“Mom,” Zane breathed.
I nodded. “They both fell for her right then and there. At first I guess it was innocent brotherly competition, see who could get the girl. She was the talk of the town, to hear Dad tell it. Every single guy under the age of fifty had his eye on Lena Dunfield, and more than one married man had made passes at her, he said. She’d been turning down marriage proposals from the age of sixteen, and never seemed to give half a shit for any of the local Ketchikan boys. Until she saw Liam and Lucas Badd. I guess she fell head over heels right off the bat, too, but couldn’t make up her mind which of ’em she liked more. Turned into a real ugly pickle, sounds like. She started favoring Liam, which, obviously got under Dad’s skin. Brotherly competition for a girl they both liked turned into two brothers gone heart and soul for the same woman, and then, at some point, Lena chose Liam, and Dad got the shaft. When it became clear she’d chosen his brother, Dad got pissed at them both.” I shrugged. “I dunno if your dad was like ours, but I know Dad had a hell of a temper when he got riled.”
Both Bast and Zane nodded. “He had a temper, all right. Mom could usually settle him down, but if he got well and truly pissed, it just took time and space for him to calm down,” Bast said.
“Sounds like Dad,” I said, “only he never had anyone to settle him, so he’d just stew in his own juices. I’m not sure he ever learned how to really get over anything, truth be told.”
“So after Mom chose Dad instead of Lucas, it turned into a fight?” Zane asked.
I nodded. “What it sounds like. Turned really ugly too. Dad wouldn’t talk about that, only that their fight over Lena damn near tore down the city.”
“Jesus, you mean like an actual physical fight?” Corin asked.
I nodded again. “What it sounds like. Dad said Lena tried to stop ’em, but couldn’t. Seems they both walked away from that fight half-dead and bitter as hell, ’specially Dad, since he walked away alone, without his brother or the girl he was in love with.”
“And they never spoke again?” This was from the redhead, who was sitting on Bast’s lap, toying absently with his hair.
I nodded. “Never saw each other again, never spoke again. I think at first Dad was too pissed and too hurt, and then after a while too much time had gone by and both of their stupid stubborn-ass pride wouldn’t let them reconnect. And then Dad met our mother, and that went to shit after like eight years, and then Lena died.” I stared down at the photo again. “Looking back, I can mark the exact date when he found out Lena had died.”
“Callahan’s,” Ramsey muttered.
“He was never the same after that,” Remington added.
I blew out a breath. “He went up to a dive bar outside of town, got obliterated, started a fight, nearly killed a coupla local farmers with his bare hands, and then wrecked his truck and nearly died himself. We were what…eight? Ten? We found him passed out in front of the trailer in a pool of his own puke, covered in blood, with several busted bones and a punctured lung. I called 911, and they barely saved his life. After that, he was…different.”
“Shit,” Bast murmured. “That sounds rough.”
I nodded. “It makes sense why he’s been a drunk his whole life. I don’t think he ever got over Lena.”
“And he lost not only her, but his twin, and then his wife divorced him, and he was stuck raising triplets on his own,” Hollywood said.
“They weren’t ever married,” Ram said. “Just shacked up on account of us kids. We were the accidental results of a one-night stand, and they tried to make it work for our sake, but our mother couldn’t handle us. We were pretty difficult kids.”
Corin and the other twin, Cane, exchanged looks. “I can’t imagine a fight so bad we’d stopped talking for the rest of our lives,” Corin said.
“I’d rather die,” Canaan agreed.
The redhead spoke up again. “What I don’t understand is why you’re here in Ketchikan.”
“We wanted to meet our cousins,” I said, with a flirty grin. “The fact that all’a ya’ll managed to land seriously fine-ass honeys is just a bonus.”
“Wait, hold on a second,” Kitty said.
I’d nearly forgotten about her in all the drama with my cousins, as she’d sat quietly up until now, listening and watching.
God, what a woman. Not flashy, oh no. Not my usual fare by a long shot.
