“No?” He asked, not sure what she was saying no to.
“I think you’ve had too much to drink. I’m...” She paused, pushed him away, and moved away from him. “I’m going home. It’s late.”
“Roxie…” He called out, but she was already gone. What had he said wrong?
One moment she’d been like a sensual serpent in his arms, writhing against him with unbridled desire. The next, she was cold, hard as stone, and then she was gone. Was it his question? What he’d done?
Fuck.
Fuck this.
It was all too confusing, what was he supposed to do? She was his employee now, which made this situation even worse. He thought it would help him to get back into her life, that he’d be able to keep an eye on her, maybe make life easier on her. Now?
He might have fucked it all up and made her life worse than it was to begin with.
“Dammit,” he spit out just as Kai opened the door.
“You’re out here, good. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, Kai. Just me fucking things up for myself even worse. What’s up?”
“Just wondering if you saw the alert go off on your phone. Something’s going off over at Lemon Fresh, the dry cleaner’s below where Roxie lives. You want me to handle it?” Kai stared over at him, ready to do whatever Lincoln asked of him.
“No, you’ve had far more to drink than I have.” Lincoln groaned, remembering how she’d said he was drunk. He wasn’t anywhere near drunk, but he wished he could be. The news that something was going on by her place when she was headed there was like a cold splash of Arctic water that sobered him up. “I’ll head over there, check it out.”
“Awesome. I’ve just met the woman of my dreams and I’d like to have another hour or twelve with her.” Kai smirked and went back into the house.
Lincoln just shook his head at his friend and went inside to get his keys and wallet. He checked his phone as he walked out to his car and saw that one of the private security guards had sent an alert to his and Kai’s phones. There were lights going off and on at Roxie’s, but she wasn’t home. Someone was there.
Probably that asshole boyfriend of hers, he thought, gripping the steering wheel as if it was the neck of the prick that wasn’t good enough for her. Should he pay the guy to disappear completely? He’d thought about it before - finding the guy and paying him to go to Mexico or someplace that wouldn’t extradite him back to the US. But the guy was like a boomerang, he’d come back at the worst moment. It was best to find him now and put him in check until his court date.
If his and Kai’s plan worked, that was exactly what would happen.
From what the security detail could find out about Nathan, he was a gambler and a drug addict. He hadn’t been violent to a woman before, and that was the only reason the guy hadn’t simply disappeared yet. Lincoln wasn’t at all squeamish about changing that if he found out differently and it pertained to Roxie. He’d break the guy’s neck himself.
Lincoln drove through mostly empty streets, glaring at a stoplight when it seemed to get stuck. He was about to just take a right and use a backstreet when it finally changed. He was nervous about this situation. Maybe it wasn’t Nathan at her apartment. Maybe it was the guys who were after Nathan, and Roxie was about to walk in on them.
He had another ten minutes of driving ahead of him at least, and that was 10 minutes too long. He poked at buttons on his dash, and he soon heard a phone dialing out over his speakers.
“Have you got eyes on the apartment?” He said without preamble.
“Yes, sir. She’s arrived but so far everything seems alright. I haven’t heard any shouting or signs of distress.” A female voice answered shortly, relaying the most information with the least words possible. Tanya was always efficient like that.
“Can you get anyone higher, look into the windows to confirm she’s alright?” He asked as he stopped at yet another fucking stoplight. They loved those fucking things down here, he noted with another glare.
He liked the new place he’d decided to call home, for now, but there were some things that he’d have to get used to. An overabundance of stoplights was one of those things. It probably netted the city a lot of revenue during tourist season, but it was a pain in the ass when you were in a hurry and trying not to break the speed limit. Too much.
He’d noted how many cops prowled around the place too so he knew he couldn’t push his luck too much with speeding. A cop pulling him over to give him a ticket was the last thing he needed at the moment. It would just delay his arrival at Roxie’s. But that brought another question to mind. What did he do once he got there? Wait with Tanya who had a habit of getting handsy when they were alone together?
