He laughed again, but when Bull didn’t move a muscle his laughter slowly faded.
“I assure you, I am merely a man who likes his wine. I import it for the enjoyment of others, and grow my own merely for personal pleasure. A hobby, if you will.”
He looked relaxed. Like a man without a care in the world. Although, his body slightly stiffened when Bull sat down in a gold velvet wing-backed chair across from him.
“Boy, that’s a relief to hear,” he said, faking a smile that was as unnerving as his demonic eyes. “Because I’d hate for us to have a problem here.”
“A problem?”
Bull’s smile vanished as he dropped the niceties. “If I discover you’re lying to me and Eagle’s Nest is a façade for bringing drugs into my town, I’ll fucking burn it to the ground. Do you understand me?”
The two men stared at each other.
“I think it’s time you left,” Martel said calmly.
Bull said nothing as he rose. But his eyes remained on Martel as he walked toward the door.
I, on the other hand, decided to give him a farewell in French. “Today, we came here as a courtesy. But you put a hair out of place in this town, and next time, we’ll bring war.”
You could cut the tension in the room with a butter knife.
Thankfully, Martel didn’t stick his turtleneck-wearing thugs on us and we made it out alive.
Outside, Yale stared at me in disbelief.
“Dude! You know French?”
I gave him a look. “My father was French, my surname is La Montagne and I’m from New Orleans. The chances were heavily in my favor, mon ami.”
Yale still looked surprised. “Fuck. I didn’t even know you had a surname.”
Yale wasn’t the smartest tool in the shed.
I raised my eyebrow at him and kept walking to catch up to Bull.
“Martel is lying,” I said.
“I know.”
“He thinks he’s got us fooled.”
“Good, it means he’ll fuck up.”
I slid on my sunglasses. “So, what do you want to do about it?”
Bull climbed on his bike. “We wait and we watch. And when he makes a move, we take him down.”
CHASTITY
On Saturday night, Peter picked me up for our date, and when he arrived, he took one look at the black dress I was wearing and whistled.
He looked good, too. Black button-up shirt over well-fitting chinos, cleanly shaven with black hair tousled and falling over his forehead.
He took me to a bar in town called The Salty Fish. It was usually a popular place on a Saturday, but tonight it was quiet because of a college football game over in Humphrey.
We sat in the dark booth toward the back of the bar, in the corner, where a glowing Miller Lite sign barely made a dent in the shadows.
“So, tell me how a good-looking girl like yourself is single?” he asked after the waitress left with our order.
The question was cheesy, but he asked it with the cutest grin on his face and it came across as more endearing than anything.
“I had a long-term boyfriend in college, but when I came back to Destiny we broke up.”
It was only a half-truth. I just didn’t feel like explaining the reasons behind it. I had moved on from Joey. He wasn’t Joey who dumped me by text message anymore. He was just Joey, some guy I used to know. He made sure of that when he replaced me within a month of ending our engagement.
“And no one since?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve been busy trying to finish college while working part-time.”
He nodded. “I get it. I had to juggle finishing high school and working at my daddy’s workshop in the afternoons and on the weekends. Then there was football.”
That explained the athletic body and impressive abs.
“Did you go to college on a football scholarship?” I asked.
“Nah. When my mom walked out on us I had to quit school altogether and go and work for my old man.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling bad for the assumption.
“It’s okay, I did alright. I’ve been fixing cars full-time for almost six years now and I’m good at it.” He grinned at me across the table. “I’ve been told I’m pretty damn good with my hands.”
He winked when he said it and I smiled, but I wasn’t really feeling the sexual innuendo he was throwing my way. Peter seemed nice and he was definitely easy on the eye. But our conversation had slowly become stilted and forced. Without warning, my mind drifted back to last night when I was sitting with Ruger out under the stars. We had talked for hours, about everything and anything, and with every passing minute I had felt a subtle pull in his direction. It felt like we could talk forever and would never run out of things to say.
But this, now… it was obvious Peter and I had little in common.