Daring Devlin (Lost Boys #1) - Jessica Lemmon Page 0,12

picture was worth a thousand words, the busted side of my face was worth a set or two of confidences lost.

Halfway to the restaurant I’d paused by a sign near the road, my balls nearly frozen solid, feeling as if I might vomit as a result of several steel-toed-boot kicks to the stomach. The sign I’d leaned on read, crane lake apartments, and I remembered this was where Rena lived. I’d reviewed her employee file before we hired her. She lived at 802 Crane Lake Run.

I had what some might call a photographic memory. It helped with remembering who bet on what and how much. Gambling in general. I was good at what I did and had made a nice life for myself. Rena Lewis’s address was one stat among many filed into a handy drawer in the back of my mind.

“Devlin?” That light tap came again.

I hadn’t intended to involve her—still didn’t—but she was the safest haven I had until I could find a ride home. Sonny wasn’t an option since I had no idea what to tell him yet, and I knew he had a cross-section of gamblers who were cabbies, so taking a taxi was out. That left either asking Rena to drive me home or calling one of Sonny’s guys who would keep his mouth shut. Nat was the first guy I thought of. He was a massive block of silent man. He didn’t gossip. He rarely spoke. And if he wasn’t too busy working someone over with a crowbar, he’d do fine.

I yanked open the door and stepped out of the bathroom. Rena stood in the hallway, slender arms crossed over her middle, eyes wide behind a pair of large, black-framed glasses. Her brown hair fell around her face in soft waves in the front, the rest of it pinned into a sloppy excuse for a bun. The pencil she’d stuffed into her hair pointed straight up at the ceiling, making her look like a nerdy unicorn.

A sexy nerdy unicorn. I winced to keep my smile away. I couldn’t understand why I noticed everything about her. Like how, at work, she wore her ponytail smoothed against her head, never wore glasses, and bit her lip whenever she was concentrating hard—which appeared to be most the time.

Her Oak & Sage–issued white starched shirt and shin-length black apron over black pants should have her blending in with the rest of the staff. One in a sea of many. But I’d noticed her. Noticed not only how she looked, but that she was delicate and observant. Nervous. Cautious. And pretty.

Really pretty. The kind of pretty reserved for guys not like me. Which made her as far from my type as they came. My kind of girl liked it fast and hard, typically a blonde with a short attention span who never expected me to call her later.

I didn’t sleep with girls at work. I wasn’t stupid. Especially girls like Rena. Good girls who wanted to stick around, ask questions, get close. Close wasn’t something I could afford to be with anyone. Not while I toed the line of legal/illegal activities on a daily basis.

I pressed my lips together and walked by my hostess.

“Thanks,” I said, my eyes on the front door, my teeth clenching in preparation for the cold beyond it. Steeling myself, I calculated the distance to the restaurant and figured if I ran halfway, I might make it without collapsing. Though running was debatable. I suspected there was a broken rib or two underneath my thin T-shirt. Those bastards and their steel-toed boots.

Rena stopped me as my hand closed over the doorknob. She asked the same question she’d asked me earlier.

“Where are you going?” Scratch that. This was less of an ask and more of a demand. I didn’t like being told what to do… unless it was in the bedroom. I lapsed into a highly inappropriate, completely intriguing thought about the girl standing behind me. I heard her approach, or maybe I felt her there, like a curious rabbit sniffing a coiled snake. Maybe that’s what I was to her. Maybe that’s what she was to me. Too soon to tell.

I released the knob and turned around. She didn’t know anything about me, and I would have liked to keep it that way. I wondered if I could trust her to keep her mouth shut about my being here. Maybe. Maybe not. But if I asked her to keep it to herself, that would guarantee