Blue Colla Make Ya Holla (43 page)

“Of course, baby. First thing tomorrow, I’m having a top of the line security system installed in both of our apartments.”

Talk of security brought a forgotten question from earlier back to the front of my mind. “Why do you have a gun?”

“For protection.” I waited for him to elaborate, but nothing came. It seemed unusual someone would have a gun in this quiet neighborhood—at least it was until tonight—unless something had happened to make them feel threatened. His last place had been huge, and I couldn’t imagine it not being in a secure building.

“Was it loaded?”

“Yes. Is that a problem for you?”

My problem was he didn’t seem to trust me enough to open up to me about it. “I’ve just heard stories about how guns are usually turned against the owner during a break in. If I’d been there alone, and he’d found it…” I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened. “Did you have it with you in the bathroom?”

“No, I keep it hidden in the linen closet. When I heard a noise, I jumped out of the shower, grabbed it, and then found him with his hands on you. Trust me, baby, there was no way he could have turned it on me.”

“I-I do trust you.”
Probably more than you trust me.

“Would you feel better if you learned how to shoot?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I panicked when I woke up and forgot everything I was supposed to do. It’s probably for the best I didn’t have a deadly weapon within reach.”

“I swear I’ll protect you from now on.”

“You d-did protect me. You saved me. I froze, I let him have the upper hand, I couldn’t breathe, and you saved me.” I buried my face into his shirt to hide my ugly cry.

“It shouldn’t have happened to begin with. I should’ve been out of the shower before you got home. I promise you, there will not be a next time. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”

‡

“W
hat can I
get for you, baby?” I asked one of the frat boys who sat in my section, along with five other guys in matching t-shirts. All six of them stared at my tits for almost a full minute before ordering a pitcher of the cheapest ale on tap. They could stare all they wanted since it usually made for better tips. However, college kids were notoriously stingy, and with their order, I’d be lucky to get more than five bucks. But at least I wouldn’t have to fuck any of them.

When I turned to head to the bar, I nearly bounced off of a solid wall of man. “What are you doing here?” I tried in vain to cover my exposed nipples as I stepped around him.

“I came to talk to you about something.” He glanced around the space and then back to me as we continued to cross the room. “I see other servers wearing bras. Why are you putting on a peep show?”

“Well, I recently took a huge pay cut,” I explained as I pushed by him to continue on to the bar. “I have to boost my tips in any way I can. Plus, the more I make, the sooner I can get out of this hell hole.”

He grabbed me mid-stride and pulled me against his chest. “These are mine,” he said as his thumbs grazed the sides of my breasts. “You need to keep them covered up.”

“And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t, I’ll haul your naked ass back to my bed and not let you out of it until you remember exactly who you belong to.”

“You aren’t exactly encouraging me to be good, you know.” He was being an ass, but his possessiveness had a way of turning me on. Before Carter, no one had ever cared one way or the other.

“How much longer do you have?”

I looked over to the clock above the bar. “Another hour.”

“I’ll wait, and then we are going to talk.”

“You don’t need to babysit me. I know what I’m doing.” He turned his gaze to the floor. “You don’t trust me. You think I’m going to sleep with everyone in this room.”

“Can you blame me? The last time I was here, that’s exactly what you were doing.” Regret washed across his face as soon as he’d said the last word. “I’m sorry. This place just brings out the worst in me. I do trust you; I just don’t trust these perverts, and with good cause.”

“Fuck you.” He gently grabbed my upper arm so I couldn’t storm off.

“That’ll come later. Until then, I’m keeping an eye on what’s mine to make sure no one else touches.”

For the next fifty-eight minutes, Carter sat at the bar and followed me around with his eyes like an overprotective guard dog, only getting up once to growl at a customer who looked at me a little too long for his liking. When my shift was finally over, I changed into my street clothes and found him waiting for me right outside of the dressing room.

“Go ahead and say whatever it is you want to say. I’m hungry, tired, and my feet are killing me.”

“Let’s go eat, it would be better to talk somewhere else, anyway.” His anger was still bubbling just below the surface.

“Fine,” I said on a sigh. He took my hand and led me to his car in the customer parking lot. There weren’t many places open in the middle of the night during the week, so we ended up at a pub a few blocks over.

“This can’t happen again,” I told him after we were settled over a platter of fish and chips. After all this time, he still insisted on sharing food whenever we were out.

“Agreed. It’s time for you to find a job somewhere you can work fully clothed.”

“That’s not what I meant. You cost me a lot of money tonight. Why were you even there?”

“I found out who the intruder was. He was one of your
customers
that night; told the detectives he followed you home because you wanted him to. Said you’d been flirting with him all night.” He looked away and fiddled with the salt shaker.

“What?”

“You’re going to have to eventually talk to the police.” He sighed and then looked me in the eyes. “I get that you flirt with the guys to make more money, but when I walked in there and saw you walking around in nothing but a thong and matching fuck me shoes?”

“Are you implying I’m asking for bad things to happen to me? That nearly being attacked was my fault?”

“No, it’s just…” He released a harsh breath and tugged both of his hands through his short hair. “Why do you still feel the need to work naked?”

“I told you; to make more money.”

“How would you feel if I walked around a bunch of drunken women with my junk hanging out?”

“That’s different.”

“How? How is it different?”

“You’re special. Men may want to fuck me, but women want to marry you.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what? That you think you own me?”

“That I’m in love with you.”

