Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,92

been altogether present. The good thing was that when the sheriff had arrived with his deputies, I’d stowed my gun in my room, in the locked gun case.

“Hey, Dez!”

We both turned, and there was Nick, smiling at us.

“Oh my God, the great one knows my name,” Dez said, chuckling, pointing to himself.

Nick nodded, and Dez slipped his arm free from where it was wrapped around my shoulders, straightened up so he was no longer leaning on me, and hopped off the porch to go to the man with three platinum albums to his name.

I watched them, and when Dez was close enough, Nick took hold of his shoulder and drew him in to talk. As he spoke, Dez turned to look back at me, and I saw his face split into a huge grin before he started laughing. Easy enough to figure out what Nick had said.

I understood that Dez was interested in me, and clearly Nick had taken note of that too, and was letting Dez know the score. He was probably telling him that looks were deceiving, and I was not the guy who was going to throw him up against a wall and fuck him. He was confiding to Dez that I preferred to be held down, not do the holding. For his part, Dez apparently found that hysterical.

Getting up, I charged into the house and went up the stairs, hurled open the door to the bedroom I was supposed to be sharing with Nick, slammed it shut behind me, and then bumped back against it, locking it in the process. Standing alone in the dark, breathing in and out so I didn’t put my hand through a wall, I realized that if I hadn’t been drinking, I would have grabbed someone’s keys and gotten the hell out of there. Since I’d had many more than a couple, I had no choice but to try and soak up the cool air in the room.

I was so stupid. I knew better than to maroon myself anywhere. Tomorrow I would rent a car so I had my getaway. This was no longer a Torus job, I could leave at any time, and the more I thought about everything, the worse it got, until I knew I had to go. Pulling out my phone, I began searching for a cab company that would come and get me.

The doorknob turned, then again, then jiggled back and forth. Someone bumped it from the other side, but I didn’t make a sound.

“Loc?”

I concentrated on breathing.

“Loc,” Nick growled and banged on the door. “Let me in.”

It took a second, and when I spoke, it came out choked and hard. “Not right now.”

“Why are you mad? Why the hell would you be mad?”

“Just go away,” I ordered, hearing the humiliation and hurt in my voice, hating how vulnerable I sounded.

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“Keep your voice down,” I rebuked him, crossing the room to the nightstand and flipping on the small lamp there. “Show some respect for the people whose house you’re in.”

“I’m not the one—let me in!” he demanded, his voice booming.

I rushed back to the door. “Why don’t you go back downstairs and talk about me some more. That should be good for another laugh.”

“What are you—did I embarrass you, talking to Dez?”

Of course he had. “Yeah,” I croaked out. “All that talk about how important I was to you was just a load of shit I guess, huh, kid?”

“Kid?” he repeated, his voice dropping low, incredulous and icy. “What the hell are you—how many fuckin’ drinks did you have?”

“Go away,” I ordered him a second time. “Go back to the party. I’ll be outta here in just a bit, and you can go find a new––”

He kicked the door, hard. “You want a scene? I’ll make a scene. And it’ll look great in the documentary. Everyone, everywhere, will know you’re a fuckin’ lunatic!”

I took another breath. “You hurt me.”

There was quiet, and then the door creaked like he was pressing his weight against it. “I have no idea what’s going on in your head,” he said, and I could hear the desperate pitch in his voice, like he was working really hard not to freak out. “But if you think I’m just going to allow anyone, friend of the family or not, to be all over you, you’ve lost your fuckin’ mind.”

The hell was he talking about?

Levering off the door, I turned and unlocked it, then threw it open to find a seething