Rowdy

“I’ve been busy.” I answered Asa’s question offhandedly while I continued to stare at this stranger that I had once known better than I knew myself.

“Busy with what?”

I jerked my head around and noticed he had a shit-eating grin on his face. The fact that I was dumbstruck by this woman was obviously apparent and he had no qualms about torturing me with that knowledge.

I picked up the beer to have something to do with my hands and tilted my head to one side as Salem and I continued to watch each other. I was looking at her like she was going to attack at any second, like she was going to pounce and pull away all the good stuff I surrounded myself with now and all I would be left with was a blanket of threadbare awfulness that covered a life I didn’t want to remember.

She was looking at me like I was the toy inside a Cracker Jack box. Her dark eyes shone like she had just found something she had been looking for and it was so much better than she imagined it being.

I took a big swallow of beer and told her flatly, “I want to know why you’re in Denver, Salem.”

She picked up her drink, something pink that smelled tangy and sweet, and took a sip. She pushed her heavy fall of hair over her shoulder and I looked down. Yep, Asa had gotten an eyeful. She had on a red lacy top that was cut low over the swells of her breasts and it looked like if she leaned in just the right way, the entire thing would fall down and expose her entire chest. She dressed provocative and alluring, but it was always sophisticated and very pulled together. She really did embody a modern-day Bettie Page.

“I’m here because Phil wanted me here. He knew this was where I was supposed to be if I wanted to be happy.”

I wasn’t expecting that answer, in fact I felt kind of like a dope for thinking she was going to say it had something to do with me being here. The little ding to my ego surprised me and I frowned.

“What does that mean?”

She just shrugged. “It means I’ve moved around a lot since I left Loveless. I never stay in any one place for very long and I’ve never managed to settle. I always thought that meant I was adventurous, that I had the soul of a gypsy, but Phil made me realize that I was always just looking for a safe place to land, a place to call home. I have never had that before.”

“Denver is your safe place? You want this to be home now?”

I got it. I mean, Phil had found me slumming in a disgusting tattoo parlor in Oklahoma apprenticing under a guy that was more interested in running meth out of his shop than tattooing or teaching me how to tattoo. He had a friend of a friend that mentioned me to him, and the fact I was young, really eager to learn, and legitimately loved art. He made a special trip to come see me, and without my knowing how it would play out, Phil Donovan had rescued me, brought me to Denver on his dime, taught me what I needed to know to have a successful career and how to make money off of art. Most importantly Phil had brought me into the fold of his family. Lonely wasn’t easy but I had done it for so long that at first I didn’t recognize what any of it was. Phil made Denver my safe place and my home as well.

She smiled and that sexy-as-hell piercing above her lip winked at me again. Now there was no question things below my belt were getting hard and taking all kind of notice of her against my will.

She told me coyly, “Sort of. My home is a little more complicated than coordinates on a map.”

I was going to ask her what in the hell that meant when the door to the bar opened and a young woman sauntered in. I heard Asa suck in a breath from across the bar and heard Saint call out “Royal” as she waved to the new arrival from where she was still wrapped around Nash by the pool table. The auburn-haired beauty gave a general wave and then glided across the floor like it was her own personal catwalk as she went to join her friend. Just like that, Nash was in the center of a sexy redhead sandwich as the two girls hugged and giggled all around him. Lucky bastard.

“Who? Is? That?”

Asa’s drawl was suddenly tight and thick in a way I had never heard before. His eyes, which were normally all shiny and bright like gold coins, darkened to something intense and intent like I had never seen in him before.

“Royal. She lives across the hall from Nash, and since Saint practically lives with him now, the two of them are inseparable.”

The two redheads were an odd mix and as opposite as two girls could be. Saint was low-key, soft-spoken, and about as humble and sweet as one person could get. She had coppery hair and freckles, so I liked to tease her that she looked like Pippi Longstocking. Royal Hastings had been genetically gifted in every way a young woman could be. She was tall, had perfect skin, cocoa-colored eyes, and auburn hair that went on for days. Her body was the kind of thing I used to think never really existed outside of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and if all of that wasn’t enough in a supersexy package, she was also really nice, superfunny, and just quirky enough to make her approachable and engaging.