It took my brain a long moment to process his words. “You—you love me?”

“I love you, and I’m also
in
love with you. I can’t stand the thought of anyone else getting to see you like that.” He reached across the table and brushed a tear from my cheek “Why are you crying?”

“No one’s said that to me, and meant it, since I was eight years old.”

“Baby, I…” He trailed off, at a loss for words.

“I lov—”

“Well, if it isn’t Officer Hottie Pants!” a drunken blonde hollered as she stumbled to our table. “Are you gonna come home with me again tonight? You’ll have to ditch the whore; I don’t swing that way.”

My stomach jerked up into my throat.
Go home with her again? Whore?
Was I somehow visibly branded for life?

“This is not appropriate,” Carter replied. His jaw clenched, and he kept his eyes trained on her. Since the moment we met, he’d always made me the focus of his attention. Now I felt like I was on the outside looking in.

“I’m hoping to get to take an oral sobriety exam this time, if you know what I mean.”

Anger clouded my vision as I tried to stare the bitch down. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

“Jill, go back to your table,” Carter commanded.

“That no nonsense voice of yours is so hot,” she slurred.

I’d had it. “What the fuck is she talking about, Carter?”

Turning toward me, his eyes went wide, as if he just remembered I was there. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.” He stood and walked her toward the back hallway that led to the restrooms. While they crossed the room, he kept his hand on the small of her back and leaned in close to whisper in her ear.

By the time his request for ‘a minute’ had turned into ten, I was beyond ready to leave. He finally returned, without Jill, just as I was picking up my bag.

“Baby, don’t leave.”

“Who is she? Why does she look familiar?”

He diverted his eyes to the table. “Remember the night we met? The waitress at the diner?”

“Oh my God! You fucked her? After everything you said?” Tears of rage burned my eyes.

“Of course not; you can’t possibly think I would do that.” Unlike me, he kept his voice quiet to keep from adding to the scene I was making.

When he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the shadow on his left cheek lifted. Red. I literally saw red. “Then why the fuck do you have her lipstick on your face! The two of you seemed awful cozy just now.”

“I had an…encounter…with her at work. I’m telling you, that bitch is insane. She tried to kiss me, and when I turned away, she got my cheek. Even if I’d never met you, I would never, ever consider touching her.”

“Work! You do road construction in the middle of the fucking night, how would you have met her at work?” I almost collapsed when a couple of pieces to a puzzle I didn’t know needed solved clicked into place. “Did she give you those scratches on your neck?”

“Yes—but it’s not what you think.”

I dashed to the front of the bar, the cool night air slapped me in the face when I ran outside. Holding my stomach as I moved down the sidewalk, I ducked around the corner of the building and leaned against the wall. My imagination was running away with me. It pictured him fixing her flat tire on the side of the road. Or maybe she got into a fender bender near where he was working, and he checked to make sure she was okay. In either of those scenarios, she would be
extremely
appreciative. Maybe she stopped to ogle the hot road crew and propositioned him. She wasn’t unattractive, at least not on the outside. Even if he did truly love me, that wouldn’t necessarily stop him from testing the waters. Guys cheated on their significant others all the time at the club, and anyone would be better than a whore, right?

He came to stand beside me but didn’t speak right away. I replayed the scene in my mind to see if I’d missed any clues. Maybe I was overreacting since it happened in the middle of an argument-slash-confession of love. She was obviously drunk when she came to the table. Carter was an incredibly handsome man, and he did say she was crazy, so she might have just been a little stalker-ish. The instant replay came to a dead stop as soon as the dialogue began. My stomach left my throat and fell to the ground. “Why did she call you ‘officer’?”

“Alissa, calm down and let me explain.”

“Have you been lying to me this whole time?”

“Technically, I didn’t lie. I told you I worked on the freeways, which for the most part, I do. You just assumed—”

“You’re a fucking cop!”

“Yes, I am.” Carter’s voice was so low I could barely hear him.

Everything started falling into place. He avoided talking about work almost as much as I did. He had a loaded gun in the house and stayed relatively calm when that asshole was attacking me. The weird things he said to the nine-one-one operator. He didn’t want me to talk to the police that night, supposedly because he knew it would upset me, but maybe he was just trying to keep his secret. I hadn’t met any of his friends. He said it was because they might have seen me at the club, but maybe the real reason was because they were cops, too.
Wait… friends… cops… club…

“That night…the night when you came to my room at the club…were you really there for a bachelor party?” He looked away from me. “Fuck! Has any of this been real?”

“How can you ask me that after everything we’ve been through?”

“It seems a little convenient that you moved into my building, got me to trust you, showed up at my job, still wanted to be with me after you found out what I did… You already knew, didn’t you? You’ve known since the very beginning. I was your assignment, or at least part of it.”

“No.” He fell quiet for a moment while I stared him down and then added, “I swear.”

“I told you
everything
. I trusted you, and this whole time it was just an act!” I was attracting a crowd, but I didn’t give a shit.

“Come on, let’s go home and talk about this.”

“I’m not going home with a
cop
.” The word was sour on my tongue.

“Why are you so scared? Even if I was trying to take you down, which I’m not, what’s the worst that could happen for a first offense? Pay a fine, do some community service, check in with a probation officer once a month?”

“I’d lose everything.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

“Oh, so you think they would still let me go to law school and be admitted to the Bar with a criminal record?”

“Why would I pretend to be with you for something as petty as solicitation?”