Five feet seven, slender, with long, fine hair that was somewhere between blonde and light brunette. It was her eyes, man. Brown, the sweet warm shade of mocha and hot chocolate and little wide-eyed puppies. In this case, however, her eyes were snapping and blazing with fire, which was hot as fuck; I like a woman with attitude. She was wearing minimal makeup, if any, and she didn’t need it to be beautiful.
And when I say beautiful, I mean…not average hot, or slutty sexy, but legit beautiful. Lovely. Her nose was kind of crooked, her cheekbones high, her chin delicate. Her lips were plump and kissable and had the faintest sheen of lip gloss. No layers of eye shadow, no caked-on foundation. No smoky eye or bright red lipstick. Just unadorned beauty. It was refreshing, honestly. And alluring in a way I was unfamiliar with.
And her body? It was hard to tell, considering she was in a waitress outfit—somewhat ill-fitting jeans and a black V-neck at least two sizes too big to be sexy. But even with that outfit, it was easy to see the girl had curves. I mean, the jeans didn’t do her any favors, but her ass was still mesmerizing in its sway and bounce and roundness, and the way she filled out that baggy work shirt told me she was rocking some serious cleavage under there.
God, I wanted her naked. I was trying to imagine what her body would look like when she spoke again, and her words snapped me out of my reverie.
“You told me you guys were opening a bar,” she said, her eyes hard and her voice harder.
I had been hoping to avoid that particular tidbit for a few more minutes at least. “Yeah, well…we wanted a change of pace from smokejumping, and running a bar seemed like a decent challenge,” I said, breezily.
Bast’s eyes narrowed. “And then you try to poach my waitress. For a competing bar, in the city where we live.” He stood up, crossing his arms over his chest. “Kind of a dick move, if you ask me.”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah, well, from what I saw, there’s plenty of business to go around.” I gazed levelly at Kitty. “And, as far as Kitty goes…fair game is fair game, know what I’m sayin’?”
Kitty’s already hard, pissed-off gaze blazed with renewed fury, and good goddamn was she sexy when she’s pissed. “I’m not fair game, jerk. Not for you, not for anyone.”
I just smiled at her. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that, won’t we, Kitten?”
“Don’t call me that,” she hissed.
Bast took a threatening step toward me, and the three largest brothers followed suit.
“I think it’s time you left,” Bast growled. “Now.”
Rem, the more cautious of the three of us, shoved me roughly for the door. “Let’s fucking go, you reckless tool.”
Ramsey, the quickest tempered of us, and the one most likely to spoil for a fight, just laughed as the three of us trooped out onto the sidewalk. “What, Rem, you scared to tangle with our Alaskan cousins?”
Rem shot him the finger. “Fuck off. I don’t mind a fight, but only when the odds are something like fair.” He jerked a thumb at the bar we’d just left. “And those boys seem more than capable of giving even us a fight we won’t forget.”
“Exactly!” Ram exclaimed. “It’d have been fun.”
“I don’t find fistfights as fun as you do, Ram,” Remington said.
We had booked a nearby extended stay hotel for a month, just so we could get our feet planted here in Ketchikan, and fortunately our hotel was within walking distance. We didn’t say much as we walked the quiet sidewalks; streetlamps flickered and buzzed orange, an occasional car slid past, headlights stabbing bright spears of illumination.
“That waitress shut you down, Rom
e,” Ramsey said, eventually, glancing at me to gauge my reaction.
“First time for everything, I guess,” I said.
Ramsey laughed. “You know, my gut tells me you may just have met your match with that one. She didn’t seem at all susceptible to your charms, bro.”
I growled. “Yeah, don’t fuckin’ remind me.” I had her face in my mind, those blazing, fiery, intelligent brown eyes. “But make no mistake, Ram—she will. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
3
Kitty
* * *
It was a rare day off for me. I worked four doubles in a row, including one the day after the bizarre and intense confrontation with the newly arrived Badd triplets. After the fourth double, Sebastian told me in no uncertain terms to go away and not come back for at least twenty-four hours. He pretended to be kicking me out, and I pretended to be ungrateful, and it was funny.
