So they stayed in their lane professionally.
And, more importantly to me, they stayed in their neighborhood almost exclusively.
That neighborhood was a bit of a slum and none of us actually lived anywhere near it.
But my brother Shane did own a building in the area. In fact, it was practically across the street from Third Street headquarters.
Maybe Shane needed some work done on the building.
Hell, the entire building needed to be fucking condemned.
There was plenty to have me dropping in and maybe looking around a bit without seeming like a fucking creep.
And maybe more importantly, without my brothers finding out that I was all obsessed with a random woman I spent all of five minutes with during an armed robbery.
I would never live that shit down.
They'd be placing bets on when I'd be tying the fucking knot knowing them.
Like that shit would ever happen.
One thing was going to happen though.
I was going to see Angela again.TWOScottiShit.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
That was not supposed to go down that way.
First, I was never supposed to come face-to-face with the freaking cops. Second, there should have been more time in the first place before the NBPD got there. Someone had screwed up the timeline. And, well, in our particular line of work you could not screw up the timeline. It was the most important factor followed by the precision of the camera cuts, the sealing of the door, then the getaway.
And Kingston said my freaking name.
Granted, at least he had the common sense to say Scott and not Scotti, but still. That was an epic fuck up.
We were so off our game.
Comfort did that.
I tore through the lot, trying my best to keep my pace at 'I just lived through an armed robbery' and not at 'I just successfully helped conduct an armed robbery.' It was a careful balance.
I slipped down a small alley in the strip mall across the street, leaning back against the wall, and taking a slow, deep breath. I wanted to go right to them. I wanted to wring their freaking necks. That being said, it wouldn't help if I took off and led the cops right to them, implicating us all. We had been doing this too well for too long to get pinched in some weird-ass town in Jersey.
From what I could tell, they bought my story. They fed right into my lie about the description of two of the perps. The only one who even looked at me like I might have been less than one-hundred percent accurate was the Mallick guy. He was a loose end.
Nothing about him seemed to imply he was a cop or related to cops. If anything, they addressed him like the cops at the drunk tank greeted the local twenty-year alcoholic who showed up to sober up every Friday night.
Dollars to donuts, the man was a criminal of some sort.
Which was, well, interesting.
Not that it mattered per se, but it was just a fascinating tidbit of information. It was also intriguing how his first instinct was to silence me. He kept his wits about him. Again, likely because of some nefarious background, but still, it was an attractive trait to a woman like me to see a man like that.
He was also stupidly good looking. There was that as well. That couldn't go without being said. Men who looked like that deserved a quick mention. Or a long, incredibly detailed mention. In bed. With a battery-operated device after a couple glasses of wine.
Because, damn.
He was tall, first and foremost. That was always what I first noticed in a man, being tall myself. I didn't even see him, but I could feel him against my back. He was at the very least six-two with a strong, but not overly bulky build. In the dark, all I could figure out beyond that was that he smelled good. Manly. Not all soaked in cologne. There was a hint of what was either body wash or deodorant. On top of that, a hint of sweat, but not BO, and a mix of the unusual ingredients of oil, gas, and grass. As in the stuff on the ground, not pot. He smelled like fresh cut grass.
But when the lights cut back on and I got a look at him, well, yeah. He was of the tall, dark, and handsome variety, but in a rough kind of way. I had never been the type of woman who went all gaga over suits. They were too clean, too buttoned-up, too bland for my taste. I figured they were the type to get pissed if I messed up their hair during sex. But this Mallick guy's hair was already mussed. Dark and perfect and mussed. He wouldn't object to a little more muss. Then there was the absolutely perfect bone structure. Classic. He was classically handsome. Oh, and one had to mention those eyes. Those light, almost transparent blue eyes. There was some nice ink work he had going on down his arms as well. Another thing I was into.