“Enter the code, Naomi.”
She did as she was told while muttering about what pains in the ass all men were. She wasn’t wrong.
“Good girl. See the green light?”
She nodded.
“Open the door.”
“Knox, I should get back out there. People are going to be talking. I’ve got six tables,” she said, her hand hovering over the handle.
“You should open the damn door and take a breath.”
Those gorgeous fucking hazel eyes of hers widened, and I felt the world slow to a stop. When she did that, when she looked at me with hope, trust, and just a little bit of lust, it did things to me. Things I didn’t want to dissect because it felt good, and I didn’t want to waste time wondering how it was going to go bad.
“Okay,” she said finally, pushing the door open.
I hustled her across the threshold and closed the door behind us.
“Wow. The Fortress of Solitude,” she said with reverence.
“It’s my office,” I said dryly.
“It’s your safe space. Your lair. No one but Waylon is allowed in here. And you just gave me the code.”
“Don’t make me regret it,” I said, moving in to back her against the door, fighting against the need to grab her and hold her tight.
“I’ll try not to,” she promised on a breathy sigh.
“What happened out there was a shit show,” I began, putting my hands on either side of her head.
She winced. “I know. I’m so sorry. I had no idea he was coming. I haven’t talked to him since the rehearsal dinner. I tried to get him away from the crowd and handle it privately, but—”
“Baby, a man ever gets you in that position again, I want you to knee him in the balls as hard as you can, and when he doubles over, you knee him in the fucking face. Then you run like hell. I don’t give a shit about causing scenes. I give a shit that I walked into my bar and found a man with his hands on my girl.”
Her lower lip trembled, and I wanted to hunt down Warner Whatever the Fuck His Name Was and put his head through a plate glass window.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Baby, I don’t want you to be sorry. I don’t want you to be scared. I want you to be as pissed off as I am that some asshole thought he could put his hands on you. I want you to know your worth so no one in their right mind ever thinks they can treat you like that. You get me?”
She nodded tentatively.
“Good. Think it’s time you tell me the whole story, Daze.”
“We don’t really need to talk—”
“You’re not getting out of this room until you tell me everything. And I mean every fucking thing.”
“But we’re not really togeth—”
I pinched her lips closed. “Uh-uh, Naomi. It doesn’t matter what the fucking label says, I care about you, and if you don’t start talkin’, I can’t do what I need to do to make sure it never happens again.”
She was still for a long beat.
“If I tell you, will you let me go back to work?” she asked through my fingers.
“Yes. I’ll let you go back to work.”