“I want.” Asa’s voice dropped an octave and I saw Salem look back and forth between the two of us. I hated to even think it but it sure ran through my mind that if he set his sights on Royal, that meant I didn’t have to get all queasy and weird about him flirting with Salem so I told him, “Go for it. She’s single.”

His eyes shot back to mine and he scowled. “Why is a chick that smoking hot single?”

In guy speak that totally meant “what is wrong with her?”

I lifted a shoulder and let it fall innocently. “She works a lot and has weird hours, I guess.”

He put his hands on the bar across from me and leaned forward a little. “What does she do?”

That was the tricky part. When I told him what the stunning young woman did for a living, I knew his interest would immediately be dampened. I tossed it around in my head for a second, toying with how to tell him, when Salem suddenly interrupted our back-and-forth banter by stating, “She’s a cop.”

Asa’s eyes bugged out huge in his face and he took a step back from us like the news held an electrical shock.

“How do you know that?” His tone was harsh when he asked her the question.

Salem lifted a bare shoulder and let it fall. I decided I wanted to lick along her entire collarbone and suck on the curve of her shoulder where it met her elegant neck. What was wrong with me? I was supposed to be running away from her and the hurt I knew she could inflict.

“She comes into the shop with Nash’s old lady all the time. One time she was in her patrol uniform. I asked her to show me her gun.”

All the color fled out of Asa’s face and he shook his head back and forth like the action would dispel the truth in Salem’s words. Just to drive the point home I nodded and added, “She really is. I didn’t believe it when Nash first told me but it’s true. She even got jumped by a junkie while she was on patrol a little while ago and ended up walking around with a black eye and a busted lip. She carries a badge and enforces the law, my friend.”

He swore under his breath and gave me a lopsided grin. “That should be illegal. No girl that hot should be allowed to protect and serve.”

He wandered away to fix some drinks for Dixie, who was watching the exchange from the end of the bar. When I caught the pretty cocktail server’s eye, she smiled at me and I had to swallow back some beer to avoid the automatic grin back. Flirting with a pretty girl came as naturally as breathing to me, but Salem was watching me carefully with those ebony eyes of hers, and for some reason giving Dixie my I’ll show you a good time grin didn’t really sit right under the scrutiny. She pushed some of her long hair over her shoulder and I watched it slither across her bare skin. Flirting might be second nature to me, but this woman was effortlessly sexy and oozed sensuality like it was an expensive perfume. She was way better at playing this back-and-forth game than I was ever going to be and that was just more reason to keep my distance from her.

“Pretty girls shouldn’t be police officers?” Her tone was a little snide, so I pushed off the bar and inclined my head to where Asa was still talking to Dixie.

“Asa has a long history of being on the wrong side of anyone with a badge. It isn’t her so much as what she does. He isn’t the kind of guy that likes it when a hot girl is off-limits and to him what she does for a living makes her most definitely off-limits.”

She lifted a raven-tinted eyebrow and cast a speculative look between Asa and the striking redhead that had tossed her head back and was laughing loudly at something Saint had said.

“It’s a shame he feels that way. They would make a really beautiful couple.”

Well, that made me feel less like strangling Asa for not only getting an eyeful when Salem had been bent over the bar, but for smiling at her and being so easy around her when she made me feel like I was back to being an unwanted and out-of-place little kid.

“So you just dropped everything—left your entire life—to come help Nash and Rule with the new shop because Phil wanted you here? You didn’t leave anyone or anything behind?”

There was resentment there. I could hear it in my own voice, and I couldn’t seem to help it. My mom had died in a random act of violence when I was a really little kid. I didn’t have too many memories of her. But I could recall that she was nice, pretty, and was always smiling or laughing. I remembered her being happy.

