She slapped a hand against his chest when he would have leaned in. Lifting a brow, she said, “Nice try.”
“Can’t blame a man for trying,” he said, covering her hand with his. “Why don’t we take them inside? I’ll show you around and . . .”
He stiffened beside her. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but she was becoming adept at picking up those minute changes in him. From the corner of her eye, she saw where his gaze had shifted and she followed it, saw the man who somehow managed to slide quietly onto the porch. For a second, she could only stare.
It was like seeing double.
But then her brain kicked into action and she saw the differences. They were slight, but they were there. Trey was observant, something she’d already noticed.
His twin left him in the dust.
In the seconds it took her to sum up the man on the porch, he’d already taken her measure and was probably already at work forming an opinion. She wondered what it would be. Those eyes—they were the same lovely blue as Trey’s, but so different. They held a hardness.
“My brother,” Trey said. “Travis.”
“Thanks for telling me. I wouldn’t have figured it out on my own,” she said dryly as he led her up to the porch.
“Yeah, well. He’s the ugly one,” Travis said, moving forward with slow, easy grace, those eyes still resting on her face. It was like he wore a mask, though. He watched her with good humor and curiosity and maybe that wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t altogether real, either. There was somebody else below that expression—that mask.
“Trey tells me you’re a librarian,” Travis said as he shook her head.
“Yes.” She smiled. She could almost bet what he did. The look in his eyes was a dead giveaway. She’d never seen anything about him mentioned—he was the only Barnes sibling who had absolutely no public persona at all.
Trey had a good-humored sneer on his face. “If we didn’t look so much alike, I’d swear he was a changeling or something. He went and ended up in the most boring job imaginable.”
Yeah, she mused, remembering now. Trey had already told her that. But . . . an accountant?
Ressa looked back at Travis, listened as he exchanged what sounded like well-used jibes and insults. That shrewd look he’d given her suddenly made her feel more than a little nervous, though.
She had to fight the urge not to look over at Neeci, not to place herself protectively between her and her cousin.
It was practice that let her smile at him, practice that let her keep herself from tensing up under that all-too-keen gaze.
An accountant? Like hell. The only place she’d ever seen anybody with eyes that watchful was when she’d been forced to talk to cops.
If he was an accountant, then she was Marilyn Monroe.
* * *
“I like her.”
Trey hefted a bucket filled with ice from the counter and headed for the door. He didn’t look back at his brother. “You just met her.”
“Talked to her for a while already. That’s enough,” Travis said. His voice was carefully neutral, but the message was there. An apology underscored every word. “I like her. And I was an ass. You going to stay mad at me all day?”
Trey shrugged. “Who says I’m mad?”
“Well, since we’ve kinda known each other for . . . I dunno, our whole lives, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading the signs.” Travis closed his hand around the door handle, but instead of opening it, he stood there, keeping Trey from moving outside.
Now Trey had to look at him.
Once their eyes locked, Travis said, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I can’t help but worry . . .”
“That’s a fucking joke, coming from you,” Trey snapped. “You have more secrets than the CIA, don’t think I can’t tell. But you worry? Give me a break. Look, I’m not mad. I’m just . . .”
He stopped, eyed Travis. “What?”
There was a faint echo of surprise in the back of Trey’s mind, there for a blink, then gone. Travis hadn’t expected Trey to pick up on so much.
Trey almost snarled.
“Look . . . it’s . . .” Travis was staring off into empty air. “I . . . son of a bitch. Look, yeah. I hold stuff back. I guess I never realized how easy it would be for you to pick up on it. But you don’t have to worry, and I’m sorry about last night.”
His twin meant it. Trey could tell that much. He was sorry, and . . . yeah. He didn’t think Trey should worry. There was a sincerity there that Trey could feel. But what did any of that mean? Trey had no idea.
Blowing out a breath, Trey said, “Open the door, would ya?”
“Should I go?” Travis continued to stand there, watching him. “I can crash at a hotel.”
