House of Payne: Rude (10 page)
“Screw that. You missed this as a kid, so you’ve got to have it now. Better late than never, yeah?” Before she could set up a debate that wouldn’t get her anywhere, he stepped up to the kiosk and bagged two tickets. “Okay, newbie, we’re set. Now, let’s talk about how this goes.”
“It’s not exactly rocket science.” She pursed her lips in a look he knew all too well. Imminent sass was coming his way. “I can tell you how it’s going to go. It stops. People get off—which sounds really dirty since we’re in public, but whatever. We get on. It goes in circles, kind of like this conversation. Then it stops and yep, you guessed it,” she said and went up on tiptoes to whisper huskily in his ear. “It’s our turn to get off.”
Fuck, she could turn him inside-out without even trying. “Ah shit, you’ve ruined me.”
“Why?”
“I’m never going to be able to look at this innocent ride again without thinking of getting off with you.”
“I didn’t say you’d get off with
me
.” She turned and gave him a scorching look over a shoulder. “I’m not so easy that I can be bought with just the price of a carousel ticket.”
“There’s never been anything easy about you.” And he didn’t want her any other way. “But I wasn’t talking about procedure. I was talking about
strategy
.”
That stopped her in her tracks, and he grinned at how her blink of bewilderment wiped away her cocky smirk. “There’s a strategy when it comes to riding a carousel?”
“That’s right, newbie. To get the best ride, you’ve got to look at the horses’ feet.”
She stared at him before rolling her eyes. “You’re so full of bullshit.”
“I’m serious.”
“Uh-huh, right. And what do their feet have to do with anything?”
“The ponies that have their feet touching the floor don’t go up and down. The ones that are suspended on their poles are the fun ones. There.” He pointed to a white horse with a fancy pink-feathered headdress. “We go for that one when it comes to a stop, all right? Shove people out of the way if they try to get there first.”
“You cannot be seri—”
“
Go
.”
She let out a little squeak as he tugged her forward the moment the attendant opened the gate. He put his hands at her waist and hoisted her up onto the carousel, earning himself another squeak. Seconds later she was on the white horse, looking flustered and wide-eyed and not sure how she got there.
Damn, she was fun.
“Holy crap.” Trying to catch her breath while clutching onto the gold-painted pole, she glanced around herself before sending him a blistering look. “Oh my God, Rude. There are like, three other people who got on the ride with us. What the hell was the rush?”
“There wasn’t one. I just wanted to make sure you got the prettiest pony.”
She stared at him for a long second before she burst out laughing. He stepped into the space where she sat on her mount, while the rare sound swept through him until his skin tightened in a pleasantly painful way. Making Sass laugh was better than winning the fucking lottery.
“Oh, my God,” she said again after collecting herself, looking torn between laughing some more and kicking his ass. “I could kill you for that.”
“For what?”
“You make it feel like life and death if I don’t hurry, you throw me onto the carousel—”
“I didn’t
throw
you. I lifted you gently because you’re pocket-sized and you need all the help you can get.”
“And now here I am on a merry-go-round with three other people who must think we’re insane for running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”
“Acting insane is all part of the amusement park experience. You don’t have to thank me.”
“I’m trying not to strangle you.” Then she blinked at him. “Hey, wait. Why aren’t you on a horse or a unicorn or whatever?”
“Because one, you may not have noticed, but I’m kind of a hulk, so I’m not about to see if I can break this thing just by sitting my ass somewhere on it. Two, I’m a guy, and going giddy-up on a carousel horse would be the equivalent of voluntarily cutting my balls off in public. And three, I want to be up close and personal when you experience your very first amusement park ride.”
A funny half-smile curled the corner of her mouth. “You do know that there’s nothing you could do that could ever take away from your manhood, right? I mean, you’re
such
a man, you almost make me breathless.”
“Yeah?” He leaned in, one arm curling around her where her ass met saddle, while the other hand came to close over the top of her thigh. “Breathless in a good way?”
