It’s the late hour, I tell myself. I’m exhausted, and the added stress of my car being dead has made me slightly delirious. Or it’s the way the soft glow of the lanterns burning along the edges of the lot make him look less severe.
“I’ll have a tow truck come out and get it.” He shuts the hood and wipes his hands on his pants.
“I can do it. Thanks, though.” I grab my purse from the car to dig out my phone, but the by the time I even get the door open he’s already on a call.
“Yes. The light blue…uh…Ford Focus.” His eyes meet mine as he gives the details of my car in the lot. “Bring it to the shop and have it looked over. It’s dead.”
I slam my car door and frown. “I just said I could take care of it.”
He slides his phone back into his pocket and lifts a shoulder. “Another perk of working for Obsidian. If anything dies on our property we take care of it.”
I don’t miss the phrasing. Ivan doesn’t say things unintentionally.
“Fine. But you’ll give me their contact information so I can follow up?”
“Absolutely not.” He steps around me and opens the car door back up. “Keys.”
A car repair could eat up more than I can spare. And it’s not like I really have a choice here. Ivan’s going to get the car towed with or without my keys. I drop the set into his waiting palm.
He tosses the keys onto the driver’s seat then grabs my purse and shuts the door.
“I’ll drive you home.”
“I can call a ride share.”
The fierceness returns to his expression when he turns back to me. “No.”
“No?”
“Yes.”
I blink. He’s messing with my head because he’s tuned into how tired I am and how at his mercy I sit.
“Yes, no.” I shake my head. “Whatever. I can ask Darren for a ride. He lives in my general direction, I think.”
“Darren went home with Serenity. He’s not here.” He holds out his arm toward the employee entrance door. “We need to go inside to go down to the garage.”
Winning an argument with him is impossible. He’ll just stand here all night out-waiting me. If I do manage to get a cab here, he’ll just send them away with one of his glares. The man doesn’t need a weapon; he just narrows his eyes, and grown men flee.
Another enormous red flag.
“You’ll take me home. To my home, not your home, mine?” I take my purse from him.
“Yes. Your home.” He places his splayed hand on my lower back and leads me back inside and to the garage where he and his brothers park.
It takes thirty minutes before we’re on my street. Aside from having to go through the maze that is Obsidian to get to the garage he and his brothers use, he needed to deal with something before we left.
“It’s just up ahead on the right.” I lean forward in the front seat to point out my building coming up. “You can just pull up.”
He doesn’t drive just any car. We’re cruising in a high gloss black Bentley. Given the lateness, the street is mostly bare ofpeople, but there’s a bar on the corner of my street and we’ve turned every head of the small group standing outside smoking.
“I’m going to walk you up.” He finds a spot between two cars a short distance from the front entrance of my building.
With one hand gripping my headrest and the other palming the wheel, he parallel parks into the spot seamlessly in one try. I can’t help being impressed, it would have taken me three attempts, and my car is smaller.
“You can’t leave your car on the street,” I say, but he’s already out of the car.
As I reach for the handle, a knock on the hood stops me. He glares at me from outside and swishes his finger from side to side.
