Текст книги "A Little Too Hot"
Автор книги: Lisa Desrochers
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Chapter Sixteen
“RED? WAKE UP.”
I open my eyes and look down at Jonathan’s blurry form. “What?”
His image in the hospital bed sharpens as my eyes focus, and I realize I must have fallen asleep at his bedside. It’s been three days since we got run off the road, and my head is finally clear enough that they’re discharging me. There’s a bandage covering the gash over my right cheekbone, but it didn’t need stitches. What hurts more are the bruises across my right shoulder and left ribs where the seat belt was, and my right arm’s in a sling because my shoulder’s sprained. But I still came out of everything better off than Jonathan.
His eyes flick to the other side of the room and I follow his gaze to find Blake, leaning into the door frame with a gun strapped to the left side of his chest. I straighten up in my seat and wipe the drool off my chin with my sleeve.
“We’re ready to move you to the safe house,” he says, all business.
“Is Jonathan coming?”
Blake splits a glance between us. “No.”
“But . . .” I look at Jonathan. “You said you thought this was Ben.”
Jonathan’s eyes widen and shoot to Blake. “Seriously, man?”
For just an instant Blake’s jaw tightens, then he shrugs off the doorjamb and fixes me in his gaze. “As long as Jonathan is here, he’ll have our protection. But Arroyo wasn’t after Jonathan. He was after you. We need to get you somewhere safe.”
I’m stuck in Blake’s intense gaze until I feel Jonathan’s fingers thread into mine. “You need to go.”
I look down at him in the bed, then back at Blake. “Where am I going?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t tell you. If anyone knows,” he says with a glance at Jonathan, “it would defeat the purpose.”
It kills me that he still doesn’t trust Jonathan. “What about my family . . . my parents? Can I call them?”
“If there’s anyone you need to call, you have a few minutes now, before we go. You can use your cell, but you’ll be leaving it here when we leave.”
I feel my eyes widen. “You’re taking my phone?”
He shrugs. “Sorry. We need to take every precaution.”
“What about the rest of my stuff. All my clothes are at Jonathan’s.”
“We’ve taken care of it,” he says, his eyes catching mine before he lowers them.
“I’ll hold onto your stuff, Red. You’ll be home soon,” Jonathan says. He lifts a hand and touches my bandages. “Did I mention how hot a chick with scars is?”
I’ve been avoiding thinking about that. “Yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “They’re all over the fashion magazines.”
His eyes spark as he pokes at the ring through his lower lip with his tongue. “You think I’m joking? I’ll show you how hot when I get the fuck out of this hospital bed.”
I roll my eyes again. “One word, Jonathan. Ginger.”
He grins. “She’ll want one too. It’s gonna be the new thing. Plastic surgeons’ offices will be flooded with hot chicks wanting scars.”
You can question his methods all you want, but Jonathan’s heart is always in the right place. I squeeze his hand and turn to Blake. “I can call people now . . . before we go?”
“Anyone you want. But please don’t give them any details of your situation.” He lays a hand on the doorknob. “Do you need some privacy? There’s a room up the hall.”
“Give me a minute?”
Blake nods and slips through the door into the hall.
I wrap Jonathan in a one-armed hug. He squeezes me hard and it hurts my sprained shoulder, but I don’t let go.
“Listen,” he says in my ear, suddenly sounding uncharacteristically serious. “I don’t really think this was Ben, but I’ll see what I can find out. If I got you into this, I’m going to get you out.”
“You didn’t get me into anything but a job. A perfectly legal job,” I add with a glare at the door.
He gives me that cocky sideways smile and tweaks my chin. “There’s no way anything that hot is legal, Red. You’ve gotta know that.” I lean in to kiss his cheek, and he pulls me to his shoulder. “You’re gonna be okay,” he says into my hair.
“You too.”
I pull back and find him grinning. He pounds a fist into his chest, but then winces. “Indestructible, baby.” I stand and he reaches for my hand. “Stay in touch, Red.”
“I’ll try.” I start to the door, but then shiver as something cold fingers up my spine. I turn back to him. “Jonathan?”
He grins at me. “Are you going to profess your undying love? Because I already know.”
I smile despite myself, but it falters when dread that I can’t explain coils in my gut. “Stay away from Ben, okay?”
He tips his head in a question.
“Just . . . please,” I say, my face scrunching in embarrassment. I have no idea where this is coming from but . . . “I have a bad feeling.”
