Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) (3 page)

“I know.” Liam’s voice was sad, “All these sketchy little nothing towns, though. Wouldn’t it be something just once to pick up a souvenir?”

I
N
THE
POLISHED
wood hallway of our Georgian fronted house, the taller of them, Pennsylvania, said, “What the hell’s a woman like you doing with a piece of shit like Hollis Cullen?”

I thought,
You don’t think I’ve been asking myself that very same question, every hour of every goddamned day?
But I said sharply, as sharply as I could at least, “I told you, I’m his wife.”

“Well, Mrs Cullen,” the sparkle in the other man’s New England twang made everything seem light, no matter what he said. It was like a soft, lilting song. A country breeze. “You got some surprising taste in men, that’s all that I’ll say about it.”

I told him, “Taste didn’t come into it.” A sour note had crept into my voice. Why I should have opened up like that, exposed myself to these two strangers, I had no idea. All that I knew was how liberating it felt.

Pennsylvania leant towards me a little, raised a mocking eyebrow, “You mean you just married him for his money?”

My lips pursed as I slapped his face. Hard.
 

He said, “I suppose I should take that for a ‘no,’ would you say, Liam?”

He touched his cheek where I’d hit him and it colored up. My fingers stung. It hadn’t displaced his sarcastic grin, though, it still glimmered, making me want to do it again. Slap him even harder.

My lips pulled between my teeth as the tingling sting on my fingers faded. As it went I wanted to feel the hardness of his face again. The other man looked at him long and hard. He had said his partner’s name. How I knew that was what his look meant, I don’t know, but I was sure of it. The knowledge was like the echo of a big bell, deep underwater.

Maybe it was just a name they used when they were working, like in that old movie where the bad guys call each other, ‘Mr White’ and ‘Mr Pink.’ And the who’s one called ‘Mr Pink’ kicks off about it.

In our hallway was a full length mirror and I watched the reflection of Pennsylvania’s eyes over the tops of his shades. They snaked up the backs of my legs. Where his eyes peered, I trembled.

Slowly following how the sheen of gunmetal nylon hugged the sweep of my calves, the soft valleys behind my knees, his gaze stroked up the now zinging curves of my thighs. His tongue slipped out along his lips as he checked my inner thighs a second time and came at last to rest around my ass.

He blinked slowly. When his eyes flashed open, they went straight into mine and a depth charge went off in the pit of my stomach. Hot molten lava spilled out into my panties.

They prowled around the kitchen. Then the mess that Hollis calls his office. Pennsylvania sent New England to look upstairs. I heard his footsteps in the hallway, in the bathroom. The spare room. Then in our bedroom.

Pennsylvania was standing near and the heat of his body penetrated my thin dress. My throat caught as I inhaled the spicy cologne and the sweet manly scent of him behind it. His breath was near enough for me to taste. As it crept across my tongue, I wished I could run my lips up along the column of warm, sweetened air. Slip my tongue up along it until, stretched on my tiptoes, my lips reached his.

Since my marriage I had successfully banished thoughts of that kind. I had been proud of myself, even though I knew that it was only because all the men in this town were such beige and flimsy specimens. My pride at resisting any and all temptations fell to the floor like the waft of a silk slip now, as I realized that I had been able to appear so very strong, only because the temptations were all so very untempting.

The rough mechanic with the glow in his eyes who rounded on me in the dark corner of the garage, his dirty face, his glistening, oily scents stirred me inside my lacy panties, but passing up his offer of ‘an exciting layaway payment plan’ was no challenge.

When the mayor cornered me in a council chamber and offered ‘favors for favors,’ I was proud of how delicately I told him that I would consider it. The flatness in my voice and a slow shuttering of my eyelids let him understand that it would never happen in his lifetime. His dignity and mine were all intact. Wasn’t I smart?

No. If Pennsylvania had cupped his fingers then and made an impatient upward insistence, or if he had warmed my throat with his breath as he blew a grossly improper suggestion into my ear, if any of that happened and I had resisted, then I really would have shown some strength.

Inside I felt torn in two between a fearful hope that he would do nothing of the kind, and a hunger to beg that he did. Under no circumstances did I want to be unfaithful to my husband, however cruel and undeserving he was. But at that moment, I had a lot of trouble remembering why.

All the way from the café I had tried to pretend these two men were just businessmen. Insurance salesmen or men from the bank, coming to talk to Hollis about a loan or some investment or something like that.

Their manner was business alright but whatever it was, I didn’t think for a second that it was any legal business. Once I remembered hearing of a bank robber who smiled when he took the money. Suave and good-looking, he was polite and thanked the tellers nicely as he made them empty their drawers for him.

When they were interviewed and they talked about him, the women who worked behind the counters in the banks, the women he’d robbed, blushed and hid their eyes behind fluttering lashes.

New England and Pennsylvania were just how I imagined the charming robber. Easy and relaxed. Big, loose-limbed, fit and confident but without a lot of swagger. Capable and knowing it. They could do whatever they liked and they’d get away with it.

They looked smoking hot in their expensive suits but what made them so very sexy was their manner, their ‘do-whatever-I-want’ assurance. ‘Do-whatever-I-
fucking-
want,’ is how Pennsylvania would say it. There isn’t a man in this dry, dusty town that has ever made my pulse pick up the way that these two easy killers did.

Pennsylvania said, “We kind of expected Hollis to be waiting for us.”

“It’s disappointing,” New England said, “I have to say. Usually we expect that the formalities will be observed.”

“Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?” I asked them brightly, covering the catch in my voice as best I could.

“Ah no, but thanks all the same,” said New England with a polite smile.
DNA
I thought.
They don’t want to leave traces
. My mind was forever making up stories like that, making something dramatic out of an ordinary situation. Hollis hated it, so mostly I kept it to myself.

