1. “The Prophecy” #2
“Woman,” I heard growled from the side of the table.
I looked that way, then up, and up, and up , right into Javier Montoya’s crystal-clear amber eyes in his drop-dead gorgeous face.
Nope.
Correction.
His angry crystal-clear amber eyes in his furious , drop-dead gorgeous face.
“Man, he’s good,” Raye breathed. “He appeared out of thin air.”
I didn’t have time to reflect on or admire Javier Montoya’s shadow-like ability to slip in under the radar of five women keeping close watch on me, especially doing this when the man was six foot six inches of hulking, defined muscle (something that earned him the nickname of Mountain).
I was too busy being peeved he’d showed up at all.
I was this for obvious reasons, and for other reasons that weren’t as obvious.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“What are you doing here?” Javi returned.
“I asked first,” I retorted.
“But I’m getting an answer first,” he shot back.
“Uh…can I ask what’s going on?” Jay/Trev entered the conversation.
Javi turned his attention to Jay/Trev. It was still unhappy.
Jay/Trev understandably quailed under his golden glare backed by a mountain of muscled man.
“It looks like you’re on a date with my girlfriend,” Javi declared.
At these words coming out of Javi’s mouth, my stomach plummeted in a happy way I did not like (but I did, and I didn’t like that either), my skin tingled in an excited way I also did not like (but I did, etcetera), and my mouth wanted to form a smile (which I did not allow).
Suffice it to say, that traditional, organic meeting with my soulmate?
When I met Javi during our last big mission, I thought it was him.
In the months since, I discovered it was not.
So why was he here, out of the blue, claiming me?
“Holy shit,” Raye whispered.
“What the fuck?” Jess snapped.
“Oh my God,” Luna said.
“My pregnant girlfriend,” Javi finished on a lie.
All those earlier sensations vanished, and my mouth dropped open.
“Um… what ?” Jay/Trev asked.
“Javi!” I cried.
Javi turned back to me. “You steppin’ out on me?”
Oh my goodness!
He was ruining everything!
Weeks and weeks of setting this up, wasted .
I pushed back my chair and stood, ordering, “Go away.”
“No, I think I’ll go away,” Jay/Trev said, standing as well, doing it shifting to the other side of the table so he didn’t have to get close to Javi.
Dang it!
Now what do I do?
“No, wait,” I said to Jay/Trev, hoping to buy time to figure out how not to let this whole operation come to nothing because Javi, for some reason, was sticking his big (it wasn’t big, it was perfect), fat (it wasn’t that either) nose in it.
Jay/Trev shot me a look of disdain.
He was doing terrible things to unsuspecting women, and he looked at me like that?
Me!
“I’ll let Bryan know he dodged a bullet with you,” Jay/Trev said, and then he took off, pulling out his phone.
I whirled on Javi.
“Are you insane ?” I snapped.
“I’m not, but thinking you are.”
“It took weeks to set tonight up,” I informed him.
“Wasted effort,” he grunted.
“No kidding?” My voice was rising.
“I don’t understand this shit,” he stated conversationally. “You women got an issue, you just tell the men, and we’ll sort it for you.”
Was he…
Was he for real ?
While I expended grave effort not to scream my frustration at the top of my lungs, Javi kept speaking, and he did this while assuming Jay/Trev’s seat.
“Now, tell me what’s up, and me and the boys’ll get on it.”
At this juncture, it was important to share that Javi was one of the Hottie Squad.
That was, he was a member of the Nightingale Investigations and Security team.
And they were all the baddest of bad-A’s.
The Angels had a loose association with the boys of NI&S that hinged mostly on Raye living with Cap, and Jessie being loved up with Eric, both of them NI&S men.
Oh, and when the Angels got to the parts of our investigations that might include blood and guns and direct run-ins with bad guys (not to mention the police), the NI&S team stepped in.
But before that, Javi had been a Shadow Soldier.
Nope.
The Shadow Soldier. He’d been the first and he recruited all the rest.
In other words, a vigilante, like the Angels, except they were all men, they had matching tattoos, and two of them sadly got dead not too long ago, so the NI&S team snapped the rest of them up and absorbed them into their operations.
As previously mentioned, Javi was also a man I had a huge crush on, and not just because he was incredible to look at, he had a deep, rough voice that did things to my heart (and other places as well), the most unusual, beautiful eyes I’d ever seen and an amazing body.
No, it was because he had a finely honed sense of right and wrong, and the drive to do something about it, he loved his mom a whole lot, and he treated his men like brothers and grieved the ones he lost like he’d lost his own blood…
And again, as mentioned, the very first time we met, sparks flew. So many of them, I was singed, and the burn felt awesome .
