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“No, not at all.” I shook my head for emphasis. I wasn’t too fond of Curtis Mulligan right now but I didn’t want to make trouble for him over nothing. “You just hadn’t mentioned anything about a new employee.”

My dad’s expression relaxed. “Deck vouched for the kid. He’s from Emblem and Deck knew the family. Curtis has had his share of troubles, used to run around with one of the gangs down there.”

“Agang?” I was startled. My father had been known to give people a chance but he didn’t often bring real hardened criminals into the fold. “He’s a gang member?”

“Was,” my dad emphasized. He shrugged. “He’s trying to turn his life around. Deck swears he’s a straight arrow now.”

“Then I’m sure it’s true,” I said, feeling slightly unsettled by the idea that the guy who’d been deprived of his lunch burrito probably had a history of violence. Of course I’d noted his riot of tattoos but I’d been raised around men who had a ton of ink and knew it said nothing about a man’s character other than the fact that he liked ink. Now that I had learned a thing or two about Curtis I realized my earlier assumption had been wrong. He probably wasn’t putting on a gruff bad boy act. He was an actual real life bad boy. In a way I ought to be glad we hadn’t exactly hit it off because I had no interest in playing with fire. If I ever did take a chance on a guy again, he wouldn’t be some surly ex-gang member. It also surprised me to hear that he was from Emblem. I’d never lived there but I’d heard enough about it growing up to draw my own conclusions.

Emblem, the prison town my family came from, wasn’t the worst place in the world but it probably had more than its fair share of rough and scary characters. I still had a grandfather who lived down there and whenever we saw him he would complain that the town was going downhill, courtesy of the opioid epidemic that was devastating so many places. Other than my Grandpa McCann, I didn’t have any real ties to Emblem. Supposedly my grandmother still lived in the area too but she and my mother had been estranged since my mother announced her marriage plans many years ago. Welcoming a low life Gentry into the family was not something my status conscious grandmother was willing to endure. My mother always assured us it was no great loss but her mouth would turn down slightly when she said it so I was sure the rejection still troubled her.

As for my father’s parents, all I knew of them were things I’d heard in whispers and conversation fragments. My father was one of three triplets born into a violent home and he was lucky to survive his childhood. He escaped with Uncle Creed and Uncle Chase the moment it was legally possible, thus ending a legacy of violence and despair that stretched back for generations and stuck to our family name like glue. I’d never felt anything but pride in my last name but I knew that hadn’t been the case for him. I’d never met his parents, Benton and Maggie Gentry. They died when I was little. But I wouldn’t have met them even if they’d lived. Once I heard my father say that he would have cut his own arm off before he let his father get within forty yards of his girls.

“Cassie.” My father snapped his fingers and I was startled to attention.

“Sorry, Dad. What did you say?”

“Just asked if you had class tonight.”

“Yeah.” I checked my watch. “In less than an hour.”

“What time will you be home?”

“It’s a three hour class so I guess by nine thirty. Why?”

His grin was a little sad. “The house is pretty empty these days, especially with Cadence gone to summer camp.”

“You could always have another kid,” I teased. “A baby would keep you company for a good long time.”

He snorted. “I’ll relay the suggestion to your mother.”

“I’m sure she’ll be wildly enthusiastic.”

My dad waved me off. “Get to class.”

“Marian’s not here yet.” Marian was the part time receptionist who worked the evening shifts on the days Scratch had late hours.

“She texted me to say she’d be about twenty minutes late. You don’t want to be late on your first day of school though so just leave the bell on the counter and take off.”

“You sure?” Usually my dad hated to leave the reception desk unattended.

“I’m sure,” he said.

Five minutes later, after I’d tidied up the reception desk for Marian and retrieved my handbag, I was on my way out the door. And as luck would have it, so was Curtis Mulligan. What were the chances that with all the Scratch employees coming and going the two of us were the only ones heading to the parking lot right now? The gods of coincidence must have a sense of humor.

Curtis held the door open but didn’t look me in the eye when I mumbled my thanks. I could hear his heavy steps right behind me and pretended to check my phone to make the moment a little less awkward. For some reason I was hyper aware of the fact that he was close by. It had to be some internal instinct for danger now that I knew Curtis had a criminal history. It couldn’t be because I was kind of attracted to him despite his rather crusty personality.

“Cassie.”

The sound of my name being uttered in his deep voice startled me so much I dropped my phone right on the cracked asphalt.

Curtis didn’t miss a beat and scooped my phone right up. He brushed the dirt off before handing it over.

“Thanks,” I said, tossing the thing in my handbag without checking whether the screen had been damaged.

Curtis watched me from three feet away with an indecipherable expression. I noticed he was tapping one hand against his leg and the action seemed strangely nervous, which was ridiculous. Curtis was a hardened ex gang member. He wouldn’t shrink from an encounter with a five foot three female.

“What?” I challenged him.

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