Page 69 of Burn for You (Slow Burn 1)
I turned and found Jackson standing inside the door, staring at me. He was wearing faded jeans and his battered motorcycle jacket, with a white cotton shirt molded to his body so his abdomen muscles were on display like an ad for stacked bricks.
He was not altogether unfortunate looking.
I said, “Oh. Hello.”
His brows quirked. He glanced at the gathering in the private dining room, fifteen people staring at us in open curiosity from behind a sparkling sheet of glass. “Is this a bad time?”
Is there a good time to sign away five years of your life?
I said, “It’s fine. They’re contained for now.” I made my employees sound like a nasty viral outbreak, which wasn’t too far from the truth. “Let’s go into my office.”
I led him through the restaurant, past the private dining room with its gaping menagerie, and through the kitchen. My office was down a hallway in the back. It was a cramped, messy space where I regularly collapsed into exhausted comas at the end of the night or cried over the mountain of unpaid bills strewn on my desk while I examined my life choices.
I opened the door, he closed it behind him. He looked around with a critical eye. “Looks like a bomb went off.” Then his gaze fell on the bouquet of red roses on the edge of my desk, and he went stone-still. His tone was acidic. “From an admirer?”
I snorted. “If you can call Satan’s spawn an admirer.”
In two long, jerking strides, he was in front of the bouquet. He snatched the little white enclosure card off the plastic stick. He read it aloud while his free hand curled to a fist. “I’m sorry, bumble bee. I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. Please call me, we need to talk. Trace.”
Jackson pronounced Trace’s name as a hiss. When he cut his gaze to me, all the air left the room.
He growled, “What happened?”
I dropped into my ratty captain’s chair and sighed. “We had a little run-in at my mother’s house.”
“A run-in?” he repeated slowly. His eyes had turned an unnerving serial killer shade of black.
“Long story short, I stopped by Mama’s on my way to the restaurant, and he was there. I told him we were getting married, and he called me the c-word.”
Jackson turned the little white enclosure card to dust with a single crushing flex of his fist.
I said, “That’s not the worst part.”
His eyes were seriously weirding me out. I expected laser beams to shoot out of them at any second and blow the place apart.
“He’s opening a restaurant,” I said, unable to hide the quaver of fury in my voice. “Down the street. As a big f-you to me and all the plans we made to do it together
.”
Suddenly my office wasn’t big enough to contain Jackson. Hulklike, his entire body expanded with his angry inhalation. I wasn’t sure the seams of his clothing would be able to hold him.
I said, “It’s just another one of his childish games. There’s nothing he can’t stand as much as being ignored, and he knew this would get my attention. He wants me to obsess over it. Which is why the only thing I can do is act like it doesn’t get to me.”
Jackson said darkly, “We’ll see.”
The implied threat made the little hairs on my arms stand on end. “I’m not condoning violence, Jackson.”
“Who said anything about violence? There are ways to deal with this kind of situation that don’t involve shedding blood.” His serial killer eyes burned. “Even though I’d very much like to rip his head off and shove it up his own ass for what he said to you.”
I allowed myself to enjoy the mental image of that for a moment. What a beautiful thing. Then I waved a hand at the chair across from my desk. “Sit. Please. You’re making the room seem smaller than it already is.”
He sat in the chair. His bulk appeared to reduce it to the size of a piece of child’s furniture. He seemed to be getting bigger every time I saw him, all legs and arms and towering strength, potent masculinity. I felt dainty in comparison, which was impressive considering what the bathroom scale had read this morning.
“I brought the contract,” he said, still bristling.
I blew out a tremulous breath.
“Bianca. Your face just went white.”
