Susan Andersen - No Strings Attached

“Tash!” Jenny moved to squat alongside the tall strawberry blonde, and it was as if the speed and sound of a movie had been switched back on. “Are you okay?”

Strawberry blond. He’d discovered after his night with her that that was what people called the pale red-gold color of her hair. Staring at her, he felt his entire face light up with a delighted smile.

It died an abrupt death when she suddenly raised her gaze and looked straight at him. His entire body recoiled as if a fireball were hurtling straight toward his head, and he dropped back into his seat. Because those eyes, that expression.

If looks could kill, he’d be sliced and diced into tiny bite-sized bits of steak tartare. What the fuck?

She glanced back at Jenny and apparently didn’t level that scary look on her as well, because there was no recoiling on Jenny’s part.

“No,” Tasha said in answer to the are you okay? question as she handed the little brunette first one wine bottle, then another. She must have gathered the rest of the containers as well, for she rose to her feet and extended the cloth sack to Gina, an elegant, slightly darker version of her daughter, Harper, who was Luc’s other half brother Max’s woman.

Christ. All these relationships were making his head hurt.

“I’m so sorry,” Tasha said as the older woman accepted the bag. “I hate the thought of both you going back to Winston-Salem and me missing your party, but I don’t feel so hot.”

“Yes, you look quite pale, dear,” Gina agreed, reaching out to give Tasha’s forearm a soothing rub. “You go home and go to bed. Hopefully you can sleep off whatever this bug is.”

“It’s not the flu, but bug sure seems like an appropriate word for it.” Tasha shot him another lightning-fast malevolent glare, then said a touch grimly to the older woman, “I suddenly feel like a hairy, nasty spider is crawling up my spine. I haven’t felt this awful in almost a decade, and what I’d like to do is shoot the bastard between his beady little eyes.”

Twisting to set the wine on the table, Jenny narrowed a thoughtful gaze on Luc, then turned back to study Tasha for a second. “Poor baby. You want me to drive you home? Jake can bring your car back in the morning.”

Luc watched a look perilously close to panic flash across Tasha’s face. Or maybe he only thought that was what he’d seen, because when he blinked, she appeared perfectly calm.

Tasha patted Jenny’s hand. “No, I’m fine to drive. I’ve just been burning my candle at both ends since tourist season started, and I guess it’s finally caught up with me. I desperately need some sleep.”

“Good thing you’ve got an extra helper in the works,” Jenny said.

An edgy laugh escaped Tasha. “Ah, yeah, about that. It turns out that’s not going to happen.” She suddenly seemed ready to wilt as she shoveled long, pale fingers through her hair. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” She looked away from the little brunette to the rest of the company gathered around the table.

Well, except for him. Now that she’d finished eviscerating him with her death-ray stare, she evidently had no desire to even glance his way again.

“I’m sorry for the drama,” she said to the group at large, then focused her attention on Gina once more, bestowing on her the sweet, generous smile that had been branded on Luc’s brain for seven long years. “Have a safe journey home,” she said, giving the other woman a hug. When she pulled back, she gazed at Gina with warm-eyed affection. “I’ve just loved getting to know you. I really hope you’ll come back soon.”

“Oh, I intend to, darling,” Gina said. “My favorite daughter lives here now.”

“Uh, Mom?” Harper said dryly. “I’m your only daughter.”

Gina gave an elegant shrug. “But you’re still my one and only Baby Girl.”

Harper’s olive-green irises all but disappeared behind the lashes-fringed crescents her eyes became as she grinned. “That’s true.”

Tasha exchanged a few more pleasantries with the guests. Then between one moment and the next, she’d said her goodbyes, strode out through the kitchen and was gone.

Luc pushed back from the table and rose to his feet. “Okay if I grab myself a beer?” he asked Max.

“Help yourself,” his half brother invited even as Harper said, “Here, let me get it for you” and started to rise to her feet.

No! his mind snarled. But he hadn’t spent more than a decade in deep cover for the DEA for nothing. He flashed her the friendly charmer’s smile that years of practice had rendered second nature and merely said, “Please, Harper, you don’t need to wait on me.”

“Yeah, Harper,” Jake said. “He’s family. Which means he can do the dishes, too.”

“Or at least fetch my own drink. Anyone else want anything while I’m in there?”

No takers chimed in, and he left the room with an unhurried stride that nevertheless ate up the distance between the table and the back door. Silently letting himself out, he spotted Tasha heading toward the end of the attached garage, with the obvious intention of making a beeline for the parking apron around front. Clouds the color of a day-old bruise hung low in the sky, but for the moment at least, it was dry, and ignoring the few back steps, he dropped directly to the lawn, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.

He could move fast and silent as ground fog when the need arose, and he came up on Tasha’s flank just as she rounded the end of the garage. He moved into its shadow one step behind her and reached out, his fingertips brushing her arm. “Hey, Tasha, wait—”

With a gasp, she whipped around. Wild panic flared in her clear gray eyes, and watching her suck in a breath and open her lips, Luc knew she was about one second away from screaming down the house. Snaking a hand around her nape, he clamped his free palm over her mouth to keep her from cutting loose with a screech that would bring everyone inside stampeding to her rescue.

Not that there was anything she needed rescuing from—Jesus, he would never hurt her. All the same, he really didn’t want his deputy sheriff half brother thundering down on him. He didn’t doubt for an instant that if Max heard a woman scream, he would be out here in a red-hot hurry, his big-ass service pistol drawn.

“I’m sorry,” he said in the most soothing, nonthreatening voice he could summon. Her lips were soft and her skin warm beneath his hands.

He shoved the tactile sensations into a far corner of his mind where they could just wait to be examined when his concentration wasn’t demanded elsewhere. “I didn’t mean to scare you—I just want to talk to you for a minute. I’m going to let go of you now, okay?”

He obviously didn’t follow through with the promised action quickly enough to suit her, for she narrowed her eyes at him as if to say, Then get on with it! Wondering if they’d be right back where they started, he gave her a hard-eyed stare back. “And you won’t scream, either, am I right?” It was a command, not a question, and he stared into those crystalline eyes without blinking.

She hesitated a second, then dipped her chin in a slight nod.

Slowly, he released his light grip on the back of her neck and lifted his hand from her mouth.

Tasha promptly knocked his hand aside and scrubbed the back of hers over her lips as if they’d come into contact with hazardous waste. Pushing past him, she marched back into the rear yard before turning to face him. “If you want to talk to me, you can damn well do it out here, where people can see us,” she said.

He nodded. But what the hell—why was she so mad? He wasn’t the one who—

Being on the business end of another of her eat-shit-and-die glares chopped the thought in two, and he was still regrouping when she demanded, “So who are you pretending to be today, Diego?”