No Strings Attached

Luc leaned farther over the railing, possessiveness sounding low in his throat. Who the hell was she dressing up for?

He pulled himself up short. “Jesus, get a grip.” Really, it was no skin off his dick if she had a boyfriend. It had been a million years since she and he had—

Best not to go there, man. Anyway, it wasn’t as if he weren’t anxious to get back to his own life, to his work. He should probably avoid civilized company altogether. Hell, he’d nearly pulled his gun, which he likely shouldn’t even be carrying here in Razor Bay, when Tasha had crashed the outer door against the wall. He was a guy who needed the buzz of living by his wits, of playing the game right up to the final rush of taking down the bad guys, of putting one more power-happy drug kingpin out of business.

Not that there didn’t seem to be dozens more in the wings just waiting to take up the mantle. Still, he could only do what he could do—and he was ready to take them down, too. So whoever Tasha was or wasn’t doing shouldn’t matter.

Which didn’t explain why he was leaning so far over the railing trying to keep her in sight that he was in imminent danger of tumbling over it and landing on his head on the street below.

“Shit.” He straightened away from the balustrade and took a giant step back to drop into one of the chairs, his eyes narrowing as it creaked beneath his weight. Tasha sure did have a thing for wicker furniture.

He wasn’t what you’d call an avid view guy, but he had to admit that this one was pretty damn sweet. Yesterday’s rain squalls had apparently blown out to sea, for the rugged mountain range across the narrow band of water etched its craggy peaks against a cloudless blue sky. Some kid on a Sea-Doo was rrrEAR-rrEAR-rrEARing in relentless loops out in the canal, and Luc caught a glimpse of one corner of the local inn’s float that he and Jake had rowed out to the evening that Tasha and both of his half brothers’ women went skinny-dipping from it. If he’d known then that it was his Tasha—or okay, not his-his, but at least the Tasha he’d once known—he would have tried a helluva lot harder to see through the shadowy night and stygian waters. Short of X-ray vision he would’ve failed, but he’d have tried. Now a group of kayakers paddled past the area down toward the state park.

He felt restive. Edgy. Tired of his own company. Climbing to his feet, he slapped his jeans pocket to make sure his room key was still there. Retrieving it, he let himself out of the room, then locked up. He might as well walk down to the inn and see if Jake was around. It beat the hell out of this little memory-lane jaunt his mind kept wanting to take off on.

It didn’t occur to him that he probably should have called first until he crossed the porch of The Sand Dollar, the largest of the cottages scattered around the evergreen-dotted grounds of The Brothers Inn. Then he rolled his shoulders and knocked on the front door. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, man. He was here now, wasn’t he? He rapped out another rhythm.

“Keep your shorts on,” he heard Jake’s irritated voice say from the other side of the door. Footsteps approached, and the door whipped open. “There better be a fucking fire, because I’m in the middle of someth—” He blinked at Luc. “Oh, hey, it’s you.” Stepping back, he opened the door wider. “C’mon in. You, I actually wanna talk to.”

“Yeah?” It was stupid to feel the warm fuzzies because some guy he hadn’t even known existed six months ago maybe wanted to get to know him as much as he wanted to get to know both his recently discovered half brothers. As a newly orphaned only child, he envied their obvious closeness and the way Jake had jumped to Max’s defense, especially when it came to their mutual father, more than once now.

“You want a beer?” Jake asked. He glanced down at his pricey watch, which, along with his green silk T-shirt, honest-to-God pressed cargo shorts—who did that?—and razor-cut sun-streaked brown hair, screamed well-put-together-rich-guy. “It’s not too early for a brew, is it?”

“Hell, no. A beer would be good.” Surreptitiously checking his own plain cotton tee to make sure it was still clean, he followed his half brother into a small galley kitchen.

Jake fished a couple of Fat Tires out of the fridge and handed one to Luc. “So,” he said, popping his bottle’s top and snapping his fingers to send it winging toward the sink, “I hear you and Tash have a lurid past.”

He started. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

“Jenny is Tasha’s best friend, remember? She went over this morning to find out what was with her yesterday, because she claims Tash wasn’t acting like herself.”

It was small of him, but he gritted his teeth over Jake’s casual use of Tasha’s nickname when she’d forbidden him to use it.

“I hear Tasha claims you’re a drug dealer and that she got arrested for drugs you had in your vacation rental.”

“Fuck.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his shield for the third time this day, flipping open its wallet and holding it out to the other man. “I was undercover, and I didn’t even know she’d been arrested until yesterday.”

Jake took the badge out of his hand and studied it. “DEA, huh? Max will be interested in this.”

“He already knows—he came to see me at my hotel in Silverdale earlier.”

A slight smile crooked Jake’s lips. “That’s our boy. Not much gets past him.” He returned the shield. “Why don’t you just show this to Tash?”

“I did! She said IDs could be faked.”

Jake laughed. “Yeah, she was pretty hot under the collar when she called Jenny about getting together at the Anchor for some girl time.”

“She’s at the Anchor? With your fiancée?” It wasn’t as if he was relieved or anything. He merely had a new resolve, and he took a step back. “Well, listen, I’ll let you get back to that middle-of-something thing you were working on.”

“So you can go to the Anchor without me?” Jake demanded. “Screw that.” He disappeared into another room, but almost immediately returned. Shoving a wallet into his back pocket, he said, “You do get that she’s there to trash your good name to her girls, don’t you? You’re not exactly gonna be welcome.”

A corner of his mouth ticked up. “Yeah, why can’t they be levelheaded like us?”

