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He looked struck, almost like he’d forgotten. “Yeah, sorry.” Releasing her, he stepped away. “Guess for a woman like you, that puts a damper on things?”
For other women it wouldn’t? She curled her lip. “Yeah, afraid so.” But she wished it was otherwise. “Why were you on the run?”
Resigned, he said, “It had nothing to do with dodging my duty, so forget that.”
“No little Rowdys running around?”
“Hell, no. I’m always careful, but if it did happen, you can bet I wouldn’t bail on them.”
She believed him. From what she’d seen so far, Rowdy never shirked his responsibility, whatever he decided his responsibility might be. “Okay.”
Maybe thinking she mocked him, he studied her a moment before being satisfied with her sincerity. “I would never do that to a kid.”
Hands behind her, she leaned back against the pole. “So...why did you move around?”
“Mostly because the idea of settling down never appealed to me.”
“Wanderlust?” Before her life had taken such a drastic turn, she’d enjoyed traveling everywhere in the States and often around the world. Before she was twenty, she’d already been to more than two dozen hot tourist spots.
“Hardly. I stayed in the area.”
“The area being Ohio?”
He shrugged. “My sister was here. Still is, but now she’s with Logan and she doesn’t need...” He stopped, cursed low and let out a long breath. Indicating the couch, he said, “If we’re going to do this, you want to sit down?”
“This, meaning talk?”
His mouth quirked. “Unless you have something else on your mind.”
She had all kinds of things on her mind, but none of them were appropriate. “Talk it is.”
“Then I’ll give you my bare-bones history.”
Jumping on that promise, Avery headed for the couch. “Why only the bare bones?”
Rowdy sat close beside her and stretched out one arm along the back of the couch. “It’s a long story, it’ll be morning soon and I don’t feel like rehashing it all.”
“I suppose you’re tired.” From what she could tell, he’d been up all night. If he’d slept at all, it would only have been for a few hours before coming in to work again. That should have made her feel guilty for keeping him awake, but she remembered why he hadn’t slept and it irked her.
As if he knew her thoughts, Rowdy smiled. “We can talk until the sun rises if that’s what you really want to do.”
It wouldn’t be the worst way to spend the night. “You don’t need to sleep?”
His attention moved over her face, her throat, her shoulders. “I’ve never needed much sleep.”
Given the intensity of his gaze, she almost felt naked. “You’re sure?”
His fingers trailed down her ponytail. “Fire away, honey, before I forget my promise.”
Avery tried to relax. It wasn’t easy, not with her thigh touching his, his heat surrounding her, his presence so...overwhelming—as usual.
To start, she went back a little in history. “That time I hid you in the pantry at the bar, I asked if you were in trouble, and you said pretty much always.”
“I have no problem making up shit when necessary, but for some reason I didn’t want to lie to you.”
Had he never lived aboveboard? What type of upbringing made him so casually accepting of difficulty? “There were five men searching the bar for you. Why?”
His hand stilled. “Because I’d asked too many questions, and I was getting too close.”
“Too close to what?”
“A trafficking operation.” She started to ask, but he shook his head. “No, not drugs. Women.”
Her throat tightened. “That’s...”
He agreed with a nod. “Totally fucked up, I know. I hid because there were too many of them. Three or four I could handle.” He held up a hand for her to see. “I’m a big man with big fists. When I hit someone, he feels it.” He rested his hand on her thigh. “I know how to fight dirty, and I know how to win. But five men at once? That would be pushing it.”
Of course, she recalled another time when he’d taken apart the goons who’d been involved in forcing women to transport drugs. It had all transpired in the bar just prior to Rowdy buying it. He’d fought with such ease, walking through the men as if they were nothing at all. “I’ve seen you fight. You’re dangerous.”
“You learn to be when it’s necessary.”
Sitting more or less snuggled into his side, she inhaled the warm musk of his skin with every breath. That, combined with the idea of him playing defender for so many women in need, left her liquid with desire. Rowdy used his size and strength to protect.
Such an admirable trait to have.
So different from her own personal experience.
Without even trying that hard—just by being himself—Rowdy pulled her from her self-imposed exile. “You’re a regular white knight, aren’t you?”
He eased closer. “Want to see my sword?”
A hero and a comedian. “You’re outrageous.” Avery smoothed a hand over his shoulder, enjoying the contrast of the soft T-shirt stretched taut over his solid frame. “Why was it necessary for you to learn?”
Her touch caused a brief pause and the tensing of his muscles. “What?”
“To fight.” She knew very few people who ever engaged in physical confrontations. While growing up, the only fights she’d ever witnessed had been in sporting matches. In her world, men had ruled with money and prestige, not brute strength.
Her one and only experience with physical anger had sent her running away and into hiding. “You’re so good, you make it look...effortless.”
He studied her, his attention far too intuitive. “You know I have a younger sister.”
And that explained his need to fight? One day, Avery would love to meet Pepper. “You two are close?”
His concentrated attention strayed from her mouth to her collarbone to her hair. “Our folks died in a car crash a long time ago, so it’s just the two of us.”
Oh, God, so tragic. In sympathy, Avery reached for his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” As if it didn’t matter at all, he laced his fingers with hers and said, “They were a waste of breath.”
The harsh words threw her, leaving her wide-eyed and speechless. She still grieved for her father, who’d died years past.
She mourned what would never again be, and for how everything had irrevocably changed—not for the better.
