16. Quiet Night

SIXTEEN

QUIET NIGHT

T hat evening after work, I came in my apartment door, saw Eric in my kitchen slicing mushrooms, and suddenly understood why many women hankered after that white dress and big cake day.

If this vision before me was what I got for a lifetime after going through those motions, I’d put up with all the overblown hoopla to get it.

That said, I was me so I had to shovel shit.

“What? Did you pick the locks?”

He smiled at me.

That hoopla was looking better.

Then he answered, “Yup.”

Fascinating.

Though, mental note. Give the guy a key.

“You found truffle butter,” he said as I closed the door behind me.

“I totally did,” I replied.

I tossed my bag on the couch and went to him.

He twisted from the counter, but not fully, though he did fully circle me with his arm, pull me up against his side and drop down to give me a quick kiss.

Oh yeah.

Official.

I’d go through that hoopla.

When he lifted away, he said, “I know you wanted to cook, but I haven’t eaten since lunch, so I got started.”

Since I hadn’t eaten since lunch, and it was after seven, I was glad he got a head start.

I looked down at my cutting board that had some chopped chives and a bunch of sliced mushrooms on it.

I returned my gaze to him. “You know I’m already good at the slicing and chopping parts. I want to get into the meaty stuff.”

“Then hurry, honey, your man is hungry.”

“Can you wait two point five minutes for me to change clothes?”

“Absolutely.”

I smiled, rolled up for my own lip touch then dashed to my room to switch out from the clothes I worked in all day to a pair of black wide-leg lounge pants with a white racing stripe down the side and a tight white tank. That accomplished, I pulled my long hair up into a messy bun.

When I came back out, Eric sent a glance my way, almost turned back to the mushrooms but instead did a double take.

Yeah, I had nice arms, a nice ass, and I rocked a lounge outfit.

But I especially rocked a tank.

Seemed someone was feeling his have-sex-for-the-first-time-with-your-new-hot-chick vibe.

I smirked.

“If you ever call me a tease again, I’m shooting you,” he muttered to mushrooms.

I smirked harder.

Then I clapped my hands and said, “Let’s get this puppy going.”

I moved to the Barefoot Contessa cookbook I’d bought at the bookstore a couple of days ago to start my new hobby. It was where I left it, on the kitchen counter, opened to the recipe.

And that was when I saw the box with a flier resting on top of it, sitting on the counter next to the cookbook.

“Did you grab my packages from downstairs?” I asked.

“No. All of that was on your mat at your door. I just brought it in.”

That was weird.

Was our postal chick delivering right to the door now?

“I didn’t order anything. Can you hold another minute while I look at this?” I requested.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll get the pasta water going.”

That wasn’t a meaty part of the recipe (in truth, this recipe wasn’t hard, and there were only nine ingredients, two of them salt and pepper, so this wasn’t the spectacle the pastitsio was, but it sounded yummy), so I let him have at it.

I grabbed the flier, turned it over and saw:

Oasis Holiday Extravaganza!!!!!!!!!

When: December 12, starting at 7:00 p.m.

Where: Oasis Courtyard

What: Glitter and Potluck

Dress: Get your holiday on!

(We’re dressing up.)

RSVP: Bill and Zach

Fill out the OASIS HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!!!!! Google form sent to your email to share what you’re bringing (Raye, your only acceptable contribution is your pudding, Jess, you’re on a signature cocktail, make it a good one!)

Anyone coming must give Bill or Zach $20 by

December 10 to fund the bar.

Anyone wanting to participate in the Secret Santa,

fill out that Google form in the same email.

If you come in jeans, we won’t throw shade, but this is about glitz and glamor and holiday cheer. So find a sequin or two or put on a blazer. It won’t kill you.

HOSTS: Bill and Zach!

“Do you think we’ll still be together on December twelfth?” I asked Eric.

“Yes,” he answered immediately.

I smirked again, though that was on the outside. On the inside, that gooey feeling was back.

I waved the flier and inquired, “Wanna be my date to a glitz and glamor holiday extravaganza in the courtyard?”

“Yes,” he repeated.

“Feel like being in on the Oasis Secret Santa?” I kept at him.

“No.”

I laughed.

Just what I thought he’d say.

But I was totally getting in on the Secret Santa. I killed at Secret Santa stuff.

It wasn’t hard, just buy a good bottle of booze.

“I don’t think you have to wear a tux, but you might have to wear a suit,” I warned him.

“I’m not allergic to suits, honey,” he told me. “What are you wearing?”

I thought about the sleeveless, black lace dress with the deep, to-the-midriff vee bodice and flirty, understated ruffles at the shoulders and on the long skirt that I scored on sale to go to a friend’s black-and-white wedding. Only to have said friend call off her wedding three weeks before it was supposed to happen because she figured out she was more in love with the best man than her groom.

