CHAPTER FOUR
CASH
“You guys have zero fucking chill. You looked like a bunch of deranged puppies.”
Axel smirks at me as I resume my seat at our table. He’s cool and collected. His arm is around Zara, his cognac is nearly gone, and his sapphire eyes are glinting with amusement. “You’re the one who invited us to witness the proud moment.”
Maddox tips his drink to me, his mouth pouted in feigned pride. “Your boy is all growed up, Papa Axe.”
I invited them to throw her off. If I’d shown up alone, she’d have known I hunted her down, which may have been alarming. They were supposed to be my casual disguise, but instead, they exuded escaped-an-asylum vibes.
“Girls like puppies,” Jax argues, considering that a beat longer than necessary before tacking on, “Bernard gets me a lot of numbers.”
Bernard is our bulldog—well, technically, Ryker and Mercy’s bulldog. Remy named him after our head concierge, who is essentially our honorary grandfather. It’s only confusing sometimes.
They dive into a conversation about how both Bernards are cute and deranged, spiraling like they do, while I wave the waitress over.
“Mind if I use your pen”—I check her name tag—“Gina?”
“Sure,” she says with a syrupy sweetness as she digs in the pocket of her apron for it.
“Oh, look at that.” I twirl it through my fingers like a baton. “I already have it.”
She giggles, her eyes wide in awe of the simple trick. “How did you do that?”
“If I revealed my secret, I’d have to ”—I let that hang for a second while I click the pen open—“learn a new trick.”
She probably assumed I was going to say something about killing her there, but that’s a little too on the nose.
Tessa harumphs, but I don’t pay her any attention. I write a note on a napkin.
When it comes to crème br?lée or “crème br?lée,” I am a man who always delivers. At our next coincidence, I’d be honored to offer both. Or just dinner, if you’d prefer.
Folding the napkin, I pass it to the waitress. “Can you send this with crème br?lée to the beautiful brunette in the gray sweater and leggings, sitting at the bar?”
Her shoulders deflate as she blooms a brittle smile. “Of course.”
After she walks away, Ryker mutters, “Fucking hell,” rubbing his hand across his mouth as the rest of the table laughs.
“What?” Even as I ask for clarification, I keep one eye on Sylvie, who is making small talk with her too-old-for-her date and his friends.
Tessa leans in, her voice low. “That waitress thought you were giving her your number.”
I glance at the server area, where our waitress—a cute young redhead—is punching in my order. “Why would she think that?”
Mercy pins her lips with subtle disapproval. “You took her pen, and you said her name.”
“I needed the pen, and she’s wearing a name tag for a reason.”
“You have a look, and your whole aura is flirty,” she counters with the same scary maternal scowl she gives Remy when he misbehaves.
I wave that off with a wry smirk. “I can’t be held accountable for minding my own business and still being irresistible. That’s not on me.”
Ryker coughs a dry chuckle. “I’m sure it’s taxing.”
“That’s not really the point,” Zara chimes in. “The question is, why didn’t you notice?”
“Or”—Maddox jumps on that, a little too zealous—“more importantly, why are you over here? Did you crash and burn with your little bandit?”
My little bandit. I considered the same moniker until I figured out her name.
Mercy hums into her iced tea. “I don’t think he did. She thought Cash was giving the waitress his number too.”
At first, that’s concerning because Sylvie is undoubtedly searching for anything to support her preconceived notion of me, but then I realize that means she displayed some sort of feeling about it.
At the thought of her being jealous, my lungs detach from my body. “Did she?”
Mercy responds, but it fades to the background as the waitress drops off the dessert and note.
I track every shift in Sylvie’s expression as she reads it and does her damnedest to smother the giddiness staining her cheeks.
If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now; the attraction isn’t one-sided.
She doesn’t acknowledge me though. She tucks the note into her purse, which sends an uncanny sense of thrill shooting through my veins because she kept a damn napkin.
I’m losing my mind.
But my insanity is inescapable when she digs into the dessert with her spoon, closes her mouth around it like a goddamn wet dream, and savors that bite with fluttering eyelids for a good fifteen seconds.
Like it truly is giving her an orgasm. Then she curls her lips in mocking amusement, tilts her head to side-eye me, and winks.
Fuck me. She’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
Maddox’s smart-ass baritone severs the moment. “Is the plan to eye-fuck her while she’s on a date?”
