#2
She turned. He hadn't moved from the doorframe, hadn't shifted his weight, hadn't done anything but stand there with his arms crossed and his eyes on her like she was the only thing in the room worth tracking.
And maybe that was the part that made her angry — not that he was offering help, not that she needed it, but that the man offering it looked at her like that and she couldn't tell if it was protection or possession or something in between that was going to complicate her life in ways Garza could only dream of.
"If I say yes — if I agree to Intimidator protection — what do I give up?"
"Nothing." His voice dropped half a register, and the word hit the air with a weight that made her skin prickle. "Your diner stays yours. Your staff stays yours. You make every decision about your business, your property, your life. We handle Garza. That's it."
"And when Garza's gone? When this is over?"
"Then it's over. You go back to running the best breakfast spot on A1A and I go back to eating in it."
"That simple."
"It's exactly that simple."
It wasn't. They both knew it. Whatever was building in this kitchen — in the two feet of charged air between a biker president and a diner owner who'd rather chew glass than ask for help — was not simple, was not temporary, and was not going to resolve itself when Garza's name stopped being relevant.
But the alternative was Marco Vitale and a seventy-two-hour clock that had already zeroed out, and Nina was a lot of things but she wasn't stupid.
"My staff doesn't get involved," she said. "Marcy and Jules have kids. My cook did time and can't afford to be near anything that brings police attention."
"Your people won't even know we're working. Patches at the diner, that's visible. Everything else happens away from here."
"And I get to know what's happening. All of it. I'm not sitting in the dark while you and your brothers handle my problem like I'm some —"
"You'll know." He said it before she could finish, cutting the sentence off at the pass. "Everything that involves your diner or your safety, you hear it from me first."
She studied him. Six years of Friday breakfasts, and she knew his order, his tip amount, and the way he took his coffee.
She didn't know the man behind the cut — the one who built a motorcycle club from nothing, who held a coastline through force and loyalty, who walked into her kitchen on the worst week of her life and said I'm handling it like it was a fact of physics.
She was about to find out.
"Fine." She said it like she was conceding a parking space, not handing her safety to a man whose world ran on violence. "But if your people scare off my regulars, we're going to have a problem."
"Your regulars will love it. Bikers are good for the tip jar." That almost-smile again, the one that rearranged his face from granite to something warmer, and she felt it in her stomach like a missed step on a staircase.
"I need to finish closing."
"Then finish. I'll wait."
He said it like waiting was nothing. Like standing in her kitchen at nine o'clock on a Friday night was exactly where he'd planned to be, and the rest of the world could adjust its schedule around that fact.
She turned back to the flat top and scrubbed while he stood in the doorframe, and the silence between them was different now — not the crackling tension of two people negotiating, but the warm weight of a decision made, a line crossed, a door opened that wasn't going to close.
She finished the kitchen in twelve minutes. He didn't rush her. She grabbed her bag from the office, checked the walk-in, killed the lights, and walked to the back door where he was already standing with his hand on the frame, holding it open.
"Gator and Redline will be here when you open tomorrow," he said. "And I'll have someone on your house tonight."
"My house."
"Your house. Your diner. Anywhere you are." He said it simply, like it was obvious, like the concept of anywhere you are was a territory marker he'd just placed and expected the world to respect.
She stepped through the door and he fell in beside her, walking her across the parking lot to her Honda with the ease of a man who'd done this a thousand times — except he hadn't, not with her, and the newness of it sat between them like a held breath.
At her car, he stopped. His hand settled on the small of her back — warm, solid, there for exactly two seconds before he lifted it and stepped away. Two seconds of contact. His palm against the base of her spine, fingers spread wide enough that she felt each one through the fabric of her shirt.
"Lock your doors. I'll follow you home."
She got in the car, started the engine, and pulled out of the lot with Throttle's headlight steady in her rearview mirror. Two seconds. That's all it was. Two seconds of a man's hand on her back in a parking lot.
She hated how much safer those two seconds made her feel.