[English] The Viper

The Viper
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“So come back.” Angel held up a hand as if it were obvious. His eyes were sharp and calculating, his broad shoulders tense, making it obvious he had been waiting not so patiently for Marcos to get over his fit of morality and come back around. “You can stay here if you want. I bet Mia wouldn’t mind sharing her room. She’s my cousin, you know? She just moved here from the island a few months ago, but she’s smart. Got a college degree and everything. Top shelf. Better than these putas you’re used to.”

Marcos looked to Mia, whose gaze was as calculating as Angel’s.

“What’s in it for you?” he asked Mia curiously, because he didn’t put it past Angel to sell his cousin to the first dick who could help him make more money. “You really wanna share a room with a prick like me for some bodywork?”

“It’s not about the vin numbers. That’s his problem.” Mia’s gaze ran over Marcos slowly. “Like I said, I heard things. They say you’re good at all kinds of bodywork.”

“Man, you should’ve seen this pendejo when we were younger.” Angel laughed and turned to Mia. “He had every girl in Miami calling him. His mother changed their phone number five times when he was in middle school. Probably more than that when we got to high school.”

Marcos was already feeling a little raw, and he didn’t trust Angel. They’d been friends when they were younger, but something changed after high school. Greed had consumed Angel a little more than the rest of them. Marcos just had an innate knowing that he would do anything and sell out anyone for enough cash, and he hadn’t trusted him for a long time because of it.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” Marcos warned him before he could stop himself as the dark, dangerous side from his youth surfaced without warning. “You know you don’t get to talk about her, cabrón.”

Angel’s shoulders tightened, and Marcos half expected him to lash out. He welcomed it, realizing just then that *** or booze wasn’t the outlet he needed. He wanted to fight. To hurt someone until they bled, because he was so ****ing tired of his life without options.

He suddenly didn’t want to do Mia’s bodywork any more than he wanted to do Angel’s. She was beautiful, but he realized now she was just as cold and calculating as her cousin. He had the unexpected urge to shower and wash off her touch rather than stand there.

“I heard what happened,” Mia cut in before Angel could say something stupid. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“It was a bad night,” Angel confirmed and then took a deep breath as if remembering just then how bad of a night it was. “I’m sorry. Sore subject. I get it.”

Marcos took a breath too, knowing that the rum and cokes were probably getting to him. “I’ve had a ****ty day. Maybe I’m just looking for a fight.”

“Hey, I got people you can fight.” Angel laughed, the tension slipping away as easily as it started. He turned his arm, showing Marcos the snake tattoo that matched his as a reminder. “But we’re brothers. Los Corredores need to stick together, right? Look at Chuito, he’s still my bro even with all the money and ****, and I’ll be at his next fight. Front row. Us against the world, right?”

Marcos hesitated, not so sure about the loyalty anymore. They were obviously in a lot deeper than a group of teenagers stealing cars. It had been more than that for a while now. The game became deadly the night Juan died.

The same night his mother died.

Unconsciously, Marcos rubbed his arm, feeling the snake tattoo like a brand as he agreed on autopilot, “Right.”

“You want another rum and coke?” Angel asked as he gave him a wide smile.

“I guess.” Marcos nodded, because he knew he wasn’t driving anywhere. Might as well be drunk for it. He could certainly use it. “Yeah, why not.”

“Mia.” Angel gestured to the backdoor of the warehouse.

For one long moment, Mia gave her cousin a dirty look. Then she glanced back to Marcos, her gaze hot once more and then turned and left. Marcos watched her go, her hips swaying, the skirt she was wearing clinging to her in all the right places.

Strangely, an image of Katie Foster came into his mind.

Innocent eyes, pale skin, all those soft, wavy chestnut curls. He wondered what her ass would look like in a skirt like that. Then he shook his head and blamed the rum. He didn’t deserve a girl like Katie Foster. Not even close.

“She wants you.” Angel grabbed Marcos’s shoulder, shaking him playfully.

“Huh?” Marcos frowned at him, his mind still on Katie.

“That one.” Angel gestured to his cousin. “She fetches for no man. Not even her papi, but she’s getting a drink for you.”

This was all sort of strange. It was almost as if Angel was trying to push his cousin on Marcos. Since money hadn’t worked on luring Marcos back into the deep end of gang life, Angel must have figured ***** would do the trick. Top-shelf ***** with a brain and an ass.

No one could say Angel wasn’t good at what he did. He was observant. He obviously knew what Marcos liked, and it wasn’t the brainless nineteen-year-olds hanging out at the warehouse every night.

Marcos was still contemplating it when his cell rang. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, seeing Chuito’s face on the screen.

“Sorry, it’s my cousin,” he mumbled to Angel and answered his phone. “¿Hola?”

“I want you to tell me, play by play, what the **** you said to that gringa Katie Foster the night you got into that accident.”

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That was the last thing Marcos was expecting to hear, to say nothing of the hostility in Chuito’s voice when the two of them had been as close as brothers since birth.

“Excuse me?” He scowled, thinking he had heard him wrong. When Mia handed him another rum and coke, he leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Gracias.”

“Where are you?”

“At a party.”

“Where?” The suspicion was deep in Chuito’s voice.

Marcos took a sip of his drink, very aware of Angel and Mia standing next to him. “What’s this about Katie Foster?”

Chuito was quiet for a long moment, making it obvious he heard what Marcos couldn’t say.

“You’re an idiot.”

Marcus answered Chuito’s accusation by saying, “I lost my job today.”

Chuito was quiet again, before he whispered, “I told you I’d give you money.”

