Page 2 of Things Left Unsaid

“Sounds deadly.”

“Heisa soldier.”

“Thought he was a pilot.”

“He is. Pilots are soldiers too.”

“They’re technically pilots first.”

“Whatever. Sweet Lips isn’t good enough for Parker. That ‘sweetness’ has nothing to do with candy and everything to do with his oral skills?—”

“You don’t know that.”

“—oral skills he practiced on God knows how many women. I’ve seenSons of Anarchy?—”

“We watched it. Together.”

“No one is good enough for you or her. It’s a fact. Specifically not some Sam Crow wannabe.”

“The Sinners make Sam Crow bikers look like child’s play. You should see the stuff I deal with as part of their defense team.” I make a motion of zipping my mouth shut when she peers at me with interest. “Anyway, whether he is or isn’t good enough for her, he had to get past Rachel who, you can’t deny, is utterly terrifying. She’d kill Sweet Lips if he hurt Parker. And Rex would sanction the kill.”

Rex is my boss’s husband as well as the leader of the New Jersey chapter of the Satan’s Sinners’ MC—an outlaw band of misfits.

“Murder one…soreassuring.”

“As if she’d let herself be caught. You know she’s one of the country’s best criminal lawyers,” I reason. “I’m almost offended on her behalf.”

Rachel Laker is Lady Justice’s version of a Valkyrie. Or do I mean a Fury?

Either way, I’m both proud of being her employee and?—

“You’re scared of her.”

Yes. Yes, I am.

“Wouldn’t you be? She’s terrifying in a Machiavellian way.”

“Parker loves her.”

“Parker needs a therapist. As we’ve already established with the whole ‘never leaving the house’ thing.”

“I wanted her to come to the All-Star game with me,” she whines. “Was that so much to ask?”

“For an agoraphobic,yes. Duh. Talk about shoving her into the deep end without a life raft. Not only would she have had to come up from Ohio to watch it, but then there was the whole ‘being in a crowd with twenty thousand people’ disaster waiting to happen.” I wiggle my hand that’s cramping from working on this sugar cookie for the past twenty minutes. “Just leave her alone.”

“She loves the New York Stars. Do you know how expensive those tickets were?All-Startickets. Onhometurf. With LiamfreakingDonnghal as one of the team captains!” With true Italian flair, her hands waft wide and free. “It was a travesty! Even more of a travesty that you fell asleep halfway through the game.”

I grace her with an eye roll. “You should have taken your brother. Anthony loves hockey too. Knowing him, he’d have flown in for the occasion.”

“Where’d be the fun in suffering through a game with him? I had a better time with you snoring next to me.”

As thoroughly outraged as she’d been in February, she graces me with a sniff and then snags an unfrosted cookie from my pile. She proceeds to take a bite before I can slap her fingers.

Smirking, Tee wiggles away as I holler, “I was doing six!”

“Now you’re doing five. Your hand will thank me later.”

On the brink of cussing her out, though she’s technically correct, my cell phone rings, announcing, “Grand-mère,” to the apartment.

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