Fighting for Devlin (Lost Boys #1) Read online

  Devlin came deeper into the cooler and I backed up until I rattled the shelf behind me. He penetrated my personal space, leaning over me without touching me, his heat blanketing my side. He pulled down a stainless steel bowl wrapped with cellophane, his eyes on mine as he handed it over. I took it, allowing a brief inventory of my helper. Charcoal suit, red patterned tie, shiny shoes. Every inch of him smacked of warmth and power and…

  Danger.

  My earlier thoughts of Joshua scattered in the wake of Devlin’s presence like a flock of birds spooked by a sound. Joshua’s smile, abandoned for the full set of Devlin’s unsmiling lips. Joshua’s jovial laugh for Devlin’s silence. Joshua’s cold, still body, the color of clay, for Devlin’s sun-kissed skin and thick black lashes.

  “What table?” he asked.

  My forehead crinkled in confusion.

  His nostrils flared, his beautiful face growing as hard as stone. “Diet Coke. What table?”

  Oh. Right. I pursed my lips to speak, but no sound came. A few seconds later, I was able to utter, “Twenty-nine.”

  I watched him leave while I remained, metal bowl filled with whipped butter cooling my hand, my jaw slack. I followed, my newfound bravery wilting. Maybe tomorrow would be better. I yanked the door open and headed into the bustle of the kitchen, nearly plowing into one of the servers yelling for butter.

  Then again, maybe not.

  Chapter 2

  Devlin

  The Wilson residence stood on a tree-lined street on Linney Avenue, the only blue house on the right side. When I’d lived here as a delinquent teen, I mowed the yard and trimmed the shrubs and restacked the bricks around the lush Japanese maple out front—bricks that now lay in a haphazard stack around the neglected tree.

  Pulling my leather coat tighter to keep from being pelted by the light rain that would soon turn into snow, I sidestepped a pile of waterlogged newspapers scattered across the drive.

  The hedges I’d once perfectly squared were scraggly, their leafless arms clawing at the filthy windows. The formerly manicured home that had been my refuge for almost two years now looked more like a place I’d take the long way home to avoid.

  Paul Wilson, chronic gambler, might not seem the best father figure, but since he was my dad’s gambling buddy (as close to a best friend as my dad ever had), he’d been the only one left to offer me a place to stay. Unlike my father, who gambled and scammed his way through most of his life, Paul had a career as an—as far as I knew—honest accountant. He and his then-wife gave me a place to stay back when Dad died, and let me stay despite the fact I’d been busted for trying my hand at gambling shortly after.

  I was good at it, thanks to a fail-safe memory for facts and figures, but I hadn’t been so good at not flaunting my wins at the restaurant. Sonny quickly put a stop to my bad habit. If saving me had been a two-part plan, he was the other half of what Paul had started.

  An interior light was on, and a shadow passed in front of it. It had to be Paul. Joyce divorced him last year, and his son, Cade, was away at college. The only current resident of the Wilson place was the man who used to make sure he always had Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the kitchen cabinets for me. Sucked that I was here to get money from him.

  I knocked. “Paul!”

  He knew better than to run from me when I needed a payment. And he was late. He hadn’t shown up at Oak & Sage for a week. A week. He had never been a week late before. I didn’t typically come to collect personally. Sonny had guys who did that part of the job. Big guys with baseball bats. My job was maintaining the restaurant—my future—and acting as drop-off point for Sonny. There were a few reasons for this.

  One, I owed Sonny a lot of money since my dad died indebted to him; and, two, Sonny was the one who’d stepped in and helped me run the place when I’d been left in charge, most likely to guarantee he’d get the money Dad owed him, but I liked to think his trust was in part due to how skilled I was at what I did.

  Either way, our paths merged, and bettors began frequenting Oak & Sage to place bets and meet with him. They still frequented, but the betting was now done via Sonny, and I played role of collector in addition to owner. Since I was familiar with the business and had no need to write down who owed what, it worked out well for both of us. Plus, Sonny knocked a percentage off my dad’s debt for the exchange, which allowed me to make a profit but still pay toward my father’s debt.

