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“I’m always up for settling scores. I live right there.” They shook again, and Cooper added, “Take it easy on your boy, yeah?”
A shadow of offense passed across Jorge’s face, and Cooper understood. He was a stranger, telling a man how to treat his own child. But he knew well that a man who’d get so hot he’d throw a woman around was probably a man who’d get hot enough to throw his kid around. So he kept his look steady.
“I don’t ever touch my kids like that,” Jorge said, with just a hint of edge.
“Good. I apologize for suggesting otherwise.”
“I get it.” He gestured toward Siena. “This is all you know about me.”
With that, and a final nod as a farewell, Jorge turned and headed down the street, apparently toward his own home in this neighborhood.
Cooper watched him for a second or two, then turned to his neighbors. He focused on Geneva first. The only innocent one in the whole scene.
Hey—at least both of these chicks would look at him now.
“You okay, Robin?”
She nodded. “Thank you for coming to help.”
She’d pounded at the sliding glass door in his kitchen—which, he thought, meant she’d come through her own side door and then scaled the fence between their houses. Before he’d had the door all the way open, she’d been yelling at him that her sister was going to get beat up and she didn’t know where else to go for help.
He would never describe himself as having a savior complex, but he hadn’t hesitated. When he’d tried to go through the side, thinking to retrace her path, the skinny little thing had shoved at him, yelling to go out the front.
She’d been right—five seconds later, and Jorge would have bloodied Siena up and unleashed a whole lot of fuckery in a whole lot of directions.
While he got the rage, he didn’t get the impulse. Not to hurt a woman. Maybe he was simply used to bitchy women, considering the one that had, at least nominally, raised him, but he’d never felt the urge to strike a woman or a child. A few boys who were almost men, but definitely no chicks or little kids.
Not even Siena, who really did piss him off and had probably said or done something to get Jorge frothing, too.
“Thank you,” Siena said again. “Do ... do you want to come in? For a drink, I guess?”
She sounded like having him in her house was maybe not thelastthing she’d ever want, but definitely in the bottom third of the list. He did not understand this woman’s problem with him. They’d interacted exactly three times, and fine, the first time had been in the middle of the night and he’d been tweaking on caffeine and exhaustion and had not been his best self. But he hadn’t hurt her. And the other two times, he’d been a verifiably good guy! He’d just fucking saved her ass from a beating, and still he was shit on her shoe.
Only one reason he could think of that she assumed the worst of him, even when he was pulling angry men off her. The usual reason white people thought the worst of him.
Well, he was finished saving little white damsels from big brown men, so why was he standing here being all brown and shit? “No, thanks. Got all I want to drink inside my own house.”
He turned and walked back to his own house.
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~oOo~
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Ten minutes and threeshots of tequila later, Cooper’s doorbell rang.
Had that fucking bitch called the cops? Holy shit.
He stood there, not sure how to handle it. Generally, when he wasn’t expecting someone, he answered the door with a gun in his hand. But if shehadcalled cops, and he was holding a gun when he met them at the door, things would go very poorly for him very quickly.
Jesus fucking Christ. His plan for the night had been to head out to the Strip, find somewhere to pull, pull, get a room, and fuck. He’d been about to head to the shower when Geneva had come over and ruined his night. Possibly his life, if law was now on the other side of his door. FUCK.
Okay, Coop, take a breath. She was a bitch, but shehadthanked him. Twice. It was unlikely she’d call the cops because he hadn’t accepted her reluctant invitation into her house. Right?
Right. So who could it be? Maybe Jorge had changed his mind and wanted to fuck up a couple of dads? He’d rather continue with his plan to hunt up some likely pussy, but laying down some correction on a couple of assholes could be fun, too.
The doorbell rang again, followed by a knock. Not a cop kind of knock. That was encouraging.
