by Tracy Wolff
“So give it your full attention. Give it all of your attention. I won’t bother you.”
“Like I believe that.” But he’s weakening. I can see it in his eyes, feel it in the way his body is starting to relax.
I move in for the kill, let tears well up in my eyes that are only partially fake. “Please, Miles. Don’t make me go back out there. Not today, not right now. I’m not ready to see anyone.”
He sighs, shoves a frustrated hand through his hair, and that’s how I know I’ve won even before he says, “You know we’ll be at each other’s throats in under two hours.”
“Not if I stay out of your way, we won’t. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?” I ask, tongue firmly in cheek. I know I shouldn’t poke the bear—especially when the bear holds all the cards—but it’s hard not to when Miles is so delightfully easy to rile up. Plus, he did just insult the hell out of me and make me beg. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t make him suffer for it a little, even if he is going to let me stay. “You could call me a whore? Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. You already did. And you aren’t even the first person to do so today.”
I pat his cheek like the word doesn’t hurt—like none of this hurts—and then breeze past him on my way upstairs. I’m heading for the guest room at the back, the one farthest away from the room he likes to use when he’s here. Because much as I’d like to make his life hell while I’m here—just on general principles—I know I can’t. Not when two hundred dollars and his goodwill are all that stand between me and total and complete destitution.
But I’ve only made it up three or four more steps before I land wrong on my foot and feel the cut I got in the street earlier break wide open. I clench my teeth together to keep from crying out, but it’s too late to hide the high-pitched gasp of pain that came out the second I landed on the foot.
I reach out for the banister and grab on, hoping against hope that Miles isn’t watching as I prepare to hobble my way—on tiptoes—to the top of the stairs. But Miles is beside me in moments, face concerned and eyes laser-sharp as they search mine. “What’s wrong? Where do you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I lie, then force myself not to flinch as I take the next step. But he’s studying me with the single-minded focus of the engineer he is, and it only takes him a couple of seconds to notice my foot is bleeding all over Ethan and Chloe’s bleached-maple steps.
“What happened to you?” he demands, even as he sweeps me into his arms and carries me the rest of the way up the stairs. “Where are your shoes?”
“Oh yeah. I wasn’t wearing any.”
“You weren’t wearing any?” he repeats in confusion. Maybe he’s not as observant as I gave him credit for, considering I’ve been in the house a good twenty minutes and this is the first time he’s noticed that I’m barefoot. “You walked all the way from your condo to here with no shoes on?”
“It’s only about a mile,” I tell him, determined to brazen it out as he continues down the hallway to his bedroom with me still in his arms.
“More like two miles,” he growls. “I swear, Tori, you need to take better care of yourself.”
He hits a nerve with that, but I swallow down my instinctive comeback. I can’t afford to let my mouth get away from me right now. It’s bad enough that I have to stay here where I’m not wanted. I’ll be damned if I let Miles Girard of all people know just what dire straits I’m actually in. He’d probably fall over from laughing too hard.
Except he’s not laughing as he carries me through his room and into the luxurious en suite bathroom. No, he’s actually really gentle as he places me down on the edge of the large sunken tub and then reaches past me to turn the water on.
“Let’s get your feet washed off and see what kind of damage we’re dealing with.” He grabs a washcloth and towel from the nearby linen closet before kneeling next to the tub.
“It’s no big deal,” I say as I start to stick my injured foot under the running water.
He stops me with a gentle hand to my knee. “Give it a second to warm up. It’s brutally cold first thing in the morning. And you won’t know how big a deal it is until we get it clean and can actually see the damage.”
And so I wait, watching—bemused—as he sticks one hand under the stream of water while he adjusts the faucets with the other. Finally, when he’s satisfied with the temperature, he nods for me to get my feet wet.
It’s perfect—warm enough to send shivers of pleasure up my back but not hot enough to hurt my injured foot or make the blood run faster. Chloe makes fun of Miles all the time for his minute attention to detail, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate it at the moment.
“I have to admit, I feel a little like Goldilocks right now,” I tell him as he sticks the washcloth under the running water.
“Why Goldilocks?” he asks, before squirting some orange-and-bergamot-scented shower gel onto the wet cloth.
“You know, the whole too hot, too cold, just right thing? This water is just—” I break off with a moan as he takes my foot in his hand and slides the washcloth over it.
He freezes, his eyes jumping to mine. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” I duck my head, suddenly embarrassed by my overly dramatic reaction to his touch. But it’s been so long since a man has touched me tenderly—even longer since one has touched me for a nonsexual reason—that I can’t help responding to him. I know he’s just trying to help me, but the way he’s cupping my ankle while his fingers stroke the washcloth over the sole of my foot feels entirely too good.
Worse, it feels right, like it’s something I’d let him do for me over and over again.
Which is ridiculous, I know, considering the fact that we’ve been enemies pretty much since the beginning. I can forgive almost anything, but the way he treated my best friend is unforgivable. Just because she’s managed to move past it doesn’t mean I have. And it doesn’t mean I ever will, no matter how good he is at washing and massaging feet.
