So, she thought, unless they’d done something to, or were still hiding in, her three-quarter bathroom off to the left, her place was uncompromised. For now.
Pushing off the floor, she got to work on doing what she could to feel as relaxed and safe as she possibly could in her situation. She poured a full glass of Jack and downed half of it on the spot with four ibuprofen before refilling it and setting it on the wooden trunk.
Rolling her head to stretch her neck in hopes of relieving some of her tension, Kat changed into her typical sleepwear: a wife beater tank and panties. She had a window A/C unit, but it only worked when it wanted to and Louisiana summer nights were brutal, so the less she wore, the better.
As she pushed her skirt off, she sucked in a breath at the tender points on her hips. Glancing down, she saw the four red marks on both sides where Rick’s fingers had bruised her from pressing her skin against her own hip bones. It had been a long time since she’d seen marks like those on her body, and seeing them now threatened to choke her brain with the bile of her past.
But she’d be damned if she let it. She had more important things to worry about. Like whether or not she even had a future if she couldn’t figure a way out of dealing with Sicoli’s men.
Once she finished dressing, she opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and dug out her 9-mil from under all her shirts. She almost never took it out, but Lenny had made sure years ago that she knew how to use one. At the time, she’d thought it was sweet that he wanted to make sure she was able to protect herself. It didn’t take long to realize that using it to protect or cover him had probably been closer to his intentions. A real peach, that guy.
She dropped the clip into her palm to check the bullets and then slammed it back up before double-checking the safety and tucking it under her pillow on the futon. She turned on Anchorman because it was already in the DVD player and it was a good choice for anyone who wanted to escape into the hilariously dumb. Unfortunately, even Ron Burgundy and one and a half glasses of whiskey couldn’t numb her enough to forget the last hour.
Leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, Kat rested her head in her hands. What the hell was she going to do? She’d never been the brains of this outfit. Well, neither had Lenny, but he’d always been the leader. He’d say it was time to go and she’d pack up their measly belongings and they’d head out in the Celebrity to the next town Lenny was sure would be both safe and a gold mine just waiting for them.
We got eyes on you and ears with the pigs.
The idea of Sicoli’s men watching her every move made the small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She glanced at the windows looking out over Main Street. The dingy white curtains glowed with orange and red from the neon tattoo sign below her windows.
The guys who came collecting in Tennessee last time made it abundantly clear what would happen to her if they didn’t get their money. Sicoli couldn’t let debts go unanswered. It made him look lenient, weak. If the debtor couldn’t pay, he or she was eliminated. And apparently, as far as Sicoli was concerned, she owed the money just as much as Lenny.
She was as good as dead.
Kat had to try and make a run for it. Tomorrow was payday, though, and she’d need every bit of money she could get. She’d go to work like always, let them follow her home and think she was going to sleep. Then she’d pack everything she could in a backpack, wait a couple of hours, and sneak out the back. She’d have to leave the car behind and rely on public transportation or hitchhiking if necessary. Whatever it took to get as far away as possible.
She’d be on her own for the first time in her life, her ties to Lenny and her old life completely severed. Even though that had been her goal for the last month, now that it was time to follow through, she felt like throwing up, and her entire body shook with fear. Then again, that could be because she also had the added pressure of a crime boss after her now. Either way, she’d run like hell until she couldn’t run anymore.
The cell phone on top of her dresser started ringing, and her head snapped up. She’d had that phone for years, though Lenny didn’t know it. She had always left it off and kept it well hidden, but after he got arrested, she’d turned it on and left it out. Not that she ever answered it. Only one person had the number to that phone, and though it killed her to constantly avoid her sister, Vanessa would only try to involve herself, and Kat couldn’t let that happen.
She waited for the chirp that signaled a new voice mail and then punched in the code to listen.
“Hiya, Kitty-Kat.” Vanessa always sounded two parts happy and one part sad on her voice mails. Like she couldn’t be completely happy because of the distance—both physical and emotional—Kat kept between them. Every voice mail twisted the knife in Kat’s heart that had been there since the day Nessie left for college almost fifteen years earlier. “So, I’m sitting here making seating charts for the wedding. I really miss you, Kat, and even though I’m so happy with Jackson, the only thing that could make my wedding day perfect is having you there with me. If you call me, I’ll fly you out and fly you back to wherever it is you want to go, I promise. Just…” Sigh. “J”Listen, I’m going out of town tomorrow for a couple weeks. I’ll be unavailable by phone, but I’ll call you as soon as I get back, k? I love you, Kitty-Kat. ’Bye.”
Hot tears singed Kat’s cheeks as they streamed down her face. Nessie had been Kat’s whole world growing up. A day didn’t go by that it didn’t kill her to not be in her life. And now that her sister had found the love of a good man—something neither of them had ever believed existed—she felt even more remorse that she couldn’t be there for Nessie to share in her happiness.
