“You’re going to be a vet?” he asked in surprise. “When did that happen?”
Yeah, that’d been one of the things I’d refused to share with him in my letters.
A, he didn’t need to know how hard schooling was for me. He didn’t need to know how I could barely afford to eat, because I was paying so much in college tuition. It just seemed easier to omit that part of my life in the letters I sent him while he was in prison.
I grinned wickedly. “It happened when I realized that Braxton wasn’t my way out anymore.”
“That’s why you’re working?” he asked. “Because you’re going to school and doing this?”
“Yep,” I confirmed. “And we’re about to start looking for someone to break ground on our clinic. We just have to find a responsible and reliable contractor.”
He pulled out his phone. “I can help with that, actually. His name is Etienne. He owns his own construction company.”
“Oh.” I smiled, which caused my head to tilt awkwardly and then my neck throbbed. “That’s great.”
He handed me my discharge papers and then said, “Get in. You’re coming to my place tonight.”
“Your place?” I frowned as I got in, only groaning when I reached to get the seat belt.
He stilled my hand, then did it himself and I realized how sexual having someone put on your seat belt was.
As in, the moment his hand dragged that buckle across my chest, then went down to my waist, I realized that Bain was touching me.
Holy shit, I had always wondered what it would feel like to have his hands on me again… but wow.
Just a brush of his knuckles across some side boob, and there I was, willing to do just about anything to make him take my pants off.
Down, girl.
“What was that noise you just made?” he asked as he pulled away.
A microscopic orgasm.
“Neck hurts,” I lied.
Well, not quite a lie.
It did hurt. That just wasn’t why I’d made the sound.
“Ahh,” he said as he gently closed my door and walked around to the driver’s side.
I shifted my body to the side so I could look at him trying to squeeze his way into my car.
Bain was tall. Six feet, four inches of lean, jaguar-like muscles. He reminded me of a clown trying to fit into a miniature car.
“You look ridiculous,” I couldn’t help sharing.
He shot me a glare, then scooted the seat back as far as it would go before trying to adjust the steering wheel. Joke was on him, though. That thing had been broken for a decade.
“I can’t believe you’re still driving this piece of shit,” he grumbled darkly. “I also can’t believe that out of all the money Braxton has in his reserves, you didn’t get any of it.”
I sighed. “I didn’t want any of it.”
“What’s that saying about pride?” he teased. “Pride comes before a fall?”
I scoffed and tried to turn myself to face the front. It worked. Barely.
“Braxton was a taint,” I admitted. “I wanted nothing to do with him and the fastest escape possible after all of it was said and done.”
‘All of it’ being him protecting me and my ex-husband doing what he did best—hide. After that, it was downhill.
After that, I’d wanted nothing to do with him or his money.
“Braxton hasn’t changed since you met him,” he challenged me. “You could be driving a brand-new car right now and going to school and studying, while living comfortably. Instead, you made it way harder on yourself than it should’ve ever been.”
When he put it like that…
CHAPTER 4
Mess with the bull, and nine times out of ten, you’re gonna get fucked up.
-Bain to Bart
BAIN
The call that she was hurt was still causing my heart rate to be elevated.
Even worse, the fact that she was hurt was enough to remind me of years ago when she’d been put in danger. The danger that had almost cost her her life.
Had I not been there…
I viciously shut that train of thought down.
Thinking about that night… well, it wouldn’t do to relive it. Reliving it almost always caused me to get pissed.
And getting pissed while she was freaked the fuck out wouldn’t be good.
Instead, I took a deep, controlling breath and tried not to think about what could’ve happened today.
Needless to say, that little fuck Bart was about to find out what, exactly, he’d fucked with.
I’d given her the out at the diner when that little excuse of a man had slapped her ass. She’d gotten a good kick out of it. But I’d allowed the encounter to fade into the background because I didn’t need to be getting into trouble when I was only hours out of the state penitentiary.
Yet, now that choice was taken from me.
I would be finding Bart. And I would be dealing with him.
As soon as Luce went to sleep, anyway.