That peace lasted for all of ten minutes before I heard the heavy engine roar as it came up the street and parked in the garage at the back.
His footsteps echoed from the other side of the wall as he came up the sidewalk. The gate buzzed, swung open, and he was there.
Emitting his own gravity.
He was wearing tattered jeans and another thread-bare tee, this one white and stretched taut across his strong chest.
“Mia . . . what are you doing out here this late?” The words were grated, scraping across my flesh like the seductive rake of teeth.
A shiver rolled down my spine, and I clutched my wine glass to my chest as I sat forward a little, my legs dipping deeper into the cool waters like it could halt the flashfire that lit in my body. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to be. Both you and my brother seem to think I need to be permanently locked in my room. I might as well be Brendon and Kallie with the way you treat me.”
Maybe it was a challenge. A gauntlet. A tease.
Anything to ease the tension that was banging between us.
He huffed a sound and looked to the side before bringing that penetrating gaze back to me. “Had I known you were going to be out here this late, I wouldn’t have left.”
Skeptical laugher rippled from my mouth, and I took a sip of my wine. “I thought you were here to play. I wasn’t aware that my brother had hired you as a body guard.”
“Maybe you’d be better off if he had. Seems it would have served a better purpose.”
“I don’t need a babysitter. I’ve seen plenty in my life. I’m not helpless.”
His head shook, his hair tossing shadows against the brick walls where the yard lights glowed across his face. “Never implied you were, but you have more important things to be living for than I do.”
There was something in his voice, the twist of a knife slashing his tongue that had me swiveling my attention fully to him. My eyes narrowed as I tried to make him out better through the lapping darkness. “Why would you say that?”
Blowing out a sigh, he glanced toward the wing of the house where my children slept. “I think we both know what’s really important in life, don’t we?”
My spirit clutched in an erratic way, and a thick, solid lump formed at the base of my throat.
“I know what’s important to me,” I answered on a haggard breath.
A smile tugged at his mouth. One that was utterly sad. Beautiful and dark and invading the space.
This man that was terrifyingly beautiful and devastatingly bad.
Written in the scars he wouldn’t allow anyone to see.
“Do you want to join me?” I asked, lifting the bottle of wine I had sitting on the cool deck beside me.
Blatant enticement.
Apparently, I was wanting a few more of those scars for myself.
But I couldn’t get over the other night. The way he’d touched me. Kissed me. The way for a few blinding moments, I’d felt utterly alive.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mia.”
“Friends,” I told him. God. I was so full of shit. “We’ve been managing that, haven’t we?”
He laughed a harsh sound. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
“I do.”
He blew out an exasperated sound, his face downturned, hesitating, before he finally gave and started to move in my direction. He grabbed the end of a pool lounger and dragged it over to where I was, sitting down on the very end of it about a foot away.
He rested his forearms on his thighs.
His lean, cut body on edge.
I could almost feel his spirit fluttering in the stagnant air.
“Not exactly dressed in pool attire.” He gestured to his boots and jeans before his gaze was sweeping me, my tank and short shorts, my bare legs exposed in the muted light in the water.
Hunger flashed in his eyes.
Desire and need.
Chills rolled. Goosebumps a ripple across my skin.
I cleared my throat and forced a light smile as I swiveled to face him, offering him my glass of wine. “I share as well as my son does.”
Chuckling, Leif reached over and grabbed the full bottle instead. He tipped the entire thing up as he brought it to his mouth. His thick throat bobbed as he swallowed, his lips drenched in the sticky sweetness when he pulled the bottle away.
He used the back of his hand to wipe his mouth, eyeing me the whole time.
I gulped.
Why did he have to be so sexy?
He gave a new meaning to the Law of Attraction.
His own gravitational pull.
I felt like I was orbiting him.
Wanting more but terrified to get too close.
He angled his head to study me, and I took a shaky sip of my wine like it might stand as a good enough distraction to keep me from crawling on my hands and knees to him.
“How are you doing, Mia?” His voice was serious. Hard but full of care.
God. This man. He was going to be my undoing.
I laughed out a brittle sound and let my gaze wander across the yard. “Other than the fact I can’t sleep? Jumping at every bump in the night?” Aside from the sorrow and the mourning? Aside from how damned badly I was aching to feel him?
“Great.”
He expelled a low grunt of disbelief. “Great, huh?”
“Absolutely. Look at this place. How could I complain?”
Those eyes traced, warm brown-sugar again. “It seems you’re missing something to me.”
I exhaled a heavy sound, looking out at the gentle ripples of the water before I got brave enough to look back at him. “When you lose someone you care about most, there’s bound to be something missing, isn’t there?”
“Yeah.” He said it without hesitation.
Hard and fast.
He left no question that it was from experience.
My eyes squeezed shut for a moment. “I just . . .”
I opened them to him waiting. Waiting on me. “I just can’t make sense of it. Why? Why so much violence? A beautiful life wasted . . . and for what? I . . . I wish I would have given him the money. Wished I didn’t push that panic button. He warned me not to move, and I did it, anyway.”
Guilt crushed down on my chest. A thousand pounds of rocks. Burying me.
My words rushed out with the sorrow. “If I just would have listened to him, Lana would still be here today. He told me . . . he told me if I just gave him what he was after, he wouldn’t hurt us. And I . . . I panicked, Leif.”
My lips pursed in anguish. “One mistake. One I’m not ever going to have the chance to make up for.”
His face pinched, and his teeth clamped down on his bottom lip as he shifted forward another inch. The muscles in his arms ticked.
I couldn’t tell if it was rage or desire.
If he was holding himself back or letting himself go.
“You don’t know that, Mia. You have no idea what a monster is going to do. When a man is nothing but cruel and vile. The length he will go. The thirst for blood.”
My entire being cringed at the thought. “That is something I will never understand. Life is precious. It should be treasured and cherished. How could someone take it so casually and carelessly?”
His expression shifted.
Grief.
Regret.
Hatred.
My insides trembled.
God. Who was this man?
He fisted his big hands between his knees. “Sometimes people become monsters without knowing it’s happening. Caught up in lawlessness before they realize who they have become.”