Kat returned to the futon and stretched out on her side, hugging the Snuggie to her front and tucking it between her legs. It was too damn hot to wear a thick blanket with sleeves, but she couldn’t sleep unless she was at least holding onto something. When she was a little girl, it had been her stuffed animals or Nessie. Once she left home, she adapted to using the comforter or blanket or even another pillow to clutch in front of her. It didn’t matter, just so long as she didn’t feel so alone.
She wiped away the tears and reminded herself that at least her sister had made it. If good things were truly possible for people like them, then she was glad they’d happened to Nessie. She was the pure one of the two, and she deserved every good thing the world had to offer.
Kat, however, was too tainted by their past. It had touched her in ways it hadn’t Vanessa, and the results had stained her soul irreparably. Though Kat had made peace with that knowledge a long time ago, there were times when she couldn’t help but wish it could be different. That maybe she could find happiness with a man who would never hurt her.
Someone like Irish.
As her eyes drifted closed, Kat remembered the way he’d gently tilted her face up to his so he could look her in the eyes. And it was with that image that she finally, blessedly succumbed to sleep.
Chapter Four
Aiden watched as Kat picked up a tray of drinks from the bar and wound her way through the customers, noting her unusually flustered behavior.
Usually she worked her tables with an aloof grace and confidence. But at the moment, she reminded him of that kitten again. Her eyes constantly shifted, and she’d been startled more than once tonight. Her actions were classic paranoia.
The question was, was it due to what happened with Mullineaux? Or the cryptic placemat threat he suspected in fact did belong to her?
As though proving his point, she jumped when someone put a hand on her shoulder and she spilled an entire tray of tap beers. Aiden quickly made his way through the crowd, using his broad shoulders to push people to the side when they didn’t move fast enough for him. When he got there, Kat was in the middle of trying to calm a guy wearing a Skid Row T-shirt with apologies as she bent to pick up the broken pieces of glass. From the look of the guy’s pants, he’d caught the majority of the backsplash, and he was wicked pissed about it.
&nbs
p; Aiden stepped in front of Kat and got in Skid Row’s face. “Hey, back off, buddy. It was an accident. She said she was sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to fix my pants, asshole. The dumb bitch should have been looking where she was going.”
Aiden flexed his jaw and clenched his fists at his sides. One, two, three… It was a total cliché, but counting was one of his tricks that kept him from going Hulk, smash! on every idiot who pissed him off. That, and staying stone sober. But instead of calming him, the numbers felt more like a countdown to how much longer before he gave in to his inner monster. He needed to handle this differently before that happened.
Signaling Xander to deal with the dick who was now insisting he and his friends drink free for the rest of the night, Aiden bent down to where Kat was trying to gather the broken glass onto her tray.
“You okay?” he asked by her ear.
Her body jerked and he could almost see the year of life he’d scared out of her leave her body. “Shit!” she said, dropping a large shard to the floor.
He turned her hand over to see a big cut weeping bright red on the heel of her palm. “Come with me.”
“Wait, I have to—”
“No, you don’t,” he said, yanking off his white T-shirt and wrapping it around her hand. The way it was bleeding, she’d leave a trail all the way to the office. Aiden hauled her up with an arm around her waist and ushered her toward the back, despite her protests. Before they got to the hallway leading to the business end of the place, he told one of the bar-backs to go clean the mess before anyone else got hurt. Then he took Kat into Lou’s empty office and closed the door.
“Will you please stop?” she said. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Have a seat.”
He grinned when he heard her huff in frustration while he retrieved the first-aid kit. She decided to sit on the desk instead of Lou’s chair, and he didn’t blame her. Lou was a large man, a profuse sweater, and not overly fond of showering on a daily basis. Opening the plastic case, Aiden took out all the supplies he needed and arranged them on the desk.
“Let me see your hand.”
Reluctantly, she held it up so he could unwrap his shirt. Once it was off, he tossed it in the trash. There’d be no saving it. He’d have to pay Lou for a replacement. Although, considering the only part that made it a uniform shirt was the “Lou’s Riverview” in black letters over his left pec, Aiden could just ink up one of his undershirts with a Sharpie and the old man would never know the damn difference.
He ripped open several alcohol wipes and gently cleaned the blood from her hand, starting on the outside and working his way in. He tried like hell not to notice how her knees brushed against his thighs or how her soft breaths feathered over his hand as he tended her cut.
Or how her long red hair fell like a silky curtain on either side of her face and she smelled like lilacs in the spring.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since she left in such a rush last night. Although, if he were being honest, from the first day he saw her working at Lou’s, he’d thought about her a lot more than he should. She was off-limits to him. Though she had a boyfriend, from what Aiden had observed in the month before the guy got locked up, they were about as much of a couple as Aiden and Xander.
Aiden had a feeling if he wanted to get between them, her boyfriend wouldn’t even put up a fight. Which didn’t make any fucking sense, because if Aiden had a girl like that, he’d kill anyone who tried taking her from him.
Hammer, meet nailhead.
That whole killing thing was the reason he didn’t allow himself to consider her as anything other than a coworker. Aiden only did no-strings-attached, and there was something about this mysterious woman that told him one night—or even several nights—with her would never be enough.
