Loved You First Read online

  Hoods loitering on street corners. Drug deals negotiated out in broad daylight. Hookers already slicked up and stalking their prey. He could smell the stench of overripe garbage and unwashed humanity. His feet crunched on broken glass as they crossed the heaving sidewalk and entered the scarred and graffiti-laden brick building.

  The smells were worse here, trapped inside, where even the fitful September breeze couldn’t reach. Zack maintained his silence as they climbed up three floors, ignoring the shouted arguments behind closed doors and the occasional crash and weeping.

  Nick unlocked the door and stepped into a single room furnished with a sagging iron bed, a broken dresser and a rickety wooden chair braced with a torn phone book. A few heavy-metal posters had been tacked to the stained walls in a pitiful attempt to give the room some personality. Helpless against the rage that geysered inside him, Zack let loose with a string of curses that turned the stale air blue.

  “And what the hell have you been doing with the money I sent home every month when I was at sea? With the salary you were supposed to be earning from the delivery job? You’re living in garbage, Nick. What’s worse, you chose to live in it.”

  Not for a second would Nick have admitted that most of his money had gone into the Cobra treasury. Nor would he have admitted the shame he felt at having Zack see how he lived. “It’s none of your damn business,” he shot back. “This is my place, just like it’s my life. You were never around, were you? Just because you got tired of cruising around on some stupid destroyer doesn’t give you the right to come back here and take over.”

  “I’ve been back two years,” Zack pointed out wearily. “And I spent a year of that watching the old man die. You didn’t bother to come around much, did you?”

  Nick felt a fresh wash of shame, and a deep, desperate sorrow that he was certain Zack could never understand. “He wasn’t my old man.”

  Zack’s head jerked up. Nick’s hands fisted. Violent temper snapped and sizzled in the room. The slightest move would have sparked it into flame. Slowly, effortfully, Zack forced his body to relax.

  “I’m not going to waste my time telling you he did the best he could.”

  “How the hell do you know?” Nick tossed back. “You weren’t here. You got out your way, bro. I got out mine.”

  “Which brings us full circle. Pack up what you want, and let’s go.”

  “This is my place—” Zack moved so quickly that the snarl caught in Nick’s throat. He was up against the wall, Zack’s big hands holding him in place while his thin body quivered with rage. Zack’s face was so close to his, all Nick could see were those dark, dangerous eyes.

  “For the next two months, like it or not, your place is with me. Now cut the crap and get some clothes together. Your free ride’s over.” He released Nick, knowing he had the strength and skill to snap his defiant young brother in half. “You got ten minutes, kid. You’re working tonight.”

  By seven, Rachel was indulging a fantasy about a steamy bubble bath, a glass of crisp white wine and an hour with a good book. It helped ease the discomfort of the crowded subway car. She braced her feet against the swaying, kept her gaze focused on the middle distance. There were a few rough-looking characters scattered through the car whom she’d assessed and decided to ignore. A wino was snoring in the seat behind her, his face hidden under a newspaper.

  At her stop, she bulled her way out, then started up the steps into the wet, windy evening. Hunched in her jacket, she fought with her umbrella, then slogged the two blocks to Lower the Boom.

  The beveled glass door was heavy. She tugged it open and stepped out of the chill into the warmth, sounds and scents of an established neighborhood bar. It wasn’t the dive she’d been expecting, but a wide wood-paneled room with a glossy mahogany bar trimmed in brass. The stools were burgundy leather, and every one was occupied. Neat tables were set around the room to accommodate more customers. There were the scents of whiskey and beer, cigarette smoke and grilled onions. A jukebox played the blues over the hum of conversation.

  She spotted two waitresses winding their way through the patrons. No fishnet stockings and cleavage, Rachel mused. Both women were dressed in white slacks with modified sailor tops. There was a great deal of laughter, and she caught snatches of an argument as to whether the Mets still had a chance to make the play-offs.

  Zack was in the center of the circular bar, drawing a beer for a customer. He’d exchanged his sweatshirt for a cable-knit turtleneck in navy blue. Oh, yes, she could see him on the deck of a ship, Rachel realized. Braced against the rolling, face to the wind. The bar’s nautical theme, with its ship’s bells and anchors, suited him.