Marcos coughed and cursed in Spanish before he added, “Kiss my ass.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m trying to get there,” Marcos confirmed. “And I’m working on something.” He winked at Mia, even if his stomach lurched when he did it. He wasn’t near drunk enough for this, but he knew now this was as good as life was going to get. No pretty, sweet girls like Katie and no honest jobs. He might as well just accept his destiny. “Can you get to the point?”

“Hijo de la gran puta!” Chuito sounded more than little irritated when Mia’s giggle reached his ears. “This is what got you into all this trouble to begin with. I dunno what you said to that poor chica, Katie Foster, but she’s been bugging the **** out of me for your number.”

He raised his eyebrows, wondering for just a moment if destiny was trying to send him a different message, and held up his glass to Mia. “Un momento.”

Marcos walked over to the junkyard behind the warehouse. He looked at the hollowed-out bodies of long-dead cars and whispered into the phone, “Tell me.”

“You tell me what party first.” Chuito switched to Spanish, making it obvious he was somewhere public. Probably the Cellar. He always worked out at night. Life before moving to Garnet had made him a night owl. Car thieves didn’t do mornings.

“I’m at the warehouse,” Marcos admitted, also speaking Spanish.

“Is Angel there?”

“Yeah, I was talking up his cousin before you decided to ruin my night.”

“You’re going to **** Angel’s cousin? What the hell?”

“Consider it a fringe benefit. I’m going to end up working here anyway.”

“I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” Marcos cut him off before he could start in with a lecture. “I lost my job because the heat’s been shaking down Sebastian’s since I started. Fighting and auto body are the only two things I know in life, and I can’t get an honest job doing either of them. What the **** do you want from me? I tried.”

“I want you to try harder.”

“Yeah, you ****ing try.” Marcos took another drink of the rum and coke, allowing the burn of it to fuel his anger. “Angel told me you got him front-row tickets for the fight. You didn’t even get me front-row tickets, mother****er.”

“I didn’t give him those tickets.” Chuito sounded disgusted. “He must’ve bought them.”

Marcos winced, knowing that was a sensitive subject. No one wanted to untangle themselves from Los Corredores more than Chuito. He’d even moved to the bum****, backward town of Garnet trying to get away.

It hadn’t worked out so well.

“Do you want front-row tickets?” Chuito sounded slightly abashed, as if realizing just then he was in no position to give Marcos **** when he was in deep too. “I didn’t think to ask, but—”

“Just tell me about the gringa.” Marcos took another drink. “Why does she want my number? Did you tell her I’m broke? If she thinks suing me will get her anything—”

“I thought that’s what she wanted at first,” Chuito started, making it obvious he was as suspicious as Marcos. “But I don’t think that’s it. She’s been wearing your jacket around town, and today I heard her tell Jules she’s been putting out messages to you on craigslist.”

“What kind of messages?” Marcos pulled his earphones out of his pocket. “Hold on, let me check it out.”

He plugged in his earphones, letting him look at his phone and talk to Chuito at the same time. He typed in craigslist on the search engine and waited for it to pull up.

“What did you two talk about that night?” Chuito asked, clearly trying to fill in the silence.

“I don’t remember,” Marcos lied, because he had relieved every moment of that night a million times in his head. He was still looking at his phone, now paging through the dozens of categories on craigslist. “Where do you think she would put the message?”

“Do I know?”

“She didn’t say?”

“No, she just told Jules she’s been posting messages on craigslist, and every weirdo in Miami has been messaging her. That’s got to mean personals or something, right?”

Marcos went to the personals. He was silent for a long while, and Chuito just let him search. His eyes got wide as he looked through them. “Have you seen the **** on here?”

“What did you say to her that night? Really. Try and remember.”

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Marcos sighed, his gaze still on his phone, but he tried *****m up the conversation for his cousin. “I said sorry for running into her. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I told her I was probably getting a DUI. I thought it’d make her feel better knowing I was going to get screwed too, but she told me to leave. As if that would get me off. I’d already called 911. I was just keeping her company. It’s not like I was talking her up or anything.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“What kind of messages do you think she’s posting to me? This can’t be the right place. Is there another section?” Marcos was having a very hard time wrapping his mind around the idea of a woman like Katie Foster being interested in him for anything more than maybe paying him to do work on her car. “It’s got to be money. She knows you’re rich. She probably thinks you’ll pay her off if she tries *****e.”

“I don’t think its money. I think she’s into you.”

He laughed in disbelief. “I wish.”

“Marc—”

“I’d definitely hit that,” Marcos confirmed without remorse, realizing just then that he was drunker than he thought for admitting out loud to Chuito something he didn’t even want to admit to himself.

He’d been trying to live an honest life for the past four months simply for the memory of a woman he’d spent five minutes with.

“You know she’s a high school teacher.”

Marcos’s smile grew devious. “Where were teachers like that when we were in school?”

Chuito grunted in disgust. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“I like the gringas.” Marcos’s smile grew wider, though it hadn’t been true before Katie had ran into him. He went back to looking at his phone rather than analyze how one pretty gringa could change his preference so completely. “I need help with this. Mia!”

“Who’s Mia?”

“Angel’s cousin.”

“You’re going to ask one woman to help you look up an ad another woman is posting to you on craigslist? What the hell?”

“It’s not like it’s that kind of message.”

There was no way he believed pretty Katie Foster, with those innocent eyes, was even remotely interested in him—but he was intrigued enough to ask Mia for help with craigslist.

Mia walked up with her eyebrows raised curiously.

“Okay.” Marcos turned to Mia and explained, “This gringa Katie Foster that I got into an accident with back in January is supposedly posting messages to me on craigslist. Do you know where to find them?”

Mia took his phone from him and stared at the craigslist postings on the screen. “What kind of messages?”