Sebastian wasn’t an overtly humorous sort of man; his humor was very dry, sarcastic, and you had to know him pretty well to know when he was joking. The first few times he insulted me, I took it literally and nearly quit. And then his dear sweet wife, Dru, pulled me aside and explained that Bast only insulted people like that when he liked them, and to not take it seriously, and that if I wanted to really earn his respect and affection, I should insult him back. Play his game. So, I watched how he was with his brothers, and realized they were constantly insulting each other, making a game of who could come up with the harshest burn, so to speak, and that the harder they teased each other, the more fun they were having. There was very clearly an enormous amount of love and respect between the eight men, and I appreciated that. And I wanted to be a part of that. So I learned to trade insults, which is way outside my comfort zone—as the daughter of a kindergarten teacher mother and a philosophy professor father, I was raised to be kind, sweet, polite, accepting, open-minded, and generous. To a fault, quite honestly. I had to learn the hard way that sometimes a little distrust and suspicion is necessary to keep your heart intact.
Such as, for example, in the case of Roman Badd.
The man is walking, talking trouble. Or rather, more accurately, swaggering, blustering heartbreak. Everything about him screams trouble, from his dirty, foul mouth, to those big blue eyes sparking with humor and cunning, to that enormous, breathtaking, predatory body, to that cocky assurance of his own indomitable supremacy in all situations. He’s the living embodiment of a red flag.
Stay away, that’s what my gut, heart, and mind are all telling me.
Annoyingly, my body seems to have a different viewpoint.
WANT, WANT, WANT! That’s the refrain my traitorous, weak, ridiculous body is chanting.
I managed to overrule my body’s desire to flirt back with Roman last night, but it was a hard-won battle, and I was kind of bitchy about it, which, somewhat absurdly, I feel guilty about. But if I have to be a little bitchy to keep my heart intact, does that make me a bitch, or just prudent?
Ugh.
Currently, I’m at the grocery store. Most of my food spoiled since I was working so much, and the rest didn’t amount to anything I could make a real meal out of, so my day off has been spent doing laundry, paying bills, and now buying groceries. Woohoo! Adulting is fun!
Not.
I hate laundry day, though. I get so few days off that when I do laundry, I literally end up having to wash all my clothes, which means I spend the day wearing a less than amazing outfit. I mean, it’s not like I wore evening gowns on my days off or anything, and I’m not a fashionista like my roommate Izzy, but I try to look like I didn’t just crawl out of bed. Which is what I look like today.
Seafoam green cotton daisy dukes so small and so tight that I get front and back wedgies at the same time, with a white cotton V-neck undershirt so thin and old you could probably see my nipples if I didn’t wear a bra. And speaking of bras, the one I was wearing was a plain-Jane white granny bra, with plain-Jane white granny panties to match.
So sexy.
Not.
Of course, I wasn’t trying to be sexy, not for myself or anyone else. Which was fine. I didn’t need to be sexy. Chore day isn’t a sexy day anyway, so if I was going to be all scrubby and sloppy, with my hair in a messy bun, no makeup—not even lip gloss—and my feet in two-dollar Old Navy flip-flops, then it might as well be today.
Once I had all my groceries paid for and in my zippered reusable bags, I had to figure out how to get all these bags home. I only brought my keys, wallet, and phone which, when empty-handed, is fine because it’s only a three-block walk from my apartment to the store. But now that I had five reusable grocery bags full of food, getting my groceries home became a juggling act. I removed my sunglasses from where they were shoved in my hair—ripping out a tangle of hair strands in the process—put them on, hooked my keyring on an index finger, shoved my phone in a bra cup so the bottom end of the phone stuck up out of my shirt, and then hung two bags from my elbows, three in one hand and two in the other.
And suddenly, a little three-block walk seemed a lot farther.
