“Ohhhhh-kay,sure. Whatever you say, honey.” I heaped sarcasm into the words.
She couldn’t keep the straight face. “Okay, fine. It was to do with my friends in high school. I was hanging out with some kids from a different group, and my friends held an intervention to remind me of the importance and responsibility of my social standing. It wasn’t seemly for me to be associating with…the unsavory sort.”
“Bet you wish they could get a load of me, then, huh? We could really shock ’em.”
She laughed. “Oh my, they would faint dead away, I think. I doubt they’ve changed much since high school. They still flit around the same town they all grew up in, driving their husband’s cars instead of Daddy’s, spending money and judging people.”
“Sounds like a wonderful bunch of bitches.”
“God, they’re awful. They all nearly fainted the first time I told them I’d refused Thomas’s proposal—” she cut herself off, blushing. “But that’s not important.” She glanced around the room. “I’m Evangeline du Maurier.”
Claire, perched on the arm of the couch near me, slapped my arm. “You’re a mannerless barbarian, Baxter. Seriously. Introductions, maybe?”
I whacked her shoulder back, but gently and playfully, because Claire was all of five feet five inches and weighedmaybeone-ten, one-twenty fully clothed and soaking wet and holding a ten-pound bowling ball, and if I smacked her too hard she might go flying through the wall and into the bay, the tiny, svelte, slender little thing that she was. Delicate looking, but fierce and ferocious in personality.
“Yep, mannerless barbarian. That’s me.” I gestured at Evangeline. “Well, like she said, her name is Evangeline du Maurier. Eva, you’ve met Dru, and IknowI introduced you properly. The little blonde pixie here by my arm is Claire. Zane is the ugly fucker you’ve already met, back in the alley, my brother. The angry pregnant lady is Mara.
“For reference, Dru is married to Sebastian, the surly cock waffle with all the tats who was guarding the door when we came in. He’s the oldest Badd brother. Zane and Mara are together, and thank god because he knocked her fine ass uprealgood. Claire is with Brock, who you may or may not have noticed slinging drinks behind the bar, he was the pretty, GQ-looking motherfucker. He’s the next brother older than me, after Zane, who’s in between Brock and Bast—which is short for Sebastian.”
Evangeline looked like her head was spinning. “Wait. There arefourof you? And you all look like…that?”
Dru laughed, a genuine belly laugh. “Oh god, Evangeline, honey: there’seightof them, and yes, they all look like that.”
Evangeline boggled, her mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out. “No way. Nuh-uh. Not possible.”
Dru tugged a slim silver cell phone out of her bra, opened it, tapped a few times, and then handed Evangeline the phone.
Evangeline eyed me, then the phone, and then moved to sit beside me, squishing in between Dru and me. “Who’s who?” she asked, addressing me.
The photo was of the eight of us brothers standing in a line abreast by age with Bast on the far left and Xavier on the far right, our arms around each other from end to end. We’d closed the bar down on a Monday a month or so ago, rented a boat and took a trip to some island or another that Brock and Claire knew about, and we horsed around on the beach and swam in the ball-shrivelingly cold water and made a bonfire. And at some point, the girls had insisted we get a picture of all of us brothers together.
I ignored the way my whole right side was tingling from where her body was brushed up against mine, and tried to keep my eyes on the phone and off her tits; I started on the left and pointed at each of us in turn. “In order from oldest to youngest you’ve got Bast, Zane, Brock, me, Canaan, Corin, Lucian, and Xavier.”
Evangeline just stared for a moment. And then I saw the penny drop. “Wait. Canaan and Corin—Bishop’s Pawn…they’re your brothers?”
I nodded, grinning. “Yep. Talented boys, ain’t they?”
She glanced around the apartment, and then at the door to the downstairs. “So the, um, dingy dive bar they’re playing in?”
“Badd’s Bar and Grill. Family owned and operated since nineteen eighty…um…four? Five? Hell if I know.” I winked at her expression. “We’re the Badd brothers, spelled B-A-double-D.”
“Oh.” Evangeline just shook her head and handed the phone back to Dru. “Well that’s just ridiculous. Nobody needs that much male perfection in one family.”
Claire giggled. “Honey, you ain’t seen male perfection until you’ve seen a Badd boy’s big ol’—”SMACK.
That would be the sound of an issue ofELLEmagazine flying through the air, courtesy of Mara, and hitting Claire straight in the face.
“CLAIRE. SHUT—THE FUCK—UP,” Mara said, managing to snap the phrase through grinding teeth. “We just met poor Evangeline. Let’s not shock her all at once, shall we?”
Evangeline was blushing so hard it was a wonder she had any blood left in her body, her cheeks were so red. “I, um. Wow. Okay.”
“Awww, she’s blushing.” Claire grinned, a predatory gleam of her teeth. “I like her. I can have fun with this.”
Mara sighed. “No, Claire. Just…no. Don’t go there. Donotscare the new girl.”
Evangeline eyed them both, and then looked to me for an answer. “What are they talking about?”
I winked at her. “Penises.”
