All of You: The Lonnigans, Book 1

by Dee Tenorio

  Kyle couldn’t help the deep relief that pushed his held breath out. The last thing he wanted was either to get his ass kicked or be introduced to his maker because he’d been dumb enough to eavesdrop. “I don’t know. I’m not much of a cook. Probably something worth eating, though.”

  He led the way to the kitchen, aware of the giant behind him. Stick to your purpose, man, find out more before you make up your mind. He hit the lights on the way into the kitchen, causing them both to blink at the sudden harshness, but it took most of the menace out of the night. He opened the fridge and peered inside. Same as usual—beer and sandwich fixings. Eggs. Restaurant leftovers.

  “Omelets and beer or sandwiches and beer?”

  “Got chips?”

  He pointed to the cabinet next to the stove. Daniel crossed to the long pantry panel, opened it and pulled out a package of pretzels.

  “Sandwiches,” they both agreed. Against his better judgment, Kyle grinned, relieved again when Daniel matched him. When he wasn’t prepared to rip your throat out, Daniel Pierson was a pretty likable guy.

  Kyle reached into the fridge and started pulling out fixings. The sound of the bag popping and then the subsequent crunching let him know what Daniel was up to.

  “You really didn’t eat much today, did you?”

  Daniel grunted a negative. “I got Jessica’s call and hopped right on the bike. I was over in Blythe. Near Nevada,” he clarified. “She just caught me. If I hadn’t been asleep, I’d have been riding out in the opposite direction.”

  “How do you get into biking?” Was that a job?

  “Just happens, really. You start off riding crotch rockets cuz they’re fun. Some guys get started on dirt bikes, but that wasn’t really my thing. Don’t like dirt much.”

  Kyle had to fight to keep his eyebrows from rising while he constructed the sandwiches.

  Daniel chuckled at his struggle. “When you’re my size, you can’t stay on regular bikes too long. I got into Harleys when I was a kid. I mean, you don’t have to ride to appreciate the beauty of ’em. But when you ride…man, there’s no better feeling than a hog.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it.” He might hate cars, but they were a hell of a lot safer than bikes.

  The other man lifted his chin in question. “You don’t like bikes?”

  “Only if you count the ten speed I had as a kid.”

  “You’re missing out, man.”

  “I think I’ll live.” He handed Daniel the sandwich. When he saw the man take huge bite, he rethought biting into the other one and handed it over as well.

  “You not eating?”

  Kyle smiled. “I’ll start with pretzels.”

  Daniel shrugged and took it. “So what’s the deal with you and Jessica?”

  Well, maybe he could make another sandwich. Kyle pulled another set of bread slices out of the bag and dipped into the mayo jar again. “You’ve got me.”

  “You’re not seeing each other?”

  No, I’m just trying to get her to marry me. “We’re trying.”

  Cheeks full, Daniel stared at him in question.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Women usually are.”

  “Not for me.” Kyle sighed. “At least, they never were before. Jess is…special.”

  “She’s nice. Mom talks about her a lot.”

  “You and Dory are close, then?”

  Daniel took a big bite and nodded. “It was just me and her most of the time. She was kind of wild when I was a kid,” he conceded.

  “No,” Kyle replied with false shock, his laughter escaping. “She seems so down to earth and conservative.”

  Daniel’s dark eyes danced. “She showed you the tattoos already then?”

  “Tattoos?” He tried to picture where Dory could be tattooed. Then he winced and thought better of it. “No, haven’t seen any. She just talks about sex a little more than my local politician would like.”

  Daniel laughed, a rough rumbling sound that could have been a cough. “She does have a kinda dirty mind. But I like that best about her. She always says what she thinks. We figured that’s why she never got re-married. No one but me really put up with always knowing what she thinks. Except Jessica.”

  “Sounds like one of those situations where you took turns taking care of each other.”

