Infamous (3 page)

Lille pointed a finger at Carl. “You better not be angling for Max and me to get together, because beyond fucking him, I have no interest in a relationship.”

Carl laughed. “I didn't think you were fucking him, either, but good. Women who want relationships send Max into hiding.”

“Like I care.” She tossed her hair.

He chuckled again. “Well, then, it's settled. We'll have a family meeting and discuss your problem. I'm sure we can come up with a solution.”

“Problem?” Lille huffed. She'd just told him the biggest secret of her life, and he referred to it as if it were about as important as a misfiled tax return.

“And we're not family.” Lille didn't like the note of longing that colored her voice. It was not in her character.

Carl straightened and gently pinched her chin in his fingers. “Sure we are, honey.”

“Awesome,” exclaimed a voice from the door, which Carl had left cracked open when he'd come in earlier.

The black eye of a camera had taken in at least part of their exchange. Lille tensed, wondering how much Kim had recorded of their conversation. Jordan, looking vaguely guilty, fluttered his hands behind Kim's body.

“Sorry”—he made a face at Lille—“she promised to let me kiss her if I shut the fuck up and let her film.”

“What did you hear?” Lille tried to sound nonchalant, but she pinned Jordan with a deadly stare. She didn't remember seeing them in the doorway when she'd been talking about her father, but she wasn't certain.

“Just that you're only interested in fucking Max, you don't want to leave, and you have some kind of problem,” Jordan summarized immediately, wincing as if Lille were the glare of the sun in his eyes.

Kim dropped the camera and grinned unrepentantly. “You know, you could kill with that look,” she informed Lille. “All the pervs on the Internet are going to love it. Oh, pretty lady's gonna whip me good. Hello, millions of YouTube hits.” Kim had yet to convince Lille to put on a dominatrix costume and brandish a whip, but she'd been working on it.

Lille turned on Carl. “Family, huh?”

Carl shrugged. “It takes all kinds.”

CHAPTER
Twelve

Forty-five minutes after he'd eaten breakfast, Max could no longer take the peace and quiet of his house. He'd read the same paragraph in the biography of James Joyce three times, and he kept looking around for Bambi; John had taken her to the Box with him last night and hadn't brought her back to Max yet this morning. Likely John was too busy in bed with Mary.

When he couldn't sit still another second, he changed into jogging shorts and a pair of running shoes, picked up his keys and cell phone and shoved them in his pockets, and went out the French doors in his kitchen. He crossed the yard that he shared with Mary and used his key to open her back door.

Bambi and Atticus, who'd been sleeping on the couch, barked excitedly and hurried to greet him. Bambi sat like the good girl she was, but Atticus scratched at his legs and yipped, the uncivilized mongrel.

“Shhh,” he hushed them, patting their heads.

“Max?” John came out through the hallway that led to the bedrooms. His hair was disheveled and he was wearing only a pair of boxers . . . which were on backward. He looked none too pleased at the interruption.

“Sorry.” Max shrugged, completely insincere. He was feeling frustrated and annoyed, and wasn't it a best friend's job to join him in misery?

“Just get lost, okay? Take the dogs with you.”

Max wasn't able to resist the devil that made him say, “Are you worried she'll ask me to join you?”

John looked pissed, and for a moment his face just twisted, tugging and highlighting the scars; then something seemed to occur to him, and he laughed. It was a strange laugh to Max's ears, and not one he'd ever heard from his friend before. Sadness, resignation, and relief were the low notes, but there was also a steady drumbeat of joy, of calm happiness.

“Max, my friend, here's the truth. I'd do anything for her, even have a threesome with your ugly ass.”

The house seemed to settle and still for a moment, the way it would after a loud crash.

Max stared at his friend, then snorted and picked up Atticus. “Well, that's just fine, then. I'll hold my breath till that happens.”

Love. For fuck's sake.

He located Atticus's leash on the hook near the door and hooked up the tiny white fluff ball before putting him on the ground. “The thing is . . . I might be able to understand if she were just another girl ye were bangin', but if ye love her, how can ye share her with anyone else?”

John struggled to answer for a moment, but then he just shrugged. “I don't know. I just know it's true.”

“Really?” Mary, who'd apparently been listening from the bedroom, appeared in the hallway entrance wrapped in a sheet. She put a hand on John's shoulder; her other hand held the sheet to her chest.

