Risk It All (Risqué #2) (8 page)

Blaser had disappeared to the other end of the bar and was serving a customer, but Crystal was hovering on his periphery, waiting to pounce.

‘Really, I mean you’ll just be having a normal everyday conversation like it’s no big deal and then boom, suddenly they’re kissing again. It’s getting worse. I don’t know what it is. I think it’s because he’s so desperate to have kids. But Lyssa isn’t going to be fooled into pregnancy, you know? I mean she’s a sex doctor for crying out loud! If anyone knows the ins and outs of fertility, it’s her.’ She sighed and propped her head on her hand to gaze at the canoodling couple again. ‘I mean it’s kind of sweet really. But don’t ever tell him that I said that out loud.’

‘You’re not… Suzette by any chance, are you?’ Bri asked.

‘Yes,’ Suzette said, slinking creeped out eyes around to her. ‘How did you know that?’

‘You’re Lyssa’s best friend, she told me that she was at your place this morning. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘If it’s from Colt then it’s probably all bullshit, he’s never liked me… though I suppose he did save Lyssa’s life, and his brother is giving me a place to stay. Yeah, I shouldn’t be so bitchy, should I?’

‘It’s quite an adjustment, your best friend getting married, that’s a big deal.’

‘It was supposed to be me, you know,’ Suzette said and Bri’s jaw dropped.

‘You were going to marry Colt?’

The idea that Colt had them queuing around the block wasn’t a new one, she’d been around to see how well he did in high school. But Colt had always had a respectability about him – though she called it superiority – it was that righteousness that made him an excellent husband. Whatever their differences, Bri knew one thing and that was Colt Warner treated his first wife very fairly, so there was no doubt that Lyssa would get the same dedicated treatment.

‘Ew!’ Suzette exclaimed. ‘No!’

‘What’s going on?’

This time the voice came from the other corner of the bar, where Colt and Lyssa had been. Bri saw that Lyssa was coming over. As soon as Colt clocked Bri behind the bar he stopped moving.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Don’t swear at a lady,’ Lyssa chastised him and hooked his arm around her shoulder, but Colt remained intent on her.

‘I needed some money and Blase said—‘

‘I fucking bet he did, what did you do this time? Shake your tits in his face, let him take you up the ass, what?’

Suzette spat out her wine, but laughter quickly followed. Lyssa, on the other hand, was outraged. ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’ Lyssa asked him, moving her figure away from his and folding her arms. ‘How dare you speak to her like that!’

‘You don’t know what’s happening, Cherrypop. Stay out of it.’

‘I will not,’ Lyssa said, undeterred by the fact that Colt still hadn’t taken his eyes off Bri as though his vision alone could vaporise her. ‘I won’t marry a man who believes it’s ok to speak to a woman like that, what if we have a daughter?’

‘She’s not going to be anywhere near a place like this or a woman like her, so there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I sense trouble,’ Suzette said in a sing-song way. Bri had to think that it wasn’t much of a sense, the trouble was burning neon in this darkened space.

‘It’s ok, Doctor Cutler,’ Bri said. ‘Please don’t anyone fall out because of me, he’s entitled to say whatever he likes.’

‘Damn right I am.’

‘He is not,’ Lyssa said. ‘And please call me Lyssa, Bri.’

‘She,’ Colt said, finally taking his eyes from her to look at Lyssa, but he thrust out a finger to point in Bri’s direction. ‘Is the one who got Blaser locked up, who got Blaser messed up, who got this place raided and you arrested too, so don’t fucking expect me to—‘

‘Oh, so now you’re swearing at me? It’s not attractive, Colt. Why do you feel the need to do that? Does swearing make you feel more powerful? When you raise your voice—‘

‘That deconstructing shit is patronising when we’re fighting, how many times have I got to tell you that?’

‘And how many times have I got to tell you that shouting and swearing is not the way to get your point across.’

