by Marie Wathen
“I’m sorry, but that is a riot.” Natalie snorts and then points accusingly at Decks. “Did he really promise you that he wouldn’t jump your bones? Because we all know that he will break that promise tonight.”
Decks pouts and Angel defends his intentions. Even with her claiming to trust him to be an honorable man, I can’t help feeling alleviate by the player being put in his place.
We load up Angel’s three boxes of personal items and a stack of hanging clothes into the back of Decks’ truck. Then she climbs onto a slick, black motorcycle and fires it up with a proud smile. My damn heart nearly jumps out of my chest watching her race up the interstate on that sexy little kitten. Damn, she is one interesting woman. I had no idea that she could handle herself so well, but I have clearly underestimated her talents.
After dropping her stuff off at Decks’ house and him inviting her along on our trip to the stash house, I decide to hold off on bringing up the subject of Dr. A. Instead, we discuss random shit, including a rumor that has been circling around about a mole. I know that there are a few undercover cops from a couple different agencies working a drug case, but I haven’t heard back from Lassiter or my chief on their identities yet. Feeling safe about Murph not being one of them, I toss out his name, and Decks instantly perks up.
Anxiety builds within every cell in my body, all because of the beautiful woman humming softly behind me. As hard as I try, I can’t focus while Angel is sitting on a small sofa, so close, and looking so hot in tiny shorts and a formfitting tank. Riding over here encased in Decks truck with her scent circling with the air conditioning and seeping into my pores nearly fucking killed me, and now I have an insane craving for spicy vanilla.
The doorbell rings, and while rubbing his hands together, Decks says, “Our first guest.” To Angel, he promises, “I’ll be right back, sweetness.”
After he leaves, I suggest, “Whatever happens, promise me that you’ll just stay quiet.” She nods hesitantly, so I push it a little more and beg, “Angel, please don’t visit here with him too often.”
She holds my stare until Decks walks in with some freaky looking dude who insists that I call him Mad Hatter. He notices Angel sitting in the corner and then loses his shit. He screams at Decks, Decks shouts back, chasing the tool out of the room, and I move swiftly to Angel. Mad Hatter is the sick son of a bitch that Minder warned me about. I’m pissed off at my two bodyguards for failing to obtain this information, and for being caught off guard.
“Hey doll, come here.”
Her whole body shakes violently against mine as I draw her to me. She clutches me like I am her savior and then with a shaky voice, she explains, “Sorry, that guy reminded me of my ex. He was hooked on meth and it made him crazy.”
Looking down at Angel, my heart clenches seeing the fear simmering in her pretty eyes. Christ, she doesn’t belong in this goddamn house, or with Decks. Or with me!
“Sure,” I mumble, because I can’t tell her that I really want to scoop her up and run so far and so damn fast away from here that we’ll out run memories of this life. But, none of that can happen. I am an idiot and I have been delusional for too damn long. She and I, being together isn’t in the cards, and I’ve got to stop fantasizing about that shit. The best that I can offer Angel is doing the job I came here to do, so that this damn organization is shut down, and she will be safe. Motivated more than ever before, I suggest taking her back to Decks’ house. Once there, I tell her that what happened between us can never happen again, and she agrees with me. My ego takes a massive hit with that one, but it’s for the best.
Returning to the stash house, I pass Mad Hatter leaving in a hooped-up, lime green Crown Vic. I sure as hell intend on getting more information on that sick prick immediately. When I enter Decks’ office, he has an odd look on his face. I can’t imagine what the junkie could have said that would make him look so damn happy, and I really don’t give a fuck.
“What is going on with Juan’s shipment?” I growl towering over the front of his desk.
He snaps his gaze up and replies, “I’m handling it.”
“How?”
“I put Wise on it,” he answers truthfully.
Shaking my head and slamming a fist against his desk, I say, “Fucking Christ, Decks, you heard Nelson. Don’t fuck this up.”