“Just call him.” Pennsylvania said, “Say there’s somebody here wants to talk to him. That’s all you have to say.”

I reached into my purse for my phone. Liam put his hand on mine. My insides quaked at his touch, like a trapdoor over a deep old well dropped open inside me, and my stomach fell straight into the chasm. For a moment, I missed what he was saying to me as my eyes reached around for his.

“Use the house phone.”

“Yes. Okay,” my knees were unsteady.

Pennsylvania touched my shoulder and he asked, “Is there somewhere we could wait for him? Somewhere that we wouldn’t be in your way?” I swallowed.

“Come with me.” I showed them into the lounge at the back with the conservatory. They’d have a nice view over the garden and up to the woods. They could see the pool and the grounds. Like they’d care. They looked at everything as though they were being shown around the inside of a doll’s house.

“Make yourselves at home,” I told them, “Are you sure there’s nothing I can get for you?”

Pennsylvania’s eyes travelled up my calves and my thighs, made themselves comfortable around the hem of my black skirt. Then they had took a tour of my blouse. My chest heaved hard as he openly studied my breasts and he almost licked around my ear with his eyes.

When his eyes finally reached mine he said, “Nothing. Really, Mrs Cullen,” In a voice that you knew meant the exact opposite of whatever he said.

As I broke away and looked at his companion, I could see that he’d been enjoying a long, lingering look at me, too. My cheeks and my chest prickled as I colored up. The bra felt tight and constricting and my nipples hardened, sore in their captivity.

The polite thing to do, I felt, was to go make the call. Leave the two men in peace and allow them to relax. Maybe fetch some water or lemonade in a jug in case they decided to refresh themselves. A plate of cookies perhaps.

I shouldn’t just stand there, letting them stare at me like I was something on offer in a store. But that’s what I did. It had been such a long time since anyone had looked at me like that. I didn’t want them to stop.

Women in the town looked at me, and always enviously. Their men would occasionally look, too, the way a dog on a chain will look at a steak, a piece of meat that’s just out of their reach. Nobody looked at me the way these two men did. Did Hollis look at me like that in the beginning? I couldn’t remember.

I did remember the way he looked at me when the phys ed teacher told me to go find him that one time, and I had to go look in the shower. He was wet, holding a towel. He stopped, practically froze when he saw me. Then he had that hungry look.

Turning and almost bumping into wet, white tiles I ran out of there so fast. Afterwards I often wondered, if it weren’t for that moment, that one split second, would it still have been me that he had for his bride? If I could have escaped, I wondered which other poor girl would have gotten the prize, the poisoned pill.

All this time I hadn’t ever had a man just look at me, see me, appreciate me. Other men would look at Hollis’s wife and wonder what Hollis’s daddy bought him. I know. And Hollis, he just saw something stale. Something that he would use when he needed it, but something to have only when there was nothing else available.

Cold meatloaf. Something you might drag out of the fridge in the early hours, or pull a hunk off on a slow afternoon when there was so much of nothing to do you couldn’t be bothered to even care.
 

Hollis, my husband, knew every backdoor that wasn’t locked in this town, every wife with some lust left to spare. And of course he knew his way all over little Kylie, although I couldn’t believe that particular treasure map was a very well-kept secret.

Here I was tearing myself up with all this sordidness when there were two really fine looking men sitting, if not quite at my feet, at least sank deep in the upholstery of my lounge. Deep enough for their eyes to be about level with my knees. Deep enough for them to appreciate it, and for me to enjoy their appreciation.
 

Then the noisy rattle at the front door broke the spell. Without a thought I knew the sound of Hollis stumbling and barging in. Football captain in high school, and just a few years later he didn’t have the physical grace to make a decent entrance to his own house.

Red-faced and rheumy-eyed, his hair looked like something a farmer abandoned. Without even looking straight ahead, where he would have seen me immediately, he lurched through the hallway shouting, “Courtenay? Courtenay?” and he whacked each door open as he passed while I called out to him.

“Hollis. Your guests are out here.”

He exploded past me into the room. As soon as he saw the two men that sat in their black suits in our armchairs he swung an open slap at my cheek. He was so sloppy it barely knocked my face sideways.

“You made me late!” He took another swing, but it was easy to lean back and dodge him. As I did, I caught the hard stares the two men were giving him. He almost lost his balance. “Why didn’t you bring them to me? Why couldn’t you have let me know sooner?”

“I had no idea where you were,” I said, “Dear.”

“Get us some beers.” He growled, swaying with his paw outstretched towards Pennsylvania. “Good to see you, gents. Good of you to come.” He fell and sagged onto the sofa and began to fish in his pants for a blunt.

As Hollis lit the short end of his blunt, New England said evenly, “No drinks for us, Mrs Cullen, thanks all the same.”

“Welcome to our humble little town.” Hollis said, stretched his arms out along the top of the couch and sank deep as his thigh spread wide. He lit the spliff and held a deep draw.
 

When he let the gray smoke seep out he said, “I know that your stay will be short but I hope it’s to your liking, and that our business is concluded fast. Your business, I mean. The piece of work that you’re here to do for me.” And he held the smoldering joint unsteadily towards Pennsylvania. A slightly raised hand was a polite refusal.

Hollis leaned over to offer the joint out to New England. Liam. He also refused. Hollis shrugged. “Well the piece of work, and he is a piece of work I’ll tell you now…”

Pennsylvania leaned forward and cut him off. “You sure you want us to talk in front of your wife?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Matters to us.” Said New England.

“She won’t make any trouble.” He didn’t even look at me. Pennsylvania did, though. And Liam stood. “Why don’t I help Mrs Cullen fix us some coffee after all.”