Page 9

I nearly broke an ankle jumping down from the height of the truck, but I kept my feet, and more importantly my dignity, as I again flounced, this time doing it up the drive to the courtyard gate, feeling Javi follow me.
I let myself in the gate and it didn’t fall shut right behind me because Javi caught it and entered after me.
Some of my Oasis neighbors, Bill, Zach, Patsy and Sally, were in the courtyard, enjoying the somewhat cool (it was May in Phoenix, so we wouldn’t get really cool until October) evening night by the pool with some cocktails.
They all turned toward us when we appeared, and I knew they were going to call out greetings, but they saw Javi behind me, so they did not.
This wasn’t because he was huge and scary.
This was because they all knew him, and me, and I’d probably not kept my crush on him as secret as I should have, so me all dressed up in date clothes and Javi bringing me home shocked them silent.
I walked directly to my apartment and let myself in.
Javi, of course, came in right after me.
The door snicked shut and I heard him turn the lock.
I tapped my toe on the foot switch of a standing lamp that looked like a tulip—green stem, spiked leaves, white tulip-shaped shade and all.
I then turned on him and put my all into ignoring both him staring in open shock at my décor (a reminder, I was ultra girlie and everything about me reflected that, absolutely everything) and how I felt that Javi was standing in my space, somewhere he’d never been, somewhere I’d wanted him to be for six whole months.
“I’m home safe,” I pointed out the obvious. “You’re off your self-imposed duty now.”
His attention shifted from the teal-green-and-white-striped, large glass mushroom that was one of the things that adorned my white, curvy coffee table, to me.
“Props, you women want to do good things for good reasons,” he began. “But that doesn’t mean you know what you’re doin’ when you do them.”
Mm-hmm.
This announcement made me no less fume-y.
Nope.
It made me more.
A whole lot more.
I tossed my clutch to the dusty-rose velvet covered, semi-structured beanbag chair, crossed my arms on my chest, and returned, “Sorry, except for the last five months with NI&S, where did you get your formal training when you and your Shadow Soldiers were taking on the streets?”
“I got it on the streets,” he shot back. “As in, livin’ on them for most my life.”
He had me there.
“It isn’t like this is my first rodeo,” I retorted. “You knew I had the ear thingy?—”
“Ear thingy,” he muttered, like me calling it that proved his point.
I ignored him and carried on. “My guess is, you knew all the girls were there, taking my back. I was in no danger having dinner with a stranger at Oceans 44. Even if I knew beforehand he’s a big jerk.”
Javi appeared to be losing patience, but for the most part (and what was beginning to freak me), he was no longer angry. He didn’t seem much of anything, but he was this like he was trying to be like this.
Like there was a mask he’d put on to hide something from me.
And I hadn’t known him from birth, but since I’d met him, Javi had always been a kind of put-it-all-out-there guy.
But then, still wearing his mask, he put it all out there.
And I would wish to the bottom of my soul he hadn’t.