‘I’m not shouting,’ he said, having already lowered his volume considerably. ‘You don’t know who she is and what she’s done to my family.’

‘I know exactly who she is,’ Lyssa said, slipping onto a stool and topping off a half drunk glass of wine from the bottle beside Suzette. ‘Bri and I have met. She’s living in your old apartment.’

Colt’s frown took a while to react, perhaps because he wasn’t expecting Lyssa to say this. ‘Why would she be staying there?’

‘I assume because she made an arrangement with Blaser or Gus. Possibly Ruger, though I doubt that, having Suzie in his place is probably as much responsibility for a female as he can take.’

‘No one can take responsibility for that,’ Colt mumbled.

Suzette shot upwards and from her height Bri would guess she was standing on the crossbar of her stool. ‘Blaser! Where’s my wine? This bottle is empty!’

‘Jesus,’ Colt breathed.

‘She’s having a hard time,’ Lyssa said to Bri. ‘I’ve tried to tell her that alcohol isn’t the solution but…’

‘You were the one who was stalked, not her,’ Colt said. ‘You’re too understanding, you take on all these ridiculous pet projects and—‘

‘My best friend is not a pet project,’ Lyssa said and put a hand to his face. ‘Think about how I would feel if I lost you. I can’t be sure what I would do.’

‘You wouldn’t become a drunk,’ he said, threading his fingers through hers and bringing her palm to his lips. ‘And you’re never losing me, I’m not an insane sociopath like her fiancé.’

A hand on her hip alerted Bri to Blaser’s proximity, he nudged her aside and bent to retrieve a bottle of wine from the bottom of the fridge, which he proceeded to fill Suzette’s glass with. ‘If she passes out I am not carrying her home again. It’s your turn,’ Blaser said to Colt.

Suzette settled down when her wine glass was full and everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Bri could only feel sorry for the woman if she had lost the love of her life… well, Bri knew what that was like.

‘Is he giving you a hard time?’ Blaser asked her in a low voice, but it was obvious that Colt and Lyssa were still listening.

‘Actually he is,’ Lyssa said to Blaser. ‘I find it fascinating. Why should you be at all interested in causing trouble with your brother’s ex-girlfriend? You do realise it’s that sort of behaviour which caused all of this trouble in the first place. Maybe if any of you sat down with Gary—‘

‘Sat down with him?’ Colt asked. ‘I’m sorry, are you aware that this is the same guy who had his associates molest you and Destiny in that locker room back there? I didn’t see you sitting down to talk then.’

‘I was talking to him actually,’ Lyssa said. Bri could understand now why Destiny would have a different opinion about the camera in the alley. ‘Maybe if you hadn’t come in and—‘

‘Gary,’ Bri said. ‘My brother attacked you?’

‘No,’ Lyssa said. ‘No, it wasn’t your brother.’

‘It was Zeke and that bastard Marshall,’ Colt said, garnering more anger. ‘They rushed Destiny outside, crowded her into that locker room and tried it on with her and Lys. If Ruge and I hadn’t walked in—‘

‘Oh Ruger was the big hero,’ Bri said, unable to stop her lip from curling. ‘Spare me his sob story. I’m not interested.’

‘That’s your nerve,’ Lyssa sighed out and her intense intrigue made Bri squirm. ‘Why is the mention of Ruger so upsetting to you? Did you have an affair with him?’

‘What?’ Blaser barked and Bri jumped at the suddenness of it. ‘When the fuck did that happen?’

‘We… we didn’t,’ Bri said, surprised by how Blaser loomed so close and grew larger without ever moving from his spot beside her.

‘If he tried it on with you or—‘

‘I wouldn’t let Ruger touch me. He wouldn’t want to. He hates me now, just like he always did.’

‘Ruge doesn’t trust you,’ Colt said. ‘And neither do I.’

Maybe if she had known just how much animosity still existed in this family towards her, she would’ve stayed away. Blaser had always protected her and now she began to see just what he’d been dealing with.

