Page 58 of Dealing Dirty
Twisting to face him, I wedge my feet between his thigh and the couch. “How did Jack take the news?”
I study the curve of his ear and the waves of blond that surround it. Some people have those freaky earlobes that attach to their heads instead of having space for an actual lobe, and I’ve always found that really strange.
I’m oddly relieved that Derrick has normal ears.
Why have I never noticed how cute his ears are?
“Juliana, are you listening?”
Jolting, I wave for him to continue. “Yes, yes. Go on, please.”
He eyes me suspiciously. “I was saying, it’s November, which means Diablo has had plenty of time to come up with a way to retaliate. I’ve already told Sasha this, but I’ve got this nagging feeling that he’s not alone in all this.”
My stomach clenches at the mention of his name.
“Are you suggesting there’s someone else behind Bruce?”
He nods. “I just don’t get it. Why The Pound? And why go through the trouble of vandalizing it and slashing tires?”
“He’s trying to shake us up,” I say.
Derrick doodles in Oscar’s fur, lost in thought.
“More like trying to keep us distracted,” he murmurs.
“Jackie made it clear to me that he’s willing to help. It wouldn’t make sense to ignore that.” Those pale begging eyes have become a brand in my psyche. I can imagine his cruelties and the wrongs he’s made just trying to survive. So many people that he’s had to hurt.
“I don’t trust him.” Derrick’s eyes turn dark. I know he’s remembering the way Jackie manhandled me at the casino. The faint bruise along my collarbone has yet to completely fade.
My forefinger brushes little circles over the soft material covering his bicep. “I know, and you have every reason not to, but the man I encountered that night was like a caged animal. He’s desperate, but something in the way he spoke made me believe him.”
He tsks. “Desperate men make mistakes.”
“And that’s what we’re going to count on Bruce doing. If he’s trying to take The Pound out of spite, he’s going to slip up. Ben is helpful, no doubt about it, but Jackie is going to be our best shot at bringing him down. Imagine the intel we can get from him and the influence he could have. He could start a mutiny.”
He shifts to face me. “I need to have Jack arrange a meeting with him. I want to know his angle. The guy’s going to have a price; no man who’s been in his position this long would let it go so easily.”
Part of me suspects he’s right, but the other thinks maybe, deep down, Jackie’s a broken man with little left to lose. I did some research after our encounter and found that shortly after he took his position, he and his ex-wife went through a nasty divorce. That divorce also involved a huge settlement in her favor. Almost like he—or someone else—was paying her off.
Derrick’s hands roam freely over my legs, tracing the curves of my knees before gently inching back down. The chatter of the TV fills the room while we sit quietly, lost in thought.
“Can I ask you something?”
The heat from his body blends with mine, greeting it like a long-lost friend. Oscar jumps down when Derrick pulls my legs onto his lap, and as he leisurely rubs my calves and ankles, I have no problem picking up where Oscar’s purring left off.
“You can ask me anything, Juliana.”
He’s breathtaking when he smiles around my name like that.
“Let’s say we weren’t trying to outsmart and destroy a psycho kingpin’s decades-old empire. What would your future hold?”
I lean my elbow into the couch and watch his chest expand with a sigh. His skilled hands still over my shins while my thumping heart refuses to relax.
“I wanted to go to college. Jack was off with Ben working at Royals, but I was completely lost, working odd jobs around town to afford my little one-bedroom apartment.” He rests his head back against the couch. “Sasha was always too smart for her own good, and driven, too. She never questioned herself or her desire to bring peace to the world, but I wasn’t as easy to figure out.
“When I finally got the courage to apply to community college, Jack called me with this crazy bar idea. He was so excited that it felt impossible to turn him down. So I started working with him and Ben and… the rest is history, I suppose.”
I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “You’d want to get a degree, then?”
