No Strings Attached

by Susan Andersen - No Strings Attached

  “At last,” she said. “Someone who doesn’t simply take him at face value.”

  “Yeah, well, you might not be as happy about this. Or, hell, maybe you will. I don’t know. But he’s not a drug dealer. He’s with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  “Oh, please,” she said dismissively. “Did he show you his badge, too? I’m kind of disappointed in you. You must realize that anyone can buy anything on the internet these days.” But her stomach had begun to roil. Because if Max thought it was genuine—

  It probably was.

  “Anyone can maybe buy a knockoff that fools the general public,” he agreed easily, but in that deep, no-nonsense voice that just seemed to carry more authority. “But I’ve seen my share of badges in both the Marines and my time in the sheriff’s department and his looks legit. Besides, I called an old Marine buddy who’s now with the DOJ. He ran Luc and confirmed it. Guy’s DEA, Tash.”

  “Thank you for letting me know. You’re a good friend.” She climbed out of the booth with stiff gracelessness. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “No,” Jenny protested, but something in Tasha’s face when she turned her head to stare at her best friend must have warned Jenny off, for the petite brunette merely said quietly, “Must you?”

  She couldn’t help herself; she glanced down the room to where the other two Bradshaw brothers were. Luc stood with his back to the dartboard and, even as she watched, sent a dart flying over his shoulder. It stuck in the fat above the double ring. She couldn’t hear Jake, but she was fairly sure he’d informed Luc of his score from the way Luc laughed.

  Then he suddenly looked at her.

  She started and jerked her attention back to Jenny. “Yes, I really must. When I found out that Luc was the one who’d rented Will’s apartment, I left the kitchen at Bella’s half cleaned. It needs to be finished before I open tomorrow.”

  “I’ll help you.” Jenny started to slide out of the booth.

  “No.” Tasha took an abrupt step back. “No. I love you for offering, but stay. Have a glass of wine with your fiancé.”

  She was so happy that her best friend had found happiness with Jake. Glad for Max and Harper, as well. But she didn’t think she could bear to be around all that happiness right now. Not when she was so steeped in misery.

  Her gaze glanced off Jenny’s, and she hoped her smile didn’t look as frozen as it felt. “I’ll talk to you soon,” she whispered. Then she whirled on her heel and made her getaway.

  * * *

  LUC GRABBED MAX by the arm as the other man made his way to the bar. “What the hell did you say to her?”

  Max glanced down at the hand on his biceps, then transferred his gaze to Luc’s face. The you-don’t-wanna-be-doing-that cop look in his eye, coupled with the size and heft of his half brother’s muscle beneath his fingers, made Luc reconsider, and he dropped his hand to his side.

  “Good to see you, too, bro,” Max rumbled, then met his gaze with the straight-shooter directness it hadn’t taken Luc long to figure out was Max’s default mode. “I told her I was damn near a hundred percent certain your DEA badge was real.”

  “But...isn’t that a good thing?”

  “You’d think so, right? But I guess not, because she looked like she’d just been kicked in the stomach. Maybe you being legit makes it somehow worse in her eyes. Because if you were the supposed good guy, how did she end up in jail—and why didn’t you lift a finger to help her?”

  “I didn’t know about it! I gotta go talk to her.” He started to push past his half brother, but Max stepped more fully into his path. The guy was big and solid, so Luc had no option but to stop. That didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. “What?”

  “You need to take a big step back here. Just think about this for a minute—and try to look at it through Tash’s eyes. Something damn traumatic happened to her seven years ago, but she’s had time to put it behind her and move on.”

  Realizing he’d been doing more reacting than thinking, which wasn’t his usual M.O. at all, Luc shook out his hands. “Then I show up.”

  “Not only show up but are related to her best friends’ men. Which means there’s going to be no avoiding you. And Tasha just said something about you moving into her studio apartment? How the hell did you swing that?”