I had gone into the system when I was only six years old. I had no other family or at least no one with my blood willing to claim me, so I bounced from foster home to foster home until I landed with the Ortegas when I was ten. I knew logically my mom hadn’t left me alone in the world on purpose, that fate was a tricky thing and could be really fucking nasty when she wanted to be, but there was no denying that whenever someone I cared deeply about walked away from me it brought back all those feelings I had long since held on to of being abandoned.

Instead of answering my sarcastically asked question, she propped her hip on a bar stool and leaned a little to the side while she considered me solemnly. I always thought she had great eyes. When I was younger I thought they looked like velvet and something soft. Now, while she watched me unflinchingly, I thought they looked dark and enigmatic. I didn’t like that she came across like she knew every secret the universe had and that she was just waiting for me to catch up to her so she could whisper them in my ear.

“Why haven’t you asked me anything at all about Poppy? Not how she is? Not where she’s at? Not what she’s doing? You wouldn’t even let me say her name yesterday and I’m wondering why. I know the two of you had a pretty bad falling-out, but there is something more there. You two were attached like Siamese twins when I left Loveless. So enlighten me, Rowdy. What really happened between you and my sister?”

I couldn’t stop the way her sister’s name made me take an involuntary step back. I didn’t ask because I really didn’t want to fucking know any of that information. This was exactly why I had been avoiding Salem like a coward for the last month. I just wanted to go back to a point where I was happy pretending like the Cruz sisters were nothing but a distant memory I only dusted off when I had too much to drink or sentimentality snuck up on me and gave me a sucker punch.

I was saved from having to choke out a lame response when Ayden popped up at my side and grabbed my elbow. Her eyes were the identical shade of rich whiskey as Asa’s and they were shiny and bright with both tequila and mischief.

“Come dance with me. Jet is being difficult.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw that my friend was glaring at me in warning. Since ruffling Jet’s feathers was at the top of my favorite-things-to-do list, there was no way I was going to tell her no. I wasn’t really a country-and-western kind of guy, but I did have on cowboy boots and I was never going to complain about getting my hands on a girl that was as pretty as Ayden.

I looked back at Salem and could practically see the wheels in her head turning behind her dark gaze, but before I could say anything to her she reached for her drink and pushed off the bar.

“We’re gonna have a reckoning eventually, Rowland. You were always really quick on the field, but off of it you kind of stumble.”

She swished her way around me, her hair slinking across my bare forearm and making my guts clench. I watched her as she wound her way to where Nash and Saint were still talking to Royal and saw her embrace the auburn-haired stunner in a one-armed hug like they were long-lost friends.

I looked back at Ayden and told her before she could even start, “Don’t. Just don’t.”

I let her tug me toward the tiny dance floor and easily fell into a quick two-step with her as David Allan Coe crooned “Mama Tried” on the digital jukebox.

“Rowland?” She giggled a little and I scowled down at her.

“I haven’t been that guy in a long time.”

“Where did ‘Rowdy’ come from, then?”

I grunted but flashed a very toothy grin at Jet over the top of Ayden’s head as he raised both middle fingers up at me and mouthed every dirty word he knew. I pulled his lady closer and smiled cheekily down at her just to rile him up even more.

“I was an unruly child. I had a lot of energy that no one seemed to know what to do with. I was always in time-out, always in trouble at school, and no one really seemed to want to get a handle on it. I was put with a family when I was ten that already had a bunch of other kids, their own and other fosters. The mom—Maria—didn’t speak the greatest English and used to mutter at me in Spanish. She was trying to tell me to settle down, to act right, but I was just rowdy. My teachers, the other parents at church, some of the other kids started calling me that and it was easier for her to say, so it stuck and it fit.”

Her eyes had widened huge in her face and her mouth had sort of dropped open in a little gasp. I gave her a squeeze to let her know it was a long time ago and that it was all right now, but inadvertently my gaze once again sought out that dark head of hair and those ridiculous curves encased in a skintight skirt. At least it had been all right until she showed up.