“Really what?” John looked nervous, which Max thought served him right.

Mary's lips curved on one side. “You love me that much?”

John glanced at Max, who raised an eyebrow. The lad could nut up and just fucking say it.

John put a hand on the back of Mary's head and pulled her in until their foreheads touched. “Yeah, I really do.”

Mary laughed. “That's awesome.”

She looked teary-eyed, which was Max's cue to leave as quickly as possible, and he did, grabbing Bambi's leash and whistling. The dog charged out the door as if naked displays of emotion were appalling to her as well.

Max walked back over to his place with the two dogs. He was having trouble wrapping his head around what he'd just witnessed. He could've sworn his best friend had just proven how much he loved a woman by saying he'd be willing to have a threesome. With Max. If that wasn't some fucked-up shit, he didn't know what was, but nothing should really surprise him anymore.

When he reached the gate on the side of his house, he leashed up Bambi and set Atticus down on the ground. He wouldn't be able to run far with the white dog, but the little man would be game for at least a mile or two.

He started jogging at a fairly leisurely pace, heading toward the road that ran alongside the beach and doing his best to keep the dogs out of the grasses and weeds on the side of the street. Sticker burrs had a tendency to get hopelessly tangled in the dogs' fur.

After a mile, he was out of breath and cursing—John had put him to shame on their run yesterday. Max had spent more time at the gym and less running as of late. He'd wanted to lift heavy objects, but now his wind was suffering. Of course, all the smoking he'd been doing wasn't helping. He put his hands on his knees while the dogs sat and looked at him as if he'd lost his damn mind. He reached out and petted Bambi's big head.

“Well, this is a fine mess, isn't it?”

They were in the shade at least. He'd gotten as far as the nature park, which had quite a few trees and recently paved jogging paths. He sat down on the curb, coughing a little, and thought that maybe he should finally consider quitting smoking. Carl, John, and now Mary were right nags about it.

He looked at Bambi. “And then why don't I take up embroidery and start going to church, too?”

She licked his face, which calmed him down a bit.

“The thing is, Bambi, my love, I do understand John.”

The breeze kicked up, shaking the trees overhead and cooling the sweat on his skin.

Max remembered when his uncle had finally realized how much he loved Mary's mother, Mandy. The old man had denied it for years, denied that they were even sleeping together, because Mandy had refused to give up her fetish parties and the opportunities to play the role of dominatrix. She loved his uncle, and she had the warmest, most generous heart of anyone he knew, but she loved sex as well—loved the feel of the whip in her hand, the play of it, the thrill of it. Sex had never been something shameful for her. He'd heard her describe it once, to a patron at the bar, and he'd felt bad for his uncle, felt bad that the man loved a woman who wasn't going to be a normal wife.

But she'd turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to his uncle; Max had never seen him happier than he'd been in the years he'd been with Mandy. Mandy, although wild and more than a little eccentric, had been very kind.

He'd been so pissed at her for dying and even more furious when he'd found out she'd left half his bar and her entire business to a girl she'd never even known. He'd been an ass when he'd first met Mary. He'd wanted to scare her enough so that she'd leave, and had done his best to be a complete pig, kissing her, asking to touch her tits, but to his surprise, she'd let him.

It had taken him some time to trust her, knowing she'd let him do that and he a stranger, but she had a way about her, a heart as generous as her mother's had been, and the curiosity of a child.

An image of Lille, of the smooth curve of her back as she'd straddled him, flashed through his mind. He'd slept with her after knowing her for all of one day, without thinking much of her outside of her looks, and he hadn't seen the point in trying to dig any deeper. He still didn't see the point; the woman had avoided him for two weeks after the best sex of his life, but damned if that didn't make her even more interesting. Drinking coffee with her in the kitchen yesterday had made him feel more alive than he had in years, as if every cell in his body had lit up. It was damn near terrifying. She was hot, sexy, irresistible. Kind she was not. He thought that if he ever did settle down and decide to have children, it would be with a kind woman, an uncomplicated woman. Never the type of woman Lille clearly seemed to be.

So . . . why couldn't he leave off thinking about her? He wanted to have her disappear from his life the way all the other women he'd known had done, but he couldn't. Like it or not, she was part of the circle, part of the strange family they'd woven, and he could no more get rid of her than he could Carl. And the truth was . . . he didn't want to. He wanted her firmly in the category of “woman I care about but don't want to care about too much,” like one of his employees or the long-time bar patrons.

