Page 32 of Breaking the Rules
He wrestled the phone out of his pocket and answered it on his way back up the path.
“Mother fucker,” Waverly muttered.
“My sentiments exactly.”
She jumped a mile out of her skin and was pulling the gun from her back when Xavier stepped out of the scrub brush.
Her fingers brushed the metal, and she pulled back at the last second. “What are you doing here?” she asked. They both froze when they heard the engine rev from the parking area.
But it was Brad leaving.
“I got your note,” Xavier said, his voice chilly with calm.
“Yeah, I was just about to go pick up breakfast for us,” she said uneasily. With a thirty foot drop to her back and Xavier at her front, she wasn’t liking her chances for escape. And he may have pissed her off, but she didn’t feel that quite warranted shooting her way out.
“Why don’t you sit first and we’ll have a little chat?”
“I think I’m good. I don’t need to talk,” she crossed her arms.
“Let me rephrase that.” Xavier stepped over the bench and into her personal space. “Sit the hell down and tell me why you’re sneaking out for pre-dawn meetings without telling me.”
“Do you really want to go over the whole ‘I didn’t hire you’ thing again? Because we can,” Waverly said, jumping on the offensive. “I didn’t hire you. You don’t work for me.”
“And I told you before, I go where you go or I spill all your secrets.”
“You don’t know my secrets!” Her voice echoed around the canyon. Unless he’d been there for the entire conversation.
“I know that you weren’t in rehab for ten days. I know that you were in Petra Stepanov’s house when you got shot by a bunch of goons with guns. I know that you haven’t heard from Dante since that night, and I also know that when I find him, I’m going to kick his ass for pulling you into this.” He ticked the items off on his fingers.
“Dante didn’t pull me into this!”
“You’re in over your head and refusing to let me help you is just fucking stupid,” he snapped.
“You know what’s fucking stupid? You underestimating me. You don’t want to help. You want to swoop in and take over. And I don’t need you to. I have everything under control!”
“Then where’s Dante? And why was that guy threatening you? I got his plates when I got here, you know I’m going to run them and him.”
She bit back a sigh of relief. So he hadn’t heard the entire conversation. That was a plus.
“That ray of sunshine was Brad Tomasso, head of Target Productions. I have a movie coming out with them soon, and he’s pissed that I could be hurting the rep of the film with my recent antics. I came because I was hoping he had information on Dante.”
“Your recent antics involve a fake stay in rehab confirmed by Target Productions.” Xavier leaned back against the railing, a deceptively casual stance.
“None of this is your business, X. How the hell did you find me anyway?”
“Tracker on your bike.”
At her gasp of indignation, he grinned. “I know you, Waverly. You want to pretend that we’re strangers, go right ahead. But I know every move you’re going to make before you make it. Even the stupid ones like meeting someone alone in the dark when no one knows where you are.”
She gave herself a second to fantasize flipping him over the railing and into the canyon.
“You wouldn’t be able to get me off the ground,” he said with a smirk.
“I hate you.”
“You hate that you want me,” he corrected.
“Dream on,” she spat out.
