“Actually,” Grady replied coolly. “I would love to hear about that.”

My mouth dropped open.

Before I knew it, Brock was settling into the booth beside me. Sitting so close that the entire length of his right side was pressed against my left. “So I was fourteen, I think, and you were eight.” He gently elbowed my side. “Right?”

“Right,” I murmured, eyeing the wine glass and thinking that my whole never getting drunk again thing sounded like a dumb idea right now.

“I’d been hanging around her father’s Academy for a while. Every kid growing up in that neighborhood knew who the Limas were. We’d all loiter outside just to catch a glimpse of her father or one of his brothers.”

“So your family is a bit famous?” Grady speculated, obviously forgetting Cam’s reaction to Brock and all of that.

“Something like that.” Fully aware of Brock’s body against mine, I eyed my wine glass with fervor.

“She’s just being modest. That’s how Jillian is,” Brock said in an infinitely familiar way, and I swallowed a groan. “Anyway, let’s just say I was a bit of a punk back then.”

“Was?” I muttered under my breath.

Brock grinned, obviously hearing me, and I hated that grin. It wasn’t cute or sexy or charming at all. Nope. “I tried to rob Andrew, her father, one night.”

“What?” Interest filled Grady’s gaze as his hand halted, the wine glass several inches from his mouth.

“Yep. I’d left home. Was starving and it was cold. Needed money, and I was a fucking idiot,” he explained, and Grady flinched at the curse word. “Tried to rob a man who could end my life in about six hundred different ways.” Laughing softly, Brock shook his head. “But Andrew didn’t kill me or beat the crap out of me like he easily could. Didn’t call the police. He’d noticed me hanging around the Academy, knew that I was fighting in some of the underground circuits—”

“At fourteen?” Grady sounded stunned. The poor country boy had no idea.

“You’d be surprised by what goes on in the cities that no one ever knows about,” Brock replied, leaning back in the booth.

I stiffened.

He draped his arm along the back, right behind me, and I tilted my head to the side, somewhere stuck between wanting to laugh at the outrageousness of him right now and wanting to throat punch him. “Andrew brought me to his house that night, offered me a hot meal and a place to stay.”

“Wow.” Grady’s smile was faint when he looked at me. “Your father is a saint.”