Counterfeit Love

"I'd like to be a couple minutes from the beach."

"The traffic will be hell," I warned him, knowing he was new to the area.

"So we find the back roads."

We.

That one didn't escape me.

I wasn't the only one thinking in terms of we. Even if it was a little early to put down roots when we weren't sure about the soil, the growing conditions.

"The food will be really good in the summers," I told him.

"Well, it is fucking perfect then, huh, angel? Figure a midway point between the beach and Hailstorm would be a good idea. I know that when you take over, you are going to be there a lot."

"Does that bother you?" I asked. "That I work so much."

"I like your drive, doll."

"Even if it severely cut into the time I spend with you, on occasion?"

"Well, I will just have to find me a job up at Hailstorm too, so I get to see you. Resident eye-candy, perhaps?" he asked, showing me his angles. "Look, I've gotten along pretty well this far without needing to be up someone's ass all the time. The way I see it, I will get along just fine when you are pulling the boss bitch hours."

"You could even pick up a hobby. I can see you with one of those metal detectors on the beach. Like any other normal, retired man," I teased, getting a piece of lettuce thrown at me.

"What do you think your crew is going to think of me?"

"You've met my, ah, crew." Ferryn and Malcolm were the closest things to friends I had. And he'd met my mom too.

"Oh, doll, we both know what a fucking lie that is. In this incestuous town? You're connected to all those Henchmen and a dozen or so others from that loan shark family--"

"The Mallicks," I filled in, even if that was a very, very distant connection for me.

"Yeah, them. For all I know, your Great Uncle is that mob guy who runs the fancy restaurant in town."

"Mr. Grassi and Familglia. Actually, no. Those guys are one of the few that I don't have a familial kind of bond with."

"Damn. I was hoping I was going to be marrying into a Sopranos type story. Guess Jersey isn't the hotspot for the mob like TV and movies claim."

Marry?

Was he really thinking in that direction?

I wanted to add: already.

But, somehow, it didn't seem that far-fetched, that early. So much had been shared in such a short time.

"I am very sorry to inform you that you will have to settle for gun-running bikers, hackers, various paramilitary individuals, and loansharks."

"I guess I can live with that," he said, reaching for me, pulling me close. "So, we are going to move in that direction, yeah?"

"The direction of sort-of beach houses and such?"

"Yeah."

"I think we are," I agreed, giving him a tentative smile that he promptly kissed away before climbing out of the bed, walking over to the small desk in the room. "What are you doing?" I asked when he started digging through the drawers.

When he turned back to me, he had a pad and a pen. "Getting you a notebook and pen. I figure you are going to want to get started on one of your lists."

He wasn't wrong.

I did have a lot of things I wanted to work through. And I worked things through better when I wrote them down.

But...

"So... you don't want to hop in the shower with me?" I asked, dropping my voice, hoping it came off a bit, I don't know, sultry.

To that, his lips curved into a wicked grin as he threw the pad and paper over his shoulder.

"Fuck the list," he declared.

Now, see, I loved my lists.

I wouldn't know what to do without my lists.

But just this once?

Yes.

Fuck the list.Chapter SixteenFinch"We're supposed to have a beer," Cash, Chris's adoptive father, said when I opened the door.

Cash, as the legend went, used to have a half buzzed head with the other half left to grow long and blond. Chris told me that, one day, she finally got the nerve to tell him he was too old for the haircut. Clearly, he'd taken the advice.

I'd run across a few of the Henchmen guys around town since we made it back to Navesink Bank. Whether that was by accident or on purpose was a mystery. But each of them had possessed a quiet intimidation that made normal people take a step or two away from them.

Cash, though, had laid-back shoulders, and a smile tugging at his lips.

Maybe he would have been intimidating had I not been informed by multiple sources that he was calm and hard to rile, someone who liked a good time and not taking life too seriously.

He wasn't here to do the cleaning his gun speech. And while I would have respected him doing it--especially in Chris's case--I felt a rush of relief at not having to tell him the whole story about how I, more than anyone else, would never hurt his girl.