by Stacy Gail
“I only get pissed off when you treat me like what you just called me—a little girl.” This was too heavy a conversation to have with her Nemesis when she had all her wits about her. Having it now was just ridiculous, yet her mouth couldn’t seem to shut up. “And I can be a tank.”
“Oh, honey. Not even a little bit.”
“Tanks don’t need anyone. I’ve never needed anyone my entire adult life. That should at least earn me tank-like status.”
“No. It just makes you alone.” His hands landed on her shoulders, a soothing heat that soaked through the fabric of her shirt before they squeezed the muscles there and pushed her deeper into the living room. “Get changed out of your work clothes and into bed, okay? You’ll feel better.”
That was when she realized he had to be just as exhausted as she was and no doubt wanted to get out of there as soon as decency allowed. With only a minor wobble, she looked over her shoulder and gave him what she hoped was a convincing smile. “I feel better already, just being home. Thank you for delivering me safe and sound.”
Again he gave her a little push. “Get changed and into bed, Angel.”
“Right. Feel free to see yourself out, okay? And thanks again.” She waved a vague hand at the door before heading down a hallway that seemed to want to shift and dodge under her feet. “Drive safely.”
The truth was, she thought some time later, flicking the bathroom light off and sliding gratefully into bed, she didn’t feel all that great despite being home. The dizziness was making her queasy and while the medication she’d been given had lessened the pain considerably, she still had a headache shadowing her. Every cell in her body craved sleep, but as she turned out the light on the nightstand, she knew it was going to be rough going. Closing her eyes made the room rock and her stomach roll, something the doctor at the hospital had warned her might happen.
Maybe she should try to sleep with her eyes open
Think of something else, she told herself, staring into the darkness. Sadly, the only thing that came to mind was the bane of her existence. It sucked that of all people, Twist had been the one to save her, if only because she didn’t like thinking there was anything redeeming about him.
Until tonight, there hadn’t been. Right from the beginning when they’d been introduced, he hadn’t liked her or her work, and he’d made no secret about it. He was moody, pushy, opinionated, refused to acknowledge personal boundaries, and somewhere along the way he’d decided to make her his favorite piñata to take verbal whacks at whenever the mood struck him.
Maybe it was a leftover from prison, she thought, frowning into the dark. He took one look at her, marked her as the weakest link in the House Of Payne pack and instantly locked into big-dog domination mode. She was no expert, but big-dog domination behavior was a thing a person should probably have in order to survive a hellish place like prison. And Twist was definitely a Big Dog, a true leader of the pack. In the dog world she could picture him as a Rottweiler or a German shepherd, whereas she was more like a teeny Maltese, or maybe a Pomapoo. Rottweilers probably ate Pomapoos for breakfast.
Did that mean Twist wanted to eat her for breakfast?
Probably not. But the idea of getting a Pomapoo was suddenly appealing.
Man, her head hurt.
She rolled onto her side, then seconds later catapulted out of bed and into the bathroom, her knees hitting the slate blue Travertine tiled floor before her body convulsed with the force of being sick. Her already-empty stomach did its best to turn itself inside out until every muscle felt like it was trying to exit from her body via her mouth. Her head throbbed with the strain, and with each passing second the pain only increased…
At the height of her misery, soothing hands suddenly came to her—one holding her forehead, the other gently stroking her hair back, offering her comfort when she needed it the most.
Only after the worst of it was over, did the full force of reality hit her.
Twist hadn’t left her alone. He had stayed just in case she needed help.
Damn him.
The sun’s newborn glow seeped weakly through the white-washed plantation shutters in Angel’s quiet bedroom. Silently Twist rolled off the side of the queen-sized bed he was occupying and ran his hands noiselessly down the slats to shut out the light, then pulled the curtains closed for good measure. At the faint scrape of the metal curtain rings, he glanced back to the bed, then sighed at what he saw.
Poor baby.
