He’d hardly managed getting away, ignoring the mad impulse to scoop her off her feet and hold her.
God, if he could just hold her…
“You didn’t touch her, did you?” he found himself demanding. He couldn’t resist himself. Locke had an ability to woo women in without any kind of effort. It didn’t matter he was so intimidating. There was just something disgustingly appealing about the man.
“No,” Locke answered. If bothered by the question, he didn’t let it show in the slightest. And that was the other thing with Locke. You couldn’t know if he was telling the fucking truth.
Locke’s morality had abandoned him after he’d emerged from that hole all those years ago.
He was a spider now.
Lies were nothing to him.
Thames’ curiosity went up another notch. “What does Charlotte do for you exactly?”
Locke didn’t skip a beat. “Keeps my businesses in balance, primarily my law firm and the club. That’s where she is most days.”
Thames studied him for a while. “Why Charlotte?”
“Why not Charlotte?”
“You could have a team of people keeping your books balanced.”
“Charlotte had nothing growing up. Her dad was an alcoholic before he died. Did you know she witnessed his car crash?”
“Yeah, I know about it.”
“He had a bunch of mental issues himself, wasn’t medicated and wound up self-destructing. They had little money, and her mother was a sadistic piece of work that gave her less than nothing. As a result, Charlotte’s got some weird habits. Not sure you’ve ever noticed, but she hoards her money in cash. She sets them up in neat little piles and pays her bills at the same time and day of every month. Her entire environment is structured in a neat and orderly way, and don’t get me started on her obsession over numbers. She’s never fucked up once since I employed her. It’s hard not to admire that kind of tenacity.”
He was sceptical. “You hired her because she’s OCD?”
“I wanted to help her.”
Thames responded dryly, “I never took you to be so generous.”
A cool smile spread on Locke’s lips. “I tried my hand at altruism. I spent time at the bottom of the barrel, scoping out the lay of the land.”
“What for?”
“I wanted to see what people were like.”
“What was your verdict?”
His smile went flat. “They’re the exact same.” And before Thames could respond, he added, “Except Charlotte. She’s not like them. She’s not like everyone else.”
Thames breathed slow, wistfully picturing her face. “No, she isn’t.”
“I saw it from the start. You did too.”
“Why do you think I scooped her up so fast?”
“She deserved better.”
If his comment was supposed to piss Thames off, it didn’t work. Thames viciously smirked at his childhood friend. “You think you’d have done better?”
Locke shrugged one shoulder. “I think everything happened the way it was supposed to.”
“Me locked up.”
“Billy in the ground,” he corrected, another glance in the rear-view. “He was too dangerous. You did the right thing.”
Thames felt the pressure behind his eyes again, though nothing happened. He stared back at Locke, biting back, “At the expense of losing everything.”
Locke was indifferent. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” His voice dropped; the question directed more at himself. Was he here, really? Because he didn’t feel like himself. He felt like a stranger in his own town.
Coming to a sudden stop, Locke put the car in park and sat back, levelling Thames with a final look. “You need rest, Thames.”
Looking out, Thames took in the motel they’d pulled into. “I have somewhere to be tonight.”
“You can’t make it back to the city. You’ll be in a car wreck in a matter of hours with no valid licence, and I’m not looking to bail you out again anytime soon. You need rest.”
He eyed Locke. “How’d you know I was in the city?”
Locke evaded the question. “The same way I knew you had arrived at my club. I got eyes everywhere, Thames. While you spent your days surviving max, I spent mine grinding.”
“Still did nothing for your soul, did it, Max?”
Locke glanced ahead now, appearing distant. “Were you able to keep yours in lock up, Conor?”
First name basis now. This was serious.
Thames understood perfectly. Locke lost his soul in the hole, and he’d been without it for almost two decades. Was Thames staring at his future self?
The thought unnerved him.
“I borrowed a car,” he finally said, steering the conversation to safer grounds.
Locke nodded. “I’ll have it here by tomorrow morning.”