No Strings Attached

Chapter Twenty

“What I’ve done?” Nate spluttered, “How the hell are you holding me responsible for what just happened there?”

Jayden began piling together the plates agitatedly, the sound of the cutlery scraping against the porcelain an angrily stilted percussion.

“Because Tor would never have brought that up if you hadn’t have rocked up in here spouting all your ‘no more secrets’ bullshit!”

Nate’s spine went rigid beneath his thin grey t shirt, and his eyes raged with a sudden fury, but you would never have known it to hear his deep, baritone voice, harboured as it was with a deathly calm.

“Bullshit? You think this is bullshit? She was fucking pregnant. She walked away from here thinking that I thought of her as nothing more than a fuck, and she was carrying my child. You and Tori may have your own little quarrels to deal with, but you already have everything that I’ve lost for this, so you can just fucking tolerate my bullshit!”

Jayden blanched, dropping back into one of the chairs with a long exhale.

“Fuck, man, I’m sorry ... I didn’t know, I was just ...”

“No, you didn’t know, hell, I didn’t even know until last week! Just don’t pull that controlling bullshit on me over this, okay? You handled that wrong, it makes no fucking difference how I said anything! Sometimes I wonder if you’re ever really listening to her – she’s not even asked to be involved, she didn’t seem to want to know what was going on, for fuck’s sake! But you just shot her down straight away at the slightest implication that she might! That’s a sure fire way to get her back up, you know that!” Nate propped his hip against the kitchen island, watching the flashes of various emotions that were passing over his face, knowing there was probably more to this than Jay was saying, “So what is it?”

“What’s what?” Jay asked gruffly, rubbing the palm of his hand over the nape of his neck in agitation.

“Whatever has you wound up tighter than a nun’s ...”

“Oh, gross!” Jay broke in, laughing miserably, before steeling himself with a deep inhale. “Two of our girls are missing from Asylum. That’s what I needed to speak to you about.”

“That’s rough ... Who?”

“Clara, and Sophie.”

“Sophie? Fuck, man!”

Clara, one of their performers, had always been wired a little strangely – disappearing at the drop of a hat was kind of what the leggy redhead had always done. It wouldn’t be a worry, if she vanished, because you’d expect it. She was flighty, and unpredictable, and seemed to follow the wind wherever it took her, without regard for anything she left behind. Sophie, on the other hand, was a completely different story. She tended to work on the bars, or in reception, not having too much to do with the performance side of things.

She had a sick mother at home, though, so it would be odd for her to disappear without a trace – especially from a steady income, and the rates she was getting.