Текст книги "Twisted Bond"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

I nod. Tinder has popped up more than once in infidelity cases.

“My cousin met this really great guy, so I figured I’d try it out. I have nothing to lose, right?”

“So, what’s the problem?” Alison asks.

“The guys are…creeps,” she whispers. “They say some real odd stuff. Like, listen to this.” She picks her phone back up and reads, “‘I’ve been feeling a little off all day, but you just turned me on.’”

I purse my lips to fight my giggle. “Oh, wow. Romeo, eat your heart out.”

“It’s not even the worst.” Bekah’s face wrinkles up. “Listen to this one: ‘Your body is sixty-five percent water, and honey, I’m thirsty.’”

“How did you answer that one?” I snort.

“I told him he could turn on the tap and get one hundred percent water if he needed a drink that badly.”

We all laugh. Then Alison reaches over and taps my arm. “Hey, why don’t you join, Noelle? It would keep Nonna off your back.”

“Oh! Do it!” Bekah exclaims. “Then you’re kind of actively datin’ and she can’t go on too much.”

I raise an eyebrow skeptically. “And I suppose Tinder just happens to be full of men with Italian blood.”

“Let’s find out!” Alison grabs my phone, and I lean over as she downloads the app.

This is going to end badly. Not least because I don’t have the time to date on account of my job, but because I’m happy not dating. I agree to Nonna’s dates once, maybe twice, a month to keep her happy, but as soon as I mention what I do, the guy basically jumps out the window.

Apparently, my job is intimidating.

I say that those men are boys playing dress up with Daddy’s clothes.

“We need a picture of you. Do you have a good one on your phone?”

“Maybe when you get past some of the images of cheating spouses.” I wince when she shoots me a dark look. “Okay, okay. I’ll go take one.”

“Put lipstick on!” Bekah shouts as I leave the room.

I look to the ceiling as I make my way upstairs to my bathroom. I rifle through my makeup bag and extract my lipstick. My phone buzzes from next to the sink just as I smack my red lips together.

Drake.

“What?”

“That’s professional,” he replies.

“I’m not working. I’m at girls’ night getting manhandled into joining Tinder. What do you want?”

He doesn’t say anything for a second. “Tinder? That dating app?”

“It’s a long story. I’m supposed to be taking a profile picture right now. According to Alison, a cheating couple using a leather whip won’t cut it.” Shame.

Another silence. “I’m not sure how to reply to that.”

“You could just tell me why you’re callin’, ya know.” Duh.

“I spoke to Ryan earlier,” Drake finally says. “You should probably have a meeting with your client.”

“Or you could save me the awkwardness of seeing his serially cheating butt and just tell me how it went,” I say hopefully.

“Confidential. I brought him in for questionin’.”

“You did that deliberately, you bastard!”

I can almost hear him grin down the line.

“He’s jumped so far up my suspect list that he’s the only one on it, Noelle. I wanted that shit recorded.”

And I can’t get access to those tapes unless the HWPD hires me.

No way. Rules and restrictions like needing warrants to access information will make this way harder.

“That’s a shame,” I sigh. “I was going to copy all the information on Lena and Daniel for you. You know, the info you’ll need to get warrants to access at the station? Oh well. I guess you don’t need it on file.”

“Noelle—”

“Sorry, Detective. Gotta go.” I hang up with a shit-eating grin and snap my profile picture.

There. If I have to do it, at least I’m actually smiling.

Apparently, Detective Drake Nash doesn’t take well to threats.

I mean, I wasn’t threatening him. I was promising that he wouldn’t get the information, but whatever. He also mentioned something about blackmail, but he knows as well as I do that it won’t stick because I didn’t technically blackmail him.

I did for the autopsy report, but he gave me it, so that’s moot.

I erase all the angry messages from both my cell and my office phones. The machine kept cutting him off, and he got progressively more irate with each message he had to leave. I’m doing everything I can not to burst into crazy laughter.

