CHAPTER 4
Marlie didn’t know what she’d done to deserve this particular day off, in which her best friend held secrets from her then tricked her into rescuing feral cats. In which she found herself enjoying cocoa with a potential serial killer named Demon. In which her brother appeared out of nowhere when she’d gone out of her way to avoid him for the past few days.
“Him. You’re him.” Steve blathered like an idiot while he stared at her companion.
“I am a him. Yes.” Demon looked her brother over with a flat stare that should have concerned her.
Something about the guy screamed danger, so at odds with the polite, contained man sitting across the table drinking cocoa and eating gingerbread cookies.
Oddly, she found him kind of…hot.
So strange. Marlie went for nice guys. Men who treated salespeople well and smiled at pets and children. Guys who had no problem acting like gentlemen, treating her to meals or movies while enjoying her company and sense of humor. Men who weren’t threatened when she returned the favor of paying for a meal.
Maybe that’s why she’d had such a tough time dating. She wanted what her parents had. For the man to respect his significant other, and for the woman to not be scared to be herself around him.
“How did this happen?” Steve asked, looking from Demon to her.
“This?” Demon growled, his voice deep and gravelly. A lot like the man himself.
As a tall woman, Marlie had spent a lifetime trying to accept her height and not make a big deal about it. Though she did tend to look for men at least as tall as she was.
Demon had a good six inches on her. And he wore them so well.
Not at all slender and sophisticated like Ben, Demon had brawn he couldn’t hide under a Carhartt coat. She’d noticed those jeans that clung to his powerful thighs, the large boots protecting big-ass feet. And she wondered at the truth behind the correlation of boot size to you-know-what size…
She realized she was staring at him when he artfully raised a brow at her. Refusing to blush, she raised her brows back at him, pleased when he grinned.
His smile pulled at her. It turned his grim features into something else. Something not pleasant but captivating all the same.
“Marlie?” Steve prodded.
She sighed. “Well, it’s like this, Steve, I?—”
“Wait. Who the hell is Steve?” Demon asked.
Her brother flushed. “I’m Steve Reynolds. Marlie’s twin brother.”
“Ah.” Demon looked between them, and she wondered what he saw.
Both she and her brother had their father’s dark hair, dark eyes, and strong facial features. But she’d been given a hint of her mother’s complexion with a smattering of pale freckles over her nose and cheekbones.
A cross she had to bear, she supposed. Though the freckles on her petite mother made the woman look adorable, Marlie felt like a fraud. The cuteness factor on her barely clung to the surface. Then she opened her mouth and let her true personality rip.
“My brother, Steve,” Marlie said, “is a hockey fan.”
Steve nodded. “I play in a league with our other brothers and friends.”
Demon considered him. “Any good?”
“Yes,” Steve said at the same time Marlie said, “No.”
She and her twin glared at each other.
“We’re a work in progress,” Steve conceded. “But what is Demon Sinclair doing in our town? I heard you were taking time off due to an injury.”
“I’m here to see family.”
Steve blinked. “You have family here?”
