I moved behind him, sipping at my beer and trying to ignore the gazes I felt following me.
I found this was easier than expected since I did this by watching Buck’s behind in his jeans, and the visual was so good, it automatically assumed control of all my concentration.
This concentration was broken only when a man shifted away from the pool table and I saw the balls in their triangle at the end.
Buck left the shot glasses, tequila and beer on the side of the table and went to the wall where he selected a cue.
I stopped by the table and wished I was wearing something else. Jeans, maybe. Gym shoes. Not a tight, buff-colored pencil skirt, a fitted white blouse with cap sleeves and ballet-pink, stiletto-heeled pumps.
I’d wanted to look professional and feminine.
Professional, so that the men I delivered the messages to would take me seriously.
Feminine, so they would think twice before hurting me.
Now, I was thinking this might have been a mistake.
Buck moved back to me, handed me the cue and looked at me.
“You wanna start or you want me to start?” he asked.
“Start?”
“Twenty questions.”
I tried to decide which was the best strategy.
“You start,” I told him because I wanted a sense of where this was going.
He didn’t delay and he didn’t shield his hand.
“You work since they fired your ass after your man went down?”
As I stared up at him, I felt my lips part and my stomach clench, and it didn’t feel good.
He knew me. He knew all about me.
Oh God.
“Pardon?” I whispered as my legs started to shake.
He again didn’t delay. “Your man was found guilty and handed a ten-year sentence. One month later, you were fired from the Hunter Institute. You work since then?”
Yes, he knew.
He knew all about me.
He knew more than just what he could read in the articles about all that Rogan did.
He’d looked into me. He knew I was coming. He knew Esposito was going to send me, slap him in the face by not coming himself or sending one of his lieutenants. He knew Esposito was the kind of man who had no respect, not for anyone, not even for the charismatic, magnetic leader of a biker gang.
He knew.
He knew and he’d prepared.
Oh God.
“He wasn’t my man,” I said softly.
“You were married to him, Toots,” he replied.
I shook my head. “No, the divorce was final before then.”
Something about him changed and it was almost like the very air around him gentled before he spoke again quietly.
“I know, darlin’, but you aren’t answering my question.”
“No,” I answered just as quietly.
He nodded, moved closer to me, and I was too out of it to step away.
“Your turn,” he whispered.
I stared up at him.
“Have you investigated me?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“I’ll let that one slide, babe, not smart,” he said softly.
My heart skipped.
“Pardon?”
“Don’t ask a question you already know the answer to,” he advised.
“But you are,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but I have my reasons, you don’t,” he replied.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Go again,” he prompted.
I didn’t know what to ask.
Something was happening here. Something that had nothing to do with Esposito.
Or maybe it did. Maybe it was a power play and I was stuck in the middle.
Or maybe it was all about me.
Either way, I was on dangerous ground.
Far more dangerous than the ground I’d walked on when I entered this building and that ground was already pretty darned shaky.
My attention shifted, and for some reason, focused on one of the plethora of tattoos on his arm. Before I could stop myself, I lifted my gaze and asked my question.
“What’s the snake mean?”
He tilted his head to the side as his brows knit. “Come again?”
I pointed at the snake slithering up his arm, starting low, curling around, the design opening larger at his biceps.
The snake was not thin, it was beefy.
It was also curled around a skull at the bulge of his biceps, head flared, eyes focused, mouth open, fangs exposed, ready to strike.
“The snake tattoo, what’s it mean?”
I dropped my hand as he dropped his head and looked at the tattoo. Then he looked at me.
His expression was blank, but his eyes were alert, assessing, intense, drilling deep into mine, and if it could be believed I was even more uncomfortable than I was before.
“Kristy,” he stated.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“Kristy, my ex-wife. She had occasion in our marriage to piss me off and do it a lot. She said, when I got pissed, I was not all bark and no bite. I wasn’t even just bite. I was a strike. Like a snake.”
“Oh,” I whispered, my gaze slid away, and I took another sip of my beer thinking he didn’t seem the kind of man to get angry enough to strike. He seemed totally in control.
Therefore, I found this fascinating.
“Line it up,” he ordered.