“Like hell. Just stop being such a dick, okay?”
The door opened and he cut past his brother. Some of the tension that seemed to wrap around them both dissolved, like sticky threads of cotton candy caught in a rainstorm. But it wasn’t gone. Sooner or later, they’d have to have this out. He was tired of Travis hiding away like he was.
But all that could wait.
* * *
Both of them swam like fish.
Ressa smiled to herself as Clayton and Neeci chased each other around in the shallower end of the big pool. So far, Ressa had managed to stay out of the water, and even mostly dry, although every few minutes, a giant splash would come her way. She didn’t know how long she would be able to evade them. But she had every intention of doing so for as long as she could.
“I like your suit.” Trey’s voice was soft and low and he laid a hand on her hip, the warmth of it almost shocking even in the heat of the day. Because he was there, because it was too tempting not to, she let herself lean back against him, and the solid wall of his chest against her back was a delight that she’d remember for a long, long time.
Even if—
If—
Broodingly, she made herself silence that if. For some reason, that if had been whispering through her brain a lot today. Ever since she’d met the too intense gaze of Trey’s twin.
Maybe those thoughts weren’t fair—hell, she knew they weren’t. Not to her, not to Trey. Maybe not even to Travis, even if he did have cop’s eyes.
As his thumb stroked over the ruby red retro suit she’d pulled on, she forced herself to focus on Trey and not the worries that had chased her over the past hour. “The suit? This old thing?”
This old thing—she’d spent about thirty minutes debating on the right swimsuit and had ended up going with the red because it highlighted her breasts, her hips and her butt and she liked how it showed off her ink, too.
“Yeah.” Trey stroked a finger down one of the tattoos on her arm, smiling. “This old thing. Although you could be wearing sackcloth and I’d still be intrigued. I think I’d like nothing best, but . . . not a good idea right now.”
“No.” She turned her head up and met his eyes. “Probably not.” She glanced across the pool where Travis lounged on a chair, gaze shielded by a pair of dark sunglasses, his face supposedly relaxed. But he was watching every damn thing. She could feel it. And there was a weird tension between the brothers. “Seems like there’s something going on between you and your twin. Everything okay?”
“It’s fine.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You got family, right? You know how it is. We just bumped heads last night. The jerk has a hard one.”
“Oh, I got family. I doubt we’re as close as y’all are, though.” She covered his hand with hers and looked back at the pool. “The way those two play, you’d think they were born joined at the hip.”
Trey chuckled. “When I told him you two were coming over, he all but bolted out the door looking for you. Then I had to tell him it wasn’t until this afternoon. You’d have thought I told him the world’s candy supply had disappeared overnight.”
“Likes his candy, huh?” She slid him a look.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.” His lips brushed against her shoulder.
&n
bsp; That light touch sent a shiver through her. “Trey . . .”
“Sorry.” His hands tightened around her waist and then he stepped back. “Damn if you don’t go to my head, Ressa.”
Slanting a look at him, she said, “Now it wasn’t like I told you to stop.” She already missed the feel of him standing there so near she could feel his body heat.
“Standing that close makes it hard for me to think.” He shook his head and instead of moving back to where he’d been, he moved around and cut behind her, settling onto a tall stool sitting at the nearby bar. His gaze settled on the pool where Neeci and Clayton had decided to play an enthusiastic, but slow, game of water tag. “Do you realize I don’t even know all that much about you?”
She stiffened, then forced herself to relax. “What do you want to know, honey?” Then, mentally, she wanted to kick herself. She had secrets, so many that she didn’t ever want to share. Some of them weren’t even hers, and some of the ones that were still made her look back at the years behind her and wonder what she’d been thinking.
He must have read something on her face and she gave him a wide, easy smile. “I’m an open book,” she said, the lie falling too easily from her lips.
A smile lit his face. “An open book. No woman is. That’s why you drive men crazy . . . and why we love you.”
