Now he had some kind of mark on Evie.
Mark. If not for the bullets flying at his head, he might have pondered the irony. Instead, he shoved a new magazine in his gun. He couldn’t get rid of Mark, but he sure as hell could get rid of Axle.
*
“So … when is your date with old Vipe?” Connie leaned against her car, a red Pontiac G6 convertible that she had financed to the hilt. She’d promised Ty a ride home from summer camp in style and that didn’t mean chugging through Conundrum in Evie’s beat-up Ford Focus.
Evie waved to one of the mums waiting in the school parking lot for the camp bus. “Don’t call him Vipe. His name is Viper.”
“That can’t be his real name. His momma didn’t pick him up from the cradle all bundled in a blue teddy bear blankie and say, ‘He’s so cute. Let’s name him Viper.’”
Evie’s cheeks heated and she twirled a strand of hair around her fingers. “It never came up. Bill brought him around to the shop and introduced him as Viper, said he wanted some detail work and that was it. He never told me any other name and after our second date, I was too embarrassed to ask.”
Still, she couldn’t deny her attraction to the president of the Black Jacks. Tall, with a barrel chest, two full sleeves of tats, and a cut worn and heavy with patches, Viper screamed danger with every stride of his long legs. Although he was almost twenty years older than her, hardened by life on the street, and striking rather than handsome with his long black hair fading to gray, and a broad scarred face, weathered and worn, he dominated every room with the force of his presence alone. And when he focused all that power on her, Evangeline Monroe, single mom and custom painter, he was difficult to resist.
“So you call him Viper? How’s that gonna go down in the sack? Give it to me hard, Viper? Lick me there, Viper? Although snakes do have forked tongues…” Connie pushed up her enormous sunglasses, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine glaring off the asphalt. “Come to think of it, Viper does have a bit of a badass ring to it.”
“I don’t know if it will get that far,” Evie said, blushing. “I’m not sure where things are going with him anymore.”
A grin split Connie’s face. “’Cause of the ex of sex? Mr. Deep, Dark, and Delicious? You gonna get back together?” Connie knew all about Evie’s recent encounter with Zane and their past together. She was the sister Evie always wished she had, although with a bigger mouth and a sharper tongue.
“No. Definitely not.” Evie sipped her second iced coffee of the day. She needed at least three cups of caffeine to keep going; four if she didn’t get a good night’s sleep, which was basically every night for the last four nights since she’d seen Zane.
Alone in the darkness with nothing to occupy her thoughts, the emotions she’d bottled up over the years, the hopes and dreams that had shattered when she realized he wasn’t coming back, came spilling out. Every night she tossed and turned. And she thought about him.
She slid her hand into her purse, her finger stroking over the edge of the picture frame Zane had given her all those years ago. On impulse, she’d grabbed it this morning and put it in her purse, with half a mind to talk to Ty about the man in the picture who so closely resembled him.
Damn Zane looked good. No. Not good. Breathtaking. Older, yes, but age had just made him sexier His tall, lean frame was now filled out with solid muscle; his face hard and weathered; and his jaw rugged and rough with a five o’clock shadow. Only his eyes hadn’t changed, and his dark, piercing gaze still sent a delicious shiver through her body.
But who did he think he was, showing up after all those years and thinking they’d pick up where they left off? That slap should have showed him she wasn’t the same girl he left behind—the girl who waited by her window all night after her dad sent him away, and for another three years because her heart couldn’t believe what all of Stanton believed to be true.
She tucked the picture away and zipped up her purse. Eight years ago she laughed and ran, climbed trees and took risks simply because she knew Zane would be there to catch her. Now she had her life together, and she knew better than to trust a handsome face.
Which was one of the reasons she’d agreed to go out with Viper. No chance of losing her heart to a man who looked so fierce and feral it was hard to believe he was as articulate, entertaining, and well-mannered as he had been with her—albeit, his sexual restraint was somewhat disappointing.