Читать книгу The Mane Event - Shelly Laurenston - Страница 8

“They found the body last night.”

Mace Llewellyn watched the police activity going on in front of his Pride’s home. He knew when he saw one of the Pride males waiting for him at LaGuardia Airport something was wrong. Still, hearing that a Pride male had been found with the back of his head blown out did take him by surprise. But only for a moment. He shrugged his shoulders. “And?”

Shaw, one of the more recent additions to the Pride, smiled. “I’m just doing what she asked me to. She said to pick you up at the airport, and that’s what I did.”

Rubbing his hand over his head, Mace sighed. Damn Pride bullshit. He didn’t have time for this. Or for them. His sisters and cousins. Waiting in that house like fucking queens of the Serengeti. They still hadn’t figured it out. Mace no longer wanted this. The day he signed the papers making him the property of the United States Navy, he ceased to belong to the Pride. Fourteen years in service had made him a man with a purpose.

He had two goals in his life at the moment, both of which involved his future. The first would work itself out with few problems. He would finally start his own business. He already had the financial backers and a partner. The second would be more difficult. He needed to find a woman. Not any woman, but the woman who had haunted his dreams and fantasies for longer than he could remember. The woman who deserted him more than twenty years ago. True, they had only been fourteen at the time but, damn her, it was the principle of the thing. He would find her. He would find her and he’d claim her.

The potential reality that she may be married with six kids or living in Istanbul as a nun never crossed his feline mind. He knew what he wanted. So he would have her. But, as usual, his sisters were in his way.

“Not sure why I should care.”

“Neither am I. Personally, I’m glad to see Petrov gone.”

Mace gave the man a sidelong glance, unable to hide his smirk. “Did you kill him?”

“Oh please.” Shaw studied his fingernails. Then he unleashed his claws and studied them as well. “Do you really see me bothering with killing him?” He looked at Mace. “I mean…really?”

The man had a point.

“Besides, he did know how to party. Petrov had…exotic tastes. So, anyone could have killed him.” Shaw resheathed his claws. “And what did you do to your head?”

Mace rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t exactly have a mane in the United States Navy, now could I?”

“I guess.” Shaw cracked his big neck. “She probably just wants to see you. You are her only brother.”

And the only Breeding Male of the Llewellyn line.

No. They would not have that conversation again. About his duty to the Pride and the Llewellyn name. He’d done his duty for his country. The Navy reluctantly cut him loose. He wasn’t about to go back into another service that would last a lifetime.

And he sure as hell wasn’t about to let them trade him out to another Pride like a New York Mets pitcher.

Shaw, however, clearly enjoyed his life. As the top Breeding Male of the Llewellyn Pride, he couldn’t ask for better. For some, being a Pride male was a great existence. The females fed you, bore your cubs, and made sure you lived comfortably. In return, you simply needed to help them breed when they were ready and protect them and their cubs from other Pride males. On the surface, it seemed great. For some it was. But not for Mace. He wanted more. He wanted his own mate. In particular, the girl he’d lost so long ago. She would be his and his alone. He had absolutely no intention of being in service to the Pride females like some rutting bull.

“I’m not coming back.”

“Don’t care. I could care less what you do. Although I would like you to get out of my car now.”

With another sigh, Mace grabbed his duffel bag and stepped out of the Mercedes that Shaw picked him up in. He didn’t go through the front door with all the media activity, but went around to the side. Several uniformed cops and a Pride male stood by the side entrance. The Pride male glanced at him, scrutinized his shaved head, and then let him in with a laugh. Mace fought the desire to snap the man’s neck. A fight he almost didn’t win.

He slipped into the back of the house, through the kitchens. The staff glanced at him but kept working. The holidays were their busiest time because of all the balls and charity events. Although Mace didn’t know a less-spirited group than his sisters when it came to the holidays. Mace reached the other end of the kitchen, pushing the swinging door open, when his phone rang. He dug into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out the cell phone.

“Yeah?”

