He eyes me. “So. Anjalee.”
I finish my bacon and wash it down, start on toast before I answer. “I work at a nightclub in Vegas. Security. Fact is, I like it. Never boring, but I don’t have to shoot anyone.” I glance past him through the side window, through which I can see the barn, and the hands moving around. “It ain’t this, but it’s good.” I shrug. “There’s a group of us who work there, and we live there, too. Each of us is…well, kinda like me. Broken in some way.” I show him the tattoo brand. “We’re the Broken Arrows. We, uh…we were sort of collected by this…person. I can’t and won’t say anything about him, other than he found us, each of us at the end of our ropes, brought us to Sin, the club, and just gave us…a safe place to be, a group of other guys who understand being…more dead than alive.”
“Interesting,” Luke says. “So the brand…?”
“Just sort of…binds us. My heart will always be here, riding for the L-Bar-A, but now I ride for them, too.” I wave. “Anyway. My friend—brother? His name’s Rev. He met this girl, recently. And Luke, I swear, she’s the spittin’ image of Della-Marie. Freaked me out. I’d mostly been able to block all the…the shit out, but the more I was around her, the more it all kept popping up. So, I had to leave. Just rode to get my head clear. I was in the middle of the desert, camped off the highway a ways, and here Anjalee comes. Runs out of gas, just after sunset, and figures she’ll just walk away. Hundred miles from Vegas, two hundred-some from anywhere else.” I laugh. “She grew up rich as hell, but sheltered. Like, a real-life Rapunzel, only Indian. No clue about fuckin’ anything.”
“Seems she’s pretty astute in matters of the heart,” Lilly notes, leaning on the other side of the counter, with her own coffee now, listening and eating toast and bacon.
“Yeah, she is that.” I swirl my coffee, thinking. “She…I dunno. Barely know her, just met her a few days ago, but…she’s just…inhere.” I thump my fist over my heart. “Scares the hell outta me. After Della, and then that shit that happened in Afghanistan, I just…”
“You don’t feel worthy,” Lilly says.
Despite being barely dressed, she exudes competence and compassion and wisdom and understanding, to a degree I’ve never seen in another person before. I see why Luke fell for her; all that, plus she ain’t hard on the eyes.
I shake my head. It’s all I can manage.
She touches my hands, hers closing over mine around my mug. “That’s totally understandable. You just have to trust her.” She smiles at me. “She’s proven she cares about you—you said she risked losing you in order to get you here, and that’s on top of not having anywhere to go but back to a difficult situation at home. That took immense courage and immense conviction, Kane. But more than that, it shows how much she believes inyou.”
“Fuck,” I spit between gritted molars. My eyes burn. I put my palms over my eyes. “Don’t deserve that. She…she’s sweet, innocent, beautiful…she’s fuckin’everythingI’m not. She looks at me like I’m…I don’t even know. Like I turned on the sun in the morning, just for her. I wish to fuckingGodI could see myself like she does, just for one fuckin’second.”
Luke eyes me. “How innocent is she, son?”
I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms until I see stars. “As innocent as a person can be, Luke. Anjalee is pure as the driven snow.”
“Quite a gift she’s giving you, trusting herself to you.” Luke turns to me.
“No shit,” I start. “I—”
“Wasn’t finished,” he cuts in over me, gently. “She may be innocent, but she’s far from stupid, son. One look at her, and you can tell that.” He pauses, sips coffee. “You gotta trust her. You gotta trust that she knows her mind and her heart, and trust her to make that decision, giving herself to you.Shefeels like you deserve it, who are you to say you don’t?”
I blow out a breath. “Hadn’t thought of it like that.” I look at Lilly. “She told me that she’d done this, bringing me here, partially for selfish reasons. She says she wanted all of me and was willing to risk the half of me she had to get the whole.”
Lilly smiles. “Smart, smart girl.” She leans a hip on the counter. “What that means is, you just have to commit to giving her what she wants, what she fought for—that being all of you.”
I open my mouth to respond, but close it again when Anjalee shuffles out of the guest room. She’s half asleep, long glossy black hair loose and wild around her shoulders and face and sticking to her eyes and lips, wearing her Rolling Stones shirt and a pair of black panties, the shirt short enough that it leaves a sliver of beautiful brown skin bare between hem and panties. My cock twitches at the sight of her.
It’s my heart that twitches next, because she squints around the kitchen, one eye closed and the other half shut, fixing on me—and she beelines for me, shuffling on bare feet. Right to me. Still three or four paces away, her arms go out, reaching for me. I pivot on my stool and spread my knees wide; she goes in without hesitation, arms going around my middle and her cheek going to my chest.
Jesus.
The sweetness and innocent trust of the move has my throat burning, my chest cracking. I do not fucking deserve this, not from a woman like Anjalee. Yet here she is, giving it to me.
Who am I to say I don’t deserve what she chooses to offer me?
I touch a kiss to the top of her head. “Mornin’ darlin’.”
She does the thing with her chin, resting it on my chest and peering up at me. “Good morning, Kane.” She blinks, rolling her head to the side, taking in Luke and Lilly, who are watching with identical expressions—those being masculine and feminine versions ofawww. “Oh no, how embarrassing. I am not wearing any pants.”
Lilly just snorts. “Makes two of us, sweet pea. Not big on pants in the morning, around here.”
Luke guffaws. “Lilly, my love, you don’t put on pants unless you absolutely have to.”
Lilly nods, shrugging. “This is true. I retired from the office to work from home. This means pants are optional as much as I can get away with it.”
Anjalee giggles, and how she can make a giggle at once elegant and adorable, I do not fucking know. She eyes the plate of toast. “May I have some of this bread, please?”
Lilly laughs. “Be offended if you didn’t.” She moves for the coffeemaker. “You want coffee?”
