So damn defiant.
“I’m…what?”
“It wasn’t your situation to handle. It was mine.”
I moved closer, jerking my hand out of my pocket to run my fingers through my hair. “Your solution was to come to me because you were scared. I’m right about that?” She didn’t answer but didn’t look away from me either. “You came to me because my kid sister told you that was the best place for you. And you listened. So if that wasn’t my situation to handle, why the fuck did you bother coming to me at all?”
“I…needed somewhere to…go.”
“You couldn’t go home?”
Again, Maggie opened her mouth, but remained silent.
“So, you’re saying I was good enough to fuck but not good enough to protect you?”
“No.” She swallowed, those big, black eyes shifting, her gaze moving over my face as she stood, her lips tight, frowning. “No…but you…I was going to tell you… after but…” I moved forward, forgetting my anger just for a second as Maggie blinked, moving her eyes to my mouth. “Afterward …there…wasn’t time.”
“Bella…” I touched her cheek and Maggie relaxed, moving toward my fingers as I held her face between my palms. “You have to let me protect you.” I pushed my forehead to hers, inhaling her sweet scent. “This only works if you let me protect you.”
“And what about you?” she said, tilting her head. When I squinted at her, confused, she lifted my hand, pointing at my knuckles still bruised from the beating I’d given Finney’s man. “Is this how you’re gonna protect us?”
“Yes,” I said, not hesitating. When Maggie’s expression dropped, her mouth opening, I grabbed her face, holding it between my fingers. “I don’t know any other way and I’ve never done this before. You. Me…” I glanced at the kid, then back to her. “Us. Tell me you wouldn’t kill for him. What person on this planet wouldn’t kill to protect the people they love?”
Maggie waited a long time before she answered. There was a look that passed in her eyes, too much I couldn’t get a read on before she nodded, seeming to understand me at least a little bit.
“I’d do anything for him.”
“And I’d do anything for you both, but you have to tell me when there’s a threat coming for us. Bella, I have to be prepared for it.”
She nodded, pushing her eyebrows together.
“Promise me.”
“I promise, sweetie. I won’t keep anything else from you.”
I hoped like hell she meant it.
Two days passed before we got back into our groove, and I spent that time trying to get an angle on this Reynolds asshole. But there was no intel that linked him to Maggie, at least nothing concrete. There was, however, a flower delivery that came to her apartment when I was in Edgemont with Dino, something that irritated me to discover she hadn’t told me about until I texted her.
Smoke: You got flowers and didn’t tell me?
Maggie: I thought if they weren’t from you, they might be from your mom.
Smoke: Hell. That would make sense.
Fact was, I wouldn’t put it past the woman. In fact, since Pop’s party, she was doing her best to let everyone in town know she’d orchestrated my entire relationship with Maggie.
She probably did send her the damn roses.
I meant to ask her in person when she stopped by my office to get Mateo while I watched him for Maggie as she went to the dentist. But, my mother was late, she always was when there was food to prepare for the kid, and it seemed she had a lot of it, and the other visitor I had me forgetting about the damn flowers. Ma though, was single-minded.
“He’ll be hungry. He needs fattening up. Let me see what I have in the kitchen. Ah, I know, buttered noodles.”
“Ma. He just ate,” I’d told her, trying to stop her before she hung up the phone, but the line went dead and I chunked my cell on the desk, wincing when the kid stared up at me like I’d flung the thing across the room. “Sorry, man.” But he was already over the disruption and caught up in playing with my chain and I was too busy fanning through articles about this REN Cypher company that Reynolds and Maggie’s ex worked at to give too much attention to who came in behind me. But the scent was too sweet and thick for my liking.
I jerked around, flaring my nostrils when Paris came through the door. “Can I help you?” I asked her when she stood next to my desk.
Her expression was severe as she watched Mateo. Like she was disappointed I held him, but then she smiled, blinking away her frown before she brushed the hair from her forehead. “I wanted to know, um…Smoke, if I could speak to you.” Clearly, I needed to have a conversation with my boys about who they let in my office.
“Speak,” I told her, my attention moving back to my laptop and another article about the potential of the company going public if their app live date went off without a hitch.
“So that’s why I thought maybe you’d say yes.”
“Wait, what?” I blinked, glancing at the woman when I realized I hadn’t heard anything she said. Paris was always underfoot lately, it seemed. She’d been with my folks’ restaurant since high school. Ma wasn’t crazy about her, but Paris’s grandfather and Pop had grown up together. Her working for them was always seen as a favor.
She seemed to always get red around her face anytime something didn’t go her way or when she was upset. Something must have irritated her then because the woman’s face was damn near purple.
But she recovered, blinking before she waved a hand. “I said, you seem like a worldly man. You’ve got a lot of…experience.”
“Um…okay, yeah, I guess,” I said, positioning Mateo on my other knee, away from the woman.
“And I don’t have a lot of…well. Smoke. I know you’re single. I know that you and Maggie aren’t engaged or anything like that.”
I kept my features neutral, not willing to give anything away.
She stepped forward, touching my arm, her fingernails scratching over my skin. “I haven’t had a lot of sex…”
“Umm…that sucks for you…”
“Smoke,” she said, giving me a look that told me she was lying her ass off. She knew exactly how to manipulate and seduce. “Would you fuck me?”
I’ve had a lot of women throw themselves at me. It happens when you’re in the position I’m in. Money, power, it comes with both.
But shit, I was standing in my office holding a one-year-old, and she propositioned me while I fielded articles on my almost-live-in girlfriend’s ex-husband’s company.
The fuck was happening to my life?
Paris moved her hand up my forearm and I jerked her touch off me. “No. Not gonna happen.”
“Wha…what?”
“Look, that shit might work on one of these local idiots, but it won’t on me.”
“I don’t know what you’re…”
“You wanna keep your job?” I interrupted, stunning her silent.
She nodded, tugging her top lip under her teeth like she was scared to say anything stupid.