Before he went to jail they hadn’t spent much time with Colt and Ruger, they associated with different members of the Warner family. So she hadn’t had to deal with Blaser’s brothers directly very often, at family parties they mostly ignored her and if they wanted to talk to Blaser they would pull him aside to do it.

‘Cryst!’ Blaser called and Crystal was quickly at his side. ‘Show Bri around, will you?’ His hand curled around the back of Crystal’s neck and he leaned down to whisper something into the blonde’s ear.

Bri tried not to bristle, but her shoulder popped back and her head twisted away. Through the course of their relationship, it had never occurred to her to be jealous. Now seeing how close he was to Crystal, and how easily they spoke to each other in a private way, she could only assume that they’d had their own intimate relationship and that made her skin sting.

The heat of the club rescinded and she was cold all of a sudden, Blaser with Crystal would just be the icing on her cake. Her life was supposed to get better after they split up, it was the whole reasoning behind their break up. It didn’t matter which angle her life was examined from, there was nothing better about it now, not a single thing. Whereas Blaser, on the other hand, had flourished. She didn’t begrudge him his success, but it did leave her wondering why she hadn’t accomplished her supposed fate while he languished in his.

‘Crystal will show you around,’ Blaser said.

Bri glanced at the hand he had at the small of Crystal’s back and her own spine straightened, he did care for Crystal. Now she knew there was every possibility that she had lost the love of her life to a woman who hated her and everyone else she cared for.

But when Crystal moved away from the bar, Bri could only follow on behind her. She was in no position to question Blaser’s life choices, he had broken up with her so that she could move on. Now she saw that their break up made his life better while she remained shattered.

After Bri had disappeared through the staff door with Crystal, Blaser propped his hands on the bar to support his weight. ‘What the fuck is your problem?’ Blaser asked Colt. ‘She’s been through enough, leave her the fuck alone.’

‘I think we’ve had this conversation before,’ Colt said with sarcasm that Blaser didn’t understand or appreciate. ‘A couple of thousand times. She’s bad news Blase, do you want me to remind you of all the crap you went through for her?’

‘I didn’t go through any crap for her. I make my own decisions, then and now. She didn’t force me into doing the things I did.’

‘Bravo,’ Lyssa said, looping an arm through Colt’s. ‘Blaser is taking responsibility for his own actions. That’s what a person has to do in order to move on. He’s taking responsibility and look how far he has come since those days.’

Blaser didn’t know what Colt had told Lyssa about his past. At the rate Lyssa liked to ask questions married with Colt’s strength of desire to please her, Blaser would bet that she knew a lot about every member of the family.

‘Yeah and I’ve been here to see him do it,’ Colt said to Lyssa. ‘You haven’t seen how hard he’s had to work. I don’t want to see all of his sweat go to waste just because he goes cross-eyed over the girl who has always led him around by his balls.’

‘Maybe he likes that.’

‘Maybe he does,’ Colt said. ‘But it’s not worth it. She’s not worth it. She never gave him any damn thing, all she did was take. I won’t watch him dismantle everything just because she makes him feel like less of a man for not giving in to her every whim.’

‘Is that what it is, Blase?’ Lyssa asked him. ‘You have an inferiority complex?’

‘No,’ Blaser said.

‘Oh, come on,’ Colt said. ‘You did what you did because you wanted to make her proud. You were showing off for a girl who got off on the bad boy act.’

‘It wasn’t an act. I got stoned, I stole. I chopped cars and beat on people. I was a bastard, Colt,’ Blaser said, owning what a prick he’d been back then.

‘Because you thought it was cool,’ Colt said. ‘Because her, Gary, and that damn gang of his thought Mattie was all that, and you were his cousin. You couldn’t let the family down, could you?’