Rowdy turned her hand over, brushed his thumb over her palm. “My parents were both miserable drunks.” He explored the thrumming pulse in her wrist. “That’s how I got my name.”
Her stomach dipped when he put a damp, warm kiss to her wrist, followed by the soft touch of his tongue.
She needed to get him back on track, and fast—before she forgot her reasons for waiting. “I think you told me once that your mom was a Clint Eastwood fan. I assume that’s why she named you after one of his characters.”
Sardonic humor curved his mouth. “She claimed that she went into labor during a three-day drinking binge and couldn’t remember any other names. She and Dad would laugh about the good times, which usually led to a rip-roaring drunk and a lot of bitching about how kids got in the way of having fun.”
The insensitivity of his parents both angered and saddened her. “They actually told you that?”
His mellow gaze showed total disregard for the cruelty. “The night they wrecked, they took out six other cars. Luckily no one else died, but a lot of people got banged up pretty good.”
Emotion squeezed the air out of her lungs, making her chest hurt. “You weren’t with them?”
He shook his head. “I was pretty young still when I learned to recognize the signs. Mom would get giddy, or Dad would smile a certain way, and I knew they planned to tie one on. I’d hide with Pepper so they couldn’t take us.” Looking beyond her, he drew in two slow breaths. “When I got big enough, around the time I turned twelve or so, I just flat out refused to go. They figured leaving me behind was easier than the fight it took to take us along.”
So young! Her eyes burned with the idea of how he’d lived his youth. “Pepper...”
“I kept her with me.”
She was glad to hear it, but how much strength had it taken for a boy at that young age to defy alcoholic parents?
Rowdy traced the lines in her palm. “I was home with Pepper when we got the news they were dead.” His hand tightened on hers. “She cried for two days straight.”
That poor girl. “How old was she?”
“Fifteen. Plenty old enough to understand that we’d been on the radar for children’s services for years. She figured with our folks gone, she’d end up in a foster home.”
A vise of sorrow closed around Avery’s heart. Now she understood what had forged Rowdy’s hard edge—pure survival. “How old were you?”
“Just turned eighteen.”
On the run. Avery already knew, but asked anyway. “You took off with your sister, didn’t you?”
“That seemed better than being separated. And we did okay for a few years. At times, it was even kind of fun.”
Because he no longer had abuse to deal with? She fought the unbearable urge to hug him tightly, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate it.
Not for the reasons motivating her.
Without her realizing it, Rowdy tugged the cloth-covered band from her hair, freeing it.
“Rowdy...” She reached back to gather the unruly mass, but he already had his fingers tangled in it, spreading it out, bringing it forward over her shoulder.
As if fascinated with her hair, he watched his hand instead of meeting her gaze. “Pepper had grown up without much, so she didn’t feel like we were missing anything. Long as we had a roof over our heads and enough to eat, she was happy.”
Gently, Avery said, “I think being happy had more to do with having her big brother around.”
“Maybe.” He gave a gruff laugh of disgust. “I screwed up a lot of stuff, but most of all when I got us both jobs in a high-end club. The pay was great. I was able to save up some money and keep Pepper close at hand.”
Had he been protecting Pepper his whole life? First from his parents, and then from well-meaning authorities?
If so, where did that leave Rowdy?
Who had looked out for him?
Avery tried to imagine him as a little boy stuck in a bar while his parents drank themselves into oblivion. At thirteen, hiding with his sister. At eighteen, on the run from the establishment.
“You did the best you could.” Always.
Something shifted in his demeanor, the sadness replaced with iron will—yet his touch remained gentle as he toyed with a long lock of her red hair. “By the time I realized the club owner was a murdering bastard, it was too late.”
Oh, no. Visions of horrible scenarios played out in her head. “You were hurt?”
“That would have been easier.”
Meaning he’d been hurt before? The thought crushed her, making it even more impossible to resist him.
Concern robbed her voice of strength. “Your sister?”
He nodded. “It’s a convoluted story, but the gist of it is that Pepper saw a city commissioner take a bullet to the brain.”
Stunned, Avery forgot about her hair and barely noticed when Rowdy lifted it to his face.
“She stuck to the shadows, so they didn’t at first know that she’d seen anything. I was working the floor as a bouncer, and Pepper didn’t want to chance telling me. Before I knew what had happened, she’d shared the details with a reporter.”
It took Avery a moment to find her voice. “Why not the police?”
As if it made perfect sense, and was to be expected, he said, “Powerful men have powerful contacts.”
Sadly, she knew something about powerful men. “Police?”
“Yeah. More than a few of the boys in blue hung out in the club. So many of them were on the take, Pepper didn’t know which ones, if any, were honest.”
That explained Rowdy’s distrust of the law. “A terrible situation.”
The back of his knuckles brushed her cheek, down the side of her neck. “Unfortunately, the boss also employed a few people at the newspaper. When the reporter tried calling in his ‘big story from Yates,’ he ended up with his throat cut. The only upside was that everyone figured me as the snitch.”
Covering her mouth with both hands, Avery waited to hear the rest of the story. She knew it wouldn’t be good.
He slid a hand around her jaw, tipped up her face. “We had few options, and no one to trust.”
Because they were all alone in the world. How tragically heartbreaking. “You became a target?”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “For once, being a street rat came in handy. I had my own contacts, so I got Pepper a new identity and tucked her away in an apartment building I won in a card game. I stayed mobile, moving around so no one could get a bead on me. I was the one they remembered, the one they wanted. I figured without me, they wouldn’t find her.”