  “I didn’t have a clue about Tasha when I sublet it from Will—I actually arranged it last month when I discovered you lived in Razor Bay. From the time I found out I had brothers, I’d been looking for you and Jake. I didn’t know when I found you, though, that Jake lived here, too.

  “My original plan was to take some time to scope you out. I wasn’t sure how that was gonna work, but I figured if you didn’t want anything to do with me, I’d have a more private place than a motel room to kick back in while I looked for Jake. I put in for a sabbatical when I learned Dad died while I was on a job and figured I’d have a while before I was assigned to a new one. Worst-case scenario seemed to be that I’d be forced to relax for a while.”

  Max shrugged. “But you can see how Tasha might be overwhelmed by all these surprises, right?”

  He gave a terse nod.

  “Then take my advice and back off a little. You can’t fix everything in twenty-four hours. Give her some space and yourself a little maneuvering room.”

  He slipped on his Laid-Back Luc persona, doing everything except calling Max “Dude” as he agreed that was a good idea. And in all honesty it was.

  Everything Max said rang true for him. He did need to give Tasha some breathing space.

  But he realized he had another truth, as well. He intended to spend time with his half brothers. And that meant spending time with their women.

  Which meant spending time with Tasha.

  So, for however long he ended up being here, he needed to put some serious thought into figuring out how to get back into her good graces.

  For everyone’s sake.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I’M REALLY SORRY, TASHA,” Tiffany said as they walked out of Bella T’s kitchen the following Friday afternoon. “I hate that I’m letting you down.” Her normally cheerful face was etched in misery, causing Tasha to stop in her tracks to stare at her waitress.

  Then she reached out and grasped Tiffany’s plump shoulders, giving them a squeeze as she bent her head to pin the younger woman with a no-nonsense look. “Tiff. Honey. No. You have nothing to be sorry about, and you haven’t let me down at all. I didn’t really think you’d be happy in the kitchen. But you’ve been with me since I opened this joint, and I thought I should at least give you the right of first refusal before I go outside again for help.” She grinned at the plump brunette. “Just in case you’ve been harboring a secret hankering all these years to be a cook.”

  “Gawd, no.” Tiffany shivered. “Even with it half-open to the dining room, I’d go nuts in the kitchen all day. Not to mention mess up my mani. I like being around people.”

  “And that’s where you shine, so don’t give it another thought.” Dropping a hand, she slid her other around Tiffany’s shoulders and pulled her in for a quick one-armed hug. Then she stepped back and automatically gave the dining room a swift perusal. “Looks like the after-school rush is kicking in, so get your tush out there and hustle some orders.”

  “Aye, aye, boss.”

  Tasha took up her customary station behind the counter, where she could keep an eye on the growing crowd until the orders started coming in. She watched Tiffany sashay from table to table, laughing and joking with the students as she wrote down their orders, then turned her attention to Jeremy, the Cedar Village boy who bussed dishes for her.

  She’d originally hired him as a favor to Max and Harper, who were both very involved in the boarding school for troubled boys. Yet it turned out they had done her the favor, because Jeremy was working out great. He was a tall, built, good-looking eighteen-year-old, and when she’d first agreed to take him on she had half feared that he’d spend his entire time flirting with the high school girl
s. But no matter how many of those girls tried to get him to do exactly that, he refused to be sucked in. He wasn’t a social creature like Tiff. He did his work but kept to himself. She could only assume the loner trait made him even more attractive to the young females, because God knew they didn’t let up in their attempts to get his attention.

  And when they weren’t trying to flirt with him, they watched him.

  She saw Peyton Vanderkamp doing exactly that right now. The pretty fair-skinned, black-haired girl shared a table with Davis Cokely, but she kept shooting covert glances Jeremy’s way as he cleared a table a short distance away. Davis was a handsome kid himself, but as far as Tash was concerned, his smug air of entitlement took the shine off his nice looks.