A block and half later, I had to stop and set the bags down to give my burning, trembling arms a rest. With a tired sigh, I heaved the bags back up and resumed my slog. Another block and a half—almost two full blocks, really—and I was within sight of my apartment building. And, of course, Paulie the mailman was standing half-in-half-out of the apartment building door, sorting mail in his bag.
Paulie was in his late forties with a thin, graying ponytail and a straggly graying goatee, fond of wearing wraparound Oakleys even on rainy days and inside. He was a little overweight and super friendly, always happy, always ready with a warm smile and a dumb joke.
He looked up from his mail sorting. “Hey-ya, Kitty, how are ya?” He flipped through the stacks of mail, found a particular section, and withdrew the mail, extending it to me. “So…what do you do with a sick boat, Kitty?”
I was already laughing in anticipation of the cringe-worthy punch line. “I don’t know, Paulie—what?”
“Take it to the doc, of course.” He laughed at his own joke, and flapped the handful of envelopes. “You want these, or should I stick ’em in your mailbox? Looks like you’ve got your hands full.”
Yeah, and it wasn’t getting any lighter.
I tried to shift things so I could take them, but I was out of hands. “Um…” I clacked my teeth together. “Just put them in my mouth.”
Paulie’s eyes widened, and he halfway restrained a snicker. “Oh man, Kitty, I’ve got so many jokes right now, but I’ll be a good boy and keep ’em to myself.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I suppose I walked right into that one.”
He stuffed the envelopes between my teeth and left the apartment building—letting the door close as he did so. “See ya, Kitty!”
I watched the door close, standing on the sidewalk, helpless to stop it. With my hands full and the mail in my mouth, I couldn’t even call out to stop him, other than make unintelligible grunts.
If I put all these bags down now, I was worried I’d never get them all upstairs. My arms were jelly, I was sweating, and clutching the bags for dear life. I tried to scrabble at the knob with the hand I had the fewest bags clutched in, but it was a losing battle.
I should just put them down and make a few trips, but I refused. I knew once I got upstairs, I would collapse on my couch in front of the A/C, drinking an iced tea, and watching my DVR’d backlog of Bachelor in Paradise, one of my guilty pleasures.
I shifted the handle of the bag to my wrist, let it slide backward to catch against my elbow with the other two heavy bags, and reached for the doorknob—but the angle sent all three bags sliding down my forearm suddenly, forcing me to lift my arm to arrest their motion.
“Darn it!” I hissed.
Just then, a huge, tan, strong-looking hand reached past me and opened the door.
I felt him before I knew it was him. He smelled like dust and sweat and deodorant, and radiated body heat.
; “Let me help you, Kitty,” he murmured in his basso rumble.
“I gah ih,” I said around the envelopes.
He just chuckled, and suddenly all three bags in my right hand were gone, and then the two in my left. He had all five heavy bags in one hand, and it didn’t appear like he found them heavy at all. He grinned at me, his empty hand closing around mine and sliding the keyring off my index finger.
I was stunned stupid by his sudden appearance, clearly, because I made no move to stop him. Nor did I have the presence of mind to take the mail out of my mouth. Nor did I attempt to stop him when he glanced down at my chest, his grin widening, when he reached down, bold as you please, to withdraw my phone from my bra.
I stopped breathing when he did that.
And then, finally, he plucked my mail from my teeth.
Everything I’d been struggling to carry for the last three blocks he balanced easily. And still had the facility to kick open the door, tromp up the stairs, and head right for my apartment door.
Finally, my brain caught up, and I trotted after him. “Hey, wait!” I flounced up the stairs after him.
And, of course, he had stopped to let me catch up, so he saw every, erm, bounce of my flight up the stairs. “Can you go back down and do that again?” he asked, deadpan. “I think I missed some of it.”
I just glared at him. “Don’t be a pig.”
He oinked, a surprisingly accurate impression, and continued down the hallway. He stopped at my door, whirled the key ring around his finger to catch the keys, unerringly picked the right one, and stuck it in the lock.
Unlocked my door.
Opened it.
And let himself in.
I stared after him, stunned at his sheer gall.
Badd Kitty Page 4