Her eyes darkened with a sudden, heated intensity he’d never seen there before. “Everything manly in you makes everything womanly in me purr. And I have no frigging clue if that’s good or bad.”
“Sounds like you want me to convince you that it’s all good. I’m up to that.” In more ways than one, he was totally up for it.
She opened her mouth to speak a scant second before the carousel started up with a noisy lurch, and calliope music began to play. Suddenly they were moving, and his arm at her butt tightened as she began to float up. Talk about bad timing. Now he had to play Pin the Kiss on the Sassy, when what he really wanted to do was haul her off of the painted horse and kiss her into such a state of submission that she’d only have been able to say his name and maybe the word “yes.”.
But he’d had harder missions in his life, so when her horse slid back down to his level, he caught her mouth with his.
He knew the floor was moving under his feet. Logically that would explain the sudden elevator-drop of his stomach while her lips fastened to his as if she were determined to hermetically seal herself to him. It might also have explained the crazy lightness that rolled through him. But none of that could explain the rush that made his head spin when she plowed her fingers through his hair and moaned into his mouth.
Right then his new favorite pastime was to make Sass moan. She made the sexiest sounds he’d ever heard.
The rise of her horse broke them apart, though her fingers still lingered in his hair. For his part, his hands stayed on her, silently claiming. Her heavy-lidded eyes were darker than he’d ever seen them, and in them he saw an absolute and inescapable understanding about where this was going.
About fucking time.
But, just in case she had any remaining doubt, he decided he needed to make things clear.
“When I’m inside you, and your legs are quivering because I’ve got you on the edge of coming so hard it’ll be the sweetest agony you’ve ever known, you’re going to moan for me, Sass. You’re going to moan and gasp and cry my name, and it’s going to be the most beautiful goddamn thing I’ve ever heard.”
Her eyes widened at that, but she didn’t look away or try to play any other kind of game with him. She had guts, he’d give her that.
“If this ever happens, you’ll be too wrapped up in your own sweet agony to even think about listening to me. And when you’re done you’ll know beyond any doubt that you’ve never had any better than me.”
That made him smile, even as the flesh behind his zipper began to throb. “I’ve already figured that out, babe”
“Have you, now?”
“Oh, yeah. But feel free to make sure I’m convinced.” The carousel’s calliope music stopped and the vibration of the ride’s motor beneath his feet stilled. She threw her leg over to slide off the horse, and he caught her at the waist to help her down, sliding her against him all the way. Her hands landed on his shoulders to steady herself before she removed them the moment her feet were on the ground. That had his smile widening into a full-blown grin. “You’re not a big fan of PDAs, are you?”
“I just don’t get the point of them, unless you’re a lame poser intent on showing the world you’re officially hot for each other.”
“Or you can’t help but touch what’s important to you whenever you’re close.” At her dubious shrug, he chuckled as the carousel began to slow. “You’re more fun than Christmas, Sass, you know that? It’s going to be such a crazy-ass blast, convincing you that PDAs are—” His words sliced cleanly into silence as he caught sight of a familiar pair of aviator sunglasses as they spun by.
Goddamn it.
“Rude? What—”
Oblivious to Sass’s call of alarm, he half-ran against the carousel’s rotation between the brightly painted animals, his eyes glued to the dark-haired man walking away into the crowds. He had to come to an ungainly halt in order to avoid a collision with a young mother pulling her toddler off the back of a white tiger. In that split second when he looked down so he wouldn’t flatten mother and child, the man he thought he’d glimpsed had melted into the crowd and vanished.
Then again, maybe Aviator Glasses had hadn’t been there at all. Rude hadn’t gotten a good look, after all. Just the sunglasses. A popular style of sunglasses. It could have been anyone.
But…
“Rude? You okay?”
A hand landed on his forearm. When he turned his attention to Sass, who dropped her hand and took an immediate step back, he realized he had to dial back the crazy, or risk undoing all the progress he’d made. “Yeah, I’m good. I just thought I saw someone I knew.”
