Just for Now (Sea Breeze #4)(48)

A girl walked up to Preston and started whispering in his ear. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his eyes shot directly to me. This was what I was afraid of when I’d decided to come tonight. Girls knew Preston as a player. They loved him for it. Preston moved forward away from her mouth, which was entirely too close to his body.

His eyes never left mine. I dropped my gaze to my soda and contemplated just leaving. This was too hard. I couldn’t get upset about the girl because of Marcus. Preston couldn’t act like he was taken because of Marcus. If I was going to be anything more than just a blip on Preston’s radar, we were going to have to tell Marcus.

I couldn’t just keep going this way. Preston’s reputation would require he act a certain way to keep Marcus from questioning things. I reached for my purse and stood up. I’d tell Marcus bye and go back home. It was where I should have stayed.

Preston was up and out of his seat before I could say anything. I stopped and watched as he pushed the girl away and walked over to me. “Dance with me,” he said in my ear, taking my purse and laying it back down on the table, then pulling me out to the dance floor.





Chapter Seventeen



Preston



I’d be fighting tonight, but it wouldn’t be with some guy who was getting too close to Amanda. It would be with her brother. He’d been watching me closely, and I’d just given him a very good reason to suspect something. But it had been a choice between letting the girl paw all over me in front of Amanda and watching her face fall, or having my best friend take a swing at me, so I was going with the ass kicking.

I couldn’t let her walk out of here like that. She’d been upset and about to bolt. I wasn’t going to let that happen.

“What are you doing?” she asked as I pulled her into my arms once we were in the mass of moving bodies. Hopefully, far enough in that Marcus couldn’t see us. Although there was a good chance he was right behind us.

“Dancing with you,” I replied, slipping my hands down over the curve of her hips.

She smiled. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

I glanced back over my shoulder to see if Marcus was barreling down on us. Coast was still clear. I turned back to Amanda. “You were about to leave,” I told her.

Her face pinched into a frown. “Yeah, well, I’d seen more than I could stomach.”

I pulled her closer to me and bent my head to whisper in her ear. “I’m only interested in you. If you’d left, I’d have chased your sexy ass down.”

She laughed, slipped a hand up my chest, then twined it behind my neck. “I’d have let you catch me. You wouldn’t have had to try real hard.”

I was ready to haul her out of here and get her alone. But that wasn’t going to happen until I faced one big hurdle.

“I’m gonna have to talk to Marcus about this.”

Her smile fell. “I know.”

I wanted to kiss her and reassure her, but I’d pushed it far enough. There was a good chance Marcus, me, or both of us could end up in the emergency room if I gave in to that urge.

“He’s gonna be upset,” she said.

I laughed. “No, baby. He’s gonna be pissed. So damn pissed he’s gonna go for my throat.”

Her hands fisted in my hair. What was she going to do, try to hold me here?

“Maybe we don’t have to tell him. I can learn to deal with the girls.”

No, she couldn’t, and I sure as hell couldn’t deal with the guys. There was no hiding that. When that dickwad had stepped in front of her, I’d been one-track-minded. I didn’t care who saw me or what they thought. I just wanted him to move. If he’d touched her, it would have been a lot worse.

“I want guys to know you’re with me. I don’t like them getting close.”

She giggled and pressed against me again. “Well, at least no one was hanging all over me. You had a girl making out with your back.”

I eased both my hands down over her butt and squeezed it gently, causing her to laugh louder. “If he’d touched you, things would have gone down a lot differently.”

“Oh, really? How so?”

She was teasing me. It was easy to forget we weren’t alone when she looked up at me like that.

“I’d have beat. His. Ass.”

A hand gripped my shoulder. It was too big to be a female’s, and the hold it had on me meant Marcus had finally come after me. Amanda’s eyes went wide, and she started shaking her head at him.

“I got this. It’ll be okay,” I assured her. She dropped her hands from my neck and grabbed on to my arm tightly.

“Outside. Now,” Marcus said in a loud, angry snarl. Oh yeah. He was pissed. “Let him go, Amanda,” Marcus snapped at her.

“Don’t talk to her that way.” I raised my voice and got right back in his face. I understood he was mad, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to take it out on her.

“Outside. Now,” he repeated.

I looked back at Amanda as Marcus stalked toward the door. She was holding on to me so tight her fingernails were digging into my arm. “Stay here,” I told her, and she shook her head.

“No way,” she yelled over the crowd. I started moving over the crowd with her holding on to my arm. She was going to have to let me go. Marcus was only going to get more furious if she kept holding on to me like this.