‘You thought I was showing off for Mattie? What? Do you think that I wanted to be a part of his crew?’ Widening his hands, he lowered toward the couple. ‘Let me tell you something that you never knew back then, Mattie asked me to join his crew. He wanted me there through it all, he practically begged me to be his right-hand man, and that was a lucrative offer. If I wanted infamy, Matt would’ve delivered it.’

‘Why didn’t you join him?’ Lyssa asked.

His tongue darted across his lips as memories of a very specific night went through his mind. ‘She told me she’d leave me,’ he said, confessing something he’d never spoken to anyone. ‘Bri hated it, she hated every time I went out with her brother. I used to come home to find her crying, she wouldn’t let me touch her for days if I came home with so much as a scratch on me. She hated that world and the only reason she took any part in it was because of Gary and me.’

‘Easy to say that now,’ Colt said. ‘So it was really Gary that you were trying to impress?’

‘You’re very judgemental today,’ Lyssa said. ‘Why does he have to be trying to impress anyone? Maybe it’s just his personality to be a bastard.’

‘Because if he really was a bastard who wanted to cause trouble then he wouldn’t have gotten himself straightened out. I’m damn proud of everything he’s done to get here, our parents are too, and if that all goes to shit…’

Some of Blaser’s gusto seeped out because he’d never heard Colt admit to having pride in him. They spent so much time butting heads that Blaser forgot his twin actually did like him sometimes. Reminding himself that it was one thing to say something negative about your own brother compared to someone else saying it, he released some of the pressure on his hands. Colt always gave him grief, but he’d never hesitated to use his influence at the police station when Blaser got himself into a jam, something he never did for Mattie.

‘It’s not going to go to shit,’ Blaser said, cutting his brother some slack. ‘You have to trust me, and you have to give her a chance.’

‘A chance? Why?’ Colt asked and Blaser braced for what was to come next. ‘Are you fucking her?’

‘Why would he have put her in your apartment if he were sleeping with her?’ Lyssa asked.

‘This isn’t about sex,’ Blaser said, appreciating that Lyssa was sticking up for him. ‘She was my girl for years, I’m not going to see her in trouble. Gary is in prison and she has no one to look out for her.’

‘You ran to her after Gary was arrested and she slammed the door in your face.’ She had, but he’d stayed right there knocking until she opened it back up for him.

‘Because she thought that I was responsible for it, she was upset, but she’s calmed down again.’

‘Ruger told me that you two were sleeping together,’ Lyssa said and Blaser mentally retracted his previous gratitude.

‘When did he say that?’ Colt asked in that cop voice as though he was trying to catch Blaser in a lie and once again Blaser’s irritation bubbled up.

‘The night after the rock came through my window,’ she said. ‘The same night Gary showed up here and… all that happened.’

Colt’s eyes came to him and the accusation in them clenched Blaser’s fists. ‘I am not having sex with her, I haven’t had sex with her since…’

Recalling the last night they’d been intimate probably hadn’t been wise, because it reminded him of exactly how it ended… with his arrest. Drifting into the memory, he didn’t come out of it until Lyssa’s hand took his.

‘Since when?’ she asked.

‘Sometimes it’s just nosy to ask personal questions,’ Blaser said to Lyssa, knowing exactly how inappropriate her questioning could be. But his rebuke didn’t make her loosen her grip on his hand, it didn’t put her off her probing at all.

‘It’s very clear that you still have feelings for her,’ Lyssa said. ‘But she’s struggling with her own demons at the moment, Blaser. I very strongly urge you to consider not going ahead with what you’re thinking about.’

‘I’m not thinking anything,’ he said, unsure how his future sister-in-law could so easily read his mind.

‘Sexual attraction is important in a relationship and you can work to build that element of your bond with her. But it’s crucial that you not force her into—‘

‘I would never force her into anything.’

‘I know, but something you may think is an innocent advance could remind her of her previous experiences and that could be dangerous, it could set back her recovery. Have you sensed any kind of fear from her when you’ve been in proximity?’

