Honestly, in this day and age, even what had happened last night with Iris and me shouldn’t have happened. She should’ve been so much more careful.
Something in which I’d be talking to her about after she told me of her ‘attempt.’
“Not me, no.” She shook her head. “I’m a flight attendant, remember?”
I nodded without saying anything, rolling over on my stomach and shoving my arms underneath my pillow while I rested my head on my pillow and waited patiently.
“Well,” she sat up and the blankets fell to the ground, revealing my t-shirt that all but swallowed her whole. “I was on this flight from Dallas Love Field to McGhee Tyson in Knoxville. And there was this little girl on the flight with a man who we assumed was her dad. Throughout the flight, the little girl never looked up a single time. I’m talking like barely ever. When I tried to give the girl a cookie, she seemed to almost draw into herself, and I just had this really bad feeling that she was in trouble. The dad, this entire time, doesn’t even ask if she’s okay. Nothing at all. Throughout the flight, the feeling grew and grew and grew until suddenly, I had to do something. I accidentally spilled water on the little girl, and then I took her to the bathroom with the ‘dad’s’ permission. That’s when I got the little girl to talk to me and found out that the man she was with wasn’t her dad. Hell, he wasn’t even a family friend. She couldn’t tell me who the man was to her, only that she was scared of him.”
She shook her head. “I had the marshal on the flight detain him until he could be questioned by authorities in Tennessee. Turns out, the little girl was taken from Texas. They got her a fake passport and then were able to transport her out. All because they threatened to kill her parents if she didn’t comply. It was disgusting, and I swear, that little girl clutched onto me so hard. I still remember the way her tiny little arms dug into my throat.”
I got out of bed then, walking over to sit on the pallet she’d concocted for herself.
When she held the comforter for me, I scooted until we were under the comforter, her bare legs rubbing against mine.
“My brothers and I started a new thing,” I started, “where we help victims like my sister. After we got her back, she was really fucked up.”
She snorted. “I’m sure she loved that you thought she was fucked up.”
She bumped me with her shoulder, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“She wasn’t happy that we wrapped her in cotton wool, no,” I admitted. “But she’s better now. Has a husband. She takes care of her husband’s two nieces. They have another baby with one on the way.” I shook my head. “I tell you what, though. There was one moment in time that I thought she wasn’t going to be okay. It was right after she was rescued, and she wouldn’t even let us near her. It broke my heart, and I wanted to seriously fuck the entire world up because of how she was acting. God, I still remember when she would scream when we got too close.”
Iris started fidgeting. “You’re making me want to go take self-defense classes.”
I looked down at her. “Self-defense classes are definitely something that every woman in the world should have. Even if you’re not planning on killing your attacker, you at least need to know how to get away from them if you need to.”
She hummed in agreement. “I’ll look for one.”
I jerked my chin up at my phone. “My brother teaches classes at the CrossFit gym that Haggard, that’s my brother, now co-owns with his best friend, Taos.”
She frowned at me. “The one that burned down?”
I grimaced. “Yeah, that one.”
She frowned. “Didn’t someone die there? The owner? That wasn’t your brother, was it?”
She looked so alarmed that I couldn’t stop myself from tapping her on the nose. “No. The man that died, Madden, was my brother’s best friend growing up. They grew apart, but eventually found their way back to each other.” I paused. “In fact, my brother is married to Madden’s daughter, Sophia. They just got married, actually.”
“Oh,” she frowned, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching over and wrapping my arm around her shoulder.
“A quarter of the gym was left to Sophia and Haggard, Madden’s shares split fifty-fifty between the two of them. Taos, the other half owner that’d started the gym with Madden, is considering giving them the gym fully,” I explained. “They built a new building a couple of miles away from the old one. Now the new one has more space for alternate classes. Which is where my brother teaches the self-defense classes.”
“I’ll have to sign up.” She sighed. “But unfortunately, I have a flight later tonight that I need to get to Dallas for… which means I have to go.”
I got up and tugged her to her feet, my mouth going dry at the sight of my shirt falling down the length of her bare thighs.
God, the girl had great legs.
“Bathroom?” she asked quietly.
I jerked my head toward the closed door. “Right through there. I locked the other side so she can’t access it through the hallway.”
With a small smile, she slipped into the bathroom without another word.
In the meantime, I was left staring at the door where her ass had once been, trying to decide how the hell I was going to keep her.
It’d been less than a day, but I already knew that I wanted to spend as much time with her as she allowed.
Sadly, when she came out of the bathroom, she was fully dressed and handing me my t-shirt back.
She didn’t even try to steal it.
Even though it would’ve been kind of hard to hide taking that since she literally had nothing more than the clothes on her back.
I took it from her hands and tossed it to the bed.
“Don’t go out there yet,” I urged. “Wait for me.”
Iris winked. “Don’t worry. I’m not into getting yelled at first thing in the morning. I’ll wait.”
And she did.
It took me less than two minutes in the bathroom, then I was dressed, clothed, and ready to head out.
Not that I wanted to do that.
I’d much rather lie in bed with her the rest of the day.
But obviously she was a much better, dependable worker than I was.
“Ready?” I asked, finding her at my dresser looking at the photo of my family that Cannel had put there the last time she’d come to my house.
“Ready,” she confirmed. “You have a beautiful family. Though, just sayin’, not a single one of you look alike.”
I snorted.
“Dad is half Cuban, half Greek. Mom is half Polish, half American Indian. Funny enough, it looks like each of us took after one of their halves.”
“That no-body-hair thing that American Indians have going on would be really nice,” she teased. “I have to shave every day or I resemble Sasquatch.”
I snorted and jerked my head toward the door. “Let’s go face the music.”
And, like always, Lindy was waiting for us.
She looked like she was mad as hell, and for it being almost noon, she looked like she hadn’t slept a wink.
Lindy took us both in as I walked to the coffeepot and poured myself a cup.
After I was finished, I said, “Iris, do you want one?”