Page 38 of Rockstars, Babies & Happily Ever Afters: Vol. 1

“Yes, it fucking damn well matters. You’re asking me to walk into a goddamn nest of drug dealers and who knows what else, and you won’t even tell me why. Who is this girl to you, Lila? Some new commodity that went off the rails? Some investment that went bad?”

Her pause was so lengthy that Mal cursed, about to end the call.

“She’s the twin sister of the man I love. The only family he has left in this world. She’s everything to him. Okay?”

Mal narrowed his eyes, squinting into the smoky, shifting near darkness, lit only by the flickering Christmas lights strung along the eaves. The room throbbed with the bass from the music, something he’d never heard but would never forget.

He wanted to argue.So what? What the fuck does the man you love matter to me?Lila wasn’t married to his dad anymore, and he wouldn’t have felt more kindly toward her had she been. To his way of thinking, anyone who married his fuckwit of a father deserved whatever shit flowed their way.

But somehow her impassioned response stilled his tongue. He didn’t know why. He didn’t believe in love any more than he believed in anything else.

But Christ, he was jealous as fuck that she still did. That she could.

“Third floor,” he said flatly, repeating the info she’d given him during their last phone call. “That’s his apartment.”

Lila let out a long breath. She’d been holding it, he realized, waiting for him to say no. Expecting him to.

Because Malachi Shawcross never did a damn thing for anyone unless there was something in it for himself. Just like good ol’ Dad.

“Yes,” Lila said. “Vinnie lives upstairs with his brother Don.”

Mal was already on the move, pushing his way through the dancing, laughing crowd and scanning the endless faces in the darkness. Lila had said yesterday that Vinnie and Richelle sometimes came down to the parties on the first floor when they weren’t “holed up.”

Lila had refused to elaborate on exactly what that meant.

“Family affair,” he said into the phone as he stalked through the writhing mass of people. His head was already a little buzzy from the scent of weed floating through the air. Just what he needed—a contact high.

Luckily, it took a hell of a lot more than their low-grade shit to get him lit.

“Yes. Though the woman they work with isn’t family. She doesn’t have any, from what I could find. Former foster child. She had previous dealings with someone else who is important to me.”

Mal didn’t know why Lila was playing share-and-tell hour, but that wasn’t unusual with her. She’d fill his head with useless crap so that he’d miss the salient points buried beneath her bullshit.

He wasn’t falling for it this time.

A woman toting beer in plastic red cups held high over her head bumped his shoulder and giggled as the liquid sloshed over his arm. “Oops, sorry.” She stared at his chest then apparently realized his head was a few feet up. Tilting her own back, she frowned. “You’re a big one.”

“You don’t know the half.” He wiped off his wet arm and smeared it on her jacket sleeve, making her giggle again.

She was still laughing when he moved past her. Damn stoners.

“She’s not here,” Mal told Lila a few minutes later after making a full sweep of the first level. “Unless she doesn’t look like that picture you sent me. Was that recent?”

Blond hair, blue eyes, sweet smile. She looked more like a preschool teacher than a fairly hardcore user. Hardcore in frequency if not in selection, though as soon as someone messed with blow, he figured they were headed nowhere good. But his ex-stepmommy had been adamant that Richelle could be “saved.”

Sure, she could. Just like the rest of them could be too.

“Yes, just a few weeks ago. She changes her hair color now and then. Sometimes she’s brunette too. Hang on.”

He swallowed another curse as bubbles showed up on his screen, indicating another message was being sent. A moment later, he was staring at the same preschool teacher lookalike, except now she was vamped up. Hair so dark it was the richest color of oak, wet red lips, and still, those same innocent blue eyes. But they had a hint of something else in them now. Mischief. Seduction.

A sort of knowing that seared him right to the marrow.

“Got it,” he told Lila, making his way to the door to the central front hallway where you could choose which apartment to visit. “I’m headed up. I’ll get back to you.”

He was about to click off when her words cut through the din around him. “Mal, be careful.”

Saying nothing, he waited.

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