Page 6 of Lone Star

The smirk that tweaked his mouth looked like the one Fox had been looking at in the mirror his whole life. It was eerie as hell.

“And,” Fox continued, “unlike some shitheads, he actually shows up when it’s time to train.”

Tenny turned toward him, just as slowly as Fox had, tucked his chin, and made eye contact over the gold rims of his shades. The absolute douchebag. “Train?” he asked, voice just as flat as Fox’s. But his eyes – the Devin Green blue they all shared – sparked with a challenge.

Not the first time, Fox was struck by the notion that handling Ten was like riding a horse that was just waiting for the right moment to scrape him off on the fence, and go leaping off the track.

And now he used racetrack references, apparently, because he’d spent way too much time with Walsh lately.

“Why wouldIneed to train?” Ten asked.

“To keep sharp.”

Tenny made a show of surveying their surroundings, the empty section of lot, the unremarkable, rambling backside of the clubhouse; the scrap yard, and the glint of the river at the far edge of the property, sliding slowly, darkly past. Then he turned back to Fox, and some of the showmanship dropped away, leaving him flinty-eyed, ruthless, and – most disturbingly – just as restless as Fox felt. “Keep sharp for what?”

Keep sharp because I fucking told you to, Fox thought, and recoiled mentally like he’d been burned. God, he sounded likePhillip.

He turned away.

Reese was watching them, not at all coy, blatantly staring. Fox wondered how good his hearing was.

“That’s not for you to know,” he said imperiously. At least now he sounded like Abe rather than his oldest brother. “Guys like us in this organization: we go where we’re told, kill who we’re supposed to, and we don’t question the higher authority.”

“Higher authority,” Ten said flatly. “Ghost.” No mistaking that for anything but an insult.

Fox sent him a sideways glare. “You could do – and have done – a lot worse than Ghost for a boss. Remember that.”

Tenny stared back, silent, refusing to bend.

One of these days,Fox thought,I’ll have to put him in his place for good.

The worst part was: he didn’t know if hecould.

Five

It was a big thing, a man moving across an ocean for you.

Axelle kept telling herself that wasn’t what Albie had done. His move had been about learning the true origins of his father. About the crushing disappointment, and the upheaval in London, and the need for a change of venue.

But the first thing he’d done, when he’d gotten to town, was have someone drop him off at the post office, where he’d learned she’d be, and he’d opened his arms, and it sure felt like this was for her – at least a little.

She wasn’t sure what to do with that kind of pressure.

“It’s not pressure,” Eden had assured. “He’s not that kind of guy. You don’t have to do anything. Or promise anything,” she’d added, eyes widening for emphasis. No doubt, in her book, promises were scarier than “doing anything.”

Axelle passed a cloth over her already-spotless coffee table one more time and stood back to survey her apartment: the whole thing, save the bathroom, was visible from where she stood. The club – Maggie, specifically – had set her up with a list of available apartments. This one had been her favorite, namely because there was plenty of room to park her car, and a garage in which to work on it, but she’d thought it was charming, too. The converted attic space of an old, but well-kept Victorian house in a quiet part of town. It was an open loft space, with slanted ceilings, ledges in the dormer windows, creaky hardwood floors, and a deep claw-foot tub in the bathroom. It had come furnished, the oval coffee table and faded Persian rugs already here, but she’d added her own bedlinens, a chair she’d picked up at a secondhand shop, a newer model TV. There had been strands of Christmas lights taped up on the window frames, and they’d still worked, surprisingly, plugged in now and giving the space a cheerful air.

Satisfied that everything was clean and orderly, she stowed the dusting cloth under the sink. Then went to the bathroom to triple-check her appearance.

She’d braided her hair loosely, its dark blonde length pulled over one shoulder. She didn’t really do dresses, as a general rule, but she’d found a nice navy sweater, and her jeans were new, still stiff. She’d used eyeliner, and dug a pair of dangly, silver earrings from the depths of the small chest of valuables she’d shipped to London, and then back again.

“This is fine,” she said aloud to her reflection, tweaking the hem of her sweater. “Right? It’s fine.”

Out in the main room, the buzzer sounded, and she jumped.

“Shit!”

She took a sequence of deep breaths as she crossed the apartment and pressed the button on the intercom. She didn’t bother to say “come in,” too afraid the nerves would show in her voice. It would be easier face-to-face, she reasoned, when she could gauge how he felt about all this and respond accordingly.

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