Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
Reese wasn’t generally one for teasing, but she had her little-sister moments when she liked to try her hand at it.
“He’s just… he has something, y’know?”
“He fixed the dishwasher.”
That had me stepping out of my closet in my bra and panties—matching, just in case—with a pile of dresses in my hands.
“Say again?”
“You know that weird rar-rar-whoosh noise it has been making for the past few weeks? Yeah, he heard it, and he went and fixed it. He used a butter knife as a tool, and I maybe wanted to do him right then and there.”
That was so unlike Reese that I threw my head back and laughed, doing so until my belly hurt, making my hand rest there for a long minute. “You dirty little slut, you. All it takes is a MacGyver to get the cobwebs out of the downstairs, huh?”
“It hasn’t been that long!”
“Oh, girl, it really has been.”
“Well, fine. Get me a man who is good with his hands… not like that!” she insisted when my smile went wicked. “You know what I meant.”
“Superior finger-fucking skills. Got it. I will keep an eye out.”
“I hate you,” she declared, cheeks flaming as she climbed off my bed and made her way back into the hall.
“Sure. Now you do. But when I find that man with the magic fingers…”
“Shut up!” she hissed from the hall because I hadn’t exactly whispered that last part.
That felt good.
Actually, the whole day felt better.
There was guilt there underneath it all, guilt that if I focused on it could likely pull me under and drown me, drown everything good that had been growing inside.
But as I slipped into an unusually subdued dress for me, short of hem but with a high neck and only a slit of mesh across the chest to even hint at cleavage, and full sleeves, perfectly black and unworn since it wasn’t my usual style, I remembered one of the last things Cass had said to me the day she was taken—about Tig, about wanting him.
It almost felt right to take a chance on him, knowing that she would have approved if she were still around.
So I slipped in some studs, climbed into some ankle-breaker red bottoms that had been a gift from Elsie, Paine’s girl, for my last birthday—her being extremely well-off in life and sharing a love of high fashion—spritzed on some perfume, and made my way out.
At the sound of my heels in the hall, Tig’s gaze immediately moved from his phone screen, stopping mid-text and putting it away without finishing, something I found refreshing as he slowly unfolded and stood.
“Damn, woman,” he said, giving me a slow, appreciative once-over.
I could see the look Reese was giving me, a look I could read thanks to a lifetime of her looks. It said ‘that is not your usual first date dress’ and maybe even ‘I think that might be a sign.’
But then Tig was moving toward me, making her gaze fly away, maybe a bit embarrassed at seeing any kind of affection between people, not generally being in the position to see it in person. His hand reached for mine and held it out, brow raised.
He wanted me to spin.
And, feeling silly, maybe a bit giddy on the cuteness of it all, I went ahead and did a spin.
“Alright, let’s go make a restaurant full of men jealous, shall we?
” he asked, and there was the flip-flop feeling again.
Maybe it wasn’t progressive of me to admit it, but it would be a lie to say that I didn’t get all dolled up for him, that it didn’t mean something to me that he was proud to have me on his arm.
So the fact that he obviously felt that way about me seemed right.
“Just got to blow by my place. You can even wait in the car. It’ll be five minutes. ”
It was too.
Five minutes.
On the dot.
He had pulled up in front of what was, well, an old office building.
An old office building was ‘his place’? It was one of the small ones that maybe housed eight offices max at one time or another but was obviously not operational as such anymore.
He urged me to press the locks, then climbed out and disappeared inside.
When he reemerged, I was reminded how unfairly easy it was for men to completely transform. Throw any average Joe in a perfectly tailored suit, and they looked like a new man.
Tig though—wow, he had a body meant for hanging a suit.
It was those massive shoulders, the long body.
He had picked a gray that was so dark it was almost black, with a black dress shirt and shoes.
Everything fit perfectly, spoke of tailoring because no suit off the rack fit that way.
If my eyes were right, which they usually were, it was good quality too.
To put it plainly—he looked good.
Really, really good.
Or, as Cass would put it, fine.
He was damn fine.
And he totally knew that I thought that because he had to tap on the window to remind me to unlock the doors since I had been too distracted ogling him to remember to do so without encouragement.
