The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(64)

The pissed-off growl.

Crap.

“She comes through my line and either ignores me or messes with me. Demanding price checks she knows she doesn’t need and stuff like that,” I explained. “I don’t know her. I just know she’s . . . not nice.”

“Right. But that doesn’t explain you sending her a fuck-you-very-sweetly smile just now,” he pointed out.

Okay.

He’d been out with her, I’d just sent her the smile exactly as he described, and he was not dumb.

“Right, Tobe, after our fight on the street she came through my line and had a few digs at me about you,” I shared.

Slowly, his head turned Jocelyn’s way.

Uh-oh!

I pressed into him. “It wasn’t a big deal. I know what kind of woman she is and why she was warning me off you was not about the sisterho—”

I cut myself off when, slowly, his head turned back to me.

Uh-oh!

Before I knew it, or could do anything to control the damage, Brooks was dumped in my arms and Toby was stalking toward Jocelyn.

Okay, dancing around each other for seven months, a week of our shit being tight, me getting there were reasons behind his macho-man lunacy, all of that did not make me an expert in Tobias Gamble.

I was seeing this now.

But what I knew right then was I had to act fast.

So I turned to Deanna, holding Brooklyn out to her and muttering, “Do you mind?”

She took my son and muttered back, “Lock that down, girl, whatever it is.”

“Dodo! Mama!” Brooklyn yelled as I hoofed it behind Toby.

He stopped two feet away from Jocelyn about three seconds before I made it to his back and put a hand on the small under his jacket.

“Tobe—” I started.

“Considering the fact, the one time I fucked you, you acted like we were makin’ a sex tape and you had to have hair and face camera ready, I pretty much figured you were seriously up your own ass . . .” Toby started at Jocelyn.

Good God.

“But that was just me makin’ a poor decision about a woman I’d fuck,” he continued. “You go after Addie, that’s somethin’ else.”

“Toby,” I whispered, pressing in at his back with my hand and my body, but looking at her to see the color had drained from her face.

This might be because of his words.

It was also because there were people around, they weren’t far, they could totally hear, and knowing the folk of Matlock, they were probably listening.

“You givin’ me a mediocre piece of ass once does not buy you a role in my life or the right to open your smart mouth about me to anyone, but especially not to someone I care about,” Toby told her.

The pale was going away and red was seeping into Jocelyn’s cheeks.

Not embarrassment.

From the flash in her eyes, anger.

“You’re nothing to me but a bad choice that didn’t mean enough even to regret,” he carried on. “But you drag someone important to me into your nasty, you’re gonna get my attention.”

“I don’t want your attention,” she snapped.

“Bullshit,” he bit. “Newsflash, that attention isn’t the good kind. I just thought you were conceited. Now I think you’re a bitch.”

“You aren’t all that, Toby,” she bit back and did a lame toss of her hair. “Newsflash, big man, I faked it with you.”

“No kidding?” Toby asked. “That wasn’t lost on me. You were bad at doin’ that too. I just didn’t care. After putting up with half an hour of you preening and arranging your hair instead of paying even a little bit of attention to me, all I wanted was to get outta there,” he shared.

Yikes.

Ouch.

“And just so you know,” he went on, “you aren’t the only one’s got a mouth they can use to share shit they shouldn’t, and it’s known wide you can’t let go enough, not to get it good, but to give it good, and you fake it with everybody. And I’m not only talking about orgasms. That’s the reason you can’t get laid unless you go to the city to find some dupe who doesn’t know all about you and the fact, in a lot of ways, you aren’t worth the effort.”

He’d hit a nerve with that, and she wasn’t smart enough to hide it.

This was why she leaned forward and hissed, “Fuck you, Toby.”

“You wish, and that’s why you screwed with Addie. That’s another thing you’re poor at faking, Jocelyn. You know what you want but you’re mistaken that all you gotta do is crook your finger and you can lead a man around by his dick. It takes more than being an expert at applying lip gloss to get a guy to like you.”

“Well, that’s obvious.” Her eyes came to me peeking around Toby’s shoulder.

“Christ, Jocelyn, you’re even bad at hiding how fuckin’ jealous you are,” Toby muttered. Then he spoke clearly, “Her line at the store doesn’t exist for you. You with me?”

“I’ll use whatever line I want,” she snapped. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“You’re right,” he replied. “And honest to God, standin’ here wasting my time on you, I’m wondering again why I did it.”

He then stopped doing that immediately, turning to me, hooking me around the neck with his arm, and leading me away.