Ten minutes later, when he and the dogs were more than halfway back home, his cell phone rang.

He stopped and fumbled quickly to get it out of his pocket, thinking it might be Lille. Nope. Kyle, his bartender on Sundays. Not that he wanted Lille to call him . . .

“What?” Max barked, breathing heavily.

“Hey, Max, it's Kyle.”

Max's grip on the phone tightened, but he reined in his impatience. “What is it, lad?”

“Cherry called in.”

“What? Again? Is she sick?”

Kyle sounded hesitant. “No . . . she's not coming back.”

“What?”

“She said she's going to Vegas to get married and find a job as a blackjack dealer in the casino.”

“And she decided this today?”

“Apparently.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Max kicked an empty Coke can and sent it skittering across the road. Bambi whined low in her throat and Atticus pawed at his leg, asking to be picked up.

He scooped up the white dog. “Fine. I'll be over to help ye this afternoon, then. It shouldn't be too crowded today, and I've paperwork to do anyway.” He hated it, but he would do it.

“Sounds good,” Kyle agreed, and hung up quickly, before Max could change his mind.

Max scowled and wished he'd brought his damn cigarettes. Lungs be damned—this definitely wasn't the day he was going to quit smoking.

Carl held
an outfit up for Lille's consideration.
In the store, Jordan was still following Kim around, ostensibly showing her the layout of the place and how to work the register, but mostly he was clearly just fantasizing about her. He was practically drooling.

Lille, who was at the computer working on the Web site for the Box while Carl played with the outfits in the office closet, looked up at the clothes he was holding: a sleeveless black leather top with a high neck, a pencil skirt with rose piping, classic fishnet hose, and black high-heeled Victorian-style boots with lots of buttons.

“Nice,” she agreed, and went back to what she was doing.

“Nice?” Carl dropped his arms with a huff. “
Nice?
That call is really bothering you, isn't it?”

Lille shrugged her shoulders and pushed her reading glasses up on her head.

“Of course it's bothering me, Carl. I don't want to leave, but I don't want anyone here getting hurt, either.”

“We'll talk to Mary and John about it when they come by tonight.”

Lille shook her head in brief but automatic rejection—she'd never told Mary much about her past, for all that they were friends. She'd always been protective of Mary and didn't want her to worry.

“That reminds me.” Lille tapped a few keys to bring up the schedule in Outlook. “It looks as if Jordan has been working quite a few double shifts since Kaylee was attacked.” Kaylee was the Box employee who had been hurt in a break-in. Prior to the attack, she'd worked part-time as a nurse. “She called yesterday to say that she wants to focus on nursing and won't be able to work here anymore. I just hired Kim, but she won't be able to work by herself until she gets the hang of things, and initially I want her to focus on the documentary. I want the virtual tour edited and up by tomorrow.”

“All the more reason for you to do a little show tonight after we have our chat with Mary and John.”

Lille had a feeling she wasn't going to get to remain silent on the subject of her father, so she ignored Carl for the moment. “A little show?”

“Sure. You've made these fabulous changes, decked the place out. Anyone who's seen the clips posted so far knows you're beautiful. I want to show them that you're ferocious. We'll do some training videos. Hell-oo. That's why I'm picking out an outfit for you.”

Lille rolled her eyes. “Fine. But as far as scheduling, John is supposed to work tonight, but Kaylee was scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Have Kim do it. Tomorrow's Monday. What kind of trouble do you think she can get into on a Monday? This place is as dead as your love life of late.”

“Carl, has anyone ever mentioned that you can be
very
annoying?”

Carl pursed his lips. “I don't think you're going to say that when I show you what I have in my hands . . . ”

Lille rolled her eyes. “I just love it when men tell me that.”

“Me, too, honey.” He wiggled impatiently, hands behind his back. “Now, are you ready for the pièce de résistance?”

“You tell me.”

“I think you were born ready.”

Lille laughed. Damn, she liked it here. “Okay, Carl. Show me what you got.”

He pulled out a black fedora with a glittery rose-colored band, and a soft suede cat-o'-nine-tails with a braided black leather handle and a bead at the end of each tail. If she wore that hat and carried that whip, she would be the female S&M version of Indiana Jones. She couldn't help but think of Max's expression if she strolled into his bar tonight in that getup. A grin spread across her face.