The blond actually seemed turned on by the idea.
“And we don’t share,” Judy told him. To add to the effect, Judy slid a hand around Meg’s waist and pulled her close.
“Fucking Hollywood,” the man mumbled under his breath as he walked away.
Judy turned toward her friend. “This is a bust.”
Meg scanned the bar with a nod. “Cheap beer and cheaper pool. I thought it sounded great.”
“We managed sixty bucks. Not that bad.”
Behind them, someone laughed. “That was classic.”
Judy and Meg both twisted toward two guys who stood shoulder to shoulder. They were about the same height as Meg, which rivaled five nine, and they both looked enough alike to make Judy think they were brothers. Only the auburn-haired man placed his hand on his friend in a way that told her they were much more than friends.
“What was classic?” Meg asked . . . the music in the pool hall changed and seemed to get louder.
“Putting those guys off.”
Judy laughed. “Not hard to do when they come on that strong.”
“You guys play?”
“She does,” Meg told them.
Lucas had short blond hair that fell in his eyes with every shake of his head. His friend, and if Judy had to guess, his lover, Dan, had an easy smile and an open wallet. “You girls want another drink?”
“You go ahead,” Meg suggested. “I’ll drive us home.”
“Not to mention I’ve had a crap day.”
Lucas racked the balls while Dan sat across from Meg at a nearby table.
“Bad day at work?” Lucas asked.
“You can say that.”
Lucas pulled the triangle away and hung it on the nail sticking out of a beam. “We playing for money?”
“She’s good,” Meg warned him.
“I’m good,” Judy said at the same time.
Dan laughed. “You guys suck at hustling pool.”
“We’re new in town,” Judy told him. “It’s never a good idea to hustle anything until you know the players or have backup.”
Lucas pulled a twenty from his back pocket and set it on the table with Meg. “I’m not half bad either. If you kick my ass, it will be the only twenty we ever play for.”
Meg placed a twenty on top of it, solidifying the bet.
Judy broke, sank a solid, and missed her second shot.
Lucas followed with two stripes before she had another turn.
“You guys aren’t really lesbians.” Dan wasn’t asking a question.
“Not even in my diary,” Judy said as she set up her shot.
“And you guys aren’t straight.” Meg called them out.
Dan laughed. “According to my mother I am.”
Lucas leaned next to his friend and watched Judy take out two more balls.
“So is this place always so lively?” Judy asked, letting the sarcasm drip from her voice.
“This place is a dive, but the drinks are cheap.”
“Hence the term, dive.” Meg glanced around. “Even the jukebox isn’t turned up enough to drown out the burps from the bar.”
Lucas cleaned the table on his next turn, putting Judy to shame. Once he sank the eight ball, she handed him the forty bucks and shook his hand. “And that will be the last twenty you get from me.”
“Fair enough,” he said as he slid the forty bucks in the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans.
“There’s a dance club up a block. Wanna blow out of here?”
From anyone else, Judy might be a little concerned, but Lucas and Dan were obviously into each other and about as safe as anyone could be outside of her brother.
Meg nodded when Judy made eye contact. Ten minutes later, Lucas was using the money he won from their match to pay the cover charge.
Judy wasn’t sure if walking into the club with two good-looking guys kept men away, or if there just weren’t that many single guys in the room, but she and Meg didn’t have to brush off one hand all night.
Lucas was a wannabe actor who waited tables as a day job, and Dan worked in research with a small newspaper. They’d dated each other for nearly a year and had just moved in together to make life easier.
“So how come you girls don’t have dates?”
“We just moved here,” Meg told Dan.
“And I really don’t need to complicate my life right now.”
“Is that why you keep blowing Rick off?” Meg asked.
Before Judy could open her mouth, Meg leaned into their new friends and said, “Rick is seriously hot, and boy is he ever trying to get her to go out with him.”
Lucas leaned forward. “What’s wrong with Rick?”
His never-ending smile, his huge arms and thick everything? His alpha self was just too mind-numbing to actually ever consider in a real relationship. Getting wrapped up in Rick would distract her from her goals. If she was ever going to prove her independence in the architectural world and prove how wrong her father was about her second major in school, Judy needed to concentrate. Placing Rick in her life . . . or, she sighed, her bed, would shift her off course. He was too intense not to. Just thinking about him made her smile and her palms sweat. He’d even returned her favorite jacket. Which meant he’d gone back into the bar fight to retrieve it. In her perfect avoidance fashion, Judy hadn’t opened up a conversation with him to thank him. She figured she’d see him sooner or later and thank him then.
Meg waved a hand in front of Judy’s eyes. “Earth to Judy?”
“Sorry . . . what was the question?”
Meg shook her head and answered for her. “There’s nothing wrong with Rick.”
“He calls me babe! That annoys me,” she told them.
“He calls you babe to annoy you.”
The guys laughed and they changed the subject to how they met.
The dance club was packed, and more than one person was taking pictures with their cell phone. It wasn’t until a particularly close flash made Judy flinch that she turned around to see a long-lensed camera pointing their way. Her first thought was why? . . . then she remembered Rick’s and Karen’s warnings. “Must be a slow night,” she said to Meg and nodded behind her.