The thought made him shudder as he came to a stop at yet another shitty little red light. Tanya was great at her job, she was beautiful, but she was just too aggressive for him. That would be fun in bed and he doubted she was the kind that would scream sexual harassment, but he wasn’t about to press his luck over a woman he’d only ever want to fuck once. Especially when the woman he wanted to fuck over and over might be in trouble.
16
Roxie
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Roxie groaned as she drove home alone. She should have stayed at the party, made sure everything ended safely, but she had to leave.
There was something going on between her and Lincoln that put her on edge and left her feeling…helpless. She hadn’t felt helpless since she managed to get on her feet and get her own apartment. She thought those days were long behind her, but that little knot of anxiety in her chest proved her wrong.
A car braked suddenly ahead of her and Roxie’s foot took over the thinking to slam down on her brake. “I’m not buying you a new car, asshole!”
Her heart started to calm down once the car turned off and the road was clear of traffic. Lincoln’s almost kiss had turned into a very real kiss, something she’d wanted to avoid for the most part. Okay, she’d kind of given in to the idea of sleeping with him again before she found him flirting with Kitty.
She’d warned him off her friend and that caused the knot in her chest to grow a little more. Guilt gnawed at her, because it wasn’t her looking out for her friend that had set her off. No, it was that he was flirting with her very good friend and not her.
Nathan’s face appeared somewhere in the background of her thoughts, destroying her pride in an attribute she thought she had: loyalty. She could justify her actions, say that he’d abandoned her, that he was absent from her life because he’d run away from some men in a van. That begged a question she’d tried to avoid posing, however. Did he even care that he’d left her with men he was afraid of?
What if those men had turned to her instead of going after him? He’d abandoned her to her fate and that shit had happened to her once already. Did she really owe him any kind of loyalty after that?
Roxie was a lot of things people would say were bad, a dancer, a stripper, a woman who was sexually liberated, and so many other things, but she’d never stolen anything from anyone. She’d dealt with the hand life had given to her when she’d been cast out on her own at 18. She’d had to be strong when so many others were still relying on their parents. Was it so wrong to take a little comfort from Lincoln now?
It was that question that had bothered her, that had turned the heat in her veins to ice. Did she want to be owned?
She was afraid of stepping into that world with Lincoln. That little nugget bloomed into life with a fierce swell in her chest just as she drove up to her normal parking spot in the back of Lemon Fresh. Her history with him was complicated, angst-ridden, and weird, but it was also…sweet.
Did she want to replace those memories with him, taint them, with what she was now? That one moment in time was the last time she could remember being clean, sweet, innocent. Everything with him had been pure, couched in trauma, sure, but it had been pure comfort.
She looked up as she got out of the car and saw lights on in her
apartment. That complicated things even more. If it wasn’t Wendy then it was Nathan, since they were the only two people that had keys to her place. Wendy waited at the stairs that led up to her apartment, her face riddled with anxiety.
“Roxie.” Wendy hissed, her eyes large and full of worry. “Nathan’s up there and something’s going on. I don’t think you should go up there.”
“What? Why not?” Roxie scoffed, her gaze on her door. “It’s only Nathan, it’s not like he’s any kind of threat to me.”
“You haven’t seen him yet. He looks so dirty and…wild.” Wendy’s face creased in distaste, her full lips pursed in disapproval. “I think he’s looking for something up there. It sounds like he’s torn all your furniture apart.”
“I see.” Roxie gnawed at her bottom lip for a moment before she realized Wendy shouldn’t be there with her. “Why did you leave the party?”
“Oh, um.” Wendy looked towards the edge of the building, to where the back door to the shop was. Roxie thought she saw a man jerk back into the darkness but couldn’t see who it was. “I decided to come back here, and, uh, that most of that wasn’t for me.”
