"And now I suppose Her Ungratefulness will be wanting a slice of pie, not that the sweetness wouldn't be an improvement," Gramma Fred said with a huff.
"Apple, please, if you have any left." Izzy stood up on the bar stool's rungs, leaned across the counter and wrapped her grandmother in a hug. "And vanilla ice cream," she added as she sat back. "Thank you."
Gramma Fred simply shook her head, returned the coffeepot to the warmer and headed to the opposite end of the counter and the pie case. Izzy watched her go, feeling Baron's gaze on her face as she grinned at her grandmother's back.
When she finally glanced up, it was to find him looking at her with a curious expression. "What?"
He shook his head, his mouth caught in a crooked smile that skirted the corners of his eyes. "Interesting bond you have with your grandmother."
"She's amazing. The best. Aren't you, Gramma Fred?" Izzy asked as the older woman slid a plate holding a quarter of a pie and nearly a pint of ice cream toward her.
"Eat up," she ordered, giving Izzy a wink before getting back to her other customers.
Baron watched her go, lifting his cup to drink. "You're lucky to have that."
Izzy didn't think she'd ever seen a man's hand envelop a coffee cup so completely. "It's beautifully smothering and wonderfully challenging."
He lowered his cup to the counter. "Is that a complaint?"
Slowly, Izzy pulled the soup spoon from her mouth, pressing her lips tight to get the last smear of ice cream. The delay allowed her to think of a comeback that wouldn't send this man running into the night.
"Tell me about your family, Joseph."
He picked up the spoon resting on his saucer and tapped the counter with the end "Well, Isabel, if I had a family, I'd be more than happy to tell you about them."
What a strange admission to make. She didn't think she'd ever known anyone without at least a black sheep or disinherited outlaw sharing the family name. "Would you like to adopt mine? I have more than enough to go around, and not enough business for all of them to stick their noses into."
A smile pulled at his lovely full lips before revealing even, white teeth that she knew someone had been paid to keep that straight. So white against his sweet pecan skin. Staring into his coffee, he shook his head. "Can't say that interference is something I need any more of these days. When I was back running with my boys, well, having a nose stuck into my business would've been a good thing."
Curious, her feelings about this man. "Your boys? Just what kind of running did you use to do?"
He rolled one shoulder, and she wasn't quite sure if he was giving her an answer or simply shrugging off her question.
"Running I'm not exactly proud of, Isabel. I've done some things. Things I shouldn't have done. But that was a long time ago. People change. Circumstances, too."
"So, how have you changed?" she asked quietly, her mood suddenly pensive as she pressed the tines of her fork into her pie crumbs. Yes, she wanted to know, even as she admitted feeling intimidated by his answer.
She'd known former gang-bangers and what it had taken to turn their lives around. But she hadn't known one as intimately as she wanted to know Joseph Baron.
"For one thing, I only strap on blades that are legal."
But no less lethal
, he might as well have said. "And I have a respect for human life that I sure as hell never learned from example."
Something in the way he said it told her… "You learned it from experience," she finished for him.
He nodded, frowned. "A month spent with a tube up your dick and down your
throat'll
make a big difference in the way you see your life."
In that instant, Izzy's whole world shifted. All this time she'd been bitching and moaning because everything around her seemed to stay the same. No matter what she did to get away, family obligations kept calling her back.
How petty she had been in her complaints, how small her issues were in comparison. And then it hit her that, if not for his strength of character to overcome his background, his strength of will to switch the track down which he'd run, Joseph might never have lived to come into her life.
He didn't have to give her the details for her to know that a very large thing had happened in his life. "That's why you do what you do, isn't it? You save lives because you almost lost yours."
His gaze dropped almost involuntarily to the number fourteen intricately tattooed on his left forearm, as if covering up an earlier design he wanted to hide. He then dug for his wallet, tossed a ten on the counter and got to his feet. "I want to show you something."
She glanced from the bill on the bar to his face. "Gramma Fred will be insulted if you try to pay."
Baron looked back briefly at the money he'd left before signaling for Izzy's grandmother. She made her way down the counter, refilling cups along the way, stopping when Baron covered his with his hand.
"One cup? That's all?" she asked.
"Shift change is at
and I'm on call. I've got to go." He picked up the ten and tucked it into her apron pocket. "Isabel tells me you won't accept payment."
"My girl's got that right," the older woman said, her head cocked in that jaunty way that dared him to argue. And then she looked at Izzy. "He called you Isabel."
"I know, Gramma," Izzy said, her heart swelling with the tingle of anticipation. "I think he's used to getting his way."
"I am. I also tip based on the service, not on the cost of the meal." This time it was Baron's look that told Gramma Fred he wouldn't be putting up with any back talk.
"Thanks, Gramma. Wednesdays without you just wouldn't be the same." Izzy got to her feet and leaned over to press a kiss to her grandmother's cheek. As much as she enjoyed seeing Gramma Fred speechless, Izzy couldn't imagine not hearing that bossy voice on a regular basis.
She was still wondering over her sudden melancholy when she and Baron reached his truck.
The stars were bright in the sky of velvet darkness, and Baron had parked at the far end of the lot, where the floodlights didn't quite shine. Izzy couldn't say that the idea of shadows and solitude bothered her a bit. Nope, not even a little.
In fact, the idea of having Baron and the stillness all to herself brought a warm flush to her skin. She crossed her arms and rubbed her hands over her bare skin and the gooseflesh that had nothing to do with the weather.
"Are you cold?"
