Page 51 of Prodigal Son

Fifteen

Whiskey was a bad idea. She was full of those lately.I won’t make your mistakes, she’d thought at her father’s graveside, in her itchy, cheap black dress, looking at the casket she’d sold her car to buy. Penniless, optionless, she’d vowed she would never be in that position again. Mom was gone, Dad was dead, and she was grown. No one could control her life anymore.

And yet, here she sat in London, homeless, hopeless, bossless, caught up in someone else’s crazy personal war. Surrounded by the very assholes who’d put her father in the ground.

(Deep down, she knew that wasn’t true. Dad’s addiction was no one’s fault but his own. But.)

She was trying to be a decent person, though. Or so she told herself. When Raven finally left the clubhouse, security detail in tow, and she again found herself aimlessly stuck at Baskerville, she did her assistant/driver duty of going to see if Eden’s mother needed anything.

Vivian was…horrible. And horrifying. And just…awful.

“Oh no, dear,” she said, staring frostily into the fire someone – definitely not her – had lit in the grate, cut crystal glass of Scotch held delicately in one hand. “What could I possibly need?”

In every movie about the South, girls’ mothers possessed a glacial kind of calm. Unfailingly polite, but utterly cold; they could cut you down through guilt and glances, and never have to resort to a single vulgarity. Vivian was like that; Axelle had learned that Old South manners and charm had been imported from England.

She didn’t care for it, but she respected it. Feared it, even. She beat a hasty retreat to the bar – the woman wasn’thermother, after all – and now she was staring down into a glass of whiskey on the rocks, suspicious it might be just the first of several mistakes tonight.

(She would be proven correct.)

“Normally,” a voice said beside her as someone climbed onto the next stool, “I would offer to buy you a drink and hit you with one of my best lines. But. You already have a drink. And I get the feeling my line would just result in you throwing that drink in my face. That’s the impression you’re giving right now, anyway.”

She turned her head just far enough to give Tommy her best side-eye. “There are lots of women in here.” And there were; it was the dinnertime crush and the pub was packed with regular customers and Dogs, and plenty of women looking to catch a Dog’s attention. “Did they all already turn you down?” she asked sweetly.

“Ouch. Alright, yeah, I deserve it.” He leaned in closer and dropped his voice. Up close, in the dazzling spray of fairy lights, he went from being hot to being almost beautiful. They had good cheekbones, these half-brothers. And eyes. And their smiles were more like smirks, and…she needed to stop that line of thought. “The thing is,” Tommy said, “I’m not smart, yeah? But I’m not so stupid that I’d actually do you like that.”

“What?”

“I’m not hitting on you.” He winked.

“Then what the hell are you doing?”

“Giving the person who wants to hit on you a little incentive.”

“What?” she asked again, and a hand appeared between her face and Tommy’s. Callused, the nails bitten down. A ring on the middle finger, heavy, masculine silver, some design she couldn’t parse out in the low light.

She knew who the hand belonged to, but she turned her head anyway, and was rewarded by an image of Albie glaring at his brother. It was the most pointed expression she’d seen from him so far, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“What are you doing?” Albie asked, deadpan.

Tommy slumped over with one elbow braced on the bar, chin cupped in his hand, pleased with himself. “Offering to buy the lady a drink.”

“She has a drink.”

“A fact she’s already pointed out to me.”

“Then you should leave her alone.”

A smile tugged at Tommy’s mouth, and he managed to bite it back into something sly and manageable. “Do youwantme to leave her alone?”

A stare-down ensued.

Albie said, “Tommy.”

His younger brother chuckled and slid off the stool. “All yours, bro.” He tossed Axelle another covert wink and slipped off into the crowd.

Albie stood and stared at the vacated stool a long moment.

“It probably won’t bite you,” Axelle offered. She might, but she figured he already knew that.

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