‘She doesn’t fear me,’ he said, thinking about the anxiety she’d displayed last night when he put his jacket around her, and how short her temper had been. ‘She seems more comfortable instigating physical contact than letting me do it.’

Lyssa nodded. ‘That is very normal behaviour.’

‘We shouldn’t talk about this here,’ he said.

‘No, we shouldn’t… But I’d like it if you came into the office.’

Blaser blinked. ‘Your office? Why would I do that?’

‘You care about her and these situations often affect loved ones.’

‘I’m not having this conversation with you again,’ he said.

‘What are you two talking about?’ Colt asked. ‘You don’t have to sexually deconstruct everyone in the family, Cherrypop.’

‘Your father and I had an interesting conversation after dinner last weekend,’ she said.

‘Was that before or after my mom asked about your cycle?’ Colt shuddered and Lyssa laughed, resting her head on his shoulder.

‘Now that was an interesting conversation, if for no other reason than to see all of you men blanch.’

‘Future reference,’ Colt said. ‘That’s not acceptable dinner conversation.’

‘I thought you wanted kids,’ Blaser said, happy to see that his brother was finally with a woman who would be able to handle him and wouldn’t turn on him, Lyssa just wasn’t the type.

‘We do,’ Colt said. ‘But my mother doesn’t need to know every detail about my fiancée’s internal temperature for that to happen. In fact if I hear them discussing the volume of my yield one more time, there’s a chance it will never happen.’

Suzette laughed in time with Lyssa and Blaser stepped back to serve another customer. Colt had never been particularly happy until he’d met with Lyssa. Blaser had never considered just how pent up and frustrated his twin was until he saw this new more relaxed side of him.

Bri and Crystal came back on to the floor and Bri was wearing standard Risqué garb – a Lycra skirt and halter top that squeezed her breasts up and together. He loved her chest, she was insecure about it because she wasn’t as ample as some of the other girls they’d known growing up. But he’d never had any complaints, it wasn’t like she was flat-chested, she just didn’t flaunt herself in the way other women did.

The blonde in her hair reflected the white lights flashing on the stage and he stopped, shaking the coins of the customer’s change in his hand while he watched her. Crystal was explaining something about the stage and Bri just listened. Her perfect skin was so soft, he knew it because he still remembered the way it felt last night when he’d touched her.

He’d touched her when she was sixteen, made love to her when she was seventeen, and been in love with her from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. The years since then hadn’t dulled any of her beauty, to him they had enhanced it.

Breaking up with her while he was in prison had been agony for him but he really believed he was doing what was best for her. He’d left her alone for years afterwards and from everything he’d heard she started to get her life together. On the couple of occasions that he’d enquired about her when he came across mutual acquaintances, he’d heard good things. She’d worked at an architecture firm doing some sort of admin work and was even dating some guy, which he didn’t like to hear, but had to accept was inevitable in letting her move on.

Man, she was beautiful. Being here, around women who were usually semi-naked, had never really bothered his equilibrium. It made no sense that from across the breadth of the room he couldn’t take his eyes from the little scamp who had always tied him up in knots. Other women didn’t affect him in the way she did, their bodies weren’t quite as alluring, their eyes didn’t shine quite as brightly, and he’d never been given a hard-on at the sight of their smile.

Bri was smiling at a patron who was saying something to her. Blaser’s fingers closed tightly around the warm coins in his palm because blood began to move south and his eyes closed to block out the sight of her glittering, happy eyes. He couldn’t want her, he’d been there and done that, and she’d been through too much. Being with her again would only make it more difficult when he had to let her go.

‘Hey! Buddy!’ The patron at the bar was there holding out his hand when Blaser opened his eyes.

With a mumbled apology, he handed over the coins with a shaking hand. The customer stuffed them into his pocket and stalked off wearing a frown.

Having Bri around wasn’t going to be good for business, he could tell that already.