Marcos shrugged. “Chuito says she’s been trying to get my number, but he wouldn’t give it to her. She probably wants money, right?”

“She wouldn’t post something on craigslist if she was looking for money. Maybe she likes you.”

“Yeah, right.” Marcos laughed as Mia started looking through craigslist on his phone. “She’s from that place, Garnet, where my cousin Chuito trains, and it is one seriously country town. She probably thinks touching a guy like me will get her hands dirty.”

Mia looked up and grinned. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands dirty with you.”

“Thanks, chica.” Marcos’s tone was encouraging, but he looked away rather than meet her gaze.

Chuito coughed. “You know I’m still on the phone, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” Marcos pointed to his earphones when Mia looked up. “My cousin.”

“The fighter?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice.” Mia raised her eyebrows as she continued to page through his phone. “I might go with Angel to see the fight. He bought twelve tickets.”

Chuito cursed, making it obvious he had picked up what Mia said.

“Anything?” Marcos asked, hoping she hadn’t heard Chuito through the earphones.

“I’m looking in Missed Connections. Women love Missed Connections.”

“What is it?”

“My sister reads them. Sometimes they’re romantic.”

Marcos snorted. “You’re probably in the wrong spot.”

“Here it is.” Mia held up the phone.

Marcos was going to ask how she knew the post was for him when she handed the phone back, allowing him to see for himself why Mia was so certain.

Man with unusual snake tattoo who “ran” into me on New Year’s Eve in Garnet—w4m

The snake on your right forearm is purple and black, with several red ink drops decorating its coiled body. The tattoo is likely a work in progress as the rest of the ink drop scales were not filled in.

If this is you, please message me. You were so kind to me that night, and the conversation we had changed me for the better. Your courageous actions taught me to be a braver woman, and I would love to have one more chance to talk to you and thank you.

Also, you gave me something of yours. Please describe it, and I will gladly arrange returning it to you.

He was silent after he finished reading, wishing now he hadn’t let Mia be the one to help him find it. He could feel her gaze on him, and it left him more than a little uncomfortable. His breath was hitched somewhere in his chest. He cleared his throat and pushed aside the rush of lust that surged through him from seeing right there in black-and-white that something about that night had stuck with Katie as much as it had stayed with him. It felt like a small stroke of luck when he had been dealing with nothing but negativity for a while now.

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He knew instinctively that this connection was dangerous for both of them. Chuito should have never told him about it, because Marcos was feeling more than a little rash and reckless since losing his job.

“Why would she mention your Los Corredores tattoo in a public ad? Isn’t that like putting a target on your back?” Mia asked.

“She mentioned your ink?” Chuito choked. “Read it to me.”

Marcos read it to him, still feeling self-conscious with Mia standing there listening. When he was done, Chuito cursed and then said, “What the **** did you say that night?”

“Nothing.” Marcos couldn’t figure it out either, though he was still secretly riding high over it. He wasn’t going to let Chuito know that. Or Mia, so he just shrugged. “I called 911. I waited for the cops to get there. I didn’t do anything.”

Mia smiled, though her gaze was still sharp and cunning in a way that made Marcos’s skin crawl as she asked, “Are you going to write her back?”

“Hell, no.” Marcos snorted, trying to mentally convince himself of it for Katie’s sake if nothing else. “I shouldn’t even be looking at it, let alone responding to it.”

“It’s not illegal to have a tattoo.”

Mia didn’t seem as concerned, but she also hadn’t spent most of her life being dogged by law enforcement either. He should be mad at Katie for it, but he wasn’t. She couldn’t know what posting about the ink meant. She was completely naive to Marcos’s reality, and that was all the more reason to forget the post and go back to drinking away the pain his life was always inflicting on him.

He wanted to read more, to see if Katie had posted anything else, but he was very aware of where he was and who was watching him.

“Whatever,” he said, his gaze on Mia as he forced a grin. “You wanna finish that dance?”

Mia’s smile was wide and pleased. “Sure.” She flipped her hair, looking triumphant.

“You’re just gonna ignore it?” Chuito huffed. “And let me keep dealing with your issue? What the ****, Marc?”

“I’ll call you later.” Marcos clicked the button on his earphones to end the call and then tilted his head back toward where others were dancing under the stars. “Come on, chica.”

He let Mia lead the way, waiting until her back was turned to pull his phone out of his pocket and text Chuito before his cousin got pissed and started calling back.

No worries, bro. I’ll take care of it.

* * * *

Marcos managed to slip out of Mia’s clutches with the excuse that he was far too drunk to give her the night she deserved. Fortunately for him, Mia was the type of woman who wanted her men at 100 percent when providing “bodywork.”

So Marcos ended up on a couch in the warehouse once the party had wound down. He lay there in the early morning hours, reading through the other messages Katie had posted in Missed Connections. There were dozens and dozens of them, and no amount of rum and coke could pull his eyes shut now that he knew where to find them.

They all had the same tagline, but the messages themselves varied drastically. Some were to the point and professional, but others were intimate and vulnerable. Marcos reread one in particular over and over again, feeling himself fall under Katie’s spell even if everything in him knew it was a mistake.

I’ve thought of you every day since the accident, but tonight I dreamed of you for the first time. I was so disappointed when I woke up that I decided to write you another note, even if it is the middle of the night, and you’ll probably never see it anyway. In my dream, we were on the beach in Miami. We were both happy, and there wasn’t a stroke of bad luck in sight for either of us. I told you I had never seen the ocean. You laughed, and it was such a nice sound. Now I am lying here wondering if you laugh a lot in a real life or if your days stretch on like mine do, with so little to smile about.

