“Danny, I can’t move in. We barely know each other.”
“And I’m barely home.”
Her brows ticked toward each other.
“So what do I care you’re here?” he went on.
“Say I consider this, and I’m not really considering this,” she stated quickly. “But say I do, I still wouldn’t because I couldn’t live somewhere and not pay rent.”
“Yes, you could.”
“Danny—”
“Six months rent-free,” he said.
“I’m not haggling over living arrangements I’m not agreeing to,” she returned.
Right then.
Shit.
He had to say it.
“Then I gotta tell you, Evan, that I can’t let you live anywhere else because I just don’t have that in me seein’ as you’re in more danger than your brother ’cause he’s got cops guarding him and you got nothin’. But me.”
More big eyes and these he didn’t like.
“I’m in more danger than my brother?” she asked.
“That bag is gone, baby,” he said carefully.
“But, when he gets back in touch with me, I can just tell Mr. Shade of the Long Car someone took it.”
“And how do you think that’ll go?”
He saw it dawn on her how that’d go and then watched it land on her, her hand reaching out to grab his counter in order that she could physically take the weight.
“Whatever your brother is into, we need to get to the bottom of it and sort it out,” he said to the side of her head, considering she was staring down at her hand on his counter. “And by ‘we,’ I mean me.”
She looked up at him and her voice was soft and shaky when she replied, “I can’t move in with you and I also can’t ask you to wade into this garbage.”
“And here I’ll note that you didn’t ask.”
She pushed away from the counter. “Danny—”
He cut her off.
“Evie, tell me, is it gonna be booze, food or tears? I haven’t had dinner, so I’d pick number two with a little of one. But I didn’t get my apartment tossed today so it’s lady’s choice.”
She studied him and she did it so long, he was about to say something.
But she beat him to it.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” he asked back.
“Why would you offer to help me, give me a place to stay, get involved in this mess?”
“There are a lot of reasons why,” he evaded.
“Tell me two,” she bossed.
That cut through his anger, because from the start, he liked her version of attitude.
Though he didn’t have an easy answer because a lot of it had to do with wanting to get into her pants. That said, he also wanted to get to know her better, either before or after getting into her pants.
But more of it had to do with the fact he was just not that guy who could handle knowing someone was in trouble, he could help, and then not help.
Especially a woman.
He went with, “Because I like you.”
“Why?” she asked again.
But now, he was confused.
“Why do I like you?”
“It was just last night, Danny, so I remember being a raving bitch to you.”
“Evie—”
“And I shouldn’t say this, because I should keep you safe…”
Keep him safe?
Before he could cut in, she kept going.
“But I didn’t mean it. I had to latch on to the only semi-negative thing I knew about you, so I did. I mean,” she tossed out a hand, “it’s not fair to label you something I’d lose my mind if you labeled a woman the same way.”
And again, before he could utter a word, she got in there.
This time to mutter, “Though, it’s uncool a man’s thought of as a man if he sleeps around and a woman is considered easy.”
He went careful but he didn’t stop himself from reaching to her, using a finger to hook her belt loop at the side of her black jeans, and tugging her a little closer.
He considered it progress in a variety of ways when she let him.
“The only semi-negative thing about me?” he teased, not about to show how relieved he was that she didn’t mean the shit she’d hurled at him last night.
She’d just been overemotional.
And trying to “keep him safe.”
He still didn’t get that.
But he’d get into it later.
“Danny, I can’t stay with you,” she said quietly. “Even more now.”
“Why even more now?” he asked.
“If you like me.”
Oh shit.
He felt his spine stiffen and his lips were the same when he asked, “You don’t like me?”
“I mean, you know…because…,” she lifted both hands between them and flipped them out before not answering his question, which, thank fuck, answered his question in the way he wanted it answered, “it’d be awkward.”
“I’ll be a gentleman,” he muttered, watching her bite her lip.
Then he watched those lips whisper, “Danny.”
No one called him Danny but his mother, his sister and Mo’s sisters.
He’d been that in high school.
He’d earned the name Mag in the Marines.
Danny had died somewhere in between.
Every time Evie said it, it felt like a resurrection.