his opponent the opposing show of force they tried to incite.
“Franklin, you need to apologize to Estelle.”
He was ignored as he expected, the other man’s lips curling into a grin. “Hello, Adam. You’ve been ignoring my calls.”
“If I’d known that answering would have prevented you from showing up here today, I would have...” He considered his options. “I still wouldn’t have answered.” Adam crossed his arms over his chest and dug in. “Apologize to Estelle. Now. I’m not asking.”
Franklin considered him, his gaze never leaving Adam’s face. “I apologize.”
It was as good as he was going to get. Adam nodded at Estelle, his smile communicating his own apology. He waited until she’d left before he turned back towards Franklin, dropping the smile entirely.
“Whatever you’re here for, the answer is ‘no,’ ‘none of your business,’ and ‘get out.’”
“All of the above,” Justin added.
“That too,” Adam agreed.
“Cute.” Franklin sneered. “I’m here to find out why you have a redhead with big tits asking questions about me.”
Franklin’s tone was ambivalent but the words hit Adam like a sledgehammer and it took most of his will to not react physically to his words. However, the spark of interest in his adoptive father’s eyes told him that he wasn’t holding his poker face as well as he usually did. A guttural sound of outrage behind him communicated that Tess wasn’t maintaining her cool either. Franklin’s eyes slid from Adam’s face to look beyond him, to where Tess was standing.
His eyes raked over her before he spoke. “Well, they weren’t wrong about the tits.”
“Shut your mouth,” Adam warned, facing off with Franklin with a shove to his chest before Adam turned and walked toward the fuming Tess.
Now he knew what she looked like when she was pissed and it was so not the right time for him to linger on the fact that she was gorgeous. Anger raised the pink in her cheeks and made her eyes flash a poisonous green.
He never wanted to kiss her more than he did right this instant.
He never wanted to keep Franklin away from someone more than he did in this instant.
“Tess,” he murmured as he reached out and grabbed her hand. She tensed, attempting to get him to let her go as she peered over his shoulder, the venom shooting out of her glare like a laser. If it had been leveled at anyone other than Franklin Thornton her opponent would be cowering in a corner, but Adam guessed that Franklin was giving as good as he got. Letting these two at each other would be a very bad idea. He tugged her in closer and leaned down to murmur, his voice pitched low and edged with a warning that he wasn’t going to argue about this. “Don’t.”
At his demand, she stopped resisting him, her eyes snapping to meet his with the sizzling impact of a lightning bolt hitting too close to the mark. Tess wanted to fight. Her reaction was visceral, a tremble of tension that ran up and down her body and hitched her breath with every inhale. Adam slid his hand around her wrist, letting his fingers soothe her with the gentlest touch against her rapidly fluttering pulse point. Franklin got him riled too, pushed buttons he didn’t even know he had, but her reaction was strange, more than just anger over his words, and prompted a million questions in his mind. Questions that would wait until later. Right now, he wanted to put as much distance between Franklin and Tess as he could manage.
“Tess, go make sure that Estelle is okay,” he asked. She hesitated, her refusal poised on the edge of the tensed hard line of her lips. “Please, baby, just do this.”
The unexpected endearment shocked him as it slid past his lips and she was now utterly focused on him. He would have bet money that the world had ground to a damn halt except for the electric current running between the two of them. Tess didn’t look angry, didn’t look like she objected, her expression was more shocked pleasure and sharp interest than anything else and he wondered what her reaction would be if he tugged her even closer and tasted her mouth. Only the knowledge that Franklin was watching, a viper in his house, kept him from acting on the impulse.
“Please.”
His one-word plea broke the spell and spurred her into action. He took in the stiffening of her muscles and the quizzical, lingering glance aimed at him. Then she was gone