To be fair, I was going to give him the information. He could have applied for a warrant to get it while he already had a head start. I want this damn case solved as much as he does, and clearly, the connection between Lena and Daniel is a pivotal point in the case.

Unfortunately, I just don’t think the connection between them is what it seems to be.

That would be just too simple, and if I learned anything in Dallas, it’s that murder is anything but simple.

Even the most cut-and-dried cases have a string of complications simmering beneath the surface. There’s always a motive beyond the obvious, something you’ll never consider until it’s too late. Sometimes, you don’t understand until death is staring you in the face. Sometimes, in that situation, you’ll make the wrong call. You’ll make a move too early and blow everything.

Sometimes, even moving ten seconds too early can cause an explosion where there was supposed to be a simmer.

That makes cases like this precarious. If we move too early, we could lose the killer. If we go too late, we could have any number of dead bodies on our hands. The second our murderer so much as thinks we’re onto him, then it’s case over.

If I learned anything else in Dallas, it’s that killers can disappear as quickly and quietly as they take a life.

I’ve put off calling Ryan Perkins for three hours now. His number is scrawled on top of the case file, but I’m too chickenshit to dial it. I don’t want to know about his relationship with Penny.

I try not to be judgmental in my job. It’s the hardest thing in the world, because sometimes, people need a damn good judging. Ryan Perkins is one of those people. It’s one thing to cheat on your fiancée with another woman. Not right, admittedly, but it’s one thing to do it. It’s another thing entirely to marry your mistress and then knock up her best friend.

I mean, come on, man. If you’re gonna cheat, use a goddamn condom at the very least.

It strikes me that Ryan isn’t the brightest star in the sky.

The moon seems to be brighter.

I take my scissors and cut across the top of the packaging on the new flash stick. I do this four times and insert every one into my laptop, using every USB port. Of course, the laptop freezes, so I remove the sticks, restart, and insert again one at a time.

Each time I push one in, I copy files over. Three months of each year onto each stick, exactly the way they were before. As the files transfers, I pull my sticky labels out and identify what files are where by writing the first letter of each month in tiny letters on the bright, white surface. As another three months of files transfer onto another stick, I cut the label and press the relevant sticker onto the right flash drive.

A knock sounds at my door. “Boss?”

“Two seconds, Marshall.” I pull the device from the USB port once the files finish moving and gather all four drives. Then I drop them into my purse, open my drawer, and shove all the packaging into it.

No one on my team knows about these sticks. No one outside my team does, either. Hell, I even turned the security camera in my office off before I sat down to do this. I’m fed up with my files disappearing when I need them.

“Come in,” I call.

Marshall opens the door with a grim expression.

“Don’t say it,” I order quickly. “If you don’t have the file, leave right now.”

“It’s like it never existed,” he says quietly, shutting the door behind him.

I bang my fist against my desk. Shit. All I have are three albeit detailed surveillance ops written up in Mike’s almost-undecipherable handwriting. No background, no interviews, no images…

I fold my arms on the desk and bury my face in them. A quiet groan leaves me as I process this information.

Whoever the killer is, they know we recovered the information about Lena Perkins and the police have the file. Whoever they are, they’ve been inside my building, and they’ve wiped clear every trace of Claire Santiago and Daniel Westwood’s affair.

Good fucking job, asshat.

I’m angry so much lately that I’m beginning to wonder if my body thinks I’m having a perpetual period. The hormones would explain a lot, for sure.

Apparently, assholes have the same effect as a surge in estrogen.

Still, though, it doesn’t add up to me. It should. It’s simple, right? In theory, Ryan got Penny pregnant, and when he couldn’t work out how to break up with Lena, they devised a plan to kill her. Their alibis are each other, and yeah, the hotel confirms their arrival, but it’s one hour after the approximated time of death.

Then they—or someone else—dumped her here, on my property, the next day, for whatever reason.

But Daniel… He’s a wildcard. Kind of. Maybe Ryan was overcome with grief after having killed Lena, went on a jealous, angry rampage at the man he believed had been sleeping with his wife, and killed him in the manner he had Lena.