Curled up in a tight ball under the covers, Angel slept on, her pale head half-buried in a multitude of pillows that matched the down comforter—white, with black ink sketches from the original Alice In Wonderland.
The woman definitely had a theme going throughout her personal living space. Her foyer was black and white checkerboard, as was her kitchen, which also sported all sorts of red-heart accents. An entire wall in the living room had clearly been done by Angel herself, and it must have taken her forever to depict her vision of the Queen of Heart’s off-kilter Croquet Garden. The rest of the walls were ice blue, so pale it was almost white, with the words, “We’re All Mad Here” in the form of a Cheshire Cat’s smile over the low white sofa where he’d originally decided to bunk for the night. The sofa wasn’t a hardship, God knew. In the four years he’d done behind bars, he’d learned to sleep on a thin mattress that was narrower than a twin bed. Her sofa was a slice of heaven compared to that.
As he’d settled in for what was left of the night, thinking about what he’d slept on in prison brought his head around to what Angel’s reaction might be if she knew she had an ex-con under her roof. Just looking at her, it was obvious she was used to better men than him—more refined, more cultured, more sophisticated, more worldly. Just fucking more. And she deserved a guy like that. Hell, she deserved the best.
He wasn’t the best. Far from it.
Then he’d heard her, sounding miserable and in need of someone to take care of her. That was when he’d decided her bed was more than big enough for the both of them.
On silent feet he rejoined her, yawning and rubbing at his gritty, sleep-deprived eyes as he went. He half-expected her to stir long enough to tell him to get lost like she had throughout the pre-dawn hours. This time she simply slept on, either too exhausted to know he was there or finally accepting that he was more than capable of ignoring her when he wanted to. Lying on top of the covers, he carefully curved his body around the tight ball of hers and pulled her into him, braced for her jolt followed by the outraged demand to know just what the hell he thought he was doing. This time, however, she simply shifted her head against the pillows and sighed in a long-suffering kind of way.
Heh. She could be adorable when she wanted to be.
“Really? Again?”
“Mm-hm.” With great care tightened his arm around her fragile frame, just to make sure she got the message. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“I never pegged you for a spooner.”
“I never pegged you for a motor mouth. Go to sleep.”
“I can’t believe I have to actually state this out loud, but we don’t have a spooning kind of a relationship.”
He kept his tired eyes closed. “I’m stealing what little body heat I can get off of you, Alice. It’s either this or I get in under the covers with you to stay warm.”
“Oh no, you’re cold?” Before he could answer, she rolled to a sitting position, grabbed one of those woolly-soft, mini-blanket things she had draped across the foot of her bed, and took her time in covering his shoulders and torso with it.
“There we go.” Her eyes were sleepy but no longer dazed as she concentrated on tucking him in, before she curled back into her human-ball position. “Sorry about that. You should’ve said something sooner. Oh, and don’t call me Alice. That’s almost as irritating as little girl.”
He grinned, ridiculously happy to be under a nice, warm blanket that smelled like Angel. “I can’t remember the last time someone tucked me in.”
“Now who�
��s being a motor mouth?”
“Good point.” Wrapping an arm around her once more, he pulled her close and closed his eyes. “’Night, little girl.”
“Twist—”
“Shh, you need to recover.”
“But—”
“And I’m trying to sleep. Can’t sleep with you talking my ear off.”
“There’s a quick fix for that. You wouldn’t hear me if you were, say, on the couch or at home in your own bed where you belong.”
“Exactly. I wouldn’t be able to hear you if you needed my help. I’m so glad you’re seeing things my way.”
“Um, I’m not.” When he didn’t answer, she gripped his hand and shook it. “Twist?”
When the silence stretched out she sighed again before settling deeper into the pillows. Somehow her hand remained on his, and he slowly shifted his fingers until they were laced with hers.
Satisfied, Twist drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Four
The scent of coffee—and the impatient roar of her empty stomach—woke Angel.
