8. “Smoke Signals” #2
Javi tossed the covers over my lap and angled out of bed, but he turned and leaned into a fist by my hip with his face in mine, whereupon he ordered, “Do not move. I’ll get rid of them and be back.”
I nodded, vigorously.
Him being back would be good.
Oh so good.
He stalked out in a manner I was a little worried about whoever was at the door, but mostly I was admiring the extraordinary curves of his ass highlighted by the material of his long sleep shorts.
Oh, and the sweeps and dents of the defined muscles of his bare shoulders and back.
He disappeared out the door.
I pulled the covers tighter to my lap and took a look around.
Considering I was mostly asleep last night, not to mention the lights had never been on, it was only then I noticed his bedroom was like the rest of his house that I’d seen.
A dark greenish-blue bedspread covering dark-gray sheets, and I counted four pillows at the head.
There was a chocolate-brown suede headboard that was handsome.
But the two nightstands and lamps, along with the single dresser across the room from the bed, looked battered, worn, and none of it matched. Even the lamps.
I knew, before NI&S, along with doing the Shadow Soldier stuff, he’d had a good job as a baggage handler at Sky Harbor Airport.
The thing that was becoming clear was, even so, it didn’t seem he’d allowed his life to start back then, because whatever that life was, he didn’t bring much of it with him to this space except some nightstands, a couple lamps and a dresser.
That life hadn’t started until now. When he got a job with Nightingale Investigation and Security, one that Jessie told me paid a lot better because her brother told her it did, and he’d been a baggage handler with Javi.
I didn’t know how old Javi was. My guess, he was around my age, which was thirty. Probably he was just a bit older.
And it was only recently, when he got hooked up with his new crew, that he believed.
Believed he could settle in.
Believed he could begin his life.
Until recently, I traveled light .
And I belatedly wondered, with that comment, before now, if he’d even settled at all.
Stuff was occurring to me. Uncomfortable stuff. Understandable stuff.
Stuff that might explain why a man like Javi said the things he’d said to me after he dragged me away from Oceans 44.
Explain it, not forgive it.
But still.
I was grasping onto these threads to weave them together when I heard Jessie yell, “You don’t want us in your shit with Harlow, you keep your shit out of ours!”
Oh boy.
I threw the covers back from the bed and raced out of the room, down a short hall that had a couple of more doors that led off it, to the staircase, which was open to the space below.
The instant I hit it, the first thing I saw was Javi, in nothing but those shorts, offering up a full-frontal, unobstructed view of his mile-wide, significantly muscled chest (and abs, and those scrumptious hip Vs).
That vision was a doozie, which would do pretty much any girl in.
But it wasn’t what did me in.
What did me in was the fact that his gaze was on me wearing his tee.
It was traveling up and down my body from hair to feet, and there was such a smug, self-satisfied, possessive/branding look on his gorgeous face, I knew I’d been claimed from all the way across a room, and I was all the way down with it.
So down, I almost went down, since I stumbled on the stairs.
Javi’s big body jolted, and he made to move toward me, but I righted myself, waved at him and said, “I’m okay.”
For self-preservation, I turned my attention to who else was in the room.
Jessie was looking at me, as was Shanti.
My guess was, all the Angels would have been there, except Raye, Luna and Willow had the first shift at SC, so they couldn’t be.
Shanti smiled.
Jessie gawped.
She then explained her gawp. “You have sex hair.”
I lifted a hand to my hair.
“Babe, right here,” Javi grunted.
He was pointing to the floor by his side.
Hmm.
Conundrum.
See, on the face of it, this seemed like a man who was calling his woman like a dog.
However, I was learning, in Javi World things had a different meaning.
This particular meaning was that he wanted me right at his side so he could more easily butt into my conversation with Jessie if she said or did something that displeased him, the displeasing part of this would be if it was something that harmed me.
Which also, on the face of it, didn’t seem all that great.
But considering he thought he was protecting me and keeping me safe, it was.
It was all that great.
All of it .
So I went “right there,” this being right at his side.
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and then hauled me right into his side.
I didn’t protest.
Jessie’s gawp turned into a goggle.
“How…how…how…” she stammered. “How in the fuck were you two ‘never gonna be a thing’ one day, and the next, she’s in your tee in your house with sex hair?”
“If Harlow wants to tell you, she can tell you. Later. Now, you two are gonna leave so I can make my Lolita breakfast.”
It seemed that Lolita thing was going to stick, and I was not at all mad about it.
