25. Isla

25

ISLA

The knock on the door for the third time finally got me off the bed. My anger had grown tenfold since I got in my room, and now I was ready to explode. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t care that you were only trying to protect me, and if you think for one second I’m going to have sex with you,” I shouted as I yanked the door open, but it wasn’t Kavanaugh on the other side. “Then you’re completely wrong, Anna,” I finished with a haughty tone, pretending I had meant to say all that to her.

“Damn, and I thought the sex would be phenomenal.”

I chuckled, opening the door wider for her. “Would you like to come in?”

“That depends. Are you going to demand I grovel?”

I shut the door as she walked inside and headed to the bar for a drink. Holding up the glass, I asked, “Want one?”

“At dinner. Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

“I should really do more research,” I said, chewing my bottom lip. Though, going out to dinner sounded really tempting right now.

“Either you’ll get the job or you won’t. You already know what you’re doing. So, let’s grab something to eat and get drunk off our asses.”

I quirked an eyebrow at her. “Fox would actually let that happen?”

“Of course. But he’s always watching, so I don’t have to worry about sneaking around.”

“Isn’t that annoying?”

“Absolutely, and not at all.”

I pulled on my coat as we headed out the door. “I don’t get it.”

She shrugged lightly. “He’s Fox. Yes, he’s always going to be overprotective, but I’ve known that since the moment he kidnapped me.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Okay, I have a feeling there’s a lot to the story that I don’t really want to know.”

“You don’t, but the point is, it’s done out of love. And as long as he doesn’t stifle me, I can let him have his eccentricities.”

“Like what?”

“Sticking a camera on my coat,” she said, holding out the button. “Like I don’t know what this really is.”

I stared at the button, wondering if any of mine were actually cameras.

“Yes, they are. And I can guarantee they’re all over your clothes. You probably have some cameras in your car, as well as your briefcase. I’d take it as a sign of love rather than the blatant invasion of privacy that it actually is.”

“And you’re not bothered by this.”

“At first, yes. But when a man slowly tears apart another man for you, brutalizing him so he feels every inch of pain the bastard inflicted on you, you kind of go with the flow and just be happy that psycho is on your side.”

I smirked her. “He’s your psycho.”

“Absolutely. Here,” she said, pointing to a bar.

“I thought we were getting dinner.”

“Oh, we absolutely are, but I need a drink.”

She yanked the door open and we walked inside, but I almost immediately turned around and walked out. “Nope, not here.”

I turned to walk out, but before we could, Fox spun around and spotted us. “Hey! There’s my lovely lady!”

“Anna, I’m really sorry, but I’m outta here.”

I was just about to slip out the door when Fox scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder. “Fox!” I beat him on the back, but he didn’t stop striding across the bar. “Anna, do something!”

But instead of helping me, she followed Fox across the bar and took a seat. Fox plopped me on a stool at the bar, my hair flying everywhere as the world was righted again. I almost fell off, but warm hands wrapped around my arm, keeping me in place. Glancing over my shoulder, Kavanaugh shot me an apologetic smile.

“I swear, I didn’t know you would be here.”

That much was obvious since he showed up here first.

“One drink,” Anna said. “Then we’ll go someplace else.”

I glared at her. “This was a setup.”

“Was it?” she asked, tapping her chin. “I would never say I purposely took someone anyplace they didn’t want to be.”

“That sounds like Fox doublespeak for not kidnapping someone.”

She shrugged and grabbed the drink in front of Fox. “Bottoms up!”

I could walk out of here or I could stay and have a drink. Going back to the room and drinking alone didn’t sound very good at this point. One drink couldn’t hurt.

“What are you having?” the bartender asked, grinning at me and my wild hair.

“Do you have something to make you forget the possessive boyfriend who neglects to tell you important things and bursts into interviews to ‘save the day’?”

He pointed at Fox and I shook my head, redirecting him to Kavanaugh.

“Ah,” he nodded. “Well, I can recommend something fruity, something spicy, or something really fucking strong.”