She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth when he carefully swiped a pad over the gash. Glancing up at her, he said, “That’s gonna need stitches.”
Before he even finished the sentence, her head shook back and forth. “No, it won’t. Just wrap it up, and it’ll knit itself back together eventually.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, that would probably work if you didn’t need to move your hand for a few weeks. But if you wanna keep working, you need stitches or you’ll open the wound every time you move your thumb.”
Her eyebrows pulled together, and she drew her full lower lip between her teeth and bit hard.
“You afraid of needles and doctors?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly, staring at the floor, her face paling beneath her peach freckles.
…
“You’ve never been to the doctor?”
The way he said dahctah would have made her smile if she wasn’t so petrified of the idea of seeing the inside of a hospital for the second time in her life. And she wasn’t about to tell him about her first visit.
She shook her head and clamped her teeth on her lower lip as pieces of her past dug their way into the forefront of her mind. It wasn’t that she’d never had any reason to go to the doctor or hospital growing up. But when your parents were the reasons you needed to go, they usually weren’t too keen on taking you and risking a visit from the local authorities.
“Okay, tell you what,” he said, lifting her chin to force her gaze to his like he’d done the night before. “I’ll get this wrapped up, and then I’ll take you to the hospital to get it taken care of properly. I’ll wait for you, take you home, and then call Xander to pick me up. That sound all right?”
Something in her stomach fluttered as his sapphire eyes searched her face for an answer. What was it about Irish that could make her feel things she never thought she’d be capable of? Was it because he was a walking contradiction?
On the outside, he looked like a pierced and tattooed-to-the-gills badass you wouldn’t want to meet in broad daylight, much less a dark alley. But if he saw her coming, he opened the door for her. If he thought she was being hassled by a customer, he stepped in. And every time he looked at her, she knew he’d never let anything hurt her as long as he was close.
“You with me, kitten?” he asked, his voice soft and deep.
Funny. He’d said something similar the night before when she’d started freaking out. Stay right here with me, kitten. At the time she’d thought it was meaningless, but now the little girl that still lived deep inside her cynical shell was sighing with starry eyes. Kat would have to be careful to keep that tiny part of herself in check.
She swallowed and nodded. “Yes, okay,” she said in response to his offer.
A shallow grin told her he was satisfied with her answer, and then he got to work opening up the antibiotic ointment and setting out some sterile gauze pads.
While he played amateur doctor, she kept herself distracted by discreetly studying his body. It was amazing, but it wasn’t only due to his four-percent-body-fat physique. The man was a living canvas, covered in vibrantly colored tattoos. When he’d taken his shirt off she’d nearly lost her breath.
She’d only seen his tattoo “sleeves” up to where his work T-shirts stretched over his muscular upper arms, plus the letters between his knuckles that spelled cage on his right hand and rage on his left.
His left arm was a mural of ocean life. A lifelike octopus started at his shoulder with its tentacles swirling and reaching down his bicep. Everything from sea turtles to sea stars, from tropical fish to colorful coral filled in the rest of his arm, all the way around and down, and all surrounded by vivid blue water.
The right arm had an Asian theme with a beautiful geisha over his upper arm and a samurai warrior covering his forearm.
But the one she’d never seen before took up the majority of his chest. Centered over his sternum and spreading to cover part of each pectoral was a lotus flower in vivid greens, purples, and yellows on a background of bright blue Japanese-style waves that stretched across what remained of his chest. Above that, following the shallow arc of his collarbones
and written in fancy script was what she assumed was his last name bracketed by Kelly green shamrocks.
Kat had been so lost in studying the designs—not to mention the sexy-as-hell silver barbells he had in both of his nipples, she almost flinched in surprise when he spoke.
“Does it hurt?”
Did it? Hell, yeah. But when compared to her history of injuries, this barely rated a four on the severity scale. “A little.”
He spread the last of the ointment. A dark eyebrow hitched up his forehead as he continued his nursing duties. “If either of my sisters had gotten cut like this, they’d have been screaming bloody murder.”
She shrugged her right shoulder so she wouldn’t interfere with him placing the gauze pads on her left hand. “High pain tolerance, I guess.”
His gaze landed briefly on the three-inch vertical scar that marked her below her collarbones. It was old and most people didn’t notice it. Then again, most people didn’t get as intimately close to her as Irish was now. She wished the uniform shirts weren’t V-necks that practically put the mark on display, but Lou liked the girls flashing their cleavage, and in reality the more flashing, the better the tips.
He grunted, though whether in agreement or disbelief, she wasn’t sure.
Irish held the pads in place with one hand and reached for the roll of gauze with the other. He wrapped it around her palm and wrist, securing the makeshift bandage in place.
“Feel okay?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Her eyes settled on his chest again as he busied himself with putting all the supplies back in the kit. “O’Brien, huh?”
Blue eyes peered through long, dark lashes for only a heartbeat before lowering to his task again. “Yeah,” he said with obvious hesitance. “You wanna even the score and tell me your real name?”