“Not sure,” I said, shrugging. “Probably make him buy his way out by participating in the fights. Mule for them. Steal for them. The possibilities with these guys are endless.”
Another sigh. There was more talking from the woman. He said something to her that made her laugh before he spoke to me again.
“I don’t want to deal with organized crime this late at night. Will he still be alive in the morning?”
I smiled wryly. One day Anthony would make that joke, and the answer would be no.
“He will. I just thought you should know, so you guys have something to talk about the next time you see each other.” Anthony and I had become friends by force. We weren’t so much friends as we were the designated special task force in charge of containing Lawson Foley. I was surprised a guy like him even cared about his brother that much, but it was admirable. Maybe it was a twin thing. Lawson fucking up probably had a direct effect on Anthony’s life force.
“If I report him to the cops, how many years would he get for this?”
“If he goes to jail, you will get a collect call at midnight from the county jail asking you to come and get him after I refuse to pick the phone up.”
He sighed again and thanked me for telling him. He said he’d do something about it in the morning.
“Sorry for waking you guys up,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. Say goodnight Mandy,” he said to his girlfriend. A muffled female voice replied ‘goodnight Mandy,’ giggling.
I said bye and ended the call. I got up and headed for the shower. The original plan had been to see whether Natasha’s boy Tommy was all bark and no bite. I knew he could fight, but it was that pistol I wanted to see if he would pull or not.
He probably wouldn’t… then again, maybe he would if it was over Natasha. Whatever that girl had on her skin or in her voice; it had sedated him like he had just mainlined pharma grade heroin. Since Natasha was off the menu for the night, I decided to stay in.
I had a bone to pick with two thugs down at the docks the next day.
5
Dana
When I was younger, Dad used to do this thing where he would go outside when the sun was setting and just sit on the porch, watching the sunset. He would sit on the steps, or just stand with a beer or a mug of something hot in one of his hands watching the sun descend below the horizon. He would watch the colors of the sky change and transform before the sun disappeared completely and the blackness of night started to settle.
I used to think it was overly sentimental—too melancholy and imbued with too much fake gravitas—but as an adult; I found myself doing the exact same thing. I don’t know why my father did it because I never asked him. Maybe it was because he was sad, or maybe it was because he just thought it was beautiful and he wanted to look at it. Whatever the reason, the years of doing it had etched lines around his eyes from prolonged squinting and facing the sun with no protection.
When he would smile, his face would crinkle up happily around the eyes. I always thought they made his smiling face more charming and kind-looking. His was likely the only house I could drop into without notice where I would always be welcomed with open arms. The journey between the house where Mimi and I lived, and Dad’s was about 2 miles. I liked to take the walk at sundown when I could squint up at all the beautiful colors of the sky.
My parents were the kind of people who had no real business being together. The fact that they had stayed together long enough to raise two children into their preteen years was something that shocked and baffled people—myself included. The fact that my brother Jaden and I were born in such quick succession should have worried more people. There was barely a year between our ages. While Jaden was a gorgeous and capable prince making his parents proud, I contented myself with frustrating my mother.
Throughout the years of shared custody, I never dared to choose sides. It felt almost treacherous to choose the easier going parent over my mother, and it felt worse than that choosing the person who gestated me for nine months over my father.
Jaden was his mother’s son, through and through. He had the same bright, yellow-blond hair she did and the same affluent looking face. My hair was blond too but had an ashy tone, and my face was much more… middle class. My mother would swear up and down that she still had her natural face, but she didn’t count non-invasive treatments as procedures. Regardless of whether her face was still the factory-assembled one she was born with, she was beautiful. That must have been what got my dad because, besides Jaden and me, they had nothing else in common.
They had been the kind of couple that you looked at and wondered what the hell they talked about to each other. More likely than not, Jaden and I were probably the things that kept them together as long as they ended up lasting.
Though I couldn’t choose which one of my parents I liked more than the other, I could easily pick which city I preferred. San Diego was something entirely different from LA. They were only 120 odd miles apart, but it was a long, long 120 miles of cultural distance.
Los Angeles would always be the city that I was raised in, but San Diego was the place that I would more readily call, ‘my home.’ Weighing the differences between the two places was just defeatist. They were two different places that were established under different conditions and circumstances for different reasons. But San Diego was the place I was able to run to when I thought my world was falling apart.
Mom and Dad were breaking up. Our last name was changing. We weren’t going to be able to see Dad every day anymore. Nobody knew me in San Diego; I could pretend that my family was completely normal when I was there. Besides, that was where Mimi and I met.
It was Saturday evening, and she was having her boyfriend Anthony over. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the guy, but honestly… I didn’t like the guy. He was nice, clean, no kids, passably handsome and she seemed to like him, but something about him made my scalp itch. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I used the guise of giving them their privacy just to avoid one-on-one encounters with the guy.
I had shot my dad a text saying I would be over for the night. I turned off the sidewalk and walked up his short driveway. His garage door was open, and he was leaning into the open hood of one of the cars he had in there.