“Me!” he shouts, standing up so that he is eye level with me. His nostrils flare with his anger. “You are the son of a bitch who gave that motherfucker the transport and now I’m the one responsible for fucking everything up? No damn way.” Pointing at me, he insists, “If you want this shit, take it, but I don’t care how tight the X is with the Hijos. We don’t need those bastards anymore.”
Pulling back and stepping away, I consider his words. Scrubbing a hand through my hair, I rein in my anger, lower my voice and then demand, “Juan will kill people that you care about.” He doesn’t say a word to that, so I add, “He could get to you by going through Angel. Are you going to let that happen?”
“Never, I will slaughter every person in his family one at a time if he touches one hair on her head.” His whole body trembles with caged hostility, his brown eyes are primed with murderous intent.
“Take a proactive stand on this one,” I beg. “Do not give him a reason to come after her.”
With a jerky motion, he nods. “I will handle it.” I narrow my eyes on him, waiting for more assurance. “I swear it, Blues. It won’t get out of control.” His eyes cut toward the doorway, he exhales loudly, and adds, “And then, we are leaving the old fuckers behind and taking our cartel into the future of designer drugs.”
“What do you mean?”
No longer angry, he smiles. “The world has no idea what’s coming, but soon we will be so damn powerful that the Hijos will be begging for our business.” Pointing to himself he adds, “And, I will finally get to tell Nelson to piss off, like I’ve wanted to do for the past ten years.”
Hearing his claim encourages me. Finally, he seems to have caught up and we are now on the same page. Settling old scores is on both of our agenda’s. Perhaps we can work together to get the confession from Nelson, and save everyone from the hell mounting on the horizon.
Chapter Sixteen
A couple of weeks before Christmas, I finally hear back from Lassiter on the identity of one of the undercover agents, so I drive over to Jude’s house to talk it out. Sitting in the small living room, my eyes are glued to the twinkling lights interwoven on their kid-friendly Christmas tree, but I’m too shocked to really focus on anything.
“Here you go,” Natalie says, pulling my attention back to the real world as she hands me a steaming cup of coffee.
I smile up at her, hair all messy and a teal-colored penguin robe drooping off one shoulder, and say, “Thank you. Is he getting up?”
Yawning, she nods while turning away. “Yeah, I told him again that you are here. Did you ditch the XL brothers?” This is Natalie’s special name for Zeke and Bales. I nod, watching her crawl into the oversized chair beside the sofa, tucking her feet under her. “You want me to unplug that?” She gestures toward the tree.
“Nah,” I reply after taking a small sip of the extremely hot coffee. “Do you always leave it on?”
“No,” Smirking while she swipes a hand through her hair, she explains, “I forgot to turn it off before I went up last night.” I nod. “So, we’re really going back home?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
She giggles. “I still can’t believe it. And, just when this was starting to feel like home.”
“I thought you hated this place, and the stupid ass mortgage,” I tease, repeating what she told me a few months ago.
She shakes her head. “Not the house, you ass. Just….” she shrugs, “Everything. Holidays, our neighbors, you, and of course, Angel.” Blowing into my cup, I arch an eyebrow up. “I really like her, and we’ve gotten so close over the past few months.” I grunt a response, and she continues. “I’ll never admit this, if you repeat
it, but I’m kind of disappointed that we’ll be gone before Jude’s big weekend in New Orleans.”
“Weekend?” I ask, unaware that he planned a trip away.
“He didn’t tell you?” I shake my head. “Yeah, he wants to drag me off for the Super bowl.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m not into boys beating up other boys, but a trip alone with my man is going to be worth getting squished between a bunch of rowdy Alabama fans.”
“That’s college football,” I correct, smiling.
“Well, whoever. You know what I mean.” Dropping her feet to the floor, she scoots to the edge of the ottoman and claims, “I was going to ask you to babysit for us.”
“I love keeping them.” I smile. “Too bad you’ll be gone.”
“It is going to break Simone’s heart to lose you and Angel.” She narrows her eyes, observing me. “She loves her, too, you know?”
“That’s good. It’s easy to fall for your little girl, Natalie.”
“I’m talking about Angel. Simone loves her too.”