  That part was important. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything. And if I ever had a kid, I sure wouldn’t want him to be responsible for my debt when I died.

  Wet, chilled, and getting aggravated, I knocked again. Over the last several months, Paul’s demeanor had changed. I wasn’t accustomed to not seeing him at “his” table each week, ordering the cordon bleu and peach iced tea, and either dropping off payment or picking up what he’d won. Since Joyce left, he had become more reclusive, and had visited the restaurant less and less. Where he used to be a straitlaced numbers guy who enjoyed betting on sports games more for fun than profit, now he reminded me of a twitchy chipmunk who suspected a dog was nearby.

  At first I thought he was depressed because of the divorce. His wife had left and, as far as I knew, hadn’t contacted him at all. Paul had mentioned she’d taken her dream job to be a flight attendant and travel, but I suspected she stayed in touch with Cade. Joyce was a great mom. She mommed Cade, she mommed me—and hell, I hadn’t even deserved it.

  Now, though, I’d begun suspecting he was on the lam, or maybe it was substance abuse. I hoped it wasn’t the latter. The thought of the man I’d once admired and had wanted to emulate throwing it all away for a hit made me sick.

  I’d seen the decline of many a man in this business, my father included. Gambling had a way of dismantling lives piece by piece. Not surprising, considering that most bettors were degenerates to start with. Wasn’t like they had far to fall.

  I glanced around the neighborhood at the jaunty Christmas lights, already up despite Thanksgiving being a week away. Luxury cars were parked in every other driveway, and giant blow-up cartoony Grinches, Rudolphs, and Santas decorated the yards.

  The rain had shifted to sleet. I changed my knock to a bang, slamming my fist into the door and shouting Paul’s name with more urgency. He opened the door.

  Fucking finally.

  “I’m freezing out here, man,” I let him know.

  Paul was my dad’s age, or would have been, if my dad was still alive. Unlike my dad, he was a few inches shorter and had grown a potbelly, likely from too much Heineken. Tonight, his belly was prominent, covered in a hideous patterned sweater, but his normally round cheeks were sunken, his eyes dark underneath.

  Heroin? Crack? Cocaine? My stomach did a half flip. Being strung out wasn’t something Sonny dealt with. If a bettor ever came to him strung out, he turned him down. Sonny and I ran a respectable illegal gambling ring. Everyone knew we didn’t mess with guys who couldn’t handle themselves. Especially guys who knew better—like Paul.

  “Hey, Dev.” He fidgeted, rubbing his fingers together as he continued looking around nervously.

  “Five hundred,” I stated. Lost causes weren’t my specialty. Whatever problems he had were his and his alone.

  His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed. I stuck my hands in my pockets and watched as his eyes followed the movement, probably wondering if I had a gun or not. I let him wonder.

  After another lengthy silence, his nostrils flared. “Go away, Dev.”

  What the hell? We were friends…or used to be, anyway. Even if we weren’t, he knew better than to challenge me. Saying no to me was saying no to Sonny. But it was hard to intimidate the guy who’d seen me as a scrawny, starved teen.

  Simple solution: I’d remind him who sent me. “If you don’t have it, I’ll have to call Sonny. I don’t want him to take you down, man, but…”

  Voices rose in the house, then two goon-sized men were towering in the doorway behind him. I widened my stance in preparation for trouble but made sure to
give the pair of bozos a cool glance as I lifted my phone to dial.

  Showing weakness would only get my ass kicked. Thanks, but no thanks.

  One of the guys had a bald head, the other had a mop of messy brown hair and a cleft top lip. They outweighed me. Hell, both of them together could probably lift my SUV. The back of my neck prickled out of instinct, or maybe from plain old experience.

  Paul was in trouble.

  If I didn’t stand a chance in a fight against Dumb and Dumber, he was screwed. He had pudding where there should have been muscle.

  I lowered my voice and leaned close so only Paul could hear me. My thumb was still on the phone, ready to dial Sonny if it came to that. “Look, man, if you need help just—”

  A blinding light resembling a nuclear blast bloomed behind my eyelids as my head snapped back on my neck. I staggered backward from the punch, hearing a splash as my phone dropped into a puddle on the pockmarked driveway.