“If they’re searching you out, it must be.”
“What’s up with him?” Lucas asked while nodding toward the photographer.
“He must think you’re famous,” Judy told Lucas, who would love to have his face in a tabloid . . . any tabloid. She had to admit, the thought actually brought a smile to her face. Mike might have gotten over the attention he attracted, but as his sister, she hadn’t really experienced it all that much. Yeah, the photographers showed up at her graduation, but they weren’t searching her out. Her entire family had been plastered all over the papers shortly after Karen and Mike had announced their pending divorce. When news spread about her and Zach’s relationship, it seemed the entire Gardner family was under the media glare. It didn’t last long, however. According to Karen, the media had the attention span of a gnat.
“I don’t think a few buried commercials have made me anything but a wannabe,” Lucas said.
“Well you never know. Might as well smile and pretend you don’t see him. Then he’ll question who you are.”
“You think?” Lucas glanced over her shoulder and quickly looked away. Beside her, Meg laughed.
The flash went off several more times.
“Don’t most celebrities duck out a back door when they’re spotted?” Meg asked.
Judy took a last swig from her beer and pushed away from the table. “Let’s pretend we’re famous,” she told their new friends.
Dan and Lucas surrounded the two of them as they shoved through the bumping and grinding crowd on the dance floor.
A bouncer stood between them and what looked like a hall to the back of the building.
“Hey!” Meg smiled at the overly large man and gestured behind the four of them. “We need a discreet exit.”
The bouncer looked over them as
a flash from a following camera blinded them. He leaned to the side and the four of them ran down the hall laughing. They burst out the back door and kept running toward the street. They slowed when they reached the pool hall.
“You guys are crazy!” Dan caught his side as he leaned against Judy’s car.
Judy opened the passenger side since Meg was driving and tossed her small purse inside. “This was fun. We’ll have to hang out again.” They’d already put their phone numbers in their cell phones earlier.
Meg hugged Lucas right as the photographer from the dance club found them.
Judy jumped in the car with a wave. “See you guys next weekend?”
“Sounds good.”
Meg sped out of the parking lot while Lucas and Dan scrambled to their car. The photographer didn’t give chase.
Judy met Meg’s eyes and they both burst out laughing.
Chapter Five
The sound of a crying baby met Rick’s ears as he stepped into Neil and Gwen’s home. Neil was all about security and seclusion, so he knew Rick had arrived long before he entered the house. A must when your best friend topped two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle and had a Marine background that would hold no issue with taking out a trespasser entering his home uninvited.
Neil was fiercely in love with his lady wife and had nearly lost her over two years ago. The experience had changed the man. Now he smiled more than Rick ever remembered while they were on active duty, and he talked more. Oh, he was as silent as ever when he was working on something in his head, but Gwen had made the man open up since he’d married her.
“Neil?” Rick called out as he walked through the large home to the source of the sound. “Gwen?”
The crying grew louder as Rick walked up the back stairs to the nursery.
The explosion of pink and purple always made Rick smile. The room resembled a tower in a castle, complete with a mural of a turret behind the crib.
The smell hit Rick before he realized what his friend was dealing with.
Neil stood over his infant daughter, his back to Rick. “Not sure what you’re crying about. I have to deal with the mess.”
Emma cried harder.
Rick leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest.
After a few attempts at using those wet wipe things, Neil abandoned the traditional diaper-changing route, picked Emma up at arm’s length, and turned toward the adjoining bathroom. “Are you going to stand there and watch or are you going to help?”
Rick chuckled. “Didn’t think you saw me here.”
“I knew you’d follow the noise. Or the smell.”
Emma’s tiny cry grew silent as the two men worked their way into the bathroom. “Where’s Gwen?”
“Helping Sam with a new employee. Turn on the water,” Neil instructed Rick while holding his daughter over the tub.
“Isn’t she a little young for a bath in a full-size tub, Dad?” Rick opened the flow of water.
Emma’s wide eyes blinked several times and a tiny smile lifted one side of her lips. At only seven months old, the girl had her daddy wrapped around her itty-bitty finger. Truth was, Rick was pretty wrapped himself. Blonde hair had barely started to fill her once-bald head, and her blue eyes always seemed to take in everything around her. She watched, just like her father, appeared to assess the world around her, then reacted to have her needs met.
“Grab that.” Neil nodded toward the removable wand that doubled as a shower head.
“I take it you’ve done this before,” Rick said as he pointed the spray away from all of them and checked the temperature of the water.
“How so much comes out of such a tiny thing is beyond me.”
“Maybe you’re feeding her too much,” Rick teased.
Neil leaned farther over the tub. “I’ll hold, you spray.”
“Let the kicking begin, eh, Em?” Rick let the water hit her tiny feet first and slowly let the spray move up to the mess. Instead of letting out a war cry, Emma giggled and kicked at the water while Neil turned her around so Rick could get her backside. After a little soap and a washcloth finished the cleanup, Emma was wrapped in a fluffy pink towel.
