Aria frowned. She certainly hoped not. The man was probably harmless, but since she’d found out about the cartel, she saw danger on every street corner and was suspicious of every new person she met. Especially, much as she felt awful to admit it, those with Mexican accents. Lately it felt as if she was jumping at her own shadow and she hated it. Diego had a lot to answer to.
Chapter Three
Nash
Nash’s insides twisted with a mixture of nerves and excitement, and he wasn’t sure which emotion was most dominant. He was excited to be seeing his mate again, but she didn’t know about the mate bond. He was no one to her—a stranger. How could he ask her probing questions about her happiness and wellbeing? She would probably tell him to get lost. And rightly so.
He'd gone straight home after his ‘chat’ with Flint, but being cooped up inside the house had him going stir crazy in minutes—made worse by the fact that Cole had made him promise to wait all day before he went to see his mate—and then stuck around to make sure he honored that promise. A whole day. It was crazy. But his friend had reasoned that the best time to talk to her would be after she had finished her shift—any other time and she might have been busy with customers. It was a sound argument, so Nash had agreed to it, but his bear half had been even more agitated than usual, doing what Nash could only describe as internal pacing. Now, finally, the time had arrived for him to see her again. He could hardly wait. It was all he could do to keep from breaking into a sprint. His beast’s excitement matched his own, swelling inside him until he thought he might be in danger of exploding—in more ways than one—the moment he laid eyes on her.
“How are you feeling?” Cole asked as they strode along the sidewalk on the short walk from the parking lot.
Nash shrugged. “Nervous, excited.” He shot a sideways glance at his friend. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t fooling him. “Afraid.”
Cole clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll be there soon enough, buddy. And I don’t want to give you false hope or anything, but you know, humans feel the pull of the bond, too.”
Nash glared at his friend. “What are you suggesting? That she’s the type of woman who would dump her husband for another man?”
Cole frowned. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“Well, yeah.” He rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “But that’s not the point.”
Cole rolled his eyes. “We’re here.”
“Oh, God. I feel sick.”
“You can do this. Have you got control over your bear half?”
“I think so.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Um, yes?”
Cole shook his head then checked his watch. “Okay, they should be coming out any minute now. Oh, no.”
“What do you mean, oh, no? Oh, no, what?”
“I think you’re going to have to do this another time.”
“What? Hell no! We’re here now. I want to see my mate.”
“Right, but um, her husband, Diego, is heading this way.”
Nash whipped his head around so quickly he was surprised he didn’t get whiplash. As the wiry man amble along the sidewalk, he narrowed his eyes. His bear roared its fury within him at the mere sight of the man who’d touched his mate, fighting to be set free so that it could go and kill him, and anyone else who tried to stand between him and Aria.
Easy, he warned it. To Cole, he said, “He looks shifty. I don’t like the look of him.”
“Come on,” Cole said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“No, not yet.”
“Nash,” Cole said, a note of warning in his voice. “Do I have to drag you away from here?”
Nash forced himself to draw in a deep breath and roll out his shoulders. “No, I’m good.” The tension barely stayed gone long enough for him to get the words out. “Why does he keep looking over his shoulder?”
Cole shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“It’s weird. Does he think someone’s following him? Why would someone be following him? Oh, God.”
