Baddest Bad Boys(24)

He shook his head. “It’s more like I just want to believe in it,” he said, in a halting voice. “The possibility of it, anyhow. It’s all you can offer people who get hurt by f*ckheads who don’t care about anything but money or themselves. Or people who run into monsters who enjoy inflicting pain. It never makes up for what’s been lost. But it’s all there is to give. If there’s anything I want to stand for, it’s that.”

She sat down on his lap, her smooth, perfect buttocks nestling against his erection, slid her arms round his neck and gave him a soft kiss, part holy benediction from a sweet madonna, part pure, red-hot scorching temptation. “Jon Amendola, you are one righteous dude.”

He struggled to find his voice. “Don’t be fooled,” he said. “I’m a heinous dickwad most of the time. Ask my exes.”

She tapped his lips, looking stern. “No talking about past lovers. It’s not fair, since you’ve had hordes and I don’t have any.”

“No past, no future? Sort of limits conversational possibilities,” he grumbled. “And I’m not much of a chatterbox to begin with.”

“Phooey. You’re doing just fine.” She kissed him again. “So cope.”

It was definitely looking like he was going to get lucky again, but now he had his own questions to ask, before his brain melted down.

“How old were you when your mom died?” he asked.

Her eyes went flat. It unnerved him. “Danny never told you?”

“Told me what?” He was getting apprehensive.

She looked away. “She’s not dead,” she said. “She walked out on us, after our daddy got himself killed. I was one at the time. I don’t remember her at all. I’m surprised Danny never told you.”

He cast back, trying to remember. “I thought he said he was an orphan. Or maybe I just made assumptions and he never corrected me.”

“Did he tell you about our father?” Robin asked.

“How he was a con man? Yeah, he did tell me that. He said your dad used to use him to run his scams. That he was pretty good at it.”

“Yeah, Danny’s the sneakiest one of us. Me and Mac are hopeless that way. Not a sneaky bone in our bodies. So both parents were pretty problematic. Maybe we’re better off without them. I don’t know.” Robin’s voice was muted. “I tried to pry details out of Mac and Danny when I was littler. They just got angry. Finally I got a clue, and let them be.”

“You’ve never…” His voice trailed off as Robin shook her head.

“Never,” she said. “She never called, never wrote. My uncle tracked her down about a decade ago. At that point, she was in Texas, married. With another family. My half brothers and sisters.” She shrugged. “I guess she liked them better than us.”

He was speechless with fury at the selfish bitch. Walking out on her baby, to say nothing of her older sons, and never a f*cking word.

God, that was cold. He pulled her closer. Her head dropped against his shoulder, and her satiny hair swirled over his shoulder and chest.

“We have pictures,” she said, her voice musing. “I look exactly like her. It’s freaky. Like looking at myself, in eighties drag.”

He squeezed. She cuddled closer. “When I was little, I fantasized about becoming this amazing person, finding her and flaunting how excellent I was. To make her guilty, I guess. Show her how much she’d missed out. Then I got older. My ideas got a lot less grandiose.”

“You are excellent and amazing,” he found himself saying. “You don’t need her to recognize it in order for it to be true.”

She pressed her face against his neck. “You’re sweet to say that. But I’m OK with it. I guess when your mom runs out on you, there’s always a part of you that’s thinking, what am I, chopped liver? But most of me knows I’m not. Mac and Danny drive me nuts, but I’ve never doubted I was important to them. That’s more than lots of people have.”

She slid her hand up his chest, and touched the medallion again with her fingertip. “Still. You’re lucky to have this. Little though it is.”

He wanted to do something, say something, but shit. He usually left the touchy-feely stuff to people who knew how to deal with it. He didn’t. It rattled him. Made him feel thick, stupid.

He was reminded, uncomfortably, of all his own long-lost-mom-comes-back fantasies. He’d finally rooted them out, replaced them with armor-plated reality. But Robin shouldn’t have had to.

No sweet, innocent little kid should have to. And aw, Christ. This was why he left touchy-feely stuff to other people. It got to you. It hurt.

He cupped her face, turned it towards him. “I’m lucky to have this,” he said roughly.

He put it all into the kiss, everything he was too nervous to say, everything he had no words for. She deserved a mom who gave a shit, who appreciated how special she was. She deserved the best. All of it.

It wasn’t anything so coherent as a plan, or even a thought. More just a primeval impulse, but once he made the split second resolve, it was unbreakable. As long as he had this gorgeous, red hot, live wire chick within arm’s length, she was going to feel properly appreciated, by God. He would damn well make this adventure worth her time.

He still couldn’t believe she’d picked a clueless bozo like himself to deflower her. What a gift. It dazzled him. Dazed him with raw lust.