Yet…why would he kill him if he wanted to break up with her? Wouldn’t infidelity on her part be the easy way out of the marriage?

I tap my pen against my desk.

Sure it would be, but cheaters… It’s one rule for them and another for another, right? So, in Ryan’s mind, he could grow a mini Perkins in his second mistress’s belly, but the second Lena offered her vagina up for occupation, it was out of order.

Again, it’s a crime driven by anger.

Maybe Ryan couldn’t take that Lena wanted someone more than him.

Maybe Penny hated that Ryan loved Lena more than her and that she’d always be in her way.

Maybe nobody knew what they really wanted.

And maybe, just maybe, I’m totally wrong. After all, I can push it to the side, but I can’t ignore the fact that there’s no DNA tying either Ryan or Penny to the murders. That I know of, at least.

Maybe there is something. Maybe there’s more than meets the eye to this investigation, and Holly Woods Police Department and Detective Drake Nash are keeping it to themselves. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

Drake Nash has a particular set of skills. Actually, he has several.

The man is a fantastic cop. There’s no disputing that. He takes no shit and cuts to the chase before his opponent has even thought about running. He’s quick-witted and determined.

The man wrote the book on seduction. With his delightfully killer biceps, cocksure smirk, and eyes that are connected to his cock by some magic thread, he could melt a ton of metal to his bidding in seconds.

The man is intelligent. He barely seems to think before he connects people or situations together, but that intelligence makes him arrogant. He always thinks he’s one step ahead when, maybe, he’s a mile behind. But he doesn’t see that.

He doesn’t see that, once, I was a fantastic cop. That, now, I’m a fantastic investigator. He doesn’t see that, like him, I take no shit and make no time for excuses. My wit almost destroys his on a regular basis, especially when he talks about fucking handcuffs.

He doesn’t see that, as a woman, I’m a master of seduction. I know my body. I know my curves and how to exploit them to my advantage. I can flutter my lashes and pout my lips to rival Dior’s catwalk models if the situation calls for it.

He doesn’t see that my body makes me intelligent. He doesn’t see how I use it to my advantage and almost strangle information from my source. Detective Drake Nash has no idea how I can manipulate someone until I’ve drained every ounce of information from their body.

Detective Drake Nash has no idea who he’s up against.

He has no idea of the power of my mind or my body.

At this point in my investigation, with my privacy violated in a brutal way, with my freedom abused and my workplace contaminated, he has no idea what lengths I will go to if it means I can solve this case.

Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit if I embarrass his ass in front of the sheriff or at the county fair. I couldn’t give a flying hippo if he stares at me when all is said and done and despises every vein that pumps blood through my body.

I don’t care if my heart does some bullshit skip-a-beat thing whenever he walks within ten yards of me. I don’t care if my skin tingles at the barest touch from his skin against mine. I sure as hell don’t care if my pussy goes into overdrive when his body is flush against mine.

If I want that, I’ll take my nonna up on her dates.

If I want that, I’ll reply to the guy on Tinder who just asked me if I rose from Hell because I’m “looking hella horny” right now.

If I want that, I’ll let Drake take me with those darn handcuffs he’s so fond of.

But I don’t. Not for a second.

I don’t do my job to fall in love. I don’t do it to be second to a man—or, indeed, first to one. I do my job because there isn’t a thing I’d rather do than this.

And if that means stepping on Detective Drake Nash’s toes, then so be it.

I grab my phone and dial Ryan Perkins’s number. He doesn’t pick up, so I dial again. And again. And again. Finally, the answer machine makes way for his voice, and before he can speak, I say, “I think we need to talk.”

He’s drawn. He looks like a man who’s had his heart broken then tugged through the wringer a million times over.

I don’t anticipate my estimation to be that far off reality.

“Ryan,” I say softly yet firmly. “I need to know everything. You know that. I can’t help you unless you help me.”