  Daniel nodded. “She didn’t handle losing my dad real well. Once she was back on her feet, though, we got along a lot better. She’s the one who got me into bikes. Probably thought it’d make me feel closer to my father. A lot of our friends were bikers. I remember this one guy had an Indian—”

  “He just kept one around?” Kyle asked, trying to picture that in a way that wouldn’t get him labeled a racist.

  “Original bike manufacturers, man. They went out of business back in the fifties. They’re back now, but it took ’em fifty years to pull it off. Anyway, finding a ’53 Chief is a lot like finding a perfect Babe Ruth autographed baseball in your backyard.”

  Kyle whistled.

  Daniel nodded appreciably. “Exactly. I was like, sixteen, looking at this thing and I fell in love. Just fell in love. It was beautiful. I was goner from that day on. You couldn’t get me off bikes after that. Mom taught me to ride and I was on my way.”

  “On your way where?”

  Daniel tilted his head. “Wherever I wanted.”

  “Don’t you ever want…you know, more?”

  “More what?”

  Kyle clamped down on his frustration. He couldn’t be the only guy in the world who felt like this. “I don’t know. A house. A family?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Never really thought about it. Women don’t exactly fall all over themselves to jump in front of my bike, if you know what I mean.”

  “My brother says the same thing.”

  “Your brother rides?” Daniel looked so hopeful, Kyle felt bad about laughing. But the image of Lucas on a motorcycle was too ridiculous to consider.

  “He says women are hard to find.”

  “But not for you.” Daniel finished off his sandwich with a chomp.

  Kyle lifted his hands. “I don’t know why. I like them, they like me. I guess they don’t intimidate me. You just talk to them like they were anyone else and they seem to respond to it.”

  “You think I’m intimidated by women?” Which sounded more like, “You think I can be intimidated?”

  “That might not be the best word. I don’t worry about how they’ll respond. If they walk away, so what? There’s always another one to talk to.”

  “What about Jessica?”

  Kyle took a sip of his beer, his confidence dropping like a rock. “Like I said. She’s different.”

  “She intimidates you?”

  “No. Yes.” Way to make sense there, buddy. Now he knew why Belinda didn’t like talking about Lucas. “It’s…complicated.”

  Daniel polished his beer off and made a gesture asking where to toss it. Kyle pointed under the sink. He finished off his own and gathered the plates to put in the sink. As he rounded the island, he stumbled to a stop when he saw Daniel bend down to put the bottle in the trash. The unmistakable shape of a gun holster was visible past the line of Daniel’s torso.

  Averting his eyes, Kyle made himself put the plates in the sink and pretend the camaraderie they’d just had was still there. Instead, all he could think about was the phone call he’d overheard and the fact that there was a man in his house with a gun. A stranger with a gun.

  “I’ll take care of these in the morning,” he mumbled, anxious to get back to his room and go to sleep before he started thinking. Or worse, not thinking and doing something stupid. Like getting shot.

  Jessica arrived at the ICU bright and early the next morning, having slept surprisingly well despite a face-first dive into the torte that tasted a lot like guilt. Carrying a vase of daffodils, she had her smile pasted on, ready to be cheerful for her friend. Instead, she stopped short when she found Daniel already there, speaking in low tones
to his mother, whose face was pale and drawn. She couldn’t make out what they were talking about, but both of them looking grim and worried couldn’t be good.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked automatically, worrying more when they both seemed surprised to find her in the room. As if they hadn’t even seen her come in.

  “Oh, nothing honey. Daniel’s always a grump this early in the morning,” Dory replied, pasting on a smile of her own, if Jessica wasn’t mistaken. Without her makeup and wig, Dory looked more weathered and definitely more stressed.

  Hoping to alleviate that a little, Jessica accepted the explanation with a nod to Daniel, who gave her a weak smile of his own.

  “They don’t have strong enough coffee here to wake up a guy my size,” he explained, rubbing at his right eye with his half-gloved hand. “Kyle wakes up pretty early for work, so I just left when he did.”

  “Yeah?” Jessica didn’t know that. Then again, living here in California, it made sense that Kyle had to beat the market opening on the east coast. She’d always gotten flack for being a morning person. Interesting that Kyle seemed to be too.