Maybe that’s why I can’t give up hoping that one day we’ll talk again. I can’t stop thinking that maybe two negatives might equal a positive. That together, even something as terrible as a car accident can be beautiful.

What do you think?

It was a nice theory, if not completely naive. Marcos tried to imagine never seeing the ocean and couldn’t even fathom not spending at least one day in the sand, listening to the surf and feeling the sun on his back. Then he found himself fantasizing about taking Katie to Puerto Rico. The beaches on the island were more intimate than Miami—unscathed by the hordes of tourists.

With the rum still lingering in his system, he wanted to believe her theory. That in the small town of Garnet there was a pretty gringa with the ability to turn his negative life into a positive one. The oddest thing about the fantasy was that as he lay there on the couch in an illegal chop shop, what he wanted most was the chance to show Katie the world. To see her laugh. To watch those wide, innocent brown eyes light up with amusement and know he was the one to give that to her.

Then he started wondering what that soft gaze would look like hazed in passion. Didn’t two negative forces have to join together to create the positive? He imagined those pale thighs around his waist, those soft tits pressing against his chest, and he had to adjust himself in his jeans when his **** got too hard for comfort. He was willing to bet her nipples were a rosy pink, just like the color of her cheeks in the cold, and it created a very ***y image in his mind. It seemed a real shame that she was lonely enough to be posting notes to a thug like him on Missed Connections.

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This craigslist **** was leaving him very frustrated.

He could go up and find Mia’s room; instead, he decided to text Chuito.

Coming to Garnet. I’ll take care of the gringa situation when I get there.

What he didn’t say to Chuito was that he wanted one more chance too, but he didn’t dare respond to Katie’s post, not with the mention of a gang tattoo plastered all over the Internet. Miami PD knew what a Los Corredores tattoo looked like, but there was nothing stopping him from responding to her in person.

He needed a distraction from the gang life that always sucked him back in no matter how hard he fought against it, and, unfortunately for Katie Foster, she’d just provided one.

Chuito texted back almost instantly even though it was past four in the morning.

Bad idea. Call me when you’re sober.

Marcos knew his cousin was probably right, but rather than respond, he went back to rereading Katie’s posts in Missed Connections until the sun came up.

He was wired and felt alive in a way that was more than a little addictive to an adrenaline junkie like Marcos. The anger over losing his job had evaporated under the waves of lust reading all those Missed Connections posts had churned up. He kept waiting for the moment when reality would sink in, and he’d know it was a bad idea to test out Katie’s theory.

Instead he found himself packed and heading north on I-75 by noon.

He never did text Chuito back.

Chapter Five

Garnet County

Katie was worn out.

The Friday before spring break left the kids distracted and high-strung. They were counting down the minutes until break and really had no use for history.

As she headed to her car, Katie realized she was every bit as ready for spring break as her students. One of the small perks of being a teacher, and she planned to celebrate with a long bath, a glass of wine, and a good book. She had a stack of historical romances waiting to be read, and if she was lucky, the one she chose would be as good with the *** as it was with the historical accuracy and make her history-geek heart go pitter-pat.

A girl had to dream a little.

“Katie girl.”

Katie groaned and refused to turn around as she walked to her car. Instead she just held up a hand, giving a backward wave to her ex-husband.

“Wait up.” Grayson came up behind her, his loafers clicking on the asphalt. “You never told me what you were up to for the break.”

“That was by design.” Katie arched an eyebrow when he stood in front of her, blocking her path to her car. “Getting divorced means I don’t have to answer to you anymore.”

Grayson bristled at that. His eyes narrowed, making it obvious the long school day had worn on him as much as her. “Why do you have to be like that when I’m trying to be nice? I was going to buy you dinner.”

“Grayson!”

Katie looked toward the edge of the parking lot, seeing Ashley, the cheerleading coach leaning against the fence to the football field and waving Grayson over. Katie didn’t know why, but it seemed like lately the perky blonde was always underfoot whenever Grayson was doing his daily groveling.

“Why don’t you go buy her dinner,” Katie suggested, unable to taper the hopeful hitch in her voice. “She’s always after your attention. She giggles at everything you say in the staff meetings, even when it’s not funny.”

Rather than respond to the suggestion, Grayson glared over at the football field. “Later, Ashley!”

“My car won’t start!”

“Her car won’t start,” Katie repeated, giving Grayson a wide smile. “Go be a hero.”

Grayson grabbed her arm, obviously not amused with her sarcasm. “I am tired of begging, Katie girl, and I’m tired of this game you’re playing with our lives.”

Katie tugged at her arm, trying to break it out of his grasp. “Let go of me!”

“You know how it looks to this town when someone gets a divorce. They’re still talking about it. You need to come home now, and we need to get back to living our lives. Together. People look at me like a loser since we broke up, and I’m over it.”

“Oh, sweep me off my feet, why don’t you?” Katie laughed bitterly. “I don’t care what people in this town think.”

“I do.”

“I know.” Katie pulled at her arm again. “It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to be married to you anymore. All you ever cared about was what others thought. The perfect house. The perfectly obedient wife. Someday the perfect children to torment with this delusion.”

“It’s not a delusion,” Grayson snapped at her as he tilted his head toward the football field. “We’re better than them. We’re smarter. We make better life choices. Hell, I got more in my money market account than most of the people in this town could ever dream of. I pay more in taxes than they probably make in a year. I’m going to retire in another two years just off my investments.”

“Everyone talks about everyone. Not just here, but everywhere. It’s human nature.” Katie gave up trying to pull her arm free and just gave him a look of pity. “Stop worrying about what they think and just live your life. This obsession with being better is making you miserable. It was making me miserable too, until I realized I didn’t have to play along if I didn’t want to.”