“Oh.” Her uncertain frown vanished, and he slung an arm around her shoulders as the carousel at last came to a stop. But time and again his eyes strayed to the crowds around them, sifting through the faces.
“I don’t know which is more shocking—getting Crystal Gardens booked successfully, or you and Rude making out.”
“I know which one’s got my vote.” Holding a plastic plate that was in the shape of a cartoon kitty head, Sass dodged Sabrina’s grasping hands, and ignored the toddler’s squeal-scream of frustration when she couldn’t get out of her booster seat and nab the plate for herself. “You’re sure I can’t put this plate down on the table? She really seems to want it, Tonya.”
“You do that, and it’s on the floor in the next heartbeat. Then
you’ll
be on the floor in the heartbeat after that, because I am
not
cleaning up another plate of thrown food today.”
Sass looked back to a pouting Sabrina, with her cherubic face adorably smeared with food. “Sorry, kid. Mommy’s being a harda—”
“
Sass
.”
“That wasn’t the word I was going for, but at least it rhymes.” With a sigh, she took the little airplane spoon and tried to get another bite of macaroni and cheese into the toddler’s mouth. The twenty-month old squirmed back in her seat and screamed like she was being tortured. “Sabrina, sweetheart, you loved this food two minutes ago. What happened?”
“No!”
“Welcome to my world.” Glancing at the plate Sass held, Tonya clearly did some intricate mommy calculations, took the plate from Sass and scraped the food onto the kitchen table right in front of her daughter. “Harder to throw long distances this way,” she muttered as Sass gaped at her. “The diced green beans might get more distance, but mac-and-cheese is too sticky to go anywhere if it’s not traveling by plate. Best to mix it all into one gooey mess.”
“You’d know better than me.”
Ignoring Sabrina’s outraged wails and grabby-hands for the now-empty plate, Tonya turned to rinse it off before dropping it in the dishwasher. “I can’t even picture you and Rude being civil to each other, much less locking lips. How’d it happen?”
“He said he wanted to show me something. I realize now the thing he wanted to show me was how easily I could be had. Just a little tongue action and my motor zooms into overdrive.”
“Tongue,” Sabrina yelled accusingly to the room at large.
“G-rated, as of now.” Taking the airplane spoon from Sass, Tonya gave it to her daughter and sat nearby to supervise. “Whose idea was it to, uh,” she glanced at Sabrina, “try to get to first base?”
Sass stared blankly at her. “I can’t even remember what the fu—”
“G-rated or I kick your A-S-S.”
How they were going to communicate once Sabrina learned how to spell was a mystery to Sass. “As I was saying, I can’t even remember what the eff first base is. But I get your meaning,” she added hastily when her former foster sister did her best impression of a thundercloud. “For your information, I had no intention of even stepping up to the plate. In mean, why would I? The thought never even crossed my mind. Then Rude showed up with a ton of Chinese food, some rice wine that was surprisingly good, and a whole lot of
that word
Sabrina just yelled. Of the three, that was my favorite part of the meal.”
“Wow.” Tonya shook her head. “I have to admit, I’ve always wondered about Rude.”
“Wondered? Wondered what?” It wasn’t like he was a big mystery.
“You have to ask? That boy was a seething volcano of hot-guy hormones and yummy Italian-stallion S-E-X on legs when I came to live at the Panuzzis. You’d already been there about six months or so, so I don’t know—maybe you were already used to him. But I’m telling you, the first thought that went through my head when I saw him was wondering if I could get away with sneaking into his room in the middle of the night and…” Another glance at Sabrina had her biting her lips together. “Trying to score a homerun.”
“What?”
“I was sixteen, he was sixteen, and hormones are hormones. They can’t think, they just get you into trouble, and I was this close to seeing how much trouble they could get me into.” When Sass continued to gape, she blinked innocently. “What? Don’t tell me that thought never occurred to you back in the day. You like to play with the boys just as much as I do.”
“Yeah, but not with
Rude
.” And certainly not back then. She eyed Tonya with new eyes, feeling an odd discomfort at the thought of her climbing into bed with Rude. “You didn’t ever do it, did you? Go for a homerun, I mean?”