“Four months ago.” He looks out the window, the bags beneath his eyes more pronounced than they were when he saw me a week ago. “That was the first time. It was at a party. I don’t remember where. Lena was tired and wanted to leave, but she told me I could stay, so I saw her into a cab safely and stayed.”

“And?”

“Penny was there. She…tempted me. I gave in. We went to the room I’d booked for me and Lena and spent the night together. I regretted it instantly, Noelle.” He meets my eyes. “I fucking loved Lena. I still do. But she got busy with the store, and Penny told me she was pregnant, and I didn’t know what to do. So I had two relationships. I told my wife I loved her with the same mouth I kissed her best friend with.”

“And?”

“And then I lost the person I love most.”

I take a deep, slow breath. My eyes flit over every inch of his face, examining his expression from the downturn of his lips to the creases by his eyes. There’s no twitch. He doesn’t look away for a second despite my intense scrutiny. His lips don’t move even a millimeter.

“Talk to me about Daniel Westwood.” I lean back in my seat. “What was Lena’s relationship with him?”

Ryan’s nostrils flare, but the sadness remains in his eyes. “They grew up together. Separated for college. He came back to town and they reconnected,” he explains, a robotic, dull tone to his voice. “They were best friends, but they took it to the extreme. If she had a bad day, she’d call him instead of me. She’d have nights out with him and not me.”

“So you found solace in Penny,” I summarize. “You assumed your wife was finding comfort elsewhere, so you did.”

“No—”

“Yes,” I interrupt, leaning forward. “Your mistake, Ryan, was not trusting Lena. It was putting her into the bracket you put yourself. Maybe it was easier to speak to someone other than you. Maybe she didn’t want to worry you with her issues. Maybe Lena was so much herself that pushing her burdens onto you was too much for her to bear. Maybe, just maybe, she wanted you to ask her.”

“Stop.”

“What if Lena needed her best friend? Women don’t all have female best friends. Brody is my brother and my best friend. I go to him before Bekah sometimes. What if Lena was too afraid to trust you? What if she feared what you know to be true? What if she was so afraid of you being unfaithful that knowing she had problems with her business tipped her over the edge?” My gaze hits him with the force of a ten-ton truck. “What if, Ryan, her telling you about her being in debt tipped you over the edge and you left her?”

“Never!” He shouts it. No, he roars it, his chair clattering to the floor as he stands. “I’d never fucking leave her.”

“But you’d fuck her best friend.”

“I loved Lena!”

My door bangs open, and Mike and Dean fill the space where it just was. “Miss Noelle?” Dean asks, his muscles taut.

I hold my hand up. “So, why’d you cheat on her?”

He steps toward me, and in the same moment, Dean and Mike jolt forward and I slam my hands on my desk.

“I have three guns I could grab in a second. You wanna step forward again?”” I lift my brows, and Ryan freezes. “You know you’re the prime suspect, don’t you?” I continue, my hand on the weapon concealed at my hip. “For both me and the police. You have every motive under the sun, Ryan.”

“So arrest me!” he shouts, tears filling his eyes.

“No.” I smile sadly. “I don’t think you did it. I don’t believe you killed her, so I won’t tell them to or let them arrest you. You don’t look like a murderer to me, doll. You look like a man who fucked up and now has to bury the love of his life.”

Everyone in the room freezes. Mike and Dean are still holding fort at the door, their arms tensed and ready for a fight.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” I push Ryan. “I can’t help you if you don’t help me, honey. You want me to find Lena’s killer, you’ll sit down and tell me everything you hid before.”

Ryan looks at my impromptu bodyguards, his own body tight and ready to fight his way out of here.

“Y’all can fight it out, but all it’s gonna do is call the cops here and make you look even guiltier.” I slowly sit back down, my eyes still connected with Ryan’s. “This conversation is on camera. You really wanna help me, help the PD, help Lena…you’re gonna talk, Ryan. You’re gonna sit your ass down and talk right now or I’m telling my team to get Detective Nash, Detective Bond, and their boys in this office to lock you up. Now, sweetie, what’s it gonna be?”

