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Since the accident, Nico had felt lost, going through the motions of a life he used to love, but that now felt gray and cold and bleak. In less than an hour, she’d begun to change that. Inside, warmth spread through all his frozen places like spring after a long winter, every fiber of his being coming to life again as the ice around his aching heart cracked and crumbled.
Lexie Bowen was a miracle. She had seen him scared, vulnerable, torn to pieces, and she’d saved him. Nico had spent a long time appreciating that, wondering what it would be like to see her again, to talk to her and have her talk back.
Now, he couldn’t believe he’d waited this long.
“Well, this is an interesting development.”
Nico scoffed and made a point of walking straight past Frank as he stood like a schoolgirl waiting for gossip.
“Hey, hold up,” he said, keeping pace with Nico as he aimed for the door.
Nico stopped. “What?”
Frank’s grin was teasing as he pointed a thumb to the bar where Lexie had returned to work, waiting for her tray to be filled, then delivering the drinks to her customers. Nico could tell she was trying not to look his direction. “You wanna tell me how you two know each other?”
“Not particularly.”
“Oh, come on, LT.”
“We’re just . . . old friends. Nothing to tell.”
Nico started toward the exit again.
“Yeah, well, I’m no expert on the fairer sex, but I do know that women don’t look at men all gooey-eyed like that unless there’s something to tell.”
“ ‘Gooey-eyed?’ ”
To answer Nico’s question, Frank stopped and morphed his masculine facial features into a grossly exaggerated swoon, complete with fluttering lashes. Nico blinked—in no way thinking that it even remotely resembled the way Lexie had looked at him—but couldn’t help the laugh threatening to bubble up from his chest.
“Christ,” he mumbled, shaking his head and turning on his heel once more, only to bump right into an off-guard patron who dropped the empty glass he was carrying. The jarring sound of breaking shards cut through the noise of the room and a few people looked over, Lexie and the bar staff included. Nico couldn’t be sure from so far away, but he thought he saw Lexie’s hand fly to her throat and her eyes fill with what could only be described as panic.
“Watch it, asshole!” the man barked before Nico got the chance to apologize. He had cropped blond hair and a scowl that could cut through steel as he pushed Nico’s chest hard enough to make his top half sway backward. “You made me spill my fuckin’ drink.”
Nico frowned at the barely provoked hostility and lifted his chin. “Sorry about that.”
“Damn right you are,” he replied, taking a stance that deposited his weight more evenly—definitely a brawler. “Now, how about you buy me a new one?”
Nico slid his gaze to the mess on the floor, pursing his lips. “Looks like it was empty to me.”
Frank hung back, folding his arms and hovering over Nico’s right shoulder. In his peripheral, Nico could see a smirk on his lips.
“Well, you must be as blind as you are stupid, because it wasn’t,” the guy said.
Nico smelled a good amount of liquor on his breath. More than that, he sensed the roiling aggression, the threat of violence beneath the surface, like a grenade right before the pull of the pin. His heart hammered in his chest, the sound filling his ears and drowning out the sounds of the crowded restaurant. His limbs pulsed with the familiar reserves of adrenaline his body naturally knew to give him in moments like these. Though, to an onlooker, he would have been the epitome of indifference.
After a moment’s consideration, Nico reached for his wallet and dug out a twenty, holding it up between them. “Tell you what,” he said, sliding it across to the redheaded woman behind the bar before the man could take it. “The next time you come in here, first round’s on me. For the trouble.” He gave a meaningful look to the bartender—No more tonight, to which she seemed to interpret well enough as she nodded—then gave the man his most amiable smile. “Have a good night.”
Nico was ready for the rough grab on his jacket before it came, though the need to deescalate the situation evaporated as Frank stepped between them a second later.
“Easy, Kyle,” he said.
At the cool, yet authoritative, warning, the man—Kyle—bristled, his eyes filling with pure venom as he held Nico’s stare.
Nico also noted the tall, bearded man behind the bar had stopped what he was doing to watch. To wait. As had many of the customers.
“You might want to rethink this one, bud,” Frank told Kyle. “Say hello to Nico Dominici, our new lieutenant.”
Kyle’s face slackened by the smallest degree at Frank’s words, deflating some of his previous bravado, but the seething anger remained.
