I hugged him back, my arms absurdly fragile around that huge back. “You got here in time,” I told him. I ran my hands up and down his back, trying to comfort him, and it gradually worked. I felt his shoulders lower and his muscles relax…
...and then my fingers touched the scars I’d seen, that day when he’d stepped under the lights, and I jerked them back. He leanedback so that he could check my expression and he must have seen me put it together:Foster parents. Scars. Stuff he won’t talk about….
“It’s not what you think,” he snapped, pulling away from me.
“I didn’t say—”
His look cut me off. I’d been thinking it and that was enough. “Don’t try and fix me,” he said. “I don’t need fucking fixing.” And he grabbed his jockey shorts and started to pull them on.
Shit.“Wait!” But he ignored me and stood up to pull on his jeans. “Sean!”
He froze. He’d turned away from me but I could see his massive back rising and falling as he panted, fighting down the anger.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—Look, I won’t ask about it again, okay? It’s off-limits. We’ll make it a rule.” I was babbling now because I could sense I was seconds from losing him. “I’mgoodat following rules!”
He slowly turned and looked over his shoulder at me. “Youaregood at following rules,” he said at last, his voice a low rumble
“Yes! So...come on.” I patted the mattress next to me. “Can we make this work?”
The question hung in the air between us. I could see the battle going on in Sean’s eyes as he stood there, torn between heading for the door and returning to me. He looked deep into my eyes...and something changed in his expression—a softening, as if something had just melted inside him. I thought I saw him lean towards me, about to take a step—
The silence was shattered by his cell phone ringing. Both of us jumped. Sean walked over to his jeans and dug his phone out of the pocket. Looked at the screen. Answered.
I could only hear his side of the conversation and even that was mainly muttering. But I saw the way his expression darkened and the way he kept looking at me. I recognized that look from the time we’d gone to see Murray for the loan. He was scared for me.
When he finally ended the call and let the phone hang down by his side, he just stared at me, his lips pressed together.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“It was one of Malone’s people,” he said. “Malone’s the guy we’re going to sell the crop to. He wants to meet. Tonight.”
I sat up. I was still naked but the room was hot—I’d been comfortably warm until he spoke. Now, the tone of his voice made me shiver. “That’sgoodnews, right?”
“Yeah,” said Sean. “But he wants to meetyou.”
39
LOUISE
“Why?”I asked, my voice coming out high and tight. “Whyme?”
“You’re the grower,” said Sean. “You’re what counts. You’re what’ll make it a good crop. I’m just hired muscle.”
This was the side of things I’d not wanted to touch, the sidehewas meant to handle. Sean had terrified me, when we first met, and he was several rungs below the guy we were talking about. Someone with enough money to buy half a million dollars worth of weed...that was serious gangster territory, find-your-body-face-down-in-the-river stuff. “I can’t,” I said weakly. “I don’t want to meet him.”
“I don’twant youto meet him,” he told me. And I saw his hands ball into fists. “I want to keep you as far away from him as possible. But fuckers like Malone, they get what they want. If we say no, the deal’ll be off.”
Shit.Now I really did feel shivery. I grabbed one of the blankets Sean used for sleeping and threw it over me, despite the heat. It smelled faintly of him, and that made me feel better. “Where? When? What’s he like?”
Sean’s voice was a low rumble. “His jazz club. Tonight. And he’s a big, fat, bald, black fucker.”
“I meant—is he dangerous?”
“I know what you meant.” He came over to me and knelt down in front of me, then brushed his hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy with regret. “Yeah, Louise, he’s a nasty son of a bitch. But no one else around here can move this amount of dope.”
“Does he know I’m a woman?”
“No. He doesn’t know anything about you,” he said bitterly. He’d been hoping, just as I had, that I’d be able to remain out of sight. He’d wanted to keep me insulated from all this. But now....
