Page 13 of Diamond In The Rough

“Yes, boss.” He sets a glass on the bar and reaches up to free the phone from his kinked neck. “Is she a problem, sir, or a protected species?”

“Not sure yet.” I push up to stand, drawing Felix’s gaze as he turns with an unlit cigarette perched between his lips. “She’s got my blood tingling, and I can’t help but think it’s survival instinct, not lust. I’ll come down later and make myself known on the floor.”

I bring the phone from my ear and kill our call, then I reach out as Felix lights his smoke, and tear the fucking thing from between his lips. I crush it in my palm, pissing him off in a matter of milliseconds. “Our father died of cancer, stupid. We didn’t like him, so we didn’t mind much. But I’d rather not see you in a diaper anytime soon.”

I drop my phone into my pocket and open my hand so tobacco and ash trickle free to the table, then I step around my chair and push it back in. “I’m heading upstairs to get changed. Then I’ll walk the floor to keep watch over things.”

“It’s not your night to work,” he calls back. “And that was my last cigarette, bitch. I was saving it for a ceremonial thing.”

“Ceremonial?” I roll my eyes and force myself not to turn to look across the club floor. “You’ve been smoking all night, dickhead.”

“It’s my last pack.” He nods to a soldier I don’t have to turn to see. “Christabelle’s on me about it. So’s Minka. So I was enjoying my last lot before I put the habit away and become a better man.”

“Uh-huh. Well, in that case, I just helped you out.” I reach up to tug on the tie I would normally be wearing inside this club, but of course I only graze my sweaty tank instead.

I was just jogging past this place. Monitoring things before I continued my route. But Tiia was outside, wading into a pond filled with killers.

Everyone knows what happens to female ducks during mating season.

“Christabelle still at the office?” I ask my brother. “That why you’re stressed out?”

He slumps back now, because I brought up his kryptonite. “She’s finishing up some stuff for a big publication that’s going out in a few days. Jasper’s on watch, then he’s bringing her to me. I’m waiting here till she’s done so we can drive home together.”

“And in the meantime, you’re blackening your lungs and pouting like a little whiny baby.”

“Says the guy who can’t stop obsessing over a chick in sexy little shorts and kick-your-ass boots.” He flashes a playful smile, and winks when Stovic reaches past me and offers his own pack of cigarettes.

Felix accepts it, opens the cardboard, and selects a single smoke, then places it between his lips and tosses the rest back. “Last one, gentlemen. From this day forward, you’ll never again see me with one of these fuckers.”

“Uh-huh.” I snatch that one too, crush it in my palm, and smile when his killer’s stare, the look that liquifies a lesser man’s bowels, snaps up to lock onto mine.

“Did you another favor,” I smart. “Stop sucking that shit into your lungs, or I’m telling Christabelle.” Then I set my hand on the table, pain slicing up through my arm from the amputation I never consented to, and meet his stare. “And don’t mention another woman’s sexy shorts or how she looks in them, or I’ll tell Christabelle that, too.”

He sits back and sneers. “You’re a dick.”

I straighten up tall again and step around the table. “I like having this new button to press to keep you in line. You’re a pain in my ass, Felix. And Christabelle is the leash we’ve all been wishing for.”

I stop in front of Stovic and Michaels and lift a brow. “No more cigarettes for him. You heard the man; he’s quitting. Help him.”

At their nods of acknowledgment, I step through the duo and move to the flight of stairs. Then I head up, not down, and leave behind Tiia Hale, the beautiful woman whose very existence makes me stop and stare.

The realistic part of me acknowledges that I’m heading up for a shower and change of clothes strictly so I can redeem the impression she must surely have of me, but I push that part of my conscience aside, and tell myself over and over that I’m here anyway. I’m working. Thus, I must dress the part.

And if I happen to see Tiia Hale again… Well, that’s just a neat bonus I wouldn’t mind exploring.

Too bad that when I come down in a fresh, pressed suit, my hair brushed, and just enough cologne to make a woman lean closer, I find neither the red-haired woman in a skimpy dress, nor the other, far more subtly sexy one.

“Gregory?” I come up to the bar and lean across the stool Tiia occupied only moments ago. The seat is still warm, and the glass she drank from remains, with condensation still on the side. “Hey!”

He spins, his gray eyes widening when he looks to me, then to the stools he was ordered to watch.

“Where are they?”

“Boss.” He pays no attention to any other person in this place shouting for a drink, and rushes across to where I stand. “She was here a second ago, I swear.”

“I told you to call me when she was leaving!”

“I didn’t see her leave. I was watching.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly, despite the beard he keeps to cover a weak chin. “I swear I was watching them. The dude turned up, and the three of them were sitting there a second ago.”

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