“Is there somebody back there, Wendy?” Roxie teased and knew she’d hit the nail on the head when Wendy’s pink-dappled cheeks turned bright red. Roxie knew Wendy brought guys back to the shop sometimes because she couldn’t take them home to her parents’ house. She’d said more than once that she needed to move out of her childhood home and find her own apartment, but she hadn’t done it yet. Roxie looked at her friend, daring her to fess up.
“No!” But the fact that she wouldn’t meet Roxie’s eyes made the word a lie.
“Mmhmm. Well, you have fun, babe, I’m going to find out what’s going on upstairs. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“I’ll wait here for a little while, shall I?”
“If you want.” Roxie nodded, her eyes on her door again. “If he’s destroyed my apartment, he can fuck right off, so don’t be surprised if you see him running down the stairs.”
“I’ll stay out of the way, but I’ll be here.” Wendy leaned over to peck Roxie’s cheek before she watched her walk up the stairs.
“Nathan?” Roxie called out as she opened the door but stopped as soon as it opened to stare at the utter devastation inside.
It looked as if some maniac had broken in, bent on destroying everything she owned. Her couch had been slit to pieces with the cushion stuffings discarded on the floor. The carpets were torn to shreds, her cabinet doors hung on their hinges, and the walls were pocked with holes. Through the devastation, she could see into her bedroom where her clothes were strewn all over and her mattress had been treated to the same torture as her couch. “Nathan, what the fuck? And where the fuck have you been?”
Anger surged in to replace the shock and she stomped inside to find him taking a knife to her pillows.
“Where is it, Roxie? Where the fuck is it?” He came at her with a brutal-looking knife in hand. Her eyes zeroed in on a black blade that was obviously made to inflict a lot of damage and pain. He pointed the knife right at her.
She looked up at Nathan, her eyes narrowed in sadness. Did he really think he was the first man to threaten her with a knife? “What are you talking about, Nathan?”
He stood there, a wild light of madness in his eyes, with a full beard, wearing the same clothes he had on the day she picked him up from jail. They were crusty with dirt, mud, and what she thought might be blood, but she didn’t want to look too closely. This lunatic with filthy hair and a dirt-streaked face was not the man she’d almost loved. She knew that in an instant.
“That fucking watch, Roxie, the one crusted in diamonds you selfish bitch. Where is it?”
Roxie went still, feeling the betrayal wash over her in waves. It wasn’t that he wanted to take the watch from her that hurt the most, it was that he’d searched her home for valuables, going so far as to look under the carpets and floorboards at some point in the past. He’d done that when she wasn’t home, probably one night when she was working trying to provide dinner for them both. The motherfucker.
Her eyes narrowed into angry slits as she stared at him, wondering if actual fire was shooting out of them or only felt it was?
“I know about you, Roxie, about who you really are.” He smirked, his teeth furry from weeks without a toothbrush. But he’d managed to find a knife somewhere, and she made sure she knew where he held it, even if she didn’t look directly at it.
“You might think you know about me, Nathan, but you don’t. You don’t know a damned thing about me.” She shook her head in disappointment. This man hadn’t deserved even an ounce of her love.
“I need that watch, Roxie. I need to get out of this place before they kill me. Now give me that watch or I’ll cut your eyes out.” He spit the words out, but she could tell from the way that his eyes darted around that he wasn’t as steady as he thought he was. The sweat on his face could be exertion or withdrawal, and Roxie had to wonder how long it had been since he’d had a fix of whatever it was he’d been on lately.
“I don’t have the watch, you idiot. I pawned it. How the fuck do you think I paid your bail?”
“What? No! I need that watch, Roxie, I have to pay those men in that van back or I’m dead. Get it back.”
“I can’t.” She answered, wondering why he couldn’t get it through his thick skull that the watch was gone.
He rushed at her, pushing her up against the wall, and slammed the knife into the wall just over her head. “Get me that fucking watch right now, Roxie.”
Roxie didn’t scream, she had far too much control over herself in these kinds of situations to let him know how afraid she really was. She stared up into his crazy eyes, daring him to hit her.
