God.
Branch.
“Oh, honey,” she breathed.
“She didn’t protect us from Dad, she didn’t protect us from life. She leaned on us. Twice, I tried to intervene when he was having a go at her. Twice, he backhanded me, knocked me into a wall. Second time, stunned me so bad, think I might have lost consciousness for a while. But I remember, when I came to, she was just staring at me like she was taking in a show. That was, she did that until it hit her that Dad was yelling at me, his attention turned, and she got the fuck out. Leaving me with him. I never intervened again and felt shit about it. Luckily, not long after that, he took off and didn’t come back.”
“Oh, honey,” she forced out, her eyes prickling.
But she held it together because she had to.
He wasn’t done.
“My brother took the dark path, started dealin’ drugs when he was in high school. He was a mean motherfucker and one you didn’t mess with … in high school. That included me. He was a dick to me. Until I got old enough he thought he might be able to recruit me into his business.”
She bit her lip, staring up at him, unable to believe this amazing man on her couch had endured all he’d endured and the only thing he did was check out, not lose it completely.
“I couldn’t wait to get out,” he told her quietly. “Enlisted the minute I could. It was torture, finishing high school. Putting up with my brother’s shit. Watching my mom waste away. Best day of my life was packing up for boot camp. I left and never went back. Twenty years, never went back. But I’ve kept tabs. She’s still a mess. He’s in prison. Strike three. He’ll be there awhile.”
She tightened her hold on him with her arms around his back and gave him what he needed.
Closeness.
He watched her and remarked, “That’s more of what you let in your home.”
“Think I said I’d take would I could get,” she reminded him.
He shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe she was real before he lifted a hand, rubbed Murphy’s ears but then held the dog closer to them with his forearm as he slid his fingers into the side of her hair.
“I just wanted easy,” he said softly. “And everything I did, everyone who crossed my path, it wasn’t easy, Angie.”
By God, she was going to make his life easy if she dropped dead doing it.
“It’s going to be easy now, Branch,” she vowed.
“It’s gonna be life, baby. What’s gonna be easy is not having to put up with the shit without someone at my back.”
She stroked that back, whispering, “Well, you’ve got that.”
“I know.”
She smiled at him, it was soft and slow, but she knew he liked it when he watched it form and the ice in his eyes melted.
“Peace of mind, Murphy’s the shit, but you need a bigger dog,” he declared.
“You already know I’m happy with that.”
“Decal in your front window that says you’ve got an alarm.”
She closed her mouth because those were ugly and she didn’t want one in her front window but she forced her head to nod.
His lips twitched. He knew she didn’t want it.
But he didn’t relent because he wanted more to find as many ways as he could to keep her safe.
And she was good with that.
He bent closer and the humor fled from his expression.
“This keeps working, we take it further, baby, I can’t promise a normal life with shit like Disneyland and you’ll never meet my mom.”
Disneyland?
Did he mean…?
She didn’t press that.
“Can you meet mine?” she asked.
He nodded.
She’d take it.
“I have a dad and two brothers too,” she shared.
“Meet your mom, can’t dis your dad and brothers.”
She smiled up at him.
He shifted his hips so she had no choice but to round his thighs with her legs.
“Disneyland?” she whispered.
“It goes that way with us, you want that?” he whispered back.
Beautiful boys with ice-blue eyes, long bodies, black hair, fierce protective streaks, good senses of humor and kind hearts?
“Disneyland with … um, kids?” she asked tentatively.
He shook his head and her stomach took a dive.
Then he said, “No Disneyland. I’m not good in crowds. Too much to keep an eye on. But yes. Kids.”
She was not tentative with her answer to that.
“Absolutely.”
“No soccer, babe.”
She frowned.
“Pop Warner,” he stated.
She grinned.
“Girls can have dance classes,” he allowed.
“What if they want to play soccer?”
“They can have that too.”
God, were they actually discussing this?
They were.
She, Evangeline Brooks, and Branch Dillinger were talking about kids and soccer and dance classes and …
Everything.
“I’m thinking you already get this, honey, but I may have a house filled with knickknacks and a really cute car, but I’m not normal and I’ve been good with that since forever,” she shared. “My man works at a sex club, that’s not what some would consider normal either. Just as long as it’s good and we’re happy, I don’t give that first fuck.”
“That’s my Angie,” he murmured.
His Angie.
She’d take that too.
Oh yes, she would.
“That first fuck?” he teased.
“I’m embracing the f-word.”
Finally, that earned her a big, beautiful, white smile.
Trapped, Murphy didn’t fight it but settled in, jaw to her shoulder, after having the shit in his short life that wasn’t easy, finding a home where he was safe.
