Chapter 39 Louise
LOUISE
“Why?” I asked, my voice coming out high and tight. “Why me?”
“You’re the grower,” said Sean. “You’re what counts. You’re what’ll make it a good crop. I’m just hired muscle.”
This was the side of things I’d not wanted to touch, the side he was meant to handle.
Sean had terrified me, when we first met, and he was several rungs below the guy we were talking about.
Someone with enough money to buy half a million dollars worth of weed.
..that was serious gangster territory, find-your-body-face-down-in-the-river stuff.
“I can’t,” I said weakly. “I don’t want to meet him. ”
“I don’t want you to meet him,” he told me. And I saw his hands ball into fists. “I want to keep you as far away from him as possible. But fuckers like Malone, they get what they want. If we say no, the deal’ll be off.”
Shit. Now I really did feel shivery. I grabbed one of the blankets Sean used for sleeping and threw it over me, despite the heat. It smelled faintly of him, and that made me feel better. “Where? When? What’s he like?”
Sean’s voice was a low rumble. “His jazz club. Tonight. And he’s a big, fat, bald, black fucker.”
“I meant—is he dangerous?”
“I know what you meant.” He came over to me and knelt down in front of me, then brushed his hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face.
When he spoke again, his voice was heavy with regret.
“Yeah, Louise, he’s a nasty son of a bitch.
But no one else around here can move this amount of dope. ”
“Does he know I’m a woman?”
“No. He doesn’t know anything about you,” he said bitterly. He’d been hoping, just as I had, that I’d be able to remain out of sight. He’d wanted to keep me insulated from all this. But now....
Now I was going to have to get closer than ever to that dark, criminal world. Or the whole plan would fail. But I was so scared...
I took a deep breath. For Kayley.
I leaned forward and put a reassuring hand on his arm. “You’ll be with me, right?”
He gripped my shoulders with his huge hands. “Fuck yes.”
I nodded. “Then I’ll be okay.” I looked into his eyes, then down at myself, at the mattress. I wanted to know where we stood, what his answer was. The phone call had interrupted us just at the crucial moment.
He gathered me into his arms, the drape sliding out from between our bodies, and cuddled me naked against him to show me that everything was alright, and I gradually relaxed.
We were together and, as long as that was true, I felt like I could handle anything else.
“I have to get home,” I said. “I raced out this morning—I haven’t seen Kayley all day. ”
I felt his nod against my shoulder. Then he drew back, took my cheeks between his hands and kissed me, sending a soothing glow through my whole body. “Go,” he said tenderly. “For tonight, put on something dressy. I’ll pick you up at nine.”