“Fuck!” He screamed and picked up a glass snow-globe Wendy had bought her as a joke. He threw it at Roxie, but it smashed against the wall.
She ducked as the glass shattered but a piece of it sliced across her face. She felt hot blood rush from the wound, but she didn’t move.
“Roxie? What’s going on in here?”
Roxie looked up and her jaw went slack when she saw Lincoln. His eyes took her in, huddled against the wall, blood dripping down her face, and she could actually see the moment that rage cracked his control. He didn’t say another word, he just looked around the room until he saw Nathan and charged at him.
Roxie saw his fist fly, heard the sound of bone against bone, and heard the way Nathan screeched in pain. Nathan didn’t fight back though, too strung out to actually do anything but curl up in a ball.
Lincoln didn’t make any sounds at all as he continued to punch Nathan. He was completely quiet as he watched his fist smash against the other man’s face. Roxie knew he’d kill him if she didn’t do something, and she launched herself at the men.
“Lincoln, stop. Don’t kill him. You don’t deserve what will happen to you. Not for him. Stop. Please.” She leaned over Nathan, not to protect him but to protect Lincoln from the repercussions of beating the slimy bastard to death.
“Roxie?” Lincoln asked, his voice distant and confused.
“It’s okay. Let’s get out of here.”
“We’re done, Roxie, I’m through with you. You’re a fucking whore.” Nathan spit on her face as she got off him and she looked back with a laugh that felt as if it set her free.
“Oh really? Did you really think I’d take you back? I’ll be glad to never see you again you filthy bum.” She grabbed her bag from the floor where she dropped it and followed Lincoln downstairs. “Just a second, I want to do something first.”
Lincoln stood there, staring up her steps to make sure Nathan didn’t come down them.
“Hello, police? I’d like to report a break-in at my apartment.” Roxie waited, gave the police her address, and looked back up at Lincoln. “If he’s in jail, I’ll at least know you’ll get your money back.”
“If they don’t revoke his bail,” Lincoln said calmly, glancing at his knuckl
es. They were bleeding but he didn’t seem to care. “Not that I care. I wish you hadn’t stopped me, Roxie.”
Wendy came up before she could reply, concern etched on her face, and swamped Roxie in a hug. “What happened, why are you bleeding?”
“He threw that snow globe you bought me in my direction and it shattered against the wall.” Roxie brushed it off, but Lincoln broke in.
“He was about to take a knife to her, I made sure he didn’t,” Lincoln said, now standing guard at the stairs.
The police car that pulled up must have been close by, for a change. Roxie was glad to see them and told them what had happened. Both cops went up the stairs and knocked on the door before they walked in. A few moments later one of the cops came down with Nathan in handcuffs while the other one stopped in front of Roxie.
“He’s admitted he’s the one that tore your place apart. Do you want to press charges?”
“I do, yes.” Roxie stood tall, not afraid at all. Lincoln and Wendy were there with her, why would she be?
“You’ll have to come down to the station to file the paperwork,” one of the officers said and Roxie tried not to groan in frustration.
“I’ll take you,” Lincoln volunteered. Roxie looked over at him with grateful eyes.
“Thanks,” Roxie replied before she breathed a sigh of relief as the cops drove away with Nathan in the back of their car. “I guess I need to clean up once we get finished at the station.”
“Girl, you can’t stay up there,” Wendy said but Lincoln stepped in.
“Come stay with me, Roxie, like Wendy said, you can’t sleep up there tonight.”
“Go with Lincoln, Rox. I’ll get this cleaned up tomorrow and a contractor in to fix what can be fixed.” Wendy slowed, sad for her friend. “We can replace the furniture, that’s no big deal. I’m only glad you’re alright.”
“Me too.” Roxie breathed, relief a wave that made her knees weak. She sat down on the steps and looked over at Lincoln. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Dancing With Lies (Barre To Bar Book 1) Page 15
