Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73208 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73208 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
“As in—” the guy started.
“Yes,” Pepper snapped.
He took a step back and nodded his head once before turning and walking away. Clearly, he’d met Huck.
“Don’t start anything with them. The lot think they’re in love with her. Brings in business. If you got something to handle with Briar, then do it elsewhere,” Pepper told me.
I held up my drink. “Just here for this.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied with a twist of her mouth, then turned to walk down the bar to take someone else’s order.
The place was clearing out as Briar made her way toward me. I’d eventually moved to a back table and ordered food tonight. Every chance she could, she shot me a warning look. It had become amusing as fuck. She walked past the servers cleaning up with her determined glare locked on me.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
I stood up and pushed in my chair. “To take you home.”
She blinked at me as if taken off guard for a moment, but then she recovered quickly. “Pepper is giving me a ride. You can leave now.”
“Not the best idea, seeing as how your car has a tracker we didn’t put on it and is wired.”
I hadn’t planned to blurt that out just yet, but she’d started talking about getting a ride with Pepper, and, well, it’d come out.
A flash of unease lit her face. “What?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper.
Got your attention now, little siren.
“My guess is, it’s the ones who sliced your tires. You need me because, right now, you’re not safe.”
She paled, and her eyes widened. “I don’t need you,” she said with more grit than she appeared to have at the moment. “I can take care of myself.”
No, she couldn’t. She had a gun, but whoever was watching her probably knew that. It wasn’t some stranger. They’d tracked her down and gone to the trouble of wiring her car. I needed to know who the fuck it was, and when I knew, I would take them from this world. Staying close to her, I’d find them soon enough.
I took a step toward her. “You can hate me, but I’m not leaving you until I know who it is that’s fucking with you.”
Her shoulders stiffened. “It’s not Roger, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I had thought for a brief second that it could be. I never questioned my lie detector, but with this woman, I wasn’t positive it was working one hundred percent. I couldn’t help but wonder if that pretty face of hers had distracted me. But even if it had and the motherfucker wasn’t dead like she’d claimed, I wasn’t ready to alert King. I didn’t trust him with her. No matter how much her life choices pissed me off, I was finding it impossible not to want to protect her. If she’d lied to King, then he’d make her pay for it, and I wasn’t letting that happen. Admitting I’d go that far to protect her shocked the hell out of me, but I would. The idea of anyone hurting her seemed to send me into a blind rage.
“Like I said, I’m not leaving.”
Anger, frustration, even fear flashed in her ocean-blue eyes. “You’re not coming inside my apartment.”
I walked past her. “I’ve got my Jeep,” I replied, although if I wanted in her fucking apartment, I would go inside.
“Where is King? I want to talk to him. I’m over him sending you here. This needs to end.”
The thought of her talking to King made me uncomfortable. It wasn’t going to happen.
“King isn’t someone you need to piss off. Keep your distance.”
She waved a hand at me. “And you? Y’all are just alike, yet I keep getting you in my face all the time.”
I turned back around, leveling her with my stare. She needed to understand this. “King and I are not alike.”
Placing both her hands on her hips, she scowled. “Is that so?”
I took two long strides until I was so close to her that our bodies were almost touching. Towering over her, I inhaled her sweet, heady scent and wished like hell I hadn’t. “King doesn’t care if you live or die. I do.”
She sucked in a breath as she stared up at me.
“Now, get your goddamn shit, and let’s go.” I spun around and started stalking away from her, needing to calm down. Get her scent out of my fucking nose.
“Why do you care?” she blurted out.
I didn’t look back at her, but I stopped. “I just do,” I bit out, then continued on toward the exit.
Verbalizing the way I felt about her wasn’t something I was ready to face just yet. I had too much other shit going off in my head, making me do things I’d never imagined I’d do. All because of her.
Why did she have to be so fucking difficult? Jesus, I was helping her. Couldn’t she just shut up and let me? I didn’t want to feel this unhinged. I didn’t want to give a flying fuck, but she’d managed to get under my skin and make me overlook what she was. Just like every other man she’d manipulated and controlled. I was weak where she was concerned, and I couldn’t be weak. I had to handle this. Figure out what was happening and fix it, then get the hell away from this woman. Before I did something really fucking stupid.