Chapter Twenty-Four
KENZI
I felt unusually staid that morning as I slipped into simple high-waisted black jeans that had the cute accent of six brass buttons on the front, something I showed off with a tight white crop top, but I also slipped into a black-and-white almost floor-length tunic left open in front.
The five-inch heels, well, they were standard attire for me, life uprooted a bit or not.
For me, there was no excuse not to wear heels to work.
“Figured we should wait for him out front,” Cassie said as I walked up. She was dressed in jeans as well, which was unlike her, and a plain tee and flats. We both knew we had a long day ahead of us once we got the situation with our investigator handled.
I had come to terms with Tig the night before, after ranting and raging, heels slamming into the hardwood floors of my apartment for almost an hour while Reese listened, face impassive, knowing there was no use interrupting until I ran through my steam.
I mean,how could Sawyer and Brock turn me down? For something as ridiculous as the fact that I used to be trouble? Or because they didn’t want to piss off Paine and Enzo?
It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about contacting them.
Of course I had. But what could they do?
They were badasses, sure, and Enzo was training to become a PI, but neither of them really knew the ins and outs of private investigation.
They would likely just drag me to Sawyer anyway.
In which case, I was just cutting out the middle man and not, for once, dragging my whole family into my troubles.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they would have taken the case on in a heartbeat if I walked in there with Paine or Enzo.
“I don’t think this is a feminist issue,” Reese reasoned.
“I know that,” I snapped, shaking my head and waving a hand out.
“This is just a ‘us’ versus ‘them’ thing. Like because Paine was a gang leader, he somehow gets more respect from them than I do just because I was a wild teenager. Or maybe they think because I haven’t been in their ‘lifestyle’ that I am likely overreacting. ”
“If this Tig guy works for Sawyer, he has to be good.” That was Reese, never one to jump on a hysterical bandwagon, always trying to be rational.
The freak. Didn’t she know that flying off the handle was cathartic?
A good rage-out could clear the mind just as well as a good sex session, I was convinced.
She wasn’t wrong either.
Sawyer was a lot of things, but the biggest of was that he was a ruthlessly trained man.
He knew what he was doing. He would never settle for hiring someone who wasn’t just as experienced as he was, though maybe in other realms. Nothing about Tig screamed ‘ex-military’ to me the way that it did for Sawyer and Brock.
If anything, there was a hint of street to him, a hint of something that was familiar because I had brothers who had spent a lot of time on the streets…
and running them when the crush of poverty made everything else seem impossible.
But even if his specialty was gang shit or something, he was the best at it if he worked for Sawyer. I had no doubts about that.
“True,” I allowed, kicking off my heels and reaching up to unclasp my necklace.
“What does he look like?”
Reese was a fan of descriptions. She was spoiled by all her books, I was sure.
“He’s… huge,” I recalled, smiling a little.
“Like, he’s bigger than Paine and Enzo. Darker skin.
Brown eyes. He’s very… masculine-looking.
He has really strong features—solid jaw, stern brows.
I’m pretty sure he needs to turn sideways to get through a door.
That’s how wide his shoulders are. He’s got huge arms too,” I added, Reese knowing I was a sucker for some strong arms. “Fit overall, but he has a little bit of a beer belly too.”
Reese’s smile was a little warm at that. “I like that. He’s not perfect. None of us are.”
“Oh, please,” I said as I dropped down in the chair across from where she was cross-legged on the couch, no fewer than six books stacked around her, everything from sci-fi and romance to classics. “You and me? We’re perfect.”
I wouldn’t say Reese was insecure per se, but she definitely didn’t have the confidence I adopted sometime in high school, deciding for myself that I was the shit and no one could tell me otherwise.
She and I looked a lot alike, though she was just a bit softer in her features, and her fashion sense was, well, nonexistent. As such, if I was the shit, so was she.
“Please, have you seen the size of my butt lately?” We both got the great ass gene.
It made up for the fact that neither of us was particularly top-heavy.
I had always embraced my big butt. It was in vogue.
Men liked it. I liked it. It made jeans look like a fashion statement.