An aside: I was no longer her friend. That wasn’t the first time she was a total flake in the worst way. I’d liked her fiancé, he was a good guy, so after that, I was out.

Another aside: since then, I’d heard she eloped with the best man.

The last aside: their marriage lasted four months before the new groom filed for divorce.

Wait, no, this was the last aside: the other last aside was no surprise to anyone.

To answer Eric’s question, I simply said, “I think you’ll like it.”

“I bet I will,” he murmured while getting out a sauté pan.

I set the flier down and reached for the box.

There was an envelope resting on top that had my name on it in handwriting I’d never seen before.

I slit open the envelope and pulled out a piece of notepaper. I unfolded it. It was from one of those freebie notepads you got at hotels.

And it said,

Jess,

Don’t give up on him.

He’s working through some shit.

He took it too far. You were right to be pissed.

I didn’t know he was going to go there with you.

I’ll give him time and have a word.

Sorry about the hood and zip ties.

Also the kidnapping.

Be careful out there,

~~Javi

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

“What is it?” Eric asked.

I handed him the note, folded open the unsecured flaps on the box and peered in.

I couldn’t help it.

I gasped.

“What?” Eric was right at my side, peering in with me. “Well…damn,” he muttered.

Damn was an understatement.

With reverence, I unearthed the sleek, stainless-steel cocktail shaker with copper accents. Then I pulled out the set of bar tools in their stand that included muddler, double jigger, tongs, spoon, bottle opener and strainer. More stainless-steel with copper accents, but the muddler was a phenomenal, polished walnut and had a marble tip.

“This is insane,” I whispered reverently.

“Seems the man’s got class as well as an over-honed sense of justice,” Eric stated.

I looked up at him. “Over-honed sense of justice?”

“Babe, this is the Wild West. Denver was Candyland compared to the trip that was LA. But this place, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s touch and go just driving from one place to another. I learned fast when I hit The Valley, anything goes. And Javier Montoya is the gunslinging marshal who put the star on his own chest.”

I didn’t travel much.

But I always knew my city of birth rocked .

“Do you think Javi extorted money out of his deadbeat dad to buy me this primo bar set?” I asked.

“I think if Javier Montoya wants to do something, he finds a way to get it done.”

And there it was again.

I knew I liked the guy.

“Since he put this on my welcome mat, I’m thinking our security gate doesn’t know it has the word ‘security’ in its description,” I remarked.

“Don’t worry, babe. Your gate is solid. Again, if Montoya wants something, he’ll get it done.”

Hmm.

I could think on it no longer. I had to feed my man, so I dragged the cookbook closer to me, gave the recipe a once over, then turned to the stove.

“So…my day,” I began as I started to melt the butter and olive oil. “The girls and I are gonna head into the camp tomorrow after Harlow and I get off work. We’re gonna ask some questions and see if anyone saw anything. We’re also going to set up surveillance. And get this, after Raye and Luna scouted out a good place to keep watch in that abandoned warehouse across from the camp, Raye asked, and Arthur is going to kit us out with communication equipment, binoculars and a camera with an extreme telephoto lens.”

Eric slid his hand along the small of my back (nice) as he moved from my one side to the other to open the packet of fresh fettucine I bought.

After he did this, he said, “I know. Raye told Cap. Cap told me. I sat down with Mace. The men are going to do the surveillance with you.”

My head twisted from the oil in the pan to him. “You are?”

He shrugged. “It’s a good idea. We’ll have men undercover in the camps, and they’ll have comms so they can communicate. But Mace and Lee have been uneasy about Tex and Duke being in there without backup close. If we take shifts with the Angels, we can keep a better eye on them.”

Lee was the managing partner of the Denver branch of NI&S. He was also the hero of one of the Rock Chick books, seeing as he married a Rock Chick. To end, his last name was Nightingale, so he’s the one who started the whole thing, literally, as his book was also the first book.

I dumped the mushrooms in the pan and stirred them around before I said, “Two important questions.”

“Hit me.”

“One, who’s Duke?”

“Duke’s a friend in Denver. He’s around Tex’s age. He’s a biker, so we can make him look like he’s been sleeping rough. He’s also sharp as a whip. And he’s got a few years on him, but he can take care of himself. Though, normally, he works at Indy’s bookstore.”

Indy, by the by, was Lee’s Rock Chick wife (I met both of them at the funeral, she was gorgeous and very sweet, he was the requisite hot ).

“What’s question two?” Eric prompted.

I gave it to him. “You need to tell the boys they need to be all in for my corn nut, corn dog, corn chip and salsa theme for stakeouts. I’m not sitting around for hours, staring at a bunch of people who are just living their lives, hoping for the bad guys to show up, without the appropriate snacks available.”