As good as strong sounded, I needed to have my wits about me for tomorrow.”

“Something fruity.”

“Figures,” he mumbled.

Okay, I was offended by that. “Hey, I am perfectly fine with strong, but unlike my jealous, possessive boyfriend—” I spun to face Kavanaugh. “By the way, that look is only good on men in romance novels—” Then I turned back to the bartender. “Unlike him, I have a very important interview tomorrow. And no, you will not be joining me.”

“Me?” the bartender asked.

I pointed to Kavanaugh. “No. That was directed at the jealous, possessive boyfriend.”

“I’m not jealous,” he grumbled.

I snorted in derision. “You were jealous of IKE.”

“Can we not bring him up again? It was a momentary lapse of judgment.”

I scoffed, turning to face him. “You were just as pissed at him when all he did was walk me back to the hotel! And you’re the one who called him out here!”

“Why did he call another man?” the bartender asked curiously, still tending to my drink.

“Ooh! I know the answer to this one!” Fox said, bouncing on his stool with his hand raised in the air.

“I’ll tell you why. Because my boyfriend has a problem telling me the truth about things when he thinks he’s protecting me.”

The bartender’s eyes flicked to Kavanaugh, his eyebrows raised not in surprise, but in that kind of man, you’re screwed type of way. “Yeah, I get a lot of your kind in here.”

I spun in my seat and gave Kavanaugh a satisfied smirk. “He gets a lot of you in here.”

“Can we not talk about this with the bartender?”

“Well, if we go back to the hotel, I’m likely to shove my heel up your ass.”

The bartender set my drink down in front of me with a chuckle. “If it makes you feel any better, I mostly deal with men who have already fucked things up beyond repair. It sounds like you still have a shot at fixing this.”

“Tell me something…” I waited for him to give his name.

“Charles.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “You can call me Charlie if you want.”

“Okay, Charlie. Tell me this, if your girlfriend kept lying to you, all in the name of protecting you, would you be okay with it?”

“If I had a woman protecting me, I think I might not be okay with anything.”

“So sexist,” I hissed.

“If you’re going to drag the bartender into this, how about giving him a little perspective?”

“From you? I’m not sure that’s a thing.”

Kavanaugh ignored me, turning to the bartender. “Say you had a bad feeling in your gut, but not proof anything was going to happen. And your girlfriend had a really important meeting that could be life-altering. Would you tell her about it just before the meeting and scramble her nerves or would you hold off and dig for more information, meanwhile protecting her and making sure she could get through the meeting without worrying someone was trying to kill her?”

“Ooh! Again, I know this one!” Fox said, jumping up and down. Anna shoved a bag of Funyuns at him to shut him up.

The bartender scratched the back of his head. “I gotta tell you, I never dealt with anyone trying to kill my girlfriend before. But if I had…yeah, I think I would be on his side.”

“What?” I gasped. “He lied to me!”

“Before a big meeting. Sorry, I’m on his side.”

Narrowing my eyes at the man, I pulled out the big guns. “Yeah? Well, what would you say if I told you that he followed me to the meeting and was trying to sabotage it the whole time?”

His eyebrows shot up as Kavanaugh started to defend himself. “I wasn’t trying to sabotage it!”

“You practically accused him of having ulterior motives for hiring me!”

The bartender again looked to Kavanaugh.

“You should have seen the floor he was going to take her to. It was all under construction. There were plastic tarps and power tools everywhere! It was a serial killer’s paradise!”

“Agreed,” Fox nodded. “Tarps come in very handy, and power tools, if you’re into that kind of thing. I prefer a good pair of pliers.”

The bartender did a double take at Fox, then turned back to me. “I guess I would have to side with him. It sounds dangerous.”

“Dangerous if your job is to look for that sort of thing,” I scoffed. “To anyone else, it was a man showing me around the new office space.”

“All alone, where he could grind you into little bits,” Kavanaugh continued.

“They had a grinder?” Fox asked excitedly.

