Susan Andersen - No Strings Attached

Screw the cleanup—she’d get it done before opening time tomorrow or, who knew, maybe even later today if she could get a handle on this awful restlessness. But that was something to worry about later.

Right now, she was in dire need of the moral support that only girlfriends could supply.

* * *

LUC HEARD MUTED sounds coming from the apartment next door. After about fifteen minutes, Tasha’s front door slammed, followed seconds later by the outer door closing and the faraway clatter of footsteps growing even fainter as they progressed down the exterior staircase. He ambled out onto the veranda, leaned casually on the railing—and watched as she appeared on Harbor Street below and strolled toward his end of the building. She glanced up, and his heart gave a hard thump as their gazes clashed.

Ah, man. Scrubbing his knuckles over the sudden tightness in his chest, he stared down at her. It hadn’t been enough that she’d stood in front of him in her work clothes, her gorgeous skin all flushed from her obvious exertions and her thin T-shirt clinging to her breasts and diaphragm in little peekaboo patches transparent enough for him to see that she wore a blue lace bra beneath it? The girl knocked his socks off without even trying.

She had sure as hell put some effort into her look for someone now. Her pale eyes were made up all smoky-sultry, and her mouth—God, that lush, siren mouth with its top-heavy upper lip—was painted a soft, sheer red. She had on a short flirty skirt and a next-best-thing-to-spray-paint little girlie tee that clung to her and had a neckline cut low enough for him to see the upper curves of her pale breasts.

Her eyes narrowed. Then she looked away as if he were invisible and sashayed down the block.

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.”