Page 15 of Your Worst Fear
The two men barely spoke, but when they did, it was a dig at one another. To Gel Man’s credit, he didn’t spare more than two glances at me while they played.
And knowing it wasn’t his eyes I felt while Henley was occupied, I found myself scanning the room, trying to find who might be looking at me.
Making searching a room look casual was harder than one would think.
My eye caught on a man in the corner, something about him drawing my focus. I stared—even though that was the one thing you weren’t supposed to do when you were trying to be inconspicuous—and the entire time, he didn’t so much as glance this way.
As soon as I turned my head the opposite way, I felt eyes on me from the same direction.
I snapped my focus back to that corner, and lo and behold, he was looking directly at me. Not at my face, though. Much, much lower.
“If he keeps looking at your ass, I’ll kill him.”
Henley’s voice made me jump, my saliva nearly causing me to choke.
“Who’s stabby this time?” I teased, yet my voice felt strained. I cleared my throat, leaning into Henley a bit to keep up the facade. “You’re sounding a little possessive of a girl you just recently hit in the head with a gun and tied to a chair for information.”
“Maybe that’s my kink.”
I scrunched my nose and faced him, hoping like hell he was joking. “Maybe find anew one?”
“You don’t want me to have my way with you, then refuse to let any other guy so much as look at you? Isn’t that every girl’s dream?”
“Not the knocking-out part.” I paused. “I think. Maybe. At least, not me.”
As I tripped over my words, a smirk began to grow on his face.
This back-and-forth wasn’t the goal of us being here.
“Do you know him?” Henley asked, seeming to read my thoughts and get back to the task at hand.
I shook my head. “Never seen him before. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know me.” Though I’d never seen my boss, he had to know what I looked like. He ran a very important,veryillegal business. I was almost certain he wouldn’t let his employees run around blindly without keeping tabs on them.
Henley looked like he was two seconds away from storming over there and causing an issue with a man that we definitely shouldn’t start a fight with. The stranger had to have at least fifty pounds of pure muscle on Henley.
When his foot moved, I planted a hand on his chest. “Don’t.”
“What if he knows something?” He didn’t so much as glance at me as he asked.
“He doesn’t.” I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did. This plan tonight was an inevitable dead end; I’d known that from the start. Henley wanted to figure this out, and I felt my life was threatened, so I’d gone along with it. But there was no way anyone keeping an eye on me would blatantly follow me into this pool hall.
“Is the game over?” I asked, knowing the answeralready. Despite my focus on the room, I hadn’t missed Gel Man’s low cursing when Henley made the winning shot.
The hardness in his eyes faded, his attention moving to me. “Yes. I won.”
I smiled. “So we’re splitting the winnings?”
His expression was unchanging. “No.”
I blew a strand of hair off my forehead, letting my hand slide off his chest. “That’s not very nice, given I’m half the operation tonight. How much did he give you to make up for the plant?”
He glanced around us, but seemed to find nothing of interest as his eyes moved back to me. “Twenty bucks.”
My jaw dropped. “No fucking way. That plant is worth a fuck ton more than?—”
“On top of the twenty thousand I just won.”
My mouth snapped shut.Oh.
