Page 7 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

After Devlin dumped the billboard out of the way of traffic, he took a moment to look at the advertisement.

Then he shook his head and started back to the construction site.

There was going to be no glancing over his shoulder.

No final check that the blonde was okay. Absolutely no more talking to her—

His eyes staged a mutiny and shot to her once again. Like she was the only thing in Caldwell he could focus on.

She was still standing in the middle of the street where he’d left her.

In the glare of the cars and trucks that had pulled up short, those flaxen waves of hair danced on the wind currents and flashed like strands of pure gold, and likewise her iridescent dress gleamed, as moonlight on restless water.

The club’s wait line had closed in on her, as if she were the nucleus around which an entire atom’s components spun, and a small, dark-haired woman jumped about waving her arms like she was a crossing guard who’d been ignored.

In spite of the chaos… the blonde was calm.

And focused on him as she held his hard hat in her hands.

Even though he should go back for his shit, he forced himself to keep on walking.

He felt better when he reminded himself that it had been a long time since he’d been with anybody, felt a breast brush his chest, smelled sultry perfume.

He was used to living the life of a monk, nothing but solitude, sustenance, and work.

So maybe he needed to color outside of the rigid lines he’d set over the last couple of years some night. God knew there were countless options for scratching any kind of itch in this city—

The second he stepped back through the construction site’s pedestrian barrier, he stopped. Bob, the foreman, who wasn’t a bad guy, was standing at the head of an isosceles triangle of inconvenience, the other workers drafting behind his middle-aged paunch.

Jesus Christ. People thought old ladies were nosy? Broads in housedresses and Depends had nothing on a bunch of men with hammers and hard hats—and he’d really fed that gum-flapping beast tonight, hadn’t he.

“How ’bout we say it all comes out even,” Dev offered to the foreman.

Bob’s bushy eyebrows popped. Then he took off his own hard hat. “How you figure that works, Big D?”

“I saved a woman from certain death over there.”

“I don’t think that matters for our purposes.”

“I’ll apologize to Petey then.”

On that note, he glanced in the guy’s direction—and Mr. Big Mouth took a couple of steps back, his hands going to his throat like he was remembering exactly how hypoxia worked.

Wonder what the half-life on that reflex was going to be, Dev thought.

“He deserved it, and he knows it.”

Bob stepped between them and held his cell out like a penalty flag at a football game. “I’m sorry, D. I have to call the police. It was an assault, no matter what he said to you, and I gotta follow union and company procedure—”

“I won’t do it again.” He met the man’s tired eyes. “How about we just get back to work—”

“This ain’t personal, Dev. I like you, I really do. You’re a good worker and no trouble until now, but if that billboard hadn’t fallen, we’d be havin’ a different conversation, wouldn’t we. ’Cuz there’d be a dead body on this property.”

Dev slowly shook his head. “We’re already behind schedule.

You think the CPD showing up is going to help that?

It’ll just make the delay worse, and cut into your performance bonus.

” As Bob put a hand to his head like something had started thumping up there, Dev tacked on, “Besides, I promise to keep my hands to myself, and I don’t think Petey’s saying shit to anybody anytime soon. Right?”

Petey nodded like he had a gun pointed at him.

“See? It’s all done—and you won’t have to fill out any paperwork.”

The foreman stared down at his phone like he was expecting advice from it.

“Tell the boys to go to work now,” Dev said softly. “So we can get back on schedule.”

Bob cleared his throat. Then he shoved his phone back into his Carhartt jacket. “Finish your lunches, boys. Break’s done.”

In a lower voice, he added, “You better not make me regret this.”

“No problem, boss.”

As the other fellas muttered their return to the picnic table area—with Petey heading for his turkey sub like it was a Bible he really needed to be studying—Dev turned back to the jackhammer.

“Hello! Hi!”

At the sound of the female voice, Dev closed his eyes and pictured the blonde in that sparkly dress floating into the gritty construction site on a pair of shoes better suited to a ballroom’s marble floors than the bald, frozen earth he was standing on.

The idea the other men were surely looking at her had him thinking fondly of strangulation again, and the surge of aggression was a surprise. For all his triggers, what was up with some woman had never been one, and not because he was into dudes. He wasn’t into anybody—

Oh, God, she smelled like heaven, he thought as the wind changed directions again.

“You left this,” she said from right behind him. “In the street.”