  Hand on my throbbing jaw, I glared at Paul. He’d sucker punched me. I felt my swelling lip curl and surged toward him, latching onto his sweater with two fists. He was about to find out what that chicken-shit punch cost him. Then I’d let the goons do whatever they damn well pleased to him.

  I drew back a fist, and heard Paul wail, “Take him out!”

  And then my world went black.

  Rena

  My best friend, Tasha, handed over a vodka cranberry and shouted so I could hear her over the music. “Then what happened?”

  Then nothing happened, that’s what. I’d just shared the walk-in-refrigerator tale, leaving out the part where I turned into a tongue-tied twit. A college party wasn’t exactly the place for an intimate discussion, but I had to talk to someone.

  I briefly debated how to answer her question. Devlin hadn’t spoken another word to me since the walk-in incident two nights ago. He’d done a pretty decent job of ignoring me altogether.

  “Then I jumped him,” I shouted back to Tash. “Wrapped my legs around his waist and stuck my tongue down his throat.”

  She threw back her honey-blond curls and laughed. My brain knew I was joking, but my body didn’t differentiate real from imagined. At the thought of Devlin’s tongue on mine, my nipples tightened, my thighs clenched. The idea of kissing him, of feeling his wide, warm hands clasp my bottom as he held me against him, was a fantasy I had entertained more than once. In the shower this morning, for instance.

  Damn my barren love life.

  But it was my fantasy. And in my fantasy, he had stood behind me and skimmed his hands up the front of my shirt, his fingers teasing my breasts as they peaked in the cold air in the fridge, while his hot tongue licked a trail down the side of my neck. When I lifted to my toes, he’d ground into me as I grasped the shelf in front of me for support.

  “Ohmygawd, look who’s here!” Tasha exclaimed.

  I blinked out of my sex fantasy and took a generous swallow of my drink. I couldn’t believe I’d slipped into la-la land in public. Men didn’t often draw me into waking dreams of them. No, that wasn’t true. Men never drew me into waking dreams of them. Ever since Joshua died, that sort of daydream had died with him. I’d slotted myself into the asexual column and had done my best to ignore my hormones.

  Until Devlin. What was it about him?

  I pictured his broad, suited shoulders. Ink-colored hair slicked away from carved cheekbones. Full, firm lips and a jaw made of granite.

  It was his everything.

  “Asshole,” Tasha grumbled.

  I followed her eye line across the room to where she was directing her sneer and upturned nose, and saw a guy in a casual patterned T-shirt. A symphony of tattoos tracked down his left arm. He sipped beer from a Solo cup and when he licked the foam from his lip, a dimple sliced into one side of his face.

  “The cute guy?” I blinked at my friend.

  “He’s not cute.”

  I took a second look. “Uh, sorry, hon, but yeah, he is.”

  “Well, he’s an asshole, so that sort of eradicates the cute.” She crossed her arms as she sipped her drink.

  “What’d he do?” I asked, curious. Sure, Tasha preferred the preppy boys, well-bred, smooth talkers, over tattooed bad boys, but I’d never known her to dislike any boy. Especially a boy as cute as the one across the room talking animatedly to his buddy.

  “We were at a frat party last weekend and he hit on one of my friends. She shot him down then he turned to me.” She brushed the beaded necklace at her throat. “His eyes wandered all over me.” I thought she sounded more rapt than offended, but I kept that to myself. “And then he was like, ‘You’ve been smilin’ at me for a while, darlin’,’ in this annoying drawl.”

  Her lip was still curled, but I was pretty sure by “annoying” she meant “sexy.”

  “Then,” she continued, “he said, ‘What do you say, kitten? Care to take a ride on the Cade train?’ ”

  I laughed. Mistake. Tasha’s jaw dropped in offense.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling it together. “That’s a terrible line. I am laughing at its epic badness.”

  “He called me ‘kitten’ like I’m a tramp or something. And the ‘Cade train’ thing? Disgusting.” Her gaze cut to him again, betraying her true feelings. She seemed more curious than upset. There was a part of Tasha that wanted everyone to like her. And the fact that this tattooed, T-shirted bad-boy might not bothered her all the way down to her ballet flats.

