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There hadn’t been many men in her life. The few she’d dated in college were bookish introverts who’d had no problem keeping her company in the library on Saturday nights. Getting a scholarship to college had been an opportunity she’d had no intention of wasting.
Rennie had stayed out of the social scene, partially out of self-preservation and partially because she’d been too numb inside to allow herself any fun.
“You’ve never dated a bad boy? Not even in high school?” Alise asked. “No guys who drove too fast or smoked under the bleachers?”
“Uh…well, maybe one. But everyone just thought he was a bad boy. He really wasn’t.” Rennie stiffened. At least, she hadn’t thought so at the time.
“I see. It’s the old ‘he’s just misunderstood’ routine,” Marlena said. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why did everyone think he was a bad boy?”
Rennie bit her lip. “Because he was in a gang.” She felt her face heat, knowing how incriminating her words sounded. Alise and Marlena had grown up in normal suburban households. She couldn’t expect them to understand how complicated circumstances had been then.
“Whoa.” Alise’s eyes went wide.
“A gang?” Marlena looked intrigued. “As in Crips and Bloods? That type of a gang?”
Rennie shifted uncomfortably in the booth. “Sort of, but it was a much smaller local gang.” Why had she opened her big mouth?
Marlena grinned wickedly, clearly enjoying herself. That meant she was getting ready to grill Rennie over an open flame. “So, Ren, how did your guy look in a pair of jeans?”
Rennie was surprised that she still felt a gnawing ache in her heart when she allowed herself to think about Gray. So many regrets. So many what ifs. But despite the sting, her body still remembered him with heat that could burn white-hot.
“He was really good-looking,” Rennie said, wishing she hadn’t allowed herself to become the center of attention. “He was light-skinned with a body like a Chippendale’s dancer. Need I say more?” Her description didn’t do him justice, but it was enough to satisfy her friends.
Alise pushed her daiquiri, half full, to the side so she could lean closer to Rennie. “What was he like?”
“He was sweet. Gray looked out for me. He made sure no one bothered me, and—”
“Gray?” Marlena’s brow wrinkled. “Is that his real name?”
Rennie shrugged. “His first name is Keshon, but his mother named him after an uncle who was, as he liked to say, a few ants short of a picnic. Everybody’s always called him Gray.”
“So give us the dirt, girl.” Marlena was through warming up. She was ready to get tough. “So far you’re making him sound like a Boy Scout, but a guy who ran with a gang can’t be a complete angel.”
“I’m not saying he was, but it’s not what you think. The only reason he joined was to look out for my older brother.”
“Your brother was in a gang?” Lines of confusion creased Alise’s forehead. “I didn’t even know you had a brother. You never mention him.”
“He was killed when I was fourteen.” Rennie drained the rest of her margarita without tasting a drop of it. Suddenly, she felt exposed. That was a time in her life she didn’t want to revisit.
Her friends made sympathetic coos before falling into silence. Rennie banged on the table. “Hey, what’s with the long faces? I didn’t mean to bring everybody down. We came out tonight to have fun.”
Alise still looked a bit stunned, but Marlena immediately picked up on Rennie’s plea to change the subject. She signaled for the waitress.
“When is your girl Sarita performing, Ren? I’m in the mood to kick up my heels.” Marlena wriggled her shoulders to the music.
Rennie looked at her watch. “She should be taking the stage any minute now.” Sure enough, a few minutes later, the lights dimmed and Sarita was introduced.
The curtain parted, revealing a bandstand in front of a giant sand castle. Red and yellow spotlights swirled, and Sarita ran on stage wearing a short dress in a stunning electric blue. The lights went up, and she began to sing a swinging salsa number. The infectious tempo of the conga drums had Rennie and her friends dancing in their seats. It wasn’t long before Marlena stood, grabbed a guy lounging at the bar and began spinning around the dance floor.
Sarita sang four more songs before the lights dimmed on stage and she disappeared behind the curtain.
Marlena returned to the table, dabbing her forehead gently with a cocktail napkin. “That was fun. Why didn’t you guys come out?”
Alise laughed. “We didn’t feel like being up-staged. Where did you learn those fancy dance steps?”
“My ex-boyfriend taught me to salsa. He was a really boring date until you got him on the dance floor. Too bad he never learned to move his hips like that off the dance floor.” The three women shared another round of raucous laughter.
Rennie nudged Alise so she could slide out of the booth. “I’m going to try to catch up with Sarita backstage. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Gray entered the storage room behind Ocean’s Sand Castle Lounge, where Flex and Los were stacking crates. Despite the years they’d spent apart, Gray knew the guys working with him would take a bullet for him just as quickly now as they would have at sixteen when they’d been running the streets together.
