Chapter 9
Lord, I’m not asking you for my soul mate, I’m just asking you for the tracking number.
— Coffee cup
SHASHA
She blinked so cutely.
“I’m sorry.” She raised a finger to her ear and rubbed it. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“You heard me just fine,” I pointed out. “You’re just hoping for a different answer that I won’t be giving.”
She shook her head, her beautiful green eyes shining in surprise, and said, “I guess you’re right.”
“How do you know the woman that was killed at the mouth of my road?” I asked.
I saw her shoulders deflate.
“She used to be the school’s librarian,” she answered. “Her husband is a criminal defense lawyer.”
This I knew.
“Yes,” I said. “So I’ve heard.”
She didn’t have to know that I’d heard about the librarian’s husband via illegal means rather than hearing about it on the news like everyone else had.
“She’d told me in passing that her husband was harsh. She didn’t out and out say that he was abusing her or anything, but I could infer. There were bruises. One time he came in to pick up her car because his wouldn’t start, and he’d berated her for a solid ten minutes in front of the snack machine because she hadn’t answered her phone quickly enough. Which, might I add, she was in the middle of her school day.” I sighed.
Before I could finish, a young waitress arrived with a bored smile on her face and inquired, “What can I get you two to drink?”
“I’ll have a water,” I ordered.
The young girl looked to Brecken next. “And you, ma’am?”
She quickly scanned the menu and said, “Chocolate milk.”
I wondered if she was going to pay for that later.
I knew that she was lactose intolerant. Though, I also knew that there were multiple levels of it. Some just got stomach upsets, while others had much more intense and swift issues.
I imagined that if her intolerance was that bad, she wouldn’t be having chocolate milk.
“Wait,” she said when the waitress started to leave. “Actually, can you make that a lemonade?”
“Sure,” she said. “Our special is on the wall there.”
I didn’t glance over, not caring what the special was.
I generally tried not to order from the specials menu because I felt like the food was prepared in a more clinical way rather than taking the time to make a dish excellent.
“Oh, thanks,” Brecken said politely.
The young girl left, and I looked back at Brecken with a raised brow.
I didn’t have to say a word, and she launched right back into her story.
“He tore her a new one right there in the middle of the corridor,” Brecken explained. “The asshole grabbed her arm right above her elbow, and he was squeezing so hard. The next day, Viveka came to school in long sleeves. She did that for the next two weeks, and I knew that she was hiding the bruises.” She sighed. “A month or so later, we were in the break room, and she brought up a hypothetical scenario to me and my ex-best friend. She asked what we would do in a situation if we found ourselves pregnant with an abusive partner. Both of us gave our opinions, and Viveka got really worried looking as we described our sides. That next week was when she disappeared. I didn’t hear anything more about her until she showed up on the news having been hit by a car down the road from your house.”
I was curious, though.
“What would you have done in that kind of situation?” I asked.
She bit her lip. “I told her I would find the scariest man I could find who could protect my child and leave my child with him.”
Little did she know, that was exactly what Viveka had done.
“You’d leave your child with some virtual stranger?” I questioned.
“I wouldn’t just leave them, no. But I feel like I’m a pretty good judge of character. I think that I would’ve found someone that I trusted to take care of them. That I knew would protect them with their lives. That I knew was scary enough to do what they had to do to make sure that child stayed safe always,” she explained.
I couldn’t tell her what had happened.
I couldn’t trust her with those kinds of secrets.
Not when they’d incriminate me in any way.
So far, I’d managed to keep my nose clean in this city. I didn’t want to bring the cops’ attention to me if I didn’t have to.
“Here you go.” The waitress set our drinks down. “What would you like to eat?”
I picked up my menu, found the fresh fish section, and ordered the catch of the day.
Brecken ordered next and surprised the hell out of me.
“I’ll have the all-you-can-eat catfish,” she said. “Instead of fries, though, I want a loaded baked potato. And I also want to order the blackberry cobbler for dessert.”
The waitress took our menus and left, leaving me staring at the woman across from me in surprise.
“I’m surprised to hear that you are eating fried catfish,” I admitted.
“Why?” She took a sip of her drink, wrapping her lips around the straw in such a way that it made my cock go hard in reaction.
“Because most women eat like birds around me,” I answered. “I’ve yet to be out to eat with a woman besides my sisters that didn’t order a salad, and pretend like food was unnecessary to them.”
“Well, hate to break it to you, but food is very necessary to me.” She patted her flat belly. “If I don’t eat, I get this condition.”
My body tensed. “What kind of condition?”
I hadn’t heard about any conditions other than her lactose intolerance from Lev, who’d run a very thorough background check on her.
And why the fuck did I have such fear in my heart right now at the thought of her being sick in any way?
I shouldn’t have any kinds of feelings about the woman.
Yet, there I was, feeling them.
“It’s this really rare condition called bitchiness,” she answered. “If I don’t eat, I turn into a complete, raving bitch. Everyone is on my shit list if I don’t eat. And if I do eat, and it happens to be salad, I only have about an hour reprieve from said bitchiness.”
Relief hit me like a battering ran at her words.
“At least that’s something that I’m used to,” I commiserated. “My sisters and grandma suffer from the same condition.”
She beamed at me, and I wouldn’t ever admit it, but that smile did something to my cold, dead heart.
“You have a grandmother?” she asked.
