Gun Moll (5 page)

W
ith a grin, Mac
righted Melina to her feet, taking in the fact she had lost the tight dress,
sky-high heels, and makeup from the night before. Today, she looked like a
regular young woman dressed in Converses, skinny jeans, and a Henley.

Mac had to admit,
the steel-tongued woman wore both looks well.

Goddamn well,
actually.

“Mac?” his sister
asked behind him.

Mac gave Victoria
a wave without looking back, hoping she’d take the hint and be quiet for a
second. He doubted it would work. Victoria Maccari didn’t know the meaning of “quiet”
and she was nosy as hell. He loved his sister, to be sure, but she was one of a
kind.

Kind of like the
woman he was still holding.

Mac offered Melina
a slow, easy smile as she turned to face him. “Well, well. Funny meeting you
here. I didn’t expect to meet up with you again so soon.”

Melina took a step
back and Mac let her, dropping his hold. “Uh, thanks. I’m not usually so …”

“Clumsy?”

“I’m not clumsy.”

“What would you
call it?” he asked.

“I was trying to
get inside quicker and missed a step; that’s all.”

“There’s lots of
daylight hours left, doll. What’s the rush?”

“You ask a lot of
questions,” Melina said coolly.

Mac let her
attitude bounce right off him. He had a feeling that under her sharp-as-glass
exterior was a woman who probably had a few things to hide. People who tended
to keep others away usually had those kinds of secrets to tell.

Besides, he didn’t
mind a challenge.

“You didn’t answer
them,” Mac replied with a grin.

“I’m not required
to,” Melina said, tossing him a smile. “I don’t know you and you don’t know me.
I didn’t realize it was commonplace for strangers to have chitchats about their
personal lives.”

“Actually, we know
quite a bit about one another. I frequent fights and you entertain at fights.
Apparently, we come to the same shopping center.” Mac waved at the building,
ignoring the people who passed them by. “And lucky for you, I was here to stop
you from bruising up those beautiful legs of yours.”

Melina’s mouth
popped open.

Speechless.

Mac chuckled. “Was
that all it took to quiet that attitude of yours?”

Melina’s eyes
narrowed into slits. “Hey—”

Shit.

“Hey, doll, I was
just kidding around. No harm meant. It’s a joke, you know.”

“It’d help if
you’d cut out the ‘doll’ nonsense,” she muttered.

Melina’s anger
came in the form of fire-blazing eyes and pink cheeks. Mac didn’t think the
woman realized how good she looked when she was pissed off. Angry women were
fun women. They had passion and a hunger that most women lacked.

Maybe he liked
that a little.

“What’s the
problem with doll?” Mac asked.

He’d grown up
hearing every sweetheart of every man he knew being called that on one occasion
or another. It’d never been used in a derogatory way, and in fact, was held in
regard for those who were special to a man.

“You mean the
unintelligent, emotionless doll of a woman who looks pretty on a man’s arm and
does very little else?” Melina asked sweetly.

Sugary sweet.

Like cyanide.

Damn, this girl
was tough.

“Is that what you
think it means?” Mac asked back. “What, do you have a slang dictionary on hand
or something? Does every endearment a man might offer make you think it’s
intended to lower you or dumb down your status to him?”

Melina blinked,
her cheeks reddening. “Well …”

“Well, what?”

“Sometimes, yeah.
And then sometimes endearments are just another way to disarm a woman and make
her vulnerable.”

Mac appreciated
her honesty, but she was ten shades of wrong. “Doll actually started as
reference to a man’s mistress and a shortened version of the name Dorothy.
Then, it was used to describe a woman who was of the pretty but silly type.”

Melina huffed.
“Exactly.”

Mac laughed
deeply. “But considering how silly you act over an endearment meant to show how
much a man cherishes a certain woman in his life, and the fact you’re mighty
damn pretty, I think doll fits you awfully well.”

Maybe that was the
wrong thing to say.

Melina didn’t seem
like the type to like a man who would challenge her, but it was hard to tell.
Mac wasn’t the kind of guy who would roll over and play dead, just because a
woman liked to sharpen her stilettos.

When Melina stayed
quiet, Mac cocked a brow. “What, did you think I was all looks, with some fast
fists, and no brains, doll? I’ve got a dozen more surprises where that one came
from. Maybe you’ll let me show you sometime.”

Melina openly glared.
“You are one cocky—”

“Careful,” Mac
interrupted with a smirk. “A lady never swears in public.”

“Who said I was a
lady?”

“Certainly not
me.”

A hint of a smile
graced the corner of Melina’s lips as she tucked a strand of hair behind her
ear.

Mac thought she
had a beautiful smile.

