Something he planned to rectify immediately. She would stay. There was no doubt about that. But it would certainly not be against her will. He was never going to get to that point, however, because of the incessant interruptions. He not only despised interruptions and inconveniences, he simply didn’t tolerate either. So why the hell was he suddenly doing just that when it came to one infuriating, exasperating, stubborn woman?
Because you want her as you’ve never wanted another woman.
There was that. Even though the admission didn’t sit well with him at all. Evangeline was a complication he didn’t need. But damn if he didn’t want her. Complications, frustration, inconveniences and all. He almost shook his head. Hell of a thing to find himself in this predicament over an unwilling woman. His men—those closest to him, men he called brothers in every sense of the word—would laugh themselves silly if they even had a hint of the turmoil one small, fragile, infuriating female was causing him.
“Can’t you text them?” he asked mildly, even as he registered that she was frantically digging for her cell in her purse.
Her gaze lifted and she bit into her lip. “Yeah, I’m going to text them right now. I should have texted them the second your goon made me get into the car with him, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the moment. And to be honest, if I tell them where I am and why, me texting them isn’t going to do any good. They’ll definitely call the police and haul ass down here themselves.”
As she spoke, she was typing away on a very small, hopelessly outdated cell phone, murmuring each of the recipients’ names as she added them to the group text.
Drake shrugged. “So tell them you’re somewhere else. You don’t owe them an explanation, nor do you answer to them for your actions.”
She huffed impatiently. “Look, Drake. They know all about what happened here last night. They also know I am not the type of person to be ‘somewhere else’ at almost five o’clock in the morning after working a long shift and being dead on my feet. I’m not a party girl nor do I have men lining up to take me out on dates, so no matter what I tell them, they’re going to smell a rat, and they’re smart. They’ll put two and two together, and here will be the very first place they’ll look for me. Whether I text them or not. Whether I tell them I’m perfectly okay and not to worry. Because that’s what friends do. They have each other’s backs and they worry about each other, and they’re especially protective of me because they know I’m a naïve twit who’s incapable of recognizing a predator when I see one.”
She glanced down at her phone, worry furrowing her brow.
“They haven’t responded. I should call Steph. They’re probably freaking out.”
Drake sighed, not even attempting to hide his irritation and displeasure as she called and evidently didn’t reach this supposedly worried-out-of-her-mind friend, because Evangeline rattled off a message saying she wouldn’t be home and that she was sorry for not contacting them sooner.
Her girlfriends seemed like gigantic pains in the ass, and she’d probably be much better off without them, because it sounded a hell of a lot like they smothered her, judged her, kept her in line and expected her to gain their permission to so much as take a piss.
He mentally winced because he was every bit as controlling, but his method of control and dominance was not even close to what her girlfriends apparently considered their way of managing her life, or rather micromanaging her life. He would always have her best interests at heart. He was almost certain he couldn’t say the same about her girls.
Damn it all. If all Evangeline had said was true, and he had no reason not to believe her, then she was right. A text wasn’t going to head off a potentially ugly confrontation and the cops showing up at his club and him having to answer to kidnapping and coercion charges. Since Evangeline hadn’t received a response, and her phone call had gone unanswered, he was going to have to throw one of his men under the bus and have him take care of the matter personally.
“Maddox,” he snapped, knowing his man would hear at his station outside Drake’s door, the exit on the opposite end of the elevator that not many knew of, and judging by Evangeline’s sudden look of wariness and her quick glance at the elevator as if expecting him to appear from it, she hadn’t noticed the other door in the far corner. She likely thought he was a paranoid, psychotic bastard, and, well, she’d have at least part of it right. He hadn’t survived in his world this long without a healthy degree of paranoia and common sense not to offer his trust freely.