Chapter 3 #2
He jumped and looked beyond me.
I was not about to be taken in by that kind of crap, him conning me into looking over my shoulder then pouncing on me, so I stayed on target, my attention glued to him.
I watched him relax and only then did it occur to me how jittery he was, considering I’d heard a car pass too. But The Surf Club was on Indian School Road, one of the many busy city streets in Phoenix. Therefore, no matter how early it was, there were going to be cars.
“Ignore the traffic and keep talking,” I urged.
“They want me to—” he cut himself off when another car passed and he looked to the entrance drive to SC.
“Dude, stay on target,” I advised.
He turned back to me. “They said they’re watching me.”
Great.
“Did they follow you here?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
I hoped he was right, for both of our sakes.
“Then hurry with your story,” I urged.
“I…can I pull out my phone?” he requested.
“Sure,” I replied. “Just go slow.”
He started to reach to his back pocket, froze for a nanosecond, before his gaze shot to the entrance, then he turned and sprinted away.
What the…?
Since he was racing away, I thought it was safe to twist, and I saw lights from a car flash through the lot.
I whirled full body, only to see a black Denali angling in.
Those Denalis equaled one of the Nightingale boys.
I relaxed, stood there and watched as Shaw Drake parked, cut the lights and ignition, and folded out of the car.
Shaw was a new recruit.
Former Marine. Tall. Built. Dark-brown hair. Preposterously gorgeous.
I wasn’t sure if this kind of thing was a prerequisite to the hiring process, but I knew Shirleen, the Operations Manager who did the hiring, and I’d been invited to her screening of 300 to christen her huge new TV in her fabulous new condo.
So I was guessing it was.
I couldn’t blame her. Daily eye candy in the office didn’t hurt anyone.
But the sheer amplitude of these guys’ hotness?
Cripes.
“You good?” he asked me, attention trained beyond me to where Mr. Shithead ran away.
The Nightingale crew had cameras on SC. And at the Oasis.
Reminder: when it came to the Angels, they weren’t taking any chances.
I should have known I’d be covered when some creeper approached me in the parking lot. And the NI&S guys were probably who was calling me.
I was still impressed with how fast he got there.
“How did you get here so fast?” I asked.
“Call went out to everyone, I was closest. Headed to the gym. Gabe’s on his way.”
Well…wasn’t that just marvelous?
I had yet to figure out how I was going to tell Gabe to back off (again) but do it nicer this time, and it would seem I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to figure out how to do that.
Also, what was with these guys?
Who went to the gym at five in the morning?
Were they dedicated to the task of giving every human being on the planet an inferiority complex?
If so, they were succeeding.
“Just to say,” he began with humor in his tone, “I’m not a threat. You can lower the Taser.”
“Oh.” I lowered the Taser. “Sorry.”
He approached. “Do you know that guy?”
I nodded while shoving the Taser in my bag. “Yeah. He’s one of our informants. And not the hang-and-eat-cheeseburgers or chill-in-his-man-cave type.”
“Right.”
It was then, more headlights flashed in the parking lot, and in drove a very familiar Jeep Wrangler.
Why me?
All right.
Counting it down…
I had a shit dad.
Thus, I had to watch my mom do much what I was doing right now, except she worked harder and got less sleep because she had to cover me.
Then there was stepdad number one, who was a lot like Kev, except lazier.
Mercifully, Mom got shot of him pretty quickly.
Onward (hereditary?), I had terrible taste in men.
You’d think I’d learn with the very first one, who tried to slut shame me in high school when I wouldn’t put out, and he told everyone I did.
This escalated to a lot of ugly lies on social media my mom had to lose her mind about and alternately stalk the principal and the police to put a stop to it.
But did that nightmare stop me?
Nooooooo.
Around the time Mom gave stepdad one the boot, high school boyfriend number two cheated on me with approximately half of the junior class, a quarter of the sophomore class and a third of the senior class (maybe an overstatement, but the dude was a dawg).
I had a brief period of being smart, as such, not dating at all.
Then came Kev, who broke down my barriers with the whole charm and compliments and love-bombing thing, suckering me good, before he exposed the real Kev.
After that, I had four years of him being a mooch, verbally abusive, me scraping him off, him not liking that, serious drama ensuing, him suckering me to take him back again, until I’d had enough and made it permanent.
It just didn’t take, not with him. He kept badgering.
What took was his best bud getting dead and the Nightingale Men disappearing him (however that happened).
Suffice it to say, no matter how it happened, I had no qualms with that.
And I did not miss him.
Oh, and let us not forget Sheldon, my ex-bestie’s douchebag boyfriend, who started her on pot, graduated her to E, and now, from what I’d heard, they were both all about meth.
I hadn’t seen her in years. The last time I did, she was in the E stage, and I was warning her Sheldon was no good, she told me to go fuck myself, reminding me while she did of my own stellar taste in the opposite sex. Hence the “ex” part of being my ex-bestie.
Thus, I was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who had chosen poorly more than once, witnessed those I loved choose poorly, and now I was faced with a guy who was maybe good, but probably another version of bad, who waded in to get me paid, could carry me, and who played with my hair when I slept.
He also climbed in that bed with me without permission, so there was that.
It was good this was what I was thinking when he angled out of the Jeep, wearing loose gray shorts and a black tee in some performance material, naturally looking scrumalicious.
And making matters worse, his cousin, one of The Originals, Luke Stark, slanted his long, lush body out of the passenger side.
I’d heard Luke was down from Denver, doing some training with the new guys. I just hadn’t met him yet.
