Zee let out a breath. Gideon was strict about making sure any personal difficulties stayed out of the workshop, and that was part of why Zee liked working with him. There was something peaceful, something calm about working with engines. Making sure everything fit together, that it worked and if it didn’t, then you had to figure out why not. He liked that. It was easy to immerse himself in it, let the past and its demons lie.
At least, it had been easy. But today his head was full of Tamara, and not just her delicious body and carnal mouth. He couldn’t seem to forget what she’d told him about her brother, the vulnerable note in her voice making his protective instincts go crazy. Making him want to fix her too, just like he fixed an engine that wouldn’t work.
Obviously something had happened to her brother, because she’d been angry with him when he’d asked. Angry enough to rip him a new one with a few choice words.
He didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of Royal Road or the fact that he was a mechanic; he had his reasons for being here and they were good ones and none of anyone else’s business. Yet her words needled him. As if even though he didn’t care about anyone else, he cared about what she thought, which was just insane. He’d even felt the need to justify himself, which he never did.
And then, to make matters even worse, she’d apologized, then turned in his arms and asked him what he wanted. No one did that. No one just fucking asked him.
Then she’d gone down on him like a goddess, as if his pleasure were the only important thing in the entire world, and even though he knew it was only an apology, even though he knew not to read anything more into it, he’d felt a surge of possessiveness that was a fucking bad sign if ever there was one.
He didn’t get possessive over women and he didn’t get curious either. He made sure he kept his emotional distance. So why the hell he should be feeling that way about Tamara Goddamn Lennox he had no idea. Somehow she was getting under his skin and he didn’t like it.
She’d asked him to stay the night before and God help him, but some part of him had wanted to even though sleeping over wasn’t exactly the point of their encounters.
You can’t. Remember what you promised Madison?
As if he’d forget. He’d promised her he’d live a good life, be a good person, and he was pretty sure that didn’t include screwing rich girls about to be engaged to be married.
Fuck, what the hell was he doing?
“Zee,” Gideon said firmly, “take the afternoon off. Come back when you’re feeling in a better goddamn mood.”
Zee glowered at his friend, but Gideon just looked back, unimpressed.
“It’s Tamara,” Zee said, because there was a lot he owed the guy, the truth being the least of it. But since he couldn’t tell Gideon that truth, not if he wanted to protect what he had here, he gave him something else instead. “The chick who came to the garage the other night.”
Gideon didn’t look especially surprised. “Oh, you mean the one you banged out back? That one?”
Oh, fucking wonderful. “You heard that?”
“It was difficult not to.”
Zee cursed under his breath. Gideon hadn’t said anything to him afterward, but it wasn’t as if he or Tamara had been quiet that night. “Yeah, her.”
“So what’s the problem? She wanting more or something?”
“She’s a fucking financial intern from a big-deal family, living in a downtown loft the size of the entire gym. She’s not what I want.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re the one wanting more then?”
Zee gave the other man a belligerent look. “It’s just sex. That’s all it is.”
“Right. And that’s why you’re so pissed. Because it’s just sex.”
Zee cursed, shoving himself away from the workbench, the inexplicable anger burning a hole in his gut. “You know you’re right, I should just take the fucking afternoon off.”
Gideon shook his head. “Jesus, between you and Rachel, I’ve nearly got the full complement of assholes today. All I need is Zoe to get pissy and I’ll have the whole goddamn lot. Thank God Levi isn’t arriving till next month is all I can say.”
Zee flipped him the bird, then stalked over to the lockers and got out of his stupid damn overalls.
Gideon merely shrugged and went back to the Honda.
Once he was out of the garage, Zee shoved his hands in his pockets, that restless, antsy feeling mixing with his anger to become something more volatile, dangerous.
He turned toward Sugar Ink, Rachel’s tattoo parlor, wondering if he shouldn’t get a few more feathers for his phoenix, but then decided against it. Ever since Gideon had told Rachel about Levi getting out of jail, she’d been even pricklier than she normally was and he didn’t particularly feel like trading barbs with her right now.
Instead he called into the Royal Road Outreach Center to go over the program he’d sent them and see if they wanted any changes. They were more than happy with it, which eased his mood a little. Then he fell into conversation with some of the kids and that helped too, because it was clear some of them desperately needed some kind of direction, some kind of discipline.
Just like he had when he’d washed up there, a broken, grief-stricken seventeen-year-old with a huge chip on his shoulder and an anger management problem. Back then, he’d had Gideon to pull him out and set him on the right path, but these kids weren’t so lucky.
Or maybe they were, since they had him.
“You’re a good person, Damian,” Madison had said to him that night. “You can make a difference to this world, no matter what your father says.”
He’d clung to those words for a long time after she’d died and they guided him still. And he hoped that in turn, he could pass them on to these kids, help them find the better life that he now had.
He got back to the gym afterward feeling calmer, then spent the rest of the afternoon working out, trying to get rid of his remaining anger with a punching bag.
By the time the evening rolled around, he was good, ready for his fight at Gino’s that night. Calm and in control as usual.