Oh, but she loved the rusty and weathered sound of his voice, the way he observed and paid attention, never letting a detail slip past. She shook her head. "Not at all."
He opened the driver's door; light spilled out in a sharp triangle and took away much of the ambience Izzy had been soaking up.
But then he started unbuttoning his shirt, and everything changed.
He kept his gaze focused on hers, his eyes never wavering, not even to blink. As Izzy watched, he bared his chest, one gorgeously muscled inch at a time.
His pecs were amazing, sculpted above an abdomen that was rippled all the way to the waistband of his uniform pants. Izzy held a hand to her throat to keep it from fluttering, feeling strangely light-headed and awe-inspired.
But it was when he shrugged out of the shirt completely that she fully held her breath. Scars pocked his shoulder, deep gouges that stopped at his collarbone, only to pick up again near his waist, a scatter-shot pattern that spilled across his torso toward his ribs and disappeared down into his pants.
Her voice caught at the base of her throat, and her heart thundered. His body was so beautiful, so perfect … and so badly damaged.
When she finally found the ability to speak, she asked the most obvious question. "What happened?"
"I had my ass kicked by a nine-millimeter Beretta."
He said it matter-of-factly, as if being shot was no worse than running into a brick wall or getting nailed by flying fists. "A drive-by?"
He nodded.
"How old were you?"
"Sixteen."
And he'd spent weeks in the hospital recovering. Weeks when he'd been all alone. "Who took care of you?"
"Doctors, nurses." He started to shrug back into his shirt.
"Wait." She moved closer and touched him because not touching him wasn't an option.
She placed her palm squarely over his pectoral muscle where his skin was smooth and warm and resiliently firm. But then she spread her fingers, searching out the closest scar and rubbing a circle around it before dipping into the quarter-size crater.
"Isabel—"
"Shh." She stepped closer and laid her cheek in the center of his chest. His heart thudded; his chest rose and fell. Her fingers continued to explore.
She traced the random configuration toward his shoulder, reversing the path down over his ribs and coming closer to tears with each scar her fingers discovered.
When she reached the last one he'd uncovered, she simply wrapped her arms around his waist and held him, pressing her lips to the ribs that guarded his heart.
Baron sucked in a hiss of breath at the contact, his hands moving to her shoulders as if to set her away. She wanted nothing more than to stay where she was as long as she could.
But at Baron's insistence she stepped back and looked up, catching only a glimpse of the moon before his head descended.
His lips were beautifully full and soft even while firm in pressing down with their kiss. She slipped her palms up his back and held him close, wishing she was wearing anything right now besides her penitent clothes.
She kissed him, moving her body into his, against his, doing the same with her tongue. He pressed harder, deeper, his hands reaching down to cover her backside and pull her fully into his strengthening erection.
He so obviously wanted her that she found herself floundering when, in the next moment, he set her away. "I don't want your pity, Isabel. I've long since learned my lessons and I know how to take care of myself."
Pity was the furthest thing from her mind. He stood there in the truck's open door, his hands at his waist, his chest bared and beautiful as he struggled to breathe.
"Oh, Joseph. That wasn't pity. That was a woman enjoying a man."
His grin started slowly,
then
broke over his face. "As long as we're clear on the concept."
"Oh, yes. We are."
"Then you're welcome to climb up into the cab of my truck and show me more of what you enjoy."
And, of course, she did.
Chapter 9
W
ith Poe having walked off toward the dressing room carrying at least six garments over the store's limit of four, Kinsey turned from the rack of clothes through which she'd just uselessly combed.
She tossed up both hands and faced Lauren. "This is totally hopeless. Even with a wig, I will never look like Catherine Zeta-Jones."
Glancing away from the beveled mirror where she'd been smoothing her royal-blue headband, Izzy didn't even give Lauren time to start in before pointing out the obvious objection. "The aim here is to look like Kinsey Gray, no matter how gorgeous Mrs. Douglas might be."
"Izzy's right, you know." Lauren went back to sorting through the clothing items hanging on the rack. "You're selling yourself for who you are and what you look like. So, get to shopping. Find something to play up those two big ol' assets there on your chest."
Kinsey didn't have it in her to argue, and simply gave up trying to reason with her friends. She was stuck, end of story; she'd be selling herself to the highest bidder even if his name wasn't Doug. The thought was more depressing than she'd ever imagined it would be.
The four women had taken off a long Thursday afternoon to stroll through the resale shops and vintage boutiques along lower
Westheimer
. Taffeta and Timeless, their second stop, once a Victorian style house, was now a maze of rooms filled with period clothing and jewelry.
The store had met all of Poe's shopping expectations; after winding her way through the potpourri-scented rooms, the woman was on her third "narrowing down" of possibilities, any of which would've made the perfect auction costume.
So far, Kinsey hadn't seen a single garment she wanted to try on. At least not the type of thing she felt fit with the theme of the auction. Of course, she was shopping with Doug in mind, and probably breaking every feminist rule around about dressing to please one's self.
Still, wasn't that the entire point of this outing? Coming away with an outfit that would incite a frenzy of bidding? Garters and bustiers, indeed. "I was kidding about the wig. I'd look terrible as a brunette. Though I would love to look that hot."
Izzy narrowed her eyes. "And just who is it that you're
wishin
' to look hot for?"
Before Kinsey could even think of an appropriate lie, Izzy went on, bringing one foot down sharply on the hardwood floor. "Kinsey Gray. Do not tell me that you are planning to be auctioned off in an outfit that is more about a man's taste than your own."