House Of Payne: Twist

by Stacy Gail

  “…and no lighting. What the actual fuck it that all about? If you’re too goddamned stingy to buy light bulbs in a city notorious for its crime rate, take it out of my fucking salary.”

  Angel kept her eyes closed, and not just because she feared they might eject from their sockets if she didn’t. Keeping her eyes shut was the only way she could hide, and she needed to hide now that she recognized that voice.

  Twist.

  Now he didn’t like the lighting. Man, it was always something with that guy. Knowing him, it’d probably get twisted around so that the lack of whatever lighting he was pissed off about would somehow be her fault.

  Maybe that was how he got the name Twist. He had a talent for twisting everything around.

  Ugh. She couldn’t just lie there listening to a voice that made her hurt. She had to get away from it.

  That thought automatically had her reaching around for her purse, only to come up empty. That was strange. Hadn’t she had it with her? She frowned when she discovered what may have been thin sheets beneath her oddly unresponsive fingertips.

  Sheets?

  Wait.

  Wasn’t she in the parking lot?

  No, that wasn’t right. She was lying down, and she wouldn’t lie down in the parking lot, for crying out loud. It was too dirty, for one thing. She’d never let her hair get parking lot-dirty. Ew.

  Something’s wrong.

  She cracked her eyes open and couldn’t stifle a whimper at the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights stabbing into her brain. Ow. She didn’t know light could hurt so much.

  Not good.

  Also on the not-good list was that she didn’t recognize her surroundings. Small room. Walls an unappetizing Dijon mustard yellow. A curtained sliding glass door left partially open. A narrow bed on which she was lying, with heavy-duty railings on either side, with a bunch of push buttons embedded into the railing’s side that faced her.

  She stared at those buttons for what seemed like a long time before the unfamiliar image finally clicked into place. Aha. She knew what this was. It was a hospital bed. So that meant… something.

  But what?

  She was in a hospital bed.

  Huh.

  Weird.

  And also not good.

  Gingerly she ran her tongue over her teeth, then moved all her fingers and toes. Other than a weirdly detached numbness in everything that moved, she seemed to be in one piece. She had a headache so intense it hurt all the way to the roots of her hair, but that certainly didn’t warrant a hospital stay.

  What the hell was she doing in a hospital?

  “The motion sensor lights didn’t come on,” came Scout’s tightly controlled voice. “Payne’s got a call into the security company, so I’m sure that whatever went wrong with the system will be fixed by the time we open tomorrow.”

  “Fat lot of good that does now, with Angel getting her fucking head caved in. Five steps from the door, and she could’ve been raped or killed, and no one would’ve seen a thing. If I hadn’t been there to chase that sonofabitch away, who the fuck knows what would have happened to her?”

  Wait. Wait.

  What?

  Had Twist, her mortal enemy, saved her?

  Oh, no.

  Horror washed over her as Twist’s viciously ground-out words obliterated the last of the cobwebs. Now she remembered. She’d been digging in her purse for her keys when she’d been grabbed roughly from behind. For a second she’d thought it was Twist coming back at her, and she’d unleashed her fury by stomping as hard as she could on the foot next to hers, kicking back at where the knee should have been and doing her damnedest to clock his lights out with a backward headbutt.

  Then her assailant had sworn in a voice she didn’t recognize, and terror had ripped her world in half.

  She remembered managing to turn to face her attacker, a shadowed hulk in the dark and trying to knee him in the groin. She’d connected with something, she had no idea what. Then he’d pulled his fist back just as she heard Twist’s ferocious roar…

  And then… nothing.

  Oh, God.

  Oh God, had she been raped?

  Ignoring her pounding head, she sat up to check her clothes and body underneath, looking for signs of violation and mentally scanning for telltale aches and pains. Only after she almost passed out again did she recall Twist’s announcement that she could have been raped or murdered if he hadn’t been there to save her, and she let out a shuddering sigh of relief. Thank goodness he’d been there to save her. She’d be grateful for his actions every day for the rest of her natural life.

  Oh.

  If he hadn’t been there to save her…

  Oh, no.

  Twist Santiago had saved her.

  That meant she now owed him everything.

  Clearly the Fates had a sick sense of humor.

  “Excuse me.” A cool male voice sounded just outside the sliding door. “You came in with the head trauma patient, correct?”

  “Angel Taylor,” came Twist’s unmistakable growl. “Her name is Angel Taylor.”

  Great. I’m now known as a head trauma patient, and Twist Santiago is standing up for me. This is officially the worst day of my life.

  “Right. I’m told you’re not her immediate family?”

  “Her mother and father just left for Arizona for a fantasy golfing holiday and won’t be back until the end of September.” Scout’s voice was a calm oasis in the middle of the surreal desert that had become Angel’s world. “She doesn’t have any other family except us.”

  “So… are you blood relatives?”

  “Look, we’re not going anywhere.” It sounded like Twist couldn’t get his jaw unclenched. “We’re all she has.”