He climbed in, smelling like cologne, and sent me a smirk. “I can clean up too.”
And, because I was me and I wasn’t shy, I gave him a smirk back. “You sure can.”
With that, we made our way to Famiglia.
Because I had a nice clothes fetish and not many places in Navesink Bank required dressing to the nines, Famiglia was a favorite hot spot of mine.
Even if I was just going alone to have a drink at the bar, treating myself after a hard day.
It was also where my family and I always chose to celebrate birthdays or business successes. And, well, dates, of course.
Everything about Famiglia was sleek and classy—from the stocked back bar to the dark decor to the very neat and attractive servers.
Though the chick at the hostess podium could go take a damn hike with the way she raked her eyes over Tig, even though his hand was situated at my lower back in an unmistakable claim-staking.
I went to school with her, and while I genuinely believed in a woman’s right to sleep with whoever she wanted to without shame—that shit did not apply to married men, whom she had always had a taste for.
“Eyes over here, babe,” I said when she leaned over the podium, making her boobs spill everywhere.
Could your tatas be all on display without you looking like a slut?
Absolutely. Could she? Not a chance. But that was more because of who she was, not what she wore.
“Hi. Eyes off my man, or I will tell Luca or Matteo that you are single-handedly at fault for their cousin Bobby’s bitter divorce.
” Tig’s chuckle was low as his hand slid from the center of my back to my hip, sinking in and giving me a delicious little squeeze.
“Now that that is out of the way—reservation for Tig.”
While she did hop to and grab the menus and lead us away toward the tables, perhaps because we had grown up together, she felt she had the freedom to say under her breath, “You don’t have to be such a bitch, Kenzi.”
“No,” I agreed, tone normal, “I don’t have to be such a bitch, but certain people bring it out of me. Thanks, but we don’t need to hear the specials.”
“Old friend?” Tig asked, lips twitching as she walked away, putting a little too much sway into her step since Tig’s attention was focused entirely on me, where it belonged.
“Just to be clear, it doesn’t bother me that a man with me will look at another woman.
I think we’ve established that I am pretty secure.
Hell, I might even point out hot women to you from time to time, but what she just did was disrespectful.
And I am not someone to let that shit get inside and fester, making me lash out at you when that is misplaced.
I’d much rather confront the situation and avoid all that nonsense. ”
“Kenz,” he said, sounding almost gravely serious. “When was the last time a man told you just how fucking sexy that is?”
Unprepared for that, I faltered for a long second before recovering. “Oh, it has to have been at least an hour or so,” I quipped.
He smiled at that, making his brown eyes warm. “That’s too fucking long. I’ll have to set an alarm on my phone to make sure I don’t fuck that up again in the future.”
I was about to respond to that when the server came over, taking our drink orders.
I learned that Tig apparently would not drink wine even if he was dying of thirst and that he just wasn’t a big drinker in general, ordering one scotch on the rocks and nursing it throughout the whole meal.
I found myself oddly attracted to that, having long since gotten over my own need to get drunk or even tipsy and generally sticking to one glass of wine.
After we had ordered our food, I found myself in the uncomfortable situation of feeling like I needed to scramble for topics for small talk.
I usually just went with the flow, knowing that it was always the superficial stuff at first—school, work, mutual acquaintances.
And while Tig and I maybe had more people in common than I ever had with a date before, I couldn’t seem to find the words.
I found, almost unbelievably, that I was completely intimidated by him.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he was some badass PI.
So were Sawyer and Brock, and I had bullshitted with them on more than one occasion.
An argument could even be made for Sawyer being a much more formidable a person.
True, he could never talk about the details, but everyone who was anyone knew that Sawyer and Brock had been recruited quickly out of normal military missions and put into black ops.
They came back darker than they had been when they left, with sharper edges and more careless tongues.
Maybe that was it, though. Maybe I could overlook Sawyer and Brock’s darkness because I understood it, I knew where it stemmed from.
Tig was a complete mystery.
Hell, I didn’t even know his last name, let alone where he came from or what he had done in his life to get the attention of men like Sawyer and Brock.
He certainly could not have been some sort of Boy Scout, that was for damn sure.