For a few seconds she tried to figure out where the smell was coming from. It was too strong to be coming from her next-door-neighbors and best friends, Joey and Novak, not to mention they were both supposed to be at work this time of day. Then she realized she didn’t know what time of day it was. Fuzzy-headed, she craned around to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table.
It wasn’t there.
Baffled, she stared at the empty space where the round-faced, copper bell-topped clock was supposed to be, then slid out of bed to see if it had fallen to the floor. When she came up empty, she jammed her hands on her hips covered in the soft gauzy blue of her favorite sleeveless chemise. It was too big for her to adequately call a nightie and too dainty with extravagantly ruffled hems all over to be called a nightshirt, so chemise was what she’d settled on. She remembered changing into it last night before settling into bed. Had she set the alarm and then done something with it?
No. Instead, she’d… she’d…
Gotten sick.
A crazy patchwork of memories flooded in. She whipped back to the bed to stare at the cream angora throw bunched up in the middle of the bed, before her attention snagged on the indentation in the pillow next to hers.
Twist.
So it hadn’t been a dream. Her enemy, Twist Santiago, really had taken care of her last night. And taken care of her very well, she had to admit, thinking of how gently he’d helped her when she thought she was on the verge of suffering a messy head explosion, then kept her awake after a bout of nausea to make sure she wasn’t sluggish, incoherent or in any way unresponsive. It wasn’t fun taking care of a sick person you liked, so she figured it had to have been pure torture for him to take care of someone he had no respect for.
But he’d taken excellent care of her.
That meant she now owed him more than ever.
Crap.
The question was, why did he bother? Wearily she rubbed at her eyes as the question rattled around in her oddly empty head. He’d delivered her safe and sound to her place, which was the decent thing to do. Anyone with an ounce of compassion would have done that. But staying overnight? That was going above and beyond the call of duty in a major way, especially for an enemy.
It just didn’t make sense.
When her brain slipped back into fuzziness rather than giving her any clear answers, she decided to follow her nose and found the object of her thoughts in the kitchen. She almost felt like she’d been hit in the head again when she caught sight of Twist barefoot and shirtless, his longish black hair beach-wavy and damp as he stood at the stove sprinkling shredded cheese on scrambled eggs.
Holy…
Wow.
He glanced up at her as she screeched to an abrupt halt. “Oh good, you’re awake. I was just about to come in and see if you were up for a little something to put in your stomach.” He slapped a lid on the skillet, turned the heat off under it, then reached for the steaming pot of coffee waiting in the coffeemaker. “Do you think you could handle some coffee, or OJ, or both?”
“Where’s your shirt?” Forget the mystery of her missing alarm clock, or how orange juice wound up in her house, or why he was taking care of her—again. No. The mystery of where the hell his shirt might be was the biggest point of concern. It required her immediate attention and boy, did he have it. He looked like he belonged on the cover of one of those weight-lifting magazines. Not a flabby ounce of spare flesh could be found, and she was seriously looking for it. His heavily inked skin stretched over the graceful sweep of his collarbones and muscle-padded rib cage, tapering down to a surprisingly long and lean waist. His stomach wasn’t tattooed and she found, absurdly, that she was glad of it, as any markings there might obscure the view of wire-tight abs that appeared to have been developed by a regimen of approximately five million daily sit-ups. His worn jeans had no belt, and with the top button left undone for what she assumed was comfort, it looked like just a little shimmy from his narrow hips would be all it would take for that denim to head south.
She stared at him, not sure whether or not she wanted him to engage in that all-important shimmy.
“My shirt?” As if just realizing he was standing half-naked in her kitchen, he ran an idle hand down his chest, past those sculpted pectorals to that intriguing plain of abdominal hills and valleys that begged for a female’s attention. Then, casually, he looped a thumb in his loose waistband. The denim inched lower. And lower still.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus, gravity do your stuff…
“Hello? Earth to Angel.”