“Hi Daddy,” I said sweetly, wrapping my arms around him in a hug from behind.
“Daddy? Nobody’s ever called me that before, but I could get used to it.” I looked up in horror, releasing the man I thought was my father.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“I could ask you the same thing. Reggie said he had a daughter, but I was expecting pigtails and missing teeth.” His eyes took me in from head to toe and then back up again before resting on my eyes once more. The dots connected. Faded jeans and tattoos. It was him.
“You know my father?”
“This would be a very different conversation if I didn’t.”
He was wearing these rust colored coveralls, but they were open in the front, exposing a white vest that barely concealed a muscular, powerful chest underneath. I hadn’t seen him front-on in the store like I was seeing him now. He was… formidable. He was pulling off a pair of gloves. His hands underneath were large. Standing as close to him as I was then I saw that he was tall—very tall. The eyes that were staring intensely into mine were blue, set in this gorgeous, gorgeous face. You could cut diamonds with those sharp, high cheekbones and his jaw was square and manly.
“You didn’t answer my question. Who are you?”
“I thought we’d already established that I was your daddy,” he said, smirking. He laughed at the face I pulled.
“Adam? Adam, who are you talking to?” my father’s voice called from inside the house. He walked into the garage holding two beers. His kindly face broke into a smile when he saw me.
“Angel, you’re here,” he said happily. He hugged me to his side one-armed as he tried to hold the two beers steady. Adam walked over and took one from him. “I didn’t kno
w you were coming.”
“Sorry. I would have called if I had known you had company,” I said glancing over at the mysterious new stranger, currently sipping his beer and watching us with amusement.
“You’ve met Adam? This is my daughter, Dana,” Dad said, looking at him.
“We already met,” he said mischievously.
“She just moved here from Los Angeles.”
I half expected the next thing out of my father’s mouth to be “and she’s single” but he didn’t say anything after that. He had more scruples advertising his unwed daughter like a Christmas sale than my mother did.
“It’s good to meet you,” I said politely to Adam.
“It’s good to meet you too.” He smiled at me then; a real, broad, toothy grin and dammit if the man didn’t have a dimple in not one but both of his cheeks. I smiled back despite myself.
“Remember the Plymouth Superbird I told you your grandmother was sending down?”
“I remember you telling me she was sending you one of Grandpa’s old cars?” I said. My dad chuckled. He had tried very hard to get me into car restoration when I was younger, but it had just never taken. Jaden had shown athletic prowess from an early age so my parents nurtured that and I was the bookworm. The most I got into vintage automobiles was curled up in their backseats reading while my dad fiddled with things under their hoods.
“That’s the one. Here she is,” he said, pointing out the car Adam had been working on. I looked blankly at it. It looked like… well, a car. It had that vintage look that made older cars like Janie easy to identify but other than that; it just looked like a car. I looked at my dad’s expectant face.
“It’s really nice Dad. What are you guys going to do with it?”
“Mostly body work. A fresh coat of paint. Restoring some of the accessories. Maybe redoing the inside.”
“Some maintenance should have the engine running smoothly. Nothing major wrong with the transmission,” Adam added.
I nodded and smiled. They might as well have been talking Greek.
“Great, I’ll leave you to it,” I said brightly.
“Show her the inside Adam. Baby, you want something to drink?” he asked.
“I’m fine Dad, don’t—”
I stopped, seeing him running back into the house to grab something for me to drink. I heard a car door open and turned to see Adam standing on the driver’s side.
“Hop in,” he said simply. He walked around to the passenger side and slid into the seat. I followed, slowly, stepping into the car and closing the door. I looked at him.
“Your dad wants to take out all the black and use light colored leather,” he said, draping his hand over the back of my seat near my head. “He wants to raise the rear wing, but I don’t think he should go through with it. Any higher and it just looks tacky.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at him.
“Yeah… I know what you mean,” I said. He chuckled slightly.
“Not a car girl?”
“Nope. Cars perish in my possession,” I said, remembering Janie and the fact that I had to take her to the shop.
“Here, listen to this,” he put his arm around the back of the seat and leaned towards me. I froze as he got closer, his body not touching me but getting close enough that I could feel the heat coming off of him and smell him; car, soap, and musk. He touched the steering wheel, honking the horn. My eyes widened.
“Is that the horn?”
He nodded, leaning back into his seat. I grinned honking the horn again. That ‘meep-meep’ was unmistakable. It sounded just like the Roadrunner from ‘Looney Tunes.’
“Did Dad get that put in?”
“Nope. It’s a stock part in every Superbird,” he said. I laughed, honking the horn again.
“Oh my god. It’s adorable.”
He laughed. I looked over at him sitting in the car. There was plenty of room, so he wasn’t cramped. One hand was still on the back of my seat, and the rest of him slouched back in a way that was undeniably sexy. The sound of my father coming back into the garage snapped me out of my temporary trance. I slid out of the car.
“You show her the horn, Adam?”
