Head Hunter (City Shifters the Pack #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,36

cats. It had been fucking stupid to bring up the tiger, to have the conversation a second longer than necessary, and yet... I couldn’t think with Dodge right there. He just stood there, watching me, and I got nervous wondering what he thought. It made me blurt out something about the damn tiger and then Bridger must have known something was off...

I still couldn’t believe my stupidity even as we got in my car and Dodge started driving. I meant to drive, but he opened the passenger door for me and I got in automatically. Then my cheeks heated until he must have seen. I hated feeling so off-balance around him. He shouldn’t have had the power to make me feel so insecure and uncertain. I’d known him a day.

Although I’d almost slept with him, had been perfectly willing to get naked... until he wised up and walked away. Or maybe it had all been a game to him. Maybe it still was. He’d been sent to retrieve me for his boss. Maybe that was where his interest ended. Pretending to be interested in me physically, pretending to talk to me like he wanted to learn about me and share about himself, might have only been a way to pass the time. It hurt more than it should have, that maybe he’d used me. That he pretended about everything. That he might still be pretending.

He still had my phone. I clutched my purse and stared out the window. He hadn’t said anything since holding out his hand to me in the apartment, waiting for me to go to him. He didn’t just grab me and drag me out of there. It seemed like it was important to him that I choose to walk out of the apartment, even if I didn’t know why.

The mystery still lingered. He drove through the city and stopped at a popular coffeeshop for coffee and breakfast sandwiches. He handed me one despite my protest that I’d already had breakfast. Apparently toaster pastries didn’t count. We were back in the car for only a few minutes and a few turns when he cursed under his breath. I glanced at him. “What?”

“I think someone is following us.” Dodge exhaled but didn’t hit the gas or send the car careening into an alley to lose whoever might have pursued us. Instead, he made a reasonable left turn and kept going.

“So... why are you still driving like a grandma?”

He shot me a dirty look. “They expect you to go to a client meeting, so we’re going to a client meeting.”

“What client?” I wanted to turn around and search the streets behind us. “You’re not going to drag me back to Evershaw’s house, are you?”

“I have something else in mind,” he said. “Just – trust me.”

It was asking a lot, all things considered. But he’d been right about a lot of things, so one more seemed like a reasonable accommodation. Just the one, though.

“Persephone...” he started, then stopped. He shook his head.

I didn’t look at him, just in case it made him clam up completely. “What?”

“Nothing.” Dodge pulled the car up in front of one of the massive glass-and-chrome monstrosities in the financial district. “We’re here for the client meeting.”

“Who the hell is the client?” I stared up at the building as I hauled myself out of the car, and wished I’d worn a suit instead of the jeans and blazer.

“Friend of a friend,” he said. “He’ll let us hang out here until we have our lunch meeting.”

I shook my head but did my best to look like I was on my way to a meeting as he led the way into the fancy lobby and across the sleek tile to the bank of elevators. “You don’t really think someone is following us, right? That was just – just nerves. Right?”

Dodge hit the button for the floor and didn’t answer until the doors closed on us, alone in the small box. “I’m reasonably sure.”

“How sure is that?”

“There are at least four of them in two different cars,” he said. He squeezed my shoulder, maybe trying to be reassuring. “They picked us up a few blocks from your apartment, before the coffee shop. I wasn’t certain until after the coffee shop.”

I sucked in a breath, ready to scream at how fucking unbelievable my life had gotten in just a few hours, but the elevator arrived at one of the upper floors and I didn’t want to make a scene in that