“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Nash nodded, phone pressed to his ear and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Thanks for everything.”
Not bothering to wait for the sign-off, he punched the disconnect button on the screen and tossed the phone onto the desk, leaning back in his worn-out office chair with a sigh. It was Valentine’s Day. Supposedly the most romantic day of the year, and Eliza was nowhere to be seen.
Well, not nowhere. They’d met up for coffee at an on-campus café covered in paper heart cutouts, each of them sitting through a somewhat uncomfortable hour as they forced conversation between them. Try as he might, Nash couldn’t get Eliza to talk about what had happened the other night at the club. After a lot of prodding, she’d admitted that her dad was upset with her for throwing away precious study time to party, but he only had her best interests in mind. It seemed to Nash that she knew the old guy was a controlling dick, but he was her dad all the same. While he wanted to lay into the guy for the way he handled her, treating Eliza like a toddler and manhandling her in front of peers downtown, Nash kept his mouth shut and drank his coffee, ignoring the fact that they hadn’t made plans to see each other that night.
“I have a presentation tomorrow,” she’d said when he asked if she wanted him to come over. “Harriet and I are going to prep together. I promised her.”
At the time, Nash couldn’t help but wonder if she was trying to get some space from him, too. Put the distance between them. Pump the breaks to keep the car from spiraling off the road—that sort of thing. He’d pretended to be relieved that he didn’t need to do the whole flowers and dinner and chocolates thing, but deep down, he wasn’t feeling great. While he wasn’t a romantic sap, he would have liked to celebrate the holiday as he saw fit, preferably with handcuffs and a ball gag for Eliza.
Still, it was very apparent that she didn’t want to spend the night together, so Nash threw himself into work instead. He had a lot to do. With no perp apprehended yet, the Steel Phoenix big-shots were getting antsy, and Nash was eager to show that all this time and energy around the campus had actually been worthwhile—and prove to himself that he wasn’t getting as wrapped up in Eliza Truman as he thought he was.
So, after ordering a dozen roses to be delivered to Eliza’s dorm—because he thought he owed her something for being a petulant brat at the arcade—Nash locked the doors, grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes, and got to work.
He’d come down to the conclusion that the guys whacking his MC brothers were hired help. They were too good, too skilled, to be guys from the local gangs, and after perusing through the usual freelancers who actually did this kind of shit, he phoned in a favor from one to get the logistics. Cash flow. Rumors. Freelance hitmen who were suddenly flush. Nash dug deep, spending the last nine hours up to his eyeballs in freelance bullshit—who knew Blackwoods was such a haven for criminal activity?
In the end, a large chunk of cash traced back to Blackwoods University. Someone was diverting funds to pay for these jobs, these hits against the Steel Phoenixes, and the only guy who had a finger on that kind of trigger was the dean. Who else had enough sway to dictate where that much money was being spent? The dean was King of Blackwoods University in every sense of the word. All that skinny jerk needed was a crown.
And Eliza would be his princess.
Groaning, Nash’s face screwed as he rubbed it. Dating the dean’s daughter had some perks, but this wasn’t one of them. If Darryl was indeed the guy funneling funds to pay hitmen to take out Nash’s brothers, then he would have to pay—probably with his life.
It was going to kill Eliza. Darryl was all she had—Darryl and Nash, two secret criminals holding such large chunks of her heart. It wasn’t fair. None of it.
He decided right then and there that he had to tell her, at least a part of it. He owed Eliza that much anyway. It would mean spilling his secret, too, that he wasn’t some hotshot business student, but rather, a local biker with an online degree and three loaded handguns stashed around his apartment, none of them legally obtained. It was going to crush her, but enough was enough.
Time to stop being a coward and get the truth out in the open.
Lost in thought, he flinched when his phone started to rumble, skittering across the table with the vibrations. Snatching it up, he answered without checking the caller ID.
“Yeah?”
“Nash?” Eliza’s small voice sounded in his ear, and he sat up a little straighter, putting the cigarette out on his desk out of habit.
“Eliza…” He cleared his throat, annoyed that his heart was beating a little faster suddenly. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” she replied, sounding more like herself now than she did on their coffee date. “I just got a delivery, actually.”
His eyebrows shot up as an easy relaxation settled over him. “Oh? Well… Wonder who might have sent it. Probably some gorgeous guy with a huge—”
“Ego!” she shouted, then giggled into the phone. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, unable to stop from smiling. “How’s presentation prep going?”
“We’re talking a break, but it’s going okay so far,” she started, then launched into a huge story about the details of her night. Suddenly she stopped, and when she spoke again, some of the insecurity from before had returned. “Sorry. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about any of this stuff.”
Nash shook his head, slowly closing his laptop and migrating to the nearby armchair instead. “Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I just like listening to your voice,” he said, adding just a hint of Dom to his tone that he was sure made her shudder. “Tell me more. Tell me everything.”
“We’re only on a break for a few minutes,” Eliza muttered, though he could hear the breathlessness in her voice. Damn he wanted her.
“Well,” he mused, head cocked to the side, “you’d better start talking then, shouldn’t you?”
And so she did, because she was a good girl, and Nash listened with more attention than the topic warranted.
All the while wondering when, and how, he was going to shatter her world, and if he had the balls to actually do it.