“Nah, it wasn’t worth the risk. I’d finally found a good home and I wasn’t going to screw it up—literally. Then he was gone, and I forgot all about him the moment Adam turned those sweet dimples my way and made me tingly in all the right places.”
“Rude has dimples.” Then she pressed her lips together. What the hell was she trying to do, talk Tonya into giving Rude a second look? “Shallow ones. Not nearly as epic as Adam’s. I never knew they were even there until recently.”
“When he finally realized smiling at you was a lot better than ticking you off, you mean?”
“I don’t know what he’s decided, because I don’t know what his main objective is in Operation Sassy Pants. He won’t tell me. Maybe it’s a military secret or something.”
“Wait. What?” Freezing in the process of shoveling mac-and-cheese into her daughter’s reluctant mouth, Tonya gaped at her while some of the food fell off the spoon and plopped back onto the table. “What the ever-loving hell is Operation Sassy Pants?”
“G-rated,” she smugly reminded her, then made a sympathetic noise when Sabrina yelled at her still-frozen mother. “Mommy’s got a potty mouth, doesn’t she, sweetie?”
Tonya quickly went about tucking more food into her child. “Don’t make me ask again, little sister. I felt ridiculous enough saying it the first time around.”
“I suspect it’s Rude’s way of dealing with things—making everything into a goal-oriented operation. It probably helps him feel like he’s in control of a situation. Though I don’t know how I became a
situation
,” she added with a bewildered shake of her head. “I mean, how did that happen? I was avoiding him like the plague.”
“That’s probably what did it—being ignored doesn’t sit well with some men, and I doubt Rude’s used to that kind of thing from a woman. Remember that hoochie woman he had a couple years back when he was stationed in Georgia? What was her name? Mama Coco couldn’t stand her.”
“Rita Jaramillo.” Though Sass had never met her and knew her only from photos and descriptions of her from Frankie, Tonya and Scout, it was hard to forget a woman with platinum blonde hair and black roots, a tan that no sun had ever created unless a person had Oompa Loompa DNA, and a D-cup that looked vaguely ridiculous when matched up her flat ass. “Rude met her at a car show, if I remember correctly.”
“That’s right. She was one of those girls in a bikini top and short-shorts who sprawls on cars like a not-so-virginal sacrifice.”
Sass tried to keep her immediate and profound need to be catty under wraps. “I heard that she was a model?”
“That’s what she said. I say I’m a goddess, but that doesn’t make me one.” Then Tonya shrugged, as if the whole subject was beneath her. “My point is that he met that chick, and within a day she was all over him like a bad rash. That’s probably what he’s used to—women falling all over themselves to offer up homeruns on a silver platter. He’s not the kind of man who’s used to being ignored.”
“So…” Sass’s brows drew together. “Maybe I should offer to play ball with him just to get back some control of my life.”
“I know you’ve always been about controlling things, but obviously Rude’s cut from the same cloth.” Giving up when Sabrina began spitting the food out, Tonya got up and snagged a kitchen towel off a hook near the stove. “What are his objectives in this Operation-whatever?”
“He won’t say. Only that it started out as a desire to make peace, but that objective changed a long time ago and now he’s aiming for something different.”
“Did he say what made him change his objective?”
Sass shook her head. “Nope, and I think he wouldn’t tell me even if I threatened to torture him. Remember, he’s been trained by the military.”
Tonya made a sound that could have meant anything as she went about the task of cleaning up her daughter. “So he’s the one pushing for this to happen, obviously. But the way I see it,
you’re
the one who’s going to have to be very careful in how you walk this tightrope.”
“Tightrope?” She frowned at her former foster sister as Tonya unbuckled Sabrina from her booster seat, set her in a cushy, rectangular play yard, and turned on the small flatscreen TV above the counter to keep her entertained. “What are you talking about?”
“Think about what stopped me from sneaking into his room all those years ago. I chose the stability and welcoming embrace of the Panuzzi family instead of playing around with one of them. You don’t play where you stay, as the saying goes. If you do, you won’t be staying there for long.”
