Page 26 of Knockout (Whiskey Dolls 2)

I’d meet someone, and things would be totally normal until they found out I was a foster kid, and suddenly, in their eyes, that’s all I was, all I’d ever be. This was the exact same thing, so even though I wanted the night to continue, when it wound to a close, I didn’t put up a fuss. There would be no point. Other than the truce Jude and I had called, and a fledgling friendship, nothing else could come of this quasi-date. I needed to wrap my head around that now so I didn’t do something epically stupid, like fall for my hot-as-sin upstairs neighbor. That was a dead-end road, no matter how much I suddenly wished it wasn’t.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said as Jude placed his palm on my back and gently guided me through the restaurant. “I had a good time. Great actually.”

He chuckled as we hit the entryway, stopping so he could help me into my coat. “You don’t have to sound so surprised about it.”

I turned to face him as I lifted my hair out of the collar. “Well, aren’t you?” I challenged.

He rolled his eyes, and I could see the tremble in his lips as he fought back a grin. “All right. Yes. It surprised me. In a good way.” His inky blue eyes danced with a lightness I’d never seen in them before. “I had a great time too, Layla. And I can’t believe how much food you put away!”

I placed a palm to my stomach on a pained groan, still feeling uncomfortably full. “God, don’t bring that up. I’m in serious pain right now.”

“That’s what you get for trying to stick it to me by ordering a quarter of the menu. I thought you were exaggerating when you said you were getting two lobster tailsandan eight-ounce filet.”

And that didn’t even include the sides.

“I came here hungry, which was the first mistake. Then I felt like I had something to prove. And the food was just so damn good!”

He laughed as we pushed out into the chilly fall night, the gas lamps that lit the walkways casting an enchanting amber glow against the star-speckled night sky. The whole vibe of The Groves really was insanely romantic.

Jude passed his ticket to the valet, then turned to me. “How are you planning to get home?”

“Figured I’d get back the same way I got here.”

“I’ll take you,” he offered in a tone that left no room for argument. “It would be ridiculous to make you pay for a ride when we’re going to the exact same place.”

The money wasn’t an issue, but at the idea of this night stretching out a little longer, there was a voice inside my head—that sounded a whole hell of a lot like teenaged Layla at an NSync concert—that screamed yay! We get more time with Sexy McLumberjack!

So instead of arguing, I smiled up at him. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”

Jude’s Jeep pulled up just then, the dark blue looking nearly black under the light of the moon. The thought of how the color reminded me of his eyes popped into my head as he moved to the passenger side door and held it open for me.

“Wow,” I teased as I climbed in. “So youdohave manners like my friends claimed.”

He closed the door with that damn smirk that set butterflies off in my belly and rounded the hood. Inside the cab of the Jeep, he fiddled with the heat, adjusting the temperature and tilting a vent in my direction. “Let me know if you’re too hot or too cold.”

Who was this man, and what had he done with the Jude I’d been warring with for the past several months? I swallowed thickly, trying to relieve the sudden tightness in my throat as he shifted into drive and started out of the parking lot. “O-Okay.”

“And just so you know,” he started a minute later, breaking through the silence that had enveloped us, “yes, I do have manners. My gram would have beat me senseless if I hadn’t used them growing up.”

I was liking the sound of his gram more and more. “Tell me about her,” I coaxed.

“Let’s see. Where to start with a woman like her?” I was officially intrigued. “Well, like I mentioned before, she basically raised me.”

I jumped on that, my curiosity having gotten the better of me. “You did. How did something like that come about?” He wriggled in his seat, shifting almost as if the topic of conversation made him uncomfortable. “You know, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine,” he insisted. But I wasn’t so sure. However, before I could say anything else, he continued. “Remember how I talked about my family being a bunch of money-grubbing dickheads?”

I let out a little giggle. “You didn’t word it so eloquently before, but yes, that was the gist of it.”

I stared at his rugged profile in the lights of his dashboard as one corner of his mouth hooked upward. “Anyway. My parents were just as bad as the rest of them, if not worse. I never really fit in. I felt it and Gram saw it, so when I was twelve, she went to my folks and demanded they let me move in with her and my grandfather. She told my dad it was obvious he didn’t have the first clue how to raise a well-adjusted child, seeing as he was nothing more than a miserable son of a bitch who married a gold-digging doormat.”

I held up a hand to stop him. “Wait. She actually called them that? Her own son and daughter-in-law?”

“Yep,” he said with pride shining evident in that one word. “And it was all true, believe me. Every last word. The ins and outs of my relationship with my family is complicated.”

“Sure as hell sounds like it,” I mumbled.

“The simplest way to put it is that we don’t get along.”

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