“Babe, have you not been listening?”

I turned to glare up at him, yanking my hand from under his on the mouse then instantly finding it caught, his fingers curling around mine tight and then my hand was resting on his rock-hard thigh.

Crap.

“Tack,” I clipped, still glaring at him and now pulling in vain on my hand.

He ignored me and said outrageously, “I gotta go. Tip your face back further for me, baby, I wanna give you a kiss before I do.”

My stomach plummeted in a way that wasn’t altogether unpleasant even as I felt my eyebrows rise as did my voice. “Are you nuts?”

“No,” he replied calmly, his eyes moving over my face and settling on my mouth before he muttered, “Remember your mouth. It was near as sweet as other parts of you.”

Ohmigod!

I felt my eyes narrow mainly because he was too much and none of the too much he was was good.

I yanked at my hand. His fingers curled tighter and his other hand came up to wrap around the side of my neck as his upper body started coming toward me. Therefore, I pulled at my neck at the same time I yanked at my hand. This not only didn’t work, it made him slide his fingers around to the back of my neck, pulling up as he bent closer and he lifted my hand from his thigh to press it against his chest.

I was watching his face get closer, specifically his amazing lips surrounded by his kickass goatee. My mind took that unfortunate moment to remind me that I’d never had a man with facial hair prior to Tack and I’d liked the feeling of those lips with that goatee on various parts of me. In fact, every part they’d touched. And it was then we heard the door open.

Both our necks twisted to see a woman was standing in the door. She was pretty, with wild red hair that had liberal streaks of very fake blonde which I couldn’t decide in that instant if I thought looked good or kind of skanky. She also had clear, light blue eyes. She was wearing biker babe apparel of jeans, high-heeled boots and tight scoop-necked t-shirt with four buttons at the neckline, all of them undone exposing cleavage.

“Fuck,” Tack muttered right before the redhead exploded.

“You are fucking shitting me!” she, for some reason, shrieked, walking in quickly after slamming the door loudly, her eyes going squinty, her face setting hard and I saw what I didn’t see seconds before. Her face was already hard prior to her setting it harder. There were lines around her mouth probably from smoking too much. There were also lines around her eyes that didn’t look like laugh lines, instead they looked like she got squinty-eyed, pissed off frequently. And her skin looked like someone should have introduced her to sunblock about three decades ago.

I pulled at Tack’s hands and one let me go, the one at my neck. The other one dropped our hands to his thigh as his torso straightened and twisted to face her.

“Naomi, what the fuck?” he asked and her squinty eyes cut to him.

“Are you doin’ your new office manager?” she asked.

“For fuck’s sake,” Tack growled.

“Are you doin’ your new office manager?” she repeated, her voice, unfortunately, getting louder.

“Don’t know that’s any of your business,” Tack answered and my hand jerked spasmodically in his hold which tightened in return.

“You don’t know that’s any of my business?” she shouted. I winced at the volume of her voice at the same time I hoped that the noise in the garage was drowning her out.

“Woman, I divorced your ass four years ago,” Tack reminded her and I felt my lips part as I stared at Tack’s ex-wife. I could see it, considering she’d been pretty once. She wasn’t exactly pretty now, mostly because she looked and acted like a serious bitch. Furthermore, on closer inspection, the fake blonde streaks were definitely skanky. She shouldn’t have gone for champagne highlights. Instead her stylist should have recommended honey or, maybe, caramel.

“So?” she shot back.

“So?” Tack repeated with unconcealed disbelief.

“Yeah, so?” she returned.

“You’re hitched to another fuckin’ guy,” Tack replied.

“So?”

“So, who I do ain’t no business of yours and hasn’t been for four fuckin’ years,” Tack returned.”

“We got kids, asshole,” she retorted.

Oh wow. Tack had kids.

“Who I do ain’t their business either unless I decide to make it their business instead ‘a you makin’ it their business. Which you should not fuckin’ do but I know you will because you are one seriously twisted, stupid bitch which is the reason I divorced your ass four years ago,” Tack fired back.

Um, it seemed to me a domestic situation was brewing. It also seemed I was due a coffee break, which I decided to take immediately and take it somewhere that was not there.

