Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
GREG
Tony and I stayed at the restaurant until closing. I left a generous tip for our server for being patient and not shoving us out the door. The sun had long since set, and the air had gotten colder. I shivered and rubbed my hands together. I was glad the walk to my apartment wasn’t far.
Tony took one of my hands in his. “I can at least keep this one warm.”
I leaned in and kissed him. “Thank you for coming out to dinner with me. It was the perfect way to start over.”
We’d just passed by the subway station when I heard a man shout, “Fucking faggots!” Two other male voices echoed his sentiment.
I froze, but Tony gently drew me close and kept us moving. “Just keep walking,” he murmured. “Most of these assholes are all talk.”
The sound of multiple footsteps behind us did not bode well. My chest tightened, and my heart raced. Tony took firm hold of my arm and hurried me around the corner. He led me to the recessed doorway of a closed restaurant. “Stay here and have your phone ready to call 911.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked frantically. “There’s three of them.”
“I know. I’ve had worse odds.” He took off his leather jacket and handed it to me. “Hold this. Put it on if you get cold.”
I grabbed his arm. “Tony, I don’t want you getting hurt while I hide here like a child.”
His expression softened. “I know you don’t have any experience fighting. I’ll be able to focus better knowing you’re safe.”
I sighed, knowing he was right. “Please be careful.”
He gave me a quick kiss. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I got this.”
Before I could object further, I heard the three men round the corner.
Tony stepped out of the doorway and onto the sidewalk, where he stood with his arms crossed over his chest. Even in the shadowed light from the street lamps, I could see the latent power in his large body.
I didn’t know why I’d never noticed it before.
Maybe because he was always so gentle with me.
The assholes stopped short when they saw Tony standing alone on the empty sidewalk. “Where’s your boyfriend?” one of them sneered.
“None of your business,” Tony replied.
“We’re making it our business,” one of the other men said. “We don’t want fags in our neighborhood.”
“You should watch your mouth,” Tony said calmly.
“Yeah?” the leader snarled. “What are you gonna do about it?”
My boyfriend lowered his hands to his hips. “I guess that depends on you. You can just turn around and go back to whatever hole you live in.” He shrugged casually. “Or you can take your chances with me.” Why was that so sexy?
They laughed. “There’s three of us and only one of you. Your little boy toy ran away.”
Tony shook his hands out. “You talk a lot.”
My heart went into my throat when the three men rushed Tony.
The first man to reach him threw a wide punch that Tony easily dodged.
He grabbed the thug’s wrist and twisted his arm behind his back far enough that I heard the sickening pop of a dislocated shoulder.
Tony shoved the now-screaming man into his oncoming friends, who were sent stumbling backward.
The first guy fell to the ground and stayed there, holding his shoulder and moaning.
Enraged, the remaining two came at Tony, screaming slurs and epithets.
One managed to get in a hit to Tony’s jaw, but he used the other man’s momentum to throw him off balance, adding a kick to the side of his knee for good measure.
That guy joined his other buddy on the ground.
The third attacker, the largest of the three idiots, kept his distance from Tony, his hands clenched into fists in a defensive position. “Not so brave when the odds are even,” Tony taunted.
“You fucking f…”
Tony’s fist lashed out, catching the man full in the face. “For the last time, shut your fucking mouth.”
The man stumbled back but didn’t fall. He lunged back in, fists flying, trying to wrap his arms around Tony to take him to the ground.
He got one arm around Tony’s waist, but Tony twisted out of his grip, hooked his leg around the other man’s, and swept it out from under him.
Like his buddies, the last man ended up on the ground. He didn’t try to get up.
Tony stood there, breathing heavily, his hands on his hips. “You done now?” he growled. None of the men answered. Instead, they started scooting backward, away from him.
As I watched the scene before me, I realized I wasn’t panicking.
At all. Normally, I’d be having a full-blown panic attack seeing someone I cared about in a fist fight.
But at the moment I felt…calm. That was the only word I could put to it.
The only reason I could come up with was that I knew Tony could handle himself. That had to be it.
I ventured out of my hiding place, still holding Tony’s jacket. “Are you okay?”
He rubbed his jaw. “I’m good. Nothing an ice pack can’t fix.
” His gaze fell on the men who were still trying to pull themselves off the ground.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and snapped their picture, the flash blinding me for a second.
He turned his phone to show them the result.
“Within twenty-four hours, I’ll know who each one of you is.
If you decide you want to get cute and bother my boyfriend when I’m not around, nothing will save you from the hell I’ll visit on you. You feel me?”
A surge of lust went through me. Holy shit. I’d never heard Tony speak like that. The three idiots looked like they were going to shit themselves. They nodded like bobbleheads as they slowly struggled to get to their feet.
Tony waited until they hobbled around the corner. Then he held his hand out to me and said, “Let’s go.”
