Page 13 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)
Her blue-and-green stare shifted back to that alley next to the club, and he copycatted her glance again, wondering what she was focused on. There was nothing that he could see.
“You must live close by,” she said.
“Couple blocks over.” When there was just the cold breeze between them, he found himself compelled to make small talk—which was akin to him volunteering for a manicure. “I couldn’t find my phone and fired up my iPad. Find My Phone led me back… to you.”
“Fate with a technology twist,” she murmured.
“Is that what this is.”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
Dev took a step back. But he knew he wasn’t leaving—and that was the problem. “Where did you say you were parked?”
“I’m calling an Uber, remember?”
“So where’s your phone. Better get ordering.”
Fuck. After so many years of living his own life, minding his own business, and staying away from drama, this blonde with her glittering dress and those mismatched eyes makes an unwilling hero out of him—and pickpockets half his brain in the process.
“You should also go home,” she said softly. “It’s not safe for anybody out here in the dark and the cold.”
“Don’t worry about me.” He resisted the urge to curl up a twin set of biceps. “People tend to get out of my way instead of in it.”
“I believe that.”
As she looked him up and down in that charmingly diffident fashion, he felt something wake up between his legs and cursed under his breath.
Man, none of this was on his bingo card.
She swiped her hand across her face, clearing a drift of hair from her lips. “But you never can be too careful—”
“So how about that Uber. Is it coming?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll take care of it—”
“You don’t have to—”
Dev cut her off with a brisk shake of the head, and then never got into that app faster.
As he entered the coordinates of where they were standing, he was very aware of how she was looking around and trying to hide it, and when he was finished, he reminded himself that she was not his responsibility—
“So how long you been stalked?” he asked as he shoved his phone away.
Her startle was the kind that couldn’t be camo’d. But she gave it a shot: “Stalked—what do you mean? I’m not—”
“I’m a stranger. You can be honest with me. Ex-boyfriend? Current lover?” He frowned and thought of the women who’d clamored for pics of her earlier. “Or wait, are you famous?”
“No, I’m not—well, kind of, but not really—” She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Listen, you really should go.”
Mimicking her, he leaned down and laid his palm on her shoulder. “Listen, I’m going nowhere.” When she exhaled in frustration, he shrugged. “You honestly think I’d leave a woman here alone, especially when she’s looking around like she’s expecting to be jumped? I wasn’t raised that way.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“Fine.” He pushed his hands into the front pockets of his blue jeans and rocked back and forth in his boots.
“I’ll just hang out and enjoy this bracing wind—which just so happened to cheat me out of five hours of pay.
Two years in construction and this is the first night the foreman’s had to call us off shift because of the weather. So, how ’bout those Mets.”
The wind roared as if he’d offended the shit, and as the inside of his ears burned from the cold, he muttered, “Okay, wrong season for baseball. Who you got in the Super Bowl.”
When she didn’t reply, he took a moment to appreciate the sight of her in all his Carhartt.
Having her in his big, shitty coat was like wrapping a beauty queen in Tyvek, but she didn’t seem to mind—and the RCG virus he’d clearly come down with made him feel like that reflected well on her character.
Rose Colored Glasses, that was.
“I’m not budging until you’re safely in a car.” Hell, she was lucky he wasn’t going to insist on riding along with her. “And talk to me about what kind of famous you are. If you want. Or we can just stand here awkwardly.”
“I guess you’d call me an influencer.” She glanced at the entrance to Bathe for the hundredth time. “But I’m getting out of that line of work.”
“To do what.”
“I don’t know.” She turned back to him. “Please—”
“Ask you more? Love to.” He wished he’d brought his cigarettes with him. “What are you going to do if you leave the ‘influencer’ thing.”
As he motioned to encourage her response, he felt like he was trying to start an old engine, and had to wonder if this was what people felt like when they were around him.
“Ah… I want to do something that matters.” She huddled into his coat and stamped her high heels as if she was trying to get feeling back in her bare toes. “And I know that’s the kind of thing somebody says when they’re trying to look like a good person.”
“Depends on whether you mean it. Do you? Mean it.”
“We aren’t here forever,” she said hoarsely. “On my deathbed, I don’t want my greatest accomplishment to be that I took a lot of pictures of myself and carpet-bombed the internet with them.”
“Well, that’s noble.” Dev pointed at the center of his own chest. “?’Course you’re looking at a guy who jackhammers concrete and pulls up carpeting for a living. So I’m not exactly a Nobel Prize winner over here. Takes all kinds.”
“That’s honest work, though. A good, hard day’s work. When you’re finished, you’ve made a building look better, function better—why are you staring at me like that?”
“I’m not.” Fuck, what was he saying… “Looking at you like anything.”
The last thing he wanted to admit—to either of them—was that she was showing serious signs of being more than just a beauty queen. Meanwhile, the wind caught her hair again, pulling a blond wave out of his jacket collar as if to mock him.
Yeah, whatever, he already knew the shit was silky and gleamed like gold.
“Here’s your car,” he said gruffly.
As a Tesla auto-driver pulled up in front of them, he got his phone back out and offered her a hand over the snowbank. On the far side, he flashed the barcode that had been texted next to the door, and the passenger panel lifted.
“Your carriage awaits,” he said as he went to help her in.
“You didn’t need to do this.” But at least she slid into the seat as she spoke.
“It’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
Her eyes, those incredible, mismatched eyes, lifted to meet his—and he could have sworn they glowed with unshed tears. “What if I programmed it to go to Washington, D.C. Or Seattle?”
“You don’t have that in you.” Shut up, Dev. Just stop there— “But that’s not why you wouldn’t do it. You want to leave Caldwell right now, but something’s keeping you here… something that’s breaking your heart. And it’s not your empty-ass job.”
“How… can you see all that,” she whispered.
“Goodbye, Lyric of Lyrically Dressed.”
As he started to shut the car up, she leaned forward and stopped the door. “Wait, how did you know—”
“I looked you up.” He shrugged. “Your pictures are good. You’ve got a knack for posing for the camera—”
“I lied to you.” She glanced around. Then refocused on him. “I didn’t come to give you the jacket back…”
“So it was the phone,” he prompted.
“I couldn’t remember…” Her eyes seemed to bore right through him. “I couldn’t remember your face.”
Dev had to laugh at that. “I’m forgettable. By design—”
“Tonight’s event was a blur, and preceded by weeks and months of the same. And that’s my normal amnesia, when I’m working. But you save my life, in the middle of the street, from a fucking billboard—and I can’t remember you? That’s just wrong .”
“You were in shock.”
“No, I was on autopilot because I’m not doing anything with my life, and when something worthless almost gets taken away, it’s no big deal.” She brushed a tear off her cheek with impatience. “I don’t want to live like that. I just didn’t know it until recently.”
Now Dev was looking away—and not because he was worried anything or anybody was lurking in the shadows.
“Have a safe trip home,” he said roughly. “Nice to meet ya.”
He didn’t wait for any kind of goodbye from her.
He couldn’t.
The two of them really shouldn’t have had anything in common.
Especially not the one thing that haunted him more than all the ghosts of his past put together.
He too was busy forgetting himself, every moment of every day.
And night.