Free Sweeter Than Sin by Shiloh Walker Page A

his gut and then twisted. But he managed a somewhat neutral voice himself as he said, “Sounds like you might have done this a time or two.”
    “Sounds like.” She angled her head, studying him. She still held the glasses he’d taken from her, not bothering to put them on.
    “You need those glasses or you just hiding behind them?”
    She smiled, but it was a caustic, bitter thing. “It’s not so much hiding as just … distracting. Makes things a lot easier.”
    “A pair of glasses won’t distract anybody for too long.” He looked over his shoulder, staring at the dark, quiet town. The occasional car ambled by on Main Street, some blocks back, but other than the traffic down the main strip, most of the town slept. And waited. “You have no idea what’s been going on around here, sugar. You’d be better off just leaving. Showing up now, with everything that’s going on, is just asking to get caught up in it.”
    “Adam.”
    Slowly, he turned his head. The words carried a heavy, tired weight and her eyes were somber when she looked at him. “I am caught up in it.… This is why I came back.”
    *   *   *
    Prick .
    Layla Chalmers leaned against the crumbling brick wall and watched Adam as he hung a left on Main Street with some chick. The woman had a bag slung over one shoulder, dark hair that hung in a fat braid halfway down her back, and the one glimpse Layla had gotten of her face revealed a pair of glasses.
    She was pretty.
    That smart/sexy kind of pretty that Layla despised. Guys seemed to dig that kind of look. Layla didn’t see why. Uppity bitches like that always thought they were better than everybody else. Whatever.
    Of course, there was Adam, unable to peel his eyes away from her. He’d probably have his dick buried inside her within thirty minutes. If that. Not like he was particularly discriminating. He’d banged everybody from Rita to that gossipy bitch Meg over at the salon. She was in her fifties for fuck’s sake.
    He’d fuck that dried-up hag, but he jerked away from Layla like she had a disease.
    Hypocrite.
    Adam had years lost in a bottle but thought he could get self-righteous on her just because she liked to get high every now and then. It wasn’t like she’d been doing it on the job. She hadn’t even been using when they were fucking. She just kept it on hand when she was around her sister, because nobody could be straight around Sybil.
    “Uptight bitch,” Layla muttered.
    It was Sybil’s fault, really. All of this. If she hadn’t come in and woken Adam up a few weeks back, Layla would have been up and moving, able to get those pills stashed away before Adam noticed.
    Now she was out of work, about to get kicked out of her apartment, which meant she’d have to go back to living in that house with Sybil … and the kid. The kid.
    Because it hurt to think about Drew and the disappointment Layla always saw in his eyes, she chose not to. Turning away from the vague shadows that were Adam and his current fuck buddy, she started down the street, tottering on her heels as she made her way to the apartment she was renting from Bo Grady. She had to pay the rent in another week.
    She’d find a way to come up with the money somehow.
    She didn’t know how, but she always figured it out.
    A familiar rusty laugh caught her ears and she eased into the shadows as Rita Troyer came around the corner.
    Rita. Horse-faced Rita.
    Adam’s favorite fuck buddy … and she wasn’t alone tonight, either.
    The wide-brimmed hat hid his face, but Layla knew those shoulders, knew the way he walked.
    Caine …
    She smiled a little as a tug of heat arrowed straight down her middle to lick at her core.
    Caine was one of those boys she’d just never been able to catch. Nothing made her more determined than that. She’d get him, sooner or later. She’d figured out his poison. She’d already tumbled that sweet kid who followed around in his footsteps—Thomas. He blushed now every time he saw her,