“Whiskey,” Wrench told Tex. “On the rocks. Make it a double.”
He stared into the darkness at Lydia while Tex poured it. “Good luck,” he said, and Wrench couldn’t doubt his sincerity… or his need for all the luck he could get.
The walk was agonizingly long. He elbowed his way through the bar crowd without really registering them, then faced the long staircase down to the pool deck. The splash of the pool water features turned the sound of conversations to a distant hum, and as he walked the length of the pool, the thrum of the ocean surf muffled both.
By the time he’d made his way past the lounge chairs to the end of the deck overlooking the beach, his eyes had adjusted to the dim light and he could make out Lydia, sitting at a round table with a candle in a jar, watching the flame. She was wearing a red dress, and her dark hair was swept back with a red flower. Candle light warmed the planes of her perfect round face. The dress was long, but slit up one side, and a long, strong leg ended in a high-heeled shoe.
She drew herself up as he approached, and Wrench almost faltered as she turned to look at him, before stomping to the far chair. It squeaked across the tile as he dropped himself gracelessly into it and put his untouched whiskey on the table.
“Hi,” Lydia said shyly.
Wrench made himself reply, “Hi.”
There was a silence that deserved no adjective but awkward.
“Great suit,” she finally said.
Wrench realized that he should have said something about how beautiful she looked, but the moment was long past. “I was supposed to be here as a guest,” he felt obliged to explain. “And sometimes I do bodyguard work at fancy affairs so I gotta be able to clean up and put on the penguin suit.”
“It looks good,” Lydia said warmly, and Wrench was astonished by how good her praise felt. Panther purred louder.
“So, what do you do when you aren’t doing bodyguard work?” Lydia asked, fingers toying with the condensation on her glass. Even her fingers were sexy, and Wrench had to focus with determination to stop imagining how they’d feel on his skin.
“I fix stuff for people. Independent hire for…” Wrench tried to figure out a delicate way to explain his work. “For when you gotta scare someone or need a guy who’s good in a fight.”
Lydia looked disturbed by the idea. “Did you… hurt people?”
“Yeah,” Wrench said, hating the way she flinched. “But I had a code, you know. I was careful no one on the side got hurt, and I was pretty picky about jobs. Not, you know, indiscriminate.” He hoped he used the word correctly. The line of her neck was distracting him, and the way her hair curved along it. Had it been straight before? Now it was in big waves.
Lydia took a hearty swallow of her drink, clearly not eager to pursue this line of conversation. “So, do you have any family?”
Wrench took his own sip of whiskey. It was warm enough that the ice had melted, watering it down just a little. “Sister,” he said briefly. It certainly wasn’t sisterly feelings that he was having now, watching the bounce of her dark hair on that tantalizing arc of her shoulder.
Lydia perked up at that. “Oh, what’s her name? Younger or older?”
“Renna. Younger. Foster sister, actually. Ended up in the same house when I was ten and she was eight. We looked out for each other. They were going to split us up after a couple of years, but I was big for my age and people were already paying me to, you know, walk ‘em down the bad blocks and remind people of their promises. It helped that I was a panther shifter. So we skipped school and took off on our own.”
“You lived on the streets?” Lydia’s expression in the flickering light could have been horror or pity.
Either emotion was unwelcome. Wrench wasn’t sure why they were talking so much about him. He supposed he ought to be asking her these kinds of polite questions.
“You got family?” It didn’t sound as polite when he said it.
Polite or not, Lydia grasped the effort like he’d thrown a lifeline. “I have six brothers and sisters, all younger. My mama and her two sisters live on the same block, so there have always been a passel of cousins and aunts and uncles around. Holidays and weddings are always madhouses, and there’s not a month that goes by without some occasion for celebration.”
Wrench stared. “That’s a lot of family.”
“I can’t imagine growing up without them. Even when they drove me absolutely crazy and made me long for the tiniest piece of privacy.”
She had relaxed when she spoke of them, and leaned forward to the table to include Wrench in her enthusiasm. He was helplessly enraptured by the way her whole face smiled, and the golden candle light over her generous cleavage. Then she reached across the table and put her hand over his and Wrench startled back, nearly spilling his whiskey as he scrambled up.
She rose to her feet and he stared across the table at her.
Every emotion she fel
t was bare on her face; she hadn’t spent a lifetime trying to shutter those thoughts from the world. Wrench could see her frustration, confusion, and hurt as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud.
“I’m making a mess of this,” he said regretfully, and her face softened.