Chapter Eight
The second Jake left through the coffee shop door, Elena was leaning over the table and addressing Angel. “Damn, girl! Why didn’t you tell me you got to work in an office with a man like that? I’m switching jobs!”
Angel tried to shrug it off, but her body was still humming from the intensity of his proximity. It was going to take her a few minutes to come down off that high.
Cass shook her head and lifted her coffee to her lips. Before she drank, she said, “Angela Clemens, if you don’t tap that, I will disinherit you as my friend.” She took a sip and winced, making a displeased face. “Damn. It’s cold.” She unhappily plonked the cup back down and leaned forward like Elena. “Angel, do it for me if for no other reason. As my birthday present. Let me live vicariously through you. It’s obvious you like him.”
Elena snickered. “You almost fell down when you stood up! And….” She smiled lasciviously. “I could see the way he looked at you.” She shook her head. “That was smoldering, seriously.”
Angel lifted her hands as a sign of resignation. “Okay, that’s enough. It’s more complicated than you think. And inter-office relationships are messy.”
“Marriage is messier,” said Cass. “And that’s actually encouraged.”
Angel and Elena looked at her, but she wasn’t frowning any longer. She seemed dreamy-eyed instead.
Angel glanced at the door, thinking. She was a little scared. Jake was hot. But what she was telling her friends was also true; dating someone you worked with was never clear cut. Dating a warden? Especially when you were one yourself? It was frowned on for a reason. To make matters worse, Jacob Crow never stayed in one place. And then there were the Monsters to consider. Motorcycle clubs were tight, and his was probably the tightest. She knew damn well how too many male bikers viewed women. They saw them as baggage. Women were nothing more than ass and tits. They were disposable and replaceable.
That attitude was bad enough. Never mind the actual motorcycles the bikers rode. There were too many memories there for Angel. She mentally shook her head. No. She wasn’t stupid. Going for it with Jake was out of the question.
A chill moved through her suddenly, and she closed her eyes, experiencing a loss of hope. If Cassiana, who any man would probably have given his right nut to screw like mad, was luck-sucking at passion and romance this bad, what hope in the nine circles did Angel have? She was only a few years behind her in age. Would she ever find love again?
Angel…
Angel’s body tensed. Her brow furrowed. She turned in her seat and looked around. Had someone said her name? The coffee shop was settled, and no one was watching her.
She could have sworn, though… and it was a man’s voice, too. But Jake was long gone; they’d all heard his bike tear out. Plus, she could always sense when he was near, and he wasn’t right now.
Elena and Cass failed to notice anything out of the ordinary. They continued talking as if she hadn’t just looked around nervously. Across from Angel, Elena moved a little on her seat before leaning back and flicking a long lock of black hair over her shoulder. “See, this is what I love about Matt,” she said. “The man is the opposite of safe, but I’m well aware of that, and it’s okay with me. We’re not co-dependent, and I certainly didn’t hook up with him because I was scared not to. Hell, I was far more scared to be with him than without him.”
That caught Angel’s attention. She gave Elena a side-long glance. “He runs a gang for crying out loud. Maybe not the best comparison.”
Elena shrugged again, but her smile was sly. “No, it is. Because Matt’s all fire. But the nice thing about that is that there are never any lulls in our relationship. I get mad, he gets mad right back, but he’s so used to being in control and in command, he never yells at me or screams at me, never breaks anything or makes me feel small. Instead, we settle our differences in the bedroom. No silent treatments. No secrets. No under-handed passive aggressiveness. Just plain aggressiveness.” She leaned forward again and looked Angel right in the eyes. “Now you tell me which one you’d rather have. A man who plays games with your mind? Or a man who plays games with your body?”
Angel shivered. A chill suddenly rushed up her spine and down her arms, raising goose bumps along her skin. She blinked, glanced around again, and frowned. There was something familiar about the sensation, and this time it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t just Elena’s words that had set it off. It was too deep, too hard.
She turned thoroughly scanned the coffee shop now, taking in details like laptops, hand bags, any sign of bulges under jackets that could conceal weapons. But there were very few people in the shop to begin with, and they were all utterly innocent. No one was looking at her. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
However, the night yawned dark and deep beyond the shop windows, and she had that feeling. That feeling that someone was watching her.
The night just gazed back at her from the windows, and her feeling didn’t resolve itself. In fact, if anything it deepened. She wasn’t a detector like Caleb, but when something was personal or directed at her, she noticed it. The magic inside her pointed it out.
Angel had the distinct impression there was something beyond those windows that was all too interested in her. But this was not the time to go into warden mode. Not in front of her friends.
She hated lying to them. Countless times, she’d considered telling them the truth about what she did. But this was the life of a warden. It was probably equally difficult for federal agents or spies.
Being a warden meant making a life long decision to keep the danger of the job far and away from the ones you cared about. With any luck, Cass and Elena would grow old and die natural deaths. It was probably more than she could say for herself. She didn’t know a single warden who’d died of old age.