  She conjured up an image of him in uniform, found it entirely too attractive, and blinked it away.

  She wasn’t the fanciful type, she reminded herself. She was certainly no romantic. Above all, she was not the kind of woman who walked into a bar and found herself attracted to some land-locked sailor with shaggy hair, big shoulders and rough hands.

  The only reason she was here was to uphold the court’s ruling. However distasteful it might be to be hooked up with Zackary Muldoon for two months, she would do her duty.

  But where was Nick?

  “Would you like a table, miss?”

  Rachel glanced around at a diminutive blonde hefting a large tray laden with sandwiches and beer. “No, thanks. I’ll just go up to the bar. Is this place always crowded?”

  The waitress’s gray eyes brightened as she looked around the room. “Is it crowded? I didn’t notice.” With a laugh, she moved off while Rachel walked to the bar. She eased her way between two occupied stools, rested a foot on the brass rail and waited to catch Zack’s eye.

  “Well, darling…” The man on her left had a plump, pleasant face. He shifted on his stool to get a better look. “Don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”

  “No.” Since he looked old enough to be her father, Rachel granted him a small smile. “You haven’t.”

  “Pretty young girl like you shouldn’t be here all alone.” He leaned back—his stool creaking dangerously—and slapped the man on her other side on the shoulder. “Hey, Harry, we ought to buy this lady a drink.”

  Harry, who continued to sip his beer and work a crossword puzzle in the dim light, merely nodded. “Sure thing, Pete. Set it up. I need a five-letter word for the possibility of danger or pain.”

  Rachel glanced up. Zack was watching her, his blue eyes dark and steady, his bony face set and unsmiling. She felt something hot streak up her spine. “Peril,” she murmured, and fought off a shudder.

  “Yeah! Hey, thanks!” Pleased, Harry pushed up his reading glasses and smiled at her. “First drink’s on me. What’ll you have, honey?”

  “Pouilly-Fumé.” Zack set a glass of pale gold wine in front of her. “And the first one’s on the house.” He lifted a brow. “That suit you, Counselor?”

  “Yes.” She let out the breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “Thank you.”

  “Zack always gets the prettiest ones,” Pete said with a sigh. “Tip me another, kid. Least you can do, since you stole my girl.” He shot Rachel a wink that had her relaxing with a smile again.

  “And how often does he steal your girls, Pete?”

  “Once, twice a week. It’s humiliating.” He grinned at Zack over a fresh beer. “Old Zack did date one of my girls once. Remember that time you were home on leave, Zack, you took my Rosemary to the movies, out to Coney Island? She’s married and working on her second kid now.”

  Zack mopped up the bar with a cloth. “She broke my heart.”

  “There isn’t a female alive who’s scratched your heart, much less broken it.” This from the blonde waitress, who slapped an empty tray on the bar. “Two house wines, white. A Scotch, water back, and a draft. Harry, you ought to buy yourself one of those little clip-on lights before you ruin what’s left of your eyes.”

  “You broke my heart, Lola.” Zack put some glasses on the tray. “Why do you thi
nk I ran off and joined the navy?”

  “Because you knew how good you’d look in dress whites.” She laughed, hefted the tray, then glanced at Rachel. “You watch out for that one, sweetie. He’s dangerous.”

  Rachel sipped at her wine and tried to pretend the scents slipping out from the kitchen weren’t making her stomach rumble. “Have you got a minute?” she asked Zack. “I need to see where you’re living.”

  Pete let out a hoot and rolled his eyes. “What’s the guy got?” he wanted to know.

  “More than you’ll ever have.” Zack grinned at him and signaled to another bartender to cover for him. “I just seem to attract aggressive women. Can’t keep their hands off me.”

  Rachel finished off her wine before sliding from the stool. “I can restrain myself if I put my mind to it. Though it pains me to mar his reputation,” she said to Pete, “I’m his brother’s lawyer.”

