His words came to me, words I missed when he said them, and they filled my head so full, when we made it out of the hall into the living room, I had to blink my eyes to clear my mind.
Then I stared at Lanie’s fiancé Elliott standing in my living room with Rush and Tabby. The movie was on pause and there was no Lanie in sight.
Weird. Elliott never came over by himself.
“You know this guy?” Tack’s voice rumbled in my ear both audibly and physically.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Hey, Elliott,” I called, smiling at him.
“Hey, uh… Tyra,” Elliott replied, his eyes, for some bizarre reason, darting back and forth repeatedly from Tack to me.
Well, maybe it wasn’t bizarre. Tack was a badass biker who was holding me and Elliott knew me pretty well so he knew I wasn’t seeing a badass biker. He also probably got the lowdown from Lanie about Tack because I was pretty sure she told him everything. So he was probably surprised I was standing there in Tack’s arm with two teenagers in my living room that could not be mistaken as the fruit of anyone else’s loins but Tack’s.
Still, it was bizarre the way he was doing it because it didn’t seem like surprise or shock.
It seemed like fear.
Elliott was not tall, he was five foot seven and Lanie was five foot nine. Elliott had thinning blond hair and a receding hairline. Lanie had thick, lustrous, long dark hair akin to Tabby’s. Elliott had a paunch and a weak chin. Lanie was slim and svelte, a human hanger, no tits or ass, amazing bone structure, beautiful green eyes and she was pure elegance from top-to-toe. Lanie was a human goddess. Elliott was nowhere near a human god.
But Elliott was brilliant, a genius and not one of those socially awkward or arrogant geniuses. He was easy to talk to. He was funny. He was sweet. He was thoughtful. He was generous and he was kind. He never missed Lanie’s birthday and always bought her the perfect present, not always something expensive, but always something she wanted or something meaningful. Ditto with anniversaries. She said he made her laugh. She said he listened when she had a bad day. She said he held her when they slept. And she said she knew beyond any doubt she was the most important thing in the world to him. So Goddess Lanie saw beyond Elliott’s looks and he became the most important thing in the world to her.
They were a love match. Surprising to some, I was sure, but real. And because he made my best friend happy, I adored him.
“What’s up?” I asked, moving forward only to be tugged back, again bizarrely, into Tack’s body. This was bizarre not because he was holding me, which, I was getting, he intended to do whenever the hell he felt like it. No, it was bizarre how he was doing it.
In the hall, his natural badassness made me feel casually safe.
Right now, his tight hold and the feel of his hard body, statue-still and weirdly alert at my back, made me feel he was intentionally keeping me safe.
What on earth?
“Uh… I was wondering –” Elliott started.
“Is Lanie here?” I asked because I didn’t want Lanie there. I was a little panicked that she’d come storming in at any moment, see Tack, see his kids, see the evidence of fajitas and the movie and lose her mind.
Lanie might be pure elegance from top-to-toe but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be pure drama and when Lanie let it rip, watch out.
“No,” Eliott replied, his eyes went over my shoulder and up and he asked, “Can I uh… Kane… er, Mr. Allen, can I talk to you?”
I stared at Elliott wondering what he was on about and who he was talking to.
Elliott’s eyes flitted to me then back to Tack when he finished, “Alone.”
That was when my body went statute-still.
It stayed statue-still for approximately a nanosecond before I heard Tack say to Elliott, “Don’t move,” then he turned me around, let me go, grabbed my hand and I found myself tugged down the hall. Then I found myself in my room and the door was again closed.
I tipped my head back to stare up at Tack.
“How do you know that guy?” he asked.
“He’s my best friend’s fiancé,” I answered.
Tack looked down to the floor and muttered, “Fuck.”
Okay, now he was scaring me again but for a different reason.
“What?” I whispered.