  “Nevertheless, the rules of this hospital are clear. You can’t be in the emergency room area if you’re not related to the patient. So, if you’ll just…”

  “She’s my fiancée,” Twist said. “That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

  Whoa.

  His… what?

  Fiancée.

  Angel put a hand to her forehead and almost laughed. Hallucinations, auditory and otherwise, obviously went hand in hand with head trauma. She was now known as the head trauma patient, after all. Yeah. That had to be the case.

  “Ah, that does change things a bit. Once she regains consciousness, you can go in and keep her company. Does she have any allergies or any other medical conditions that we should be aware of, such as diabetes or high blood pressure? What medications does she take, if any?”

  “She has a strong aversion to eating right, but I’m working on that.”

  The sound of the glass door opening further made her look up a moment before the curtain was pushed aside. Twist stalked into the room, closely followed by a balding, bespectacled man in scrubs and a long white coat, with Scout bringing up the rear.

  Maybe she was claiming to be her fiancée too.

  Then Twist’s gaze ran bang into hers and he froze, but only for a second. Then he crossed to where she sat with one hand propped up on the bed, the other pressed to her head. Her brow furled as he drew inexorably closer, and she could do nothing but sit and stare. There he was in all his glory—the bane of her existence and the hero who’d saved her, all wrapped up in one complete package.

  Truly, this day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  Her frown slid into an alarmed scowl when he reached for her. “Don’t—”

  “I’m so happy to see those baby blues, little girl.” With that, he caught her face in his hands and, with his dark eyes flashing a warning she didn’t understand, he slanted his head and stilled her mouth with his.

  What.

  The.

  Hell.

  Chapter Three

  “I can’t believe my life.”

  To Angel’s surprise, she heard the words that had been rattling around in her head suddenly spill out of her mouth. But it was true. One minute she was mentally saying goodbye to the job she’d had since
she was in high school, and the next she was being driven home by the very reason she quit.

  Twist.

  She hated him. Genuinely hated him with everything she had, when hate wasn’t an emotion she normally tolerated. The only thing she’d been that passionate about was when her father had dropped out of the family for three years to shack up with his skanky receptionist-slash-mistress, before crawling back with his tail between his legs three years later. That heartbreak had been swamped by a terrible fury, which had ultimately pushed her to get the hell out of her parents’ home long before she’d graduated high school. Negative emotional intensity like that was unhealthy, yet Twist could spark it in her with ridiculous ease, and she was tired of it. So tired that now her main ambition in life was to get the hell away from it.

  But how could she gracefully kick him to the curb when he’d just saved her?

  The car—Twist’s low-slung retro Mustang in black both inside and out—slowed for a red light. “What’s so unbelievable about it?”

  She wondered if he knew that she couldn’t stand the sound of his voice. It was rough. Brooding. Uncaring of whether or not he stomped all over her. And he always stomped all over her. It was his gift. “Everything. When I woke up this morning, I definitely didn’t think, ‘gee, I’ll probably land my butt in the ER today, or be stone-cold snubbed on the concierge service—’” or get kissed into a stupor by Twist Santiago, aka, my personal demon.

  Angel bit down on her lips. She still wasn’t convinced that kiss wasn’t some surreal by-product of the hit she took to the head. She’d known him since she was nineteen years old, for crying out loud, and had loathed him pretty much the entire time. So naturally, when she’d watched his mouth close the distance between them, her brain had point-blank refused to believe it was happening.

  But it had happened. No doubt about it. Her imagination wasn’t good enough to come up with all the intimate details. The hard possession of his lips. The masculine rasp of whiskers that never seemed to get shaved off. The searing heat of his big hands lifting her face to perfect the seal of his kiss.

  Twist’s kiss.

  She’d never imagined what it might be like to kiss him. When it came to Twist Santiago, all her fantasy-time dealt with how best to kill him, and maybe where she should hide the body. Now she saw the sad, sad error of her ways. He was a total jerk, sure. But any woman with a pulse would at least appreciate the man’s talent when it came to melding his lips against hers.

  Who knew the man had such mad skills?

  Then there was the conquering boldness of his tongue invading her mouth. Just thinking about it made her want to fan herself Scarlett O’Hara style. He’d swept right into mouth as if he had every right to be there. She’d been so stunned that her body had responded on autopilot. Her mouth began to soften, her lips warming while her tongue reached toward his to sample the taste of him before her sluggish brain could tell her to snap the hell out of it. Didn’t he remember that he found fault with everything she did? What in the world was he thinking, grabbing her face and laying a long, hot, wet one on her, when he’d made it painfully clear he thought she was a moron worthy only of being a target for his jokes?

  He had broken the kiss off just in time. The man’s survival instincts had to be top-notch, as she’d been on the verge of smashing his face in. Maybe those same instincts had kept him in one piece when he had been in prison, something about which she knew almost nothing. Since they had never been on what she would call friendly terms, swapping past histories wasn’t high on her agenda. The only time she’d ever even mentioned Twist’s record, it had been to Payne, who had assured her that he would never hire anyone he thought was a danger. After four years of enduring Twist’s constant interference, she was certain Payne was right—Twist wasn’t dangerous. Arrogant, anti-social, rude, irritating, opinionated and a hopeless control freak, yes, absolutely. But dangerous? No. He’d never even touched her until tonight.

