Blood & Rust (Lock & Key #4) (16 page)

“See what a temptress you are, Mother?” I said.

Rae rolled her eyes. “Oh, Jill’s a tiny thing, and she needs her strength now.”

“Strength is found in fruits and vegetables, nuts, and lean proteins, not in sugar and flour.” Jill’s voice rang out from the kitchen.

“Killjoy!” Rae hit the button on the remote control of her lounge chair, and the chair hummed as it eased back further. “Time for my cooking show, girls. Hush and admire Tyler Florence with me, or leave the room. Those are your options.”

Grace grinned as she leaned over and planted a kiss on my mother’s cheek.

Yes, it was good to be home.

“DID YOU GET ANYTHING GOOD
?” I asked Jill over the phone. Once again, I was at the Jacks’ new storage unit, up to my ears in Wreck’s belongings. Jill was on her way home from the mall in Rapid where Boner had taken her and Nina so she could shop for maternity clothes and Nina could get her hair done at a salon.

“Yeah, I did,” Jill said, her voice flat.

“Something wrong?”

“Nope.”

“Was Nina a bitch again?”

Nina had picked a fight with me and Jill earlier, and Boner had broken it up.

“Nope.”

“Everything good with Boner?”

Boner was always a bit standoffish with Jill, so I was surprised he had offered to take her to the mall today. He’d invited Nina to go along with them in an effort at making friends with the new girl on the block. She was his buddy’s woman, after all.

“Yep.”

“Jill, you sound weird. What happened?”

“I should be home in twenty minutes or so,” said Jill in her fake relaxed voice.

“You can’t talk now, right?”

“Hmm.”

“Do I need to punch anyone?”

Jill only let out a dry laugh.

“That’s better,” I said, still not convinced. “Don’t worry about cooking anything, okay? I’ll bring food for us. Mom and Becca are staying at Penny’s for dinner.”

“Okay.” Jill clicked off.

Jill was usually super chatty and blabby, what the hell could have happened at the mall, for Pete’s sake?

Half an hour later, Boner pulled up on the Jacks’ property in his truck, and a glammed-up Nina hopped out and strode into the club. She cast a cursory glance at me and kept walking.

“Hey, Boner!” I said. “Everything good?”

“Yeah. Great.” He shot me a dark glare, his green eyes flashing as he swung out of the parking lot once more.

I think I needed to get home sooner rather than later.

Within an hour, I’d brought home a bottle of red wine for myself and a small lasagna from the new family style Italian restaurant in town for me and Jill to share.

“Jill?” I swung open the back door, which led to the kitchen, plopping the wine bottle and the heavy bag of food on the table. “Jill? I’m home!” I took off my messenger bag and dropped it on the nearest chair.

“Tania?” Jill’s panicked voice rose from down the hall.

Moments later, Jill shuffled into the kitchen in her bathrobe, bare feet, hair mussed, blue-gray eyes dreamy, face flushed.

I bit my lip. “Oh…”

Now, it all made sense. Boner’s cool attitude, yet overly protective behavior. Jill’s usual skittishness in his presence, yet her eagerness to spend the day with him. Every instance of their awkwardness together over the past several weeks suddenly fit into place.

I wasn’t the only one under this roof with a crush on a One-Eyed Jack.

“Shit, sorry. Did I interrupt you?” I asked.

Jill’s face reddened again.

And I wasn’t the only one who tended to her own needs to deal with her intense feelings for her crush.

“I have an idea,” I said. “How about you take a cool shower, while I open my wine and pour you a glass of chocolate almond milk on ice, and then you can tell Tania all about it.”

Jill let out a heavy sigh as she drew open a kitchen drawer, grabbed the wine bottle opener, and tossed it on the counter. “Make it a tall glass.”

Early the next morning I stopped off at the Meager Grand and got a triple turbo cup of Americano to battle the post-Cabernet cloud that had taken over my brain cells, then shot straight to the club and got back to work on Wreck’s collection. I was committed to going through as much of it as possible as I prepared to open my store. I had already found quite a number of pieces that I wanted to re-sell for Lock.

“Morning,” a choppy voice rose behind me.

I spun around, clutching a box of rusty handlebars.

Sweat ran down Butler’s flushed face, his wet hair pulled back in a short ponytail. He’d been to battle with himself and won. The sheen on his sculpted arms shone in the early morning light in the small courtyard to the side of Eagle Wings, Lock and Grace’s custom-detailing and repair shop at the club. The club’s new storage unit where I’d been going through Lock’s brother’s mountain of worldly goods was to the rear of the shop.

Weeks had passed since that day we’d arrived in Meager together, and I had managed to stay out of Butler’s way.

Until now.

I took in a short breath. “Hi.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Butler’s voice was sharp, his eyes cold, hard aqua stones.

Is he annoyed to see me?

He took the earbuds from his ears. “I mean, I’m surprised to see you here this time of day.”

“Lock gave me the key to his unit. I try to get here early. There’s a lot to get through.”

“You’re brave.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“And how’s it going?”