She pursed her lips as she considered that. “I think I like that.” Then she shrugged. “There’s no reason for you to know that much about me. Or for me to know that much about you. We just met not that long ago.”
“True.” His voice was soft. “And yet I find myself thinking about you all too often. In the morning. Halfway through the day. At night. And that was before we met back up because of those two. I never was able to stop thinking about you, even when I told myself there wasn’t going to be anything more for us.”
“Did you want more?”
She looked away from the pool to meet his gaze.
He was staring at her and the intensity of his gaze sent her heart into overdrive.
“I wanted more pretty much from the first moment I laid eyes on you.” Then he shrugged and looked back at the kids. “But life kept getting in the way.”
“It’s got a way of doing that.”
* * *
Trey didn’t know if he’d ever noticed a woman’s eyelashes until he’d met Ressa Bliss.
He’d certainly never had quite this fascination with a woman’s mouth. She had this way of sucking her lower lip in, biting it ever so lightly and then letting it go . . . it made him think about biting her lip, her neck, her . . . lots of things.
But then her words connected, and he lowered his head, staring down at the polished wood of the bar top. He rubbed his thumb against the surface and wondered if he was ready for all the emotion already surging inside him.
What do you want to know . . . I’m an open book.
No, she wasn’t. Trey was pretty good at picking up on stories and he’d seen the story in her eyes before she gave him that wide, easy smile.
“You know, we’ve all got shadows, Ressa,” he said softly. “We all have secrets behind us.”
A squeal, cut short, had them both looking at the pool and then Trey swore, moving off the stool with a muttered apology.
“Clayton, watch the roughhousing in the pool,” he said as he strode past her. “Neeci isn’t me or one of your uncles.”
“But she—” Clayton started, a scowl forming on his face as Neeci surfaced, her hair dripping, a look promising retribution on her little face.
“Did you hear me?”
Clayton’s face folded into mutinous lines, but he nodded and then turned to the steps. “I don’t want to play no more.”
“Anymore,” Trey corrected.
“That either!” Clay shouted. That was the last thing he got out before Neeci took him under.
“Neeci!” Ressa snapped.
“He did it to me first, Ressie!”
“Oh, boy.” Ressa shoved past Trey. “That line doesn’t fly for me. You know that. Out of the pool.”
Neeci’s eyes widened. “What . . . you—” She gulped. “You’re not making us leave, are you?”
Clayton came rushing to her defense. “I did it to her first. I don’t want her to go. It’s my fault.”
“I think both of you need to get out for a while,” Trey said, moving to Ressa’s side. “Maybe it’s time for them to eat. You think?”
“Yeah.” A smile quivered at the corner of her mouth, but she kept her face straight as they all but slumped in relief—not exactly the best thing to do in the pool. “Both of you can settle down a little while. Besides, I’m getting hungry. Come on out, guys.”
“I’ll help them dry off and get them moving inside.”
At Travis’s voice, Trey looked up. His brother had left the far side of the pool and approached without him even noticing. He looked a little less haggard and he’d torn through more than half the food Trey had made that morning. He still looked like he needed to put on a good ten or fifteen pounds, but maybe in another week or two, he wouldn’t look like he was getting ready to put in for a casting call for The Walking Dead.
Trey glanced at Ressa. She shrugged in response. “We’ll be in in a few minutes.”
After the door had closed, she looked over at him, that familiar, teasing smile curving her lips up. “I don’t think she’s ever been so worried about consequences before.”
Trey backed her up against the low-lying brick wall, his hands coming up on either side of her hips to cage her in. “Sometimes the consequences are a bitch.” Then he leaned in and nuzzled her neck. “And then sometimes, the ride’s worth it.”
“Trey . . .” She curled her hands around his waist, her fingers stroking the feathers of the raven that just barely reached his side. “I get the feeling you’re talking about something entirely different.”
“Am I?” he asked, moving to rub his mouth against hers. He could taste her and it went straight to his head.
