“Fuck no,” he answered. “Kickin’ Nick out. You’re late. Come here.”
I crossed my arms on my chest. “Actually, no. I don’t have time to go there. I’ve only got fifteen minutes on the meter but it won’t take that long to say what I have to say to you.”
His eyes never left me as I spoke and they stayed on me when I was done. They did this a while. Then they stayed on me as he moved to the phone, pulled it out of its charger, hit a button and put it to his ear.
“Spin? Yeah, Knight. Listen, there’s a blue Corolla parked somewhere on the street, rosary beads and St. Christopher medallion hanging from the rearview. Meter’s gonna run out. Feed it. I’ll get the keys to you to move it into the garage in ten, maybe fifteen. Yeah?” Pause then, “Great. Later.”
Then he put the phone down and went back to his butcher wrapped meat.
I stared.
Knight looked down at meat, declaring, “Shit car, babe. Gotta get you something decent.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my car,” I snapped.
His neck twisted and his eyes came back to me. “Boring.”
“It gets me from point A to point B,” I replied.
“Yeah, but it does it with absolutely zero style.”
Why were we talking about my car?
“You sent Spin or… whoever on a wasted journey. I’m just here to tell you it would make me very happy if I never saw you or your brother again and if I do, it would make me very unhappy in the sense that I would feel the need to phone the police. If you would like to avoid that hassle, I’ll avoid your club and you make sure you and Nick avoid me.”
“Babe, come here.”
Was he high?
“No, I’m leaving,” I fired back.
“You don’t wanna walk away from me.”
My brows shot up. “I don’t?”
“No.”
“Wrong,” I retorted. “I do. Sorry,” I went on then finished, “Good-bye Knight.”
Then, as I heard movers coming back, I turned to round the wall of the kitchen.
I got one step in. Then I was not only in the kitchen but across it, my back pressed to the counter and Knight pressed into me.
I had my hands clenched in the sides of his tee at his waist, my head tipped back, my chest was rising and falling rapidly and I was freaked.
He had movers, right there in the house and he manhandled me.
“Move away,” I whispered mainly because I couldn’t make my voice get louder.
“No,” he whispered back.
Then his hands came up toward my face and I flinched, preparing for anything but they settled cupping my jaws and my squinted eyes opened wide. This was because his touch was gentle and, even freaked out, it could not be denied it was sweet.
And his face was different. Not expressionless. As those vibrant blue eyes moved over my face, there was something working at the backs of them, something I didn’t know him enough to get but something that I knew instinctively boded bad things for me.
“Wars fought over a face like this,” he murmured like he was talking to himself, my heart stopped beating and his thumbs moved lightly across my cheeks. “A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endure torture to protect it, take a bullet for it,” his eyes came to mine, “poison his brother to possess a face like this.”
Oh.