Chapter 14 Devon
DEVON
The Doodle Bug Café was as fine dining as Dollton got.
The scent of fried every-fucking-thing filled the air as I paced the black and white checkerboard tile just inside the front door.
Lofton sat tucked into a corner booth across from a petite blonde and a towering redhead.
Chris was only a few yards behind them, covering the back entrance.
We’d been there for hours and the table was scattered with red baskets of half-eaten food and an empty bottle of wine.
On the surface, it was just a casual dinner between old friends.
But that didn’t account for the time and money spent renting out the entire restaurant, running background checks on the staff, the additional security cameras we’d mounted, or that every chair had been subtly repositioned, giving me and Chris clean sightlines to her table from every angle without a single blind spot.
And we’d pulled it off in just over forty-eight hours.
Lofton had been eager to relax and forget.
Though she’d spent most of the drive over twisting her hands into knots and toying with the diamond that hung at her neck.
I’d asked her a dozen times if she wanted to cancel.
Each time, she lied about how excited she was to see her old friends.
Once we’d arrived, she’d relaxed to a degree.
I’d done my homework on both women before they’d ever stepped through the door. Background checks, social media, employment history, all the standard protocol.
Brittany Walsh was a force of nature bottled into five feet of blonde energy.
She’d grown up three houses down from the Beck farm, which by the sound of things meant she’d practically been raised at their dining room table.
She taught third grade at Dollton Elementary now, drove a minivan, and carried a giant water bottle roughly the same size as her body.
Francine Holloway was significantly more laid back. She’d married her high school sweetheart and taught yoga out of a gym she ran with her husband on the edge of town.
Lofton had said it had been a while since she’d gotten together with them, but judging by the loud laughter coming from their table, not a minute had passed without her. Even if the smile never quite hit Lofton’s eyes.
Throughout the night, her gaze would inevitably drift to mine, double checking that I was still there.
She tracked my every move as I ran my perimeter with slow, deliberate loops along the edges of the room, pausing at the windows long enough to clock the street outside before moving on.
Chris and I would silently communicate across the room.
A small nod. All clear. He’d mirror it back, and we’d both go back to business.
Lofton watched it all, quietly monitoring as if she found something settling in the rhythm. Like she could read that my movement meant the room was still secure, but the moment I stilled meant it was time to worry.
She wasn’t wrong about either.
I hated she was struggling, but I took immense pleasure in the way my presence eased her. I wished I could have said the same for myself, but each time we made eye contact, it only got harder to pretend I wasn’t losing my footing with this woman.
Thankfully, she hadn’t dressed in full sexual-terrorist mode that night.
But fuck me, that short red dress she’d paired with strappy black heels taunted me all the same.
Her brown hair was pulled half back, loose waves falling around her shoulders as her freckles made a rare appearance beneath her barely-there makeup.
Ungodly sexy.
Understated.
Her.
“Grant,” Leo snapped in my ear. “You saw it, right?”
I exhaled slowly. “As helpful as it was for you to send it to me seven-thousand times today, I lived it. I don’t need to watch the video.”
I made a mental note to check on that backhoe Lofton had mentioned, because Apollo Park’s days were numbered. There were only two options for how Leo had stumbled across the surveillance footage of Lofton and me intertwined in the feed room two days before.
Apollo had shared it, or he’d pointed it out to someone who had.
Neither ended well for him—or me.
“Good,” Leo snapped in a tone that told me absolutely nothing was good. “Then how about you fill me in on why the hell it looks like you’re catching feelings.”
My gaze cut back to the woman in question as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her smile softening as her friends giggled.
Catching feelings.
It was too simple a description for the clusterfuck brewing inside me. The truth was, I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
I hadn’t made a move on her. Nor would I. But I was failing miserably at resisting hers.
And make no mistake, that woman knew exactly what she was doing. A confident woman, boldly going after something she wanted, only made her advances that much sexier—and torturous.
“I’m doing my job,” I said flatly. “Shit went down. It upset her. She cried, and I hugged her. The end.”
“You really gonna bullshit me about this? I got my wife pregnant with less physical contact.”
“Feel bad for Sarah.” I winced, knowing better than to poke the bear.
