Gun Moll (15 page)

Now she just felt empty
inside.

“Yo, Morgan. No
tricks today?”

Melina kept
walking, ignoring the voice that mocked her.

They were pigs.
Every last single one of them.

“Hey, Morgan, how
much for something quick? I’m looking for a good time.”

She stopped
walking, and turned to face the unmarked car that had pulled up beside her. Melina
recognized the two detectives that had interrogated her, Parks and Keaton.

“A whore doesn’t
have options. A lady does. Learn the difference, assholes.”

Melina started to
walk away.

“A whore with a
smart mouth. That’s a new one.”

She’d had enough.
The constant surveillance she could deal with. After all, a man watching her
was something she’d long ago gotten used to. But the comments, they were too
much. Melina blinked back tears that were threatening to fall. Turning back to
face her tormentors, a red haze was the only thing she saw.

 “They’re not
worth it, doll.”

Mac
.

Even though she
wished she didn’t feel so goddamned relieved at his voice, she was.

It seemed once
again that he’d come to her rescue.

 Right on time.

T
ossing a glare at
the plain-clothed cops in the unmarked car, Mac slipped his hand into Melina’s
before he leaned close and planted a searing kiss on her lips.

“Hey!” Mac heard
one of the detectives bark.

Mac ignored the
asshole. “Seriously, doll, don’t ruin your day by letting fools that have
nothing better to do than harass an innocent woman get you upset.”

Her posture
softened and a tiny smile edged the corners of her lips upwards.

“I hadn’t thought
of it that way,” Melina said quietly.

Mac couldn’t
resist letting the very tips of his fingers ghost over her jaw. The flicker of
lust darkening Melina’s gaze said that his touch had affected her deeply.

“Hey, James,” one
of the detectives said. “Don’t you have your hired fuck on speed dial like the
rest of her clients?”

Mac didn’t grace
that insult with a response. He also let the fact that they used his given name
slide. Instead, he took note of the way Melina’s smile dropped slightly. She
hid her hurt well enough, but he could tell the man’s words affected her.

“Don’t let them do
that to you, Melina,” Mac said too low for the pigs to hear.

Melina’s gaze cut
to Mac’s in an instant. “That’s easy for you to say. It’s not you who is being
called a whore every time you turn around. It’s not you being followed by these
idiots, Mac.”

“Maybe not, but
you’re still giving them the power to hurt you when you react. It doesn’t matter
if your reaction is in anger or pain—you’re still giving them what they want.
Don’t do that. They’re not worth the fucking spit from your beautiful mouth.”

Melina stood
straighter at those words. “Yeah, you’re right. Not worth it.”

“Good.” Mac held
out a hand. “Care to spend the afternoon with me?”

“Doing what,
exactly?”

“Whatever you
want, doll. We’ll say the day is my treat to clear your mind of stress.”

Melina pursed her
lips. “What, like pampering?”

Mac smirked. “I do
love to spoil a woman.”

“Spoiled women are
useless women, Mac.”

“Or maybe the
right man hasn’t been spoiling you, Melina. Stop being difficult, even though I
know it’s terribly hard for you to even imagine being something akin to
delightful and appreciative, and take my hand so we can get away from the
detectives.”

Melina took his
hand. “Now what?”

“Did she give you
a cost for the day yet, Maccari?” the other detective taunted. “We’re trying to
find out if her price range is out of our budgets.”

That time, Melina
barely showed any emotion to the cops’ rudeness. Mac was proud as hell. He
tugged her in close and moved them down the sidewalk, further away from the
detectives and their prying eyes and ears.

Mac looked over
Melina’s fingernails, letting the pad of his thumb run over her fingers. “When
was the last time you had your nails done, doll?”

“A couple of
weeks.”

“That’s a shame. A
woman’s outer beauty and confidence should reflect what is inside her. Any man
who gives a damn about his girl should make sure he not only tells her how
gorgeous she looks, but takes special care to provide her with whatever she
needs to physically feel beautiful, as well. You’ve been biting the hell out of
your nails, doll. Stress, right?”

“Possibly.”

Mac winked. “How
in the hell do you plan on leaving another set of your marks down my back with
a mess like this?”

Melina’s jaw
dropped. “Mac!”

“Well, it’s an
honest concern. My treat, let’s go.”

Mac swept Melina’s
heeled feet into his hands and rested her shoes in his lap. She tossed him a
curious glance, but kept quiet when he pulled her shoes off and pressed his
thumbs into her ankles.

No matter what a
woman liked to say about the topic, heels were hell when they were walked in
all day.

The Asian woman
buffing Melina’s fingernails down gave a sweet smile in Mac’s direction as she
continued her work.

“Good man,” the
woman said, her accent thick. “Good man please woman.”

Melina sighed,
averting her eyes from Mac’s grin. “So they say.”

“Your poor hands,”
the Asian woman muttered to herself. “You treat them horrible.”

“Lay off,” Mac
told the woman. “She’s had a rough couple of weeks.”

“You not good man
then.”

Mac cracked up,
chuckling loudly. “I am.”

“These hands say
no, mister.”

“That’s why I
brought her to you.”

The Asian woman
smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Ah, good man.”

