Page 19 of Bolt (Iron Thunder MC 1)
Impossible.
Cassie woke up. Just when I was picturing a relationship with her. It was a fucked-up thought. I didn’t do relationships.
She gasped and rolled away hurriedly. I grinned because she knew what she’d done. She was the one who’d rolled over to me. I’d remained exactly where I was from the start.
“Did you sleep well?” I asked, and she sat up in bed with a jerk.
“Barely slept,” she replied. That made me want to laugh aloud, but I didn’t want to embarrass her.
I got out of bed and went to the wardrobe for a fresh shirt. I could feel her eyes on me. The thing was, I didn’t have a plan for the day. I had no idea what I was going to do with her for the rest of the day. We couldn’t stay cooped up in here all day. We’d drive each other nuts.
“I have to go to work. You have to let me out of here. Even if you don’t want to let me see my brother.”
I turned to her as I buttoned up my shirt. She was weaving fingers through her tousled golden hair.
“Where do you work?”
“I have a business to run. A coffee shop.”
“You run it?”
“Yeah, I own it. It’s my responsibility to go open it up. My regulars will be waiting outside the doors. My staff will know something is wrong if I don’t open up on time.”
Her bright green eyes sparkled as she spoke. Was she just making up excuses or telling the truth? If her staff worried about her, they might go looking for her. What if they went to the cops and they came looking, trying to trace her whereabouts. The last thing we needed was for Cassie to be reported as a missing person.
“Fine, you can go to the cafe, go about the day as usual.”
I thought I saw relief on her face. She brightened up immediately. She jumped off the bed.
“I promise I won’t do anything to piss you off. I’ll wait for Chip to come home. I won’t go to the cops.”
I shook my head.
“You’re not going to be alone. I’ll be there to make sure you don’t go to the cops or do anything you’ll regret later.”
“You want to be in the cafe with me?”
I brushed a hand through my hair.
“Did you really think I’d just let you go about your day without supervision?”
“I’m not going to do anything. Why can’t you trust me?” she shrieked. It was so early in the morning and Cassie was already losing her calm.
“I don’t trust you because I don’t know you, and since we first met, all you’ve done is fight and scream and threaten.”
Her shoulders heaved, her nostrils flared. She looked very different now than when she was fast asleep just a few minutes ago. There was a different kind of beauty to her now. She was still sexy.
“You can’t come to the cafe with me. You’ll scare all my customers away,” she declared.
“I really don’t care how successful you are at your business today. I just want you to keep up normal appearances,” I replied. “I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
She stood there with her fists clenched. I knew she had a million things on her mind which she wanted to blurt out, but she was trying to keep calm. Keep herself in check.
When she didn’t move or say a word, I went up to her, holding her gaze. “This is the best I can do for you today, take it or leave it. Alternatively, if you don’t want me hanging around your cafe, we can stay all day in here instead. Your choice.”
For a second, I thought she was going to burst out crying, but she didn’t.I thought about keeping one hand on Cassie the whole time, just to keep her in place but then decided against it. Maybe that would be pushing it too far. She deserved a little bit of freedom at the very least.
Once she said she was ready to go, I led her back down to the Club room where the others were. From the looks of it, most of them had slept on the premises just like I did. Drax wasn’t up yet, but Flash, Spike and Ghost were.
They all glared at us when we walked in. Maybe they thought I was wasting too much time on Cassie. If it were up to them, they would’ve handled her another way. Maybe if she’d been a different girl, I would have handled her differently too.
“Sleep well, you two?” Spike asked, grinning, when I walked toward him. Cassie lingered by my side. This morning, she wasn’t shrieking or kicking up a fuss. Maybe she considered herself lucky that I was letting her go to work.
“I need someone to drive her car up to a cafe in town,” I told Spike. He eyed Cassie and then put a hand on my shoulder to lead me aside.
