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“Jimmy!” he shouted, which got the man’s attention. He turned, saw Xavier, and then suddenly bolted for the back, shoving bar-goers out of his way. He pushed one woman to the ground who fell hard, spilling her drink on a group of guys standing next to her.
“Hey!” one of them cried, and then Cardinals Hat had more than one pursuer, as the girl’s boyfriend gave chase.
Stymied by the thick crowd, Xavier couldn’t catch Jimmy. Emma watched as the man disappeared through the back. Xavier followed and Emma, worried about him, bolted for the back as well.
“Where are you...” she heard the blond shout after her, but she was already gone, worried about Xavier. She wiggled through the crowd, and before she knew it, found herself at the back kitchen, where Xavier had stopped by an open alleyway door.
“He’s gone,” he told her, running his hands through his thick hair. “I went out there, and...I don’t know, he’s just gone.”
Emma felt a bit of relief. Xavier was safe, the jerk was gone.
Xavier turned, looking at her with a pained expression. “Emma, that man...he’s got a sexual assault conviction on his record.”
“He...what?” Emma tried to process that information. “But he was certified with a background check.” The noise from the clang of pots and pans in the kitchen and the low rumble of music from the bar made it so Emma had to raise her voice.
Xavier shook his head. “He got past the safeguards somehow, but I’m going to figure out how and stop him. Put in more security. Something. I’m working on it, but, Emma, I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard right over the noise in the bar.
“Why are you sorry? And what do you mean, ‘working on it’?” Now Emma was beyond confused. What was he talking about?
Xavier hung his head. He glanced around as if he wasn’t sure how to break bad news. Then he caught her eye once more, his own eyes fixed on hers, deliberate and serious.
“You’ll find out with your first Google search, anyway.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I built Nost. I own it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EMMA FELT LIKE the earth suddenly tilted beneath her feet and she had trouble steadying herself.
“You own Nost?” A million confused questions raced through her mind, none of them good. Had he gamed the system? Had this somehow been just an elaborate joke?
Xavier nodded his head once.
“You use your own app to pick up girls?”
A flash of guilt crossed his face. “What kind of hypocrite would I be if I made the app but didn’t use it?” Xavier was trying to be lighthearted, to joke, but Emma found nothing about this to be funny.
Somehow, it just seemed all wrong that he was using his own app, his own program, to find women, but Emma couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because he’d be able to game the system (he created it, so he’d have to know how to take advantage, right?) or maybe it was because his commitment phobia went far, far deeper than she ever realized.
“You created Nost.” She just couldn’t get over the fact that the man she was falling for had relationship anxiety so deep that he built a company around it. There might never be a cure for him. All of her hopes about them being something more felt like they disintegrated in that moment. Poof, up in fantasy fairy-tale smoke.
“Yes.” Xavier moved closer and she backed away until she was flat against the wall in the corridor between the kitchen and the bathroom. “I told you up front that no strings was what I wanted.”
Yes, he had. He’d been more than up front about that. So why did it bother her so much that he owned Nost?
It was because he was here and he knew the man in the Cardinals hat would be here. He also knew the man was messaging her. But how?
“How did you know that man would be here tonight?” She pointed toward the back door where the jerk had fled.
Now Xavier looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I looked at your account,” he admitted.
“You can see the messages?” Now Emma felt shocked. He could hack her account? She felt a jumble of emotions all at once. She took a deep breath. The fact that he cared enough to dig around to find out about her proved her whole point that there was more between them than he ever admitted. Yet, another part of her felt unsteady, uneasy.
Xavier wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yes,” he admitted. “And since you sent a complaint about him, I followed up. I just wanted to make sure you were safe, and I had a bad feeling about that guy so I checked into him. That’s when I saw he had a criminal history. That’s when I knew I had to warn you.”