  When he’d kissed her.

  Oh God, that freaking awesome kiss.

  “One thing I’ve learned about life—shit happens when you least expect it.” Twist’s comment brought her drifting thoughts back to him as the light turned green. The car moved forward, and to her dismay her stomach moved greasily with it. Oh, great. Like she didn’t feel bad enough already, now she had tummy troubles to go along with her throbbing head. “The best you can do is roll with the punches.”

  Her insides felt like they were rolling, that was for sure. “Even though I can’t remember it, apparently the only real punch I got was from my car. Or maybe it was the headbutt I gave my attacker that knocked me out. I really can’t remember.”

  She felt his glance brush over her like a physical thing. “You headbutted the guy?”

  “Yeah. And stomped the crap out of his foot.” She wasn’t about to admit that she’d thought it was him. “I also kneed him in the junk, or at least I tried. Hope I hobbled the jerk.”

  “You fought back.” She really must be out of it, she thought dazedly, hugging her arms around her unsettled middle. No way would Twist sound admiring of anything she did. “Good for you.”

  “I don’t think it did any good.”

  “It slowed that asshole down long enough for me to get there. I’m just sorry I couldn’t go after him, but you were my main priority at that point, not him. You were out cold and I wasn’t about to leave you just lying there in the parking lot.”

  “Thank you.” It had to be said. No matter how she felt about him—and she felt a lot, none of which was repeatable in polite company—he had saved her tonight. “If you hadn’t been there—”

  “I was.”

  Typical. There she was, trying to do the honorable thing, and he couldn’t wait to interrupt her. “Because you were there, that guy didn’t even have time to jack my purse, much less do any more damage, so I’m grateful.”

  “I don’t want your gratitude.”

  Geez. “What the hell do you want, then? For me to be an ungrateful, inconsiderate wretch? You’re not making this easy.”

  “Actually, I’m trying to stop you from talking altogether.” Then he surprised her by shooting her a quick, rare grin. “You actually used the word wretch. You might be the first person I’ve ever met who’s used that word in a sentence.”

  “I’m full of surprises.” And if they didn’t get home soon, she was going to surprise him by doing another kind of retching all over the passenger footwell.

  All things considered, that would be a perfect end to a perfect day.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m a big fan of surprises.” When she didn’t answer, instead resting her head gingerly against the passenger window, he reached over for her hand and curled his fingers around it. “We’re almost there, baby.”

  The words slipped over her brain without leaving a mark. She was too busy looking at his hand, dark against her fair skin, and wondering how in the world the simple squeeze of his fingers could make her feel like she was being enveloped in a comforting embrace. Almost like he knew she was in more distress than she wanted to let on, and that now was not the time to be his usual annoying self.

  How strange.

  No, it was more than strange. It was flat-out amazing to see Twist acting almost human instead of his usual demony self. Maybe she should get hit in the head more often.

  “It’d almost be worth it,” she murmured.

  He glanced at her as the car came to a gentle stop. “What was that?”

  “Sorry. Nothing. Didn’t know I was talking about loud.” Not at all sure if she should be alarmed by that or not, Angel glanced up and nearly wept in relief when she saw the familiar façade of her corner condo. Her next-door-neighbors, Joey and Novak, would have kittens when she told them about her day… “Wait.”

  “What?”

  She blinked in confusion. “How did you know where I live? I don’t remember giving you my address.” Though that didn’t mean much at the moment.

  “Scout mentioned
it. Do you need help getting out?”

  “No thanks, I’m good.” And she was almost sure she was as she maneuvered her way through unbuckling her seatbelt and climbing out of the Mustang. But the moment she was on her feet she wasn’t sure how she was going to make it to the door without fainting when she couldn’t feel the ground and her stomach gave her attitude over every move she made. In the end he had to guide her up to her front door, took her keys from her uncharacteristically clumsy hands and helped her inside.

  “Maybe I should have made Scout see me home.” As she hit the lights in the living room, Angel was surprised once again to hear her thoughts tumble out of her mouth. “I’m not sure how you got the short straw.”

  “No short straw. I volunteered.” Shutting and locking both the deadbolt and the heavy chain on the door, he made short work of helping her out of her jacket. “It’s after four in the morning and she has her man to get home to.”

  “And she scares the crap out of you.”

  “That she does.”

  She almost laughed. “I’m surprised you admit it.”

  “Don’t be. I get the feeling she’d like to clean my clock, so whenever I get a chance to earn some brownie points off of her, I go for it.”

  “If anyone could clean your clock, it’d be Scout. She called herself a tank and me ethereal.”

  He hung her jacket and purse by the door. “Sounds about right.”

  “I don’t want to be described as ethereal.”

  “Feel free to not want that all you want, but it won’t change an ethereal little girl into a tank. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll stop being pissed off all the time by wanting things that are beyond your reach.”