  Peyton, she didn’t know that much about. The Vanderkamps were relatively new in Razor Bay, but they were immensely wealthy, from all accounts, and the girl ran with Davis’s posse, so Tasha didn’t expect a lot from her in the way of character. She knew that prejudices born of her own high school experiences likely colored her opinion, and she freely admitted that wasn’t very grown-up of her. But since she doubted she’d ever have an intimate relationship with the girl, she didn’t see the point of spending a lot of time worrying over her lack of maturity.

  She was about to turn away when Davis turned so he was facing her more fully. The calculating look that crossed his face caught her notice, so she was watching when he, oh, so casually stretched out a foot just as Jeremy passed his table.

  Her employee stumbled over it and went down like a felled tree. The bus tub in his hands bounced on the floor before tipping onto its side and spilling half its load of crockery out onto the floor with a resounding clatter.

  Like field crickets at a predator’s approach, all the kids went stone silent. Davis laughed.

  Incensed, Tasha reached for her Ping-Pong ball gun under the counter. Bringing it up, she fired off a shot. The ball bounced off Davis’s temple and stopped that annoying guffawing.

  He spun to face her. “What the hell?”

  She came out from behind the counter and strode over to his table. Planting her knuckles on the tabletop, she leaned down until she was nearly nose to nose with him. “Nobody messes with my people in my restaurant,” she said flatly. “You wanna be a lowlife, kid, go home and trip your dog.”

  “Not the dog!” one of the girls from a nearby table protested. “Go home and trip yourself,” she suggested alternatively and her friend nodded in earnest agreement.

  Tasha stooped to scoop up a pizza pan whose lazy elliptical spin on the floor was rapidly losing steam. She put it back in the tub. “You okay?” she asked Jeremy in a low voice.

  Muscles jumped in his jaw, and his pale blue eyes burned with outraged pride. She thought he was going to come up swinging, thus starting a bare-knuckles brawl with Davis—and wondered what it said about her that she intended to let him get a shot in before she intervened.

  But Jeremy merely nodded in answer to her question and pushed back to sit on his heels. Silently, he helped her gather the other plates and glasses that had escaped.

  She couldn’t help but be impressed. Not many eighteen-year-old males would have reined themselves in the way he was doing.

  A sudden idea made her pause mid-stretch for the plastic soda glass she’d intended to nab before it rolled out of reach. Letting it go, she sat back on her heels and contemplated him for several heartbeats while she silently debated the merit of her brainstorm.

  Then leaving him to deal with the tub, she rose and turned her attention to Davis. “As the sign on the wall clearly states, I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. I’m exercising that right. If you want to come back and play nice another time, you’re welcome to do so. But you’ve lost your pizza privileges today.”

  “Big deal,” he said, shoving back his chair and standing. “Your pizza’s only so-so.”

  Jeremy surged to his feet as if that, of all things, was the final straw.

  But before he could say anything, a football player named Sage from a few tables down demanded, “Have you and me been eating the same pizza, Cokely? ’Cause Bella T’s makes the best damn slices in the county.” He gave Tasha a guilty look and held up his hands. “Sorry, Miz Riordan—don’t shoot. Best darn slices, I meant to say.”

  She merely grinned, and red crept up Davis’s neck at the reprimand from one of his teammates. Ignoring everyone else in the restaurant, however, he gave Peyton an imperious jerk of his chin. “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t budge from her chair. “You go ahead,” she said coolly, making Tasha wonder if she ought to reevaluate her original impression of the girl. “I’m going to stay. I like the pizza here.”

  He swore under his breath and stomped over to the door. A moment later it slammed closed behind him.

  “We’ve got a number of orders stacking up, boss,” Tiffany called, and Tash nodded.

  “You might want to take the meat lover’s slice off mine,” Peyton said in her I’m-much-too-cool-to-ever-get-rattled way.

  “Will do,” Tiffany said, then grimaced apologetically. “I’m afraid you’re stuck paying the tab for the two pops.”

  With a haughty lack of concern, Peyton hitched a slender shoulder. “Not a problem.”

