Daz was pissed. Seriously, almost terrifyingly pissed.
I tried to convince myself the anger wasn’t directed at me. It was at Aaron for showing up like that. The way he’d ordered me inside, the look on his face of pure fury that blazed over me when he did, I wasn’t succeeding. At all.
We barely made it through the door when he slammed it closed behind us hard enough the windows around it rattled.
“Explain.”
I looked over to the couch, wondering if I could talk him into going to sit down, thus buying myself a second he might have used to calm down.
“No,” he stated. “We're not sitting. We’re not going to take a breath and count to ten. You’re not going to fucking avoid this shit anymore. Explain.”
Well, that was firm. It also said a lot, none of it great, about how he handled things like this. Lack of practice might have been a factor, but it was also just Daz. He was standing there, big arms crossed over his massive chest, muscles on display like he was still out there trying to intimidate Aaron into not coming back.
No, that wasn’t it. He was trying to intimidate me into giving him what he wanted to know. He’d been a dick that night he’d found the flowers on the step, but this was a whole new level.
I was also not an idiot. Depending on how all this played out, I could try to address that later. We got through this drama, he could see the error of his ways. Or it could be that being with Daz would mean facing this shit whenever things blew up.
Truthfully, it wouldn’t be the later. If this tendency wasn’t something he could check, there wouldn’t be an us.
But all of that was for later.
“Avery,” he warned when I didn’t speak.
“I didn’t know he’d be here,” I started, lamely. I also didn’t know where exactly to go from there, so I lapsed into a silence Daz thought took too long.
“Yeah, I could fuckin’ tell,” he replied sarcastically, no trace of humor at all. “What I want to know is why you didn’t tell me you had a problem with this fucker at all. We stood right in this goddamn house and you told me you didn’t know who was sending the flowers. I asked you as part of your fuckin’ job to ask around about who might have issues at the shop that could be related to those calls, you said not one thing about your own shit. So, what the fuck else are you keeping secret? What the fuck is going on with that asshole?”
“I didn’t know it was him calling. Really. I had the thought once, after I talked to everyone and none of the girls had anything going on that would be an issue, but I really didn’t think it was him.”
Daz looked at me like I was dense, and I forced myself not to get pissed. “Why? From the look of shit, he’s the fuckin’ type. Calls, flowers, showin’ up at your place at the crack of goddamn dawn—a move, which I’m guessing didn’t escape you, because there aren’t a lot of good reasons anyone wouldn’t be home at this fuckin’ hour. So, what? You just thought he wasn’t the type?”
“No, I know exactly what type he is. This isn’t the first time he’s done stuff like this,” I admitted.
“Then why in the fuck did you never fuckin’ say a damn thing?” Daz demanded, his voice thundering through the room.
“Because he swore it was done,” I snapped. “Because I did everything—everything—he asked so it could be done.”
There was a shift to him that was difficult to pinpoint. It was as if that raw, volatile rage dissipated a bit, but in its place was something far more dangerous. Something waiting beneath the surface I wasn’t sure I wanted to unleash.
“What does that mean? You did everything he asked?”
The way he asked it, the menace seeping through each word, made my throat tight. I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t think it was wise.
I also did not want whatever was coming to be directed at me.
“I met Aaron at the last club I danced at. He started on as a bartender and asked me out. It wasn’t skeevy. He wasn’t going after all the dancers. It was just normal guy-likes-girl shit. I still said no. I didn’t think it was a good idea to get involved with someone I worked with.” I tried to infuse a light tease to that last bit, but the nerves shaking through me made it difficult. I had no idea if it came through or not, but Daz definitely did not find it amusing.
“He worked there about two months, then put in his two weeks’ notice. The manager was pissed. But Aaron came and told me he got offered another job he’d applied for around the same time, and he took it. In two weeks, we wouldn’t be coworkers anymore. He asked me to dinner right after that.
“I still wasn’t sure I was interested,” I kept at it, seeing as Daz was doing nothing but staring at me with tension in every line of his body, and that frightening edge just beneath. I didn’t tell him I’d thought Aaron was attractive enough, but he just didn’t really do it for me. Not like Daz had right from the start. “But he’d kind of gone so over the top, and it was flattering, I guess, so I’d agreed.
“We dated for about six months. Casual, the whole time. He pressed for more, but I just didn’t feel it. He was nice, so I never felt like I needed to break it off. I just kept waiting to become more invested, but it never happened. When I realized it had been six months of going out about once a week, I figured that was enough time to know it was never going to happen for me. So I ended things.”
I hesitated then. We’d arrived at the part I feared was going to truly set him off, and I didn’t want to. He didn’t appreciate the delay.
“Sugar,” he started, and I was—hysterically or not—going to take the fact that he was using the pet name as a good sign until proven otherwise. “Just had to listen to a whole lot of you talking about being with some other guy I already know from experience is a fucking dick. I don’t want to hear that shit. I don’t want to think about other guys taking a shot with you. So, how about you get to the part you’re right now avoiding because we both know it’s exactly the information I was actually looking for.”