Eric smiled. “I see stakeouts with the Angels are gonna be a whole fuckuva lot better than the ones we do on our own.”

“What are your snack themes?”

He started laughing. “We don’t have snack themes. So already your stakeouts are better.”

I shot him a smile and turned back to the mushrooms to give them a swizzle.

I did this asking, “So, how was your day?”

“It was a day.”

I thought he was blowing me off, but he continued.

“We have an established rep in Denver and LA. But as I mentioned to you before, we’re starting from scratch here. Things have been slow. However, our rep in those other places is such, they weren’t that slow. That said, now shit’s sparking off. Since we’re picky with recruiting, there’s gonna be a lot of shuffling of staff until we can get another couple people on the payroll. This isn’t going to be easy. All the men in Denver have families they don’t want to be away from for very long. All the men in LA primarily do security details, and they can’t get away. It’s good Roam is moving down. That’ll help.”

“I thought Roam just made the decision to move. Is he fully down already?”

“He’s gotta move his shit, but he’s staying with Mace and Stella while he looks for a place and meshes with the team. Soon as he finds a place, he’ll go get his shit.”

“Right.”

“Also, we’re bracing for a showdown at the office because Shirleen has decided she’s going to be the firm’s Operating Manager with her base here, but Mace had just talked the woman who worked with us in LA into moving to Phoenix, so we don’t know how that’s gonna go.”

I turned to him again as he continued talking.

“They’re both spitfires, so unless we can figure that out, it’s gonna spark off too.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I noted.

He shook his head. “Shirleen manages the entire operation of NI and S. Payroll. Billing. Accounts receivable. Bookkeeping and accounting. Marjorie, who has already retired, twice, the second time when Mace and Stella moved to Phoenix, would only manage Phoenix operations, which means local staffing, case reporting, filing, receptionist functions and acting as a personal assistant to Mace.”

“So they won’t clash,” I remarked.

“No. They’ll clash. Shirleen has a laissez-faire work ethic. She gets it done and done well, but if she feels the need to take an afternoon off to go shopping, she’ll go. Marjorie has a Puritanical work ethic. She’s there on time. She’s highly organized. She’s obsessively professional. The only thing they have in common is that they’re both ballbusters. If they work together, shit will undoubtedly get real.”

“Well, at least it’ll make the office interesting.”

His eyes twinkled, and I noted how good of a look it was for him, before he said, “Yeah. And fortunately for me, I don’t have to be in the office very often.”

I kept stirring the mushrooms, thinking that this recipe was kind of boring (though, it was gonna taste amazing), when I offered, “I was born here, and I know a lot of people. No one springs to mind as a badass, but what are you looking for in recruiting?”

“Cap and I think Jacob might be a fit for the team.”

I looked at him yet again, this time with surprise.

Not surprise surprise, because it appeared the most important aspect of having a job with that team was to be built and ludicrously good-looking, and Jacob was that.

But still, surprise.

“Jacob?”

“He’s in excellent shape. He works with his hands. He seems to have good instincts. He’s protective of those he cares about, and we have to know what we’re doing, but we have to do it having the backs of the people we work with. He’ll need a lot of training, but we think he’d be a fit.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

He smiled at me. “No, since he’s pissed I’m not talking you out of ‘whatever that fool shit is’ you’re doing. And to make it clear, the ‘fool shit’ part of that were his words.”

I knew he’d gone to Eric to talk to him about my insane life.

“Once he calms down, we’ll talk to him,” Eric concluded.

“How many people are you looking for?”

“At least two for fieldwork. An additional two for full time in the surveillance room. And we need someone who can manage the surveillance room. All of the junior members of the team work that room, Brady, Knox, Gabe. But with that, we’re seriously short-staffed, and we need people who take that on as their primary job.”

“Surveillance room?”

“We also provide security, so the surveillance room is operational twenty-four-seven to keep an eye on client properties. But we have cases where we need to install cameras to keep an eye on other things.”

“Your job is so rad,” I muttered to the mushrooms.

I felt warmth coming from him at my comment, but he didn’t reply to it.

“Want me to grate the cheese?” he asked. “Or is that a skill you want some practice with?”

Grating cheese did not sound like something I had a desperate desire to do at that moment (though I’d want practice at a later date).

However, what I did have a desperate desire to do was feed my man, so I told him, “You can do that.”

He shot me a smile, then he got on the cheese.

We cooked the rest of the meal together in that comfortable silence we shared during our No-Fucks-to-Giving.

And as we did, I enjoyed not only having this synchronicity with Eric, but also having this time of normal where it wasn’t about Jeff or my head being up my ass or anything. It was just about winding down from the day, being normal and getting chill.

I peeked at the icebox cake in an effort to curtail my need to shove my entire face in the bowl of fettucine (it smelled so good!) before we sat down on the stools at my kitchen bar after we dished up.