There were five of them left, including Gray, and nothing bonded a group of men together more than knowing each one would die for the other. That’s what being in a gang meant. It was family—bound together by choice rather than genetic obligation. It meant never being alone or on your own.
That simple truth should have made things easier for Gray, but a lot of the time it only made what he had to do more difficult.
“Hey, G.” Los passed with a loaded hand truck, humming the theme song to “The Jeffersons.”
“Hey. I tried to break away in time to help you guys unload the truck, but I got tied up working the door.” Gray walked over to the closest shipment. “Kalashnikovs?”
“Yep, sixty crates,” Flex answered, stacking the last one.
Gray rubbed his hands together. “Let’s have a look.”
Los handed him a crowbar, and Gray brushed away the packing material to inspect the gun.
Flex leaned forward, issuing a low whistle. “Man, that is tight. When you gonna hook me up with one of those?”
Gray’s laugh had an icy edge. “We don’t deal on the front lines anymore. Don’t think street thug, think businessman. Trust me, if you find yourself in need of this kind of hardware on the regular, you’re doing something wrong.”
“Yeah.” Los smacked Flex in the back of the head.
Flex shrugged. “Hell, I just thought I might, you know, start a collection or something.”
Gray opened a few more crates and did a quick count to make sure all the guns were accounted for. The client for this particular shipment wasn’t one of the heavy hitters, but Gray had built a reputation for providing reliable service, and these small-time deals were starting to lead them to the big ones.
The biggest problem Gray had faced in the last few months was convincing his boys to look at the big picture. When he’d rolled into town, they were still committing petty crimes with quick payoffs they could blow through in less than a day. Most of them didn’t have the patience for the kind of jobs that would bring in real money.
Their world hadn’t changed much while he’d been gone. Success was still measured more by what you owned than by how you lived. In the neighborhood they had all grown up in, the trick had been to live hard and collect as many toys as possible because no one expected to live long.
Life had a different value on their side of town. A good pair of athletic shoes was worth more than a kid’s life. For teenagers, even light conversation was heavy. Instead of talking about which couples were hooking up or breaking up, they talked about who’d been shot lately. Instead of fantasizing about the kinds of jobs they would get or the houses they would buy, they picked out the music for their funerals and the types of caskets they wanted.
How, Gray wondered, was anyone supposed to have hope for the future? For them, a better life just didn’t exist.
This was it. The only way out of the ghetto was drugs and guns. So why not do it right? No more petty thieving. No more quick payoffs. Why not hold out for the big score? They knew how to get the money, but it took a lot of planning and patience.
The transition from street thug to businessman had been easiest for Los, who looked more like a fashion model than a common thug, anyway. He was willing to do anything that would bring in enough loot to keep him in designer clothes, trendy cars and materialistic women.
Franco, Los’s younger brother, who was tending bar in the VIP lounge, wasn’t much of a problem, either. He did whatever his older brother told him to do, but Woody and Flex were another matter.
Woody had gotten his leg shot off in a drive-by when he was eighteen. Even though his prosthesis wasn’t really made of wood, no one could resist the nickname. He hadn’t been too keen on the idea of checking ID and collecting cover charges at the door. He and Flex still didn’t understand why they had to do real work at the club in addition to their private endeavors. But their positions at Ocean were crucial to the operation.
As long as they got their work done and made regular contributions, Ocean’s manager, Paul Nocchio, didn’t care what other business the men conducted on the side. It hadn’t taken Gray long to make connections with local arms dealers and begin to funnel business through the club. With just a few deals, he’d been able to start swimming with the big fish.
Now he planned to catch himself a shark.
Sarita leaned over and gave Rennie a hug. “Thank you so much for coming, chica.”
Rennie squeezed her in return. “Thanks for the invitation. We’re having a great time. Are you doing another set tonight?”
Sarita nodded. “One more at ten-thirty. Then I’m going home to get some sleep. I was so keyed up about this performance that I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
“Then I’ll let you get ready,” Rennie said, backing toward the door. “I’ll see you at our group session tomorrow evening?”
“You bet.” Sarita walked her to the door. “Do you know how to get out? This place can be confusing, and all the doors backstage look the same. Make sure you leave through the second door. Otherwise, you’ll end up in the storage room.”
Rennie stepped into the hallway, feeling a rush of pride for Sarita. She’d come such a long way in just nine months. When Rennie met her, Sarita had been dancing in a run-down strip bar trying to pay for her sister’s hospital bills after the younger girl had her face slashed by an all-girl gang. It had taken Rennie months to get Sarita to trust her.
Now Sarita was going to nursing school, working part-time at the hospital, and she’d even met someone special. Her new boyfriend, who worked as a bouncer at Ocean, had helped Sarita get this singing gig. Rennie smiled. She was really beginning to feel like she’d made a difference in the young woman’s life.