“Grant,” he warned in a deep growl.
Careful to keep my voice quiet so I wouldn’t interrupt the ladies, I replied, “Look, I gotta say you’re giving some seriously mixed signals on how you want me to handle this.
I came in hot, hell bent on keeping my distance, and you handed me my ass for cutting her while she was bleeding.
So, then I take a different approach, soften things up and try to be there for her in order to stop that bleed before it drains her, and now you’re giving me shit about that too? What exactly do you want from me here?”
“I want you to be focused.”
“I am focused,” I seethed.
And it wasn’t even a lie, because every minute of the Goddamn day, all I could think about was Lofton.
Her mouth.
Her hands on my chest.
The breathless way she said my name.
That woman was in my head, under my skin, and, I was starting to believe, a fast pass to ending my career.
Leo’s voice got low and ominous. “You can’t risk blurring lines on a job like this, Grant. Not with the threat we’re dealing with.”
“I’m not blurring anything. For fuck’s sake, I hugged her, Leo. That’s hardly cause to call in the ethics committee.” I thrust a hand into the top of my hair. “Are you done bitching at me yet? Currently, the only thing distracting me from this job is you.”
There was a long, loaded silence, and just when I thought he was gone, Leo dropped a nuke. “She’s not Levee.”
My ears rang and my vision flashed red. Those three words ricocheting inside my head, each rebound more deadly than the last.
How fucking dare he throw that in my face. He knew the years of torment, regret, and self-loathing that woman had caused me. And yet, to prove his point, he’d used her name like a crowbar to my knees.
“You fucking bastard!” I boomed, my voice echoing through the restaurant.
Lofton’s head snapped in my direction, fear etched in her face. Her gaze flicked to Chris who was also staring in my direction, brows drawn tight with concern.
“Everything okay?” he asked, protectively inching closer to her.
I swallowed hard, but the rage lodged thick in my throat, choking out anything that even resembled a response.
Lofton must have caught Chris’s movement because the fear in her eyes didn’t just linger. It deepened, twisting into something terrifying. He was right there, within arm’s reach of her. However, in the next breath, she scrambled out of the booth and raced across the room—to me.
She hit me full force, arms wrapping around my waist like I was the only thing that could keep the earth from swallowing her whole.
Didn’t that just make me feel like the world’s biggest asshole.
I was supposed to be her safe space, one where I not only kept her unharmed and out of danger, but also never gave her a reason to question it. Once again, my personal bullshit had overflowed—directly onto her.
Guilt iced my veins, extinguishing my anger in an instant.
“Easy, babe. You’re good.” I folded one arm around her, the other cradling the side of her head, anchoring her to my chest.
“What’s wrong?” she croaked. The tremor in her voice felt like claws ripping me open.
“Nothing. I just got pissed for a second. You’re safe. I swear.”
We stood there for several seconds as her breathing slowed. I glanced up to find Chris standing with her friends. Brittany gave me a skeptical once-over while Francine looked downright delighted by the situation.
Chris, however, still had his brows drawn, but his face was hard as he stared at Lofton’s back.
Great. Fucking perfect. The whole damn team was going to be riding my ass now.
And it wouldn’t have been complete without one last blow.
Leo’s voice came through my earpiece again. “Yeah. Definitely not any blurred lines there…babe.”
He was my boss, who I usually considered a friend, but I did not hesitate in flipping off the camera hidden in the corner of the room.
“Yeah, fuck you too, buddy. Get your shit together,” he rumbled, before my earpiece fell silent.
The wise thing to do would have been to heed his warning, take a step away, act like a fucking professional, and quell her fears without the stir of my cock between us.
Though with Lofton, I wasn’t sure I had a rational brain anymore.
“I promise you’re good,” I whispered, rubbing my hand up and down her spine.
Her timid blue gaze tipped up to mine. “Is Daddy okay?”
Apollo’s answer came fast in my ear as if he had been glued to the security camera watching his favorite soap opera. I really hoped that prick had made popcorn, because when I got back, he would not have time for a last meal.
“All clear,” he stated. “He’s still asleep.”
I relayed the message, and her body sagged.
Still, I didn’t let her go.
“Who were you yelling at?” she asked.