And if it’s with a beautiful woman, or two, it’s considered socializing, right?”
They smiled at him and he took this as an invitation to wrap an arm around each of their shoulders, kicking his feet together before he walked off with them.
What a fucking winner.
I headed in the direction of the nut roaster. That was where Harry Boy said he’d be waiting for me at the arranged time. Maybe he picked the nut stand because he was busy getting his balls busted by the girl named Mari.
She was working one of the food booths, dressed in vintage clothing of the time, except for the plastic flip flops on her dirtied feet. It was hard to miss her. She reminded me of a young queen in an oil painting—there was something regal about her.
I stopped, stepping to the side of the constantly moving foot traffic.
Fuck. Her face. Either she had face-planted, or someone had used her as a punching bag.
I found Harry Boy eating roasted almonds coated in cinnamon and sugar, watching as Mari served food. I studied his reaction to her for a minute. When she would touch a spot on her face that must’ve been sore and wince, his jaw would tighten. I wasn’t getting involved in his personal affairs, but I was curious as to how he was going to handle this.
However he did would prove to me what kind of man he was. Was he going to kill the bastard who did that to her face? It wasn’t hard to tell when a man made that kind of mark on a woman. If it were my woman, I’d kill a fucker for much less than that.
Harry Boy stood up straighter when he noticed me and held out his hand. We shook.
“Nice day to be out,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “The weather is turning warmer.”
Even though he looked at me, I could tell he was itching to look at her again. “Your girl,” I said. “She have a date with the ground, or someone do that to her?”
“My girl?”
I nodded in her direction. “The one you keep staring at.”
“You noticed that?”
“I notice everything.”
He nodded, trashing the rest of his nuts. “She’s my sister’s best friend. Mari Flores. We all grew up together on Staten Island. My sister told me her deadbeat landlord did that to her. He’s a fucking prick.” Then he really looked at me, at my plain clothes. He’d never seen me out of a suit.
“Harri—” Keely stopped cold when she noticed me standing there.
In less than a second, her eyebrows lifted and then her eyes narrowed. In this light, they were pure blue. Maybe it would’ve been easier to compare them to the sky or to water, but heaven was all I could think of—a blue only known to heaven. Peaceful. Her fierce red hair made the color seem even brighter.
Keely Shea Ryan was a beautiful woman. Heavenly, in fact. But there was also no doubt that she had a tongue that was made in hell. That temper, too. It matched her hair.
“You,” she said, and not nicely.
Hell, could I call ’em or what?
“Kee, this is my boss,” Harrison said, standing taller. He was pissed at how she had spoken to me. He didn’t want to lose his job. Or worse.
He knew I was a testy motherfucker, and I didn’t put up with much. I might’ve just gotten out of prison, but I was still known on the streets. It was hard to forget a man called “the marauder”: a man who always took what he wanted, damn the consequences.
“Mr. Kelly,” Harrison continued, “this is my sister, Keely Ryan.”
Keely Ryan looked so fucking ridiculous in her vintage clothes that a smile that I knew pissed her off came to my face. One long curl came loose from the plastic crown adorning her red hair, and she blew it out of her eye with a harsh breath. It didn’t budge and she swatted at it.
“We’ve met,” she said, narrowing her eyes even sharper at me.
Her eyes were just as I imagined the gates of heaven would be: narrowed to a slit to men like me.
“Good to know you have a strong memory,” I said.
“Oh, it’s excellent, Mr. Kelly.”
“Keely—”
I lifted a hand, stopping Harrison from whatever he was going to say. He was trying to communicate through narrowed eyes that she was being rude to his boss. It was something Killian would’ve done to me. Manners were never a strong point of mine, though.