With three pairs of eyes and a camera focused solely on him, Ryan Perkins sets his chair right and sits down.

“He threatened you?”

I roll my eyes. “God, Devin, no. He just tried to intimidate me.”

“I hear-a you taking the Lord’s-a name in-a vain-a!”

“Has no one procured legal tranquilizers yet?” I look at all three of my brothers and Alison. “Why is she still making my life hell? Doesn’t she know Brody is single?”

“Ahh, but I’m a year younger than you,” he sniggers. “Besides, you’re a woman, Noelle. You should be married by now.”

“Go on,” I threaten. “Keep it up. You know I can shoot better than all y’all put together and I won’t hesitate to do it.”

“One day, you won’t threaten such stupid things.”

“Cazzo no.” I stare at the large, Drake Nash shaped figure in the doorway. “What are you doin’ here?”

“Noella!” Nonna strolls into the front room with pasta sauce at the side of her mouth.

“I cursed in Italian!”

“Noella,” she repeats, this time with anger lacing the extra syllable she insists on adding to my name.

I push myself up with a fake cough. “I think I’m sick.”

“Sit the cazzo down!” Devin and Brody shout synonymously, each one of them snatching an arm and yanking me back onto the sofa.

“Y’all are only speakin’ Italian to please the pazzo vicchia senora!”

“Your switch from Texan to Italian is somethin’,” Drake says, grinning as he takes a seat.

I fix my gaze on him. “Io castrare te, stronzo,” I snap, to the amusement of both Nonna and Mom, who steps up behind her.

“Noelle.” Mom looks at me with that shut-the-hell-up look only moms can give. You know, the one that makes you wanna hide behind the sofa despite being a grown woman.

I tighten my jaw shut as Drake’s grin widens even further. Crap, I’m twenty-eight and being totally embarrassed by my mother. Didn’t she lose the right to do that when I turned twenty-one?

“I see-a why you have-a no husband,” Nonna pipes up. “You have-a no idea how to speak-a to a man.”

“I wouldn’t call Drake Nash a man,” I grind out.

His grin falls, his eyes chilling until their blueness reaches glacier quality. “Don’t you have a cheating spouse to be following?”

“Don’t you have a murderer to be finding?”

“Noelle,” Dad says firmly. “You can take your hand off your gun, sweetheart. You’re a little outnumbered.”

Reluctantly, I pull my fingers away from my waistband and tuck them between my thighs. Just in case my finger gets twitchy. “Yet I have a better aim than you all put together,” I mutter in frustration.

“Only because Dad took pity on you and thought you needed more target practice than we did,” Trent grumbles.

“Aww, poor big bro,” I coo, reaching for his cheek.

He knocks my hand away to Alison’s giggles.

I continue. “Did nobody teach little baby Trent how to shoot a bull’s-eye?”

Devin looks at the two terror children in the corner, his lips forming the widest, cockiest smile I’ve ever seen. “Someone did.”

Trent leans over me to thump him in the arm, but I block his swing.

“Hey, now!” I protest.

“Thought you had a better aim than all of us!” he vents.

I ball my hands into fists and slam them both down onto my brothers’ thighs, making both of them cry out in pain.

“Cagna!” Trent hisses as I jump up and away from both his and Brody’s attacks. Sure—he refuses to curse in English, but Italian is all good until his kids learn it.

I hold my hands out to the sides and smile sweetly. “And to think—I meant to do that. Another two or so inches outward…” I whistle innocently and shrug my shoulders.

“Noella! Trent! Brody! Devin!”

“The hell did I do?” Brody exclaims, looking at Nonna.

She furrows her brow, her dark hair perfectly pulled back from her still-youthful face. “You all are children!”

“I’m thirty-three!” Trent protests.

“You no-a act it!” she retorts, straightening to her full five-foot-two height and slamming her hands onto her hips.

That’s it, Nonna. You stare down that six-foot-three police officer grandson of yours.