Before he had a chance to deepen the kiss, though, she pulled away. “Even on the drive back, I already missed you. It’s crazy. I watched you, wanted you for months before I even knew your name,” she said, staring up at him. “Then we had a weekend. One night, really . . . crazy, amazing sex and a few hours together where it was just us. Not much in the scheme of things, but it felt like I was missing some vital part of me when it ended.”
His heart did the weirdest little spin inside his chest—it couldn’t be healthy for a body organ to do that, Trey was almost certain of it. But it felt so right, staring into her eyes. Cupping her face in his hands, he bent his head, pressed his brow to hers. “It didn’t end, though. Just a time-out. Now we just gotta figure out where this is going. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She closed her hands around his wrists and smiled. “Yeah.”
* * *
They talked her into the pool.
She did it only after they promised not to splash her, and that held for all of ten minutes and then Clayton and Neeci gleefully pounced on her and she gamely let them take her under.
Since she was already soaked, she took off after both of them as they swam away and she caught Neeci, tossing her into the air and watching as she landed with a giant splash. Neeci came back out of the water, laughing and squealing for her to do it again. Clayton took a wide-eyed look at her and then swam for his dad.
“Don’t expect me to save you,” Trey said, laughing and moving out the way. “She told you not to splash her. I think you’re in for it.”
From the side of the pool, his legs in the water from the knees down, Travis watched all of it, an amused look on his face.
Realizing he wasn’t going to find any help from his dad, Clayton took off for the next best bet. He climbed out of the pool and ran around the brick surface to hide behind Travis. “Don’t let her get me,” he begged.
Travis snorted. “You trying to put me in the middle of this?” He sighed and shook his head. “Clay, kid.”
&nbs
p; “You’re stronger than she is! Besides, you don’t want to kiss her and Dad does.”
Travis shot Trey an amused look. “I’m pretty sure your dad and kissing has nothing to do with any of this. But . . . here. I’ll make it easy, cuz your dad doesn’t want to kiss me.” He hooked his arm around Clayton’s waist and flipped him in.
Clayton hit the water with a giant splash and surfaced with a dark glare for Travis. “That’s not fair!” There was a grin on his face as he started to swim for his dad. “I’ll make Dad dunk you. You’re too big for me.”
“I’ll dunk him later, Clay. Your uncle looks like a puppy could kick his butt right now.” Trey slid him a look across the pool. “Makes it too easy. He’s not dressed for the pool anyway.”
For some reason, the idea of a puppy beating up his uncle Travis struck Clayton as hilarious and he went into a fit of giggles—which made him oblivious to the fact that Ressa had slid under the water and swam up behind him. She caught him around the waist and came up out of the water, twisting and plunging them both under. Clayton’s screech of delight was cut short and he came up sputtering.
“That was sneaky,” he said, swiping the water out of his eyes.
“Next time a woman tells you she doesn’t want to get wet,” she advised. “Listen.”
Then she winked at him and swam over to the far side, hoisting herself out and sitting on the edge to watch.
Losing one of his playmates had Clayton swimming back to Travis.
Looking down into a pair of blue eyes that were almost a mirror of his own, Travis lifted a brow. The kid was up to something, he knew it.
“You gotta come in now.” Clayton propped his arms on the brick and gazed at him soulfully.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Travis gave him a game smile, but shook his head. “Your dad’s right, kid. I’m dragging so bad a puppy could kick my tail. I’ve been sick. Don’t think I’m up to a swim.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw his twin’s gaze narrow on him, and he felt the intensity of Trey’s gaze as well. Oooohhh, yeah. He was going to get it. If it wasn’t for the stitches, he would have just gone in.
But he couldn’t get them wet and he wasn’t going to explain them either. No way to hide the injury if he took off his shirt, and that was a talk that just couldn’t happen right now—or ever, if he had his way.
Busted (Barnes Brothers #3) Page 22