Takedown Teague (Caged 1)

“You have any brothers or sisters?”

“Well, not biological ones, no,” she said. When she didn’t elaborate, I hounded her until she did. “Leo has three kids—two girls and a boy. I grew up with all of them.”

“What about their mom?” I asked.

“She died in a car accident the year before my dad.”

“Wow—already raising three kids on his own and takes in another one right after his wife dies? This Leo must be some kind of saint.”

“Not…exactly,” Tria mumbled, but she refused to elaborate.

“So tell me about the adopted siblings,” I suggested. “Were you all close to the same age?”

“Helen and Heather are both older than me. Helen’s twenty-four and Heather is twenty-two,” Tria said.

“And your brother?” I lit up a smoke and watched her out of the corner of my eye as she started digging around in the Grand Canyon of women’s accessories. She didn’t answer but mumbled something about where she might have left her lip gloss.

As she dug into the bag, she wasn’t watching where she was going. She ended up tripping on the curb and nearly falling on her face. I wanted to be the one to save her, to right her before she could fall. If I were being honest, I just wanted to touch her just for a moment. Unfortunately, she managed to right herself before I could grab her and help her up.

&n

bsp; “That purse is going to end up killing you,” I told her. “Either you’re going to fall into it and never be seen again, or you’re going to fall off a cliff while looking for something in it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

She always said that whenever I made a comment about Grand Central Handbag.

“I bet I could put a mouse in there and you would never find it.”

“I most certainly would.”

“You wouldn’t notice it until you found nibble marks in your lipstick.”

Tria groaned at my joke and pulled the bag up a little against her side as we rounded the last turn before Fin’s.

“I’ll see you about one?”

Tria nodded.

“Hopefully, I won’t be too late. I hate making you wait for me.”

“I have nothing else to do,” I told her with a shrug.

“Thanks again,” she said.

“No worries.”

Tria smiled and turned to walk into Fin’s. There was a good chunk of me that just wanted to follow her inside, greasy food smells be damned. But as she disappeared behind the entrance, I turned to head back home.

I was never one to cling, but it almost seemed to hurt when she walked away from me.

Chapter 7—Stake the Claim

The walk home was interesting.

I had been thinking about our conversation most of the night while hanging out at Feet First and listening to some crappy garage band. The conclusion I had drawn was that she had been intentionally elusive about her foster family, and my curiosity gnawed at me as I waited for her to exit Fin’s so I could walk her home and barrage her with more questions.

I didn’t even ask who the patron of the night was this time.