Reese, not so much. She wore long sweaters all winter to cover her yoga pant-clad rear end, not liking any attention brought to it. “I need to lay off the ice cream.”
“If you stopped showing up at the ice cream shop, I think they would send the cops over to make sure you hadn’t tripped going down the stairs because your nose was buried in a book. Your ass is fine. Your mindset sucks.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “But, yeah, I think you’re worrying over nothing. I bet he is going to be great.”
“We shall see.”
—
“Maybe we are blowing this out of proportion,” Cassie said as she handed me a to-go coffee, black but with blueberry syrup because that was how I liked it, and she was a good friend like that.
I had the same niggling feeling all morning as I got dressed. A good night of sleep and some clear-headedness had me second-guessing our reaction the other day.
“Well, I didn’t actually get his number,” I said, shrugging. “And he’s likely already on his way. I’m sure if we’re being pansies about this, he will tell us that.”
I raised the coffee to my lips and took a long sip, feeling the warmth swirl around inside.
About five long minutes later, every bit of me more convinced than before that we were overreacting, a dark mammoth of an SUV pulled up and parked right on the street in front of my store, not bothering to heed the ‘no parking’ sign one bit.
The SUV made sense, given how huge the man was. It wasn’t like he could squeeze into a sports car, and I wasn’t sure there was a motorcycle around that could hold him.
“You didn’t tell me he was fine,” Cassie chided, looking over at me with a haughtily raised brow.
“Because that has nothing to do with how well he can do the job or not,” I countered, standing as Tig cut the engine and climbed out, wearing casual dark jeans and a white tee.
“Ladies.” He gave us a nod, offering a small smile.
“Tig, this is Cassie. Cassie, Tig.”
“So this is your shop.”
“Wow, he is good,” Cassie said dryly, giving Tig a wry smile.
“Yes, ha ha,” I agreed, rolling my eyes. “Yes, this is my shop. We have had an…”
“Incident,” Cassie supplied.
“Right. An incident,” I agreed, going to the door and unlocking it, pulling open the door, then reaching in to flick on the lights.
Not to toot my own horn, but my shop was amazing.
A lot of boutique shops I had toured, thanks to my own obsession with couture and maybe a bit of spying to get ideas, had taken a turn toward hipster with fake chipping walls, exposed brickwork, and distressed floors.
They even hung their clothes on clothing racks like designers used backstage at fashion shows.
Fake rustic aesthetic.
Meanwhile, the clothes cost a fortune.
When I decided to go through with it and sank every bit of money I had into it, along with the small business loan I had taken out, I decided to go big or go home.
Metaphorically. Style-wise. The store itself was about a step up from a shoebox.
But, hey, it was in the best part of town for foot traffic, and the smaller the store, the less rent I had to pay. It was a win-win.
But, yeah, it was pretty.
It needed to be.
I practically lived there.
You were met instantly by slate floors that stretched the whole store.
The clothing racks were minimalist—chrome and mirrors.
Shoes were displayed on the walls in individual hexagonal shelves, each painted some form of metallic—silver, gold, brass.
There was a small seating area in the center toward the back, sitting in front of the silver dressing room doors—just a white rounded loveseat in front of a golden coffee table, where you actually put coffee because we had a machine.
We couldn’t get the license to offer wine or champagne, but the town was cool with coffee.
Cassie and I spent our days behind the brass desk to the left of the room, where we had actual chairs instead of stools or the like since we were our own bosses and fuck what anyone else thought.
It wasn’t a crowded space, as when I drew up my plan, I did it with exclusivity in mind.
We didn’t carry a big stock because we changed what we carried every single week.
So the fashion-obsessed woman could drop in and pick out something new every payday and know that not every woman she passed on the street would be wearing the same thing.
It was a model that, so far, had been working beautifully.
Was I rich? No.
I still shared an apartment with my sister. Granted, it was a much nicer apartment than we used to have, but I certainly wasn’t living large.
That being said, I got to work in the industry I loved, and I answered to no one.
It was the dream life.
Maybe it wasn’t vacation homes in Malibu and bottles of Dom.
But it was freedom.