Oh, God.
What did I do?
My brain rattles through everything that happened. From the men in my store, the car chase, the decision to slip out of Knox’s room, and…
My cheeks flame with heat, and I scramble out of bed.
“What?” Knox mumbles, his voice thick with sleep.
“I gotta go.”
He pushes himself up onto one elbow, shoving his dark hair back off his face, watching me as I dash about his room, trying to find my clothes.
“I’m late.” God. “I’m not just late. I’m catastrophically late. The kind of late that means there may be customers outside my shop right now waiting for airboat tours. And…I was robbed. Maybe. Those assholes could have taken my laptop. And I never locked up.” The stricken feeling ricochets through me. “Someone could have stolen all my inventory.”
Knox huffs out a laugh as I try to pull on my drawstring pants and shove my panties into the pocket.
I whip around and look at him. “This isn’t funny.”
Knox sits up and rubs both hands over his face. “It is a little bit.”
“It’s not,” I snap. “I’m about to do a barefoot walk of shame through your clubhouse, which contains a large group of men, some of whom saw meorgasm…in an open-air garage where anyone could have seen me. And now, I’m going to arrive at the shop and find it emptied out and?—”
“Maren.”
I ignore him and continue. “Customers are going to get bored of waiting, and walk down the street to one of the million other airboat tour companies in this godforsaken town, and because I’m dressed like this, they’ll all know why I wasn’t there.”
I gesture with my hands up and down my body. No bra, and a pair of flimsy drawstring pants. I press my lips together as heat continues to flame my face. “God.”
“Maren.” This time my name is said firmly.
“What?”
There’s a beat, and Knox offers me his hand. I look at it like it’s poison. He doesn’t say anything until I capitulate and take it.
He tugs me down onto the bed on top of him. “I sent four prospects over there the minute I left you in here last night.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“To your shop. Four prospects.” He pushes my hair back from my face with both hands. “Told them to sit on it all night.”
“You…what?”
“They’re still there. Place is fine; they would have called if there was anything they couldn’t handle.”
My shoulders drop, and some of the tension in them seeps away.
“Oh.” It’s all I’ve got while I process what he just said. The last twelve hours have been a lot. And I felt a certain amount of guilt when Knox told me that before I saw him, Pax had said the two men had leaned on him, had found out all the illegal things he was into, and that’s why he told them about Jackal’s location. A location he only knew about because of the conversation I had in the store. Intellectually, I know that was a coincidence, but I can’t help but feel bad.
Knox’s mouth curves into a satisfied smile. “You’re welcome.”
He kisses me, then. It’s quiet and soothing and not at all like last night.
“I’m still going to have to walk barefoot through your bar,” I mutter against his lips.
That earns me a full grin. “Yeah. You will. What happened to your shoes?”
“I’d kicked them off under the desk while I was working. Didn’t think about them in the panic.”