“You’re not exactly a ten, Katie.” Grayson laughed cruelly, reminding Katie why she left to begin with. “No one is going to love you for your mind like I do, not in this town. I’m your best option, and I don’t understand why you did this to us.”

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“I think she’s a ten,” a man called from behind them.

Goose bumps danced over Katie’s skin, and she wasn’t sure why until she craned her neck to look toward the direction of the low, male voice. Her body must have recognized what her mind hadn’t caught up with, because walking over to them was Marcos Rivera. He was wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat, but it was undeniably him. She could see the snake on his arm from there.

He looked larger than life in the late-afternoon sun with those impossibly broad shoulders and large, bunched biceps covered in tribal tattoos. She couldn’t help but notice that every inch of him seemed wound tight and ready to jump—like a tiger stalking prey. She blinked, understanding for the first time all those warnings Jules had been leveling at her in regards to Marcos.

This wasn’t the kind, handsome angel from the crash site.

This Marcos looked deadly.

He took off his sunglasses when he stopped in front of them. His light gaze rested on the steely grasp Grayson still had on her arm. “This is the part where you let her go.”

“Excuse me?” Grayson huffed in that annoying superior voice of his that had always embarrassed Katie when he used it in public, usually toward someone parking their car or waiting on them at a restaurant. “This is my wife and—”

“Ex-wife,” Katie corrected before Grayson could finish. She was still staring at Marcos in shock, unable to believe he was really standing there in front of her. “What are you doing here?”

Marcos broke the dangerous staring contest he was having with Grayson. He let his gaze run over her hotly for one long moment, making more goose bumps dance over her arms. A small bit of the tension eased out of his powerful frame, and the look in his beautiful eyes became warm just like she remembered. “I got your messages.”

“My messa—” Katie cheeks heated when she realized what he was talking about, and her voice was a squeak of acknowledgment. “Oh.”

There was a quiet moment between them, one charged enough that Katie was actually breathless to be in his presence again after so long. Strangely enough, she could feel it off Marcos too. That electric frisson of need so overwhelming it actually showed on his face and translated into something tangible enough that even someone as romantically challenged as Katie could sense it. As if remembering they weren’t alone, Marcos cleared his throat and turned back to Grayson, his eyes narrowed in warning once more.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to insist you get your hands off her.” He eyed Grayson’s hold on her arm pointedly. “Now.”

“I don’t know who you think you are—” Grayson started, but he let go of Katie as requested and took a protective step back from Marcos.

“He’s a friend,” Katie answered, her cheeks still burning in embarrassment and something much more carnal. “We met through Jules Wellings.”

It wasn’t a complete lie.

“Oh, fantastic,” Grayson spat, because Jules wasn’t exactly his favorite person after getting Katie a more than fair settlement in the divorce and severely depleting those money market accounts he was so proud of. “This is just the sort of person she would introduce you to. She’s married into a family of criminals and—”

“We have to go now.” Katie was so thrilled to see Marcos, even with the craigslist fiasco, that she grabbed Marcos’s hand before she could think better of it. His palm was just as rough and calloused as it had been the night of the accident. She looked up at him with a smile. “Late lunch. Early dinner?”

“Sure.” Marcos grinned back, before his gaze darted to Grayson once more in warning “Later, cabrón.”

The dismissal was obvious, and it made it clear that Marcos wasn’t used to men arguing with him. He almost gave the impression that he was doing Grayson a favor by dismissing him.

“You can’t just—” Grayson sputtered in disbelief, his eyes wide as he gave Katie a look.

“Your girlfriend is waiting,” Katie said sarcastically as she pointed over to Ashley, who was standing by her car now and not so subtly watching the exchange.

“But you barely know this guy and—”

“We’re taking separate cars,” Katie offered before Grayson made a scene with some ridiculous excuse to protect her, even if his apprehension around Marcos was palpable and more than a little thrilling. “Bye, Grayson.”

“I’m texting you later,” Grayson warned as he looked at Marcos with distrust.

Katie shrugged with indifference. “If that makes you feel better.”

“I’m over there.” Marcos pointed to his white truck as he pulled her away before any more could be said. “Follow you?”

“Sounds great.” Katie didn’t want to let him go, so she decided to walk him to his pickup even if they had an audience.

Katie couldn’t help but pull up short once they were out of earshot. She looked up at Marcos, knowing the stunned amazement had to be showing on her face as she asked the one question that had been on the tip of her tongue since he appeared like a mirage in the teachers’ parking lot. “You didn’t come all the way here just because of those messages—did you?”

“Yeah, I did. Been driving since yesterday afternoon.” Marcos’s voice was distant for such a stunning revelation. He wasn’t even looking at Katie. His gaze was on Ashley instead. “That woman’s his girlfriend?”

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Katie couldn’t help but stiffen a little. She knew she wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as Ashley, but—

“That car’s had a new paint job. That’s not a factory color.” Marcos turned back to her. “What color was it before? Do you remember?”

“Ashley’s car?” Katie was so confused, but she glanced over to see Grayson open the hood to the red compact vehicle. “I don’t know. I try to pay as little attention as possible when it comes to her.”

“Maybe that’s a mistake,” Marcos said in warning as he looked back to Grayson and Ashley. She would have been insulted if his distrust for both of them wasn’t noticeable. “I have a weird memory when it comes to cars. That one looks very familiar.”

He turned to her and arched an eyebrow, as if expecting Katie to understand.

“Did you really drive all the way up here because of a few notes on craigslist?” Katie asked, because she could care less about Ashley or the car she drove. “Chuito told you what I said in Jules’s office, and you read them and just decided to come up. That can’t be true.”

