Page 39 of Dancing With Lies

He might have fucked it all up and made her life worse than it was to begin with.

“Dammit,” he spit out just as Kai opened the door.

“You’re out here, good. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Kai. Just me fucking things up for myself even worse. What’s up?”

“Just wondering if you saw the alert go off on your phone. Something’s going off over at Lemon Fresh, the dry cleaner’s below where Roxie lives. You want me to handle it?” Kai stared over at him, ready to do whatever Lincoln asked of him.

“No, you’ve had far more to drink than I have.” Lincoln groaned, remembering how she’d said he was drunk. He wasn’t anywhere near drunk, but he wished he could be. The news that something was going on by her place when she was headed there was like a cold splash of Arctic water that sobered him up. “I’ll head over there, check it out.”

“Awesome. I’ve just met the woman of my dreams and I’d like to have another hour or twelve with her.” Kai smirked and went back into the house.

Lincoln just shook his head at his friend and went inside to get his keys and wallet. He checked his phone as he walked out to his car and saw that one of the private security guards had sent an alert to his and Kai’s phones. There were lights going off and on at Roxie’s, but she wasn’t home. Someone was there.

Probably that asshole boyfriend of hers, he thought, gripping the steering wheel as if it was the neck of the prick that wasn’t good enough for her. Should he pay the guy to disappear completely? He’d thought about it before - finding the guy and paying him to go to Mexico or someplace that wouldn’t extradite him back to the US. But the guy was like a boomerang, he’d come back at the worst moment. It was best to find him now and put him in check until his court date.

If his and Kai’s plan worked, that was exactly what would happen.

From what the security detail could find out about Nathan, he was a gambler and a drug addict. He hadn’t been violent to a woman before, and that was the only reason the guy hadn’t simply disappeared yet. Lincoln wasn’t at all squeamish about changing that if he found out differently and it pertained to Roxie. He’d break the guy’s neck himself.

Lincoln drove through mostly empty streets, glaring at a stoplight when it seemed to get stuck. He was about to just take a right and use a backstreet when it finally changed. He was nervous about this situation. Maybe it wasn’t Nathan at her apartment. Maybe it was the guys who were after Nathan, and Roxie was about to walk in on them.

He had another ten minutes of driving ahead of him at least, and that was 10 minutes too long. He poked at buttons on his dash, and he soon heard a phone dialing out over his speakers.

“Have you got eyes on the apartment?” He said without preamble.

“Yes, sir. She’s arrived but so far everything seems alright. I haven’t heard any shouting or signs of distress.” A female voice answered shortly, relaying the most information with the least words possible. Tanya was always efficient like that.

“Can you get anyone higher, look into the windows to confirm she’s alright?” He asked as he stopped at yet another fucking stoplight. They loved those fucking things down here, he noted with another glare.

He liked the new place he’d decided to call home, for now, but there were some things that he’d have to get used to. An overabundance of stoplights was one of those things. It probably netted the city a lot of revenue during tourist season, but it was a pain in the ass when you were in a hurry and trying not to break the speed limit. Too much.

He’d noted how many cops prowled around the place too so he knew he couldn’t push his luck too much with speeding. A cop pulling him over to give him a ticket was the last thing he needed at the moment. It would just delay his arrival at Roxie’s. But that brought another question to mind. What did he do once he got there? Wait with Tanya who had a habit of getting handsy when they were alone together?

The thought made him shudder as he came to a stop at yet another shitty little red light. Tanya was great at her job, she was beautiful, but she was just too aggressive for him. That would be fun in bed and he doubted she was the kind that would scream sexual harassment, but he wasn’t about to press his luck over a woman he’d only ever want to fuck once. Especially when the woman he wanted to fuck over and over might be in trouble.

16

Roxie

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Roxie groaned as she drove home alone. She should have stayed at the party, made sure everything ended safely, but she had to leave.

There was something going on between her and Lincoln that put her on edge and left her feeling…helpless. She hadn’t felt helpless since she managed to get on her feet and get her own apartment. She thought those days were long behind her, but that little knot of anxiety in her chest proved her wrong.

A car braked suddenly ahead of her and Roxie’s foot took over the thinking to slam down on her brake. “I’m not buying you a new car, asshole!”

Her heart started to calm down once the car turned off and the road was clear of traffic. Lincoln’s almost kiss had turned into a very real kiss, something she’d wanted to avoid for the most part. Okay, she’d kind of given in to the idea of sleeping with him again before she found him flirting with Kitty.

She’d warned him off her friend and that caused the knot in her chest to grow a little more. Guilt gnawed at her, because it wasn’t her looking out for her friend that had set her off. No, it was that he was flirting with her very good friend and not her.

Nathan’s face appeared somewhere in the background of her thoughts, destroying her pride in an attribute she thought she had: loyalty. She could justify her actions, say that he’d abandoned her, that he was absent from her life because he’d run away from some men in a van. That begged a question she’d tried to avoid posing, however. Did he even care that he’d left her with men he was afraid of?

What if those men had turned to her instead of going after him? He’d abandoned her to her fate and that shit had happened to her once already. Did she really owe him any kind of loyalty after that?

Roxie was a lot of things people would say were bad, a dancer, a stripper, a woman who was sexually liberated, and so many other things, but she’d never stolen anything from anyone. She’d dealt with the hand life had given to her when she’d been cast out on her own at 18. She’d had to be strong when so many others were still relying on their parents. Was it so wrong to take a little comfort from Lincoln now?

It was that question that had bothered her, that had turned the heat in her veins to ice. Did she want to be owned?