Page 109 of Duty and Desire
I nodded.
Mo scowled at me.
“I’ll lock the door, Mo,” I assured.
He scowled some more before he dipped his chin.
I turned my attention to the screen, thus Carla, and called. “Mom and Tex are heading over to your place as soon as they get dressed. You might want to call your sitter.” I paused, “And warn her about Tex.”
“I’ll do it in the car. Thanks, Lottie,” Carla called back.
“Don’t mention it. Do you need help back there?”
“Uh…kinda,” she answered.
Yeah, she needed to hit the hospital.
I gave Mo then Smithie a look and headed behind the screen.
We got Carla dressed, I went, grabbed her purse and gave it to her before giving her a kiss on the cheek and a wish of good luck, and then Mo picked her up to take her out to the car.
I trailed them close at Mo’s heels so he’d know I was doing as ordered.
I started to lock the door practically before it was fully closed.
When I turned back to the room, I realized it was weird to be alone. The only time I’d been alone for days was in the shower.
I barely got Carla’s address texted to Mom and my false eyelashes off to do a full makeup cleanup in order to do a full makeup put on when there was a pounding at the door and a shout of, “Mo!”
Well, he didn’t jack around.
I felt my mouth turn up as I hustled to the door to let him in.
He crowded my space to get back in, which meant back to guarding me, and I realized with him, falling in love would probably be incremental.
He’d do things like that, every day. Little ones, maybe some big ones, but things like that every day that would make me fall more in love with him.
Which, taken to its natural conclusion, meant, if we worked, I’d be falling in love with him, little by little, more and more every day until the day I died.
And thatsooooooworked for me.
I hid my smile at this thought and quickly backed out of his space so I didn’t have the urge to pounce on him (or didn’t give in to the urge I already had) and didn’t make things harder for him to fight his urge to pounce on me.
I moved back to my station.
“I’m surprised you didn’t make Smithie call a bouncer to take Carla out.”
“They have four persons of interest out there. They need eyes on the crowd.”
My head whipped around to him. “Really?”
He dipped his chin.
“New guys?”
“All of them regulars who haven’t been back in a while. All of them guys who creep the waitresses out. All of them guys who bouncers have red flagged since they started coming. None of them guys who’ve been here since the letter was sent.”
I felt a tickle at the back of my neck.
