turn it up some more,” his brother shouted. “Motor mouth here won’t shut the hell up.”
Lyfe snapped his jaw shut while his two brows crashed together. Now if that doesn’t beat all. Grudgingly, he turned his head back toward the screen just as the station’s doorbell jingled again.
“Afternoon, Parker,” a familiar lyrical voice floated in.
Lyfe and Hennessey craned their necks around to watch willowy and leggy Tess stroll into the station.
Old man Parker lifted up the bill of his trucker’s hat and tossed the woman that was young enough to be his great-granddaughter a wink. “How you doing today, Miss Tess?”
“Oh, I’m doing fine,” she sighed, adding an extra humph! to her hips as she sashayed over to the counter. “I’m just looking for something to get into. You know how it is.” She handed over a pile of lottery tickets. “Daddy wants you to check his numbers.”
“Sure. No problem,” Parker said, jumping right to work.
Lyfe snickered. He had a feeling that if Tess asked the man to jump off the roof of the building while singing Old McDonald he would do it. The man was that smitten—just like most men that had the fortune or misfortune to cross her path were.
Catching the sound of Lyfe’s chuckle, Tess finally turned her bored gaze in his and his brother’s direction. She immediately lit up.
“Well, well. If it ain’t the Alton boys.” Tess’s beautiful smile grew bigger as she pushed away from the counter and strutted her way toward them. “Good Lord. All these chocolate muscles up in here. A sister might pass out.”
Hennessey laughed, mainly because Tess was as big a flirt as he was. “Don’t worry. If you faint, know that I got you.”
Lyfe rolled his eyes. He was going to have to take another look at his brother’s birth certificate and doublecheck that his middle name wasn’t “Corny.”
When she drew closer, her eyes widened. “Oh, my God … is that … Lyfe Alton? What on earth are you doing back in town?”
“Hello, Tess,” he said, tilting his head. “I’m on a little sabbatical from my architecture firm, so I came down to spend a couple of months with the folks.”
“Sabbatical, huh? Tired of living in the big city and thinking about coming back home?”
He shrugged to avoid answering.
Tess’s eyes roamed over him. He felt naked. He wondered if he should grab something to cover his private parts just in case she could see through his clothes.
“You know I never told you, but I used to have the biggest crush on you back in the day.”
“Is that right?” he said, straight-faced. The fact that Tess looked so much like her sister was beginning to make his chest hurt.
“Uh, huh.” Tess nodded. “But you were so stuck on Corona Mae that I don’t think you ever noticed any other girl in town.”
“He sure in the hell didn’t,” Hennessey said.
Lyfe gave his brother a hard glare that served as a final warning.
“What?” Hennessey asked, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s the truth.”
Only Tess picked up on his discomfort. “So where is the rest of the litter?” she asked. “Everybody knows that the Alton six-pack travels together.”
Lyfe shook his head as he looked her over again. “Like everything else, times change.”
Tess settled her hands on her hips as she tossed him a flirtatious wink. “Indeed.” She started to say something more when her gaze suddenly cut toward the suspended television set. “Is that—”
“Yep,” Hennessey said. “Looks like your older sister is still doing big things up in New York.”
“Parker, can you turn this up?”
“You got it!” Parker said, hitting the volume on the remote until people outside were likely able to hear the television set.
Lyfe groaned. But instead of leaving, like he should’ve done, his attention returned to the screen. Why not? He was a glutton for punishment, wasn’t he?
“Tess, honey. What the hell is taking you so long in here?” Rufus Banks thundered and then added to his old friend, “Yo, Parker, what’s up?”
“Nothing much. Just running your tickets through the machine here.”
Lyfe stiffened. He couldn’t help it. Things between him and Mr. Banks had never healed since the night he’d walked in on him and his daughter naked in their living room. Bullets flying at you in the middle of a snowstorm generally tended to have a lasting negative effect on a person.
The men’s gazes crashed.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” Rufus barked.
“You’ll never believe who’s on television, Daddy,” Tess said, interrupting a potential war.
Rufus grudgingly shifted his attention away from Lyfe and followed her finger that was pointing to the television. A millisecond later, a genuine smile carved its way into the center of his gray beard while he, too, strolled over to stand beneath the screen. “Well, look at Corona Mae all gussied up. What’s going on?”
Hennessey shrugged. “It appears you’re finally about to get yourself a son-in-law.”
“Say what?” Rufus squinted up at the screen.
“I’ll give you a hint,” Tess said, folding her arms beneath her small breasts. “Guess who’s coming to dinner.”
Rufus’s eyes bugged out. “What? That white boy right there?”
Lyfe gave him a lopsided smile. “Well, look at it this way. It’s not me.”
The men’s gazes locked again and another layer of tension was added between them. When Lyfe was younger, the look Rufus Banks was giving him would’ve been enough for him to trip over himself and scramble home. But fourteen years later, Lyfe was an intimidating man himself.
“Come on, Hennessey. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 4
The minute their wedding announcement segment ended on the entertainment channel, Corona powered off the television then jumped out of bed and raced toward the bathroom. “Oh, God. I think that I’m going to be sick.”
“Hey!” Rowan said from his side of the bed, as he lowered the script that he was reading. “I thought it was a very nice interview.”
Corona ignored him and dropped onto her knees next to the toilet bowl and waited for her dinner to make an encore appearance. But instead her stomach bent and turned like it was playing its own private game