  “No fooling?” Impressed, Pete took a closer look. “You the one who got the kid out of jail?”

  “For the time being. Muldoon?”

  “Right this way for the tour.” He flipped up a section of the bar and stepped through. Again he took her arm. “Try to keep up.”

  “You know, I don’t need you to hold on to me. I’ve been walking on my own for some time.”

  He pushed open a heavy swinging door that led to the kitchen. “I like holding on to you.”

  Rachel got the impression of gleaming stainless steel and white porcelain, the heavy scent of frying potatoes and grilling meat, before her attention was absorbed by an enormous man. He was dressed all in white, and his full apron was splattered and stained. Because he towered over Zack, Rachel estimated him at halfway to seven feet and a good three-fifty. If he’d played football, he would have been the entire defensive line.

  His face was shiny from the kitchen heat, and the color of india ink. There was a scar running from one coal-black eye down to his massive chin. His hamlike hands were delicately building a club sandwich.

  “Rio, this is Rachel Stanislaski, Nick’s lawyer.”

  “How-de-do.” She caught the musical cadence of the West Indies in his voice. “Got that boy washing dishes like a champ. Only broke him five or six all night.”

  Standing at a huge double sink, up to the elbows in soapy water, Nick turned his head and scowled. “If you call cleaning up someone else’s slop a job, you can just—”

  “Now don’t you be using that language around this lady here.” Rio picked up a cleaver and brought it down with a thwack to cut the sandwich in two, then four. “My mama always said nothing like washing dishes to give a body plenty of time for searching the soul. You keep washing and searching, boy.”

  Nick would have liked to have said more. Oh, he’d have loved to. But it was hard to argue with a seven-foot man holding a meat cleaver. He went back to muttering.

  Rio smiled, and noted that Rachel was eyeing the sandwich. “How ’bout I fix you some hot meal? You can eat after you finish your business.”

  “Oh, I…” Her mouth was watering. “I really should get home.”

  “Zack, he’s going to see you home after you’re done. It’s too late for a woman to go walking the streets by herself.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Dish her up some of your chili, Rio,” Zack suggested as he pulled Rachel toward a set of stairs. “This won’t take long.”

  Rachel found herself trapped, hip to hip with him in a narrow staircase. He smelled of the sea, she realized, of that salty, slightly electric scent that meant a storm was brewing beyond the horizon. “It’s very kind of you to offer, Muldoon, but I don’t need a meal, or an escort.”

  “You’ll get both, need them or not.” He turned, effectively trapping her against the wall. It felt good to have his body brush hers. As good as he’d imagined it would. “I never argue with Rio. I met him in Jamaica about six years ago—in a little bar tussle. I watched him pick up a two-hundred-pound man and toss him through a wall. Now, Rio’s mostly a peaceful sort of man, but if you get him riled, there’s no telling what he might do.” Zack lifted a hand and wound a lock of Rachel’s hair around his finger. “Your hair’s wet.”

  She slapped his hand away and tried to pretend her heart wasn’t slamming in her throat. “It’s raining.”

  “Yeah. I can smell it on you. You sure are something to look at, Rachel.”

  She couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move back, so she did the only thing open to her. She bristled like a cornered cat. “You’re in my way, Muldoon. My advice is to move your butt and save the Irish charm for someone who’ll appreciate it.”

  “In a minute. Was that Russian you yelled after your brother today?”

  “Ukrainian,” she said between her teeth.

  “Ukrainian.” He considered that, and her. “I never made it to the Soviet Union.”

  She lifted a brow. “Neither have I. Now can we save this discussion until after I’ve seen the living arrangements?”

  “All right.” He started up the steps again, his hand on the small of her back. “It’s not much, but I can guarantee it’s a large step up from the dump Nick was living in. I don’t know why he—” He cut himself off and shrugged. “Well, it’s done.”

  Rachel had a feeling it was just beginning.

  CHAPTER 3

  Though it brought on all manner of headaches, Rachel took her new charge seriously. She could handle the inconvenience, the extra time sliced out of her personal life, Nick’s surly and continued resentment. What gave her the most trouble was the enforced proximity with Zackary Muldoon.