I rose from my chair, muttering, “I’ll just –”

Naomi’s eyes sliced to me. “Yeah, get your ass outta here, bitch.”

That was when Tack let me go and he did this before he stood, turning to face her so he was standing between her and me. I didn’t know him very well and he’d been scary around me, very scary. But even though I had his back and I might not know him very well, no one could miss the vibes emanating from him and those vibes were so beyond scary it was not funny. They were so beyond scary I found myself holding my breath.

“Do not,” he said softly, in a voice that seemed to slither through the room in a sinister way, “speak to Tyra like that. Do you fuckin’ hear me?”

My body locked when he said my name but my eyeballs swiveled to Naomi who was shockingly completely immune to the scary vibes sparking menacingly in the room.

“I’ll talk to your latest piece of ass however the fuck I want, dickhead.”

At that, Tack moved and I could swear I was watching but he went so fast, I wasn’t certain what I saw. One second they were facing off, the next the bright Denver sunshine came in through the door and the next that door was closed and both Tack and Naomi were on the other side of it.

Even so, I heard their continued conversation starting with Tack warning, “Do not test me.”

“Fuck you,” was Naomi’s rejoinder.

“You came here to say somethin’, say it and get the fuck gone.”

“Kiss my ass!”

“Fuckin’ hell. Clue in, bitch, I’m done with this shit. I was done with it years ago. You got two seconds to say what you gotta say then I’m walkin’ away.” There was silence for two seconds then Tack again, “I’m walkin’ away.”

That was when Naomi said quickly, “I want her job.”

My eyes locked on the door.

Ohmigod, she wanted my job. Holy crap!

“Say again?” Tack demanded as I aimed my behind to the chair and sat in it.

“I got canned from my other job. Pipe’s outta work. I need to get somethin’ quick-like. I heard Eloise was leavin’ and I want her job.”

“Position’s filled, Naomi, and even if it wasn’t, no way your ass would be in Tyra’s chair.”

“I did that job for twelve years, Tack, no one knows it better than me,” she stated, giving me history that made me bite my lip.

“I’ll repeat, position’s filled,” Tack returned.

“Then unfill it,” she shot back. “You want your kids fed, you’ll sort shit out.”

“You got money problems, woman, Rush and Tabby got rooms at my house and I got food in the cupboards. They’re more than welcome to move in with me.”

“The kids aren’t movin’ in with you.”

“They are, you can’t feed ‘em, Pipe don’t get off his fat ass and you don’t stop actin’ like a bitch and gettin’ your ass fired from job after job.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” she snapped.

“In your twisted head, it’s never your fault but it always is.”

“I came here askin’ for help and this is what I get,” she returned.

“You came here and started shoutin’, like usual, actin’ like a bitch, like usual, so yeah, this is what you get,” Tack replied.

“You know I can do that job and you also know I won’t suck your cock as part of my job description like Tyra in there will so you’re bein’ a dick even when it’s your kids who’ll suffer.”

“Naomi, I asked you to suck my cock, you’d have your mouth wrapped around it so fast, you’d break the sound barrier.”

“As usual, right up your own ass, Tack.”

“Jesus, honest to God, seriously? You need a favor, you drive here and give me shit and think you’re gonna get it? What’s the matter with you?”

“It took a lot for me to come here, Tack. And I walk into my office and have a flashback seein’ as you like to play around, you always liked to play around and you’re still fuckin’ playin’ around!”

Oh boy.

“Christ, you are fucked up. Still singin’ that song?” Tack asked.

“Still lyin’ to me that you didn’t fuck everything that moved when you had my gold band on your finger?” she retorted.

“Twisted, totally twisted,” Tack muttered and finished with, “We’re done.”

“We are so not done.”

“We’re done,” Tack stated and I knew he meant it because suddenly he was in the office, the door was closed behind him and he locked it. Then his long legs took him across the office to the door to the garage and he locked that one too, all the while Naomi pounded on the front door shouting, “Open this goddamn door, motherfucker! We’re not done!”

Tack ignored this and walked to the window that faced the forecourt and with a rough, angry jerk he closed the blinds.

Then he turned to me.

That scene was so nasty, so intense and so unlike anything I’d ever seen or heard before

I couldn’t fight it back so I stared up at his angry face while biting my lip.