He gives me a slow nod.
I move to the door and glance over my shoulder at him as I open it. “And I do love you.”
He smiles sideways. “I know.”
When I step into the hall, Blake is waiting for me. We dodge hospital staff, bustling all around with carts and gurneys, as he leads me up the wide corridor to a small conference room.
“Five minutes,” he says, closing the door.
I stare at my phone for a minute, working up all my courage and forcing the shake out of my limbs before dialing Mom. I don’t want her to hear how scared I am. When it goes straight to voice mail, I’m one part disappointed and three parts relieved. “Hey, Mom. I know I’m thrown out and all, but . . . I just wanted to tell you . . . I have to go away for a while. Everything’s okay but I just wanted you to know in case you called my cell and I didn’t answer or it was disconnected or whatever. I’ll call you when I can.”
I disconnect and blow out a breath.
Next, I call the shelter.
“Janice, it’s Sam,” I say when she answers. “How is Sabrina?”
“She’s doing better,” she says. “Finally interacting with the other residents, and she’s asking for you.”
My heart clamps in my chest. “I’m not going to be able to come in for a while.”
“Is something wrong, Sam?” she asks, alarm lacing her words.
“It’s just . . . something happened and I have to go away for a while. But give Sabrina a hug for me, okay. And tell her that I’ll come see her when I can. I’m so happy she’s doing better.”
“Is there something you need . . . something we can do to help?”
“It’s nothing anyone can really help with, but thanks, Janice. I’ll call when I can, okay?”
“I have to say, you’re worrying me a little bit. Can you just tell me what it’s about . . . if you’re okay?”
I rub a hand over my forehead. “I’ll be fine,” I tell her, and hope to God I’m not lying.
“Okay, Sam. Keep in touch.”
“I’ll try.”
I hang up and dial Izzy, not sure if she’s going to answer. Last I saw her, she was at a table in Benny’s, being questioned by the police. Is she under arrest too?
“Sam!” she says when the phone connects. “Where are you?”
“I’m okay. How are you?”
“I’ve been trying to call you since they dragged you out of Benny’s the other night. Jonathan is missing and Ginger and the guys are flipping out, and no one knows what’s going on, and with Benny’s shut down, I can’t get a hold of—”
“I’m okay, Izzy,” I interrupt. “But . . . there was an accident. Jonathan and I are in the hospital.”
“Oh my God,” she gasps. “Is he . . . are you—”
“We’re both fine, but Jonathan has to stay here for a while. They’re letting me out today.”
“How are you getting home? Do you need help?”
“They won’t let me go home right now.”
There’s a pause as she tries to reason that out. “What?”
Can I tell her that Ben might have tried to kill me? I’d never forgive myself if I did something to put her in danger too. “I can’t really say much more, Sorry.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she asks warily.
“Promise. Can you let Ginger know Jonathan’s okay?”
“You got it,” she says. “Call me when you can, Sam. I’m worried about you.”
“I will. I gotta go.”
My next call is to the only other friend I have who might care if I fall off the face of the planet. I’m halfway through explaining to Katie that I’ll be out of touch for a while when Blake pokes his head into the room and gives me a look. I finish up and he holds his hand out for the phone.
“I can’t believe you’re making me do this.”
His mouth presses into a line. “It’s the only way we can keep you safe.”
“I would have been perfectly safe if you’d never walked into Benny’s,” I counter, throwing it at him.
He makes the grab before it hits the floor and his expression darkens as he takes a step back into the hall so I can pass. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
He urges me up the hallway and Cooper meets us at a back door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. He looks over my shoulder at Blake. “You ready?”
Blake nods. “We clear?”
Cooper pushes the door open. “Jenkins cleared the area. We’re good to go.”
I’m shaking again as we slip through the door because I know the reason for the sinking feeling in my stomach. This is really happening. Ben is really trying to kill me. Nothing else makes sense. I feel stupid for the tears pressing at the backs of my eyes, but it felt really good that someone finally gave me a chance. He told me I was a natural. Nora put me on center stage. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel like second best.
And now he wants me dead.
Cooper and Blake flank me, and I don’t shake him off when Blake grasps my upper arm, because I don’t feel quite steady. He opens the door to a black Escalade and I scramble in. He closes the door and looks at me through the window for a second before striding around the front and climbing into the driver’s seat. Cooper slips into the driver’s seat of one of two black Chargers.
