Page 47 of Stay Toxic

“Other than hearing that you were a dangerous man from my brothers, and knowing that you dropped a freakin’ whack on your house because of my brothers building it? No. I know nothing,” I said. “Though, I suspect you’re someone dangerous.”

If she had any clue…

“We’ll allow your eyes to continue looking out of those rose-gold glasses then,” I murmured.

Her eyes narrowed, and just when I suspected her to get upset or lash out in anger, her features smoothed out. “Do you know the term ‘rose-colored glasses’ originated in the nineteenth century and that the glasses themselves had a calming effect?”

Of course, she wouldn’t answer how I suspected her to.

Of course.

Before I could say anything, the waitress arrived with our food and placed it in front of us.

“Thank you so much,” Brecken breathed.

She dug in with gusto, and it was such a pleasant change from the usual women I went out to eat with—women who were so worried about their figures and what I might think about them eating real food—that I sat there and watched for a few long minutes instead of eating myself.

Lifting my water glass to my lips, I idly wondered what it would be like to live with this woman. What it would feel like to know that she was at home, waiting for me to come to bed. What she would do when she found out she was pregnant with our child…

I swiftly shut that thought down.

That was definitely something that I didn’t want to think about right now.

Or ever.

My world was too dangerous for a wife, let alone a child.

And, though women and children were sacred in my world, they weren’t sacred in the rest of the criminal underworld’s world.

I would know.

My mom had been a victim right along with my father.

Hell, my own sisters had to walk around with a fucking bodyguard twenty-four-seven. How would Brecken feel having to take a bodyguard with her to work?

She would hate it.

I knew it.

I knew it because my sisters hated it, but at least they’d been raised with the knowledge that having a bodyguard was a necessity.

Not to mention the complications that would arise if we did start dating, and her brothers found out.

I wasn’t a dumb man.

Sweat Construction consisting of Ryler, Bronc, Holden, and Tibbs might be small, but they were mighty.

I’d watched them put up the framing on my house in a span of twelve hours.

I had a feeling, if they put their minds to something, they would make it happen.

Meaning, if they didn’t want me in the picture, I wouldn’t be.

All of them retired military—Air Force like my brother, Dima—they were all fully capable of killing me.

If they caught me unaware, anyway.

I might not have been in the military, but I was raised in the concrete jungle.

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