by Nicole Helm
Jacob snorted. “Anal cereal?”
“Okay, that sounded gross, but you get what I mean. The only person I’ve ever seen eat generic bran flakes is Grandpa. Do you buy them on double-coupon day, too?”
“No.” Her syrupy sweet voice was meant to bait him, and no matter how raw he was feeling this morning, he would not give in to the urge to bite. “You know, on days we run a business here it would be best if you got at least half dressed before leaving your room.” Okay, apparently he was going to bite.
“Not a morning person, then?” She lifted a heaping spoon to her lips, but his eyes were drawn to her pretty much bare leg swinging back and forth while the other was curled under her. Could those things she was wearing really count as shorts?
Kyle concentrated on pouring milk onto his cereal. “I prefer solitude in the morning.”
“It’s true. I usually can’t get a word out of him before ten. Even for business. He’ll just email me a memo.”
Grace rolled her eyes, kept swinging that damn leg. “I bet Kyle sends a lot of memos.”
“Thank God for email, or I’d be drowning in paper.”
It took a lot more effort than it should have to tear his gaze from Grace to Jacob. “So from here on out should I expect the two of you poking fun at me to be my morning greeting?”
Jacob grinned. “It is the McKnight way.”
“Wonderful.” Kyle poked at his cereal. He wasn’t remotely hungry. Nor was his edgy mood from his dream assuaged any by Grace’s and Jacob’s teasing. So he would focus on what would. “The Porters sent pictures this morning. I uploaded them onto the website.”
“You don’t even take Sunday off from talking about work? What about it being the day of rest and all that?”
Kyle gave Grace a bland look. “Time is money. The more time I work, the more money I have to put into this business.”
“Work, money, work, money.” Grace dismissed it with a wave. “Snore.”
“Yes, I’m sure doing your little paintings and calling it art is quite scintillating, but some of us do have to make a living.” He knew the words were too harsh the minute they were vocalized. This was exactly why he preferred to be alone in the morning. Time and quiet to shore up his defenses.
“So is this what I have to look forward all month? You two going at each other?”
“I thought it was the McKnight way.” Kyle rubbed his temple, where a headache was brewing. A perfect addition to the unsettled stomach and gritty-eyed lack of sleep.
Jacob shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “Banter is the McKnight way. We poke fun at your anal-retentiveness. You don’t fight back with an insult. You should make fun of my dating history or Grace’s hair. You know, unimportant stuff.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with my hair?”
Jacob gave his sister a doleful look. “You’ve got a freaking rainbow in there.”
Grace snorted. “It’s called self-expression. At least I don’t look like some low-end catalog model.”
“See.” Jacob grinned at Kyle. “Banter.”
Kyle failed to see the appeal. Or the difference. “Yes, well, like I said, some of us have a business to run.”
“I hope it keeps you warm at night, Kyle.” Grace pushed away from the table. “Or maybe you’re just part robot. A very lifelike C-3PO.” With that parting comment, Grace sashayed out of the kitchen, hips swinging in those foolish tiny shorts.
He wondered if she did it on purpose, the skimpy clothes, the hip sway. Just another level of torture to go along with her “banter.” Oh, hello, Kyle, not only am I wild and unpredictable, but look at my perfectly toned ass. I know you’d like to get your hands on it.
“Kyle, do me a favor.” Jacob clamped a hand on his shoulder, scattering Kyle’s less-than-honorable thoughts. Jacob squeezed. Hard. “Don’t look at my sister’s ass.”
Heat flashed up Kyle’s face as he tried to argue with Jacob’s retreating back. “I wasn’t—”
But Jacob had already taken to the stairs, and unfortunately, the argument would have been a lie.
Damn it, he had been staring at Grace’s ass.
* * *
TEN HOURS LATER and Grace was still fuming. Kyle had the nerve, the nerve, to call her painting “little.” To roll his eyes at what she loved, what she slaved over, her passion. Because he was so much smarter with his business and money and blah, blah, blah.
She’d show him where he could shove his time-is-money speech.
Grace sat on the second-story balcony cross-legged, watching the street below. At first she’d forgotten about the insult, but then Jacob had left and Kyle had informed her he was going for his evening run and he’d set the security alarm.
Being alone in the big house had led to thinking about Barry. Had he gone back to Carvelle? Did he hold a grudge against the woman who’d testified against him?
Grace shuddered. That was when she’d begun to focus on Kyle’s insults, on exacting revenge. Because it was way better than thoughts of Barry. Every once in a while a smidgen of conscience would poke through, reminding her Kyle wasn’t 100-percent jerk. He’d come to her room after her bad dream to check on her, even offered a weird kind of comfort.
But if she let herself be rational, she started thinking about Barry. So here she was, waiting for Kyle to come back. He’d already been gone twice as long as the night before. Where the hell was he? She was good and ready to show him just how childish she could be.
Her phone buzzed. She looked down at the text display, relieved it was Jacob, not Mom or Dad. Will you call me around ten and demand I come home? Grace rolled her eyes. Jacob needed to grow a pair when it came to his less-than-charming dictator of a girlfriend.