“Hey. It’s me.” Watts. An old friend who knew how to find information whenever and wherever he needed it.

“What did you find out?”

“She’s still living in New York. Divorced.” Mace closed his eyes and let out a silent breath. He’d hate to start killing people at this stage in the game. Especially some poor schmuck who happened to marry the wrong woman. “And you’ll love this. She’s a cop. NYPD.”

“Really?” He knew that had always been her dream, but he always wanted to be a hockey player. That didn’t mean he ever strapped on pads and joined the New York Islanders.

Mace glanced out one of the big windows looking over the garden. He saw them standing around. Uniformed cops drinking coffee and talking amongst themselves. Mace looked down the hall leading to his sister’s office.

“Are you still there? I’ve got more.”

“Tell me later. I gotta go.” Mace closed his phone. He licked his lips and tried to slow his breathing. She couldn’t really be here…could she? But hell, if she were then he’d always been right. A sign from the goddess Druantia, Queen of the Druids, herself—she belonged to him. She would always belong to him.

He made his way to his sister’s private offices, hearing the arguing before he even reached the door. He could hear her getting good and frothy with someone, too. Not surprising. Last thing the Pride needed was a bunch of cops searching into their lives. But Petrov had not only been his sister’s employee and one of the Breeding Males, he lived on the premises. Since a shot to the back of the head usually indicated murder, the cops had every right to check the house out.

Of course, all that logic wouldn’t mean a damn to Missy, leader of the Llewellyn Pride females, his oldest sister, and the official family pain in the ass.

Mace turned the corner, one more hallway away from his sister’s office, when he smelled her.

He stopped. Cold. It took him less than a second to recognize it. He knew it better than he knew his own name. Implanted on his adolescent brain more than twenty years ago, his adult brain still remembered it. In fact, his adult brain acted like his adolescent brain used to. It stopped functioning. All it wanted to do was wrap itself around the owner of that scent and purr. The cat in him wanted to stretch out his body and rub his face into that scent.

He’d been right. She was here. That explained his sister’s anger. She hated her. Hated her whole family. Missy would never let her anywhere near the Pride home…unless, of course, she had no choice.

He came around the corner, slowly moving into the secretary’s office. One more door and he’d reach Missy’s office or, as he liked to call it, “Destination: Hell.” He could hear his sister dressing down someone behind the closed office door and he didn’t envy the man, but he had something much more important right in front of him. He had her.

She stood in front of the window overlooking Columbus Circle with her back to him. She didn’t seem moved at all by the yelling coming from Missy’s office. She radiated calm. Her energy centered. Her arms folded in front of her chest. Not nearly as tall as the women in his family, she stood no more than five foot eight or so. But curvy. Ripe. A brick house. She’d filled out in all the right places. She’d cut her auburn hair so it brushed thick against the collar of her leather jacket. As he glanced down the length of her sumptuous body, he could see the woman armed herself better than most SEALs. A gun holster bulged large behind her leather jacket, and a smaller ankle holster on her right leg under her black slacks. It also looked like her left leg sported a holster with a small blade, which he seriously doubted any other cop in the state would consider legal.

Her phone vibrated against her hip. She easily slipped the small device out of its holster, glanced at the caller ID, and answered. At that point, he almost dropped to his knees and crawled to her. That voice. That goddamn, fucking voice. Like ten miles of bad road in the hot desert, but she’d somehow tamed that brutal Bronx accent. A bit of a disappointment, though. He loved that accent on her. She used to wear it like an old leather jacket. Now she kept it muted, controlled. Kind of like her. He smiled and wondered what it would take to get back that Bronx girl he knew and still loved. Thankfully, though, there was nothing she could do about that voice. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and let her voice roll over him like a rough wave.

“I thought you’d never call me back. You won’t believe where I am.” She laughed and his balls tightened. “Missy Llewellyn’s house…no, I’m not lying. How could I make that up?”