She managed to drag her gaze to his. About half a second later she wanted to curl up and die when the amusement in his eyes told her he knew exactly what was going on in her head. “I’m not myself,” she blurted, and hoped it didn’t sound as feeble as she thought it did. But since she had a concussion, she was happy to put the blame on it rather than noticing that her most loathed enemy had a hot-as-hellfire bod. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said, after I went to the corner store to get some stuff to make breakfast, I took a shower to get myself fully awake. Once I did that, I couldn’t quite stomach the thought of climbing back into all of my day-old clothes. So…” He shrugged, calling her wandering attention to the sexy hollow that a collarbone and a well-developed trapezius muscle sloping from shoulder to neck could make. “Here I am without a shirt. Got a problem with that?”
Problem? She had no problem, except that she couldn’t stop staring.
Wait.
Was staring a problem?
“Um. Huh-uh.”
Hmm. Apparently she’d also gone brain-dead in the snappy comeback department and could now only grunt in response.
That could be considered a problem.
“You sure about that?” Abandoning the stove, he stepped toward her, a deliberate move that for some strange reason reminded her of a big cat stalking its prey. “You seem like you’ve got a problem.”
“You don’t say.” She wasn’t really paying attention to what he was saying. How could she? There was a magnificent chest coming at her, and it belonged to a man she wasn’t supposed to like. But, wow, did she ever like what he had going on underneath his clothes, so maybe she should revise her thinking…
“Yeah.” He came to a stop directly in front of her. “You’re staring at me.”
She blinked and realized with a sudden rush of horror that not only was he right, but that he was flat-out calling her at it. “Of course I’m staring. I’ve never seen you without clothes.” When his brows went up, she almost swore. Really, she shouldn’t be allowed to talk while in possession of an injured brain. “I mean, you’re not as covered in ink as I thought you’d be.”
“I see.” His slow smile appeared, the wicked kind that usually set her teeth on edge, but today seemed almost delicious. “So you’re saying you’ve given some thought to what I was like under my clothes.”
Oh, fudge. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, no. I think you did.”
Ugh. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m saying, so it’s probably best that I drop out of this conversation entirely.”
“Now where’s the fun in that?”
“I can’t imagine that it’s any fun at all, trying to communicate with a babbling concussion victim.”
“You’re not babbling. You’re straight-up talking to me, which is a refreshing change. Usually you do your damnedest to ignore my existence.”
“Trust me, you’re impossible to ignore.” Then she groaned out loud when she heard her confession. Seriously, why wouldn’t her mouth shut the hell up?
“And you’re looking at me,” he went on, reaching out a casual hand to brush her hair back behind her shoulder. Every muscle in her body froze, and suddenly he seemed to be a lot closer than he was a second ago. “Gotta say, I like you looking at me instead of through me, little girl. I like it a lot.”
Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t say anything stupid… “Don’t call me little girl.”
Good. That wasn’t stupid. That was normal.
“And don’t pretend you’re not looking at me right now and liking what you’re seeing.” He leaned down until he was at her eye level. The unexpected action invaded her space in such a way that all she could think was that he was now within kissing distance. “Little girl.”
“I’m liking what I’m seeing just as much as I’m not liking how you call me little girl.”
Oopsie.
Now that was stupid.
His dark eyes lit with a wild, predatory gleam that had her heart bouncing all over the place. Then it froze in shock when his hand reached out to link with hers, his touch surprisingly gentle. “You know that phrase, ‘look, but don’t touch?’”
She bit both her lips together. Clearly she couldn’t be trusted with words today.
“I’ve always thought that was a lame-ass saying. Touching is way more fun than looking.” As he spoke, he brought her unresisting hand up to his chest, flattening it against the shallow valley between his pecs. It was insane, how completely her attention riveted on the smoothness and heat of his skin, and the intimate sensation of his heart beating beneath her palm. If she put her ear to where her hand rested, she’d easily be able to hear Twist’s heart…