Page 5 of Gangster Daddy's Girl

4

TABITHA

When I find myself staring into Tyson’s icy-blue eyes, the scathing words sitting on the tip of my tongue for the idiot who’d gotten in my way wither and die on my lips. I feel my face immediately drain of color as my heart leaps into my throat. My first thought—fear, actually—is that he’s here to kill me for seeing too much the other night.

Izzy Worthy, my best friend, is standing beside me. She must feel me tense up because she grabs my hand and squeezes it, giving me a worried look. Always overprotective of me, Izzy takes a step forward, putting herself between me and the large man in the dark suit. Towering over the both of us, his blue eyes sparkle with amusement as the corner of his mouth curls upward.

“Tyson, what are you doing here?” I ask.

“I was hoping to have a word with you,” he replies.

My heart is thundering in my ears, my throat grows dry, and I swallow hard, trying to work some moisture into my mouth. “About what?”

He glances at Izzy, then cuts his eyes back to me. “Can we have a word in private?”

“Tabs, who is this guy?” Izzy whispers, as if he’s not standing right here and can’t hear.

It’s a fair question since he obviously doesn’t fit in with us. Dressed in a finely cut black, three-piece suit with a black shirt beneath the jacket and vest, blood red tie, and matching pocket square, he looks like the gangster I know him to be. Seriously, he looks like he just walked out of a central casting call for a mobster movie.

“I’m Tyson Harper,” he tells her. “I met Tabitha last night.”

She turns to me, her eyebrows raised and a playful smirk on her lips. Tyson is a beautiful man; there’s no denying it. But he’s also intimidating as hell. And his presence here, at my school, in front of my classroom, terrifies me. The man is dangerous. He’s brutal. And he doesn’t strike me as the type to just drop by for a little chit-chat. He’s here for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is, but imagining the possibility of what it could be has me weak in the knees.

With a frown on her face, Izzy turns to me. “Should I go get security?”

I cut a glance at Tyson, who is chuckling softly and shaking his head. As I look into his eyes, I don’t get the sense that he’s here to hurt me. If he actually means to do me harm, it seems pretty reckless to show up at my school to do it. Of course, mobsters have a way of avoiding legal trouble. Still, I’m not sure what his intentions are. If he’s planning on doing something bad to me, I’m not sure our staff of rent-a-cops will be able to stop him.More than anything, I don’t want innocent people getting in his way and getting hurt. Or worse. Not on my account.

“No, it’s all right, Izzy,” I say. “I’ll just have a word with him. Just stay close.”

With the classroom now empty, I lead Tyson inside, and he closes the door behind him. Izzy’s face is pressed to the narrow slit-window in the door, watching us, and despite the tension of the situation, I can’t help but laugh. At least until I realize that Tyson is standing between me and the only door in the room. I have no way out.

Doing the only thing I can do, I move to the far side of the room, making sure to keep several rows of desks between us. Tyson slips his hands into his pockets and looks at me with a strange grin.

“My friend is watching everything that happens in here.”

He shrugs. “So let her watch.”

“She can have security here in moments.”

“What is it you think I’m going to do here?”

The deep timbre of his voice sends waves of warm tingles across my skin that, it shames me to admit, isn’t unpleasant. Not that I’m going to let him see that. “I don’t know. But after you beat your employees in the alley last night, I’m not sure being alone with you is smart.”

“Are you afraid I’m going to beat you?”

“Maybe.”

He laughs softly. “I have no intention of beating you. And as I said last night, I only beat those two for what they did to you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t need to. I wasn’t going to let them hurt you,” he replies. “I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”

His words make me recoil. It just sounds so … possessive. Which is insane, given the fact that he doesn’t know me. More worrisome is that my instinctive reaction isn’t to tell him to fuck off. Instead, it makes me feel kind of … flattered. It’s a disturbing reaction, and I’m not sure what to make of it. All I know is I can’t let him see that in me.

I clear my throat and stand up a bit straighter. “Well, it’s not your place to do that,” I say, trying to sound as haughty as I can. “I can take care of myself, thank you.”

“Yeah, kind of looked that way last night.”

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