“Nash?” Eliza pounded her fists against his apartment door, ears tuned for any sounds inside. It probably would have been smarter if she’d called first to see if she was home, but she’d been so pleased with all her findings that she’d rushed right over. After a quick glance in either direction down the hall, Eliza knocked again, this time a little more frantically, and called out to him.
Moments later the door was wrenched open, and there stood Nash in sweatpants and not much else, his chest glistening with perspiration. Her mouth practically watered at the sight, and for a moment, she was at a total loss for words. Nash too seemed to struggle to find something to say. He gawked at her, his dark brow furrowing.
“Eliza? What are you…? Did you walk here?”
She couldn’t blame him for looking so stunned. After all, she probably looked like a total mess, her mascara running down her cheeks and hair stuck to her head. The dry February was gone, but the warm temperatures hadn’t gone with it. All day it had been pouring, the heavens drenching Blackwoods in a downpour so strong that some of the classrooms on campus had flooded.
“Combination of the bus and walking,” she admitted with a half-hearted shrug. Her father always insisted she call his driver if she needed to get somewhere in a hurry, but that was out of the question for today. Clearing her throat, she nodded toward the inside of his apartment, which was lit with a soft yellow glow of a lamp, and then said, “So can I come in, or…?”
“Yeah, shit, sorry,” he muttered, quickly stepping aside and beckoning her in. “Why would you go outside in this? You’re probably freezing.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” Eliza remarked. Once in, she set her bag aside, a bag containing very precious information, then peeled off her soaked jacket and hung it on a hook on the back of the front door.
“Let me get you something dry to wear,” Nash said, and before she could insist that it wasn’t necessary, he was gone, hurrying into the bowels of his apartment and emerging moments later with a huge sweater. It didn’t exactly look like classic Nash attire—he was more a tight t-shirt and leather jacket kind of man, which Eliza greatly appreciated—but it was warm and dry, and a comforting coziness engulfed her as soon as she pulled off her equally drenched shirt and replaced it with his sweater.
“D’you want a tea or something—?”
“I broke into my father’s study last night,” she announced, too giddy with excitement to contain herself. Nash’s eyes widened, stunned, and she nodded vigorously, all but bouncing on the tips of her toes with the nervous and excited energy that had carried over from her break-in the night before.
“You did what?”
“Broke into his study,” she repeated, grabbing her bag and heading for his living room. In it she found a mat and some obscenely large hand weights scattered around, pump-up rock music humming out of the speakers on the TV. Nash hastily turned the sound off, then rounded on the spot to face her, his eyes narrowed.
“You—”
“I had to,” she said, almost wishing he was more proud of her than annoyed. “You were going to crucify him—”
“I hadn’t decided yet—”
“So I needed to find evidence of his innocence,” Eliza continued forcefully, then held up her bag. “And I did.”
Like any good law student, Eliza knew she’d need more than circumstantial hearsay to prove that her father was a good person. Sure, she could scream it from the rooftops all she wanted—yell that he would never do what Nash had accused him of, but what proof would she have? What sort of evidence did she really have to show that her father was innocent of what he’d been accused of doing? Before she broke into his office, she had nothing but her ability to vouch for his character. That was it. And she knew by now that that would never hold up in a real court, much less the informal one that ran underground in the motorcycle club circles.
She needed hard proof, and finally she had it. It had taken all day to gather everything and organize it—as if she was giving a presentation for a class—but Eliza didn’t care. This could save her father’s life, but only if Nash hadn’t already damned him.
“Eliza…” Nash let out a long sigh and grabbed a small towel off the armrest of his couch, rubbing it over his neck before letting it hang over one shoulder. Her gaze flitted down to his toned abdomen again. It had been way too long since they were falling into bed together. He cleared his throat, which snapped her attention back to his face. “I really don’t want you doing this kind of shit. It isn’t you.”
“What kind of shit?” she fired back, arms crossed. “Looking for evidence to exonerate my father? I’m a law student, Nash. Finding and presenting evidence is what I’ve been trained to do.”
It had taken her a while, but the last few days finally made her think that her classes were actually paying off in the real world. Nash, however, didn’t seem to see it that way.
“You can’t just… This isn’t the world for you,” he argued, toned arms bulging as he crossed them, their stances mirroring one another. “I don’t want you breaking into places just to—”
“He’s my father, Nash,” Eliza remarked tersely, her temper prickling. “I have to fight for him. I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter.” She paused, swallowing hard, then added, “You didn’t leave me much of a choice.”
“Look, I told you about all this because I care about you.” He turned away, his expression hard and distant, and began putting his various weights into some semblance of organization. Eliza watched, arms still folded across her chest, trying to ignore the fact that every breath she took she was breathing him in, his familiar scent, both comforting and arousing, all but radiating from his sweater.
“Okay, so—”
“I didn’t tell you so you could throw yourself into this shit and get your hands dirty, too,” Nash continued, as he straightened up and observed his line of impossibly heavy-looking weights. She’d probably break if she tried to lift any of them. “If we took our sexual relationship out of the bedroom and turned it into an everyday thing, I’d forbid you from doing any of this. But seeing as I’m not your dominant out here…”
“I can do what I want,” she finished for him, her eyes narrowing. “Must be tough for you.”
“It is, but not for the reason you think.” He pinched the bridge of his nose briefly, eyes clenched shut, then sighed again. Eliza was sick of the sighs. “This is a fucked up world that you’re just hovering on the edge of. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. It’s dangerous, and I don’t want you involved. You… I want to keep you safe.”
“From who?” she demanded.
“Everyone!” Nash threw his hands up, exasperation seeping from every pore. Stalking torwards her, he seemed like he was going to grab her, but he stopped at the last moment, and Eliza backed up until the backs of her legs knocked against the couch, throwing her arm out to steady herself. “From the Phoenixes, from your dad, from yourself! Don’t you see that, Eliza? I want you to distance yourself from this person you’re on the verge of becoming.”
“What? A confident woman who—”
“Who might just get herself killed if someone thinks she’s sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Her eyes widened, tears threatening to surface. “Nash!”
“It’s true. The danger is real. It’s not a TV show or some bullshit thing that won’t matter once you graduate. This is real, Eliza. I told you about it as a courtesy, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if something happened to your dad, not so you could get involved.”
A chill coursed down her spine, her skin prickling, but she refused to back down. With a gulp, she drew in a shaky breath and tried to hide the fact that her hands shook. Eliza held his gaze, her shoulders back and chin raised defiantly. “Well… You can see why I had to get involved, didn’t you? I had no other choice.”
“Eliza—”
“Do you want to know what I found or not?”