I held out the coat I’d been clutching like a security blanket. “Do you want your jacket?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “But I can carry it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s fine.” When I went to drape the jacket over my arm so I could hold his hand, my own hand brushed a solid lump under the leather.
I slid my fingers over the object, tracing a shape that turned out to be surprisingly familiar.
I looked over at Tony in surprise. “You have a gun in your jacket.”
“Yeah,” he responded, taking my hand in his as we headed toward my apartment building. “I usually carry one with me because of my work.”
“Oh,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.
“Is that a problem for you?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head. “Not at all. I just didn’t realize you were still doing bodyguard work.”
“Not as much anymore,” he said. “I’m in the office most of the time, assigning teams for events, setting up personal security details, and hiring new people. But every once in a while, an emergency pops up, and I have to take someone’s place. Or Jeremy has an event. I always take point for those.”
Tony opened the outer door for me when we got to my building. “I noticed that.” I took out my key to unlock the inner door, which thankfully hadn’t been wedged open this time. “Jeremy said you two have been friends for almost ten years.” I hit the call button on the elevator.
Tony smiled. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
I cuddled against him while we rode the elevator to my floor. It was then that I noticed the bruising and swelling on his jaw. I gently traced my finger over it. “We need to get you an ice pack.”
The elevator doors slid open. I took Tony’s hand and led him down the hallway to my apartment.
Once inside, I hung up his jacket and mine and had him sit at my kitchen table.
He was flexing the fingers of his right hand, and I saw that his knuckles were swollen as well.
I went to my cabinet and pulled out a couple of disposable ice packs.
I popped the inner seals to activate them and set them on the table.
I placed a soft kiss on Tony’s injured jaw. “Thank you for protecting me.”
Tony rested his injured hand on the table and put an ice pack across his knuckles.
He pressed the second one gingerly against his face.
“It was my pleasure,” he replied. I must have given him a skeptical look because he added, “I’m serious.
It’s satisfying to beat down a bunch of homophobic dickheads. ”
I had to laugh. “I’ll take your word for it. I haven’t had the opportunity.”
“Come sit with me,” he said. “I have to be still for fifteen minutes.”
“Of course.” I took the seat across from him. “Tell me the story of how you and Jeremy met.”
“Okay,” he replied. “But first, I gotta ask, why do you have a whole box of ice packs in your kitchen?”
“Oh, I guess that is a bit strange,” I began. “I use them for when I overdo it playing the piano. I try not to, but sometimes I get into the zone and lose track of time.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you should take better care of yourself.”
“Says the man whose brothers had to make him hire someone so he wasn’t working seven days a week,” I retorted.
He chuckled. “You got me there. So, how I met Jeremy,” he continued. “I’d only had the business for a couple of years at that point. It was just Michael and me and a couple of part-time drivers.”
My brows rose. “Wow. You’ve come a long way since then.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “And a lot of that growth is because of Jeremy.”
“How so?”
“He was still up and coming at the time, but very well-known in the tri-state area. He’d picked up a cyber stalker who’d started to leave actual notes on the door to his apartment and in his dressing rooms when he played concerts.
One time, he even pretended to be a food delivery guy and tried to deliver food to Jeremy’s dressing room. He ran away when security saw him.”
My stomach twisted. “Oh shit. That must have been scary.”
He nodded. “It was. The longer Jeremy didn’t respond, the more aggressive the messages became, both online and in real life.”
“So he hired you?” I surmised.
“Yeah. It took Michael a couple of weeks to track the stalker down—the guy was pretty good. But when he finally hacked into the guy’s computer, Michael got enough evidence to get him arrested. It turned out Jeremy wasn’t the only person he was stalking.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “I had no idea. Jeremy’s never said anything.”
Tony shrugged. “He doesn’t like talking about it. It took him a long time to feel safe again.”
I shuddered. “I can imagine. So I’m guessing Jeremy sang your praises wherever he could, which got you a lot of business.”
“Pretty much,” he acknowledged. “His family is big money in the City, and between that and his fame as a pianist, he knows a lot of wealthy people.”
“And that’s why you’re always the one to guard him when he needs it,” I said.
Tony smiled. “That, and he helped my baby sister get into Juilliard and later helped her launch her career as a composer.”
I had to smile. I wasn’t even surprised, considering the way he’d taken me under his wing. It was just the kind of man Jeremy was. “He’s a good man.”
“That he is.” He took the ice packs off his face and hand. “That’s good enough.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I spar with Marco. I’m used to a few bumps and bruises.”
Well, that explained a lot. No wonder he was so good at fighting.
But as I examined his face more closely, I noticed the furrow between his brows and the lines of pain around his eyes.
I had to work very hard not to roll my eyes.
I held out my hand to him. “Let’s go to my bedroom and get comfortable. ”
He smiled uncertainly as he took my hand. “Sure.”
I kissed his hand. “Let’s just lie down and cuddle. We’ll go from there.”
“Sounds good to me.”