There was nothing for it.
“I think he knew I wasn’t that invested, so he set himself up with a contingency plan. I had a feeling he was into some shit. His place just seemed too nice, too decked out with pricey stuff for what I knew bartenders made around there. Turned out, it was identity fraud. And in all those times I let him into my house, he’d gathered enough to get into my accounts.”
Some of that thin layer of control slipper further, and I took a step back.
“Tell me you are fuckin’ joking,” he growled.
“I’m not. The day after I broke up with him, he locked me out of everything just to prove he could. I didn’t know what was happening at the time, but a few days and phone calls sorted it out. That was when the calls started. Not the silent ones like at Candy Shop. He’d call me directly and say he wanted to talk, that he thought we should give it another go, whatever. I tried to be nice, but it was still a firm no. Then, the first bouquet showed up. When he called the next time after that, I didn’t answer. He wasn’t listening when I said no, so I thought maybe he’d give it up if I stopped giving him my attention.
“Obviously, that didn’t work. He showed up at my place. Went off, spewing a bunch of shit about how I led him on and how I really was nothing but a whore. I tried to just go inside and lock the door, but then he asked if I liked what he’d done with my accounts.”
“That fucker blackmailed you,” Daz summed up.
“Yeah.”
“For what? To get you back in his bed?”
I sighed. “No, he knew that was a lost cause. He settled for a payday.”
“How much?”
“Daz—”
“How. Much?” he repeated.
“Seventy-five thousand.”
That was when that lurking monster was let loose.
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Daz roared.
“Daz—”
“No. Fuck. No. That fuckin’ cunt took you for seventy-five thousand dollars?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
“How the fuck did you even pay it?” he demanded.
That was the part that killed. It wasn’t about the money, not really. It was about what losing that money meant.
“I had it in savings. That was where he got the number from.”
Surprise stole over his features. “You had seventy-five K in savings?”
I locked my jaw to tamp down the threatening emotion. The anger, the helplessness, it all came boiling back up. It was why I never let myself think about it anymore.
I nodded in response to his question, looking at the ground.
“A bakery,” he said on a hush, putting it together.
A bakery. My bakery. My lifelong dream I had been so close to making real, stolen.
“It was my dream,” I whispered, “from the time I was a kid in the kitchen with Gran. The only thing I ever really wanted to do in life. Open up a bakery, be able to do the one thing I knew I was good at for the rest of my life. But I didn’t want it to have strings attached. Even if I could get a loan, I didn’t want to be beholden to a bank that could rip it away from me. I wanted it to be mine outright, with money saved so I could keep it afloat until I was able to make it a success.”
“Fuck, baby,” Daz murmured, coming toward me. He wrapped me up in his arms. It was still there, that fire burning inside him that he wanted to rain down on Aaron. But for me, it was just a warmth that made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
“I saved for so long. Every penny I didn’t need from the time I was old enough to understand it would take money. Every dollar fished off strip club stages that didn’t go to paying the bills went right into that account. It didn’t matter if I went without nice things. I didn’t need them. I needed a home I couldn’t lose the way my mom nearly always did until she slept with the right person, food, and to keep working toward my dream. And then he took it from me.”
He just held me. There was no undoing that past. Even if he went after Aaron now, there was no way he hadn’t blown through the money by now. It was why he was there, after all.
Daz seemed to read my mind. “He’s after more,” he surmised.
I couldn’t be certain, but, “Yes.”
“He still got access?” Daz asked.
“No. I closed everything. Moved all my accounts. New passwords. New numbers, everything.”
“Good. But he isn’t getting another fucking thing from you either way.”
That was dark. Ominous.
Threatening.
“You shouldn’t—”
He cut me off yet again. “No. Give you a lot of things. Fuck, at this point, I’d give you damn near anything you asked for. I can’t fix what already happened, and that fuckin’ burns me. But you weren’t a Disciples’ woman then. Now, I can damn well keep that motherfucker away from you, and I’ll do whatever I have to. You’re with me. You’re on the back of my bike. You stood here not two fuckin’ minutes ago facing down that shit that blew up in me. Some things, you can change. Saw how I reacted freaked you, and I’ll do my best to check that in the future. This, retribution for that asshole, meaning he won’t even think of reaching out to you again, you have to let me have, sugar.”
And there it was. I didn’t even need to tell him he’d freaked me out and crossed a line in the way he’d handled things. He knew it, and I had to trust when he said he wouldn’t go there again.
“Okay.”
He held me a little longer, seeming to need to give me that comfort as much as I needed to take it. It didn’t take long before the adrenaline of it all bled from my system, and I was suddenly more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life. Daz must have been feeling it too, or else he was just feeling the way I was shifting my weight farther and farther onto him to keep myself upright.
“Come on,” he finally said. “We both need some fucking sleep.”