Something on her face must have had Marcos forgetting Ashley’s car too as he gave her a thoughtful look and asked, “You’ve never seen the ocean? Really?”

Katie’s cheeks were hot again as she remembered what note that little tidbit was revealed in. “Never,” she confirmed rather than give in to the shyness.

“Early lunch. Late dinner,” he repeated her words from earlier as his gaze ran over her in another hot sweep that left her feeling warm and tingly in a way she’d never experienced before. “We’ll eat and talk.”

Chapter Six

Marcos rubbed at his arm, feeling his Los Corredores tattoo like a brand as he looked at Katie across the booth in Hal’s Diner.

He knew this was a mistake.

He’d known it since he pulled into the Garnet High School parking lot and spent forty-five minutes searching for Katie’s long honey-brown curls in the dying afternoon sun. He watched the sea of high schoolers spill out of the large brick building and studied their young, hopeful faces pensively because they were so very different from the teenagers he knew. These were kids with a whole lifetime of opportunity in front of them, and Katie was part of the reason for that.

She made the world a little brighter just by being in it. She helped shape young minds and got them ready to face the world. What the **** was Marcos doing with his life? He’d dropped out of high school after his mother died, and that was the nicest part of that particular story. What he did after he left school would give most people nightmares for the rest of their lives, and he didn’t even have the decency to feel bad about it.

For a lot of years, he’d wondered if he had a conscience at all, or just an ingrained code of conduct that taught him to obey a different set of laws than most people followed.

Now he could thank Katie for finally proving that he did have a conscience. He wasn’t supposed to be here making her eyes glow like they had since that moment at the school when her asshole of an ex-husband forced Marcos to step in after he’d already decided Katie didn’t deserve his kind of trouble. He had just made the decision to leave, head over to Chuito’s for the night, and then go back to Miami to start stripping the cars in the warehouse and work on forgetting the idea of two negatives making something positive. There were no pretty, sweet gringas in his future. Women like Katie weren’t meant for guys like him, yet here they were, because the second he’d seen her ex-husband grab her, he couldn’t help but go to her. He was still congratulating himself for not killing the uptight prick.

He wanted to tell her to turn and run the other way. Instead he was glancing at the menu, berating himself, and willing some sort of strength to keep this friendly rather than give in to the throb in his **** that hadn’t subsided since they sat down.

“You’re really quiet.” Katie’s cheeks were pink, and she bit her lip nervously before she asked in a hushed voice, “Are you okay?”

No, he was anything but okay, but he was saved from having to explain when the waitress walked over, pad in hand.

“Can I get y’all something to drink?”

“Hey, Melody. I can’t believe you came back to work,” Katie said to the waitress. “How old is that baby now?”

“A little over three months.” The waitress smiled at Katie. “I’m just filling in. I’m so busy with the shelter. I really don’t have time to work for Hal anymore, but I help out if he needs me.”

“That’s nice of you. I’ll just have water.” Katie glanced to her menu. “Meatloaf still the special for Friday?”

Melody nodded. “Sure is.”

“I’ll have that.” Katie handed Melody the menu before she looked to Marcos. “What about you?”

“Um.” He frowned at the menu again with his thoughts so scattered it made something as simple as ordering difficult. “I guess I’ll have the same. Water. Meatloaf. That works.”

“Okay.” The waitress took his menu from him. “Mashed potatoes good for ya?”

“They’re excellent,” Katie assured him, and Marcos nodded in agreement.

He saw the waitress, Melody, give Katie a look and a smile before she left. That had Marcos looking around the diner, and he noticed the waitress wasn’t the only one who took an interest in the two of them sitting in the corner booth. He felt self-conscious and could just imagine what they were saying about him.

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He didn’t exactly blend in this town.

How the hell did Chuito deal with it?

“I guess we should’ve gone somewhere else,” Marcos mumbled when they were alone again. He unrolled his napkin and worked on setting out his silverware as he avoided Katie’s eyes. “They’ll probably be talking about you now.”

“Probably,” Katie agreed, though her voice was warm and excited in a way he didn’t expect. He looked up at her to see her smile was wide and pleased. “Girls like me usually don’t go on dates with fighters. Not that this is officially a date, but—”

“Chica.” He groaned and rubbed a hand over his eyes as the lust and guilt collided violently enough to have a headache forming. Knowing she was so ****ing pleased to be here with him wasn’t making any of this easier. “I’m the last guy you should want to be on a date with.”

“What does chica mean?”

He lifted his head, giving her a bemused look he couldn’t hide. It occurred to him that, with a few small exceptions like the past few trips to Garnet, he hadn’t ventured out of his turf. When he was ten, he’d moved from Puerto Rico to Miami, where Spanish was still the preferred language, at least in the areas he hung out in. Hell, even the gringos knew what chica meant in Florida.

“It means, uh—” He thought for a moment. “Girl, I guess.”

“You guess?”

He gave her a smile he couldn’t hide, because there was something about her that was so incredibly endearing as she tucked strands of curls behind her ears and looked at him with open curiosity.

“It can be an endearment.” He shrugged. “Like baby or something. It’s not rude.”

“Oh.”

Katie’s grin was pleased. She blushed once more, and it had his mind sinking back into that dangerous territory as he wondered if that pale skin of hers flushed pink like that all over. He imagined her rosy and sweaty, breathless as he touched and licked her until she came over and over again.

That had always been his thing.

Watching a hot girl come was his drug of choice. That was the reason his mother had to change their phone number so many times when he’d been in school. He’d discovered too young the high he got from getting a girl off. When other guys his age were sinking into drugs or alcohol, he was sneaking into girls’ bedrooms and going down on them.