Melina shook her
head at the exchange. “You seem comfortable here.”

Mac shrugged. “My
sister spends a few hours a month between here and another salon she likes.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I usually
pick up the tab, depending on how much time I’ve spent with her that month.
It’s like my way of giving her one-on-one attention. Now that we’re older and
she’s off into her own life, we’re not as close as we were when we were
younger.”

Melina’s gaze
softened briefly. “Huh.”

“Is that a
surprise or something?”

“No, I just …”

“Spit it out,
doll.”

Melina rolled her
eyes. “It’s nothing. It just surprises me that family seems to be such a huge
thing for you. Most people don’t see it the same way. Once they’re adults and
out of their childhood home, they forget about where they came from and the
siblings they grew up with.”

Mac’s hands
stilled in their massage of Melina’s ankles. “Family is absolutely everything,
Melina. In my family, it’s even more important that my sister knows she has
someone to go to other than my mother if she needs a person to talk to.”

He had always been
a cornerstone for his sister. Mac couldn’t imagine letting Victoria stumble
through life on her own. Given she had no one else but their mother who still
struggled to maintain her own house and home, Mac didn’t think that would be a
very honorable thing to do to his sister.

“What about your
father? Aren’t most a daddy’s girl of some sort?”

Mac had to force
himself not to react to Melina’s innocent question. She didn’t know a thing
about his history with his drunk father, or the way he and his sister grew up.
He couldn’t expect her to, either, so he didn’t fault her for the curiosity.

“Not for
Victoria,” Mac settled on saying.

His words came out
lame and disinterested, but the heat of resentment trailed close behind in his
tone. Melina cocked a brow at him. Clearly, she had heard it, too, but
thankfully, she didn’t call him out on the slip.

“So,” Melina
drawled.

“Hmm?”

Mac had gone back
to rubbing her ankles and calves, which took up a great deal of his attention.
The silky feel of her smooth skin under his palms was a surefire way to get his
cock hard and his mind in a less than innocent place.

Kind of like where
it was right now.

“Mac,” Melina
said.

His head popped up
fast. “Have I told you how much I like your legs?”

“Yes. I think you
called them beautiful once.”

“You need to be
told again. Especially when you’re wearing a dress. Sexy as sin.”

The lady on the
other side of the table giggled, but kept her head down on her work. Mac didn’t
miss the way Melina’s fingers twitched, or how her thighs momentarily tightened.

“Not the place or
time, Mac,” Melina said, heat coloring her words.

“The place is
relative, doll. And any time is a damn good time for that.”

Melina pressed her
lips together like she was holding something back. Mac simply smiled at her
non-response and went back to rubbing the kinks from her legs.

“It was kind of
lucky that we ran into each other today, wasn’t it?” Melina asked after a
moment.

“If you want to
say that.”

Mac wasn’t a liar,
after all.

“How would you say
it?” Melina asked.

Sighing, Mac took
his time to put Melina’s heels back on and drop her feet on the floor. He
leaned back in the chair and said, “I told you that I would be around and
keeping an eye on things. What did you think that would involve, Melina?”

It took a couple
of seconds, but Mac watched the realization come to Melina’s pretty features.
Anger skipped over her furrowing brow as she regarded him through thick lashes.

“You’ve been
following me?” she asked sharply.

The Asian woman
made an “oh” sound under her breath, but never once looked up from her work.
Mac, despite being amused at the woman’s enjoyment over her customers, paid her
little mind. Melina was more important at the moment.

“Chill out, doll.”

“I told you that—”

“You wanted time
and space. Everything that happened—it was a lot,” Mac said, choosing his words
carefully. “I was letting you take what you needed, but there’s a lot of shit
at play between the pigs that have been trailing you and the other side that’s
watching you, too.”

Melina’s shoulders
stiffened. “The mo—”

“Careful,” he
warned.

Mac thoroughly
believed Melina was born to be a mobster’s girl, even if she didn’t know it.
The woman could handle a gun, kept a calm head in bad situations, and wasn’t
afraid to get a little dirty.

That had “gun moll”
written all over it.

But she had a lot
of learning to do in the world of mafia.

A lot
.

“
They’re
following me, too?”

“They are,” Mac
confirmed. “Guido has had Vin checking up on your place, but there’s been some
other activity I noticed by people I don’t recognize as well.”

“How do they even
know where I live?”

“As long as a
person has money, nothing is unreachable,” Mac answered simply.

“Jesus.”

“I was giving you
what you asked for, Melina, but we have an image to maintain, too. We told them
one thing, and we can’t appear as another thing. Okay? So, yeah, I’ve been
around. I made sure it would be noticed that I was coming and going from your
new apartment building. I made a trip to the center one day when you were
working with the kids, but you never noticed me. I stayed out of your way.”

Melina sucked in a
hard breath. “The kids? My new place?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know
about those things?”

Mac cringed at the
edge in Melina’s voice. It was sharper than a goddamn razor and it would
probably cut deeper than one, too. “That morning you left my place …”

“What about it?”

“I trailed you.”

Melina’s
expression fell dark before she blanked completely. Slowly, she turned in her
seat to face the Asian woman instead of Mac while her nails were being buffed
and readied.