“No,” I snap at her and she recoils at my tone. “Look, I’m sorry, just…let me go get her. Okay? I promise I’ll make sure she’s all right.”
Nora considers me for a moment before sighing and shoving her phone into the pocket of the sweatshirt she has on over what I imagine is nothing on her top. Her long legs are bare except for a tiny string thong she wore on stage. “Fine, but make sure you let me know when you have her so I know she’s okay.”
“Of course.” She turns, and with a glance over her shoulder back at us, she disappears out the door.
Gabe turns back to me. He knows me well enough to know I’m fuming. “Are you going to be able to calm down on the way to go get her? Or should I go alone? I don’t want you coming along and having to listen to you lecturing her the entire ride back.”
Making my way around the desk toward the door, I look back at him. “I promise I’ll behave.”
His laughing snort is enough response for me to know he knows I am full of shit.
Seriously, what the fuck was she thinking?
My entire body is a mass of tense muscles as we drive toward the address on Florida. What the hell was she thinking, going down there at night? It’s like she has no clue she’s a fucking magnificently beautiful woman and there might be people out there who mean her harm.
When we pull up outside a dark, abandoned factory building ten minutes later, I see Danika standing on the sidewalk next to a man in a black security uniform. She scrunches her lips together in obvious frustration when she sees my car. She probably thought going to Nora meant she could keep this from me.
Not fucking likely.
I roll down my window. “Danika, get in.”
She glowers at me and storms around the car. When she slides into the backseat next to me, she keeps herself as close to the opposite door as possible. The security officer approaches my window and leans down.
“Your girl here was trespassing on private property. I didn’t call the police this time, but I had her car towed before I found her. You can pick it up from Melvin’s Towing in the morning.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your help.” I shake his hand and we pull away with not a peep from Danika the entire time.
I turn to face her and watch her in profile. Her eyes are narrowed as she looks out the window at the dingy riverside neighborhood. “Care to explain what you are doing down here, in the middle of night, alone?”
I keep my voice as neutral as I can, not wanting to instigate an argument, but needing an answer from her for why she would do something so stupid.
She doesn’t respond. In fact, she doesn’t acknowledge I’ve said anything to her at all.
“Silent treatment?” I ask as we turn off Florida on the way back to my condo.
“Gabe,” she says, her voice perfectly calm and unwavering, “can you please drop me off at my place?”
Oh, I don’t think so.
“No, Gabe, take us home.”
Her head whips around and she gives me a blazing look. “Stop it, Savage. I was doing my job. I don’t need you to take care of me. Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
Swallowing my frustration, I take a deep breath before I respond, “Apparently, you do, and you are coming home with me so we can discuss this without an audience.”
Glaring at me, she slumps back into her seat and then turns her attention back to the street whizzing past us.
I thought the cold shoulder in the car was bad, but the silence of the elevator ride is stifling. Gabe hasn’t said a word and refuses to make eye contact with me. Seems he’s just as pissed with me as Danika. When she storms past me off the elevator and flings my condo door open without looking back, I know I’m in for a long night, and not the kind I had been hoping for.
Gabe pauses outside my door, glancing back at me with a raised eyebrow. “You plan on continuing your lecture when you get in there?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He leans back against the wall, crosses his arms over his chest, and smirks at me. “Seriously, Savage? Do you not know what you sounded like back there with her? You were like a father scolding an errant child.”
That’s exactly what she said to me last weekend.
“Bullshit, she knows I’m just worried about her, trying to protect her.”
“I’m not so sure she sees it that way. You haven’t been together very long, and I get there is this weird chemistry between you two, believe me. I’ve seen it and felt it, but you can’t try to control her, man. She isn’t Becca.”
Bringing her up is a low fucking blow.
“Of course she isn’t. Why would you even mention her?”
“Because it has been so fucking long since you’ve been with anyone, you seem to have forgotten that not every woman is meek and in need of protection. She was everything Danika is not, and if you don’t realize that and start acting like you have some fucking respect for her, you will lose her.”
With another accusatory look, he turns and opens his door, disappearing without another word.