“Are you sure?” he asks as he resumes cleaning my feet. He’s being even more careful—even more gentle—this time around.
“It just stings a little.” Which isn’t even a lie—the soap definitely makes the cut burn whenever it touches it.
“I’m sorry about that, but you don’t want it to get infected. I’ll be done washing the blood and dirt away in a second.”
“It’s not your fault. I’m the idiot who walked all the way over here without shoes.”
“That’s true.” He glances up at me, his lips quirked in a crooked smile that makes his already too-handsome face look positively godlike. “Why did you do that, anyway?”
“Like all ultimately stupid plans, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a dozen or two half-finished inventions that fit that description.”
“I wanted to feel the sand underneath my toes. But I didn’t figure on the glass close to the street. Once I hurt myself I figured I’d just buy a pair of flip-flops from a street vendor, but I forgot how early it was. No one is out yet.”
“Once we get you bandaged up, I’ll run down to Chloe’s room and see if I can find you a pair of fluffy slippers to walk around in. It’ll probably be easier on your feet than shoes or going barefoot on these hardwood floors.”
As he talks, he rinses off my injured foot, then moves on to my other foot. This one is just bruised with a few little scrapes on it, but he takes just as much time on it as he did the first one. He even digs his thumb into my arch, rubbing my sore muscles until I’m nearly purring in satisfaction.
I try to stay stiff, try to remind myself of all the reasons I don’t like him. But it’s hard to do when he’s taking such good care of me—especially when he could have just left me hobbling along on my own.
I smile at him despite myself, and he blinks a little, like he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating or not. I can’t blame him for that—it may be the first time I’ve done something besides snarl at him since I found o
ut what happened to Chloe when she was in high school.
But who would have thought it was possible for Chloe’s douchebag of an older brother to actually be human instead of a robot? Not to mention…nice? Especially since it’s only been ten minutes since he called me a spoiled brat…and only fifteen since he called me a whore.
Of course, I called him one first, so I’d say we’re about equal in the being-awful-to-each-other department. Though he’s making up ground fast with this whole foot-washing/massage thing that he’s got going on…
I’m not sure where that leaves me, except nervous. Very, very nervous.
“That should do it,” he finally says, rinsing the last of the soap from my feet. He turns the water off, then spreads a thick blue towel on the ground in front of the tub. “Swing your feet around and we’ll see about getting them dried off and bandaged up.”
“I can—” My voice breaks, to my utter mortification. Determined not to let it happen again, I clear my throat way more than necessary before I try a second time. “I can take it from here.”
“It’s no big deal.” He’s on his feet, opening up the medicine cabinet to the left of the sink. “I’ve got everything right here.”
I can see he’s not exaggerating as he pulls down hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, and a wide assortment of gauze, tape, and bandages. “Do you do double duty as an ER nurse?” I ask as he spreads everything out on the counter. “Or a serial killer?”
Miles just laughs. “Since Ethan and Chloe took two of the cars with them up to San Francisco, I’ve set up a workshop in the last couple of garage bays. But there’s been a lot of trial and error with the project I’m working on, and I’ve cut myself more than a few times.”
“What are you working on right now?” I ask, because I’m totally curious and have been for a while. I know he brought his idea to Ethan instead of running with it in his own family’s company—he walked away from his parents and his work there without a backward glance, Chloe told me when she was trying to talk me around to giving her brother another shot.
I always figured he had an ulterior motive—like he needed Ethan’s money or Ethan’s fabulous brain in order to make his latest idea work. But Chloe swears it’s the other way around, that Miles’s project is going to take Frost Industries to the next level.
He pauses for a second, like he’s thinking about whether or not he should tell me. But he must figure out that I’ve got no one to tell—my family made their money the old-school way, in textiles and steel, not technology—because he says, “I’m working on a new technology, and a much easier, more economical process, for desalinization.”
“Desalinization?” I repeat, a little disappointed after all the buildup. With the state of the California drought being what it is, everyone and their brother is working on a way to make ocean water potable. No one’s come close, though, at least not that I’m aware of.
“No need to look so enthusiastic.” Miles gathers some supplies and carries them back to me before sinking onto his haunches at my feet.
“Sorry. It’s just, Chloe and Ethan have made it sound like such a big deal.”
“It is a big deal. Making salt water drinkable is a game changer.”
“Yeah, but only if you can actually do it on a mass level.”
“Oh, I can do it,” he tells me as he pours peroxide on my cut. It burns, but I refuse to flinch. I look pathetic enough today without adding wimpy to the bargain. “But right now it costs too much. I’m trying to make the process cheaper, and for that I need to invent a different kind of filter.”
He holds up his hands for my inspection, and for the first time I see the fine scratches and scars running along his fingers and down his palms. “Hence the injuries from trial and error.”
He doesn’t volunteer anything else about his work, and I don’t ask. Partly because I don’t want to pry and partly because he’s decided my cut needs a butterfly bandage and it hurts like hell as he squeezes the skin on either side of my wound together.