  “Then I guess I’d better get back to the kitchen so no one has to wait too long for their pizza,” Tasha said and turned toward the kitchen.

  Only to find herself looking straight at Luc’s amused face.

  Her heart gave a hard thump. Oh, perfect. He’d been in here at least once a day every day this week to grab himself something to eat. Sometimes he tried to talk to her, and other times he didn’t. But always, she caught him watching, watching, watching her. He’d already been in earlier for a cup of coffee to go, so she’d mistakenly thought she could relax for the rest of the day.

  More fool she, clearly, for here he was once again, this time lounging bonelessly at one of the tables, his long jeans-encased legs stretched out and one elbow hooked over his chair back—watching her once more. She’d chew her tongue off before admitting this out loud...but his constant scrutiny was disconcerting.

  When their gazes met, he gave her a one-sided smile and a thumbs-up—the latter presumably for her handling of the tripping altercation. Without acknowledging either, she looked away and turned back to Jeremy. And acknowledged the decision she’d come to several minutes ago as a really good idea. “Bring the tub to the kitchen,” she said a bit more brusquely than she’d meant to. “I’d like a word with you.”

  * * *

  JEREMY FOLLOWED SO CLOSELY behind Tasha he came within centimeters of tromping on her heels. Crap. He should have known the past few weeks were too good to be true. Now she was probably going to fire his ass for losing her Richie Rich’s business. He wasn’t stupid; he knew the after-school crowd was a big part of her low-season profits—and growing bigger all the time, from what he’d heard Tiffany say.

  He liked working here. It was...cheerful. Except for Cedar Village in a lesser way, that wasn’t an environment he’d had much experience with. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize it when he was surrounded by it. People tended to laugh and smile in Bella T’s. It made for some nice working conditions.

  Even nicer was the way Tasha had stood up for him just now. My people, she’d said, as if she considered him a part of her team. But not only wasn’t he a Razor Bay native, he was from the Village, which probably already put a black mark next to his name. Tasha ran a tight ship around here. She didn’t tolerate even mild swearing in Bella T’s, though he had heard her swear like a sailor—but never when clients were in the restaurant. Even after having been here only a short while, he could point out several kids who’d testify to her lack of tolerance, having seen them run afoul of Tasha’s Ping-Pong ball gun the same way Cokely had. He was surprised she’d let the football player get away with saying damn, even if it had been in defense of her kick-ass pizza.

  If he lost this job, he didn’t know what he would
do. Right now he still had a roof over his head, but he was graduating the Village’s program on the thirtieth, so he knew he was on borrowed time being able to live there. He sure as hell didn’t want to go back to his White Center neighborhood on the southern outskirts of Seattle. Not when he couldn’t say with any certainty—even given all the coping skills he’d learned from his counselors—that he wouldn’t go back to his old bad habits. If he took up again with his old friends—and face it, they were the only people he knew outside of the few friends he’d made at the Village—it was pretty much guaranteed that he’d fall back into the same old pattern.

  A pattern that spelled L-O-S-E-R.

  He was so engrossed in the What Ifs that he didn’t realize Tasha had stopped until he bumped up against her back. Rattled, knowing he was probably gonna get it for not watching where he was going, he jumped back. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. Then, clearing his throat, he added, “I’m sorry about out there, too. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t you apologize for something that was not your fault,” Tasha said fiercely. “You have zip to be sorry about in the Cokely incident—that one is all on Davis. Actually, watching the mature way you handled yourself when I’m sure you would’ve preferred smacking him silly made me want to talk to you about something else.”

  He wasn’t in trouble? His counselor Jim had said he had to stop blaming himself for everything that went wrong in people’s lives, but when you grew up the way he had, it was a hard habit to break. But he took a breath, crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a jerky nod. “Okay.”

  She pulled the orders from the wheel Tiffany had clipped them to and went over to the industrial-sized fridge to get out two round dough balls and several triangular ones. Swiftly, she began rolling out the full pizza crusts atop pizza stones. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You want a Coke?”