  But not that interesting, she reminded herself. Finding things that made him fit her better was not a good plan. She was supposed to look for reasons not to like Kyle Lonnigan.

  “So you two got through the night all right, then? No problems?”

  Daniel shook his head. “None at all. He makes a killer midnight snack. Even has a comfy couch.”

  Drat.

  “He said I could stay until Mom’s doctors say she’s out of the woods. You have yourself a nice guy there, Jessie.”

  “Jessica,” she corrected automatically, though she remembered to put a smile back on when she said it. Only Kyle ever called her by a diminutive. There didn’t even seem to be any point in telling him not to anymore. Odd that she didn’t find it annoying, something she obviously had to work on.

  Daniel apologized, which she waved off. After a few more minutes, she’d have to get to the office. No one there had been given an explanation about what had happened to Dory, and Jessica was not looking forward to providing one. Thanks to her wounded comrade, she had a bad habit of thinking of Gregory Groom, Esquire as Greggy Groom, asswad. One of these days, she was going to call him that to his face and there would go ten years of career building.

  She said her goodbyes, promised to come back soon with any important office gossip and headed in to start her day. Myriad messages were waiting for her, as were a few more cases and notes from the partners concerning them. The most important note was indeed from Gregory Groom, requiring her presence as soon as she returned. Sighing hard, she went up to her executioner.

  Surprisingly, Gregory was sympathetic. He admonished her for not calling to let them know what was going on, but excused her to return to her work and requested she keep him updated on Dory’s condition—maybe he wasn’t the asswad Dory claimed.

  Jessica ensconced herself in her office and completely lost track of time. She didn’t come back to reality until she smelled the heavenly scent of mu shu chicken and heard a soft knock on the door.

  “Here you are,” Kyle said, holding a large paper bag from which she desperately hoped the smell was emitting. “When you weren’t home yet, I figured you were making up for lost time.”

  “Eternally.” She put her pen down and leaned back in her chair. No wonder he’d come looking for her, the clock read nearly eight o’clock. “Is that for me?”

  “Me or the Chinese food?”

  The devil in her wanted to ask for both. “I haven’t eaten all day and you’re tormenting me by staying all the way over there.”

  So the devil occasionally got the best of her.

  Kyle’s smile was slow, sinful and a little more tempting than the food. He strolled in, crossing the space in a few steps of his long limbs. She liked watching him move, she realized. He was light on his feet. Masculine grace didn’t get nearly as much credit as it should.

  The other surprise was that she had such appreciation for his clothes. Surrounded by men in suits for the last several years, she’d grown somewhat blasé about them. One man looked generally like another in them; dark, blue or gray, pinstripe or double breasted, it was all the same to her. Some looked dignified. Some looked like they were trying too hard.

  Somehow, amidst all those clouds of suits, Kyle looked unique.

  He favored jewel-toned shirts. Not that he was wrong, they looked good on him. Today’s was a deep rose red under black suit jacket and slacks. The tie had come off and the first couple of buttons were undone, making him look relaxed and casual. He unloaded the paper containers onto the surface of her desk, his dark lashes turned downward as he went about it.

  She liked him, she decided. Liked the way he looked, with his inky hair falling over his forehead. Liked that he was so persistent and thoughtful. Liked that he was funny and intelligent. Liked, even, that he worried about her. No one had ever worried about her. Then again, he probably considered dinner to be a peace offering. One he shouldn’t have had to make.

  “You didn’t have to bring food to come in this time,” she finally said while reaching for a white box with the name “Wong’s” on the side, breaking her musing silence as he broke a pair of wooden chopsticks.

  He raised both eyebrows, his vivid eyes twinkling at her. “I like how you don’t mention that until you’ve already got your hands on the container.”

  She sputtered with laughter, accepting the offered chopsticks. “I’m sorry, did you want this back?”

  “No, thanks. If the lady wants my meat, who am I to stop her?”

