Things were not getting easier. Dinner that night had been fine, if you were anyone else except Hannah. She felt like her legs had turned completely to jelly. She was not stupid. She’d watched Chance’s eyes dart low on her face, watching her intently. He’d seen where they threw their anchor, right over her lips, plump and pink from laughter and all the biting she’d been doing to them, trying to get control of her own giggles. If this were a movie, they would have kissed right then and there, the fireworks would have gone off, and the mid-2000s rock song about love would be playing.
Instead she was left dissatisfied, like a sneeze that crept up and up and up and didn’t come to fruition. Or being just at the edge and having a man pull out, the sensation gone but the memory there like a phantom limb. She could feel the butterflies in her stomach. They were waiting to explode, they couldn’t quite manage it yet though. There had been no break in tension, no spark to set off the flame. Everything inside her was still waiting.
“You all go from giggles to silence when we get here, I see how it is,” Ben teased but Hannah did not laugh. She was not yet ready to make nice with the man who nearly tried to sell her to his own gang.
“Talk to Hannah about that, she got all deep in thought,” Scout said, shrugging and reaching for the potatoes.
Hannah tried not to turn red as she felt the faces turn to look at her. She avoided Chance’s gaze at all costs. “I’m just thinking about this test I have coming up.”
It seemed to satisfy everyone but she could still feel a pair of eyes watching her and she knew to whom the eyes belonged. She did not dare look up again after that, focusing in on her plate of food, trying to taste it. But all she could think about was the smell of Chance’s after shave when he stood so close to her. She could count the stubble from where his razor missed, the small specks of whiskers waiting to become a beard if he’d let them. She could see the fleck of off color in his eyes. She remembered exactly how many she counted.
That could not be a good thing. She’d spent her first twenty-four hours with this man as his hostage. He hadn’t been cruel, he hadn’t tried anything on her, but it wasn’t exactly something to write home about.
This is my boyfriend. How’d we meet? He took me as collateral when my brother owed him back a loan he took out for gambling. It wasn’t exactly the story you wanted in the best man toast at your wedding. And there was the matter of her pride. She hated him, after all. She’d made that perfectly clear. She wanted nothing to do with this man. She was above him and his street antics. She was going to be a lawyer, someone who defended his victims. She wasn’t about to give into the possibility that she actually was ready to kiss him, ready to lean in and close that gap if she didn’t. He was beautiful, his body was powerful, but she wasn’t going to go farther than that. His family was fun to be around, she was making friends in surprising places, but she would not make friends with him. Friends or otherwise.
So when dinner was done she busied herself with helping to clean up, despite how many times Kat told her there was no need. The others gathered in the living room to talk and she insisted she needed to be here and not there. She feigned some fear of the situation, the less she knew the better type of thing and Kat seemed to buy it. She wasn’t going to put herself in a situation where her integrity, her feelings, everything she knew about herself was compromised over a man.
***
“All right,” Chance said, sitting down. “Ground rules first: no one outside this house knows about Hannah and I want to keep it that way. You guys are my go-to on this and the only people I really trust here.”
“Don’t let the others hear that,” Ben snorted.
They were sitting in a circle around the coffee table. Moose was to his right, Ben to his left, across from them was Link and Scout.
“Priorities,” Chance continued. “Secrecy. That’s number one. None of this gets out to anyone. Understood?”
There were nods and a general mumble of agreement.
“Second, safety. Hannah needs to be kept safe,” he said.
“Shouldn’t priority number two be our money?” Ben asked, frowning. “Not only have we not been paid back from the little hot shot but now we’re going to be down another couple thousand out of pocket if we manage to buy this bitch back from the Death.”
“None of this matters if she gets hurt,” he said.
“You mean if she’s dead. What does her getting scuffed up matter? It actually might make it easier if she’s damaged goods. Lower cost.”
Chance tried not to let his frustration show. He shoved his fisted hands under the pillows to hide them and hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt like it was becoming. He wasn’t a fucking teenager he wouldn’t be teased into some kind of revelation about his life. It wasn’t a crush, it wasn’t anything so frivolous as that. Yes, he was willing to admit he may have had a few fantasies about her. He was attracted to her, he maybe even wanted to fuck her, but that was all. There was no deeper meaning and there was no squishy feelings.
“We’re not letting innocent people get hurt,” Chance said. “I made that clear. Gabe Bremer forfeited that for himself when he skipped town but his sister is still innocent.”
“How do we know she isn’t holding out on us?” Ben tried.
“To what end?” Chance asked. “She’s basically our prisoner. Sure it’s a nice home and there’s food and a shower but she doesn’t have freedom and if she steps outside the house she won’t have safety either. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
Ben scowled at him.
“We should find Gabe,” Link said. “The Black Death aren’t budging but Gabe might make for a good bargaining chip against them. And it would at least ensure we got our cash back.”
“I agree,” Scout said. “Bremer needs to pay up and get a good talking to for that crap he pulled.”
“Whatever,” Ben said. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”
Ben could raise holy hell if he wanted. He could get drunk and throw trashcans, make a scene, deface public property. He could put cigarette burns in the leather seat of Chance’s motorcycle. He could throw every hissy fit imaginable. But he could not do anything more than that. He had no real power to overthrow Chance’s orders and he was fairly certain that was going to come back and bite him in the ass one day when Ben finally snapped. But Ben was obedient, a soldier, not a leader. He would do as he was told with a loud obnoxious wail and several protests but he’d do it nonetheless. Chance wasn’t worried about him.
What he was worried about was Hannah. Over the next few days he stayed out of his mother’s house as much as possible. He took rides, he scouted around for Gabe, he went to get groceries, he ran every errand he could think of. It was probably starting to become obvious when he took several trips in one day to get various snack foods from the gas station.
“Either you’re restless or you’re on your period,” Scout said when he got back from one such excursion. “Have anything to do with our resident lawyer?”
“I just don’t like sitting around,” he lied, poorly.
Scout smirked and shrugged and walked off. He could only imagine the things she was whispering to Ben, telling him that her brother was lovesick that his head wasn’t on straight, that some girl was making him nuts. The last thing he needed was Ben to have more fuel to get huffy over. Ben was a loose cannon, Scout knew this, but she didn’t realize to what extent he would let all that pent up rage go. Besides, she was going to side with her man, no two ways about that. Chance wasn’t going to blame her, it was expected. She had to be on his side.
But it was building up to something dangerous. And, what was worse, it seemed like Hannah was avoiding him too. It made things incredibly difficult to deal with because it meant she felt something too, she was scared like he was. That meant it was real, it wasn’t just inside his head. There was palpable tension, palpable feelings, unavoidable attraction and she was responding to it as well. It drove him nuts at night and he had to exert all his willpower to stop himself from lowering his hand to his crotch and letting all the tension go in a few minutes of glorious, comforting rubbing. He’d managed it thus far, however, and wasn’t about to break his streak. Three days without incident. Four days without incident. How much longer could he go for? He wasn’t sure. But he was going to find out.