The bar was packed out by the time he’d got there, with lots of newcomers come to try their luck up against the local champion. Money was already changing hands when he stepped into the circle chalked on the ground that marked the ring, the shouts of the onlookers echoing off the concrete surfaces of the bar’s basement, where they always held the fights.
Fuck, he loved the raw emotion of the crowds, the pumping energy that crackled through them. Here he could channel it, focus it. Let it touch the dark anger inside him and allow him to release it, transform it into a pure, controlled violence in a place where there were rules. Where every opponent knew them and went in with their eyes open, no surprises.
Madison probably wouldn’t have approved, but shit, he had to let out his dark side somewhere and this was the safest way he knew how to do it.
As the first guy stepped into the ring, Zee tried to get his head into the fight, gathering all the energy and focusing it, tuning out the sounds of the crowd, concentrating only on the man circling him, watching the expression on his face and the betraying flicker of his eyes. Waiting for the moves that everyone telegraphed sooner or later.
For some reason it took him longer than usual to find that still, quiet place inside him, the one Crazy Dave, his mentor, had taught him back when he’d been a fucked-up, angry teenager, though when his opponent finally came for him, it took Zee all of thirty seconds to end the fight once and for all.
The crowd roared, more money changing hands.
The next opponent came. Then the next. The fights beginning to blend, as they always did, into a round of circling, waiting, watching, looking for weaknesses, a chess game in earnest.
Then his last opponent went down and Zee leapt on him, his arm across the back of the guy’s neck, his knee in the small of the other man’s back. The man groaned and struggled, but Zee kept up the pressure. Eventually, his opponent cursed and conceded the fight, a
nd Zee released him, rising to his feet and standing back.
That’s when he saw the man in the suit.
The guy wasn’t like the others, all roaring and shouting, but rather merely standing there in the middle of the crowd with his arms folded, staring at Zee. He wore a black three-piece suit like an undertaker, but unlike an undertaker he was smiling.
And even though Zee was a few feet away, the crowd between them, he felt like he’d been sucker-punched. Because he knew the man. It had been years, ten of them to be exact, but there was no mistaking those cold, dark eyes. That mirthless, menacing smile.
It was Victor Krupin, his father’s henchman.
Everything in him went on high alert, his muscles tensing, his hands coming up, his body automatically readying itself for another fight.
But Krupin only smiled that still familiar smile of his, as out of place and wrong as a smile on the face of a torturer. Then he casually turned around and strolled out of the basement without any hurry at all.
Zee’s heartbeat thundered in his head, the sound of the crowd becoming distorted and muffled, his blood slowly but surely turning to ice in his veins.
It had taken him a long time to stop looking over his shoulder. To stop glancing into the face of every stranger he passed, wondering if the person was one of his father’s minions out looking for him. To stop leaving threads taped carefully over his doors and windows in case his apartment had been broken into. To stop carrying the handgun he kept in the top drawer of his dresser.
But it was all for nothing.
Somehow, his father had finally found him.
* * *
Tamara stared at the phone ringing noisily on her desk. She knew who it was and really didn’t want to answer it, in no mood to speak to her mother today. Then again, her mother would just keep on calling until she answered so ignoring it wouldn’t work either.
Cursing under her breath, she reached out, picked up the offending piece of technology, and hit the answer button. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?”
“Hi, honey.” Cassandra Lennox’s voice was full of her usual solicitousness. “Just checking up on you this morning, seeing if you’re feeling any better.”
Tamara looked at the spreadsheet open on her computer. Scott wanted all the data entered into it by the end of the day and it was already three P.M. She didn’t really have time to chat since she was only halfway through, but she knew her mother. Cassandra wouldn’t leave it alone until she’d been reassured. “Oh, I’m feeling much better today, Mom.”
She really wasn’t. She felt tired and gritty-eyed, and the raw places on her body ached.
And she couldn’t stop thinking about Zee. About the things he’d told her and the way he’d held her. And the secret she’d told him.
She had a sudden vision of confessing to her mother. By the way, Mom. I told this mechanic from Royal Road about Will. About how he probably had schizophrenia even though you insisted everything was fine. No, I didn’t tell him anything else, but maybe if he’d stayed, I would have....
“Okay, that’s great to hear, honey.” There was a pause, but Tamara knew her mother wasn’t quite done, that there was another question she wanted to ask.
For some reason it made her stomach give a nervous flutter. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “I can hear the ‘but.’ ”
Her mother gave a soft laugh. “Oh, it’s nothing really. Just . . . You know your boss was at the function last night, don’t you?”
Something cold wound down Tamara’s spine. She’d seen Scott across the room, had known he was going to be there, but she hadn’t spoken to him. “Yes, of course. And?”
There was a small silence.
“He was outside having a cigarette and he . . . saw you getting into a car with someone.”
The cold began to spread out, sending tendrils of ice through her chest, and she had to take a small silent breath to calm herself. “What someone?” Thankfully the question came out sounding much less sharp than she’d anticipated.
“A man he’d never seen before.” Her mother paused. “The man had tattoos, apparently. Drove one of those muscle cars.”