Since then…nothing.
He made no moves.
He made no plays.
None of either, even if he’d had ample opportunity. He was a member of our group. So I couldn’t say I saw Javi every day, but we all hung out together a lot.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe those sparks weren’t what I thought they were, firing from us both.
Maybe they only fired from me.
Or at least, all evidence was suggesting that.
But now, he was there, messing up our carefully crafted plan to put a stop to Kev’s (and now Trev’s) shenanigans, and that was not okay.
I was also not okay being in this classy, romantically lit restaurant with the most gorgeous man I’d ever laid eyes on sitting across the table from where I stood, looking like he was my guy.
My man.
My soulmate.
Therefore, I snatched up my bag and started to flounce away.
And yes, I flounced when I was angry. It came naturally. It was how I moved. I’d tried not to flounce, and it was like trying not to breathe.
I was just a girl who flounced.
I got five feet before my hand was seized in one much larger and stronger than mine, and I wasn’t flouncing anymore.
I was being dragged, discreetly, but being dragged nonetheless.
“Holy shit.” (Luna)
“Oh my God.” (Raye)
“What the fuck?” (Jessie)
“Okay, he’s being an asshole. But it’s still hot.” (Shanti)
In order not to make a scene, I decided to let Javi pull me out of the restaurant and continue to do it even as he nodded to the valet outside who tossed him a set of keys, and then Javi walked us to a big, shiny, granite Toyota Tundra that was parked close to the front doors.
But, let’s face it, I allowed this mostly because he was holding my hand.
It was the first time he’d touched me in that kind of way.
So I wanted it to be about me not making a scene, but it wasn’t.
It was because his hand felt good wrapped around mine. It was big. Warm. I could feel the callouses, so it spoke about him. It said he was a man who worked. He was a man who didn’t put on airs. He wasn’t soft. He got stuff done.
And it was so big, my hand got lost in his, and that felt so…danged…good.
Like he could shelter me. Protect me. Wrap me up in him so the hurts of the world could never get to me.
And…
Yeah.
That was mostly what was on my mind as he towed me to his truck.
He opened the passenger side, and I wished I hadn’t released the surprised squeak that came when he reached under my hair, plucked the earpiece out of my ear (how did he know it was there?!), shoved it in his jeans pocket, picked me up…
Yes, picked me up !
…and dumped me in the passenger seat.
I was stunned immobile by these moves. So much so, he’d closed my door, rounded the grill and pulled himself up beside me before I had a reaction.
But it was too late.
He’d fired up his truck, there was an incessant beep, and over it he demanded, “Belt up.”
I had no choice but to do so since we were moving.
After I accomplished that, even though my fingers were fumbling due to being both extremely ticked off and feeling something else, something deeper, scarier, the beeping went away, I turned to him and shared irately, “My car is there.”
“We’ll send Cody to get it.”
Cody was another former Shadow Soldier, current NI&S Hottie Squad member.
“Cody doesn’t have my fob.”
Javi didn’t reply.
I’d been around these men enough I translated his silence. “He doesn’t need my fob to start my car.”
“We have fobs for all you women’s cars,” Javi stated.
Although this was insane (I mean, how did they do that?), it shouldn’t surprise me.
Raye with Cap, Jessie with Eric, we knew the Hottie Squad looked after us.
They’d hacked into the cameras trained on the Oasis parking lot (Oasis Square was the apartment complex where we lived).
They had the code to the gate to the courtyard.
They also had other things to keep tabs to keep us safe.
But it surprised me.
Actual duplicate car fobs ?
“You have actual car fobs?” I asked as he turned onto Goldwater.
“We have actual car fobs,” he answered. “But, just sayin’, for fifty bucks, he’ll get your fob from the valet.”
I really didn’t want to think that fifty dollars would earn the key to my car handed over to a stranger, but since my car wasn’t all that much to write home about, and cost of living wasn’t either, I suspected fifty bucks would get someone the key from the valet.
“Okay, let’s move on to you dragging me out of that restaurant and poking your nose into Angel business,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Let’s move on to that. What are you women up to this time?”
Up to?
Gah!
“We’re not up to anything,” I retorted. “We have a new mission.”
“And that’s what I’m askin’ about.”
“And me not answering should be your indication I’m not gonna answer.”
“Then it’s good I shut that shit down before you got your ass in a sling.”
Oh boy.
Did he know about Kev and Trev?
I tested the waters. “Do you know about Kev and Trev?”
“Kev and Trev?”
He didn’t know.
This time, I didn’t reply.
“Was that Kev or Trev?” he fished.