“Not that I saw, but I bet if we went back there, we’d find a tarp on the floor with tools laid out to hack her to bits.”

“Who are you guys?” the bartender asked.

I took a sip of my drink, waving him off. “They’re all superheroes.”

“Men in tights?” the bartender grinned.

“We are not men in tights,” Kavanaugh exclaimed, sounding very offended.

“I could totally be a superhero. Maybe Superman or Batman.”

“Or Deadpool,” Kavanaugh scoffed.

“Yes!” Fox shouted, jumping up from his stool. “That’s me! Do you want to see my moves?”

I leaned past him and glared at Anna. “You know, for a girl’s night, this really sucks.”

“Drink your margarita,” she retorted, not caring in the least that she dragged me out here to suffer through a night at the bar with my so-called boyfriend.

“You know, the next time you want to hang out, I’m going to take you someplace you’ll hate.”

“I can guarantee by the time the night is over, you’ll never want to talk to me again.” She raised her glass and grinned at me. “Cheers.”

She was right. I most definitely never wanted to hang out with her again. We had slipped out of the bar sometime after my third margarita for some much-needed air, but wound up chasing a kitten down a dark alley. Call it stupidity or the alcohol, but that kitten was so damn cute and I just couldn’t resist trying to snag it.

“If you keep chasing it, it’s going to run away,” she hissed, crouching behind me as I hid behind a very smelly dumpster.

“If I don’t chase it, I won’t catch it,” I replied, feeling rather proud of myself for managing to get that whole sentence out. This night was not going to end well, I already knew that much.

“Let’s just leave the cat.”

My gaze snapped to hers in a snarl. “Leave it? Why would we do that? It’s so cute!”

“And probably full of diseases.”

“It’s not old enough to have diseases. It looks no more than six weeks old!”

She smacked me, holding her finger to her lips. Turning back around, I faced the kitty and made little clicking noises, trying to pull its attention to me. “Here, Sasha.”

“How do you know her name is Sasha?”

“She looks like a Sasha,” I answered, thinking that was a pretty silly question. I crept forward, nearly to her when I heard footsteps in the alley. I held out my hand, hoping whoever was there would heed my warning. “Come on, baby. Come to Mama.”

A low chuckle tore my gaze from the kitten, along with Anna tapping me on the back.

“Uh…I think this is one of those times when we shouldn’t have left the guys.”

I cocked my head at the man looming in the alley, staring at Anna and me like we were a treat left behind for his amusement. I sighed heavily. “You know, he’s never going to leave me alone after this.”

“Well, I did try to warn you.”

“In what way?” I argued.

“Uh…I brought you to the bar to make up with him, knowing he would show his possessive side. Wasn’t that clear?”

“No!”

“Oh. Well, I really thought you would get it when you saw him.”

I threw up my hands. “What kind of logic is that?”

“The kind of logic where you accept the fact that you have a crazy boyfriend just like the rest of us. Is it really that hard to figure out?”

“Yes, it really is. And do you know why?”

“Because you’re supposed to be a self-sufficient woman who doesn’t need a man?”

“That and so much more.”

“Well, here we are in an alley, about to be attacked by a creepy man, all because you wanted to get pussy.”

“I’d like a little pussy,” the man chuckled.

“Shut it, dirtbag,” Anna snapped, then turned back to me. “It’s a cat. You don’t even live here. I can’t believe you thought this was worth it.”

“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t brought me out drinking! In reality, this is all your fault.”

“If you want to blame anyone, blame Fox. It was his idea.”

“Ladies—” the man tried to interrupt.

“If anyone’s to blame, it’s Kavanaugh. If it weren’t for him lying to me and dragging you and Fox out here, I would be back at my hotel room right now, enjoying a glass of wine with dinner. But instead, I’m half drunk in an alley, chasing down a kitten with a psycho’s wife, while I’m hoping this creep doesn’t attack me.”

“You know, I have feelings,” the man pointed out.

I turned, thrusting my hands on my hips. “Oh, sure. The man who wants to rape me in an alley doesn’t want me to be mean to him.”