He hadn’t had many girlfriends. He wasn’t boyfriend material. He never had been, but he was a good time, and all the women in his neighborhood knew it. He was “different,” as Mia not so casually put it.

Jesus, he wanted to taste Katie. To feel her fingers in his hair and her thighs shaking as he sucked on her clit and then ****ed her ***** with his tongue. Just once, so he knew her flavor. So he could remember what she sounded like. He’d probably be in a prison cell again one of these days again soon. His father was still in prison in Miami and wouldn’t be seeing daylight for another ten years. That was a lot of ****ing years, and Marcos would need something *****stain him. None of the other girls had given him that. They’d always just left him looking for something new.

But with Katie, he suspected she’d be different. She was so sweet. So ****ing innocent. Everything about her was soft in a way that drove him crazy. He’d never met a girl like her before, and sitting across from her knowing he wasn’t supposed to touch her was driving him crazy. He had to look back to the table to keep himself from eyeing her, because the white blouse she was wearing was a V-neck that dipped down just slightly, showing off the curve of nice, full tits.

He also couldn’t help but remember the way her very studious khaki pants clung to her ass in the best way possible. How that prick in the parking lot had gotten to tap an ass like that was completely beyond Marcos. This woman could get any guy she wanted, but for some reason, she was oblivious to it.

“You know he’s full of ****, right?” Marcos asked as he went back to straightening his silverware rather than look at her.

“Who’s full of ****?” Katie sounded mystified, and Marcos didn’t blame her. He knew he’d been cryptic since he’d gotten there.

“Your ex. That crap about you not being a ten.” He practically growled the words, and he glanced up at her again, seeing the way those large honey eyes widened in surprise as if she couldn’t believe he’d have a different opinion. “That’s bull****. Where I come from, you’d have guys crawling all over you.”

Katie laughed. “I doubt that.”

“Don’t doubt it.” His gaze slid downward once more, unable to stop himself from indulging in a quick glance at the curve of her tits. “Never come to Miami. I’ll definitely go to jail.”

“For what?” she asked with amusement.

“Murder, probably. They’d be all over you, and I’d have to kill them. Without finesse.”

He cleared his throat and looked away again, feeling exposed and wondering what it was about this woman that had left him vulnerable since the moment he ran into her. The whole reason he’d gotten the job at Sebastian’s to begin with was because of her. He thought it was the guilt of the accident, but now he realized it might be something entirely different. A part of him had wanted to be good enough for a woman like this. She’d worried about him that night, even while injured, and it stayed with him.

He reached across the booth before he could stop himself and grabbed her left hand to pull it toward him. He could see the scars, still pink against the otherwise pale flesh of her forearm. He reached over with his other hand and touched the scars thoughtfully.

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“This is why you shouldn’t be here with me, chica,” he told her as he ran a thumb over the largest scar, watching as the fine hairs on her arm stood on end. “You can see right here I’m bad for you.”

“You gave me something that night, but it wasn’t these scars.” Katie didn’t pull free; instead, she let him touch her, to feel for himself the damage he’d done to something so beautiful. “I’m stronger than I was before the accident. You gave me that. You taught me to be like you.”

He grunted in disbelief as he continued to run his fingers over the injuries, wondering about the pain she went through in recovery and knowing he’d caused it. If only he’d turned the wheel the other way. They would’ve driven right by each other, and neither of them would bear the scars of that night. He wouldn’t have spent the past four months fighting to be something the world didn’t want him to be, and those wounds were likely just as painful as hers.

“I, um—” He brushed the scar on her wrist reverently with his thumb, caressing it instead of just touching it. “The first memories I have are of working on cars with my dad. I’ve always had a passion for cars, all cars, but I’ve spent most of my life hacking them up. Cutting into perfectly good vehicles for the parts until they’re nothing but empty frames.”

“Okay,” Katie said slowly, not sounding nearly as judgmental as she should. “I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say.”

“It’s like a curse.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles because he couldn’t resist. “Hurting the things that are most beautiful to me. It keeps happening to me over and over again. I don’t know why, but it does. I loved my mother so much, and she died.”

Katie shook her head. “My mother died too. That’s not—”

“She was killed in a drive-by.” Marcos cut her off before she could finish. “The whole front of the house was full of bullets.”

“That couldn’t be your fault,” Katie whispered, her voice strained with pain, and when he looked at her, he could see the agony in her gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

“They killed my cousin too. He was only thirteen.” Marcos flinched over the memory, remembering the screams that night, the way Juan had died in Chuito’s arms. The wide, set gaze of his mother staring at the ceiling in shock. He shook his head. “Those bullets were supposed to be for me. They killed Juan and my mother instead.”

Tears rolled down Katie’s cheeks, as if she felt the pain as deeply as he did. “Marcos—”

“I couldn’t respond to your messages because the tattoo”—he lifted up his arm, showing it to her and musing to himself that he was branded even more horrifically than she was—“it’s a gang tattoo. The heat’s probably watching. We’re a known gang in Miami, and they’ve been coming down hard on us for the past few years. I’m sure they sent a subpoena to craigslist.”

“You’re not still in the gang?” She gasped. “Are you?”

“You don’t get out of a gang,” he corrected her. “Until they bury you.”

She was silent, her eyes wide. He thought she might get up and leave, and really, that would be best. It’d be so much easier that way, and it’d save him from doing what he knew he had to do if he was going to obey his newfound conscience.

Except Katie didn’t say anything. She just sat there, like a deer in the headlights, making him feel like a Mack truck, and he hated it.

“I want to be the guy who shows you the ocean. I do,” he admitted, because why the hell not. He was spilling his guts at this diner anyway, and he really hoped no one could hear him, because he hadn’t said this **** out loud to anyone. Ever. “But I’m not, chica. I’m sorry. For both of us.”

