“Tell me you haven’t been thinking about me,” he insisted, bracing his palms on the wall on either side of my head. “Tell me it wasn’t me you were looking for the moment you stepped in here tonight.”
“I was casing the place,” I lied. I hadn’t done that until later. The initial scan I’d made when I entered The Tap Room was all for him.
“Liar.”
Damn it! How did he know?
I clenched my teeth and gritted out, “I’m not lying.” If I kept this up, I was going to be struck by lightning.
“All right. Then tell me you wouldn’t want me to kiss you right now.”
God, what a presumptive asshole! So why did it suddenly feel like the heat had been cranked up in the building? “I definitely don’t want you to kiss me right now.” Didn’t I?
Those unique golden eyes glinted with something that looked almost like a dare. “Yeah?”
I tipped my chin back defiantly. “Absolutely.”
He smiled full on then, and I felt a clench low in my belly. “Then why are you leaning into me like you want to fuse our bodies together, grift?”
Why was I what? Oh holy shit! He was right. Without realizing, I’d not only leaned so close the heat was radiating off his skin and warming my own, but I’d also reached up at some point to place my palms on his hard, solid chest. Now that it had been brought to my attention, there was no way to keep from noticing how firm and round his pecs were. The man’s chest felt like it had been carved from marble, and I was dying to know what he looked like without that heather gray Henley on. I wondered if the rest of him would live up to what his chest felt like, and my lady parts were telling me it absolutely would.
Before I did something incredibly stupid, like drag the tips of my fingers down over his rippled abs so I could count how many were there, I dropped my arms and side-stepped his massive frame.
Once again, because of this man, I was leaving without everything my family needed from me. I couldn’t help but feel like a failure, and that morphed into an overwhelming feeling of desperation that fueled my anger. “Kiss me. I dare you,” I threatened. “Give me a reason to plant my knee in your balls.”
His eyes scanned my face then. “I don’t know what I like better. When you’re spouting ridiculous things, or when you’re all worked up and mad like this.”
I had to get out of here. It was still relatively early; I could find another bar and work that one so this whole night wasn’t a complete bust, but to do that, I had to escape West’s thrall.
“Too bad for you, you aren’t going to see either of them ever again.” Hitching my purse higher, I gave him a snide look and finished with, “Hope to never see you around, Weston.” Then I turned and started for the exit I’d spotted at the end of the hall, silently praying it would lead me right out into the parking lot.
The heavy metal door closed on his voice calling out, “It’s West. And something tells me this isn’t the last time we cross paths.”
Fuming now that the first part of my night had been ruined, I stomped across the blacktop parking lot toward Gertrude when that creeping sensation of being watched returned.
Thinking it was West standing at the back door I’d just escaped through, I whipped around, ready to shoot him the finger. Only, it wasn’t him.
“Hello, little dove.”
Oh shit.
Ten
Stella
I came to when something jostled my body, sending a sharp jolt through my ribs that was painful enough to shake off the black that had swelled across my vision the second time O’Brien’s henchman slammed my skull into the asphalt.
He’d come out of nowhere, taking me so off guard there hadn’t been a chance in hell for me to defend myself. As soon as the words ‘little dove’ crossed his lips, his big, meaty fist was coming at my face at lightning speed. I recalled it hurt like hell. I’d lived my whole life up until now never being punched in the face, and now that I had, I could say with certainty that I did not recommend it. Especially when that punch was coming from Big Foot’s second cousin once removed. That motherfucker hit like a Mack truck. He kicked that way too. I’d know, seeing as he’d just beat the ever-loving hell out of me.
Another jostle shot fire through my body and forced my attention to the present, most specifically, the back seat of the moving car I was currently in. Oh hell, was I being kidnapped?
I tried to sit up, making the mistake of putting my weight on my right wrist to push myself, and cried out in pain. Oh right. Mr. Meaty Paws had also stomped on my wrist with his equally meaty foot. The jackass.
The stabbing pain made me collapse back down onto the nice, supple leather that coincidentally smelled a lot like West.
“Try not to move, sweetheart.”
The voice, low and full of concern, came from the driver’s seat in front of me, and when I looked up the best I could, it wasn’t the asshole who’d just thrashed me like a rag doll behind the wheel. “West?” I asked, my voice thready with pain. Everything in my body hurt, especially my ribs, causing each breath to feel like I’d just inhaled fire. “What’s going on?”
He glanced back toward me for just a second before returning his eyes to the road, but it was long enough to see that, despite his gentle tone, he looked like he wanted to throttle someone. “How much do you remember?”
That was easy enough to answer. “I remember I got my ass kicked.” I was trying to make light of the situation, but if the energy in the cab of the truck was anything to go by, he didn’t find a single thing funny.
“You get a good look at the asshole who did this?”
“Oh yeah.”
“You think you could pick him out in a lineup?”
“Probably—wait. What do you mean, lineup?”
“As soon as I get you to the hospital, I’m calling the cops. They’ll probably want you to come down to the station when you’re feeling better to ID this fucker.”
“No cops!” I said in a panic, swallowing down the pain in order to sit up so I could see him better. “No cops, and no hospital. I’m fine.” Or I would be as soon as the world stopped spinning.
He jerked around again, this time looking like he wanted throttle me. “Are you out of your fucking mind? You were unconscious in the goddamn parking lot! I’d have called an ambulance if I thought they could get you to the hospital faster. You need a scan to make sure it’s just a concussion and not something a whole lot fucking worse,” he bit out.
I didn’t have the money for a visit to the ER, let alone how much a freaking MRI was going to cost me. It wasn’t like I could get grifter’s insurance or something. I just needed to go home and ice all my boo-boos. I’d be right as rain in a few days. But when I told West as much, his reply was a string of colorful curses that would have made my father and brother proud.
“I’m taking you to the hospital. End of story. And you’re going to file a goddamn police report when you get there.”
Like fresh hell I was. I tried a new tactic then—bargaining. “Okay, I’ll stop fighting you on the hospital. But no cops. That’s the deal.”