“And you!” she says, rounding on me.

Oh, shit.

“You-a the worst!” Her finger points at me and she waggles it with far too much enthusiasm, if you ask me. “You wind-a them up! All-a time! No wonder you-a single! No man want-a your attitude!”

I catch Drake’s grin from the corner of my eye and shoot him a glare before turning puppy-dog eyes on Nonna. “Aw, Nonna, that’s so sweet. Don’t you know that the guys all say I get my attitude from you?”

Immediately, she bristles, and all three of my brothers sit bolt upright, as if someone just sent an electrical charge shooting up their spines.

“Aha! You think-a that? She has-a same attitude as-a me?!” Nonna shrieks.

“Mamma, maybe you need to lie down,” Dad interjects, stepping in front of her. “Just for a half hour.”

Nonna narrows her eyes, but Dad lifts his eyebrows and twists her toward the door before she can argue. After one final angry stream of Italian about how no one in this country or family respects her, Dad all but frog-marches her up the stairs and out of earshot.

“Nonna says bad words,” Aria says from the corner, her large, dark eyes the spitting image of Trent’s.

Trent winces. “Nonna is bad sometimes,” he answers, opening his arms for his daughter to climb onto his lap. “How did you know?”

“Sometimes, you and Mom yell bad words at each other. They might be Italian, but, Dad, I’m not stupid.”

I cough to cover my amused snort and look away. That’s what you get for trying to pull the wool over a ten-year-old’s eyes, Trent Bond.

“Dinner’s ready,” Mom says, breaking through the awkward moment caused by Aria’s announcement.

We all get up and head to the dining room, and despite my best efforts, Mom directs Drake in the empty seat next to me. I stare at her flatly as he tucks his legs beneath the table and deliberately kicks my foot with his.

“The hell are you? Twelve?” I hiss, kicking him back.

“Thirty-one,” he replies, his light-blue eyes devoid of their previous chill. Now, they glimmer with laughter. “And yourself? Still on the brink of puberty?”

“Twenty-eight.” I grab my wine glass and throw half of it back in one go.

Mom notices, her eyebrows shooting up.

“What?” I ask her.

“Nothing,” she replies, her pearly-pink lips curving into a smile.

I drop my eyes to the red smudge on my glass and rub at it with my thumb. Damn that man. What is he even doing at family dinner? I was always under the impression that family dinner is for family, girlfriends, fiancés, and husband/wives.

Oh. Hell no.

The crazy witch upstairs is trying to set me up with Drake Nash.

“Nonna!” I slide my chair back. “I swear to god I’m gonna beat your Italian ass into next week!”

Devin grabs the back of my chair and stops me from running upstairs at her. “Noelle,” he says through laughter.

“God will probably thank me for it!”

“She’s just being nice.”

“Nice? No. Nice is her nose up your business instead of mine. Nice is her nose up Brody’s backside inside of being up in mine all the time!” I humph and drop back into my chair.

“Shut up and drink.” Brody shoves my glass toward me.

“I love you, Brodes, Dev, but I swear to God that both of you are ten seconds away from my drink in your faces if you keep siding with the crazy old bat.”

“You only have one drink,” Devin observes.

I grab Drake’s full beer bottle. “Yeah?”

“Put the bottle down, Noelle,” Drake drawls. “Devin, let her go. We all know she’s as dangerous as a snail in a heatwave.”

I slowly cut my eyes to him, grabbing my fork and jabbing it into my spaghetti with deliberate force. “Are you sure about that, Detective? Because there are nine people around this table right now and only one of us has given you a bullet in your foot.”

Drake smiles slowly, and the curve of his lips and the glint in his eye are so fucking sexy that I want to smear my pasta sauce all over his hot little face. “Yet only four of us have a gun about their person.”

Slowly, I lift my wine glass to my lips and sip, despite the fact I only just wiped my lipstick mark away. Dad chuckles from the end of the table, and Devin’s cough is enough to make me fight against the smirk that wants to form.

