come riding in and you pull Oliver’s ass out of the proverbial fire. You sweep him up and want to make sure he’ll get to school and to his court date, and you want to help put him on the straight and narrow in the hopes that he might go to college and get a forty-hour-a-week job with a boring business suit. Maybe give you a chance to be Aunt Cora.”

  He had a good voice, she realized. It was smooth and he enunciated clearly. It was not the kind of voice you got when you went to a shabby public school. He had a lot of sisters. She found herself wondering how many brothers he had and if they had all been homeschooled. How many high schoolers knew who Owain was?

  “It is, of course, my greatest desire to become a favorite aunt.”

  “You said it, not me. Still, the point is, helping Oliver is not enough to push a stubborn lady like you to break a promise to yourself.”

  “All right, that’s a fair point. It wasn’t my brother that drove me to pizza.”

  He finished off his beer and motioned for a second as his own dinner arrived. “So what was it?”

  “My mother,” she said. It cost her nothing to tell him, and there was a fair chance that Oliver was going to be bitching about it, or had been already. “Have you met her?”

  “Twice,” he said. “She’s a…” He couldn’t seem to think of the right way to describe Samantha Anderson.

  “Greedy, attention-stealing, grade A bitch.”

  His eyes flicked back down to his partially finished food. A blush formed on his cheeks, turning them a dusky olive. He had nice cheekbones, too, Cora was forced to admit, high and well-formed. Under different circumstances he could be a model.

  “She hit on me,” Finn admitted.

  “She did what?” Cora didn’t know why she was surprised. Her mother desperately sought attention—good, bad, or otherwise. Cora had seen the woman start an argument with a cashier because she had said “have a nice day” rather than “thank you for your business.” “When?”

  “First time I met her. I was dropping Oliver off after his shift at the drugstore because it was raining, and she started off all pissy with me. Comes storming out of the house like a great big momma bear, with her arms waving and everything. And then, when she saw I wasn’t going to start a shouting match with her, she starts apologizing and pushing herself up against me. It was…well…weird.”

  “That’s my mother.”

  “I’m sorry.” For the first time tonight, he sounded sincere. It suited him.

  “You should do that more often.” She finished her glass of wine, and when Titan held up the
bottle at the other end of the bar she shook her head.

  “Do what?”

  “Be honest.” She held up her card and Titan came over.

  “I’ve got it.” Finn started reaching into his pocket, but the jeans were tight enough that he had to stand up for it. Watching him wiggle was a good show, but she already had her card out. “I got it,” he said again. There was enough of a command in it that Titan hesitated.