Balls. Get some. When he only texted back a curse, she smiled. At least there were some ways her little brother still needed her.
Grace checked the time. She’d been waiting for forty-five minutes now, and neither parent had texted. One day and things were already different. Maybe it was a sign she should just let it go. Prove her point in some less silly way, just be happy this little plan of getting out of Carvelle was working. She stood for one more scan of the street and grinned.
There he was, in the distance. She purposefully focused on the two buckets she had on the patio table. Watching him run could be...distracting, and she wasn’t going to be distracted.
She picked up one bucket of lemonade, and when he was close enough, she put her plan into action.
“Hey, Kyle?”
Right as he looked up, she upended the contents of the bucket over the balcony. He tried to move out of the way, but surprise allowed most of the contents to hit their target. When he didn’t move, instead just stood there holding his arms out as liquid dripped off, she upended the other.
“Damn it, Grace. This is not funny.” He shook his fist at her, which made him look even more ridiculous, and she doubled over in laughter.
“By the way,” she said, struggling to stop laughing enough to speak, “it’s not water.”
When he dropped a very loud F-bomb, Grace laughed even harder.
He peeled off the wet shirt, cursing impressively for a repressed suit. But her humor was short-lived when the chorus of oh, craps returned. Because she hadn’t exactly expected him to take off his shirt and give her a firsthand view of the hard plane of his chest or the slight ridges of his abs.
And his shoulders without a stupid polo or button-up were quite impressive, and that tattoo? Well, that was—
Wait a second.
“You have a tattoo!”
He quickly flung his wet T-shirt over his shoulder, hiding the black mark of ink before she had a chance to make out what it was. “No.”
“I saw it!”
“No, you didn’t.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he was stomping awa
y. Delighted with herself for finding out Mr. Stuffy had a wild side, Grace scurried into the house, determined to find him before he could put his shirt back on.
Kyle had a tattoo. The very thought made her giggle. She bounded down the stairs, hoping that the design was something hugely embarrassing. A butterfly. Fairy wings. A unicorn. Oh, the possibilities of her imagination were endless.
All the crap he’d given her about her tattoo and he had one. It was too great. She laughed again, unable to stop herself.
She managed to get to the bottom of the stairs just as he stepped into the house. The shirt was still draped over his shoulder.
“You have a tattoo,” she repeated, poking a finger at him. “I saw it.” She tried to reach for the T-shirt to pull it off his shoulder, but he was too fast and stepped away. “Come on. Let me see it. After all the crap you’ve given me about mine, I deserve to see what yours is.”
“The difference is I don’t flaunt mine.” He turned his back to her, tried to exit on that line, but she grabbed his shirt in the nick of time, starting a tug-of-war with him. He won, but had to turn in order to do so. When he faced her, his eyes were blazing angry, his scowl wedged so deep, grooves appeared around his mouth.
A smart woman would back off. He was livid. It was the principle of the thing as much as it was fascination in making Mr. Reserved and Stoic lose his cool. “Don’t be such a baby about it.” She tried to snatch the shirt again.
His hands clamped around her wrists. “Knock it off,” he growled through clenched teeth.
It probably said something wrong about her that his authoritative directive and his big hands around her wrists caused a slow, tingling sensation of awareness to flow over her skin.
“I just want to see it.” She blinked up at him as he stepped close enough to her that their knees were touching. She could smell the lemonade on him, feel the sticky sugar of it on his hands. If she leaned just a few centimeters forward, her breasts would brush his wet, sticky chest. The tingling of awareness went deeper now, became more of a longing.
“It was a stupid mistake I made a long time ago. Forget it.” His voice was low and strained, as if it was with great effort he spoke at all.
His eyes, that dark, intense blue, held her gaze. She was tempted, so damn tempted, to close the little distance between them. The weirdest thing though was, from the way his eyes held hers, the way his jaw clenched tight as if he was holding back, she had a feeling he was just as tempted.
It was hard to catch a full breath with her heart beating so damn fast, and when she spoke it came out breathless. “Are you thinking about making another stupid mistake?”
He didn’t speak or move for a full thirty seconds. She knew, because she was counting. It was the only thing that kept her from imagining what it might be like to let him touch her, press his mouth to hers.
His hands gentled on her wrists, and then he let them go. He exhaled loudly. “I don’t make stupid mistakes anymore,” he said flatly.
Grace swallowed, all too afraid regret was the feeling washing through her instead of relief. She took a deep breath, determined her parting comment would be flippant. He didn’t need to know she would have been more than willing to go at it on the floor with him.
“Too bad.” She flashed him a saucy smile and then flounced out of the kitchen. But when she made it to her room, she collapsed onto her bed and let the oh, crap chorus take over.
Except, even as the oh, craps rattled around in her mind, she found herself smiling. It might be kind of fun to poke at this weird attraction. It would be downright fascinating to see how Kyle responded.
When her phone buzzed, she didn’t even care that it was Mom.