“Seems you have diaper duty down,” Rick offered while Neil redressed and laid Emma in her crib.
“Easier than scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush.”
Rick would never forget his first few weeks in the service, when the joy of his ass being kicked by his commanding officer often ended with him scrubbing toilets.
The service had been one of his only options. His size, speed, and intelligence landed him with the elite. The Marines. He hadn’t grown up with much so living out of a duffle bag wasn’t a hardship. His dad was a broken-down dockworker, his mom worked odd jobs off and on his whole life to help where she could. Rick wasn’t sure if their marriage was happy or just routine. The two of them fought more than he thought they should . . . or maybe they just fought when they were around him or they fought about him.
Neil paused for a moment and stared down at his daughter. A rare smile met his lips and he turned and led them both out of her nursery.
“That’s it?” Rick asked. “No fussing or pitching a fit to go down for a nap?”
Neil shrugged. “It’s nap time,” he said as if the explanation was complete.
“Babies fuss.”
“Emma cries for her mama, not for me.”
Rick laughed. “I’ll bet Gwen loves that.”
Neil shrugged again and walked them into his security office. Monitors filled one wall with all the houses they monitored, including their own. A new set of monitors was dark and waiting for the next system to be installed.
“Looks like you’re all set up for Karen and Zach’s place.”
Neil sat behind his desk and opened a file drawer. He tossed a manila envelope filled with papers across the desk in Rick’s direction. “Everything you’ll need is in there. Kenny will supervise his team at Parkview Securities while they fit the house with the new system.”
Rick took the envelope, glanced inside. “What made Karen change her mind?”
“Combination of Zach and the courts.”
Karen’s safe house for kids had been an uphill battle with the courts. All she wanted to do was have a large home where kids from dysfunctional families or homeless kids could live without the fear of violence and hunger. The space had been the easy part. Getting Child Protective Services to license her was another story. At the current time, she had two teenage kids, one sixteen and one seventeen. The kids were brother and sister and had the emancipation of the courts after their mother was killed by their father and Dad landed in jail. The seventeen-year-old brother had left school to work full-time to try to keep it together for his sister. The kids came to Karen’s attention through the Boys and Girls Club where she volunteered her time. They now lived full-time at The Village, the Victorian home with more rooms than occupants.
“I take it the court wasn’t quick to grant them the ability to house a bunch of needy kids.”
“Not at all,” Neil replied. “The security system will help give the court a level of safety . . . or at least they think it will.”
“Anyone wanting to get at the kids inside will breach the system.”
“Not without evidence. And that seems to be all the court worries about. A trail of evidence if anything bad happens.” Neil sighed. “Anyway. I need you to set everything up on this end. Gwen’s mother expects everyone home for her birthday.”
Everyone meant Blake and Samantha and their two kids as well as Neil, Gwen, and Emma, and home meant the estate at Albany, outside of London.
“I have ya covered, Mac.”
Neil chuckled with the use of his nickname.
They both paused. Rick reflected back to when Neil was introduced to him as Mac. Back then, everyone on their team called Rick Smiley. Life was too short to frown all the damn time. He pushed away the memories that always threatened to remove the smile from his face and forced t
he smile again.
“How is the ol’ mother-in-law?”
Neil grinned. “Linda’s actually kinda cool.”
The slang caught Rick by surprise. “How so?”
“Hard to describe. Just easygoing now that Emma is here.”
“You won her over, did ya?”
“Sometimes quiet and stoic wins.”
Neil’s comment just made Rick’s smile bigger. “Vain much?”
Neil glanced at the monitors, looked back. “How is everything with you?”
Rick found the question odd. “Great . . . fine.”
Neil shook his head. “When we hooked up, you said you hated LA, yet you’re still here. I keep expecting you to move on.”
“Oh.” Rick leaned against the desk, glanced out the window. “Trying to get rid of me?”
“Surprised.”
“Working with you doesn’t suck.” It didn’t. In fact, Rick finally felt connected with people, something he had only felt when he was on active duty. Didn’t suck that some of those people introduced him to Judy . . . and she didn’t suck.
“So you’re gonna be around for a while?”
“I don’t feel the need to move on, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Neil nodded. “Good. I’m going to be gone for two weeks. I need you to watch everything here.”
“Not a lot here when both yours and Blake’s families are gone.”
No, there was a security team at Albany fit for a duke and his family. Not that anyone needed to worry with Neil among them.
“I need you ready to help Carter or Eliza if something happens. Michael will be back before the fundraiser.” The fundraiser was a black-tie event at The Village to help raise funds for the kids there. Carter, the governor of California, had a security team, but when push came to shove in the real world, Carter knew he could depend on Neil . . . and Rick was an extension of Neil when he wasn’t available to help. “How’s the campaigning going?”
“I think a second term is a shoo-in. We need to keep ourselves open to any threats.”
“So,” Rick recapped, “everything should be perfectly boring while you’re gone?”
Neil looked up and glared. “When is our life ever boring?”
Taken by Tuesday (Weekday Brides Series) Page 5