“Sam? Are you okay?” Blake asks.
That’s when I realize I’m bracing my good hand on the dashboard, digging my fingers into the vinyl, right on the edge of hyperventilating. I lean forward, with my forehead on my knees, and focus on taking slow, steady breaths. “No,” I finally say.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”
All my insides have turned fluid, and they’re roiling around like lava in a volcano, ready to erupt. “How is this happening to me?”
When he touches my back, it surprises me. He doesn’t rub, or stroke my hair. He just lays his hand softly over my ribcage. But it’s warm and solid, and seems to help bring things back into focus.
After a minute I straighten in my seat and his hand drops away.
He doesn’t say anything else as we slip out of the garage between the black Chargers, one in front and one behind. I lean into the window and watch in the side mirror as the Charger with Cooper behind the wheel follows us through the city streets. As we’re accelerating up the ramp onto the Bay Bridge, the sound of a phone rings out of the car speakers, slicing through the silence and making me jump.
Blake punches a button on his steering wheel. “How’s it looking back there, Coop?”
“We’re clear. Jenkins is going ahead to recon.”
“Ten-four.”
He pushes the button on his steering wheel again, and I slap my hands over my ears as something that I think is supposed to be music assaults my fragile brain.
“Oh my God! What is that?”
He turns down the stereo and shoots me a sideways glance as the Charger in front of us takes off at well over the speed limit. “What? You don’t like country music?”
I scrunch my face at the stereo. “Is that was this is? It sounds like someone’s torturing a cow,” I say, lowering my hands and punching the Seek button. “I didn’t know there was even a country station in San Francisco.”
He arches an eyebrow at me and thumbs a button on his steering wheel. The country song is back. “Some people have taste.”
“Did you grow up in a barn or something?”
He scowls at me. “Because only rednecks like country?”
“Well . . . yeah, pretty much.”
He answers by turning up the music another notch.
“You’re making my brain bleed again, just so you know,” I mutter, dropping my head onto the headrest.
He flashes me a concerned glance and turns it back down. “The answer is yes. I did grow up in a barn . . . partly.”
I just look at him.
“There wasn’t enough space in the house for all us kids when we got too old to share a room, so my uncle converted the tack room into a bedroom for me and my cousin.”
“That explains a lot,” I mutter.
We whoosh into the Treasure Island tunnel at the center of the bridge a few minutes later, and when we come out the other end, Oakland is laid out in front of us. Jonathan’s apartment was never really “home,” but I long for it now. I want more than anything to hit the rewind button and go back to my life before all hell broke loose, when all I had to worry about was paying for my nine hundred dollar a month sofa.
“Where are we going?” I ask again.
“Somewhere safe,” Blake answers without looking at me.
“How long am I going to have to stay there?”
He shoots me an irritated glance. “Until we know you’re safe.”
I feel suddenly heavier as the weight of all of this presses down on me. I start to lift my right hand to rub my face before I remember my shoulder. It reminds me with a sharp twinge that shoots across my back, making me wince. “So, how long do I have to hide? Are we talking days? Weeks?”
His mouth presses into a line. “Maybe months,” he answers without taking his eyes off the road.
“Months? Seriously?” I realize I sound a little hysterical and try to rein it back. “Can I . . . I don’t know . . . see my friends? Or my family? Ever?”
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry Sam. No.”
“For months?”
He just stares straight ahead as he navigates us off the bridge and through the maze of highways that merge and split on the other side.
The blend of fear, frustration, and anger brewing inside me feels toxic, like mixing ammonia and bleach. I’m choking on the fumes and struggling for air nearly ten minutes later when we exit the highway in Berkeley.
Blake finally flicks me a glance. “We have to know Arroyo is neutralized before I’ll agree to let you back out into the world. I’m not going to let anything else happen to you.”
I glare at him. “What, something like you?”
He winces as we weave into traffic on the crowded surface streets. Cooper’s black Charger cuts off a white Prius to tuck in right behind us. “I’ve told you, Sam, it wasn’t personal. I was just doing my job. We needed something to get us legal access to Arroyo’s financials in order to prove he’s laundering drug money through his club. We’ve spent three years trying everything else. We’ve tapped his landlines, offered deals to all his known associates, and we put Nichols inside Benny’s undercover for six months. We still came away with nothing. This was the last resort.”
