10. Chapter 10 #2
“How can you promise something like that? Why would you? You barely even know me…” Her voice quivered a little, and I had to keep myself from staring at the way her bottom lip moved with it.
I felt my jaw tighten as I thought about it.
She didn’t get it. I wasn’t sure how to explain it to her, but I settled on something I thought maybe she could understand.
“This started right here, in my restaurant. This is my home. Nobody targets women in my home and gets away with it. They might be dangerous, but I’m their worst fucking nightmare. ”
She shivered. Shit. I didn’t mean to scare her, but what I told her was true—even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
“Who the hell are you?” Her voice was somehow sturdier after my admission, but the question almost made me laugh aloud.
“Be happy you don’t know, Luce,” I told her quietly.
She frowned at this, but the wetness in her eyes had dried.
The less she knew about me or my past, the better.
This situation was already complicated without me delving into the world I came from.
Even though there was an unexpected part of me that longed to divulge who I really was, a bigger part of me wanted to keep her far away from that version of myself.
I’d only given her a glimpse, and it needed to stay that way.
Even though she’d been plaguing my mind for days straight, I’d been trying my hardest not to flirt with trouble.
And she was fucking trouble. I would keep my promise to her, but I’d have to keep it professional.
“So, what happens now?” She looked up at me willfully. “I’m just supposed to sit around and pretend none of this is happening while you play vigilante?” Frustration shouldn’t have looked as pretty as it did on her face.
“I’ll have someone run the plates and we’ll go from there. We’ll find them. It just might take a little time. Once we do, you can decide what happens to them.”
As long as it involves blood.
I knew I was toying the line of revealing too much to her. Maybe I should have told her that I already had people watching over her, but I knew she would try to fight me on it. I was doing it to keep her safe, and what she didn’t know in this case wouldn’t hurt her.
“In the meantime, you need to be careful. Don’t stay out late at night. Make sure to lock your doors. Maybe you shouldn’t be working here—”
“No!” She grabbed the manilla folder on the desk and stood up. “I want to work. Please just let me have that. I promise I’ll be careful, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” She made her way toward the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked, my gaze following her.
“Home. I need to catch the bus in ten minutes.” She pulled the door handle, and I jolted up to stop her. “What—”
“Public transportation isn’t being careful.” My hand hovered inches above hers. Warmth radiated between us.
“How the hell am I supposed to get home, Dax? I don’t have a car, I need to—”
“I’ll drive you.” It was a demand, not an offer.
“Not this again. Seriously, I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way home. You’ve already done enough to help me.” There was a hint of sarcasm in the word, but I decided to ignore it.
“I insist. The Muni is dangerous at night. You can keep working here on the condition that you let me drive you home.” I knew I was being a little harsh.
It wasn’t like she didn’t do a good job.
If this were any other employee, would I have had nearly the same reaction to the idea of her alone on the bus at night? Probably not.
She looked like she wanted to argue with me. Her eyes blazed a cognac hue and she gritted her teeth. “Fine.” Her surrender shouldn’t have made me nearly as satisfied as it did.
“What is this?” Lucy asked as she settled into the red leather seats of my hypercar.
It crossed my mind how good the color looked against her light olive skin. I lifted an eyebrow and she gestured around the interior of the Pagani.
“A car,” I replied absently.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was some kind of steampunk space shuttle ready to transport me into another dimension,” she mumbled.
Oh, the ways I could transport you into another dimension.
I cleared my throat, starting the engine. “Where are we going?” I asked her even though I already knew exactly where she lived thanks to Clay’s team. I hadn’t talked to him other than about her, and I was happy to keep it that way.
“Haight-Ashbury,” she said, continuing to inspect the gadgets on the dash of the car.
For several minutes, we drove silently in the vehicle that was definitely better suited for a racetrack than the hills of San Francisco.
Its distinguished hum was the only sound other than the beating of my pulse in my ears.
I was too aware of how close Lucy was seated next to me.
How the rip in her jeans exposed just a little sliver of smooth skin on her knee, and I was resisting the urge to slide my hand over to rest atop it.
“Why did you want the dishwasher job at Bellissima?” I surprised myself by breaking the silence. It was something I’d been wondering but chalked it up to her wanting to be closer to the scene of the crime that happened to her friend.
She let out an awkward chuckle. “Why does anyone want a job? Money.” She twisted her fingers together and looked out of the passenger window, a glossy strand of her dark hair curling behind her ear.
“You could have gotten a job anywhere,” I scratched the stubble starting to form on my jaw. “What were you doing before?” I glanced at her as she turned her head toward me. She looked tired, but somehow still captivatingly beautiful.
“I’m a student, about to go into my senior year at SFUD.
I have a job at the bookstore on campus, but it closes during the summer.
I usually go home to visit my family but that wasn’t really an option this year, so I was looking for a job.
My scholarship money isn’t really enough to afford living here without some extra income.
” Her eyes claimed mine for another moment before she shifted to look out the window again.
She was smart. Hardworking. I respected that. I also felt a small pang of humility as I realized what she must think of a car like this. An extravagance. Meanwhile, she’d been struggling to get by and was working toward her future. I remembered what that was like very clearly.
I decided to venture another question. “Where’s home?”
She seemed to think about this for a moment. “I guess now it’s here. But Iowa, originally. What about you?” My eyes shifted back to find her looking at me again.
“What makes you think I’m not from San Francisco?” I asked as I pulled up to a red light. The glow cast a crimson shadow against her cheeks that blended into her hair against the soft leather headrest.
“I don’t know. Something about you doesn’t scream Californian. Maybe it’s the way you talk. How you annunciate your R’s.” She shot a small grin that squeezed something inside me.
I let out a laugh. “New York, originally. But I guess now it’s here.”
Her lips quivered a little more but then the smile was gone.
She looked back out the window and I continued to drive.
When we arrived at her apartment building a few minutes later, I wanted to walk her to the door, but I thought it would be too weird.
We weren’t on some kind of date. She was my employee.
I was her boss. I took her home because she needed to be protected from the kind of evil I’d once sworn to commit my life to scrubbing from the earth.
As the doors of the Pagani slid up, Lucy thanked me quietly for the ride.
I tried not to watch the way her jeans hugged her ass as she got out of the car and walked up the steps of her building.
I failed. When I pulled away from the curb, I noticed someone sitting in a car across the street.
His window was rolled down despite the damp, cool breeze of foggy midnight.
He gave me a nod and I nodded back. Despite my own fatigue, I wished it was me who would be watching that apartment all night.
Making sure she stayed safe. But then that would have been crossing a line.
Instead, I had to trust I was making the right choice as I drove myself home.