She scratched her long neck. The desire to lick the same spot nearly strangling him. “Jesus Christ, don’t you read the papers? One of her people was killed in Battery Park. A couple of joggers found him. What? Nah. So, any message you want me to give her?” Her body began to shake as she stifled a laugh. “Well, I don’t think I’ll give her that message. Geez. And you said I hold a grudge.”

After a few more moments, her body stiffened. “No. I can’t. I’m working, that’s why. Yes. Even on Christmas day. Besides, I hate Christmas. I have moral issues with celebrating it.” He frowned to keep from laughing. She had “moral issues with” celebrating Christmas? The crap she could come up with still amazed him.

“Look, I gotta go. No, I’m not arguing about this.” She closed the phone and slipped it back into its holster.

Dear God, the woman was still beautiful. After all these years. All this time. And he bet he could have her pants off and be inside her in…he glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds. Yeah. That would work.

Desiree MacDermot stared out the windows of the secretary’s office and waited. Well, waited and fumed. Leave it to her oldest sister to ruin her moment in the sun. Here she stood in their archenemy’s house, moments away from throwing the rich heifer’s ass in the back of a squad car, and what does her sister say? “Are you coming to Mom and Dad’s for Christmas dinner?”

Why of course I am. I also plan to remove skin from the most sensitive parts of my body and rub salt into the open wounds.

Because isn’t that what the holidays are all about—letting your family make you wish you were an orphan?

Dez shook off her sister’s clear attempt to make her miserable. How could she be miserable when she had grand plans of making Missy Llewellyn cry? Missy, who seemed to love nothing more than to make the MacDermot sisters’ lives hell. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that all three of them had earned the right to be at the exclusive Cathedral School of Manhattan by earning top-level scholarships. Or that their parents worked damn hard to get their daughters the best they could afford. No, to Missy and the other Llewellyn sisters, none of that meant shit. They only cared about one thing—the fact the MacDermots were poor, Puerto Rican–Irish girls from the Bronx. And they wanted to make sure they never forgot it.

Maybe God would decide to smile down on her and she’d be able to piss off Missy so much the woman would do something stupid. Oh, if Missy would only hit her. Then Dez could handcuff the bitch and dump her butt in a holding cell for a few hours. Maybe the hookers would make her cry. Like she made Dez cry all those years ago on that muggy late-August day.

“You’ll never be good enough for him.”

That’s what they told her as all four sisters circled her like a pack of wolves. She never forgot those brutal words, but she never let them hold her back either. Far from it. She probably should thank Missy. Without her inherently evil nature, Dez may not have had the guts to become a cop. She decided then and there to prove Missy Llewellyn wrong, and as far as she could tell, she had. Dez realized now these people, with all their money and connections, weren’t nearly good enough for her.

Desperately fighting the smile that threatened to spread across her entire face, she suddenly realized all her fantasies seemed to be coming true at one time. The thought of putting Missy in a squad car actually made her nipples hard.

Nope. This was quietly turning into the best day ever. Like someone hit her in the head with her Christmas gift five days early. It almost brought a tear of happiness to her eye. Nothing would ever beat this. Absolutely nothing.

“So where the hell have you been?”

Dez shuddered. Man, that voice sounded familiar. She only knew of one person with a voice like that. A freaky little kid who had to be the smallest fourteen-year-old she’d ever remembered seeing with the lowest voice she’d ever heard. She spun on her heel…only to be faced with a god, if she did say so herself. Big. Like some kind of beautiful linebacker. A shaved head with a serious five o’clock shadow issue, and gold-colored eyes. Eyes that, at the moment, were staring at her like a slab of prime rib. No. This couldn’t be Mace Llewellyn. Her heart dropped. True, this man was pretty, but she saw pretty every day. The Mace she remembered wasn’t pretty, but he always knew how to make her smile. She learned over the years that was a hell of a lot more important than looks.

“Well…answer me.”

Uh-oh. Nutcase alert. How come all the good-looking ones were insane? “I’m…uh…sorry. Do I know you?”

