“I’m not comfortable discussing my personal life with work colleagues,” I shot back, my anger rising.
“Really,” he snipped, his tone wry as he pointed to himself. “Well, it wasn’t so long ago that you felt comfortable doing quite a bit more withthiswork colleague.”
For that, I should slap him. His words, sharper than any he’d ever thrown at me, sharper than I deserved, cut me to the quick and left me reeling.
Tears threatening, I opened the driver’s-side door of The Judge, wrangling the keys free again. I froze with a gasp when, with the shifting of the car’s side mirror, a familiar figure—and face—snapped into view within its reflection.
I swung around, the dead butterflies in my stomach revived in an instant, all of them taking wing all at once, their sudden flight relieving me of my ability to breathe.
Objects in mirror were indeed closer than they appeared…
He stood there in human form, dressed like a metalhead dream in torn jeans, half-laced boots, and leather jacket, black tattoos crawling out of the collar of his Metallica T-shirt to map his neck.
“Grim,” I somehow managed to utter.
But that hardened blue gaze didn’t even flicker my way. It instead remained unblinkingly trained on the man behind me—Peter.
29GRIM
Looked like Helena had a friend. A friend who was making her very unhappy.
And that was makingmepissed as fuck.
Hopefully, for his sake, this dipshit had good insurance.
Helena gaped at me as I approached, chains clinking, boots scuffing pavement. I spared her only a half-second glance as I moved to take the open car door from her and put myself between her and whoever this fuckwit was.
Since I’d only just arrived, I hadn’t caught their conversation. But this jack nut’s pointed glower combined with the devastation on Helena’s face had my right hand twitching to become a fist.
“Is this him?” the man asked, gesturing toward me, his British accent—too much like Cedric’s—irking the fuck out of me.
“This dickhead bothering you?” I asked Helena, peering down at her at last, our eyes meeting full-on for the first time since my arrival, the connection sending a shock wave of memory through my system—a distant and booming echo of that mind-altering kiss she’d planted on me. Not to mention my subsequent and scandalous scouring of her eternal being with the remnants of my tattered-ass soul.
“Um,” she said, my keys tangled up between her delicate fingers, the nails of which she’d painted posy pink, a single shade darker than the natural hue of those perfect lips. Lips I could still feel the burn of…
Fuck, she was beautiful in the full light of day, the waning sunlight giving her the aura of a goddess with a glow that tried hard to mimic the gold of her hair.
“If you don’t mind, we were talking,” said ponytail boy, his words summoning back the scowl I’d forgotten to keep in place—right along with my glare. “I’d like to finish having a word with her.”
Looked to me like this asshole had said—and done—enough already.
“Let me guess,” I said, gesturing toward him. “This is Peter.”
“Are you serious?” snapped Ponytail, speaking to Helena. “You talked to your boyfriend about me?”
Boyfriend?
My head snapped back to Helena, who peered up at me with saucer eyes, her expression terror-stricken. She death-gripped the keys, beaming a plea at me to forgive her for one of the hundreds of crimes she thought she’d committed just by existing. And in that frightened gaze, I got my answer.
Before I’d gotten here, she must have been trying to shake this loser, who’d probably asked her about the car. And, as many a woman had done before her, she’d made up a story about having a boyfriend just so she could escape the unwanted ardors of an overzealous prick who couldn’t take a hint.
Got it, I tried to convey with my own gaze.Assignment fucking accepted.
Gently, I closed my hand around Helena’s, capturing the keys to The Judge. Despite her fear, she relinquished them to me without the barest resistance, just as she had her soul when I’d tugged it from her grasp. I could still taste it, too. That lemonade sting, that hot-honey heat.
How bad of an idea was coming to see her again? Didn’t matter now, did it?
“IsaidI wanted a word,” Dick Stick called—to me.