Studying her a moment, I ask, “What’s going on?”
“Why haven’t you been around lately? Is it because of her?”
Sitting my cup on a coaster, placed along an edge of the coffee table, I warily ask, “Where is this coming from?”
“I want to know what it is about her that pushed you away from us. She moved out, and yet, you still don’t come over.” She snorts. “Unless it’s four o’clock in the damn morning.”
“I’m sorry for waking you up so early.”
“Stop that.” She sighs with irritation. “I’m not bitching about the time. I want to know what is going on with you and Angel.”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“I smell smoke,” she blurts, waving her hand in front of her face.
I search the room for the cause of the fire and then say, “I don’t smell anything.”
“No silly, you know, liar, liar, pants on fire.”
“I am not lying.”
“You so are,” she insists, crossing her arms over her chest. “See, when you lie, there is this little line between your eyes that forms for just a moment.” She points between her eyebrows and then crosses her arms again. “Now,” she clears her throat, “you have been acting so strangely for months. Jude and I narrowed down the timeline to when you started dating Lourdes. He believes that it’s because of your commitment to her, but I don’t buy that for one second.”
“Listen, Natalie,” I start, but she cuts me off.
“No, you listen. Angel is a good person. I’ve tested her loyalty by telling her a partial truth about our life before moving here. She hasn’t told a soul.” She smiles like she just won the big teddy bear at the state fair, and I shake my head, growing more pissed off by the second. “She is loving, smart, and yeah, she has some weird hang-ups, but who doesn’t? Probably because she was in foster care.” I don’t reply, because I’m focusing on not scrunching my eyebrows together. Wherever this crazy rant is going, I don’t want her picking up on anything between me and Angel. “You know…? Survival skills.” I nod. “Anyway, I do not like her living with Decks.” I work so damn hard to keep my face frozen on this one, and she stares hard, waiting for my telltale twitch. “Nothing, huh?”
Releasing a heavy breath, I groan, “What do you want from me?”
“The truth,” she states and then goes silent, studying me. I hate those two words.
Glancing toward the front door, I shake my head and wait her out, but she isn’t budging. Dammit, I can’t leave. I need to talk with Jude.
Thankfully, he steps into the room. “What’s up?” He scratches his junk, covered by a pair of Christmas light covered boxers, while he tries focusing. He pulls a knot in the belt on his robe, cinching it closed.
“Coffee is ready, honey,” Natalie tells him without taking her eyes off me, and the bastard leaves me alone again with his nosy wife.
“She doesn’t like him.”
“Who?” I play dumb, staring after my best friend, make that former best friend, willing him to return.
“Are you really going to play it like that?” She chuckles. “You know who.”
Giving in, I glance at her and tease, “Ah, we’re talking about Angel again.”
“Yeah, and, she is totally over Rad.” Again, I hold my facial expressions, but offer a slow nod. “So, she’s free.”
“What you’re getting at is that Murph can finally date her?”
She growls. “No, Ethan. You should date her. Then we could double. We sure can’t do that while you’re with the leech, Lourdes. I can’t stand her enough to stay in the same room with her for ten minutes. Plus, I think she secretly hates me, too. So…”
“Not going to happen.”
“Why?” she whines. “Because of Lourdes?” Standing, I start for the door to hunt down my best friend, who left me with this insanity, so I can beat his ass. “Don’t you walk away from me. I am being serious. You and Angel would make the cutest couple, not to mention that you have so much in common.” She stands too, moving behind me. “Just, give her a chance. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?”
“Hell yes, but,” I turn around, looking at her and then break eye contact when I remember what happened the last time that I saw Angel. I caught her speaking on the phone with someone outside of Holidays, and right before hanging up, she said, ‘I love you.’ I know she doesn’t have family, and it sounded way too intimate for it to be anyone other than a lover. Clearly, she isn’t into Decks, but she wants everyone to believe that she is. Deciding to test her loyalty, I pushed her against the outside wall. Instead of giving in, she shot me down, which really didn’t clear up anything, but kissing her and being that close again made me want her even more. “She’s with someone else. And, I don’t want to pursue her, or anyone for that matter.”