A block of ice dropped into the pit of her stomach. “I’m not
playing
with him, Tonya. He’s pursuing me, full tilt, not the other way around.”
“Yeah, but you’re not stopping him. And I’m not saying you should, so don’t misunderstand. I actually like the idea of you and Rude together.”
That made one of them, as far as Sass was concerned. “So… what’s the problem?”
“I know how you like your relationships.” With a quick look around the kitchen and one last peek at a glassy-eyed Sabrina, she settled back at the table next to Sass. “No strings, no promises, no commitments and no complications. The moment you hook up with one of your pretty boy-toys, we both know you’ve already got one foot out the door. If they get too close or too clingy, you hit the eject button because you don’t like people to get too close. You’re the epitome of a stray—footloose and fancy free.
You’re
the one who does the leaving, before anyone can leave you. That way it doesn’t hurt as much.”
Tonya’s words hit Sass hard enough to make her catch her breath. Apparently the truth really did hurt. “We all have problems making lasting attachments with other people.”
“I’ll be the first to admit it. Mama Coco and Papa Bolo gave it their best shot, trying to teach us that some things can last forever, and I love them for it. But by the time we all reached the Panuzzi house, a lot of damage had been done. We’d learned the ugly truth right from the beginning of life—people leave, because people suck. So it’s better to do the leaving first and not get messy about it.”
“Thus becoming one of those people who suck.” Sass huffed out a short breath, but it didn’t relieve the tension inside. “Do you have a point to all of this?”
“Rude doesn’t know what it’s like to be
us
, my sweet little sister.” Tonya reached over to grab Sass’s hand lying on the table with both of hers. “I know why you do the s-word you do. You can’t settle into a relationship that lasts longer than a couple months, because you have no effing clue how to do it. Life never taught you anything except how to leave people behind, so that’s what you do. You bail at the first sign of trouble, thinking that’s how it’s supposed to be, because that’s how it’s always been. But you can’t do that if you want to go the distance with anyone, and you
especially
can’t do that with Rude. He’s a
Panuzzi
, Sass. If you hurt one of them, you hurt all of them, including Mama Coco and Papa Bolo.”
And she’d thought Tonya’s words had impact before. “How do you suggest I play this out?”
“Don’t
play
. If you’re going to do this with Rude, then
do it.
Do it with everything you’ve got, with all the courage you’ve got, with all the crazy you’ve got. Do your best to not treat him like just another temporary boyfriend you have to try to control, then kick to the curb once you’re done with him. And if you can’t do that, pull out now before it’s too late and damage is done to your relationship with the entire Panuzzi family.”
Sass shivered at the all-or-nothing scenario Tonya laid out in all its terrifying glory. Her first instinct was to pull deep into her Nowhere Place and stay there until she found a way to be content with nothing. That was why she didn’t react when she heard a familiar name on TV.
“Holy shit.” Tonya’s hands squeezed Sass’s hard enough to make her wince. Baffled, she looked up, only to see Tonya staring in horror at the television screen. The cartoon that had been playing was gone, and the noonday news had taken its place.
“…body found floating in the Chicago River early this morning has been identified. Liam Cadwallader, twenty-five, was a barista and part-time musician. Security cameras show Cadwallader closing up the coffeehouse where he worked on Wednesday around midnight. Authorities are now trying to piece together how he came to be naked in the river, with the words ‘unworthy coward’ written in Russian on his chest.”
Russian.
The one word dropped poison into Sass’s veins.
Oh God.
Fucking
Russian
.
Why did it have to be Russian? Unless…
No. It couldn’t possibly be.
It had to be a coincidence.
Maybe Liam had gotten involved in something sinister. Yes, that had to be it. Before he’d tried giving her a flying lesson off the landing and nearly killing her, she hadn’t seen him in six months. She had no clue what sort of trouble he’d been getting up to in all that time. His winding up in the river had nothing whatsoever to do with her. It wasn’t possible.