Finally, after what feels like forever, he sits back and I yank my now throbbing foot away from him with only the barest hint of a whimper. He grimaces in sympathy, then gathers up the trash and tosses it in the wastepaper basket next to the sink. But when I start to get up, he stops me with a warning look.
“I didn’t do all that just for you to rip everything back open,” he says as he quickly gathers up the supplies and puts them away. Then he bends down and picks me up like I weigh absolutely nothing. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the easy way he carries me around makes me rethink my whole stance on nerdy engineers…
“Which room are you taking?” he asks as he carries me back through his room and out into the main hallway.
“The gray room,” I answer, naming the one that’s farthest away from him. It’s one of the smaller guest rooms in the house, but I don’t care about that. I just figure the farther away from him I am, the less chance I have of irritating him—which could then lead to him kicking me out. Just because he took care of my foot doesn’t mean things are all glitter and roses between us. And since I don’t even own a pair of shoes at the moment, I don’t think I’ll get very far if I have to leave.
I don’t know if Miles has figured out what I’m thinking, but instead of heading down the hall to the wing where the gray room is, he only takes a few steps before turning into a room two doors down from his.
I recognize the room immediately from its bright-turquoise-and-purple duvet and pillows. Not to mention the Picasso sketches on the wall. This is the room I’ve taken every other time I’ve spent the night—including when I hung out here for two weeks to help Chloe after Violet was born.
As Miles carries me across the boldly decorated room, I can’t help wondering if he chose this room on purpose. If he knows that this is the room I usually stay in, or if it’s just a coincidence that we’ve ended up here. His face, with its firm jaw and piercingly blue eyes, isn’t giving anything away. And neither is the still surprisingly gentle way he’s holding me.
I figure he’ll carry me to the bed, but instead he puts me down on the love seat inside the big bay window. I’m expecting that he’ll run away now that he’s done way more than his duty, and I start to thank him for all his help. But he just shoots me an annoyed look as he moves to the bed and starts taking off the throw pillows and turning down the covers.
Watching him gives me a lump in my throat. Which is stupid, I know, but other than maids at hotels, no one has ever turned the covers down for me in my whole life. Not my parents, not any of the guys I’ve been with, not even a babysitter or nanny when I was little. And here’s this guy who doesn’t even like me, who sure as hell doesn’t want me here, doing it like it’s the easiest, most normal thing in the world.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about that, or how I’m supposed to feel. Especially once he starts testing out each of the pillows until he finds one firm enough to put about two-thirds of the way down the bed. I assume it’s there for me to rest my hurt foot on.
“You really don’t have to do all this,” I say as I stand up, making sure not to put too much weight on my injured foot. “I mean, I really appreciate it—of course I do—but I’m sure you have better things to do than take care of me.”
He just shoots me another annoyed look and continues with what he’s doing. Or at least he starts to, but then it must register that I’m standing on my own two feet because he all but leaps across the room at me. “Seriously?” he demands, pulling me up and against him until my breasts are pressed against his chest and my injured foot isn’t even touching the ground. Then again, neither is my uninjured one. “You couldn’t wait two minutes for me to come get you? Do you want to open that cut back up again?”
“I didn’t want you to have to wait on me. I—”
“I think you’re mistaking basic human decency for servitude,” he answers in obvious exasperation. He looks for all the world like he wants to give me a piece of his mind�
�or a good shake.
I know I should pretend to look apologetic—it’s the least I can do after everything he’s done for me—but suddenly I’m all too aware of the fact that his body is pressed to mine. That my body is pressed to his. That our bodies are pressed together.
I should be freaking out right now—after the morning I’ve had, this is the last thing I need. But it’s hard to get upset when being held against Miles feels this good. This natural.
It’s completely ridiculous, but suddenly I’m having a hard time catching my breath. My lungs ache, the air stuttering in my throat every time I try to inhale.
Desperate to look normal, to be normal, I force myself to take a deep, shuddering breath. But that only makes things worse, because now I can smell him. Oranges and bergamot and warm, dark honey flood my system, make my nipples peak and my mouth water. For him. For Miles fucking Girard.
—
For Chloe’s brother, I remind myself a little frantically. This is Chloe’s brother I’m having such a strong reaction to.
Chloe’s brother who is sending shivers across my skin with every slow rise and fall of his chest against mine.
Chloe’s brother who has me wondering, for the first time, ever, what he would feel like, sound like, taste like, if I leaned forward just a little more and ran my lips up the strong column of his throat.
The thought settles around me like a dark cloud, wrapping me up in the scent, the feel, of Miles. Suddenly I want nothing more than to tilt my head back, to loop my hands around his neck, to pull his mouth down to mine.
But this is Miles! The little voice at the back of my head is screaming at me now, telling me to back up. To step away. To put some serious distance between us before I do something really, really stupid.
But then it’s too late. He’s scooping me up in his arms again. Holding me against his rock-hard chest as he carries me over to the bed. I’ve seen him in a bathing suit a bunch of times in the last year, but seeing him without a shirt on is very different from feeling his well-muscled pecs and flat abs pressed so intimately against me. Especially when those ice-blue eyes of his are looking down at me with the same combination of annoyance and arousal that I’m currently feeling.