He crossed big arms over a big chest and smirked at her. “Take a minute. Let it come to you.”

She blinked and tried to remember all the exits out of the room in case the gorgeous nutcase went postal.

“Still waiting.”

It hit her. Like a slap to the forehead. But…no. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t humanly possible. But that superior tone. That haughty expression. That damn smirk. That killer voice that had deliciously matured with age. All together, they really could only belong to one person. The one person she’d been waiting more than twenty years to see again.

What happened to the boy she remembered? Apparently, this…this…man replaced him. Oh, and what a man!

But no matter how different he looked, she still knew. Maybe those freaky gold eyes gave him away. Or those gorgeous full lips that, even at fourteen, she hadn’t been immune to.

Or maybe the way he stared at her. Like he spent every waking moment imagining her naked.

Only one person ever looked at her like that. Well, only one person ever looked at her like that where she didn’t have the overwhelming desire to rip eyes from sockets.

“Oh my God—Mace?”

Time had done wonders for her. Some women never looked as good as they did in high school, especially at thirty-six. But she did. Better. She still had those killer eyes. Gray with flecks of green. He used to stare into those eyes during biology class as they faked their way through the experiments. Of course, that’s when he wasn’t staring at that beautiful face with that cute, little pug nose or that incredibly hot body. She’d been an early bloomer, wearing a healthy C cup while the other girls were just moving from training bras. All of that didn’t matter, though. Not to Mace. That was just the cherry on top.

For him, it had been more than her big tits and luscious mouth. Dez actually liked him back then. Just the way he was. Ninety pounds soaking wet, barely five foot three, a head of hair he couldn’t control, and the attitude of a giant. Most people didn’t like Mace. Dez, however, found him funny and smart. Even his sisters never saw him that way. To a fourteen-year-old, that meant everything to him.

Then she left him. Walked out of his life and never came back. At the moment, Mace was completely ready to push her up against the wall and demand she tell him how she could leave him like she did.

For years, a part of him kept expecting to see her again. Although he always wished he could forget about her. Lose himself in some of the other women he had met since he last saw her saddle shoes walking down the school hall and out of his life. But he never could. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget about her. Hell, he still dreamed about her. She was older in his dreams, thank God, but his dreams didn’t do justice to the woman now standing in front of him, an NYPD badge hanging on a chain around her neck.

“Mace Llewellyn? Is that you?”

So, she did remember him. Good. Now he could tell her what a bitch she’d been for leaving him. For breaking his fourteen-year-old heart into a million pieces and stomping on it with her saddle shoes. He geared himself to do it, too—until she smiled at him. A smile that practically knocked him on his ass.

After all these years, the woman leaped beyond perfect. Especially when she literally threw herself at him, her arms looping around his neck.

“Jesus, Mace! I can’t believe it!”

His eyes almost rolled to the back of his head when she pressed her curvaceous body against his. Without even thinking about it, he wrapped her in a bear hug and lifted her off her feet. She actually squealed, which sounded strange with that voice of hers.

“I don’t believe it, Mace!” He didn’t either. How did anyone smell this good? How was it humanly possible?

She laughed. “Stop sniffing my neck!” She pushed against his shoulders and leaned back, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I can’t believe you’re still doing that.”

“You smell good.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“Answer my question.”

“Your question?”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Aw, Mace. Gimme a break.” She tried to pull out of his arms, but he held fast. “Are you going to let me go?”

“I’m comfortable. Answer my question.”

“My family moved, Mace. To Queens. My sisters and I went to a different school. I assure you it was nothing personal.” He stared at her. “It wasn’t!”

“Did you write me?”

“No, Mace.”

“Did you think about me?”

“Oh, come on!”

“What? It’s a valid question.”

“You know, you come from one of the wealthiest families in New York. You could have tracked me down if you really wanted to see me that badly.”

“I was in military school.”