Oh dear.

Drake Nash doesn’t know me very well at all.

I glide my foot up his calf, making sure to show him I’m wearing boots. “You sound so sure, Detective.”

“You’re wearing boots.”

“Cleverly observed.”

“Aunt Noelle always carries a gun in her boot,” Aria states a mere second before sucking up a strand of spaghetti with a giant slurp that sprays marinara sauce at her brother.

“Does she now?” Drake asks, his eyes trained firmly on mine.

“Yep. She says every woman with more sense than all the men in her family put together carries a gun, because a real woman needs to be prepared for everything.”

“And?” I prompt her, never breaking Drake’s gaze.

“And no matter how dangerous a man is with a gun, he’ll always be impulsive, but a woman will always be more calculating and therefore more dangerous than a man can ever dream of being.”

“When the hell did you teach her that?” Trent booms.

“Ask your wife.” I grin, lifting my wine glass once more.

Oh, shoot me. One woman surrounded by four cops, a florist, and a pensioner who fancies herself a matchmaker? I had to learn somehow, and if that meant playing Poor Little Noelle until I whooped ass at target practice, so be it. And if my sister-in-law is happy for her daughter to learn the way I did, then, well.

She’s more a Bond than my brothers are.

“Touché,” Drake hums. “One gun or two?”

“Take a ticket and get in line, Drake,” I whisper back. “You’re not the only man waiting to find out.”

“I could demand you tell me.”

The threat in his tone makes me laugh. “You could. But you won’t.”

“You sound real sure there, Noelle.”

“Oh, I am. Real sure, that is.” I twirl some spaghetti on my fork and seal my lips around the metal prongs, sucking the yummy pasta into my mouth. A string of spaghetti falls loose, and I suck it up with one sharp breath. Then, with his eyes still focused on my lips, I say, “If you were going to demand I tell you, you’d have done it instead of staring at my lips like they were on your dinner plate instead of a Bolognese.”

His eyes snap to mine, ice-blue frustration and lust warring with each other. His look is intense, but my tongue darts across my lips anyway. He gazes at me and opens his mouth to say something, but Nonna bursts into the room with yet another stream of angry Italian, complaining that her segregation will make her dinner cold.

Her rant cuts Drake off, and I deliberately turn my body away from his, well, because I’m a fucking child. And the look I just saw in his eyes said he was definitely not about to demand I show him the contents of my boots.

More like he was about to demand I show him the content of my panties.

For real this time.

I finish the rest of my wine and don’t argue when Brody fills my glass. For all of his jokes, he’s my best friend, and if anyone around this table has to see how much Drake affects me then, well, it may as well be Brody.

I tip the glass to my lips right away, much to my baby brother’s amusement. And my elder brothers’ disdain, but whatever. They know what to expect after having lived with two Bond women before I was born.

We Bond women breathe cupcakes, wine, and profanity. And marriage. Unless you’re me. Then you breathe all but marriage.

I sit in silence as Nonna catches up on everyone’s lives, because the kids’ school tests have changed since she called two days ago, and like there’s been another suspect in the murder everyone except Devin seems to be working on.

“Did you know-a Lena bought all-a her salads from Rosie’s Café?”

“What?” Drake and Trent ask simultaneously.

“She and Rosie were-a good friends,” Nonna sniffs. “Every day-a she was there!”

I narrow my eyes. “How do you know that?”

“I like-a her coffee.”

“Every lunchtime?”

“Si.”

I grab my napkin, tap around my mouth to wipe away any stray pasta sauce, and reach for my glass. “Thanks, Nonna.” Then I throw the rest of my wine back and push my chair out.

The reaction of my brothers—and the way Drake’s face sets into a mask—tells me that they had no idea about Lena’s eating habits.

“Did you drive?” Mom asks.

“Nope. Apparently, my brother has been stalking my Friday night habits.” I cock my thumb toward Brody, who grins. “Picks me up like a good little Bond boy so there’s no drinking and driving.”