don’t you?” she said.
He grinned. “That’s because I am.”
While the woman crossed her arms and sulked, he turned around to talk to April, only April was gone. No use running, kitten. She could play it off as much as she liked, but he’d seen the longing on her face, a tight, buttoned-down longing that usually meant once the lid was off, she could turn feral.
He liked feral.
Right now, April was making him hunt for her. Brandon scanned the crowd. A few women threw him looks of invitation, which he filed away for later. On a hunch, he went around back where the smokers usually went—not that his April was a smoker. His April probably had a bedspread full of adorable stuffed animals. Brandon had found that if you jerked a bedspread off just the right way, you could send those things flying.
There was a big tree out back with a bench underneath it. No smokers here tonight, but he did find April.
She looked so prissy sitting there with her knees pressed together and her hands clasped tightly in her lap. The whole pink gingham thing was a nice departure from that suburban mom crap she’d had on earlier. Brandon closed the distance between them, enjoying the fact that she hadn’t seen him yet.
If he’d been thinking with his brain, he might have steered clear. But he didn’t feel like doing that. Not with all those fascinating contradictions to figure out. Not with that body, ripe with promise, to go with the ice princess facade.
Not with his brother’s future on the line.
He noted the look of alarm when she saw him. Of all the expressions he was used to seeing on women’s faces—flinty, flirty, inviting—he didn’t expect to see fear in April’s enormous blue eyes. She was younger than he’d thought. Twenty-two, twenty-three, tops. Fresh out of college.
Five years ago, when he was twenty-three, Brandon had been doing eighteen months in the Banderas Men’s Correctional Facility for knocking over a gas station.
“What’s a good girl like you doing in a place with me in it?” The corners of his lips twitched despite an attempt to keep a straight face. “Social workers don’t actually go out and have fun, do they? Don’t you have lives to ruin?”
She quickly looked away, giving him her haughty profile. “You were a rude jerk today. You called Ryan a mall cop.”
A rude jerk. Was that the best she could do?
He braced one hand on the tree trunk beside them and regarded her lazily. Her pale blond hair shone like a candle in the dim light. Unlike his bronze-colored, one quarter Choctaw skin, hers was milky white. She reminded him of one of those china dolls his grandmother collected, except that April’s face looked wary and intelligent, not empty. She was clearly uncomfortable around men.
“How long you been with Raymond County?” he asked.
She pulled her chin up, which told him everything. So April hadn’t been working there long and felt defensive about it. That meant he could either compliment her, flatter her vanity or make her feel like the amateur she clearly was.
“I’ve been with Raymond County long enough to know you’re no fit guardian for your brother,” she said. “Matthew needs to be in school, not on a skateboard.”
“One fuck up of a home visit and you know all that?” he drawled. “Boy, you are good.”
She pressed her lips together in suppressed fury. It was fun watching her try to keep it together. “Are you familiar with family law, Mr. McBride?” she said.
“I’ve been in trouble with the law, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m talking about the law that gives social services all the authority they need to do what’s right by your brother.”
“Can’t say I’m big on authority.” His eyes dipped into the neckline of her dress. Distracting, the way her breasts kept heaving around like that. Maybe she had trouble catching her breath.
All that fire and ice. It gave him a buzz that beer never could.
“If you don’t want the state of Texas breathing down your neck, then I suggest you try abiding by the law,” she said drily. It made him wonder if she’d rehearsed those words in front of a mirror. “Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop staring down my dress.”
Busted.
Well, this was new. Most women actually wanted him to look.
“Tell me about yourself, April,” he said, changing tactics. “You banging the mall cop?”
Her mouth fell open. He could tell she was itching to get up and storm off, but couldn’t. Not with him standing right in front of her, blocking the way.
She looked as though she’d been rudely awakened from a nap, but her blue eyes had shades of steel in them. “You’re a pig.”
Brandon tilted his beer at her in agreement.
He was kind of loving this. He wanted to get under her skin. Hell, he wanted to get under her everything. “Most women would say that’s true,” he confessed. “I am a pig. But some women need one. They need someone who will drag them down in the mud and show them how good life can be when it’s got some dirt on it. In the end, we’re all animals, just feeding and breeding.” He took a long draw off his bottle before asking, “Which makes me wonder. What kind of animal are you, April?”
The blood flamed in her cheeks. He’d never seen anyone more laughably transparent. When she started stammering out reasons that wasn’t true and what an awful, awful person he was, he detected something else about her that stirred the hair on his arms. Maybe her defensiveness gave it away.
April wasn’t just uncomfortable around men. She had no experience with them at all.
Then he knew. And the discovery sledge-hammered him in the stomach.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You’re a virgin.”
If he had told April she had three minutes to live, she couldn’t have looked more shocked and mortified than she did right now, ramrod straight on the bench, hands practically strangling themselves on her lap. She would deny it, of course, but he knew.
“It’s none of your business what I am,” she snapped, making a valiant effort to reclaim her dignity. It occurred to Brandon that women like April would be a whole lot happier if they just admitted they either liked to fuck or were afraid of it. “The only thing we should be talking about is your brother’s truancy. If I have to take this to court, I will.”
A virgin. He couldn’t believe it. Who was a virgin these days? Not the chicks he hooked up with. The sluttier, the better.
“That’s too bad,” he said, “about the virgin thing. We might’ve had some fun. But to be honest, virgins bore me.”
“How dare you!”
He locked eyes with her, just to see what she would do. Pissed-off women didn’t scare him. If anything, they turned him on.
But something else stirred deep inside, almost like recognition.
