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“Jesus, baby,” he whispered, his eyes aimed at my chest.
Oh yes.
I’d never felt beautiful or confident in my life.
I’d never felt present, there, me.
But I did right then.
Because Javi gave that to me.
I tipped my head to the side.
“Ready?” I asked.
His gaze came up to my face, and I sucked in a breath at the proud possession shining stark in his eyes.
“Fuck yeah,” he replied.
I floated through Javi’s door, going to one lamp to turn it on then tossing my bag on his couch.
He went to another lamp.
We were home from our date.
No, we were home from the best date I’d ever had.
He took me to Geordie’s at Wrigley Mansion, maybe the single most romantic restaurant in all of Phoenix.
They’d seated us at a two-top by a window.
We’d watched the sun set over the Valley as we ate delicious, expensive food, Javi teased, I flirted, we talked and laughed.
He told me how things were hilariously not going all that well between Shirleen (not only Roam and Cap’s mom, but also Nightingale Investigation & Security’s Operations Manager) and Marjorie (the Phoenix branch’s Office Manager and Mace’s PA) settling in at the office.
I told him about Jinx’s accountant.
He told me he was thirty-three, and that his grandfather had been deported when his mom was just a kid. Things were tough for a not-single-but-going-it-alone woman with a young daughter. On top of that, she missed her husband like crazy.
So Javi’s grandmother had followed him back to Nicaragua when she thought Javi’s mom was settled and could look out for herself. This being when Ximena, Javi’s mom, was twenty-two.
Since his mother’s illness didn’t start manifesting until after she had Javi, they didn’t know leaving her on her own would lead to such tragedy. They couldn’t get back to help, and considering Ximena and Javi regularly dropped off the face of the earth, sometimes they went years not knowing what was happening with their girl and their grandson.
In fact, although Javi talked to them on the phone frequently, he’d never met them.
Taking us out of the heavy, he also told me, since he’d obviously never had a pet, but he’d always wanted one, he’d planned to get a dog when he got his townhome more together. But after meeting Henny, Jessie and Eric’s cat, he changed his plans because cats “got it going on.”
Back to the heavy, I told him a little about my mom, dad and brother, and how I fit in the family.
Seeing as this made Javi visibly angry, and we were in such a romantic place, I didn’t go on about that too much.
He seemed matter of fact about what happened in his life, to his mom and his grandparents, and I understood that. I thought it was healthy. It happened and there was nothing he could do about it. Everyone was in a safe place now, so there was no longer anything to do.
But I was still in the thick of being the pariah of the O’Neill clan, I couldn’t hide it hurt me, and for a protective alpha, that wasn’t something he could easily abide.
Though I didn’t like that it made Javi mad, I couldn’t deny it felt really freaking good he got so mad on my behalf.
Mostly I talked about how I really enjoyed organizing Raye and Cap’s space, and I was thinking I wanted to consider finding more clients, give them a go and see if that would be a fun career change, to be my own boss and organize people’s lives.