Chapter Four
I’m barely up the stairs before Dax launches himself out of the guard station and snatches me into a bear hug. The unexpectedness of the action is matched only by the foreignness of the feeling. It hurts, and yet it’s good too.
“I haven’t been this afraid since you called me about Tom,” he murmurs into my hair, but I sense he doesn’t mean to say it out loud.
Just when I think my neck might break with how my cheek presses against his chest, he shoves me backward and runs his eyes up and down. His first question is an accusation. Should even be surprised at this point?
“Whose hoodie is that? Why are you wearing some guy’s clothes?”
I yawn. “What does it matter?”
“I don’t know why it matters, but it fucking does.”
What does that mean? “What —?”
Aiden chuckles and pats him on the back. “Start at the beginning, Dax.”
But Dax is too busy glaring at the place where my breasts hide to take his advice. He can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the gigantic hoodie covering me to my knees. “I can’t. I’m not kidding. Whose?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, fine. Here.” I step back and pull the hoodie over my head, launching it at Dax. He catches it in mid-air without taking his eyes off me. Strangling it in his grip.
“Oh,” Aiden grunts.
“Holy shit…is this better or worse?” Dax mumbles.
“Better, definitely better,” Aiden replies, eyes wandering over my new outfit.
“What the hell are you two going on about?” Their stares are making me tingly and weird, so I give myself a distraction and tease out the braid that has been threatening a headache because of how tightly it is pulling at the base of my scalp.
I squeeze around Dax and make my way up to the apartment, hearing both following behind.
I circle the armchair and take a seat.
Dax groans and slumps onto the sofa. Aiden glides around me and sits beside him. Where one has agony carved into his face, the other is all soft grins and wide eyes.
Dax inclines his head toward Aiden but still doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Is this some kind of punishment?”
“Nope. She has no idea.”
Oh god, what now? “No idea of what?”
“Of the effect you’re having, Tiger.”
The effect…? Aiden nods toward Dax and I take a good look to see what he means.
The man rubs his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, massaging his temples and up to his hairline.
His gaze flits as fast as hummingbird wings from my head to my chest to my abdomen to my feet and back up again to linger on my lips before moving again.
He’s distracted and pained. As I watch, he opens his mouth twice to speak but is only successful on the third try.
He’s probably gearing up to shout at me after what happened today.
I’m due an ‘I told you so’ and I probably deserve it.
“You changed your hair,” he says. It’s so far removed from what I expect him to say that I laugh. The sound reverberates off every wall.
“Wow, you’re going to need to work on your attention to detail there, Dax. I’ve been here five minutes, and you’ve only just noticed?”
“There were other things to notice first,” he grumbles.
“Look,” I defend, “It’s Koko’s hoodie. I wore it to keep warm and stay incognito.”
“No…the…” Dax waves me off, but Aiden speaks over him with another left-fielder.
“You do yoga, Tiger?” Aiden defects from Dax’s side to mine, sitting on the arm of the chair I’m in.
“What?” Why would he ask…oh…ohhhh. The skin-tight sportswear. “Well, fuck.”
“If it’s on offer,” Aiden teases, his words a warm whisper at my ear.
“I…you…” Dax is still stumbling over his words. I’ve never seen the man so out of sorts.
For goodness’s sake. Show a little skin, and sane men lose their marbles. “Give me back the hoodie.”
“No!” they both shout, Dax a little more vehemently than Aiden.
“If I hope to get a sensible conversation with you about what happened today, I’ll need you to hand me that hoodie.
” There’s no way I can stand confidently in a room with two attractive men staring at me without crumbling under their scrutiny.
My cheeks are aflame, and the self-deprecation is already a million voices loud and swarming in my brain.
I need to focus and not succumb to my inner pathetic nobody in borrowed clothing while flouncing a bruised and scarred body.
Dax stands and removes his white shirt. Only when he has all the buttons undone do I realise he’s going shirtless so I can cover up. He’d rather have me wear his clothes than Koko’s? Is he jealous or is he just that eager to cover me up?
He throws it at me, and I swing it on over the skin-tight leggings and bralette thing, fastening the middle button to keep it shut.
I see his smooth-skinned expanse of muscular torso and all my thoughts dry up in my mouth.
