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He hit the bottom with a sickening thud before I could even process that he was falling.
Chapter 2
Miri
PresentDay
Jed sat opposite me in the same dingy café where he’d told me about Rosie. He’d even chosen the same booth overlooking the dumpsters and the frost-slicked car park. I took a sip of dishwater coffee and pasted a smile onto my face. I still hated him, but I needed him to get me out of this mess with his cousin, so I’d have to play nice.
An angry-looking bruise marred his right eye. It looked out of place on his round, boyish face. He looked the same now as when he’d sat across from me in school all those years ago and asked me to help him practice his goal kicks.
“Who have you been fighting this time?” I asked.
“Why?” He flashed a rueful smile. “Are you offering to nurse me back to health?”
That smile would have made me melt before. Not now. That ship had sailed. Then, when it was done sailing, Jed had smashed the ship into smithereens and blown it up with dynamite.
“Haven’t you got Rosie to do that for you?”
His eyes slipped away. The too-loud conversation of an elderly couple tucking into their fried breakfasts drifted to my ears. The stench of bacon fat turned my stomach.
Jed attacked a greasy sausage on his plate with his knife and fork. “Tell me you’ve got the money.”
Ice bloomed in my gut. I opened my mouth and closed it again. The speech I’d prepared had fallen out of my head. What the hell was I going to do?
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I need a little more time.”
“There is no more time.”
Jed shoveled a forkful of baked beans into his mouth and threw them down like a prisoner on death row. Rosie probably had him on a diet. She’d always been controlling around food. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought that there was trouble in paradise.
“I can’t help you anymore.” He flashed a glance over his shoulder before leaning across the booth, his voice low. “These are bad guys, Miri. They aren’t the kind of guys that you keep waiting.”
His knife scraped viciously on the plate. The sound set my nerves jangling. “What am I supposed to do? It’s your bloody cousin. You said he wouldn’t mind helping me out with a loan. Can’t you talk to him?”
“Second cousin, and he doesn’t want to talk. He wants his money.”
“Give me a month.”
He barked out a laugh and coughed on his sausage. “A month?”
“I can’t get it any faster.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pushed his plate away. “I’m done, Miri. I can’t keep them away from you anymore. You’ll have to deal with them yourself. I’ll tell Deano that you’ll pay him in a month. I’m sure he’ll drop in on you to discuss.”
A prickle raced the length of my spine. “What?”
Bean juice dripped down his chin like a toddler. Gross. What had I ever seen in this man?
“I can’t be the go-between anymore, Miri.”
I grabbed his wrist, holding him still. “Money is so tight at the moment. I can get it, but I need time.”
His grim gaze drifted over me. We’d been kids when we got together. He was the first man I’d kissed. The first man I’d slept with. The first, and last, man I’d let trample my heart. My resolve hardened. Never again. He cocked his head, looking at me like I was a dog he’d found on the side of the road and he couldn’t decide whether to drive on or take me to a rescue shelter. Heaven forbid he took me home and looked after me.
“Please, Jed. I need your help.”
“You’re a grown woman, Miri. You knew what you were getting into when you took that loan.”
