Page 91 of The Bad Wedding Date

I unlocked the front door and stood there waiting to take my bag from him with my hand held out.

“I’ll carry it up,” he said, ever the gentleman.

“It’s fine. I’m a capable woman, as you reminded me earlier.” I said it with a smile, even though my insides were performing somersaults of distress. Something didn’t feel right. I didn’t want us to part like this with words unspoken and tension high.

Fraser didn’t argue, but I did see the slight rise of his brow before he handed the bag over and pushed both hands into his trouser pockets.

“I hope work goes okay,” I said, looking up at him.

Fraser leaned in, closed his eyes, and he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Lock your doors. I’ll phone you soon.”

Before I could ask him why I needed to lock my doors, he’d turned and was walking back to his car, leaving me to stare after him in both want and wonder.

30

Fraser

The guys were waiting for me when I opened the door to our Soho headquarters—all of them, including Ray, who was sitting at the small round table next to the kitchenette, picking his nails with a small pocketknife.

Nobody said anything, each of the other men standing around the room in various poses. Wade had his legs parted and his hands folded over his chest in waiting, always the serious one out of the group, while Dean and Joey looked as casual as ever. I often thought they were constantly bored unless on an actual job that involved taking names and kicking arse.

“Nice of you to show up,” Dean eventually said, breaking the silence with that cocky grin of his in place. “Rough week in the sack, boss? All that tossing and turning. All that moaning and groaning.”

“Watch it.” I took my phone and keys out of my trouser pockets and placed them down on the table where Ray sat.

“Can’t say I blame you. She’s one hell of a woman—”

I cut him off with a sharp warning glare, and he immediately started laughing, holding his hands in the air in surrender.

Joey smacked him on the chest. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t be doing the same thing.”

“I would, and that could have been me if the job hadn’t been pulled out from under my feet from the pussy thief himself.”

“Dean,” Wade warned.

“My bad.” Dean dipped his head and lowered his hands, but I could tell he was still trying to stifle his laughter. The dipshit.

“What have we figured out about the men Vega had working for him?” I asked Wade, turning to him, who was sure to give me the rundown in a professional manner, unlike those other clowns.

“They’re ghosts as far as we can tell,” he answered. “There’s nothing traceable to say whether the men he had at the wedding were men he’d brought with him from Europe or people he’d hired out here. Nothing on the guest lists the hotel had filed away. Nothing on Vega’s socials; not that we expected that. Nothing on his payroll.”

“What about flight records?”

“We all know how they can be tampered with. Especially on a private jet.”

“But he’s definitely out of the country now?”

“My contact at Heathrow said she saw him getting on the plane herself.”

“And that contact is reliable?”

“Never had a need to doubt her before.”

My fist came down on the tabletop hard, making Ray look up with his brows raised. “Fuck!” I cried. “I had him. I had him right there in my hands.”

“You weren’t really going to kill him though, right?” Joey asked. “Not there. Not that… easily.”

I ran my hands back and forth through my hair, the tension in my jaw tight as visions of Matteo’s neck in my grip tore through my mind. One less misogynistic, reprehensible human being on the planet would have been the perfect ending to a story that had spanned decades longer than it should have. Yeah, I wanted to kill him. The beating of his pulse pounding against my fingers was a dream come true. The panic. The fear. The rat trapped in a corner, unable to break free.

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