Tamara’s fingers closed hard around the plastic of the phone. From where she sat, she could see Scott in his office, talking to someone standing near his desk. He was smiling, obviously enjoying whatever conversation he was having.
The bastard. The complete and utter bastard.
What? You think this is his fault? He just caught you. You’re the one who was doing something wrong.
Was it wrong though? Was being with Zee, finding out who she truly was, stepping outside her role for just a few hours, truly wrong?
Of course it is. You’re going to be engaged soon. What kind of behavior is that? After all your parents have done for you.
She blinked hard, trying to focus on the silence at the other end of the phone. “Oh, you mean Zee?” she said, as if it was no big deal. “He’s just a friend, Mom. He was in the area so I asked him to give me a ride home.”
“A friend?” There was a world of doubt in her mother’s voice. “Where did you meet him?”
Suddenly anger erupted inside her, hot as a solar flare. She tried to keep it down, to keep it under control. “Can I ask what business is it of Scott’s? Or of yours? He’s just a friend, that’s all.”
“I know, dear, I know.” Her mother turned soothing. “But you have to be careful who you associate with. And Scott said—”
“Scott said what?”
There was an offended silence. “Please don’t cut me off like that, Tamara. I’m not attacking you.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, trying for patience. “But it sure sounds like you are.”
“Well, you can see how it looks, can’t you? Getting into a car late at night with a strange man.”
Oh hell, she needed to get it together. Protesting too much was going to make her look defensive and she didn’t want that. “He’s a friend, like I said. He runs some self-defense classes that I went to with someone from work, nothing more.” She forced out a laugh. “I mean, did Scott think I was seeing him or something?”
Another moment of silence.
“Scott didn’t know quite what to believe,” Cassandra said carefully. “He was . . . concerned.”
Oh, Tamara knew how concerned he was. Concerned enough to get as much dirt on her as he possibly could. “I have a boyfriend already.” She tried to inject a note of amusement into her voice. “I mean, really, Robert is pretty much perfect, like you keep saying. Why would I want someone else?”
“Well, true,” her mother sighed. “There is that. And I have to say, I can’t see you taking up with someone who looks like a criminal. Even if he isn’t.”
Sure, Zee was a “criminal.” Who’d held her in his arms and given her a bath. Who stayed in Royal Road because of his friends and was starting to run his own gym. Yeah, definitely a criminal.
The anger turned inside her, aiming at her mother and the assumptions she was making.
That’s nothing new though, is it? She and Dad made assumptions about Will, too.
Tamara’s jaw tightened as she bit down on all the words she suddenly wanted to say and couldn’t. “So, is there anything else you wanted to talk about, Mom? Because if not, I’ve got a ton of work to do this afternoon.”
There wasn’t anything else and, after her mother had ended the call, Tamara put her phone back down on the desk, realizing that every single muscle in her body was clenched tight.
With an effort she tried to relax, breathing in deep the way the therapist had taught her in the torturous months after Will’s death. Normally it worked, but not this time.
She leaned back in her chair, staring sightlessly at her computer screen.
Was being seen with Zee going to put her shot at the permanent position at risk? Did Scott hate her enough to use that against her? Clearly he’d had no compunction about bringing what he’d seen to her parents, so he knew they wouldn’t be pleased abou
t it. He was trying to undermine her, make her look bad. But why? What had she ever done to him but been the boss’s daughter?
Ah, but what was the point in wondering about that? Whatever his reasons were, they didn’t change the fact that he was out for her blood.
Which means the smart thing to do is probably not see Zee again.
The sharp edge of disappointment rested against her skin, cutting a line so thin she barely felt it. At first. And then, as she thought about the reality of not seeing Zee, the pain set in, unexpectedly sharp.
The spreadsheet on the screen blurred in her vision and she had to take a breath.
God, she was ridiculous, because it wasn’t like they had anything special. It was sex and that was it. Sure, it was fantastic, mind-blowing sex, but nothing more than that. Did she really want to risk her success and alienating her entire family for the sake of a few nights with Zee?
No, of course she didn’t. That would be crazy. That would leave her with no support, no nothing. Her chance for making things right with her parents, atoning for what she’d done, gone.
She couldn’t risk that, she just couldn’t.
Pulling herself together, she put thoughts of Zee out of her mind. She had to get this stupid spreadsheet done; otherwise she’d be here all night.
Around seven, Scott came out of his office, briefcase in hand, obviously ready to go home. He glanced at her as he locked his office door, then walked over to stand threateningly in front of her desk.
“How’s it going?”
“Nearly done.” She kept her gaze on her screen. “It’ll be on your desk by tomorrow morning.”
There was a silence.
Tamara gritted her teeth and looked up at him. “Something I can do for you?”
Scott’s blue eyes were gleaming. “Boyfriend make another quick trip from New York last night?”
A trickle of ice water slid down her back. What the hell was he talking about?
He lifted a finger and gestured. “You need to invest in some scarves.”
She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch the place on her neck he’d pointed at. The place Zee had bitten her the night before.
Dirty For Me (Motor City Royals) Page 13