Ayden wrinkled her nose at me and gave me a squeeze back. “Did Jet tell you about Austin?”

Her voice was quiet. I almost didn’t hear it over the clatter of the heels of our boots on the wooden floor.

“He mentioned something about it.”

“What do you think?” She sounded hesitant and I saw her gulp a little after she asked it.

“I think we’re all adults and know how planes work. Austin isn’t Antarctica, and just because you’ll be in a new zip code physically doesn’t mean you won’t be here in heart and spirit still. You guys are family no matter how many miles might be between you and us.”

I saw her nod a little and her eyes got glassy and hot.

“I’m scared.”

I sighed a little and pulled her into a hug that had her squealing in surprise and her long legs kicking up behind her. I kissed her soundly on the temple and told her matter-of-factly, “That’s how you know you’re doing it right, honey.”

I put her back down and she lightly smacked me on the center of my chest with a laugh.

“Yeah, but I’m still freaked out. I’m worried about Asa. Who’s going to keep him in line and keep an eye on him when I’m gone? He’s a trouble magnet.”

“I would think it’s past time your big brother keeps himself in line and there is an army of us here to remind him what he has to lose if he slips up. Worry about you. Worry about your man. Just go and be happy and enjoy being in love and being married. It’ll be fine, Ayd, and if it’s not there isn’t anything you can do about it anyway.”

She made a noise in her throat and lifted her eyebrow at me. “So what’s the story with you and Salem? There seems to be more going on there than you originally let anyone in on.”

Over the top of her head I saw that Jet had climbed to his feet and was stalking toward us. I winked at him and was treated to another nasty look.

“It ain’t a fairy tale, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“She’s fun and kind of eccentric. I like her.”

“Salem’s easy to like.” She was warm. She was smart. She was caring and compassionate. She was the only person in my young life that had made me feel at peace, and when she took that away, when she had abandoned me to my own devices, that was when I really had latched on to Poppy with a ferocity that bordered on obsession. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of being taken in by Salem’s welcoming personality again. It left too big of a void when it was gone.

“So why are you acting like she kicked your puppy? It isn’t like you, and frankly I’m not a fan. She’s a great addition to the shop and you guys are lucky to have her.”

Jet had finally reached us and put his arm around Ayden’s middle. He pulled her backward to his chest and I let her go without a fight.

“You suck.” His tone was surly as he looked at me hard.

I laughed and shrugged. “Then get off your ass and dance with your wife. She comes and listens to that ear murder you call music, the least you can do is twirl her around a dance floor once in a while.”

He grunted and begrudgingly let Ayden pull him into a slow dance as I stepped away from the darkly beautiful couple. I headed to the bar for another beer and thought about what Ayden had said.

The truth of the matter was that the shop and even Rule and Nash were indeed lucky to have Salem here . . . but me—well, I kind of always had the idea that if it wasn’t for bad luck, then I would have no luck in my life at all. I lost my mom. I lost Salem. I lost my first love and that was all before I was old enough to drink legally. Bad luck was something I was intimately acquainted with.

I figured all the good fortune I had since meeting Phil and coming to Denver was fate’s way of repaying me for a childhood of being lost and loveless.

CHAPTER 4

Salem

“Hey, will you please call me back? This is the fourth message I’ve left you in two weeks, Poppy. I’m starting to get a little bit worried.”

I scowled at the phone and shoved it back in my purse as I jumped around a puddle the afternoon rain was leaving on the sidewalk. Denver got hot in the summer, not desert hot or Texas hot, but it was still nice and warm, so I was surprised that when the sky opened up like it seemed prone to do midafternoons, the raindrops that fell were freezing cold and the size of quarters. The weather in this state had a serious identity crisis but I guess that was okay because if you hated what was happening weatherwise it would change five minutes later.

I shivered since I was wearing cute black shorts with big silver sailor buttons and a flouncy off-the-shoulder shirt this morning, and now I was freezing as I walked to the coffee shop at the end of the block to grab something to warm me up before I headed back to the shop from my lunch break. I didn’t even want to think about what the rain had done to my hair and the heavy eye makeup I usually wore, so instead I focused on how irritated I was at my baby sister.