I nodded. “Don’t most people?”
“Yes.” She paused. “I used to have two of them, but both of them passed away about five years ago. In fact, I don’t have any grandparents left. All of them lived really hard lives. Like my parents, they were all rodeo fanatics. Both grandfathers rode bulls. My dad’s mom was a barrel racer. She did that into her late seventies and died of a heart attack while in a competition. My mom’s mom was a farmer, and she got run over by a tractor while they were plowing fields. My grandfather ran her over.”
My stomach sank. “I can’t think of anything worse to happen than to be the one responsible for running over the one person in the world that I love more than life itself.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Grams was a bitch. She fell over because she was drunk as a skunk. Grandpa was just as drunk and had no clue he’d wrapped her up in a hay bail until six months later when they found her dead body after one of the cows ate the bail down far enough that she was exposed.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.
She burst out laughing then said, “I’m just lying. Both of my grandmothers are still alive. I just don’t talk to them because they’re assholes.”
I shook my head, amusement lighting my features despite my attempt to stop it.
“You’re hilarious,” I drawled.
“I know.” She shrugged. “My brothers say that I’m a sarcastic asshole. Same thing, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Back to why you were trespassing today…”
“Technically, I’m a part of the construction crew. I had every right to be there today,” she pointed out.
I’d never felt the kind of amusement that I did right then.
“Is that right?” I asked. “Should I expect you to be there more?”
“Yes,” she said. “Until I get my answers.”
“I’m afraid that you might not ever get those answers,” I drawled. “I have to protect myself, after all.”
“I’ll do what I have to do to get them,” she countered.
Interest spiked inside of me.
“Do you know who I am, Brecken Sweat?” I asked, trying not to be amused by her name.
“If you have any humanity at all, please, please, please don’t ever call me that again. If you have to address me by my full name, please make sure to add my middle name—Navy—in there. I can’t stand my name,” she begged, placing both of her hands together in a praying position.
I’d never been a very religious man.
In the line of work I was in, it was kind of impossible to think there was a god, or people like me wouldn’t exist.
But in that moment, I realized that if anyone was sent from heaven to tempt me, it would be this woman.
I didn’t allow my face to break, however, despite her cuteness.
When she realized I wasn’t going to say anything more, she sighed and leaned back in her chair.
“Other than hearing that you were a dangerous man from my brothers, and knowing that you dropped a freakin’ whack on your house because of my brothers building it? No. I know nothing,” I said. “Though, I suspect you’re someone dangerous.”
If she had any clue…
“We’ll allow your eyes to continue looking out of those rose-gold glasses then,” I murmured.
Her eyes narrowed, and just when I suspected her to get upset or lash out in anger, her features smoothed out. “Do you know the term ‘rose-colored glasses’ originated in the nineteenth century and that the glasses themselves had a calming effect?”
Of course, she wouldn’t answer how I suspected her to.
Of course.
Before I could say anything, the waitress arrived with our food and placed it in front of us.
“Thank you so much,” Brecken breathed.
She dug in with gusto, and it was such a pleasant change from the usual women I went out to eat with—women who were so worried about their figures and what I might think about them eating real food—that I sat there and watched for a few long minutes instead of eating myself.
Lifting my water glass to my lips, I idly wondered what it would be like to live with this woman. What it would feel like to know that she was at home, waiting for me to come to bed. What she would do when she found out she was pregnant with our child…
I swiftly shut that thought down.
That was definitely something that I didn’t want to think about right now.
Or ever.
My world was too dangerous for a wife, let alone a child.
And, though women and children were sacred in my world, they weren’t sacred in the rest of the criminal underworld’s world.
I would know.
My mom had been a victim right along with my father.
Hell, my own sisters had to walk around with a fucking bodyguard twenty-four-seven. How would Brecken feel having to take a bodyguard with her to work?
She would hate it.
I knew it.
I knew it because my sisters hated it, but at least they’d been raised with the knowledge that having a bodyguard was a necessity.
Not to mention the complications that would arise if we did start dating, and her brothers found out.
I wasn’t a dumb man.
Sweat Construction consisting of Ryler, Bronc, Holden, and Tibbs might be small, but they were mighty.
I’d watched them put up the framing on my house in a span of twelve hours.
I had a feeling, if they put their minds to something, they would make it happen.
Meaning, if they didn’t want me in the picture, I wouldn’t be.
All of them retired military—Air Force like my brother, Dima—they were all fully capable of killing me.
If they caught me unaware, anyway.
I might not have been in the military, but I was raised in the concrete jungle.
I knew how to stay alive.
Hell, I’d had to figure out exactly how to do that at the age of twelve when my dad had taken me to New York with him on business and had been attacked in the streets of the Bronx.
When we’d been separated, I’d had eight men on my trail for two days. In those two days, I’d taken them all out one by one until there were none left, then met up with my father at our private jet to return home at our previously specified time.
“Are you not going to eat?” Brecken asked quietly.
I looked up to find her staring at me, a piece of half-eaten fish in her hands.
“Enjoying the show,” I said stupidly.
She blushed. “It’s just that I really like food, and I had a really long day today.”
“I didn’t say a word,” I said. “I just like watching a woman actually enjoy her food.”
“Food is life,” she said softly.
I picked up my fork and knife and dug into my grouper filet all the while wondering how, exactly, I was going to get this woman to step out of my life.