“Listen, Ava, don’t worry about Dom. I’ll take care of him,” he assured me.
Oh no.
My eyes went back to Luke. He was still leaning on the counter, still watching me and now his eyes were narrowed.
I looked away again. “I think someone’s already working on that,” I told him.
“I know, you got Stark doing it. Tell him to back off. We want to take care of this in the family.”
Oh shit.
No way was I going to tell Luke that Ren Zano was going to take care of Dom for me and he could back off. No way in hell.
I would never have expected my life could get more complicated but there it was.
“Ren,” I said softly and stupidly for the minute I uttered his name, the air in the room changed and not in a good way. It took all my efforts to keep my eyes looking out the window and ignore the scary air.
“I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night, apologize properly for all this shit.”
“I’m busy,” I said immediately.
“Tuesday.”
I felt Luke get close rather than seeing him do it. I felt this because the not good air in the room started pressing on me.
“Erm…” I said, too focused on the scary air to come up with another excuse to avoid a date with Ren.
“I’ll take you to Carmine’s on Penn. You love it there.”
I did love it there and I thought it was kind of sweet that Ren remembered. We’d all gone out, Sissy and Dom, Noah and me and Ren and one of his women; I forgot her name (Ren had a lot of women). We’d had a good time and the food was orgasmic.
“Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up at your place. See you then.”
Before I could say a word, he disconnected.
Okay, there were a lot of not good things happening in my life at the moment but this was seriously not good.
I flipped my phone closed and turned.
I was right, Luke got close. Real close.
And I was also right about the not good air.
If Luke had been barely controlling fury before, he was visibly losing his battle with controlling rage now.
Eek.
Chapter Twelve
Pins and Needles
Luke’s hand came up to rest on my neck, his thumb under my jaw.
“Why is Ren Zano phoning you?” he asked softly.
I needed to make a split-second decision and I made it. I wasn’t going to live in fear of tough guy, macho man Luke Stark. He was nuts and he was a badass but he wasn’t going to hurt me. Sure, most of the way he behaved, and nearly all of the brutally honest shit that came out of his mouth, was shocking but he would never hurt me. Maybe he would cuff me to the bed again or do some other macho man shit but I could handle that.
I was in control of my mind and my body (okay, the last one wasn’t really true but I did have a pretty magnificent orgasm not too long ago so I should be topped up).