And happy to settle in with that.
Just like his daddy.
But although she felt her pooch rest easy, her attention was on the other man in her life.
“Baby?” she called.
“Right here,” he said.
She smiled before she took an arm from his back and curled her hand around his neck, stroking his jaw with her thumb.
“There’s something I need to say.”
“Say it.”
“I don’t want to upset you.”
He looked guarded but he urged gently, “Say it, Angie.”
She shifted her hand to cup his jaw.
After that, she lifted her head from the couch to get her face closer to his.
Through all that, she didn’t lose hold on his eyes.
And once in position, she whispered, “Match point.”
Instantly she discovered something new about Branch Dillinger.
He was a really good loser.
epilogue
Jungle of Plants
EVANGELINE
“Can we have a minute?” Evangeline asked.
“Sure,” the apartment complex manager replied and moved to stand in the kitchen.
That wasn’t far enough so Evangeline grabbed Branch’s hand and dragged him out to the tiny balcony off the living room.
The complex was close to her place. It was gated. It was well kept. It had a gym and a great pool, big trees all around so it was shady and the unit came with two parking places under a carport.
She hated it.
She slid the sliding door to after she got Branch outside and looked up to him.
“I don’t like it,” she declared.
“Babe, fifth place we’ve seen today and the best place yet. You’ve hated them all. I understood with some of the others but not this one.”
“I don’t get it,” she stated.
He looked into the great room area with its cathedral ceilings and a big L-shaped kitchen with a massive island that fed off of it (which was all actually quite lush) and back to her.
Then he asked a perti
nent question.
“What don’t you get?”
“I need to understand, you know, if we’re looking at a joint custody situation with Murphy.”
Branch grinned but turned his head like he was trying to hide it from her. When he turned back, he’d gotten control of his grin, which she thought was too bad.
He also got closer, pulling her into his arms.
“Murphy’s home, honey, and he’s staying home,” he told her.
She nodded smartly.
“So now the part I don’t get is that you said you have a condo.”
“I’m selling it.”
Her eyes got big.
He read her reaction and turned them so she was still in his arms but he had his back to the sliding glass doors and he bent his face close to hers.
“And the way I bought it, Evangeline, you’re not gonna have any hand in me getting rid of it.”
Oh.
Well, that explained that.
She decided it was prudent to say nothing.
About that.
“Which brings us to you getting rid of your condo but getting an apartment.”
“Need a place.”
“You have a place.”
She knew he got what she was saying when his expression softened and he trailed a hand up her spine and tangled it in her ponytail.
“Babe, we barely been together two months,” he told her something she knew.
“I’m aware of that, Branch. And perhaps not officially, but unofficially you’ve been living with me that whole time.”
“Yeah, but we need this.”
“We need you unnecessarily renting an apartment when you’ve already got a home?”
He drew her closer and his face got even softer.
She had him.
She fought smiling in triumph.
“It’s probably going to be the same,” he said. “Be cool, I could leave some clothes at your house so I don’t have to swing by here to get changed. But we’re doing this, you and me, building on what we got, and we should do it smart. Your space. My space. We each have that, should that time, however unlikely, come if we need it. Not moving too fast. Get to know each other better. Make the unofficial official when we’re at that place and we know it’s right.”
All this meant she actually didn’t have him.
She frowned.
“I already know it’s right, Branch.”
He smiled.
“I’m getting that, Angie.”
“So?” she prompted.
He got serious.
“I need to know I’m doing it right with you. I need to know I’m giving you that. I just need to know I’m taking care of you.”
Damn.
She looked to his shoulder and gave in ungracefully with a muttered, “Whatever.”
The humor was back in his voice when he said, “Thanks, baby.”
She looked up at him and took one more shot. “Waste of good money since I’m down with making unofficially official just plain official.”
“At this point, with the salary package and 401k Aryas offers, the nest egg I built, got a friend who’s got certain skills. If he can turn that into legitimate cash, when we make the unofficial official, we can pay off your house and probably put the first couple kids through college, and in between times, seriously rest easy.”
The first couple of kids?
Her heart started beating faster.
She didn’t get into that.
She got into the other bombshell he’d dropped.
“What you’re saying is, you’re rich so you can blow unnecessary money on rent in an expensive apartment complex,” she noted.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“So you’re also saying when I won, I didn’t just win a hot guy, master alpha-sub who likes little dogs, I got a rich hot guy, master alpha-sub who likes little dogs?” she asked.
That earned her another smile.
“And again, that’s what I’m saying. That is, that’s what I’m saying unless you keep the drips on your plants like they are. If you do, we’ll be blowing millions just paying the city to keep your flowers outside from dying. And that’s not getting into the jungle you have on the inside,” he teased.
