I looked back at the screen to see it said our order was submitted.
“Tack! You submitted the order and I didn’t even get a chance to scrutinize it!” I snapped.
“Babe, have you not been listening?”
I turned to glare up at him, yanking my hand from under his on the mouse then instantly finding it caught, his fingers curling around mine tight and then my hand was resting on his rock-hard thigh.
Crap.
“Tack,” I clipped, still glaring at him and now pulling in vain on my hand.
He ignored me and said outrageously, “I gotta go. Tip your face back further for me, baby, I wanna give you a kiss before I do.”
My stomach plummeted in a way that wasn’t altogether unpleasant even as I felt my eyebrows rise as did my voice. “Are you nuts?”
“No,” he replied calmly, his eyes moving over my face and settling on my mouth before he muttered, “Remember your mouth. It was near as sweet as other parts of you.”
Ohmigod!
I felt my eyes narrow mainly because he was too much and none of the too much he was was good.
I yanked at my hand. His fingers curled tighter and his other hand came up to wrap around the side of my neck as his upper body started coming toward me. Therefore, I pulled at my neck at the same time I yanked at my hand. This not only didn’t work, it made him slide his fingers around to the back of my neck, pulling up as he bent closer and he lifted my hand from his thigh to press it against his chest.
I was watching his face get closer, specifically his amazing lips surrounded by his kickass goatee. My mind took that unfortunate moment to remind me that I’d never had a man with facial hair prior to Tack and I’d liked the feeling of those lips with that goatee on various parts of me. In fact, every part they’d touched. And it was then we heard the door open.
Both our necks twisted to see a woman was standing in the door. She was pretty, with wild red hair that had liberal streaks of very fake blonde which I couldn’t decide in that instant if I thought looked good or kind of skanky. She also had clear, light blue eyes. She was wearing biker babe apparel of jeans, high-heeled boots and tight scoop-necked t-shirt with four buttons at the neckline, all of them undone exposing cle**age.
“Fuck,” Tack muttered right before the redhead exploded.
“You are f**king shitting me!” she, for some reason, shrieked, walking in quickly after slamming the door loudly, her eyes going squinty, her face setting hard and I saw what I didn’t see seconds before. Her face was already hard prior to her setting it harder. There were lines around her mouth probably from smoking too much. There were also lines around her eyes that didn’t look like laugh lines, instead they looked like she got squinty-eyed, pissed off frequently. And her skin looked like someone should have introduced her to sunblock about three decades ago.
I pulled at Tack’s hands and one let me go, the one at my neck. The other one dropped our hands to his thigh as his torso straightened and twisted to face her.
“Naomi, what the f**k?” he asked and her squinty eyes cut to him.
“Are you doin’ your new office manager?” she asked.
“For f**k’s sake,” Tack growled.
“Are you doin’ your new office manager?” she repeated, her voice, unfortunately, getting louder.
“Don’t know that’s any of your business,” Tack answered and my hand jerked spasmodically in his hold which tightened in return.
“You don’t know that’s any of my business?” she shouted. I winced at the volume of her voice at the same time I hoped that the noise in the garage was drowning her out.
“Woman, I divorced your ass four years ago,” Tack reminded her and I felt my lips part as I stared at Tack’s ex-wife. I could see it, considering she’d been pretty once. She wasn’t exactly pretty now, mostly because she looked and acted like a serious bitch. Furthermore, on closer inspection, the fake blonde streaks were definitely skanky. She shouldn’t have gone for champagne highlights. Instead her stylist should have recommended honey or, maybe, caramel.
“So?” she shot back.
“So?” Tack repeated with unconcealed disbelief.
“Yeah, so?” she returned.
“You’re hitched to another f**kin’ guy,” Tack replied.
“So?”
“So, who I do ain’t no business of yours and hasn’t been for four f**kin’ years,” Tack returned.”
“We got kids, ass**le,” she retorted.
Oh wow. Tack had kids.
“Who I do ain’t their business either unless I decide to make it their business instead ‘a you makin’ it their business. Which you should not f**kin’ do but I know you will because you are one seriously twisted, stupid bitch which is the reason I divorced your ass four years ago,” Tack fired back.
Um, it seemed to me a domestic situation was brewing. It also seemed I was due a coffee break, which I decided to take immediately and take it somewhere that was not there.
I rose from my chair, muttering, “I’ll just –”
Naomi’s eyes sliced to me. “Yeah, get your ass outta here, bitch.”
That was when Tack let me go and he did this before he stood, turning to face her so he was standing between her and me. I didn’t know him very well and he’d been scary around me, very scary. But even though I had his back and I might not know him very well, no one could miss the vibes emanating from him and those vibes were so beyond scary it was not funny. They were so beyond scary I found myself holding my breath.
“Do not,” he said softly, in a voice that seemed to slither through the room in a sinister way, “speak to Tyra like that. Do you f**kin’ hear me?”
My body locked when he said my name but my eyeballs swiveled to Naomi who was shockingly completely immune to the scary vibes sparking menacingly in the room.
“I’ll talk to your latest piece of ass however the f**k I want, dickhead.”
At that, Tack moved and I could swear I was watching but he went so fast, I wasn’t certain what I saw. One second they were facing off, the next the bright Denver sunshine came in through the door and the next that door was closed and both Tack and Naomi were on the other side of it.
Even so, I heard their continued conversation starting with Tack warning, “Do not test me.”
“Fuck you,” was Naomi’s rejoinder.