  “You live on innuendos, don’t you?”

  “They keep things interesting.”

  She would have answered, but she was fitting her lips around the thick chunk of sesame beef, eyes closing in pleasure.

  “Oh, God,” he said, his eyes riveted to her mouth. “If you moan again, I can’t be responsible for my behavior.”

  It was all she could do to keep a straight face while she chewed. “You have problems,” she mumbled after a bit, though she knew she was grinning. She was also looking for a bigger piece of beef.

  “You have no idea,” he grumbled, shrugging out of his jacket.

  She could see the lines of his body better in just the shirt and black slacks. The width of his shoulders, the straight line of his waist and hips. She pulled in a slow breath, wishing it weren’t so shallow, remembering the feel of those hips between her thighs. The ripple of muscle in his stomach against hers as they moved together, hot and smooth, just like his mouth around her nipple—

  “Jess?”

  He was sitting now, watching her curiously. She could feel what he was seeing. Her flushed cheeks, her faint breathing. Thank God he had no way of knowing about the tingling in her breasts or the slick wetness at the juncture of her thighs.

  How did he do this to her? There were plenty of good-looking, amiable men on the earth, several of them in her office building. Yet not a single one of them made her forget what she was thinking, saying or vowing to do. None of them made her want so voraciously, need so desperately. Kyle had her forgetting her name, her goals and her limits.

  She put down the beef, suddenly losing her desire for it. “Yes?” She studiously looked in the other containers for something less suggestive. Fried rice looked the most innocuous.

  She waited for Kyle to say something—anything—but he didn’t. Instead, he went back to eating. For several minutes, that was all they did, but before long her stomach was full and her mind was slightly guilty again. She might like Kyle, but she didn’t want to keep seeing him and all this time together was starting to look more and more like dating. Eating with him was just encouraging him and that wasn’t fair. She could offer an inch, Kyle undoubtedly wanted a mile. The sooner she explained that, the better off they’d both be.

  “Kyle—”

  “What do you think about Daniel?” he asked suddenly, frowning into his container, not seeming to notice sh
e’d been brooding unfavorably in his direction.

  Jessica stopped short. “Daniel? He’s okay, I guess.” Not the answer he wanted apparently, because his frown deepened. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure about him.”

  “Not sure in what way?”

  He finally looked up at her, the frown still intact, a different intensity to his features than she’d ever seen before. Not the joking man now. “I think he’s a drug dealer.”

  “What?” She couldn’t help it, she laughed. “I know he’s a little scary at first, but that’s no reason—”

  “He carries a gun, Jess. On his person.”

  Okay, not the best thing to hear about a guy, but certainly not the worst. “Does he have a permit?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I immediately thought of asking that of a guy I suspect might be selling drugs.”

  “Well, don’t get mad at me. They are legal. Owning a gun doesn’t automatically make a guy a criminal.”

  He shrugged. That was a nice feature in a man, admitting that he lost a point in a discussion. “There’s more.”

  “Okay.” She put her food down and so did he. A fine frisson of nervousness whispered through her, preparing her to tense like a coil. She fought the urge to jiggle her knee. “Like what?”

  “I overheard him on the phone last night. He was making arrangements to meet someone for a shipment purchase.”

  “Overheard? You mean, like eavesdropping?” Well, there was another tick against him. He was nosy. She knew he had more flaws somewhere.

  “It’s not eavesdropping in your own house.”

  She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Did he know you were there?”

  “Well, no—”

  “Then it’s eavesdropping.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less valid,” he argued, his brows close together with what looked like a touch of temper. “And that’s not the point anyway.”

  “The point would be?” It should be that this situation between them was never going to work out.

  “What are we going to do about him?”

  “Do?” Okay, even she knew she was getting annoying by replying to each question with a question, but really, what did he want from her? The whole topic of Daniel as a drug dealer was insane. Dory would never…well, all right, she might have once upon a time, but she’d never stand for her son doing something so dangerous. Or stupid.