“Ethan,” Natalie warns, using a similar tone that she takes with her children when she is about to dole out a punishment.
Holding up a hand, I cut her off. “Natalie, whatever scheme you’re cooking up in that head of yours, knock it off. I am here to do a job, not find love. Please?”
“I don’t give up that easily. You should ask Jude about that.” She smirks and I turn away from her. “Besides, who said anything about love?” I walk out of the room and this time, I don’t stop until I’m standing directly in front of Jude.
“Goddammit!”
“Survived Natalie’s interrogation?” he asks, sitting at the kitchen table with a knowing smirk plastered on his face.
“You’re a real bastard,” I charge, pulling up the seat across from him and gesturing behind me with my thumb. “You knew she was out there doing that shit to me!”
With a shrug and a nod, he admits, “Tenacious little thing, isn’t she? I’ve been begging her for weeks not to bring it up, but you see what good that did me.”
“What the hell?” I grumble, throwing my hands up. “So, my love life is a usual topic of conversation around here? Bored much?”
He laughs. “No, but she thinks that she knows something and will not relent until you tell her what is really going on.”
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I glare at him. “I don’t even know what the fuck is going on. How in the hell am I supposed to tell your nosy wife?”
“So, don’t.”
“Don’t tell her anything?” I snort. “She could get a saint to confess to being a sinner. Why isn’t she in law enforcement?” He chuckles, tipping his coffee cup back and draining it. His eyes shift toward the doorway, so I turn looking behind me. No one is there.
“All right,” he says, drawing my attention back. “Let’s have it.”
“What?” My leg begins bouncing nervously and my fingers tap lightly on the edge of the small kitchen table. His eyes move between the two ticks and then he shakes his head.
“I’m your best friend, right?”
I roll my eyes and then say, “Don’t.”
“I want to hear it from you. No judgment zone.�
� He raps his knuckles on the table. “I’m not a chick or a shrink. I don’t want to hear the details, but you might as well admit it.” He shrugs one shoulder and then points a finger in the direction of where I left his wife. “It might get her off your back.”
Confessing feelings isn’t something that I want to do. It isn’t something that I ever do. But then, I’ve never been this consumed with someone before. Love, and all that sissy shit that I’ve heard Jude rave about, was never anything that I planned. In the grand scheme of my world, I adjusted my expectations to absolutely nothing, because that is what I deserve. Somewhere along the way, everything got tangled into this wild mêlée of emotions and now I’m left with shit I don’t even know how to label. What I do know is, Angel is the first thought that I have every morning, and like a fucking pussy, I whisper her name into the dark every night before I go to sleep–like I’m petitioning God for one specific angel.
Pushing a hand into my hair, I sigh, a sound of brokenness, barely detectable to the naked ear. “She’s always there.” I sound pathetic, and he nods, as if he understands. “Running along the mountain every day, riding on that goddamn motorcycle everywhere, hanging out at the club, dancing with your wife every motherfucking night,” I glare accusingly at him, smiling fondly at the memory of his wife rubbing all over Angel right in front of the entire Holidays crowd. “It’s all so hot, and I want her more than I want Nelson hanging for his crimes.” His eyes grow huge. “I can’t breathe. Part of my brain never stops thinking about her. My dreams…” He smirks knowingly. “I’m on overdrive and pissed off constantly, until I see her beautiful eyes.” I swallow hard and take a stuttering breath. “Somehow, they center me. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m tangled in a spider web, and I never want to crawl out.” He nods, holding my pleading stare. Dammit, I need for him to just give it to me straight. Tell me that I’m being a pussy and to get over it already. My voice jumps up an octave when I point out, “She’s like a spy, always there observing, but not really. I don’t know what the fuck.” Pinching my eyes shut, I shake my head, not even understanding what the hell I’m talking about anymore. “Slowly, Angel is becoming engrained in our lives, like she belongs here.” Blowing out a heavy breath and looking at him again, I add, “But I don’t want that. I want her gone…far away.”