I cross my left arm over the sling on my right and slump deeper into the seat. “I’m a resort. Great.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” I can hear the frustration in his voice, and I’m glad. It’s the first real emotion I’ve seen from him since the VIP room. “I just needed you to agree to have sex with me.”
“So, it was just an act? I must have imagined you grinding your hard-on against my ass in the VIP room.”
He stands on the brakes, skidding us to a stop at the side of the road, and there’s something desperate in his icy gaze that sends a shiver through me.
Chapter Seventeen
COOPER NEARLY SLAMS into the back of us, but Blake doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Damn it, Sam!” he says, pounding his palm into the steering wheel. “It wasn’t an act!” His voice comes out a growl, and just as he opens his mouth to say something else, the electronic ring of his phone comes through the speakers again.
“Everything okay up there?” Cooper asks.
When I look behind us, he’s out of his car, one hand holding the phone to his ear and the other on the butt of the gun in his holster.
“We’re good,” Blake answers pulling back onto the road and hitting the disconnect button on the steering wheel. “Look, Sam,” he says after a long, strained silence. “You know I find you attractive. I haven’t made any secret of that. But as far as what happened in that room, I was just—”
“Doing your job. I know.” I turn to face the window. “Was anything you said true?”
He blows out a sigh. “I’m obviously not a movie guy . . . and, as you already know, my name’s not Harrison Yates, but most everything else . . . yeah.”
I tip my forehead into the window and watch UC Berkeley pass by.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” he says.
“Hmm . . . thanks. That really makes up for ruining my life.”
Neither of us says anything else as we wind into the Berkeley Hills—somewhere my family never could have even dreamed of living. I watch the multi-million-dollar homes flit past my window for a while, then close my eyes.
“Home sweet home,” Blake says a few minutes later.
I open my eyes and see we’re slowing near a brown, shingled garage. From the road the front of the garage is the only thing I can see. The land drops off sharply down the hill in front of us, so any house that might be associated with this garage would be well below where we are in the street. Still, I might be able to see it if it weren’t for the dense, twelve-foot hedge to the right of the garage that extends all the way to the corner of the road, obscuring the view of anything beyond it, including the house and San Francisco Bay, forever below us.
Jenkins is already parked at the curb and Cooper pulls up next to us. Blake rolls down his window. “Take a sweep of the perimeter.”
“Got it,” Cooper says.
Blake clicks a button on the console of the Escalade and the garage door goes up. He eases the Escalade into one of the garage bays.
“Wait,” he says when I reach for the door handle. He clicks the button again and waits for the garage door to close. “Okay.”
We spill out of the car and he directs me to an elevator door at the side of the garage. He slips a key from his pocket into a lock, then presses in a code on the panel. The door slides open as soon as he finishes.
We step in, and, when the door on the opposite side of the elevator slides back, it’s into a foyer, which opens on a huge great room, bright and sparsely decorated. What catches my attention immediately is the view out the wall of windows across the room. A mile below us San Francisco Bay and the city beyond is spread out as if it’s on display just for me. The fog has burned off and the water sparkles under a sapphire blue sky. It’s stunningly beautiful.
I glance at Blake, then wander to the window. My eyes follow the lines of the Bay Bridge to the city, where sunlight flashes off the windows of the skyscrapers. To the right, behind the city, the Golden Gate Bridge stretches to the north, and in the foreground, just at the tip of San Francisco, I can make out Alcatraz.
There’s a French door leading to a balcony on this level, and below is an expansive redwood deck. A stone path winds down the hill from the deck to a pool with a bathhouse, at least forty feet below me. The same tall shrubs I saw at the road next to the garage surround the entire place, and even though I know there are neighbors to the left and across the street past the pool below, it’s completely private. A sanctuary.
“Whose house is this?” I ask without turning.
“It’s a government seizure. The owner is a second-string drug runner from Miami. He was just convicted last month and all his U.S. property seized.”
I turn and see Blake is standing near the sofa, watching me. I step away from the window. “Why me?”
“Excuse me?”
“When you came into Benny’s, you came right to my stage. Why?”
His eyes flick wider for just a second before his lips press into a tight line. He opens his mouth to answer but then closes it again and moves to the kitchen, at the right side of the great room. He steps around the black granite breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room and pulls down a tumbler from the glass-front mahogany cupboards, filling it at the tap. “Would you like some?” he asks, lifting his glass.
“No. Thanks.” I turn back to the window and gaze out over the city, and a minute later Blake steps up to my side.