Dez tried not to laugh, but it was a sad, weak attempt. “Sorry. I guess I just have a hard time imagining you taking orders from…you know…anybody.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Mace. It’s me.”

He gazed down into her face. “Yeah. It sure is you.” Their eyes locked and, for several moments, they did nothing but stare at each other.

Dez shook her head. “Okay. Put me down.”

“Why?”

“Mace!”

He dropped her, forcing Dez to rock back on her heels. This, of course, forced him to grab her ass to steady her before she fell back.

“Hands off, Llewellyn. Or I’m turning your nads into a necklace.”

He smiled as he released her. “Well, you haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you. I see Captain Ego still lives.”

No other woman existed who he let get away with calling him that. He glanced down at himself. “I haven’t changed? Not even a little?”

“I don’t mean physically, you idiot.” She punched him lightly on the shoulder, blinked in surprise, and suddenly felt the bicep under his leather jacket. “I definitely don’t mean physically.”

He grinned at her, enjoying that his body seemed to have her so distracted. “You doing all right there, beautiful?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“At least tell me you missed me.”

She nodded as her voice softened. “Yeah, Mace. I missed you. You were my best friend.”

Best friend? He never wanted to be her best friend. He wanted to be her boyfriend. He wanted her parents to catch them on their couch making out. He wanted to buy her one of those tacky ID bracelets with his name on it. He wanted to tattoo “Property of Mace Llewellyn” on her forehead.

“Stop frowning, Mace.” She reached up and ran her hand over his brow. A move she used to do a lot in school. Often the only thing that kept him calm back then. The only thing that kept him from tearing idiot jocks and rich assholes apart with his newly sprouted fangs. “It’s been over twenty years, Mace. Let it go, bonehead.” She ran her thumb down his nose, spreading her hand out so her fingers cupped his cheek. He leaned into her hand and she smiled that smile.

Even after all these years, she knew just how to handle him. How to contain the beast within his heart without even trying. Oh yeah. This woman was destined to be his. And nothing would get in his way now.

“What the hell do you think you are doing with my brother?”

Mace growled and wondered how much prison time a man would do for tossing his sister into the East River.

Mace’s body tensed against her hand. Then she heard that Mace growl. He only used that when something really pissed him off. Poor baby, seemed he still didn’t get along any better with his sisters than she did with her own.

She looked over her shoulder at the beautiful Missy Llewellyn. Unlike Mace, Missy hadn’t changed much. Still lean, gold, and beautiful. Pretty much the exact opposite of Dez whose least-favorite uncle still referred to her as “the pudgy one.”

“Well? Answer me.” And still mean as a snake.

Oooh. A pissed Missy. Dez loved this. She could have been good. She should have been nice. But come on. The entire homicide department didn’t call her The Instigator for nothing.

Dez turned to face Missy and leaned back into Mace’s chest. Then, for the hell of it, she grabbed his big arms and wrapped them around her waist. Initially, she surprised herself with her physical reaction to Mace. Throwing herself into the arms of a man she hadn’t seen in more than twenty years really wasn’t her style. But just the sight of him brought back that fourteen-year-old girl who could never get enough of Mace and his inherent weirdness. But now? Well, using Mace to torture his sister—just a Dez party.

She smiled at Missy. “Your brother asked me to come with him to a hotel for some wild, dirty animal sex…and I said lead the way.”

Oh yeah. If looks could kill, she’d be nothing more than a greasy spot on the woman’s carpet. Apparently, Missy still felt Dez didn’t deserve her brother. Which only made the whole thing that much more fun. Of course, Mace tightening his grip on her body and nuzzling her neck—that didn’t hurt either. She wasn’t surprised, though, when Mace played along. The two of them together had always been trouble. The nuns always separating them in class, giving them detention, calling them evil incarnate and condemning them to the fiery pits of hell. Ya know…whatever.

Seemed some things never changed.

“So, Mace, I get off work in a couple more hours.”