Rennie was so caught up in her thoughts, she forgot Sarita’s instructions. Not sure which of the identical doors led to the club, Rennie exited through the first one she came to.
“Oops,” she exclaimed as three men immediately whirled around. “Sorry, I think I’m lost—”
Somewhere in her subconscious, Rennie knew her mouth had stopped forming words and her lower lip was hanging lamely, but she was powerless to do anything about it.
Rennie had been hit by a wave of recognition so strong, it forced her backward several steps. Blinking rapidly, she tried to pull herself together, struggling to catch her breath. Had that one margarita given her hallucinations? It just couldn’t be….
“Gray? Is that you?” she whispered.
Chapter 2
“Rennie…” In the split second it took for Gray to register her presence, several emotions jolted through him like bolts of lightning.
Some of the sensations he was feeling were reflected in her eyes, like the surprise and excitement, the regret…and especially the pain. The sight of her brought an immediate and stabbing ache ten times more intense than what he’d felt each time he’d thought of her over the years.
But one emotion was entirely his own, and it took precedence over all the others. That emotion was raw, undiluted fear.
It kept him rooted to the spot, staring and shaking his head, until someone cleared a throat behind them, launching him into action. He pulled her to him in a brief embrace, and in one motion spun her around to face the door. Taking her elbow, he led her to the corridor. “Now that you know what’s behind door number one, let’s try door number two.”
They were both silent as he guided her to the main room of the club. To avoid losing her in the crowd, he took her hand and pulled her toward a roped-off staircase. “The VIP section of the club is upstairs. It’s much less crowded there.”
Gray didn’t just want to get her to a quiet corner where they could talk, he wanted to get her as far away from the gun shipment as possible. It made him crazy to think about how close she’d come to seeing something she shouldn’t have back there.
He still didn’t know how to process her sudden appearance. When he’d come back to L.A., he hadn’t believed for a second that he might run into Rennie. When she left him to go to college in Texas, he’d been certain she wasn’t coming back.
This was the last place he would have chosen for their reunion.
Gray led her to the bar, releasing her hand, which had been trembling in his. Clearly, she was as nervous at this unexpected meeting as he was. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Just water.”
While he gave her order to Franco, in the mirror he saw her run a self-conscious hand over the back of her hair.
Rennie had nothing to worry about. She looked perfect. As a teenager, she’d been pretty, with lots of potential. As an adult, she was heart-stopping. Especially in that short, clingy little dress she was wearing.
After he handed her the glass, Gray motioned her to a quiet corner table. Once she was seated across from him, she gulped her water, as if to avoid being the first to speak.
He smiled at her, trying to put her at ease. “It’s good to see you.”
She nodded. “Yes, it is. I mean it’s good for me to see you. That is, good to see you, too.”
He couldn’t help laughing out loud. “Yes, I knew what you meant.”
“This is so strange. I was just talking about you to a couple of my girlfriends.”
“Did you come with them tonight?” It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that she might have come with a date. His eyes darted to her left hand. No wedding band.
“Yes, I did. We’re having a sort of…girls’ night out…thing.”
Gray felt a smile curling his lips again. He’d never seen her this frazzled before. He made another attempt to get her to lighten up. “Are you sure that water isn’t going to your head? Maybe I should have the bartender cut you off for the night. Or maybe you need something stronger. Relax,” he said, touching the back of her hand.
She pulled back as though he’d burned her, then tried to cover her reaction by grabbing her water glass and draining it as if it were a fifth of Scotch. “I know you must think I’m wound too tight, but I wasn’t prepared to see you here. It’s kind of spooky, really. Because, like I said, I was just talking about you. It’s as if you walked right out of my thoughts.”
“You were just talking about me, huh? What did you say?”
She shrugged and then began looking around as though she couldn’t get enough of the blue velvet upholstery, marble floors or scenic ocean tapestries. Clearly she wanted to change the subject.
He opened his mouth to ask her if she’d moved to the city or was just visiting when she turned to him.
“So, how was prison? I mean, how have you been?”
Gray flinched before he could stop himself. He didn’t know who had told her, and it really didn’t matter. The bottom line was that…she knew.
“I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. I don’t know why I blurted that out like that.”
He felt his whole body go cold, and he welcomed the numbness that came with it. Gray raised his gaze to hers. Neither her stunned expression nor the hint of a blush on her mahogany cheeks fazed him. Sure, she hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but he knew exactly what she saw when she looked at him—an overgrown thug and an ex-convict.
The fact that he’d been to prison must have been on her mind the entire time. For all he knew, she’d been acting so rattled out of fear instead of nerves.
His mind replayed the image of her flinching when he’d touched her.
“Don’t apologize. I know why you said it. You want me to tell you it isn’t true, right?”
She seemed to be holding her breath. “Is it?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart. It’s true.”
Rennie chewed on her lower lip. “What happened?”
