Page 122 of Protected By West
"I've been sitting right here, babe."
He didn't have the same amount of swagger in his words that he normally did. He was definitely struggling.
"You've got that 'man-with-the-weight-on-his-shoulders' look about you. And I'm worried that you're not telling me what's going on in your head."
"Too much." The words came out before he'd really thought them through. It wasn't Shakespeare but it wasn't a grunt. "Do you want to come back to my place tonight? I have a few things to talk to you about."
Something changed in her expression. If he hadn't been looking right at her face, he might have missed it.
"Is this..." She drew in a breath that had her shoulders raising up toward her ears. "Is this about my dad being your boss?"
To say he felt like he'd been hit was an understatement. He felt like he'd been hit in the chest with a battering ram.
Withoutthe benefit of padding.
He bit the inside of his cheek and braced himself for the hell he knew was coming.
"Babe-"
One brow lifted, cutting off any words he wanted to put after that, and her lips thinned into a pale line.
"Right now, I'd rather not talk about this. At least, I'd rather not say the questions I have in my head. Maybe... you could just tell me what you should have instead of this being a back and forth."
She stood up and he was right behind her, reaching for her in case she stumbled.
His hand touched her lower back, and she tensed a little, drawing away from him.
The ease from the last few minutes was gone.
Likely the tail end of the adrenaline rush from the standoff.
Hostage situation, his brain provided.
"Tracy, I-"
"Please," she cut him off with a single word, her eyes directed away from his face. "I don't want to talk about this right now. I want to go home and put my feet up and have a few drinks before you explain just how angry I'm going to be at you."
He turned, almost facing her, but she still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I know you're angry and you've got every right to be-"
"You've got that right,butthole."
If she wasn't vibrating with anger, he might have laughed at that or even chuckled.
But he didn't want to die.
Especially not in a hospital.
If she unmanned him like he thought she might, he wouldn't want to be saved.
"I want to clear things up between us."
"You bet your ass you're going to clear things up,bucko."
Weston winced at her words.
She could have picked more colorful curses to throw at him. He might have preferred those.
At the moment he felt like her anger was carefully reined in, which, in his estimation, was a lot scarier than her throwing something at him.