“I’ve been able to plow through a good section of Wreck’s eagle collectibles of all varieties, and I organized the piles strategically around the room. Now, I’m finding non-eagle items and trying to organize those. Next, I plan on cataloging it all and taking photos of certain pieces that I feel need a specialist’s appraisal. I’m hoping Lock will let me sell some really nice pieces at my store or keep a few on permanent display there, if he doesn’t want to sell them.”

“Store? You moving ahead with your business plan?”

“Yep. I found a great space in town, and I signed the lease yesterday. It’s official.”

“Holy shit, woman. Congratulations.”

A huge grin split his face, making him even more handsome than he already was, an almost boyish enthusiasm racing over his features. The tense version of this man had its own appeal. I had to admit, I liked that, too.

His hands hung on his hips. “That’s great news, Tania. There you go, taking off. I’m really happy for you.” The lines around his mouth deepened, the hollows just under his cheekbones making an appearance.

I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

“Let me get that for you.” Butler took the box from me and set it down on top of two other boxes in the vast storage unit. “Jesus, look at this place. It’s packed. Wreck used to find all sorts of stuff everywhere we went; he was always buying something.”

“Yeah, it’s quite obvious.”

“He could get the toughest old coot to sell to him, I swear. Find anything interesting yet?”

A whiff of hard man and determined exertion wafted over me. It wasn’t the clean soapy scent of him from that night in the motel but raw, wild natural, and it set off a raw, wild urge spinning inside me.

I stepped back and let out a breath. Bending over a box, I busied myself with ripping the yellowed tape off the ends. “I found a few interesting things, but there’s plenty more to go. I’ll be here a long while yet.”

He held up an ice cream company sign from a now defunct chain in Wisconsin and studied it.

“Wreck was a good talker but genuine, you know? Not a bullshitter,” Butler said. “He gave a shit about the regular guy on the street. It came through when he talked to people.”

“I remember.”

“People responded to him.”

Like I was responding right now to the visuals of post-workout Butler?

“You went out for a run?”

“Yeah.”

“Good for you.”

“Running keeps me sane.”

I smiled.

“What is it?”

“I run for that very same reason. Well, that, and it keeps the love handles at bay.”

He lifted an eyebrow, his gaze locked on mine. “You don’t have love handles, Tania.” His growly voice curled around those words, making my stomach flip.

Why is he reminding me of his familiarity with my body, of his touch over my skin?

My face heated, and I mentally kicked myself for having said such a thing.

“Tania, look, I wanted to tell you—”

Oh God, please no! Don’t tell me! Don’t say anything!

“What’s that?” My voice came out overly chirpy, a desperate attempt not to be awkward.

“You must be wondering. You must be—”

“It’s none of my business. It certainly explains why you didn’t want to
complicate
things, and we didn’t, right? Things didn’t get out of hand—I mean, out of control.” I threw in a shrug to make myself seem casual and unruffled. “We didn’t go far, so things are fine.”

He only stared at me, his jaw stiff.

Ohh, harsh Butler.

Gah!

“Actually, I’m grateful,” I continued.

“Grateful?”

“Yes, grateful. I’m just getting out of a bad relationship. You’re newly in one, um…not a bad one—well, I guess—”
Ah, shit!
“Anyway, what happened between us showed me that part of me is still alive and ready to…” My face heated yet again. “You know what I mean. I’ll shut up now.”

“Right. I get it.”

I crossed my arms. “That’s very exciting for you—your new girlfriend. I mean, old lady. Although why you didn’t mention her, yes, I do find that odd, especially since you initiated—I mean, it was unexpected. But good. I’m good.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Unexpected that something happened between us or unexpected that it was
good
with
me
?”

“Do you care?” I shot back.

“Answer me.”

I returned his glare. “All of the above.”

He held my glare. “Huh.”

I shifted my weight. “Nina is really…”

Searching…searching…buffering…

He tilted his head at me, the edges of his full sexy-as-hell lips—lips I’d enjoyed, lips I’d been daydreaming about—twitching.

“Nice,” I said. “Nina’s very nice.”

And now that you’re all hot and sweaty and raging with cardio endorphins, you can go wake her up with demanding kisses and wild beast sex, and while you’re banging her, I’ll most likely hear both of your orgasmic moans and satisfied grunts from all the way over here.

“Tania?”

“Hmm?”

His eyes were trained on me, and a ribbon of thrill rippled through me.

My body was having orgasmic flashbacks.

Down, girl, down.

“If there’s anything here that you have a question about, ask me. I was on plenty of runs with Wreck, and if I haven’t obliterated those particular brain cells, I might remember where he found something or why he got it.”

“Oh, that would be great. Thanks.”

His pale blue eyes lit up. “Good. I’d like to help you if I can. It’d be fun. I had a good time helping you in Sioux Falls.”

I held his aqua gaze, and something kindled in my chest. “Me, too.”

My messenger bag slid off the top of a box along with a pile of Wreck’s Louis L’Amour paperbacks.

“Dang.” I picked up the yellowed books and stacked them against the wall.