“He did. I loved it,” I answered for him. Dad handed me a glass of lemonade; he hated seeing me drink in front of him.
“How’s the Riviera doing?”
I blanched at the mention of Janie.
“Janie? Oh, she’s—”
“Did she make the trip down from LA?”
“She did, but she’s been acting up lately. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“You sure it isn’t just a dead battery honey?”
“I don’t know what that means Daddy,” I said.
“You should have Adam take a look at her.” I looked over at Adam, who had been following our back and forth.
“She can come by the shop,” he said, meeting my gaze. “I’ll get under her top, take a look at her.” My heart rate quickened, and I knew I was visibly embarrassed. The double entendre was so expertly executed it went right over Dad’s head.
“Great. I’ll do that. I’m going to leave you guys alone,” I said, hurriedly kissing my dad on the cheek and heading out of the garage. I got into the house and downed the rest of my lemonade. I never worried that my father was lonely following the divorce. He had never dated or at least had never brought his dates around Jaden and me when we were younger. It seemed he had friends—this particular one a vintage car restorer. A very attractive vintage car restorer. I leaned against the kitchen counter facing the window.
What had happened back there?
I jumped hearing footsteps into the kitchen. Turning, I saw Adam walk in holding two empty beer bottles. He smirked when he saw me.
“I thought you left,” he said. He walked up to me.
“Still here,” I said. “You guys done for the day?” I was standing with my back against the counter. He placed the two bottles on the empty surface behind me.
“You still live here?” he asked, ignoring my attempt at small talk.
“No. I live a couple of miles away.”
“It was you on the phone earlier this week, wasn’t it?” I took a moment to remember the conversation. He sounded different over the phone, not as hot. Maybe it was that his hotness was just so distracting to me, and that’s why I felt like I could hear it.
“Who did you think it was? My dad?”
“I thought it was your dad’s hot 20-something-year-old girlfriend.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” I shrugged. He smirked.
“Who’s disappointed? The truth’s even better.” He paused, leaning one hand on the counter behind me, so we were closer together, his body bent over mine. “It was his hot 20-something-year-old daughter.”
I bolted from my position against the counter, putting some much-needed space between us.
“If you’re looking for the beers, they’re in the fridge.”
“What about if I’m looking for you?”
I wasn’t often speechless, but this was one of those rare times. The answer was of course ‘upstairs,’ but I was afraid that I couldn’t trust my tongue not to make it sound like an invitation.
“You should hurry back; my dad’s probably waiting for you.”
I turned and walked up the stairs in a manner I hoped was cool and composed. I got to my room and flopped face first onto the bed, my face burning up so bad it would probably leave a singed shroud on the bedcover. I could count the number of times a man had made me feel like my skeleton had turned into play-doh on one hand; that was the only time. Faded jeans and tattoos. Adam. I squeezed my eyes shut hearing his voice in my head. This was a disaster.
I jumped hearing a sudden knock at the door.
6
Adam
I always thought I had a friend in Reggie Forester, but it seemed he was holding out on me.
He’d said I’d love the Superbird when I saw it, and he was right. She was a beauty. All her original parts and still u
nder 20,000 miles. She rode smooth too. That probably went for his other girl as well.
His daughter.
I didn’t know how many miles she had on her, but that was immaterial; your body count returned to zero as soon as you moved to a new city, everyone knew that. She probably rode very smooth. My mind wandered extensively. She probably felt smooth too. I shook my head. It was Monday evening, and I was getting out of my work clothes at the auto shop. I hadn’t gotten lucky over the weekend, but on an overall basis, I got way too much pussy to be fixated on Dana Forester like that.
Dana Forester. Reggie’s ‘little girl.’ More like Reggie’s grown woman. She was gorgeous. What the fuck. Looking at Reggie, it wasn’t hard to see that he’d probably had luck with the ladies when he was younger but whoever her mother was must have been a Victoria’s Secret model or something.
Her hair was blond—not yellow-blond, but a softer tone. It was up when we were talking, but it was probably long, hanging around her shoulders when it was down. She didn’t look like she was wearing any makeup, but her skin shone. She was tanned and had green eyes that looked right through you. Her clothes were the kind that girls would wear when they had nowhere to be, those tight exercise pants and a loose sweatshirt.
She had this tight, little ass that stood at attention, pert and round and I didn’t see her tits under the loose sweatshirt, but I did feel them when she hugged me. They’d make a good handful or so—just enough. Based on her general skin tone, it was hard to guess what color her nipples would be, but I wouldn’t mind finding out.
Hell, I wanted to find out.
When was Reggie going to tell me he had a hot daughter who was new in town and needed someone to show her around? I was probably getting ahead of myself. Who the hell said she was single anyway? She hadn’t said it and Reggie hadn’t given any indication while we talked and worked on the car after she went upstairs.
I’m not going to lie; the thought of having sex with her in her childhood bed excited the shit out of me. Natasha seemed to be indisposed at the moment, so why couldn’t Dana and I see if we had anything in common?
ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Page 4