I smiled, looking at Deck. Yep, he was clenching his fists and ready to throttle me. The guy was super-protective ever since my brother died. Well, two years after that actually, because Deck vanished the day he told me Connor was dead. I saw him briefly at the funeral, but he didn’t stick around.
Every day, I expected him to come back. If I heard a car door shut outside my house, my heart would start to race and I’d run to the window to see if it was him. Or if I’d get an email from an unknown address, I’d open it with my breath held hoping it was from Deck. It never was.
Then things changed and I stopped waiting, and stopped caring.
When he did finally come back, I tried to avoid him, but avoiding Deck was like pushing away a cement truck with your baby finger. It just wasn’t happening. We argued about it … okay, I argued while he merely ignored me. He said he left because he had to go back to his team overseas. I didn’t fault him for that. What I was pissed off for was he never contacted me. Then I felt stupid because why the hell would he keep in contact with his best friend’s kid sister?
Deck was fearless, something I completely lacked when I was sixteen, and it drew me to him. Despite him being intimidating with the way he seemed to own an entire room, sometimes when he looked at me I saw a softness that made my heart pound and my stomach flutter.
Connor told me Deck had spent time in Juvie then on the streets. When I’d asked what he’d done, Connor shrugged it off and said nothing he wouldn’t have done himself. That made him a bit of a mystery, which intrigued me.
The thing was I’d only technically met him three times before my brother died. Once, he stayed with us for two weeks when he and Connor were on leave from the Army. Then before he and Connor went for training with the JTF2: Joint Task Force, an elite anti-terrorist unit. And again when they came home from duty. I’d asked Connor why Deck always came to our place, and he told me he didn’t really have any other place to go. I’d asked what about his family, but Connor just shrugged and said the team was Deck’s family.
Then Connor died and shit changed.
I hated that Deck saw me break that day. I hated that he lived and my brother died, and I hated that I’d wanted him to hold me and take the pain away. Then I hated him more because he didn’t. Deck was everything I wasn’t that day—strong, controlled and unafraid.
Then he left and my life catapulted into the same darkness I’d seen in Deck’s eyes. There was no question I was completely fucked up after that. My parents had been so caught up in their own grief they assumed I was just grieving, as well, and I was, but it was much more than that. It was the hell I suffered for months after Connor’s death. Deck didn’t know it, but it was thoughts of him which gave me the strength to survive what I went through. He was my solid.
The door swung closed after Tristan, and I watched him fold back into his car then drive away. Deck hadn’t moved, and I felt the heat in my belly burn as he watched me. After all these years, he still unnerved me. The man could be standing on the other side of a football field and still make me quiver. I just wasn’t sure yet if it was quivering with nerves or quivering because I was turned on. I was going with a blend, and that could—and would—destroy me if he got too close.
I glanced over my shoulder for Rylie, but she had snuck away to clean tables which didn’t need cleaning. Tanner, an old friend of sorts, sat at a table tapping away on his laptop with his earphones in, hat pulled down low over his face. He glanced up at me, then at Deck, frowned and went back to typing. Tanner didn’t really like Deck, although they’d never formally met and never would.
Deck approached me. He was my only weakness and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get him out of me. And I’d tried.
I smiled. “Hey, baby, when did you get back?” He hated when I called him ‘baby’ and I knew this by the way the muscles in his arms tightened. “Kill anyone this trip?” I was gambling he had.
“You planning on dating him?”
Straight to the point, as always. I raised my brows. “Who?”
Deck scowled. “Georgie.”
“Come on, Deck. You don’t know already?” His brows lowered. “Well, he’s been coming here for three weeks.” Deck’s security cameras would’ve told him that. When I’d bought the coffee shop, he’d had them installed, said they were a deterrent for burglars. I knew it was another way for Deck to keep his eye on me.
His men came and collected the footage randomly and I was betting Deck had them research every regular customer who walked in my shop. Last week, I gave them all a treat. After I closed, I blared the music and did an erotic dance standing on the counter right in front of the camera. My guess, Deck hadn’t seen that yet or I’d have heard about it.
“You know who that guy is?” he asked.
I crossed my arms, more to cover my nipples, which I knew were erect from the shivers coursing down my spine. “In what context? Because my guess is who he is in the bedroom is entirely different than who he is when he walks in here.” I let my voice trail off at the end, which was probably a good idea because Deck’s scowl was pretty menacing. “Guess I’ll find out now that I have his number.” I pressed the button on the till, and it dinged and popped open. Then I took the five-dollar bill Tristan gave me and smoothed it out. “Maybe a threesome would be—”
“Not in the mood, Georgie.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re never in the mood.”