you’ve had one too many.” He reached for her arm. “Let’s get you sorted before the meeting.”
The shy seventeen-year-old I once knew, the one who could make a grown man cry when she sang, that girl was gone. The fire in front of me swept her arm up in a calculated maneuver only someone with martial arts training would know. Blocking Vance as if she’d done it a hundred times before, she didn’t even blink before both her hands landed on my chest.
She shoved with determined strength.
I held my ground, but Vance moved.
Pinning one arm behind her, his other hand went to her throat. Holding her against his chest, bringing his mouth to her ear, he spoke in a lethally calm tone. “Not the time or place,” he warned.
Nostrils flaring, eyes on me, she grabbed the tumbler. “Yes, it is.”
“Do you need me to work this out in front of him?” Vance tightened his hold on her. “Because I will.” Dropping his voice, his expression turned lethal. “Without hesitation.”
Still glaring at me, she growled.
She fucking growled.
“Do you?” Vance barked, shaking her once.
The drunken mess in front of me flinched, but then she shuddered as if a full-body shiver was sweeping up her spine. “Let go,” she rasped.
“Drop the glass,” Vance warned.
“No.”
Leveraging her arm higher, Vance spared me a warning glance. “Leave.”
Disgusted, enraged that I’d allowed any emotions to be provoked, I turned toward the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Perfect,” Sanaa spat at my back. “Walk away.”
As I reached for the handle the tumbler hit the solid wood door next to my head and shattered.
A split second later, her grunt filled the suite before the sound of two bodies colliding with a piece of furniture echoed off the walls.
Opening the door, refusing to look back, I walked out with controlled movements.
The door shut behind me, then shook as if a body hit it from the inside right before her muffled scream traveled down the carpeted hotel corridor.
My hands fisted.
Vance barked out an order. “Get up.”
My jaw clenched.
“Make me,” she taunted.
Furniture crashed.
I walked to the elevator.
“Do it,” I demanded, holding the bottle of scotch like a weapon.
Vance’s smile was leering. “Oh, don’t think I won’t, pet.”
“I’m not your fucking pet.”
He raised his left eyebrow as he circled me. “Aren’t you now?”
“No.” Every hour I spent in Ronan’s presence made me hate this game more and more, but I stupidly couldn’t let it go. “Make your move.”
His back straightening as sure as if he’d stepped off the mat, Vance grinned. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I have a meeting to get to. Speed it up.” Despite the meeting originally planned as a ruse to get visibility in a semi-public space, I cared about the charity concert. It’d benefit recent victims of a hurricane that’d blown through Trinidad and Tobago. I could sing one more time for that.
Vance smirked as he picked up a bottled water from the bar and poured it into a glass just to stall for time. “Nothing will start without you present.” He casually took a sip, then nodded at the bottle still in my hand. “You going to use that as a weapon or are you simply drinking to dull the pain?”
“I’m not in pain.” I was angry. At him. At Ronan. At myself. At the bomber that needed to show his face so I could get off this carnival ride that had become my life.
Vance made a noncommittal sound low in his throat as he drank again.
“Come on,” I demanded, making a come-here gesture with my free hand.
Glancing at an overturned dining chair and the coffee table that was askew, he smirked. “I think we’ve already covered our bases for today, love.”
My neck was sore where he’d gotten a hold of me before I could block him. My shins were smarting from my own stupid mistake of running into the coffee table, and I hadn’t been able to take him down in two days. We were nowhere near done.
I calculated the distance between us.
He chuckled. “Oh, I do love a good tell, sweetheart.” He set his glass down. “But really, do you actually think you can take me down in your state?”
“I’m not in a state.” I was so far past that.
“No?”
I hated his superior attitude. “No.”
His eye still colored from when Ronan had hit him, he gave me the sign. Holding his hands up in surrender, the stupid gesture he’d insisted on us having early on, he gave me our version of a safe word.