He shook his head. “Baby, I can’t wait that long. Let’s go bang this out in my sister’s office. You know. To take the edge off.” Dez wrestled the part of her that wanted to take Mace up on that particular offer and kept the game going instead.

“That is sooo romantic, Mace. I never knew you were so romantic.”

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know yet. Besides, Missy’s desk is a nice, sturdy mahogany. We could go at it like wolves on that thing, and it wouldn’t budge.”

Ah, the Mace she remembered. The smart-ass kid who tortured people on a daily basis for his own amusement, and his sister was no exception. Actually, Dez knew he went out of his way to torture his sister and that he enjoyed every minute of it.

Yup. Her day just kept getting better and better.

Could his day get any better? The woman of his dreams cuddled up in his arms and his sister in an almost violent rage. A few more minutes of this and he would start purring and not stop.

“Mason,” his sister spit that out between clenched teeth. “I need to speak with you. In private.”

Mace watched her. He wondered how long before she snapped.

“Now!”

Well that took all of ten seconds.

He watched her rigid back stalk into her office.

“Ooh, Mace. You’re in tru-ble,” Dez whispered in a singsong voice.

He pulled her closer to him. He couldn’t help himself. Did she have any idea exactly how tasty she was?

Another cop came to stand beside them. He glared at Mace, but Mace ignored him. He wouldn’t let anything distract him from the woman in his arms.

“We’re out of here.”

“What? Why?”

“Got a call from the lieutenant. They’re pulling us. I’ve been informed we have enough information for this investigation and we are not to harass Ms. Llewellyn any longer. And would you two stop whatever you’re doing?”

“Hey, B! You’re harshin’ my buzz.”

With an annoyed groan, the man turned away from them. Dez looked at Mace over her shoulder. “Mr. Llewellyn, I do believe your sister made a call.”

“I believe you’re right, Detective.” His sister had a lot of political connections and was not shy about using them whenever it served her.

“Too bad. I had such plans of torture for her. And they all involved her desk.” Smiling, Dez turned, reached up, and kissed Mace on the cheek. He’d had many women do much more intense things to him over the years, but none of it felt as good as that simple kiss. “It was really good seeing you again, Mace.”

She pulled away from him and he grudgingly let her go.

“And I’m glad you’re doing okay. Although I never doubted you’d do any less.” She motioned to her partner. “Let’s get out of here, B.”

The male left. Dez followed behind, but Mace stopped her with one word. “Wait.”

Dez looked at him, curious why he wanted her to wait. Actually, she found herself curious about a lot of things when it came to Mace.

“Go out with me tonight. Dinner.”

She laughed at what was clearly an order as opposed to a request. “No.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t even remember my name, Mason Llewellyn.” He hadn’t said her name even once in the last ten minutes. It hurt to think he’d so easily forgotten about her, but when you looked like Mace now did, how could you remember all the women? Especially one who you hadn’t actually slept with.

Dez turned and headed down the hallway.

“Desiree.” She froze as his low voice slid across her skin. “Patricia. Marie. MacDermot. Dez for short.”

Dez spun around, her mouth open in awe. “How the hell did you remember all that?” He even included her confirmation name. No one knew her confirmation name except the parish priest, and that’s because he really didn’t like her much.

“I remember everything about you, Dez. Absolutely everything.”

Her breath caught on a sigh. Her heart began to beat faster. And she suddenly wondered if Mace could feel her blood racing through her veins.

After a few moments, she shook herself. “You’re still doing it, Mace.” The bastard.

“Doing what?”

She grinned and glared at him all at the same time. “Torturing me.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossing in front of him. He took all of her in. From those cute little feet, past those magnificent breasts, straight to those gray eyes and auburn hair. “Baby, I haven’t even started.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. After another moment, “I’m outta here, Mace.”

This was not how his fantasy went. She kept turning him down. Didn’t she know? “Yes” to dinner today. “Yes” to marriage tomorrow. Dammit, he had a schedule to keep. A schedule that involved getting her sweet ass into bed as fast as humanly possible.