* * *
KYLE KEPT HIS entire body tense as he walked through the house and up the front staircase. He had to focus on the anger, the fury, or he might be all too tempted to follow Grace up the back staircase.
And then...
Well, he didn’t want to think about “and then.” He wanted to think about what kind of idiot made two buckets of lemonade and doused some unsuspecting victim with it. He wanted to think about why his best friend’s sister was such a royal pain in the ass and why that was suddenly his problem.
He managed to think all of that. At least until he stepped into the shower and the warm spray began to soothe the tense muscles. The smell of lemonade dissipated, but the smell of Grace did not.
Damn it, he didn’t want to know what she smelled like. Something sweet and light and intoxicating. Kyle rested his hands on the cool tile of the shower wall, let his head hang. The anger washed away with the lemonade, leaving something that might have been pleasant if it weren’t so unnerving.
Calmed and relaxed by the warm water pounding into his back, the moment played over for him. When they’d stood there, so close his breath had fluttered the hair around her face, she’d looked at him as if...as if she felt some inkling of that same jolt. As if he wasn’t her brother’s stuffy, boring roommate.
He liked that look way too much. Kyle wrenched the water to cold for a few minutes, then stepped frigid and shivering into the bathroom. Grace was off-limits for a lot of reasons. She was his best friend’s sister. She was the antithesis of everything he looked for and respected in a woman. And no matter how often he forgot it when she was poking at him, there was a very serious reason she was here.
A reason he was all too familiar with. How many times had his father been released from jail, leaving Kyle with the sick fear he might show up and ruin this amazing life he’d worked his ass off for? How many times had Dad gotten close to doing just that?
Too many. When a man was constantly getting locked up for petty drug charges, releases were quick and inevitable. The only reassuring part was that dear old Dad always wound up back in jail. It was the one thing Kyle could depend on. It just sucked to be dragged into a knock-down, drag-out fight every damn time.
Kyle stepped out of the bathroom, realizing with a sigh that he’d tracked a mess through the house. So intent on distancing himself from Grace and her melted-chocolate eyes he’d completely forgotten he’d been covered in sugary liquid.
Well, good. It would give him something to concentrate on that wasn’t his father or Grace or the strange way life gave him an insight into what she might be feeling.
Kyle began to clean the drips, following a trail from his bathroom, down the hall and stairs. When he reached the kitchen, he stumbled a bit. Grace was already there, mopping up where he’d dripped by the door.
Kyle cleared his throat. “I was going to do that.”
She bobbled the mop. “Oh.” She turned around, blinked a few times. “Well, I did kind of make the mess.”
They stood in awkward silence on opposite sides of the kitchen. Kyle wished he could muster up some of the anger he’d felt earlier. Mainly he just felt tired and confused.
“I’ll help.”
He washed off the rag he’d been using. Crouched on his heels, he began to wipe the splotches of lemonade off the tile. Somehow, they managed to meet in the middle where there was a rather big puddle. Because that was where they’d stood way too close and talked about mistakes.
Which he wasn’t making anymore. Had to remember that.
Grace rested her head on clasped hands at the top of the mop, studying him. “Can’t you at least tell me what it is?”
She had a knack for taking a completely benign moment and making it either infuriating or the other thing. The other thing he didn’t want to think about. “No.”
“Is it that bad? I mean, I’d think if it was something really stupid you could have gotten it removed by now.”
“It’s not bad. It’s just none of your business.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t be so interested if you weren’t being so weird about it.”
“I’m not be
ing—” Kyle stopped himself. She wasn’t going to let this go, and what did it matter? What did it really matter if Grace knew? Kyle studied the woman in front of him. She represented everything he didn’t want. Chaos. Letting her in on his own chaos drew her closer, and the closer she got, the harder she’d be to push away. The harder the chaos would be to control.
But she would be a thorn in his side either way, because she wasn’t going to give up on this until she knew. Grace didn’t give up on anything, even when she should.
She tapped an index finger against her elbow. Her nails were painted a bright, blinding orange.
“I imagine you got your tattoo to stand out?”
She frowned at his assessment. “If I wanted to stand out I’d get one on my neck or get a sleeve of them. I got mine because— Nope. No way, you’re not turning this around on me. You’re going to tell me one way or another.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re pushy and obnoxious?”
She grinned, her pretty face brightening with humor. “I live for those kind of compliments.”
Kyle let out a breath. “It’s a compass.”
Grace furrowed her brow. “A compass? Like north, east, west, south?”
“Yes.”
“Why a compass?”
He wasn’t going into this. Not with her. “I don’t know. I was sixteen with a fake ID. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it.” Liar.
“Of course you did.” She shook her head so the tips of her rainbow-colored hair bounced out from under the layer of brown. “If you didn’t care what it was, you would have gotten something stupid like barbed wire around your arm or Bugs Bunny on your calf. But you got a compass on your shoulder. It means something.”
Kyle leaned back against the countertop, gripped it with his hands. He should walk away. He sure as hell shouldn’t tell her why he’d gotten it. Why he kept it. It was none of her business and he was all too afraid it would be another notch in the already too-long “things we have in common” list.