“And you heard about the hip bone thing?” I ask.
“What hip bone thing?” he asks fake-innocently.
“You know,” I say, pouting. “You got a spy following me? I mean… I didn’t see anybody, but do you?”
“I have no one following you, Violet.”
Is he fake-innocent or is he actually innocent on that matter?
“Oh. Then you don’t know the thing I said about your hip bones?”
He flashes me a big smile. We’re at a red light.
“I did, however, watch you dance for the past twenty minutes.”
“Oh,” I reply.
He leans over a little and it’s kind of magnetic, so I lean in, too.
Killian’s eyes rove my face for a minute before his eyes sparkle playfully. “If you weren’t drunk, Violet, I’d kiss you right now.”
I purse my lips briefly before I say, “If I weren’t drunk, Killian, I’d stop you.”
He stares. And the sparkle catches fire.
I stare back, feeling it crackle between us.
He licks his lips and then his hand is cupping my jaw.
I lick my own lips as my lashes lower.
I hear someone honk from behind us. They lay on their horn. Hard.
“Horny!” I grumble, calling over my shoulder. “Oh. Green light,” I add, gesturing to the windshield.
He laughs and because his eyes go back to the road, we move through the intersection. He’s shaking his head with humor as we take a sharp left after the light.
“Green light. How’s that for irony?” he mutters.
“What do you mean? You got saved by the green light,” I muse aloud and then I reach for the stereo and turn it up. It’s talk radio. I fiddle with it, looking for something better.
“I got saved? Don’t you mean you did?”
“Nope, you. You got saved from the hot mess that is me.” I find a familiar song. I strain to listen, to figure out the song. “Oh!” I gasp. “Fire Woman!” I’m shaking my hair and singing along with my air tambourine.
I get lost in a song I haven’t heard in years that I forgot I loved so much, and before I know it, we’re pulling into the underground at Killian’s building.
And the song ends as he parks, so I’m suddenly faced with the harsh lights of the underground parking garage and my situation.
A situation I don’t want to face right now.
He’s out of the SUV and rounding to open my door.
I open it first and he gives me a look as he catches the handle. “Unless I’m dropping you at the curb for your job, I open your doors. You wait for that.”
My head jerks back. “That’s silly.”
“That’s how it is. Come.” He takes my hand and I hop down, grabbing my purse from the floor of his SUV. He doesn’t let go of my hand. He closes the door and continues holding it until we get to the stairwell, where I break free so I can quickly dash ahead and open the door for him.
I smirk as he flinches. He reacts like it goes against his grain to let me hold that door, but he doesn’t argue about it.
It’s only a few paces before we’re at another door, then into the small hallway with the elevators. The walk isn’t a long enough walk for me to gather my senses before I’m in the elevator with him. An elevator that suddenly feels way smaller than it probably is.
“There’s only a week left,” I blurt. “Six days, actually.”
He presses his button, and we begin the ascent.
“Yep,” he agrees.
“If he doesn’t pay you, are you gonna disappear him?”
He stares at me without reacting. “Is that what you think I’m gonna do?”
I blow out a breath. “Well, he made comments about you. Before. He’d tell stories, talk about you being a millionaire at twenty-five. Said you said when you guys were kids that you’d be there by thirty and---”
“I hit it by twenty-four,” he corrects.
“Oh. Congrats.”
He doesn’t smile.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Gonna disappear him?”
“What do you think I should do if he can’t pay me?”
I look into his eyes. I don’t know how to read his expression. “I don’t know what you planned to do, but I have an idea of what you could do.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me.”
“I think maybe… you could… threaten him to leave me alone since he’s scared of you, and in return for that, I could make a plan to … pay you the money he owes in installments. Plus interest. Could we do that?”
He looks up at the elevator lights while he considers what I’ve said.
My heart is suddenly racing.
“How about we see what happens when the time is up?” he suggests.
The elevator stops.
“But would you consider doing that instead of… hurting him?”
He holds the elevator open with his hand while staring.
“Why would you pay his debts? He deserves that?”
I shake my head. “No. He doesn’t. But you don’t deserve to lose your money. I’d pay it back for you, not for him.”
His eyes flash with what looks like annoyance and he rolls his eyes. “You maybe think he was just bullshitting you, making it sound like he knows people who can make other people disappear?” He scoffs and then gestures for me to exit the elevator.
I push off the bar at the back and head down the hall to his door, which isn’t far. There are only four doors on this floor. Two on either side of me, two on the same side as the elevator. He quickly gets us inside his apartment and then he’s disarming his alarm.
34
Killian
I turn around and she’s standing behind me, plastered against the door, looking meek.
“Lock that,” I say and reach for my jacket, which is still around her shoulders.
I hang it up while she twists the lock. She shivers.
She looks sexy as fuck. She’s wearing a black shirt that, in front looks simple, though attractive even if it’s got one too many buttons undone. Or three too many done up, maybe. It’s the back of it that’s the showstopper. It’s lace with a deep v that shows off her back, tying loosely across the top. She’s got on tight black distressed jeans, a silver belt, silver hoops in her ears, and the black heels that I bought for her that she said were her favorite.
They’re sexy. Her toes are painted fire engine red with sparkles on them.
“You wear those shoes to the office today?” I ask.
She looks down and wiggles her toes. “No. Way too fancy for work. I changed my shoes in my car in the underground. And my shirt.”
“You changed your shirt in a car?”
“Covertly,” she admits.
I shake my head. “Underground parking garages have cameras everywhere, Violet.”
She shrugs. “I had a bra on.”
I’m surprised. And aroused. Though I’ve been aroused since I set eyes on her tonight. No, that’s wrong. I was aroused when she was sassy on the phone with me. When I set eyes on her in the club dancing with Susanna, it took me back. Three years back. And I fucking wished it was the first night I’d set eyes on her all over again. That somehow, magically, that time wasn’t stretched out between us. With her with him, the fuck. With her with anyone but me.