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Luckily, the latter was not something that happened often.
I didn’t know what took him away from me in the middle of the night. I didn’t know who was on the other side of those phone calls. I didn’t know what made Karson so grim.
Still, even in my ignorance, I knew something was happening.
Something bad.
“Excuse me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at Jay.
“I am going to have a man in my employ, sometimes Karson, but not often since he’s busy, travel with you wherever you go,” Jay clarified.
Having someone follow me wasn’t exactly a novel concept, but that was before. When things were different. Plus, I hadn’t known they were following me at the time.
“Why is someone going to be following me, Jay?” I asked evenly, hands on my hips.
He closed his laptop. “Because I am in the middle of negotiations. They’ve turned hostile.”
“Negotiations with whom?” I inquired, folding my arms.
“That’s not important,” he replied, brows dipping ever so slightly.
“If your negotiations are hostile enough for you to ‘put someone on me’, I disagree,” I refuted sharply.
Jay pushed up from the bed, crossing the distance between us. I didn’t like that. Distance made it easier to be pissed at him. When he got close, when he started touching me, things seemed less important.
“Don’t come over here and try to distract me,” I asserted, holding my hand up.
Jay did not stop his advance. He merely grabbed my wrist and pulled it into his chest, therefore pulling me into his chest.
My entire body relaxed and tightened at the same time. We were silent for a few breaths while he held me.
“Will these people—”
“The Russian Mob,” Jay offered flatly, as if he were saying ‘the people at the FedEx office.’
I sucked in a harsh breath. “Will the Russian Mob try to hurt me in the process of these negotiations?” I asked, trying to match Jay’s flat tone and failing.
His grip on my wrist turned painful. “No, Stella. No one is going to touch you.”
An oath.
I swallowed thickly. We were silent once more. I inhaled deeply. Leather. Sea salt. Jay. Home. Safety.
There were some questions one must ask when one’s fiancé tells them they’re going to need protection because the fiancé in question is having hostile negotiations with the Russian Mob.
Namely, what in the fuck is it that you do in order to have any kind of contact let alone negotiations with the Russian Mob?
And then a bunch of other questions about the level of danger he was in, how many years in jail would these negotiations buy him should the police ever find out. Was this going to be my life, worrying about the Russian Mob?
Stuff like that.
Instead of asking all of these questions, or even one, I stayed silent.
I arrived to dinner late with the man named Eric—who had driven me—sitting two tables over. Eric was African American, strong jawed, broad shouldered and had a ‘do not fuck with me’ vibe. Eric had also complimented my shoes.
Although I was forty minutes late to dinner, I was the first one to arrive. Wren rushing in less than a minute after the waitress had put down my dirty martini.
She drained it the second she sat her ass at the table.
“Two more please,” she said to the waitress who was walking past the table. “Yasmin is still at the office, and Zoe is stuck in traffic,” she said in greeting. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was a dazzling mess of curls. “I’m late for the same reason you probably were. Because I had a very dangerous man between my thighs,” she winked.
I smiled back despite myself, despite my mood.
“Things are still going well with Karson?” I asked, even though I really didn’t need to.
“Well would be an understatement.”
“I’m happy for you, sweetheart,” I meant it. I loved seeing my girl so happy.
Wren grinned. “I’m happy for me too. My vagina is even happier,” she chuckled, wiggling her eyebrows.
“What about your heart?” I asked tentatively.
Wren had yet to admit that she actually loved Karson even though he was damn near living at her house, she hadn’t even considering breaking up with him and it had been months. Almost a year.
An eternity for Wren.
She shuddered. “My heart belongs to Alexander McQueen,” she said matter of fact.
“Alexander McQueen is dead,” I pointed out.
“Which means my heart is too.”
I narrowed my eyes, ready to call bullshit, but she glanced down at her phone which was buzzing on the table. “Fuck,” she muttered. “Both Zoe and Yasmin bailed. Which sucks because we haven’t all been together in forever but doesn’t suck that bad because I kind of like you, and now we can have an entire baked camembert to ourselves.” She grinned wickedly.
I shook my head, grinning back. “Let’s do it.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered.
