Burn for You (Slow Burn Book 1)(54)

That hurt. It hurt like getting all my skin peeled off and taking a saltwater bath, but I didn’t want him to see it. So I smiled, even though the effort felt like it would split my face in two. “There he is. There’s the Trace I know. Welcome back, player. Now get lost!”

I turned on my heel to leave, but Trace caught me by the arm and jerked me against his chest. He put his nose up to mine and hissed, “How much he payin’ you, Bianca? How much does it cost to get you to suck a dick?”

I yanked my arm from his grip and backed away, so angry I could scream. “If you come near me or my mama again, I’ll call the police. And then I’ll call my future husband. And believe me, Trace, you’ll want the police to get to you first.”

I strode away and didn’t look back, not even when I heard him call me the c-word and spit on the sidewalk.





TWENTY

BIANCA

The next afternoon, Jackson kept to his usual MO and arrived unannounced at the restaurant.

It was five o’clock, an hour before the first reservations, five hours after the meat delivery was supposed to have arrived. The staff was eating their preservice meal together at the long table in the glassed-in private dining room. Meanwhile I was pacing, my new favorite form of exercise. When the door opened and I saw the long shadow fall across the dining room floor, I knew who it was without even turning around.

Pepper’s excited squeal only confirmed it.

I turned and found Jackson standing inside the door, staring at me. He was wearing faded jeans and his battered motorcycle jacket, with a white cotton shirt molded to his body so his abdomen muscles were on display like an ad for stacked bricks.

He was not altogether unfortunate looking.

I said, “Oh. Hello.”

His brows quirked. He glanced at the gathering in the private dining room, fifteen people staring at us in open curiosity from behind a sparkling sheet of glass. “Is this a bad time?”

Is there a good time to sign away five years of your life?

I said, “It’s fine. They’re contained for now.” I made my employees sound like a nasty viral outbreak, which wasn’t too far from the truth. “Let’s go into my office.”

I led him through the restaurant, past the private dining room with its gaping menagerie, and through the kitchen. My office was down a hallway in the back. It was a cramped, messy space where I regularly collapsed into exhausted comas at the end of the night or cried over the mountain of unpaid bills strewn on my desk while I examined my life choices.

I opened the door, he closed it behind him. He looked around with a critical eye. “Looks like a bomb went off.” Then his gaze fell on the bouquet of red roses on the edge of my desk, and he went stone-still. His tone was acidic. “From an admirer?”

I snorted. “If you can call Satan’s spawn an admirer.”

In two long, jerking strides, he was in front of the bouquet. He snatched the little white enclosure card off the plastic stick. He read it aloud while his free hand curled to a fist. “I’m sorry, bumble bee. I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. Please call me, we need to talk. Trace.”

Jackson pronounced Trace’s name as a hiss. When he cut his gaze to me, all the air left the room.

He growled, “What happened?”

I dropped into my ratty captain’s chair and sighed. “We had a little run-in at my mother’s house.”

“A run-in?” he repeated slowly. His eyes had turned an unnerving serial killer shade of black.

“Long story short, I stopped by Mama’s on my way to the restaurant, and he was there. I told him we were getting married, and he called me the c-word.”

Jackson turned the little white enclosure card to dust with a single crushing flex of his fist.

I said, “That’s not the worst part.”

His eyes were seriously weirding me out. I expected laser beams to shoot out of them at any second and blow the place apart.

“He’s opening a restaurant,” I said, unable to hide the quaver of fury in my voice. “Down the street. As a big f-you to me and all the plans we made to do it together.”

Suddenly my office wasn’t big enough to contain Jackson. Hulklike, his entire body expanded with his angry inhalation. I wasn’t sure the seams of his clothing would be able to hold him.

I said, “It’s just another one of his childish games. There’s nothing he can’t stand as much as being ignored, and he knew this would get my attention. He wants me to obsess over it. Which is why the only thing I can do is act like it doesn’t get to me.”

Jackson said darkly, “We’ll see.”

The implied threat made the little hairs on my arms stand on end. “I’m not condoning violence, Jackson.”