It felt sort of like cutting off his own arm, and he didn’t even know why. He barely knew this chick. She was hot, sure, smoking actually, but he didn’t really have a hard time picking up beautiful women. So why this one, with her wide, deer-in-the-headlight gaze and absolutely zero understanding of his life and his reality?

That seemed about as unfair as everything else.

When she finally broke her silence, her voice was a squeak of misery that he understood all too well. “Then why come all the way up here?”

He jerked, not expecting that. “I told you, the heat’s probably—”

“You could’ve given the message to your cousin.” Her voice grew stronger, more reasonable, making him envision her standing at the front of the class teaching. “How long of a drive is it?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, fourteen hours without stopping, but—”

“Did you stop?”

“No, but—”

“You drove fourteen hours without stopping to sit here and tell me it’s impossible?” Katie arched a dubious eyebrow at him.

“Yes.” Even to Marcos’s ears, it sounded like bull****.

“Liar.” She called him on it. “What if two negatives—”

“One negative.” He gestured to himself and then looked at her. “Just one, and what happens when you mix a positive and a negative, Katie?” He hoped she knew the answer, because his ass dropped out of high school, and he wasn’t real sure. He was tempted to Google it on his phone. A part of him was hoping for a different answer than the one he suspected was correct. “What does it equal? Tell me.”

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“A n-negative,” she whispered miserably. “A negative and positive equal a negative.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out the last of his cash and tossed it on the table. “I have to go now.”

“It’s just a stupid math analogy,” Katie said, her voice shaking as her eyes welled up like they had the night of the accident. “I hate math. I don’t even know why we’re using it. Let’s use history instead and—”

He stood up and gave her a long look. “I drove fourteen hours to tell you that you’re beautiful, chica. That’s it.”

She surged forward, grabbing his hand before he could walk off. “I don’t want you to go. I still have your jacket and—”

“Keep the jacket.” He let her hold on, because a part of him wanted her to win. “You know all those things going around in your mind. The stuff you know gangs do, but you’re telling yourself I’m different. That I never did those things. You’re wrong. I’ve done them.”

Katie shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t care if you’ve stolen a few cars.”

“We’re not talking about cars.”

“Drugs?”

“No,” he said and then shrugged. “Well, yeah, but no. Ask me what you really want to know.”

She swallowed hard, as if considering, and then looked him in the eye and actually did it. She asked, “What happened to the men who killed your mother?”

“They’re dead now.” He couldn’t even taper the pride he felt when he said it. “And I don’t feel bad about it. Not even a little.”

Katie released him, her hand dropping back to her side.

She let him go.

“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” she whispered and then looked away rather than meet his eyes. “And your cousin.”

“I’m sorry too.” He sighed, meaning it, because that horrible night had stolen something else from him. Something he wouldn’t have been able to fathom back then— wanting a pretty gringa from Garnet County to look at him as a positive instead of negative. “You have no idea how much.”

He turned to leave before she had to say anything else.

Chapter Seven

Katie ended up in the bath, as she had originally planned. Glass of wine in hand, she was reading, but it wasn’t a romance novel. She lay there with her phone, using the information she had to form a clear picture of the life Marcos had described.

One that didn’t match her vision of the man from the accident at all.

He thought she was sheltered and naive.

As she read, she realized he was probably right.

It wasn’t that hard to find the information. By typing in the description of the tattoo, Miami, and, on a whim, the fact that they were Puerto Rican, the name Los Corredores popped up almost instantly. They even had their own Wikipedia page, filled with all sorts of nasty facts like:

A particularly territorial and dangerous Miami gang. They are one of the largest and deadliest gangs in south Dade County. Known members of Los Corredores have been arrested for a wide range of criminal activities, including narcotics trafficking, shootings, homicides, assaults, and auto theft.

There was even a picture of a tattoo like the one on Marcos’s arm.

And Chuito’s.

How stupid was she to think that it was some sort of cousin-bonding thing. She had imagined that they had gotten them together.

Perhaps they had.

This picture on the Internet had only two ink drops filled in red on the back of the snake’s back, which she realized now weren’t supposed to be ink drops. They are blood. The Internet was filled with grim facts that made Los Corredores look like a very scary gang indeed.

She had a hard time equating the information with the Marcos she knew, with those beautiful, soulful light eyes that had set her on fire as he looked at her across that booth today. She just couldn’t believe the picture these articles were painting of him. She couldn’t even put Chuito in that role, and she and Chuito weren’t exactly the best of friends.

It made her realize, as a history teacher, how very different the reality was from the facts on paper, but she couldn’t stop reading, searching through the different resources, though most were police related.

One article was a study on Los Corredores’s success as an exclusively Puerto Rican gang, when Miami had a much larger Cuban population. Most of Los Corredores’s rivalry was with Cuban gangs. According to the article, they’d managed to establish a strong foothold over the past decade in Dade County through swift, deadly action whenever their territory was threatened.

Katie wondered if by threatened, the article meant shooting up a house with women and children in it. None of these articles and posts had the whole stories in them. Not even close.

She was certain of it.

And she was regretting letting Marcos go so easily, which she knew made her absolutely insane. He’d all but admitted to murder, but going after his mother’s murderers was sort of like self-defense, wasn’t it?

Katie wanted it to be. Desperately. She needed another excuse to see him and touch the magic that she felt in his presence before he left.

She closed her eyes and dropped her phone to the mat by the tub and sucked in a shaky breath, because there was no amount of denial that was going to let her believe the lie for long.

The murders he’d confessed to weren’t self-defense at all.

They were revenge.