Shanti’s smile widened.
Jessie started blinking rapidly.
However, I was confused at the breakfast mention, considering not long ago, we were eating something up that was super delicious, but it was not food.
“She’s not answering her phone,” Jessie pointed out.
Oh yeah.
Where did that go?
I took off my crossbody sometime between nuking Thai food and settling into the sofa, but I forgot where I put it.
“Take a hint,” Javi answered Jessie.
“We have things to discuss,” Jessie kept at it, though she said this to Javi.
“And you can discuss them when Harlow’s ready to discuss them,” Javi retorted.
“I don’t know about Lolo,” Shanti entered the conversation at this juncture. “But if you two were talking about me with me being right there, not getting a word in, we can just say that wouldn’t make me all that happy.”
Shanti was right.
I should wade in.
“We’re okay, Jess,” I told her. “We can hash it out at work.”
“I was a bitch,” she replied.
I wouldn’t take it that far.
“It wasn’t cool,” I allowed.
She tossed up a hand to indicate me and Javi. “I liked the idea of you two together. It bummed me out that you weren’t going for it. Now it’s freaking me out that you were going at a pace that would make a snail look like Sha’Carri Richardson, and now you’re Mach 3.”
“You and Turner take your time with a lot of getting-to-know you shit before you decided to live together even if you both have different houses?” Javi asked.
Just my eyeballs shifted to the side, because they did not. I wasn’t sure, but it could have been only a couple of days before Eric was either sleeping in Jessie’s bed at the Oasis, or Jess was sleeping in Eric’s at his house, one or the other every night.
Both of them had doubled up on toiletries and had made room in each other’s closets before a month was out, I knew that.
“I said I was a bitch,” Jess reminded him. “Totally out of line.”
I turned and tipped my head back to look at Javi.
“She did say that, Javi,” I said softly. “Now, twice.”
He looked down at me and seemed to relax even though his arm curled tighter, bringing me closer.
“You’re cool with her, I’m cool with her,” he murmured.
“Oh my God, they’re so cute, now I’m pissed they took so long to get it together,” Shanti bitched.
Jessie was watching me closely. “Are you good?”
“I’m upset someone broke my mushroom.”
Neither Jessie nor Shanti said anything.
“The one on my coffee table,” I explained.
“Yeah, babe, we know what you’re talking about,” Jessie replied, her eyes going up to Javi, back to me, and she raised her brows.
“Well, just to repeat what I said last night, I didn’t think it was a date,” I said, and shrugged. “But it turns out it was.”
Javi chuckled.
It sounded way nice.
Shanti grinned.
Jessie blew out a huge breath.
“Can I make Harlow breakfast now?” Javi asked in a tone that meant, Get out, I’m making Harlow breakfast now .
“All right, hermanito ,” Jessie returned and looked at me. “We’ll talk at work.”
“Really, we’re okay,” I assured her.
“But we’ll talk at work,” she echoed.
She was right, I had things to say, to her and Raye.
I nodded.
Then I remembered something I’d lost track of in the course of me losing my mushroom.
So I asked, “How did things go with Kev last night?”
I wasn’t fond of the expressions on their faces before Shanti shared, “He didn’t show. And he’s not answering his phone or replying to texts.”
“Eric or Cap know that shit?” Javi queried.
Jessie, unusually, shuffled her feet uncomfortably, and this was unusual because Jess wasn’t often uncomfortable. She was a woman who had it going on.
Javi didn’t know her as well as me, but he still knew her enough to know that wasn’t right, which was why he asked, “What’s the deal?”
When Jessie didn’t say anything, Shanti did.
“After you all left, we had a kind of…situation last night.”
I tensed. “What kind of situation?”
“Eric showed and he laid down the law,” Jessie shared.
I felt my mouth open in shock.
Eric was totally a mellow guy.
Javi grunted, and it wasn’t difficult to read it was a grunt of approval.
My lips turned down as I looked back up at him.
“Cap did too,” Shanti added, and my attention went to her.
That wasn’t quite as much of a shock, even if it was still kind of a shock. Raye had told us Cap had what she called an “inner caveman,” one who struggled with the Angels business.
He never let the caveman take over, though.
“So Jess threw down, then Raye threw down,” Shanti kept relating the story. “Martha’s Martha, and she was in the vicinity, so she threw down. Now Raye’s on a mission to solve this case before you Nightingale guys do.”
Javi grunted again, this one also wasn’t difficult to read, and it was not approval at all.