I blink, pull back. “You know them?”
“Not terribly well, but I was passing through town a year or so ago and ran into Monroe. Since then, I’ve listened to their show a few times.”
I smile. “Small world.”
He smiles too. “I suppose it is.”
“Do you know what they call their house here? The Horny House.”
Banks laughs. Big, deep, pleased. “Sounds like my kind of home.”
“It’s a fun place,” I say as the tech rubs hot stones along my calves. I sigh contentedly, enjoying the touch. “And you live in Los Angeles now, you said?”
“I do,” he says.
“Even though you grew up in Lucky Falls?”
“I did.”
He’s a little clipped when I ask about Lucky Falls. I’m not entirely used to that from the king of comebacks. Come to think of it, he didn’t say much about Lucky Falls yesterday, either, when he told me where he was from, only thatit’s not a bad place.Does that mean he dislikes small towns? He didn’t sound that way a few minutes ago. But maybe there’s something about that place he doesn’t care for. “Are you a city guy?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His expression darkens, like there’s a storm cloud over his head. “Anonymity is a good thing, I’ve found,” he says, a little evasively.
So then it’s not a Lucky Falls thing. It’s a Banks thing. I press a little more. “In your line of work?”
“Something like that,” he says, then looks to his feet.
It’s a sign he doesn’t want to talk much any more about where he’s from or where he lives now. I respect the boundary he’s created and move on. “This isreallyyour first pedicure?”
His laugh is instant. “Do I seem like a natural or something?”
“Sort of.”
“You’re my first, Ripley,” Banks reassures me, putting a littleextra whiskey and seduction in his voice. It’s intended to be playful, I’m sure. But it still sends a zing through me. “But my sister’s tried to get me to go many times. I used to drop her and her friends off when she was younger before she could drive. And it became this thing Emily did—trying to convince me to join them.”
“She’s the one who taught you origami?”
“Good memory.”
“I remember a lot of things from that night.”
Banks holds my gaze, leveling me with a hot stare that nearly burns my T-shirt from the intensity. “I remember everything.”
Lust holds me in its grip for several long seconds before I manage to form words rather than sighs. “Anyway…how old is your sister?”
He reorients to the conversation too. “Twenty-seven. Seven years younger,” he says as the tech tells me to put my feet on the towel.
I comply as she grabs some polish. “And you never joined her?”
“Nope. Just stood outside the salon. Read a book. Went for a walk.”
“A bodyguard in the making,” I tease.
He gives me a stern look. “You don’t see me walking around the block here.”
