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My gaze slid back to Kat, her eyes still fixed on the phone screen as her long legs carried her to the far end of the lot. I picked up the pace when he started to move toward her, determined to make it to Kat before this asshole did.
“Hey, hot stuff, give me a smile, why don’tcha?” he said, part gangster, part cocky bastard.
Kat froze and turned on her heels with murder in her eyes. “What did you just say to me?” Her outrage made me smile, but the asshole was still advancing, and her anger gave me just enough time to get to her before he did and wrap my arms around her like we were more than kinda, sorta, friends.
“Now is that any way to greet an old friend, sweetheart?” I laid it on thick. Kat was confused and angry as I spun her in a circle to get a better, up-close look at the man following her. He was tall with tan skin but he was a white guy. Built but lean with a tattoo on his right forearm. I noted the details for later as Kat tried to squirm from my grip.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked in a half-whisper, half-yell.
“Be cool,” I whispered in her ear, nearly stumbling as the scent of her expensive flowery perfume short-circuited my brain. Kat Ashby was in my arms, where she was meant to be, in another life. I set her down and pulled her close, keeping her pinned to my side as I leveled that motherfucker with an icy stare. “You lost or somethin’?”
Finally, Kat remembered we weren’t alone, and her body went stiff with alarm, especially when he aimed an angry glare right at her.
“Nope. Just walking,” he growled, leaning forward to intimidate.
I smiled and held myself a little taller to let him know that I didn’t intimidate, ever. “Then get to walking. People might feel threatened by a strange man lurking in a parking lot, and they might do something about it.”
The threat landed perfectly, his eyes flared with acknowledgment and Kat gasped beside me.
Reality had finally crashed in on her and I accepted more of her weight as she leaned into me.
“It’s a free country.”
“Yeah? You an Ashby because I’ve never seen you before and this here is Ashby property. All of it.”
“Fuck you,” he spat and walked away, looking over his shoulder every few feet for his own safety.
I watched until he disappeared from sight, only looking away when Kat stepped out of my grasp and smoothed her dress in an attempt to calm her nerves. Her hands moved in slow, methodical strokes over her flat stomach and the flare of her hips before they moved to her thick brown waves, styled to perfection. When she had her emotions under control, Kat looked up at me with a smirk.
“I guess it’s a good thing you’re totally obsessed with me since you kinda saved my life. Thanks.”
Her tone pulled a laugh from me, reminding me of the seventeen-year-old version of her, so sassy and sarcastic. “You’re welcome, princess.”
Kat spun on her heels and started to walk away, but not before raising her right arm in the air and flipping me off. “There’s your princess, Manning.”
“I see her,” I told her as I walked about five feet behind her to make sure she made it to her car and out of the lot safely. “Not a bad view,” I called out, smiling when my words made her stumble slightly.
Yeah maybe Emmett was right. Maybe I still had it bad for the Ashby princess. Not that it mattered.
It couldn’t.
Not ever.
There was too much at risk.
CHAPTER THREE
Kat
After getting my butt saved by Terry in the visitor’s lot at House of Ashby, I spent the night thinking of all the people who might want to do me harm.
Most of them were probably employees, pissed off because everyone had to work harder and longer hours until after fight night. Some might be men I’ve turned down for dates, but that was unlikely, given my last name and how infrequently I actually dated.
Which meant it likely had everything to do with the block of rooms that had occupied too much of my attention over the past few months. The Mueller Suites, as I started to call them, after the degenerate bishop connected to the rash of murdered priests.
The rooms had been blocked off through a standing reservation for the foreseeable future, through the Church, of course, to make sure the reservation couldn’t be denied. Or revoked.
When I first found out, I was outraged. Angry as hell that neither Ma or Jasper would allow me to lose or double-book the suites, especially considering what those fucking perverts had done to my brothers. But the more I sat on that anger and stewed in it, the more I realized that this was my way to do something.
