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“Safe. From. You.”
“You little fucking bitch-” he started when a familiar face appeared over his shoulder.
“Is there a fucking problem here?” Rose asked with her arms folded across her chest, a scowl on her face.
Conlon straightened and looked at her over his shoulder. As soon as he looked away from me, I took the opportunity to shake my head at my friend. Her eyes flickered from me to him multiple times before she spoke again. “You need to go. Now. Or I’ll call the cops. Which would be a safer option than letting her dog maul you to bits.”
Sadie growled again for good measure and my heart beat at a frantic pace, adrenaline coursing through me. This whole situation could go one of two ways and I was praying that it wouldn’t end in a bloodbath.
Finally, Conlon nodded his head and brushed past Rose, who didn’t take her eyes off him as he moved towards the barn’s exit. “I’ll see you soon, Red.”
A chill went down my spine at his words. I didn’t doubt that. He wasn’t going to go away until he got what he was looking for, which meant that a violent, catastrophic storm was coming my way.
Rose looked at me, brown eyes searching my face. “Are you okay? Juliette, what the hell was that?”
I was frozen in my seat, stuck on the fact that Greg Conlon knew where I worked, knew I had some kind of relations with Logan, and knew that I knew about Nicole. It put me on edge that I was being watched like that. For all I knew he was following me to work or trying to peek in my windows at night.
“Juliette?”
But I didn’t answer her. I was too busy throwing myself out of the chair and rifling through my bag to get to my phone. With trembling fingers I dialed and pressed the phone to my ear, chewing my thumbnail as Rose came into the room and closed the door behind her.
“‘Lo?” mumbled a gravelly, sleepy voice.
“We have a serious problem.”
I WAS A STRAIGHT A STUDENT. Not once did I get detention nor did I get scolded or spoken to by a teacher. Gran always told me to keep my head down, mind my own business, and make a good life for myself. There were definitely times when she was hard on me, harder than most grandparents were on their grandchildren. But she saw first hand what happened when a kid didn’t have any goals, when they didn’t have a good head on their shoulders. She tried to keep my mother on a good path, but the woman who birthed me couldn’t help but stray. And Gran made damn sure that the same thing wasn’t going to happen to me.
I was up early every morning, went home right after school, had all of my homework done before dinner, and then read before I went to sleep. She taught me the ins and outs of being a responsible adult and never let me stray from the path that we’d both carved out for me. She was my best friend and my teacher.
I didn’t have so much as a speeding ticket and I gave Gran full credit for that. The woman taught me how to drive when I was thirteen and I passed my driving test like a pro on my sixteenth birthday.
Which was why I was so overwhelmed by the time Logan showed up at Arden thirty minutes later. I’d never been in any sort of trouble and I was absolutely not equipped to deal with it. My first instinct was to call the police and then lock myself in the house until all of this blew over. But there was a sense of impending doom that told me none of this was going to blow over soon and we needed a plan. Fast.
Rose sat in the chair in front of my desk while I sat in the one behind it. Logan paced off to the side, hands in the pocket of the black hoodie he wore. There was a day’s worth of stubble on his face and his blonde hair was a mess as per usual. But even with the stress that the day brought I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to have that stubble scrape against the sensitive skin of my neck. I wondered how it would feel against my palms if I grabbed his face and pulled his mouth down to mine. That full, soft looking mouth…
“Juliette, hey, you okay? You’re flushed,” Rose commented.
Logan glanced at me and I realized I was still gawking at him while sensual, dirty fantasies filled my head. I shook my head and looked away, but not before I caught the wicked gleam in his eye and the smirk on his face.
There’s no way he knows, I assured myself. I turned to Rose. “What? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I’m just overwhelmed.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Logan said and leaned a hip against my desk, head cocked to the side as he studied me.
“It’s been a long morning. Now, let’s figure this out. What are we gonna do about Conlon?”
“I have a few friends in Boston looking into him. They’ll see what he’s up to and if it’s anything shady we’ll bust him and have his ass locked up within a week.”
“Okay, well what are we supposed to do for the next week? He knows where I work, Logan. He knows that we’re… friends.”
Logan stared at me for a minute, not saying anything. His dark, almost black eyes bored into mine and a tick appeared in his jaw. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking but the look he gave me was dark. Menacing in a way that had me clenching my thighs together and averting my gaze.
“I say we call the cops.” Rose piped in with a raised hand. “I love you, girl. But I can’t have some fucking criminal showing up here on a whim. What if he comes back again and this time he’s not alone?”
He was shaking his head before she even finished her sentence. “He wouldn’t do that. Conlon’s an idiot, but he’d have no reason to show up here if...”
“If I wasn’t here.” I said what he didn’t want to.
He gave a solemn nod and start pacing again, scrubbing a hand over his face.