“They make my house pretty,” she retorted.
“Yeah, they do,” he muttered, bending to touch his mouth to hers. “They totally do.”
She melted into him.
“So, babe, the apartment?” he prompted.
She leaned slightly to the side and looked into the space.
He’d said his condo was a dump and his bed was lumpy.
That place wasn’t a dump, and even though he wasn’t going to spend any time in it, just him knowing he had space that was decent space was okay with her.
She looked back at him. “If you like this one best, then take it.”
His fingers fisted in her hair. “First thing I’m gonna do when I move in is eat you out on the kitchen island.”
“Then you’re definitely taking it,” she breathed.
He grinned.
After he did that, he kissed her.
And after that, he walked her back into the apartment and took it, negotiating a six-month lease.
* * *
Evangeline sat on her knees, held onto the headboard and bit her lip.
Then she closed her eyes when she got it.
All of it.
Did it feel that beautiful for him?
It had to.
From the very beginning.
She felt Branch’s stubble scrape her cheek before he murmured against her jaw, “Okay?”
“Yes, baby.”
“Fuck yes, baby,” he corrected.
She opened her eyes, turned her head and caught his heated gaze.
“Fuck yes, baby,” she whispered.
Then she stifled a cry when he pulled her away from the headboard, tossed her onto her back and shifted around, coming over her.
His mouth bore down on her between her legs and her hips surged up at the same time his surged down and he thrust his dick into her mouth.
She saw her jewel winking as he fucked her face.
And then she moaned against his cock when he kept eating her as he twisted the plug with the ice-blue jewel he’d just planted up hers.
* * *
“What’d I tell you?” Olly asked Branch.
Branch didn’t answer Olly. He looked to Amélie.
“Never had better chili in my life.”
Leigh smiled her classy smile at him. “I’m delighted you like it.”
Evangeline was listening but mostly she was leaned back in her chair, twisted to the side, looking under Amélie’s dining room table, seeing Stasia, Amélie’s very shy kitty, lying on Branch’s lap.
Branch was eating.
He was also petting.
Stasia, she heard, was purring.
Apparently, those who hadn’t had easy and understood just how precious it was when they got good gravitated to each other. Evangeline hadn’t even seen Stasia sit on Amélie’s lap like that. Heck, Evangeline had barely seen Stasia at all.
When she righted herself at the table, about to return her attention to the utterly delicious bowl of chili in front of her (and the homemade corn bread, which was moist and just that touch sweet … forget about it, it was a wonder she didn’t shove the whole piece in her mouth after the first bite), she felt something and looked Amélie’s way.
Her friend was smiling at her.
It wasn’t a classy smile.
It was a happy one.
Evangeline gave her a happy one back.
Later, when she and Olly were relaxing outside next to Leigh and Olly’s fire pit with after-dinner drinks and Leigh was some distance away, standing with Branch chatting while he threw a ball for Leigh and Olly’s dog, Chevy, Olly noted, “He’s good with the kids.”
She turned her head his way.
“The kids?”
“Stasia. Chevy.” He grinn
ed. “Our kids.”
“Your kids,” she murmured, thinking that was cute.
“Got furry ones,” he looked away and lifted his beer to his lips but didn’t take a sip before he finished, “for now.”
To that, she grinned, looked at the fire pit and lifted her cool glass of champagne to her lips.
Soon, they wouldn’t be able do this. The heat was going to hit the Valley. It’d be all about air-conditioning and pool parties.
But they had this.
For now.
And Evangeline had learned she enjoyed living life, taking the goodness it gave her moment to moment, conscious of every second of it, aware of how remarkable it was.
She looked back to Olly when she felt his boot hit her high-heeled sandal.
He was looking across at Leigh and Branch.
She turned her attention that way and saw Branch smiling at Amélie while she had her hand wrapped around his biceps, leaned into him, and she appeared to be gazing at him, quietly laughing.
He seemed content. Relaxed.
Right at home.
Yes, she’d take each moment of goodness as it came, aware of how remarkable it was.
She turned back to Olly when she felt her hand suddenly taken in his.
And she watched as he lifted it and touched his lips to her knuckles.
He dropped their hands from his mouth but kept hold of hers.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She swallowed back the tears but replied softly, “Nothing to thank me for.”
“I think you know there is.”
He loved his friend.
She loved that.
She held his gaze and twisted more fully to him, leaning in.
“He needs us. That won’t stop but my guess is, you know that. So we need to keep an eye out for him.”
Now she was whispering.
He nodded. “We will.”
She squeezed his hand. “Thank you too.”
“Nothing to thank me for.”
“I think you know there is.”