Axel knocks on the table, studying me and the object of my internal drooling for a beat. “That’s valid. Is she with him or not?”
That is rooted in judgment and anxiety. Axel is always staring down the road at the crash that won’t happen for a hundred miles, trying to discern how to reroute everything. I didn’t really think this through when I invited them. But since they’re here, I might as well lay it out.
“She’s not with him, but I think she’s in trouble.”
That has all my brothers straightening their spines.
“Not with that guy,” I amend, finishing off my watered-down scotch.
“I think he’s a cover for something else she’s doing, or I would’ve worked harder to keep her with me.
When I alluded to the fact that she was clearly scheming for a heist and asked if her family knew, she was shaken, as if she thought I was here because I had something to do with that. ”
“Think she has a fence giving her a problem?” Ryker rolls his lucky dice in his hand, ruminating on the possibilities.
“Could be a handler,” Zara suggests. “They’re less common with thieves, but for the highly skilled and young, it happens, especially if she needed someone with better connections to scout big-ticket jobs for her. And those contracts …”
“Yeah.” My attention drifts back to Sylvie, living in the moment and polishing off her dessert, but I know what I sensed.
She’s here for something, and she’s terrified someone’s coming for her.
Axel clears his throat. “So, we’re staying until …”
“She’s ready to go.” With that, I write another note on another napkin and saunter over to the server station to request that the waitress pass this along to Sylvie with a refill on her coffee.
Make an excuse to leave. Tell them you have a ride or you’re calling an Uber. We aren’t done with our second coincidence yet, Sly.
The restaurant is on Pier 39, so we wait for her at the entrance, entertained by the street performers and crowds and distant roar of sea lions barking.
I spend every second with my peripheral vision glued to the door, soaking in the scents of salty air and sourdough bread, salivating for her sweet spiked-vanilla-coffee fragrance to cut through them.
No fucking clue why she’s under my skin the way she is.
I’m sure it’s primarily due to the challenge.
I don’t like to lose. The hunch that she’s tangled up in something doesn’t help either.
That’s the essence of our business. We’re a safe haven for the criminal underworld, so it’s not like this protectiveness swelling in my chest means anything.
And she’s indisputably gorgeous. No one could fault me for noticing that.
Still, the agony of wondering if she’ll ditch me and leave with the guy who has been ignoring her for half the night is alarming. I need to get my damn head on straight.
That notion is devoured when she sashays out with those sparkling ambers set on me. Her dark brown hair is in a loose ponytail of big Hollywood curls, thick wisps framing her face, and even with a fitted leather jacket on, her outfit hugs every curve.
Thank fuck she’s alone.
I stroll toward her with my hand in my pocket. “Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?”
She shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve had better.”
“Consider it my new mission to provide you with the best crème br?lée the world over. But you owe me the honor of buying you dinner first.”
Her attention snags on my family for a beat before she grants it to me again. “I know who I have outstanding debts to, and you aren’t one of them.”
Leaning close, I glide my hand across the small of her back and speak low into her ear. “Oh, but I am, Sylvie Palmer. All I had to do was figure out your name.”
“That’s not how I remember it.” Her voice is liquid velvet, soft and inviting.
“And how do you remember it, Sly?” I pull back just enough to have a full view of her beautiful face, bathed in the radiant glow of surrounding businesses and overhead string lights.
“I do recall having one desire that night.” She bites her lip, peering at me from beneath the thick fan of her lashes and plainly reeling me in. “To get my mask back.”
This woman is lethal. Daring me to catch her, but so slippery that nothing seems to stick. Littered with goose bumps from my proximity, but determined to keep me at arm’s length. And captivating enough to have the hordes of people, raucous music, and my gawking family vanishing into the background.
“Which you did, and with it, you won the coveted windfall of a date with me,” I counter, ready to call her on her bullshit.
“It’s in high demand, but reserved for you.
If you’re negotiating for something else, you should be putting your best cards on the table.
And this bluff is not your best work. Your desire is marked by your shallow breaths and parted lips, every subtle twitch on that gorgeous face and every second you choose to keep sparring with me. ”
“I think your pickpocket skills and your ego have you seeing things that aren’t there.”
I erase all but an inch between us, my focus docking on her perfect mouth. “Like how you’re panting for more.”