No Strings Attached

“Good to see you, too, bro,” Max rumbled, then met his gaze with the straight-shooter directness it hadn’t taken Luc long to figure out was Max’s default mode. “I told her I was damn near a hundred percent certain your DEA badge was real.”

“But...isn’t that a good thing?”

“You’d think so, right? But I guess not, because she looked like she’d just been kicked in the stomach. Maybe you being legit makes it somehow worse in her eyes. Because if you were the supposed good guy, how did she end up in jail—and why didn’t you lift a finger to help her?”

“I didn’t know about it! I gotta go talk to her.” He started to push past his half brother, but Max stepped more fully into his path. The guy was big and solid, so Luc had no option but to stop. That didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. “What?”

“You need to take a big step back here. Just think about this for a minute—and try to look at it through Tash’s eyes. Something damn traumatic happened to her seven years ago, but she’s had time to put it behind her and move on.”

Realizing he’d been doing more reacting than thinking, which wasn’t his usual M.O. at all, Luc shook out his hands. “Then I show up.”

“Not only show up but are related to her best friends’ men. Which means there’s going to be no avoiding you. And Tasha just said something about you moving into her studio apartment? How the hell did you swing that?”

“I didn’t have a clue about Tasha when I sublet it from Will—I actually arranged it last month when I discovered you lived in Razor Bay. From the time I found out I had brothers, I’d been looking for you and Jake. I didn’t know when I found you, though, that Jake lived here, too.

“My original plan was to take some time to scope you out. I wasn’t sure how that was gonna work, but I figured if you didn’t want anything to do with me, I’d have a more private place than a motel room to kick back in while I looked for Jake. I put in for a sabbatical when I learned Dad died while I was on a job and figured I’d have a while before I was assigned to a new one. Worst-case scenario seemed to be that I’d be forced to relax for a while.”

Max shrugged. “But you can see how Tasha might be overwhelmed by all these surprises, right?”

He gave a terse nod.

“Then take my advice and back off a little. You can’t fix everything in twenty-four hours. Give her some space and yourself a little maneuvering room.”

He slipped on his Laid-Back Luc persona, doing everything except calling Max “Dude” as he agreed that was a good idea. And in all honesty it was.

Everything Max said rang true for him. He did need to give Tasha some breathing space.

But he realized he had another truth, as well. He intended to spend time with his half brothers. And that meant spending time with their women.

Which meant spending time with Tasha.

So, for however long he ended up being here, he needed to put some serious thought into figuring out how to get back into her good graces.

For everyone’s sake.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_96039e64-8723-5aa0-8ca0-5c6a4cf2b78f)

“I’M REALLY SORRY, TASHA,” Tiffany said as they walked out of Bella T’s kitchen the following Friday afternoon. “I hate that I’m letting you down.” Her normally cheerful face was etched in misery, causing Tasha to stop in her tracks to stare at her waitress.

Then she reached out and grasped Tiffany’s plump shoulders, giving them a squeeze as she bent her head to pin the younger woman with a no-nonsense look. “Tiff. Honey. No. You have nothing to be sorry about, and you haven’t let me down at all. I didn’t really think you’d be happy in the kitchen. But you’ve been with me since I opened this joint, and I thought I should at least give you the right of first refusal before I go outside again for help.” She grinned at the plump brunette. “Just in case you’ve been harboring a secret hankering all these years to be a cook.”

“Gawd, no.” Tiffany shivered. “Even with it half-open to the dining room, I’d go nuts in the kitchen all day. Not to mention mess up my mani. I like being around people.”

“And that’s where you shine, so don’t give it another thought.” Dropping a hand, she slid her other around Tiffany’s shoulders and pulled her in for a quick one-armed hug. Then she stepped back and automatically gave the dining room a swift perusal. “Looks like the after-school rush is kicking in, so get your tush out there and hustle some orders.”

“Aye, aye, boss.”

Tasha took up her customary station behind the counter, where she could keep an eye on the growing crowd until the orders started coming in. She watched Tiffany sashay from table to table, laughing and joking with the students as she wrote down their orders, then turned her attention to Jeremy, the Cedar Village boy who bussed dishes for her.

She’d originally hired him as a favor to Max and Harper, who were both very involved in the boarding school for troubled boys. Yet it turned out they had done her the favor, because Jeremy was working out great. He was a tall, built, good-looking eighteen-year-old, and when she’d first agreed to take him on she had half feared that he’d spend his entire time flirting with the high school girls. But no matter how many of those girls tried to get him to do exactly that, he refused to be sucked in. He wasn’t a social creature like Tiff. He did his work but kept to himself. She could only assume the loner trait made him even more attractive to the young females, because God knew they didn’t let up in their attempts to get his attention.

