“What are you two beautiful ladies up to this afternoon?” The chair scraped along the brick pavers as he pulled it out, taking a seat between her and Jade.
Jade sipped her beer. “Just shopping and indulging in burgers and pale ale.”
“Did Dex ever show up last night?” George asked innocently, unaware that the trouble in paradise had now formed a lethal tsunami. Fallon shook her head infinitesimally and nudged him under the table with her foot. Fallon and Jade had the “don’t pry” understanding, but that concept was lost on George.
“You’re good friends with him—if you want to see him, call him,” Jade snapped.
And here she was doing so well . . .
“Okay, I’m sorry.” He shifted in his chair and pointed his curiously annoying eyes at Fallon. “So, Miss Run Off with Sexy Bad Boy, care to fill me in on what the hell you were thinking? And fair warning, Simone was ready to hunt you down and kill you herself after the cops left. What the hell happened to you?”
The club was closed on Sundays, so Fallon had luckily been able to avoid the questions she knew her staff would want answered. “George, dear, thank you for your concern for my well-being leaving with ‘Sexy Bad Boy,’ but I knew what I was doing.”
“And what were you doing?”
“Getting him out of there before the cops came. He was doing what you should have done, George,” she accused, raising her brows and pursing her lips at him. “He was defending Amelia.”
“That was my fault,” Jade cut in, lowering her eyes to the table. “I was having another pity party moment and George and Graham were talking me through it.”
Fallon sighed. “Who’s Graham? Never mind—it’s all in the past now anyway. I cleared things with the cops this morning, informed a groveling senator that his friend was no longer welcome in my club and that if another incident occurred while he and his entourage were visiting, they would no longer be welcome either.”
“Look at you, badass boss lady,” Jade quipped.
Leaning back in his chair, George crossed his ankle over his knee and grabbed Jade’s beer mug. “Okay, so what about Sexy Bad Boy?” he asked, then took a long pull from the frothy mug, finishing it off.
“What about him?” Fallon asked nonchalantly. Cutting her eyes to him, she did her best to send him a look that would warn him he was traveling down the wrong road.
His lips curled and he nodded.
CHAPTER NINE
Rafe was exhausted. Relying on the prospect of sleep crammed in the tight space of the airplane, with no legroom and an unhappy toddler behind him, was naive. He hadn’t gotten a bit of sleep.
“I’m here,” he hollered as he walked in the front door of his dad’s house in Philly. It smelled the same, like fresh-baked bread and cinnamon. It’d been over a year since he’d been back home. He hadn’t seen his dad or his brothers since before his deployment and the familiar surroundings were comforting.
“Where the fuck is everyone?” he yelled. Luca was there, with his vintage 1965 Cobra rebuild sitting in the driveway, and considering the house smelled of baked goods, it meant Marco was there as well. Marco ran their mom’s bakery. He was the only one in the family who knew the secret to her pignoli cookies, so it just worked out that he was the one to take over the business. Whether his youngest brother, Leo, was there or not he had no idea. That one had been pulling a lot of stupid shit lately.
“Rafael?” a sweet, familiar voice hollered from the kitchen. The boards creaked beneath his shoes as he crossed the worn hardwood floors of the living room. He pushed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen that was the center of almost every childhood memory he had of his mother.
An elated squeal reached his ears before his eyes landed on Tilly, who was kneading a loaf of bread at the kitchen table. “I can’t believe you’re here!” she shouted, standing up and throwing her arms around his neck.
“Damn, Till,” he mumbled into her shoulder as he hugged her tightly. “I’ve missed you.” After kissing the top of her head, he pulled back so he could see her.
“You look fuckin’ beautiful,” he admired, taking a good, hard look at the woman he’d known since pigtails, sneakers, and bloody Band-Aids were part of her daily attire. Her curly blond hair was still unruly and her deep chocolate eyes were still rich and carefree, but her ivory skin was flushed pink and her once slender body was now round. “Beautiful” didn’t even begin to come close to describing her.
Folding his hand over her stomach, he rubbed slow circles. “How many more months do you have, Till?”