“Let me make myself perfectly clear.I like you, Mo.”Sheleaned closer.“A lot.”
“We’re not going there,” he grunted.
“We so are.”
“We’re not.”
She put a hand to his chest and her eyes warmed as her voicewent soft and sweet.“We are, baby.”
“We’re not because there is no way I’mgonnabe in the position of being inside you and my attention all about you somethingthat would give somewhackjobthe opportunity to getthe drop on us and put a bullet in the back of my head.”
Her face went slack and her hand curled into a fist on hischest.
But he wasn’t done with her.
“After that, he’ll drag you out from under my dead body, andno one will get the warning you’ve been taken because I’m dead in your bed andhe’s got you somewhere, making you wish you were as dead as me.”
She pressed her fist into his chest but said nothing.
“Lottie, you get this is serious, but what yougottareallyget is that I need to be focused andnot on how badly Iwannamake love to you, but on howbadly Iwannakeep you safe and healthy, physically,but more,mentally.”
“Okay,” she whispered, understanding the intelligence ofthat right away, and that was his girl.“We’ll wait until it’s over.”
Goddammit.
“We won’t do it then either.”
She showed her shock then her hurt before she said, hervoice rising, “Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t cut me up too much, the likes of Tammydumping me, but I start something with the likes of you and you get the urge tomove on, then do it, where do you think that’ll leave me?”
“Have you thought about the fact that I might not get thaturge?”she asked.
“They move on, Lottie.Theyallmove on.”
“I’m not them.”
“You can do better than me and both of us know it.”
They did.
They both did.
And he knew she did when she dropped her head, took her handfrom him and stepped away.
Nowthat…
That cut him up.
Until she tilted her head back and speared him with hergaze.
“What’s better than you, Mo?”she snapped.
“More money.Betterlookin’.Tripsto Tiffany’s.”
“You think I giveonereal shitabout allthat?”
Mo fully clicked into a conversation he thought he’d alreadybeen fully clicked into and he did that by realizing somewhere along the linehe’d made her angry.