And when they weren’t trying to flirt with him, they watched him.

She saw Peyton Vanderkamp doing exactly that right now. The pretty fair-skinned, black-haired girl shared a table with Davis Cokely, but she kept shooting covert glances Jeremy’s way as he cleared a table a short distance away. Davis was a handsome kid himself, but as far as Tash was concerned, his smug air of entitlement took the shine off his nice looks.

Peyton, she didn’t know that much about. The Vanderkamps were relatively new in Razor Bay, but they were immensely wealthy, from all accounts, and the girl ran with Davis’s posse, so Tasha didn’t expect a lot from her in the way of character. She knew that prejudices born of her own high school experiences likely colored her opinion, and she freely admitted that wasn’t very grown-up of her. But since she doubted she’d ever have an intimate relationship with the girl, she didn’t see the point of spending a lot of time worrying over her lack of maturity.

She was about to turn away when Davis turned so he was facing her more fully. The calculating look that crossed his face caught her notice, so she was watching when he, oh, so casually stretched out a foot just as Jeremy passed his table.

Her employee stumbled over it and went down like a felled tree. The bus tub in his hands bounced on the floor before tipping onto its side and spilling half its load of crockery out onto the floor with a resounding clatter.

Like field crickets at a predator’s approach, all the kids went stone silent. Davis laughed.

Incensed, Tasha reached for her Ping-Pong ball gun under the counter. Bringing it up, she fired off a shot. The ball bounced off Davis’s temple and stopped that annoying guffawing.

He spun to face her. “What the hell?”

She came out from behind the counter and strode over to his table. Planting her knuckles on the tabletop, she leaned down until she was nearly nose to nose with him. “Nobody messes with my people in my restaurant,” she said flatly. “You wanna be a lowlife, kid, go home and trip your dog.”

“Not the dog!” one of the girls from a nearby table protested. “Go home and trip yourself,” she suggested alternatively and her friend nodded in earnest agreement.

Tasha stooped to scoop up a pizza pan whose lazy elliptical spin on the floor was rapidly losing steam. She put it back in the tub. “You okay?” she asked Jeremy in a low voice.

Muscles jumped in his jaw, and his pale blue eyes burned with outraged pride. She thought he was going to come up swinging, thus starting a bare-knuckles brawl with Davis—and wondered what it said about her that she intended to let him get a shot in before she intervened.

But Jeremy merely nodded in answer to her question and pushed back to sit on his heels. Silently, he helped her gather the other plates and glasses that had escaped.

She couldn’t help but be impressed. Not many eighteen-year-old males would have reined themselves in the way he was doing.

A sudden idea made her pause mid-stretch for the plastic soda glass she’d intended to nab before it rolled out of reach. Letting it go, she sat back on her heels and contemplated him for several heartbeats while she silently debated the merit of her brainstorm.

Then leaving him to deal with the tub, she rose and turned her attention to Davis. “As the sign on the wall clearly states, I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. I’m exercising that right. If you want to come back and play nice another time, you’re welcome to do so. But you’ve lost your pizza privileges today.”

“Big deal,” he said, shoving back his chair and standing. “Your pizza’s only so-so.”

Jeremy surged to his feet as if that, of all things, was the final straw.

But before he could say anything, a football player named Sage from a few tables down demanded, “Have you and me been eating the same pizza, Cokely? ’Cause Bella T’s makes the best damn slices in the county.” He gave Tasha a guilty look and held up his hands. “Sorry, Miz Riordan—don’t shoot. Best darn slices, I meant to say.”

She merely grinned, and red crept up Davis’s neck at the reprimand from one of his teammates. Ignoring everyone else in the restaurant, however, he gave Peyton an imperious jerk of his chin. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t budge from her chair. “You go ahead,” she said coolly, making Tasha wonder if she ought to reevaluate her original impression of the girl. “I’m going to stay. I like the pizza here.”

He swore under his breath and stomped over to the door. A moment later it slammed closed behind him.

“We’ve got a number of orders stacking up, boss,” Tiffany called, and Tash nodded.

“You might want to take the meat lover’s slice off mine,” Peyton said in her I’m-much-too-cool-to-ever-get-rattled way.