I glanced at Rule. His fingers were curled around the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject.” I added as much cheer to my tone as I could. “We can always talk about what else we’re going to do on our belated honeymoon.”
He barked a laugh, and the tension in his fingers eased. “Is that what this is?”
At that point, I made it my mission to make Rule laugh. The real kind of laughter that comes from the belly. I wanted to hear it at least once.
* * *
Rule
When I saw Laikyn in the outfitshe had on now, my first thought was—she’s so fucking young.What the fuck am I even doing with her?
She was young. Quite a bit younger than me. Fourteen years, to be exact.
Considering our vastly different upbringings, we shouldn’t have anything in common. And yet, if I didn’t know the details from when I had rescued her, I probably wouldn’t have guessed she was in her early twenties. There was a maturity about her that lingered beneath the sassy personality. One I suspected came from taking care of other people rather than enjoying life.
She certainly didn’t act like a woman only a few years out of high school with the rest of her life ahead of her. Or the spoiled brat people expected her to be. I knew more about her life than most people, though. More about her mother, specifically. Not because I was fascinated by Monica Quinn. It was part of the job. What I did for a living wasn’t something most people would do. And because I often committed crimes to protect the lives of others, I had no choice but to have the necessary evidence to protect my own ass. God knows the rich assholes I’d worked for weren’t going to return the favor. If anything, they would claim they’d never met me before.
If I were a good man, I wouldn’t drag Laikyn into this life. Not even for the amount of time required to get her situation sorted out. It wasn’t that I gave a fuck about Monica, but her problems would essentially become Laikyn’s problems, and because I knew the depths her mother would go for a dollar, I refused to let Laikyn suffer.
I could’ve easily given Monica time to get the money together. She would somehow. This wasn’t the first time the woman had been down on her luck and used her wiles to get her way. Unfortunately, the creditors she’d used in the past weren’t quite as besotted by her as the public, which was why I’d put my foot down. The last thing that woman needed was to seek another loan to make another problem disappear. She would merely be creating an entirely new one in the process. And if, like the last time, Monica put her daughter in danger to achieve her objective, I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t end her.
So here we were.
“Can I ask you something … business related?” Laikyn prompted while we sat at one of the restaurant’s outdoor tables.
I glanced to my left and then to my right, curious who might overhear because if I’d learned anything about Laikyn, it was that she did not have a filter.
“Don’t worry,” she said, grinning. “I’m the queen of discretion. At least when in public.”
“Okay, then.” I poked at the bowl of food.
“What you did for my mom … is that par for the course?”
“No.”
“So, what exactly do you do?”
“I fix things.”
“Like?”
I cocked an eyebrow. I certainly wasn’t going to go into details in a public place. Hell, I didn’t intend to go into detail at all. What I did for my clients was kept on a need-to-know basis. Rarely did anyone need to know aside from one of my employees if I could keep it to that.
“Hollywood problems,” she said. “Like cheaters who don’t want to get caught or executives who did something wrong in the past and need it to be covered up.”
I took a bite, choosing not to respond.
“You also save kidnap victims from creepy assholes who call them princess and threaten to steal their non-existent virginity.”
She played it off as though she wasn’t traumatized by the event, but I noticed the way her eyes scanned our surroundings. She was hyperaware of everyone and everything. I got the feeling that was the norm for her after what happened.
I met her gaze. “Don’t make me out to be the hero in the story, baby. I’m not.”
“You save people.”
“From themselves,” I clarify.