Poppy and I had always been very different. Where I was resigned to the fact that Loveless and my parents’ home were not places I was ever going to thrive in and find happiness, she was still there and still the apple of my stern father’s eye. I had prayed that after she went away to college and saw more of the world, she would branch out, live a little, and realize there was more to life than being a perfect daughter. Much to my annoyance she had returned home right after graduation and had fallen quickly into all her old patterns even when I pleaded with her to come and stay with me. A marriage to a man that was far too similar to my father for my liking had quickly followed and so had Poppy’s distancing herself from me. A choice I was sure wasn’t entirely her own.

Even though my parents and her husband didn’t love that Poppy still stayed in touch with me, it was her one act of defiance and we talked whenever she could get away with it. I had questions—a lot of them. I wanted answers and it was impossible to get them from Rowdy, considering he was about as welcoming as a concrete wall. There was more to their falling-out than the simple “he wanted different things than I did and it meant we couldn’t even be friends anymore” that Poppy had initially given to me when everything broke loose all those years ago. Something major must have occurred for Rowdy to be so adamant that he didn’t even want the slightest info on my sister. She was supposedly his first love and Poppy normally told me everything there was to tell, so all the subterfuge between the two of them had me extra curious.

My sister was not what one would call lucky in love. She was too eager to please, both the men in her life and my father. That led to her dating and ending up in relationships with some real gems. I don’t think she would know the real deal in love if it bit her on the nose, and that was one of the reasons I tried to keep tabs on her and was worried she hadn’t called me back. Her husband was a real piece of work. Oliver Martinez was a bossy and menacing carbon copy of my dad and that made me really nervous. Poppy wasn’t strong enough to walk away or willful enough to stand up for herself if a man in her life was trying to control her.

I ordered a floofy coffee drink and a brownie because they looked good, and tried to wring some water out of my long hair. I was shuffling back to the door, my eyes were down as I put the brownie in my purse, and I didn’t see the woman I almost plowed down until it was too late. I barely caught her around her wrist as she bounced off of me and the collision sent her phone flying to the floor.

We both gasped and I stammered out an apology because even though my coffee hadn’t spilled everywhere it still sloshed a little from the violence of the impact and got on the back of both of our hands.

The woman waved me off and bent to retrieve her phone as I rushed to apologize again and again. I was even more apologetic when I noticed it was the same elegant, blond woman from the other day in the shop.

She was wearing another sharp suit and her hair was pulled up in a tight bun on the top of her head. Her eyes were wide as she recognized me.

“Sorry. I was reading e-mail on my phone and not paying any attention.”

I snorted a little and flicked my hand to shake the cooling liquid off the back of it.

“I was juggling a hundred things and my mind was a million miles away. I have a few minutes before I have to head back to the shop; let me buy you your coffee to apologize.”

She shook her head. “Oh no, you don’t have to do that, really. I should have been paying attention.”

I just ignored her and turned and walked to the line hoping she would follow me. She did, still telling me the gesture was unnecessary, but by the time it was our turn to order she had quieted down and I wasn’t surprised that she got a simple black coffee and didn’t add anything to it. This woman really seemed to be absolutely no frills and no nonsense, which again had me wondering why she had ventured into the tattoo shop in the first place.

“I’m Salem Cruz, by the way.” I stuck my hand out and she shook it briskly.

“Sayer Cole. I actually work at the family law building that’s a couple of blocks over.”

I nodded and grinned a little. “You would be surprised how many lawyers are running around with tattoos nowadays. I sure hope it wasn’t your job that convinced you to forgo getting some ink.”

She balked a little and turned a hot shade of pink. “No. I’m actually pretty new to Denver and was just out exploring.” She cleared her throat as we made our way back to the door. I was relieved to see the rain had let up some. “I stuck my head in on a whim. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.”