Page 33 of Nash
"I absolutely want to find out."
"Ruby."
"That's not a number, Sergeant-at-Arms. That's just my name in a threatening voice."
Frankie looks up from her client. "It's not threatening. It's flirting. You're both flirting. I just want that stated for the record."
"Nobody asked you, Frankie," Ruby says.
"Nobody had to." Frankie goes back to her client.
Ruby's two o'clock cancels. She uses the downtime to sketch at her station, and the shop goes quiet for a while. I watch the street. I watch the door.
I watch the way her pencil moves across the paper, quick and sure, her lower lip caught between her teeth when she's concentrating. The way her tank top pulls tight across her tits when she leans forward. The way she pushes her hair behind her ear, and the movement exposes her neck from jaw to shoulder.
My body tightens. Every day this week has been the same. Watching her work, watching her move, watching her mouth, and going home hard with nothing to do about it. The discipline that used to hold isn't holding. She pushes. I engage. She pushes harder. I lean in. The cycle is winding tighter, and I'm the one feeding it.
Her phone rings. She picks it up, glances at the screen, and the corners of her mouth tighten.
"Hi, Dad."
She takes the call to the back room. Her voice carries through the wall.
"Dad. Stop. I'm fine. There's a security detail. Malachi assigned it, and Nash is handling it." A pause. "No, I'm not coming home. Dad. Dad. I said no." Her voice rises. "Because I have a job and a life. I'm not hiding in my childhood bedroom because some creep took pictures of me."
There's a long pause.
"Put Mom on."
The conversation with Raine is quieter. Softer. I hear Ruby laugh once, the kind that comes with wet eyes. "Tell Dad I love him and that he needs to stop googling security systems. He sent me fourteen links last night. Fourteen."
She hangs up. Stays in the back room for a minute. When she comes out, her eyes are dry, her grin is in place, but her knuckles are white around the coffee mug she's gripping with both hands.
She resettles at her station, picks up the pencil, and waits for her hands to steady.
I'm not hiding in my childhood bedroom.
The words sit in my gut. She said them to Lawrence. She could just as easily say them to me. A week I've kept her in the spare room at the clubhouse because I decided it was safer. Three days of her fighting me on it every night while I told her it was for her own protection. The same words, the same logic, the same decision made by a man who thinks controlling the perimeter means controlling the outcome.
I'm doing exactly what Lawrence is doing. The only difference is I don't have twenty-two years of fatherhood to justify it.
"Ruby."
She looks up from her station.
"I'll take you to your apartment tonight. You can stay there."
Her pencil stops. "What?"
"Your apartment. Tonight. You're going home."
"Are you serious?"
"I'll be staying with you. When I'm at Vesper, Rider or Kyle will be at your door."
She sets the pencil down. Studies my face. She's looking for the catch, the condition, the part where I take it back.
"What changed your mind?"