“When will I see you again?”

She walked off down the hall. “For your sister’s sake, you better hope never.”

Then she was gone. But this wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

Dez got in the passenger side of the car, leaning her head back against the seat and staring up at the roof of the Chevrolet.

“Don’t do it, Dez.”

She glanced at her partner of four years. “Don’t do what?”

“Get all bunged up over this guy. He’s rich. He’s a Llewellyn. And he can have any piece of ass he wants in this town.”

“I’m a piece of ass.” Dez grinned. “That guy from last week, who believes aliens were talking to him and that’s why he tried to set his neighbor on fire, said I was fabulous.”

Bukowski, chuckling, started the car. “And he was right, even though he wasn’t the healthiest man we’ve ever arrested. But a guy like Llewellyn would never realize it. So don’t waste your time.”

“I know. I know. A girl can fantasize, though.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He pulled out into traffic and headed back to the precinct.

Mace Llewellyn. Back in New York and looking tastier than anything she’d ever seen before. Who knew he’d turn out like that? She’d always thought of him as adorable back in the day. The cute boy who sat next to her in science class, making her laugh by mocking everyone around them while trying not to stare at her breasts. He’d been brutal, witty, and her biggest crush ever. Now, however, well…now the man was a god. He had to be at least six foot four and well over two hundred pounds, without a single ounce of fat on him.

Initially, she’d been unimpressed with the males she caught glimpses of while waiting around for Missy. Too pretty. Too glossy. Too…clean. They wore Armani suits and seven-hundred-dollar watches. They were all blond. No, not blond. Gold. Seriously gold. Their skin. Their eyes. Their hair. It was hard to believe these people lived in New York. Her New York. Where you found every shade, every hue, every color under the freakin’ rainbow.

As far as Dez was concerned, her family represented true New York culture. Her father a good Irish boy from Hell’s Kitchen. Her mother a sweet Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Together those two people created one brown-skinned daughter who looked like she just arrived off the boat from Cataño. Another redheaded daughter with pale skin who looked like she should be on Broadway in Riverdance.

Then they made Dez, who dangled between both worlds. Her straight brown hair had a reddish tinge. Her skin seemed to have spent too much time in the sun. Plus she had the same damn freaky-colored eyes as her dad.

Mason seemed to have the same problem. He belonged and he didn’t.

He always had the golden hair. The golden eyes. Even that golden skin. But now he had something rough and ready about him. He had stubble on that strong, square jaw. He had recently shaved off that golden hair, although it seemed to be fighting its way back. His pensive gold eyes showed he’d seen a lot of the world over the past twenty years. And based on the brutal scar that cut across his neck, the world had been pretty hard on him.

Yeah, but Bukowski probably hit it right on the head. A guy like Mace was way out of her league…if she had a league. It’s not like she dated much once her marriage to “The Idiot” ended four years ago.

Still, the fourteen-year-old Mace used to give her this little tingle at the base of her spine when he would smile at her in biology lab. This adult Mace, though, made her entire body tingle—violently.

She didn’t even think Mace noticed her back then. He always treated her like a sister he didn’t actually hate. After seeing him now, though…well, she really hoped he didn’t actually look at his own sisters like that.

Dez had changed. And all for the better. No longer the painfully shy girl trying to hide huge breasts behind a load of books so the jocks would stop trying to grab her, this Dez reeked of attitude and confidence. Almost cocky. Even the way she moved. She walked with her back straight, head held high, breasts straining beneath a burgundy turtleneck sweater, daring a guy to touch them. And seeing the way she moved, Mace had no doubt she would snap the neck of the first fucker who tried something.

Yup. He still wanted her. Had to have her. And, like a gazelle running past him on the African plains, he would do whatever necessary to get his paws on her.

Mace looked at the door that blocked him from his sister. With a heavy sigh, he walked toward it and prayed they got along better this time. He wasn’t sure he could handle any more stitches on his throat.