“Come pick me up. Jessica just showed up at the bar.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mack shut the door to his office as Jessica sat down with wobbly knees in one of the chairs in front of his desk. She clutched the flaps of her coat together across her chest, and her teeth gnawed at her bottom lip.
Liv took the seat next to her and spoke softly. “Are you okay?”
Mack leaned against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. Jessica glanced up at him nervously. “Do you want me to go?” he asked. Maybe something had happened that Jessica didn’t want to talk about in front of a man. The thought made his stomach churn.
But Jessica shook her head with a quick swallow. “No, I . . . I’m just not sure what to do.”
“Start at the beginning,” Liv said quietly.
“I just can’t do it anymore. He’s so mean right now, and . . . it was bad tonight.”
Mack’s hands reflexively curled into fists. “Bad how?”
“Did he—” Liv stopped, as if trying to think of the right way to ask the question that hung in the air. “Did he try to harass you again like before?”
“No. Not like that.”
Mack let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“He yelled, though,” Jessica said. “He glares at me every time he sees me. And he’ s . . .” She paused with another nervous glance at Mack. “He’s trying to ruin you.”
“Trying to ruin who? Liv?”
“Both of you.”
Mack heard a knuckle crack and realized belatedly it was his own. “Ruin us how?”
“He’s making sure that Liv can’t get a job anywhere else. And I—I don’t know about you. But he hates you because he knows you two are together. He has people keeping tabs on you.”
In the one part of his brain that wasn’t laser focused on hatred for Royce Preston and concern for Jessica, Mack waited for Liv to make some crack about them not being together, but she didn’t, and that same part of his brain was irrationally happy given the circumstances.
“How do you know that?” Liv prodded.
“He told me,” Jessica said. “He said people who crossed him always regretted it. I think . . . I think he wanted to intimidate me.”
Mack had to clear his throat before speaking. “This was today?”
Jessica nodded. “I worked the afternoon shift, and when it was over, he made Geoff drive me home. To make sure I didn’t come here, I guess. I don’t know why he won’t just fire me.”
“You can’t go back there,” Mack said in a harsher voice than he intended.
Jessica’s lower lip trembled. “I know. But I don’t know what to do.”
“Jessica, just quit,” Liv said, taking the girl’s hand. “Just don’t go back. We will stop him.”
They drove Jessica home. When they pulled into a parking spot in front of her student apartment building, Mack gave her both his and Liv’s phone numbers. “Liv and I are going to figure this out,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “Call us if Royce or Geoff and the other one try to contact you or do anything to intimidate you, okay? When you’re ready, there’s a job waiting for you at my club.”
Jessica nodded, her face downtrodden. “Thank you for helping me,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch before.”
“Hey. No. You have nothing to apologize for.”
She shrugged, lower lip trembling again. “But none of this would be happening if I had just—”
Liv turned around in the driver’s seat. “None of this would be happening if Royce wasn’t a piece of shit who preyed on women. That’s it. End of story. None of this is your fault in any way.”
Jessica’s eyes fell to her lap as she bit her lip.
“Mack and I will take care of this,” Liv said. “He’s not going to hurt you or anyone else ever again.”
This time, when Jessica nodded, she looked like she actually believed them.
Liv pulled back onto the freeway and headed toward Mack’s house. He stewed silently for ten full minutes before speaking again. “Royce is becoming unhinged.”
“He was always unhinged.”
“But he’s obviously getting worse, and if Jessica quits, he’s going to lose his shit.”
Liv took the exit for his subdivision. Mack studied her in the low lights of the dashboard. Even ninety minutes after leaving his bed, she still had a freshly sexed look about her that made his pants tighten and his heart beat faster.