Atonement (The Protectors 6)

I hadn’t actually seen a gun on Dante, but I also knew he tended to favor carrying it at his back beneath his long jacket.

Dante jerked his head in a quick nod. I knew asking him to leave the weapon in the trunk of the car probably wouldn’t get me anywhere so I merely said, “Keep it in your pants.”

A smile flashed across his face. “You jealous, Pop-pop?”

For some reason the barb didn’t irritate me, but I worked hard to keep from showing him that. It was that damn smile of his. And the fact that I actually preferred cocky Dante to agitated and unfocused Dante.

I released his arm and got out of the car. We began walking toward the elevator that would take us to the seventh floor when I heard someone yell, “Hey!”

I swung around to see a man jogging towards us, cowboy hat and holster in hand. Recognition dawned, but before I could say anything, Dante stepped in my path. He put his arm out as if to prevent me from trying to get around him and I saw his other hand reach up to search out the gun at his back.

“Stop right there,” he said firmly as the man got within a few feet of us.

“Dante,” I said quickly as I grabbed his hand before he could draw the gun out. I stepped around him enough to hide the fact that I was preventing him from going for his weapon. “This is Jeff. We work together.”

The tension in Dante’s body surprised me, as did the fact that his eyes remained glued on Jeff and he didn’t back down at all except to remove his hand from his back. Despite my reassurance that I knew the man, Dante was still on alert and that fact did some funny shit to my insides.

Holy hell, what the fuck was wrong with me?

“Everything okay?” I heard Jeff ask, reminding me of his presence and I saw he was warily watching us both, his own hand tight on his holster.

“Yeah,” I said quickly and then I moved past Dante and reached out to shake Jeff’s hand. “Hey,” I said as calmly as I could even though my mind was racing with how to explain away the heated moment.

“Hey,” Jeff responded before finally relaxing and drawing me forward into a quick hug that I wasn’t expecting. “Was starting to worry we’d lost you to the tree huggers,” he said with a chuckle.

I forced out a laugh that I wasn’t really feeling. “Liberals and tree huggers aren’t quite the same thing,” I said.

Jeff was a Texan through and through and had very few positive things to say about Northerners…or foreigners…or minorities. I’d never really liked the guy, but he’d been smart enough to keep his personal opinions to himself while he was on the job. I’d been privy to his bigotry early on when I’d gone out one night for drinks with him and a couple other of his like-minded friends and it had been the first and last time I’d socialized with the man. But the thought of what the asshole might say about the family of men who’d included me in their fold left me cold. I couldn’t help but glance at Dante. While I knew he could stand on his own two feet if push came to shove, I didn’t like the idea of anyone spewing that kind of filth at him. Especially now that I suspected his sexuality had been an issue at some point in his life and he hadn’t walked away from the encounter unscathed.

“You guys heading in?” Jeff asked. His eyes settled on Dante as he spoke.

“Um, yeah. Jeff, this is Dante. Dante, Jeff Hastings.”

Dante gave the man a nod, but he ignored the outstretched hand Jeff offered which made Jeff’s jaw tighten up. As Dante scanned the rest of the parking area, Jeff coolly said, “Not sure where you come from, son, but around here we shake a man’s hand when he’s offering it.”

I knew Jeff wasn’t even ten years older than Dante, but his sneer along with the offensive way he spoke to Dante had me seeing red. But before I could even speak up, Dante stepped forward until he was mere inches from Jeff’s face and drawled, “Where I come from, you shake a man’s hand to make it easier to slip a knife between his ribs.” Dante smiled coldly and stepped back just the tiniest bit. He stuck out his hand and said, “But hey, I’m game if you are.” The smile dropped off his face as he added, “Sir,” the disrespect practically dripping off his tongue.

I would have smiled myself if the air between the two men hadn’t grown thick with tension. I stepped between them and used my body to force Dante to take a few steps back. Over my shoulder I said, “I’ll see you inside, Jeff,” but I never took my eyes off of Dante.