“Does it still bother you?” His voice was soft, but there was something brittle about the words.
“No. Of course not,” I said, dropping my hands.
Naomi reappeared. “Did you hurt yourself?” she asked, proving that becoming Waylay’s guardian had given her superhuman hearing.
“Is it carpal tunnel?” Lina asked.
“I, uh, broke my wrist in high school. It was no big deal,” I added quickly.
Knox frowned. “I don’t remember that.”
“You had already graduated. It happened right before summer break.”
“I forgot about that,” Nash mused. He pinned me with a long, inscrutable look. As chief of police, Nash would have access to all those old records.
“How did you break it?” Waylay asked.
I purposely didn’t look at Lucian, but I could still feel his attention on me. “The same way a teenager breaks anything. With a lot of clumsiness and a flair for drama.”
“And it still bothers you?” Naomi asked me.
“No. I barely think about it anymore.”
Lina hooted. “Guess who just got three matches and two DMs?”
“Who?” I asked, perking up.
“BlondDirtyBookReader,” she said and triumphantly tossed me my phone.
Three photos of reasonably attractive, not insane men stared back at me.
“You guys are miracle workers,” I told them.
“Look at that. You’re practically married already,” Naomi teased.
On a low growl, Lucian abruptly left the room.
“What the hell crawled up his ass?” Knox wondered as he stole Waylay’s spoon and helped himself to some of her cobbler.
“Maybe he had to fart,” Waylay suggested.
15
Prison Lot Strip Tease
Lucian
I
started my day at 5:00 a.m. I’d worked out, had breakfast, handled three conference calls—two from the car—fired three people, and closed an eight-figure deal. All before noon.
I had two in-house meetings that couldn’t be rescheduled, so I did the thing I really didn’t want to do and offloaded them onto Nolan with strict instructions not to fuck anything up.
All so I could beat her here.
Sloane’s little “I’ll do some research” might have fooled everyone else, but not me.
Sergeant Grave Hopper was only too happy to agree to fire off a text when he saw the underhanded little librarian pulling out of the parking lot on her way to a mysterious Wednesday afternoon “meeting.”
“Here she is,” Hank, my driver, announced when the Jeep roared into the parking lot of the Fraus Correctional Center.
“I’ll call you back, Nolan,” I said and disconnected.
Sloane had her music loud and sunglasses on. Not a care in the world. Thinking she could just ride to someone’s rescue without bothering to think of her own safety first. I wasn’t going to stand for that again.
She was frantically digging through her gigantic I’d Rather Be Reading tote on the passenger seat when I approached her Jeep window. I peered in and caught a glimpse of her phone screen in her lap. It was an internet search for “what not to bring to prison visiting hours.”
With an eye roll, I rapped on her window.
Startled, Sloane jolted, and the contents of her bag exploded everywhere.
On an aggrieved sigh, I opened her door. She stared up at me, her jaw slack, her sunglasses askew.
I waited.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, finally regaining the power of speech.
“Waiting for you.”
“How—Why—”
“That innocent little librarian routine might work on your friends, but it doesn’t work on me.”
She scoffed and started shoveling female paraphernalia back into her bag. “I don’t have an innocent little librarian routine.”
“Did you tell Naomi and Lina that you were coming?”
“No. But—”
“Did you tell Nash or Knox?”
She stopped shoveling. Her chin jutted out.
“No,” she said.
“You went behind everyone’s backs because you decided you knew better than everyone else. Not the best way to begin your partnership.”
Judging from her expression, she knew I was right and wasn’t happy about it.
“Are you going to lecture me to death or leave me alone so I can continue to fuck everything up?” She tried to angrily exit the vehicle only to be held back by her seat belt.
I reached across her and released it. “Neither. Let’s go.”
“No freaking way, Lucifer. I’m not letting you go in there. You’ll scare this poor woman out of her wits with your disapproving death glare.”
“You’re not going in there without me,” I said succinctly.
“Yes, I am,” she spat. She turned away from me and tried to wrestle her bag across the seat.
“Leave it. You can’t take it in with you,” I said as I pulled out my phone.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Calling Naomi.” My thumb hovered over the Call button.
“Damn it!”
“Did you just stomp your foot?” I asked. Sloane’s comfort with expressing anger had always intrigued me. But I guess one was free to express their anger when one could control it.
“I was picturing your foot under mine,” she shot back.
“Either I go in there with you, or you turn around and drive home. Those are your only two choices.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at me. Her gaze slid to the prison entrance. Her lips pursed.
“You wouldn’t make it,” I advised.
She dropped her arms and fisted her hands at her sides. “Fine. You can come in. But you can’t glare or growl or roll your eyes. And definitely no speaking.”
“May I breathe?”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” she said.
“We’re supposed to be in the midst of a truce,” I pointed out.
“What truce involves you ambushing me in the parking lot of a women’s correctional facility?”
She had a very small, practically insignificant point. “If I had called you to discuss this, would you have even answered?” I already knew the answer.
“Probably not,” she admitted.
“Then let’s deal with the situation at hand. I’m going in there with you. End of story,” I snapped.
“Gee, maybe try to turn down the charm there, Master of the Universe. You might dazzle this woman into a faint.”
I shut the door of her Jeep and gestured toward the front of the prison. “Let’s go.”
We crossed the asphalt side by side, heading toward the monstrous monument of security. Earth-brown sandstone and concrete formed the towering facility walls beyond the double barbed wire fences.
Women in beige jumpsuits huddled in groups in the dismal yard. The asphalt inside the fences was crumbling, dead weeds poking up through the cracks.
Sloane stopped suddenly on the sidewalk. “Why are you here?” she asked again.
“You already asked me that,” I reminded her.
She shook her head, sending that thick, blond ponytail swinging. “Fine. It’s Wednesday. Why aren’t you ruling the corporate world? And you can’t stand me, so what does it matter to you if I screw up this partnership with my friends? I’d think you’d be happy to watch me crash and burn.”