But he was everything everyone said he was (and all of that was good, and it included how damn easy he was to look at).
Seemed to run in the family.
Bah!
“What the fuck is going on?” Gabe asked cantankerously as he prowled Shaw’s and my way.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Cameras at base caught one of the Angels’ informants cornering her in the lot,” Shaw said.
FFS!
“He didn’t corner me,” I said to Shaw.
Then…
Whomp!
I was plastered against a hot guy in exercise clothes.
I tilted my head back to look up at Gabe to find he was looking at me.
“You okay?” he asked.
I was very okay, with his arm tight around me, my body flush to his, witnessing that concerned look on his amazing face.
Yes, you are sooooo verrrrrrrrrry okay, Dreamer drawled.
Tell him to back off! Logic demanded.
“Um…” I mumbled.
“Babe,” he growled, his arm giving me a shake.
I pulled it together, and in doing so, tried to pull from his hold.
It tightened.
I stopped trying.
“Mr. Shithead isn’t a threat,” I shared.
“Anyone is a threat to a woman in a dark parking lot in the early hours of the morning,” Gabe shot back. “Or, ever.”
Hmm.
I was thinking he understood why women picked the bear.
Just not why I’d do that over him.
“It isn’t dark. Tito is all about the lights.”
“Willow,” he warned.
“Shaw scared him off before he could get out what he was doing here, but definitely something is up. I just don’t know what it is because he took off before he could tell me.”
Gabe grunted unintelligibly as his arm loosened, so I took that opportunity to put some distance between us.
He took the ensuing opportunity to hook a finger in the tan belt I had cinching my cute, muted-salmon shirtdress with the flouncy, short shirt so that distance wasn’t very distant.
Before I could protest, I noted movement out of the side of my eyes, looked to Luke and saw him crossing his arms on his wide chest, planting his feet apart, his gaze on us, an approving half-smile on his face.
What he approved of, I did not know.
What I approved of was that Luke was in all black: skintight compression shirt and lightweight joggers.
Nice.
“You got this?” Shaw asked.
“I got this,” Gabe answered.
“There’s nothing to get,” I put in.
“Later,” Shaw said and moved to the Denali.
Since he was out, I turned my attention to Gabe.
“There’s nothing to get,” I repeated.
“We’ll pay this guy a visit,” Gabe stated.
Oh no they would not.
“He said they were watching him,” I shared.
“Who’s watching him?”
Gah!
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Like I said, Shaw drove to the rescue when I didn’t need a rescue before he could say. But he was scared to death, and whatever it is involves someone who means something to him, so you boys can’t blow into the Sun Valley Motor Lodge and get her shit in a sling.”
Gabe finally relaxed, letting my belt go, and then he said, “You’re cute when you sleep. You’re cute in that dress. And you’re cute when you’re trying to be a badass.”
Oh no he did not!
“I had the situation covered,” I snapped again.
“And, you know, he’s a creep, but he’s ours, and it sounds like he’s in trouble.
So maybe tell your team to come in cold next time so you don’t scare someone the Angels are probably gonna want to help.
Because now we’re going to have to get fancy with it, possibly pull in Jinx or one of the girls, and who knows what will happen to Mr. Shithead or this person that matters to him in the meantime. ”
Jinx and the girls were the informants/friends we had cheeseburgers with, by the way.
They were also sex workers.
At first, I wasn’t sure about that, because Jinx could be kind of abrasive.
But I learned she was the bees’ knees and so were all the girls.
“Am I going to be able to talk you into letting him deal with his own shit?” Gabe asked.
“No,” I answered.
He sighed.
Largely.
I had muffins to make but now was as good a time as any to get some things straight.
As such, I turned to Luke and requested, “Can you give us some privacy?”
He jerked up his chin and took a step back.
So, the guy was tall and one of his steps was two of mine.
He still didn’t go very far.
“Maybe another six or seven steps?” I suggested.
Luke didn’t move.
I rolled my eyes as extravagantly as I could.
When I stopped doing that, Luke’s half-smile was back.
So be it.
I switched my attention to the younger Stark.
“We need to talk about last night,” I declared.
“What about it?” he asked nonchalantly.
Yes, I said nonchalantly.
“You slept with me,” I reminded him.
He nodded. Once.
“I did,” he agreed.
“In nothing but your underwear.”
“Sleeping in jeans isn’t real comfortable.”
“Gabe!” I exclaimed heatedly.
But he just hooked me at the back of my neck, yanked me into his body, and…
Get this!
Slammed his mouth down on mine, kissed me hard, but dry, let me go and asked, “How many deliveries we doin’ tonight?”
I was still recovering from the kiss—no matter how dry it was, it was still thorough—so I was pretty proud of myself when I was able to say, “You are not my delivery driver.”
“Be at yours at five. Good?”
In case he was hard of hearing, I said it louder this time. “You are not my delivery driver!”
“Text me if you need me earlier,” he replied, then started sauntering to his Jeep.
Sauntering!
“Gabriel Stark!” I shouted after him.
He did his own jerking up of his chin before he swung in, Luke swung in, and they idled with me in their headlights.
I frowned at Gabe ferociously through his windshield.
He lifted a hand and stabbed a finger toward the back door of The Surf Club.
You have muffins to make, sweetie, Dreamer sing-songed.
You can deal with him later. Without an audience. Now, you can’t let your employers down and you’re already late, Logic counselled.
Damn.
I stomped to the door, unlocked it, then stomped through it, flipping the lights on to the staff room and closing and locking the door behind me.
Only then did I hear the Jeep motor out of the lot.