Dev opened his lids, and as another gust hit his chest, he let the force of it turn him around.

She was so close. Too close—

Man, her eyes were something else, one blue, one green… both boring right into his soul.

“Sorry,” she murmured when he kept silent. “I just thought you’d need it.”

As she put out his hard hat, he stared at the thing like he’d never seen one before, tracing the scratches in the fluorescent banding, the dent in the short brim, the Wabash logo on the side.

“It’s your hat. Isn’t it?”

Dev looked the woman up and down, lingering on her bare arms and her long legs. “It’s too cold for you out here.”

Before he could stop himself, he walked over to where he’d propped the jackhammer and picked up his waterproof, weatherproof jacket from off the building’s front steps.

Going back to her, he swept the folds around her slender shoulders, and then took his stupid hat—after which, he promptly wondered what the hell he was thinking: He’d just wrapped a beauty queen up in some worn-out Carhartt bullcrap that was logo’d with “Wabash Construction Co.” She was probably allergic to anything that didn’t have a fancy label—

The woman curled her red-tipped nails around the rough canvas lapels and brought the two halves closer to her throat.

“But now you’re cold,” she said in a husky voice.

Yeah, the fuck he was cold when he was looking at her.

“Nah, I’m good.” He nodded across the street, at that club’s neon entrance. “You better get back to—”

“What did you say your name was?”

He glanced at the break area, and all the men who were NOT LOOKING, LIKE AT ALL. “I didn’t.”

“Oh. Well… I’m Lyric.” A slender hand extended out of the folds of his shitty jacket. “Pleased to meet you, and thanks for saving my life.”

He put his palms in the air, like it was a stickup. “I’m dirty.”

“I don’t care.”

“Skin’s rough.”

“That doesn’t bother me.” Her half smile was like a bomb going off in his chest. “And if you tell me you’ve never had a manicure—”

“Dev. Short for Devlin.” But he didn’t dare touch her. “And I’d take my hat off, but I already did—or you wouldn’t have had to bring it back to me.”

“Are you always so formal?” she murmured.

“You’re a lady. And my mother taught me certain manners.”

That smile got a little wider. “She’s certainly someone with standards and how lucky to have a son like you who—”

“She’s dead, and I didn’t like her.”

The blonde’s face froze, and, yup, he was reminded of why the monk thing for him was really the best option. For so many reasons.

“This is fantastic ! Let me get a picture of you both!”

That little dark-haired woman with the bullhorn voice barreled through the pedestrian barrier like a tank, and what do you know: The crowd that had gathered out in the street followed her right in, all floodwaters after a dam burst.

He put his arms wide, knowing Bob was going to fricking love this. “You people got to get outta here—”

The brunette looked up at him like she’d never seen a stop sign, red light, or hold-your-horses hand motion in her life.

“Just a picture,” she said in a suddenly level voice. “With the jacket around her standing next to you—”

“Marcia,” the blonde started, “this is not the time or place—”

As the flashes from all those phone cameras blinded him, he knew he had to bolt—hell, he shouldn’t have gotten involved with this circus in the first place.

Yeah, except then she’d be dead in the street, and what a waste.

“Keep the jacket,” he told her gruffly. “And go back where you came from.”

“Wait, you should take it—”

“I have another,” he lied as he walked away.

He didn’t head over to the jackhammer because he knew she’d just give things another go with the give-back, and bring her entourage along with her. Instead, he two-stepped the stairs and went inside the old, cold building—and made sure the door couldn’t be opened behind him.

“Fucking… hell,” he muttered as the wind howled outside.

The lobby was nothing more than a ripped-clean cavern of dust and debris, the pathways through the buildup on the floor created by bins being dragged or equipment getting pulled or workers traipsing through as tributaries running off from the headwater of the entrance.

The sixth floor was waiting for him, and yet he stayed where he was, hands on his hips, head down…

… as the specter of his past stalked around him in the drafts, having no mercy while he screamed in his head.

He’d been so good at leaving himself behind and getting lost in the present.

And a chance meeting with that blonde wasn’t going to change that track record. He was still a ghost for all intents and purposes, and he was going to damn well stay that way—

The main door opened behind him, and as the roar of the weather blasted into the lobby, all kinds of particles hit the air and spun up into tiny gray twisters.

Dev pivoted around grimly.

It was Bob, not the blonde. And that wasn’t much better news, was it.