She did like this.
Mac could see it in the glimmer still burning in her brown eyes and the way she
looked him up and down. She was agitated, sure, but she damn well liked it. If
he had to guess, Melina didn’t find a man willing to challenge her very often.

“Are you here for
something particular?” Mac asked.

Melina pursed her
lips. “Coffee, actually. I was going to get one before I headed home.”

“Let me buy you
one.”

Melina lifted a
single brow in response, but said nothing.

“Mac,” Victoria
said again, more insistent the second time.

She was probably tapping
her little black pumps on the pavement behind him.

Impatient little
…

“I think your
girlfriend is getting annoyed,” Melina said, a bitter twist lighting up her
words.

Jealous.

It flared to life
in her pretty features and in the way her lips tightened as she glanced over
Mac’s shoulder at Victoria. Melina practically dismissed Mac’s younger sister
with a flick of her fiery brown eyes and the coldness of a scowl.

“My sister,” Mac
corrected quietly. “Victoria Maccari is my
sister
, not my girlfriend.
Seems my mother thinks I’ve not been watching over Vic enough, so today was her
day to do whatever she wanted, since I won the fight last night and could treat
her to anything.”

Melina’s stance
softened, but barely. “A spoiled woman is one who can’t care for herself. No
woman should depend on a man for anything, much less spoiling her.”

Jesus.

This woman was
something else.

“Or maybe the kind
of men you’ve been dating haven’t been spoiling you right, doll.”

Just like that,
Melina’s invisible wall slammed back up again. Her gaze hardened and all
amusement on her features left, leaving a cold mask in its wake. It took Mac
all of three seconds to realize his mistake. He knew she was an escort just
from her date the night before, but his words hadn’t actually been directed towards
that.

“I’m—”

Melina held up a
single, manicured hand, silencing Mac’s apology before he could even get it
out. “Don’t bother. There’s really nothing left to say.”

With that, Melina
pushed past Mac on the epicenter’s steps and walked down without even looking
back once.

Pride was an awful
thing. It was the kind of thing that could make or break a man. Especially a
man like Mac, in a profession where pride made the man. A man had to have some
kind of pride in being who he was, or he was fucking nobody.

So, when Mac felt
his pride take a hit from Melina’s rejection, he couldn’t let it go like that.

“Hey, doll?”

Melina’s back
tensed and she stopped up short in her walk. Flicking him with a stinging
glance over her shoulder, she asked, “What?”

“I’ll be around
when you get tired of playing with pups.”

“So …”

“Shut up, Vic,”
Mac warned.

Victoria smiled
slyly. “You know I’m not going to.”

“Shut up and get
your nails done like you wanted.”

“But—”

“Victoria, I swear
to
Dio
, I will leave you here to pay for this spa day all by your little
pretty lonesome.”

Victoria frowned.
“You would not, Mac.”

All right, so he
wouldn’t.

Still …

“It’s none of your
business. Leave it alone,” Mac said.

She wouldn’t. Mac
knew it. Nosy Victoria was at it again. She’d sniffed something in his personal
life and like a shark, she would bite down and wouldn’t let go until she’d
ripped out a nice bloody chunk to chew on.

When she had
wanted to come to the epicenter—to visit her favorite spa and be pampered for
the day—Mac had been more than happy to drop his sister off with a thousand
dollars and let her go batshit crazy. He figured he didn’t have to be right
there for her sessions, or the clothing shopping she wanted to do after.

He was wrong.

She wanted to
spend time with him. Mac didn’t know how to say no.

Family was
everything.

“So, who is she?”
Victoria asked.

“Someone I met
last night and met again today,” Mac answered honestly.

“Is that seriously
all you’re going to give me?”

The nail
technician clicked her tongue chidingly and grabbed Victoria’s finger, which
she had waved at Mac.

“That’s all I have
to give, honestly,” Mac replied. “I just don’t know the woman, all right?”

“But you want to,”
his sister pressed.

Maybe.

“Leave it alone,
Vic.”

“Where did you
meet her last night?”

Sighing, Mac
wished the wall would swallow him whole. “Out somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Do you have some
kind of tape to shut them up when they don’t quit talking?” Mac asked the
technician.

His sister glared.
“Asshole.”

“Vic, where I go
and what I do when I’m there is none of your business. It’s better you don’t
know, anyway. That’s how it works. You know this.”

“How
la
famiglia
works, you mean,” his sister muttered.

Mac forced his
mouth to stay shut and not bark off the retort he wanted. Like his mother, his
sister always had something or the other to say about his choice in being
involved with Cosa Nostra.

“I chose this,
Vic,” Mac settled on saying.

“Have you gotten
what you wanted from it yet?”

“It’s not about
getting something you want from it. It’s about becoming a part of something that’s
bigger than just you. I’m damn good at this.”