“Checkmate,” Aiden whispers at my back. I can’t help but agree. There’s no way I can avoid looking. He’s a perfectly carved distraction.
“Okay…okay,” Dax mumbles, sitting back down and motioning for me to do the same. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, I can tell he’s back to business. I keep my eyes trained above his neck and try to do the same.
“Are you okay?”
I take a moment to realise he’s talking about this morning.
It’s surreal that we’re still on the same day.
That only this morning Franz was metres away from grabbing me.
I have lived weeks since. Running, Koko and Charlie, Ben, the goons, news of the baby, the ride home…
so much for one simple day. Am I okay? I don’t know, but I give the answer I’m expected to. “Yes. Tired but okay.”
“Did you tell anyone about that meeting?” Dax asks.
God, these men are emotional yoyos. From ‘are you okay?’ to ‘was this your fault?’ Ugh. “Am I being interrogated?”
“I just need to confirm how many people are in the suspect pool,” he explains. Which I guess is fair enough.
“Straight answer is no. I didn’t even know where we were meeting until Cas dropped me in front of Deja Brew.”
“Cas has been cleared already,” Aiden notifies us both.
Thank goodness he’s okay. “What happened to him?” I ask, wondering where my security detail suddenly disappeared to.
Aiden fills in the blanks. “He came in looking for you when the HU rep left the store, but the guy from VCC…”
“Mr Trainor,” I supply.
Aiden nods. “He told Cas you’d already left. Cas checked the bathroom, but you weren’t there.”
“I was! I was standing in front of the damn mirror; I’d have remembered if Cas had popped his head in.”
“Hang on. Let me call him upstairs.” Aiden pulls out his phone and fires off a message. It takes less than a minute before Cas is standing there, ramrod straight, hands behind his back, eyes trained on the far wall.
“You said you checked the bathrooms,” Aiden fires at him, more accusation than question.
“I checked the ladies,” he confirms with a sharp nod.
“When? I was there. You would have seen me. I only washed my face.” Or patted it dry, but I didn’t think they needed to hear the details of my bathroom behaviour.
Cas shakes his head vehemently. “There was no one there! That weaselly fucker—uhhh—the VCC rep was outside the gents. He said you’d left.
I figured I must have missed you when I went into the bathroom looking.
I did another check around the store and took off on foot to look for you when you weren’t waiting at the vehicle. ”
“How the hell did we miss each other? I wasn’t in the bathroom long enough for us not to see each other, surely?”
Cas shakes his head and doesn’t seem happy about the confusion.
“I’m not sure, but I take full responsibility for the error, Sir.
” He directs that last bit at Aiden, and again I’m left wondering about the exact nature of their setup here.
Cas revealed some things worth asking about this morning, Koko too, but there are still so many questions.
Then I realise what he said. Full responsibility? For what? From the sound of it, he did his job. It was just some quirk of fate or, more likely, that VCC dickhead interfered. Not Cas’s fault. I can’t let him get into trouble. Not on my watch.
I wave my hand at him. “Chill Cas. What happened wasn’t your fault. If I was there and you say I wasn’t, then we were tricked somehow.”
Dax makes a huffing sound before asking, “Let’s assume you were both in the bathrooms at the same time. Did either bathroom have urinals?”
“Not mine. Single stall, sink and a mirror,” I answer.
“Same as the one I checked,” Cas confirms.
“If they were gender neutral in design, could the signs have been swapped?” Dax asks.
I see Cas’s eyebrows furrow as he tries to recall.
I think back too. The bathrooms were small.
The signs for ladies and gents were made of varnished salt dough and hung from natural rope on a hook in the middle of each door.
Could they have been swapped? Absolutely.
And if Trainor was hanging out there already, hoping to catch me, then it was highly likely.
“Yes,” Cas answers before I can. “I’ll go back and confirm tomorrow, though, to be sure.”
“Trainor would have had time if I was already inside one bathroom and, obviously, he had motive,” I answer, and smile when I see all three men watch me with questions in their eyes and surprise tilting their brows.
“What? I think he gave himself away when he insisted I meet Cas via the back exit. He got pushy real fast. Dragging me by the wrist was the decider, though. I wonder what they paid him?”
“Or blackmailed him with, more likely,” Aiden adds, only to be cut off by Dax, who rockets forward in his chair with his fists clenched.
“Wait, he laid his hands on you?”