“I made a mistake,” he says, his voice low.
I turn to him.
He sips his water, staring out over the spectacle below as the sun starts to dip over the water, and I feel my insides tighten at the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. He is so incredibly masculine—so unbelievably gorgeous. As he answers, my eyes follow the contours of his face: the strong angle of his jaw, his high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose. “The way you moved . . . the way you looked up there on the stage . . . it just drew me to you. But I was stupid to target the girl I was attracted to. This would be so much less . . .” He rubs a hand down that amazing face. “. . . complicated if I’d gone in another direction.”
His admission stirs something deep in my belly. “I’m complicated?”
He finally turns to look at me. “This is complicated,” he says, gesturing between us with a wave of his hand.
The desire pulsing through me flows into waves of frustration and anger, and they’re all so intense, it’s impossible to decipher one from another. I spin from the window. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t set me up, and put me in so much danger that you had to kidnap me and drag me off to . . .” I throw my good hand at the window, but then my gaze follows. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
I was eleven when Mom married Greg—old enough to remember the cockroaches and bedbugs in our tiny one bedroom apartment. It was the best Mom could do on what they paid her at Food for Less, but I know she wanted something better for us. I’m not really sure if she loved Greg or not when they got married three months after they met, but he was stable, with a decent paying job and small house in Fremont that we moved into. We had the things we needed and not much more. These were the houses that we drove by when family came to visit. The Berkeley Hills were a tourist attraction, not someplace any of us ever imagined living.
But here I am.
My eyes flick to Blake and there’s a subtle twist to his face that could be chagrin.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I never expected things would go this way.”
At the anguish in his eyes when they find mine, I feel myself softening. But then I remember where I am. I’m trapped here, with no ability to contact the outside world for months, maybe. “Mom didn’t answer when I called. Can I try her again?”
He looks at me for several long heartbeats. “I’ll see what I can do.” He backs away from the window and starts across the great room. “Your room is over here.”
I follow him past the elevator and a wide staircase with a wrought-iron rail behind it, through a door into a palatial master suite. Just like in the living room, the western wall is solid glass, with an unobstructed view of the bay and San Francisco. Through French doors there’s a private balcony with a lounge chair and a small table. At the foot of an immense king-sized bed with gold linens, a fireplace opens over a whirlpool tub in the bathroom on the other side, and above the fireplace there’s a huge flat-screen TV. I step through the door next to the fireplace into a bathroom bigger than my bedroom at home. Next to the tub that I saw through the fireplace is a stall shower I could throw a small party in—if anyone was allowed to know where I was. Everything is black granite and brass fixtures. “Wow.”
“I trust you’ll be comfortable here?”
I glance at Blake, who’s leaning against the door frame, and I want to say no. I want to rail against him and tell him that I’ll be miserable here. But I can’t force the lie from my mouth. Instead, I pluck at my top—the same one Jonathan brought me before our fateful trip home. “Despite the posh shower, I’m going to get pretty unbearable to live with if I don’t get a change of clothes.”
He tips his head, indicating that I should follow, and shrugs off the door frame. He moves through the bedroom and opens a set of double doors on the opposite wall from the windows, then steps back to let me pass. Inside, I find a closet as big as the bathroom. There are drawers stacked down the middle of hanging rods on each wall. It’s mostly empty, but on the hangers I see a few blouses, sundresses, a cotton granny nightgown, and a bathrobe. “Check the drawers,” he says with a nod at them.
I pull open the middle drawer. Inside are a four pairs of faded Levi’s, almost identical to the ones I’m wearing. I open the drawer above it and find several T-shirts and cotton tops. And in the one above those there are bras and underwear. I pick up a pair of panties. They’re white cotton Fruit of the Loom bikinis, and though they’d probably fit, I can’t imagine anyone younger than my mother actually wearing them.
I hold them up. “Who bought this stuff?”
“Nichols and me.”
I pull a face. “And you thought these were my style.”
He shifts in the doorway, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “That was Nichols.”
“What did you pick out?” I ask, dropping the underwear back into the drawer.
“The jeans, those,” he says with a wave of his hand at the dresses, “and the swimsuit.”
“What about this?” I ask, fingering the thick cotton of the nightgown.
“Nichols.”
I hold his gaze. “I sleep nude.” It’s a lie, but I’m going for the reaction.