  She couldn’t dismiss him and she couldn’t work around him. Having to deal with him on what was essentially a day-to-day basis was sending her stress level through the roof.

  If only she could pigeonhole him, she thought as she walked from the subway to her apartment after a Sunday dinner with her family, it would somehow make things easier. But after nearly a week of trying, she hadn’t even come close.

  He was rough, impatient, and, she suspected, potentially violent. Yet he was concerned enough about his stepbrother to shell out money and—much more vital—time and energy to set the boy straight. In his off hours, he dressed in clothes more suited to the rag basket than his tall, muscled frame. Yet when she’d walked through his apartment over the bar, she’d found everything neat as a pin. He was always putting his hands on her—her arm, her hair, her shoulder—but he had yet to make the kind of move she was forever braced to repel.

  He flirted with his female customers, but as far as Rachel had been able to glean, it stopped at flirtation. He’d never been married, and though he’d left his family for months, even years, at a time, he’d given up the sea and had landlocked himself when his father became too ill to care for himself.

  He irritated her on principle. But on some deeper, darker level, the very things about him that irritated her fanned little flames in her gut that Rachel could only describe as pure lust.

  She’d tried to cool them by reminding herself that she wasn’t the lusty type. Passionate, yes. When it came to her work, her family and her ambitions. But men, though she enjoyed their companionship and their basic maleness, had never been at the top of her list of priorities.

  Sex was even lower than that. And it was very annoying to find herself itchy.

  So who was Zackary Muldoon, and would she be better off not knowing?

  When he stepped out of the shadows into the glow of a streetlight, she jolted and choked back a scream.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I— Damn it, you scared me to death.” She brought a trembling hand back out of her purse, where it had shot automatically toward a bottle of Mace. Oh, she hated to be frightened. Detested having to admit she could be vulnerable. “What are you doing lurking out here in front of my building?”

  “Looking for you. Don’t you ever stay home?”

  “Muldoon, with me it’s party, party, party.” She stalked up the steps and jammed her key in the
outer door. “What do you want?”

  “Nick took off.”

  She stopped halfway through the door, and he bumped solidly into her. “What do you mean, took off?”

  “I mean he slipped out of the kitchen sometime this afternoon, when Rio wasn’t looking. I can’t find him.” He was so furious—with Nick, with Rachel, with himself—that it took all of his control not to punch his fist through the wall. “I’ve been at it almost five hours, and I can’t find him.”

  “All right, don’t panic.” Her mind was already clicking ahead as she walked through the tiny lobby to the single gate-fronted elevator. “It’s early, just ten o’clock. He knows his way around.”

  “That’s the trouble.” Disgusted with himself, Zack stepped in the car with her. “He knows his way around too well. The rule was, he’d tell me when he was going, and where. I’ve got to figure he’s hanging out with the Cobras.”

  “Nick’s not going to break that kind of tie overnight.” Rachel continued to think as the elevator creaked its way up to the fourth floor. “We can drive ourselves crazy running around the city trying to hunt him down, or we can call in the cavalry.”

  “The cavalry?”

  She shoved the gate open and walked into the hallway. “Alex.”

  “No cops,” Zack said quickly, grabbing her arms. “I’m not setting the cops on him.”

  “Alex isn’t just a cop. He’s my brother.” Struggling to hold on to her own patience, she pried his fingers from her arms. “And I’m an officer of the court, Zack. If Nick’s breaking the provisions, I can’t ignore it.”

  “I’m not going to see him tossed back in a cell barely a week after I got him out.”

  “We got him out,” she corrected, then unlocked her door. “If you didn’t want my help and advice, you shouldn’t have come.”

  Zack shrugged and stepped inside. “I guess I figured we could go out looking together.”

  The room was hardly bigger than the one Nick had rented, but it was all female. Not flouncy, Zack thought. Rachel wouldn’t go for flounce. There were vivid colors in the plump pillows tossed over a low-armed sofa. The scented candles were burned down to various lengths, and mums were just starting to fade in a china vase.