“Hey, there’s no need to be nasty. You don’t know I was going to rape you.”

I scoffed at that. “Sure, you came into the alley and said you wanted some pussy, but it was totally innocent.” I turned back and looked for my kitten, but she was nowhere in sight. I tossed up my hands in irritation. “Great! And now you’ve scared away the kitten.”

I spun around when I smelled a familiar cologne that I inhaled many nights when Kavanaugh was away. I must have been downwind to smell it above all the garbage. I sighed, knowing the fun of the night was over, and I probably wouldn’t be getting my kitten.

“If you want to live, I would recommend walking away from the ladies,” Kavanaugh said congenially, though there was a definite threat in his voice.

Fox was leaning against the brick wall on the other side of the alley, chewing what I could only assume were Funyuns. “You okay, Babe?”

“Well, you know, in a smelly alley and everything. Could be better.”

The man looked at both of us and then both men. “You can have them. They’d drive me crazy anyway.”

He started to walk away, but Fox stepped in his path. “They’d drive you crazy? You don’t even know them.”

“Did you hear them?”

“We hear them every day,” Kavanaugh murmured.

“Yeah, bitches be crazy, right?” Fox grinned.

The man laughed uneasily, taking a step back. “Right.”

Fox’s smile suddenly dropped, along with his bag of Funyuns. “Are you saying my woman is a bitch?”

“What? I—no, I was…you said?—”

Kavanaugh moved in a flash, his hand wrapped around the back of the man’s neck. The man winced when he squeezed just a tad too tight. “I think he was saying they were crazy.”

Fox cocked his head at the man. “Is that it? You think they’re crazy?”

The man’s eyes widened comically and he spluttered for the right answer. “What—I—no! I would never…they’re clearly very nice, very sane women. I?—”

“You would never what?” Fox asked.

“Man, I can feel the crazy coming off him from here,” I whispered to Anna.

“Isn’t it sexy?” she sighed dreamily.

Apparently, I was seeing something entirely different. But then I looked at Kavanaugh, who had the same psychotic look in his eyes, and I finally got it.

“You would never hurt a lady? Because from where I’m standing, that’s exactly what it looked like you were about to do. Not that you could win.” Fox turned to Anna. “You want a shot at him?”

“And waste my good buzz on him? No thanks.”

“What about you, Isla?”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise as I pointed to myself. “You…you want me to kill him?”

Fox burst out laughing, throwing his head back comically. “Kill? No, this isn’t the place for that. But if you want to hurt him a little before we take him back to that office building?—”

“My soon-to-be boss’s office?” I shrieked. “I’ll never get the job if you murder someone there!”

“But they have the tarp,” Fox pointed out. “It really is perfect.”

“It is, but they might link us. Remember, he’s seen my face,” Kavanaugh pointed out.

“True, true,” Fox nodded. “So…what are we doing here?”

Kavanaugh sighed. “Do you think dumping him in the river is too cliché?”

“Too far,” Fox shook his head. “Besides, I think I tweaked my back earlier. Can’t aggravate it over someone like this.”

“I have a great cream for that.”

I watched the two of them banter back and forth. Meanwhile, this man was about to pee his pants. I almost felt bad for him. Almost. He did have bad intentions.

“Look,” the man winced as Kavanaugh squeezed his neck. “How about I go on my way, and you go on yours? We’ll pretend none of this ever happened. I never saw you?—”

“Or them,” Fox interrupted.

“Exactly.”

“And this will never happen again,” Fox grinned. “Because I will be watching you. I’m like Santa, except the evil kind.”

The man nodded furiously as Kavanaugh shoved him away. He stumbled into the street, glancing back only once before taking off down the road. Kavanaugh and Fox burst into laughter, congratulating each other on a fabulous performance. Meanwhile, my kitten was still gone.

“Well, that wasn’t exactly how I hoped to end the night,” I muttered.

“It could be worse. We could be watching a murder right now.”

Well, there was that.

“Another drink?”