To my disappointment, he stays totally cool. “That’s your prerogative.” He scratches the top of his head and backs out of the closet. “I know there are things we didn’t think of, so if you make a list, we’ll be sure you get it. You know where the kitchen is. It will be fully stocked for you. And I’ll sleep downstairs, in case you need anything.”
Whoa! “You’re staying here with me?”
He nods slowly, his eyes lifting to mine again. “Someone needs to be here with you at all times . . . for your protection.”
A thrill skitters through me, but I keep my voice flat. “You.”
It’s not a question, but he nods anyway.
“Why you?”
He shrugs. “It just made sense. I’m not from around here, so I needed a place to stay anyway.”
“Where is your room?”
He looks at me a long second, then turns. “I’ll show you.”
I follow him to the staircase behind the elevator, and he leads me down one flight to a large room with a pool table on the far side. There’s a fully stocked bar with a black granite top along the back wall, and two large sofas positioned in a wide V, both facing a giant fireplace with a huge screen TV above it in the middle of another wall of windows. From this floor, we’re not high enough to see over the hedges to the bay, but the view is of the deck and the yard beyond. It’s like a park.
“Access to the pool is through those doors,” he says, gesturing to the French doors to the deck. “It’s heated. The perimeter is secured, so you’re welcome to use it anytime you want.” He crosses the room to a door behind the pool table. “This is the panic room. If there’s ever a breach of security, I need you to get in here and lock the door until help comes.” He steps in and I follow. “This door is bullet resistant and it dead-bolts with a pull of this lever,” he says, indicating a small red handle just inside the door.
“You think I’ll need this?”
“No. But it’s here in case you do.”
We step back into the poolroom and he leads me to a short hallway next to the bar. “My room is here,” he says, pushing open a door.
I step through into a room smaller than my digs upstairs but at least twice as big as my room at home. There’s a bathroom off to the side, and in the middle a queen-sized bed with a blue duvet and lots of pillows. He has the same view out the windows as the room next door.
I spy a pile of pocket change and a bottle of aftershave on the old wooden dresser under the mirror, and a pair of jeans crumpled at the bottom of the open closet, where clothes hang on the rod.
“How long have you been here?”
“I moved in when you were in the hospital. We needed to get the place secured before we brought you up.”
I stroll deeper into the room and peer out the window onto the large redwood deck. “Seems comfortable. Is this anything like where you live?”
He barks out a laugh. “Yes. My place is the Playboy mansion.”
I turn back to him, leaning against the windowsill. “This is the Playboy mansion?”
There’s irritation on his face that he can’t totally cover. “On the rare occasions I’m home, I live in a one bedroom apartment in Santa Monica—which now that my ex has moved out I can no longer afford. So, no. It’s nothing like this.”
“So what you said about her? That was real?”
He nods.
“What’s her name?”
His hand goes to the door frame and there’s a second where he just looks at me without answering. “Vanessa.”
“Did she really leave you because of this?” I say, flicking a hand at the room. “Because of your job?”
“She wanted more than I could give,” he answers through a tight jaw.
I open my mouth to ask if this job is really worth it, but before I can get the words out, he’s out the door. “Come on. I’ll get you some dinner.”
We climb the stairs and he moves to the kitchen. When he said he’d get me some dinner, I was picturing takeout, so I’m surprised when he opens the fridge and pulls out a bag of zucchini, red and green bell peppers, and an onion.
“What are you making?” I ask.
“Veggie frittata.” His eyes lift to mine. “If that’s okay?”
I shrug and it hurts. “Never had it before.” I open my mouth to ask if he wants help before I remember I’m trying to hate him, but as he moves around the kitchen, it becomes clear he knows his way around. As much as I hate to admit it, it makes him even sexier. Which means I have to focus even harder to remember to be mad.
He starts slicing veggies and spreading them all in the bottom of a cast iron skillet. “You want something to drink? I didn’t know what you like, so there’s a variety in here,” he says, opening the fridge.
I step up next to him as he grabs a carton of eggs and find at least five different kinds of soda, two kinds of beer, a bottle of white wine, and bottles of water.
I pull a beer out. “Is there an opener?”
“Me.” He takes the bottle from my hand and the muscles in his forearm ripple as he twists off the cap. He hands it back with a smirk just as someone clears his throat in the living room.
I jump, dropping my beer, as Blake spins toward the living room, the gun from his holster appearing in his hand as if by magic.