Eric had cut the fresh loaf of bread I’d bought to add carbs to our heaping bowl of carbs, as well as put butter out on a plate that he’d nuked for ten seconds to soften it.

He went for that.

I swirled my fork in the fettucine and shoved a huge bite into my mouth, a part of my anatomy I’d positioned to hovering over the bowl ( God , so good!) when he said softly, “Thanks for asking about my day.”

Face still hovering over my bowl, mouth munching the simple but rich and decadent pasta, I turned to him.

His eyes were on me, and his teeth were sliding into a piece of buttered bread.

First, how he could go for the bread before the pasta would forever remain a mystery.

Second, I couldn’t wait for those teeth to bite into me.

I had to concentrate on those thoughts, because last, I was getting the impression from what he said that his ex didn’t bother to pull herself out of the world she thought revolved around her to ask after what was happening in her husband’s world.

Of course, according to Eric, she was never home to do so. But it would seem, even if she was, she didn’t.

And that pissed me off.

Therefore, it was angrily I finished munching. Still angrily, I swallowed.

And yes, still angrily, I asked, “Let me guess. Savannah didn’t have a lot of interest in how your day went.”

Eric shook his head. “I don’t wanna talk about her, sweetheart. But I do want you to know that I appreciate us having a quiet night and all the conversation isn’t about what’s happening with you. I’ll grant, what’s going on with you is a lot. So it means something to me you can find your way out of it to think about me.”

Translation: No. The bitch didn’t bother to pull herself out of her world to see to the man she’d vowed to share that world with.

I forked (mm-hmm, still angrily) into a mushroom and shoved it in my mouth.

Eric chuckled.

I turned to glare at him.

His chuckle became a laugh.

I reached for some bread and the butter, and one could say my swipes on the unoffending bread were somewhat violent.

“There’s something to be said about not having it all that great, then finding something great, so you know to appreciate it. Yeah?” Eric asked.

I glared at him again. “Don’t be sweet when I’m in the mood to cut a bitch.”

At that, he busted out laughing.

I took a bite of my bread.

It was good and all, but the fettucine was far superior.

Thus, I put my bread down and returned to my pasta.

Eric put his hand on my back and leaned in close.

“And it means a lot that you’d get so angry on my behalf.”

“You’re still being sweet,” I warned around a mouth full of fettucine.

He was grinning largely as he sat back and went after his own pasta.

I’d managed to remind myself that Savannah was history, Eric was sitting beside me, we were having a quiet night, and the portion I’d served up for myself wasn’t gut-busting—which should lead to wild, sweaty sex for the first time with my new hot guy—when Eric leaned forward to pull his phone out of his back pocket, muttering, “Goddammit.”

“What?” I asked.

“I’m on a case that’s close to breaking,” he said while reading the screen of his phone, “and I worried this would happen.”

“What?” I repeated.

He sent a text flying and then circled more fettucine on his fork. “The case is breaking. I gotta eat up, babe, and roll.”

Shit.

“You’re leaving?”

When he turned his eyes to me, he didn’t need to say words. I could see he was maybe even less happy about it than I was.

Still, I was tremendously unhappy about it.

“So I take it tonight is not the night for wild, sweaty sex for the first time with my new hot guy,” I remarked.

He suddenly caught me behind my head, pressed his mouth tight to mine, pulled back and replied, “If I slide in bed beside you tonight and you’re wearing something that even minorly resembles the last two nighties I’ve seen you in, prepare to get your ass woken up before it gets tagged.”

God, I wished I hadn’t wasted my best nightie on my first sleepover at Eric’s house when nothing happened.

It was then, I remembered a red number I had, which wasn’t in my normal color rotation (red was strictly accent), which was why I’d forgotten about it. I only bought it because the style was so hot, and it didn’t come in black, but I had to have it.

I’d never worn it.

Now Eric was going to get it.

My smile to him was slow.

Eric watched it, muttering, “Fuck.”

“Be safe,” I bid.

His eyes came up to mine. “Don’t dig into that cake. I’ll cut us a slice after we break this fuckin’ seal.”

Oh yeah.

He was as frustrated as I was that seal hadn’t been broken yet.

I saluted him with my fork. “Righty ho, big man.”

He pressed his lips to mine again, turned to his fettucine, downed a couple more bites, and I got another lip touch before he buttered another piece of bread and took off with bread in hand.

I took my time eating, and then I took my time cleaning up.

While I did the latter, I washed and polished my new bar set, stashed the old one I had, which wasn’t near as nice (or as expensive), and put the new one on my bar cart.

It looked amazing.

Staring at it, I didn’t want to be reassured that it was clear Jeff had cast his lot with a really good guy.

But Javi’s present, and his note, were so thoughtful, I couldn’t help but be reassured.