  A cacophony of male whoops lifted the air. Across the sorority-house living room, Tasha’s ex-boyfriend, Tony—a taller version of Bruno Mars with the same pretty quality to his face—strolled through the door. Now, him? Him I could hate. He had no business being within twenty yards of Tasha after last weekend. He high-fived a few guys for who-knew-what as he entered. Cade flicked him a dismissive gaze, which made me like him more.

  “He said he wasn’t coming tonight,” she mumbled, her eyes glued to her ex-boyfriend’s ambivalent expression. Mine was glued to Tony’s rich boy prep-wear. Tasha’s kryptonite. Oh, how she loved a well-pressed pair of khakis.

  I grabbed my friend’s arm and forced her to look at me. “You talked to him?”

  “Of course not!” She bit her lip, then added, “Text.”

  “Tasha! Tell me you’re not this drunk!” I took her drink away and she snatched it back.

  Tash was my best friend…my first real friend. And I was the one person in her life who would be honest with her. She and I had become friends in the ninth grade, and she was the only person from high school who hadn’t avoided me after Joshua’s accident.

  My world had dwindled down to two people back then: Tasha and my smother. And, yes, the “s” was there intentionally.

  “He texted me to apologize.” She waited for my objection.

  I pursed my lips and stayed silent.

  “Admit it. It’s possible he’d mistaken Jamie for me, right?”

  “How dark was this party?” I asked, my tone flat.

  “He was drunk, Reen. He kissed her, sure, but she was the one who dragged him into the closet.”

  I ruminated on this new bit of intel. “How do you know?”

  “Tamara and Casey told me. They saw the whole thing.” Her wide eyes and defense of her “friends” made me question her sanity. Is this what sorority girls did? Sat back and watched Tasha’s boyfriend make out with another girl without intervening? “I’m lucky to have them. They’d never make out with Tony.”

  “What great friends.”

  She nodded her agreement, ignoring my sarcasm.

  Tony lifted his chin at her and she gave him a huge smile. Then he saw me, seemed to debate, and wisely opted to keep his distance.

  “Maybe I was too harsh,” she said, contemplatively sipping her drink.

  “You don’t have to settle for him. You could find someone else. Someone better.” I looked for the dimpled, brown-haired guy again but he must have relocated. “Someone who doesn’t make out with college freshmen while you’re studying for y
our Physiology test.” I gave her the kindest smile I could muster.

  “You don’t know what college is like,” she shot back.

  I tried not to visibly wince. Because ouch.

  “Come on, let’s dance.” She towed me to the living room and I obeyed.

  An hour later, I’d been dragged into a conversation with a guy who called himself Turner and a girl with the blondest hair I’d ever seen. It was practically white. I’d forgotten her name. Brittany? Bridget? I wasn’t sure. They seemed nice enough; we just didn’t have anything in common. Tasha wasn’t wrong. Besides having taken a few community college courses, I couldn’t relate to living in a dorm and attending wild parties every weekend.

  “…until this one stripped off his toga.” Brittany-Bridget snorted and shoved Turner, who brayed like a donkey. His laugh revealed luminescent teeth, which were kind of terrifying.

  “Sounds…uh, fun,” I said, scanning my surroundings for an exit. I’d lost sight of Tasha some time ago. And since she was the only person I knew, I’d found myself stuck with these two. “Oh, look at that. Empty cup.” I drained my drink in one huge gulp. “Excuse me.”

  Brittany-Bridget wasn’t listening. She leaned into Turner, who’d pulled her close and cupped her ass with one giant palm. I took advantage of her preoccupation to sidle by them and out of the kitchen. Seriously, what did girls see in these morons?

  Alas, much as I wanted to mock them, I couldn’t. I had been about six months away from becoming one of them. Joshua had been headed to Ridgeway University on an athletic scholarship, and I’d filled out my applications. I planned on following him. I would have followed him anywhere. Instead, he followed me…to his demise.

  I dropped my empty cup into a trashcan, stomach tossing at an unwelcome memory. The night of the accident I went to a party alone because he didn’t want to go. When he came to pick me up, I was drunk and bored and crying like an idiot.