Page 134 of A Dirty Business
“I gotta go, Kelly. I’ll talk to you later.”
She was sobbing and hiccuped on a sniffle. “Okay. Be safe, please.”
“You too.” I was watching Trace steadily as he came in, taking his suit jacket off, then taking out two guns that I had no idea he’d taken to carrying. He put one in the drawer, and he took the other to a side wall, where he moved a photo aside, and I saw him open a safe for it.
“When did you start with those?”
“The day my uncle threatened you.”
That got my attention. “What?”
“It was the last day I saw you too. Outside your apartment.”
Oh. Right.
“He threatened me that night?”
“Make you feel better, he threatened everyone I cared about that night, but yeah. He made it abundantly clear that he knew about you.It’s why I stayed away as long as I could.” He closed the safe and came toward me, raking a hand through his hair. “Want a drink?”
“What happened tonight?”
“I’m going to get a drink.” He came over, stopped, pressed a kiss to my forehead, but moved beyond me to the liquor cabinet. There was a tingle left from his touch and his hand as he touched my waist, grazing it around me before dropping it back to his side. “Is Kelly okay? You were on the phone with her?”
“She wants to know about you and me, more specifically when you and me became you and me.”
He gave me a grin. It was a tired grin, but still a grin. There was a huge boulder of tension in my gut, but a small piece of it chipped away at that look from him. Not everything was totally fucked up.
“Justin came clean with everything about his family, but he also told her about you and Ashton. So, yeah. There’s that.”
“Kelly is freaked.”
I affirmed with a nod, moving over to him as he poured some bourbon in a glass and held it over to me. I took it. “Kelly is freaked.”
He took a sip of his own, watching me over the top of his glass as he did. “I got an offer tonight.”
I took a sip, raising my eyebrow. “Sounds interesting.”
“I’m guessing Nicolai Worthing is related to Justin somehow. He called, said his cousins were imbeciles.”
“Makes me like him.”
He ignored me. “And he offered a sort of franchise proposition. He moves in, takes over everything, while I run the money. The West family still controls everything at the top, but I’m not involved with the dirty business.”
“Except the money part.”
“There’s that. Yes. That part.”
I pointed at myself, raising my other eyebrow. “And you’re telling me? An officer of the law, more so in regard to parolees, but still. It’s inmy wheelhouse, and you know, there’s the issue where I’m not dirty. I just like fucking you.”
He grinned.
I grinned back. “Why are you sharing this new player with me?”
He swirled the last of his bourbon around the glass before letting out a small sigh. “I wanted to be straight with you. Assumed you would have questions, and I don’t want to start this relationship off with lies. I’m sure little lies will come into play later, but not yet. And because while he was giving me this offer, I realized something.”
“What’s that?”
He had a look in his eyes, a gleam. It was a light, and he was still grinning at me, in a very delicious way, but while that was making my heart speed up, the look in his eyes was adding to it. He was happy, and that made me happy, and in our present situation, I wasn’t sure either of us should be happy.