“I know, right? Women are a mystery, but it’s some esoteric female thing, the logic of which only they understand.” He sobered. “Just be prepared, bro. You’re already on shaky ground.” They stepped out onto the porch, and Jake locked up. “Where’s your car?”

“On Harbor Street. I walked over.”

Jake shrugged. “I’ll drive, then.” He led Luc to his SUV. Opening the doors with his remote, he paused to look at Luc over the top of the car. “You know, you really oughtta move into the inn so you don’t have to do so much backing-and-forthing between the Bay and Silverdale.”

“I don’t need a place at the inn. I just moved into the studio above Bella T’s.”

“No shit?” Jake shot Luc a big-ass grin. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ac197fae-d340-51a0-baf9-3ded0315d183)

“AW, HELL,” TASHA said morosely, “it’s not like I didn’t know better than to hook up with Diego/Luc/whatever-he-wants-to-call-himself in the first place.” She knocked back a long swallow from her glass of the house red, then looked at Jenny and Harper seated on the other side of their booth at the Anchor. “I knew not to go there. But instead of paying attention to my instincts, I went ahead and hooked up with him anyway.”

“How would you know better?” Harper asked with the near-British inflection that made her sound so boarding-school refined. “Did he have Lying Drug Dealer written all over him?” Her black ringlets shivered and swayed as she tipped her head to study Tasha. “And what, precisely, does such a person look like?”

“Beats me. I only meant that I hadn’t intended to hook up with anyone on that vacation. It was just my bad luck that the one time I broke my own hard-and-fast rule, it was with a guy who landed me in a Bahamian jail.”

It felt odd to have told yet another person about that time in her life. Her imprisonment in the dark, cramped cell had been the single most terrifying forty-eight hours of her life—its minutes stretching like dog years as she’d wondered if she would ever see the light of day again. When they finally did let her go, she’d wanted only to forget and had kept the incarceration a closely guarded secret, relating her experience to no one but Jenny. Now, after maintaining a stony silence for seven years, in less than twenty-four hours she had not only blurted it to Luc last night but had just told Harper, as well.

But although she may have known Harper for only a couple of months, her new friend was fast becoming important to her. And she’d deserved to hear about her prior relationship with Luc if she was ever to understand why Tasha was so furious with him now.

Raucous male laughter exploded from a table over by the window, but Harper didn’t spare so much as a glance in the group’s direction. She leaned into their own table. “You were on vacation,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you want to meet a hot-looking man?” She gave Tasha a knowing look. “And I think we must admit that Luc Bradshaw is that, yes?”

Oh, yeah. He is definitely that. Not that she intended to say so aloud. She did, however, dip her chin in the tiniest acknowledgment.

“It all stems back to her mama,” Jenny said and raised a hand to hail the cocktail waitress. Catching the woman’s eye, she circled an index finger over their glasses, indicating refills all around.

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of you having a vacation fling?” Harper inquired. “Is she quite strict, then?”

Both she and Jenny laughed. “No,” Tasha said. “Quite the opposite, actually. My mom was known around here as the whore of Razor Bay. She moved to Olympia almost six years ago, yet there are still a few people who like to throw her reputation in my face every now and then.” She shrugged. “Of course, they’re morons. And don’t get me wrong, I love my mom. But she and I are nothing alike.”

“No fooling,” Jenny said and turned to Harper. “Nola, Tash’s mom, lives strictly in the moment—I don’t think I’ve ever seen her give a microsecond’s thought to what might happen tomorrow. Tash, on the other hand—she’s a whole nother animal. She is the most goal-oriented person I’ve ever met.”

Harper gave Tasha a bright olive-green-eyed gaze, then turned in her seat to study Jenny. “I know you two have been friends for a long time. But I don’t believe I’ve ever heard exactly when or how you met.”

“It was my second day at Razor Bay High School when we were sixteen,” Jenny said with a fond smile at Tasha. “I was new in town, and Tash stepped in when some kids started giving me shit about my father’s well-publicized incarceration for a Ponzi scheme—which we will talk about another time,” she added with a little grin when she saw the light of curiosity in her biracial friend’s eyes. “I just loved her from the start, because she had even less standing in that school than I did, yet instead of covering her ass and walking on by like any right-thinking individual would have done—”

Tash snorted and Jenny flashed her a grin.

“—she just jumped right into the fray. We went from that to bonding over the pizzas she made in her mama’s single-wide and a mutual determination to move beyond our circumstances.” Shaking her head, Jenny smiled ruefully. “I thought I had plans at the time. But Tash already had a full-fledged, neatly typed business plan for Bella T’s in her underwear drawer.”

It was true, so Tasha merely shrugged. But then she slapped a hand against the scarred wooden tabletop and straightened in her seat. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this off and on for a while and it seems to me that calling my mother a whore is kind of unfair.” She made a waving motion as if to erase her words. “Oh, not that she hasn’t slept with an astounding number of men. But I can tell you that it was never for money. I’m not even convinced it was because she loved sex all that much.

“I didn’t understand for the longest time why she constantly slept around the way she did, and God knows I had to live down her reputation from the day I was old enough to understand what people meant when they said Nola Riordan was a slut. But not long before Jenny came to town, I began to realize that Mom views each new sexual encounter as a potential love match. And I’m talking Luuuv with a capital L.” Her tone leaned toward the sardonic, but it couldn’t be helped. “Against all evidence to the contrary, my mother sincerely, consistently and faaar too optimistically believed—”