by Tami Lund
By the time the house phone rang at four, the house was spotless, all of Brandon’s laundry was washed, dried and folded, and she was getting ready to get into the shower.
Gabriella glanced at the caller ID, but all it said was cell phone. She almost didn’t answer it, but then she thought it might be Brandon, so she did. And then she wished she hadn’t.
“What the hell is going on there?” He demanded when she picked up the phone. “I have fourteen messages on my phone, and they all say you found a dead body in your apartment. Is that true?” He sounded angry.
“Yes.”
“Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
“I don’t have your number. Besides, why would I call you?”
“Have you ever found a dead body before, Gabriella?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But I imagine it’s not something I’d want to go through by myself. I’d want someone there, to help me deal with it. If you had called me when it happened, I’d be home right now, helping you deal with this. Now I’m fighting goddamned rush hour traffic and I know it will take me at least another hour to get there. Fuck.”
Gabriella was both touched and startled by his concern, despite the fact that he was also obviously angry. She heard him take a deep breath. “How are you holding up?” he finally asked in a more reasonable tone.
“I’m okay. I cleaned your house.”
“You cleaned my house? Why?”
“Because there was nothing else to do, and I needed to stay busy.”
“Well… Thanks. I’ll have to figure out a way to make sure you feel the need to stay busy about once a week.”
Gabriella giggled and he said, “Good, that’s just the reaction I was hoping for.”
“It looks like you’re going to have a house guest longer than you expected. The police told me the candy store and the apartment are both off-limits, and they have no idea when I’ll be able to get back in there.”
“I’m sorry, Gabriella. I know this is screwing with your plans.”
Gabriella shrugged. “Well, hopefully it won’t be for too long. I don’t know what they expect to find in the candy store. I’ve cleaned the place from top to bottom. Oh, I guess you should call your family and cancel for tomorrow.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll do that.”
“And aren’t you glad we didn’t sleep together yesterday?” she said, just a little too brightly. “You’d be sick of me by now, and I’d have no place to go.”
“Okay, I’m hanging up now, because that is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard you say.” True to his word, he disconnected the call.
Gabriella sighed and started walking up the stairs. By the time she reached the top step, her knee was throbbing badly enough to force her to take notice. She had completely forgotten about her injuries in her frenzied cleaning spree, and now both her knee and her abdomen were screaming with pain.
Luckily, she just cleaned the bathtub. She limped into the bathroom and pushed the door closed. Butter snuck into the room just in time, and lay down next to the tub. Gabriella turned on the taps and absentmindedly searched through the cabinets, and was delighted to find bubble bath. She poured a generous amount into the water and stripped out of her clothes.
***
Brandon walked through the back door an hour later. When he didn’t find Gabriella anywhere on the first floor – although he had almost been hoping to find her in the laundry room, since that room had become synonymous with kissing her in his mind – he walked to the base of the stairs. “Gabriella?” he called. When he heard a muffled reply, he began climbing the stairs. Halfway up he said, “Where are you?”
“In the bathtub.”
He reached the top of the stairs and said, “Did you say in the bathtub?”
“Yes. Why do you have bubble bath?”
Brandon cursed under his breath. One of these days he would have to go through his house and throw away every possible leftover hint of his past dalliances. “Ah, it’s not mine, exactly.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t stress out, Gabriella, it was a long time ago. I can’t even remember her name.” By long time ago, he meant at least definitely before Gabriella came to town.
He grinned slyly and said, “Would you like company?”
“Yes.”
Brandon stumbled and grabbed the railing for support. “Did you say yes?”
“Well, I don’t need company, exactly, but I do need help getting out of the tub.”
“Just to clarify,” Brandon said slowly, “Are you trying to turn me on or are you hurt?”
“I’m hurt.”
Brandon exhaled slowly. He knew it was too good to be true.
“When I found the body, I fell and hurt my knee. It seems to have seized up on me. I can’t straighten it at the moment.”
Brandon stepped up to the bathroom door and pushed it open. She was lying in the bathtub, bubbles covering all the important parts. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy updo. Beads of water clung to her face, her neck, what he could see of her chest above the line of bubbles. He blatantly swept his eyes over the scene, searching for any remote off-limits area of her body that he could use for his fantasies later tonight.
His eyes fell onto her left knee, jutting out of the bubbles. He could see that it was already swollen and discolored from bruising.
“You do realize it is my life’s dream to see you naked, right?”
Gabriella rolled her eyes. “Yes, I do realize that. But I don’t really have a choice here. I’ve been trying to get out for the last twenty minutes. My knee is stuck in this position.”
“You need ice, not heat.”
“Thank you, doctor. Now can you help me out, and maybe get me some ice?”
Brandon reached down and flipped the lever to open the drain. Gabriella did her best to keep as many bubbles in place as possible, but it was a futile effort. Brandon did not zone in on the body parts she probably expected him to, though.
“What the hell happened to your stomach?” Gabriella glanced down and saw that a two-inch wide stripe across the middle of her abdomen had already turned bright purple.
“I tripped and fell onto a chair. I hit my knee and then my stomach. I really need some pain medicine.” Her voice hitched as her eyes filled with tears.
“Well, hell. I can’t ogle you when you’re in pain like this.”
He pulled two towels out of a cabinet and draped them both over Gabriella’s body, hiding all the tempting parts. Then he bent down and slid his arms under her upper back and her knees and lifted her out of the tub.
“You weigh next to nothing,” he commented as he held her steady and discreetly turned away while she clumsily dried herself.
“Thanks, I think.”
He shrugged, then lifted her again and carried her down the hall towards his bedroom.
“Where are you going?” There was alarm in her voice.
“Relax, I’m not going to take advantage of your indisposed state, as much as I would love to do just that. There’s a TV in my bedroom. Since you’re about to be relegated to bed for the rest of the night, I figure you might want something to occupy your time.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Gabriella mumbled.
***
She was trying hard not to be distracted by his arms, by the fact that they were wrapped around her almost-naked body, or the body heat that radiated off of him as if he were a wood burning stove that had been fed well-seasoned wood for a great many hours.
Then she decided he served as a fine distraction from the pain, so she relaxed into him. She felt him suck in a breath and when he exhaled, his breath brushed across her bare arm and sent shivers shooting all the way to her toes. Gabriella realized that she wanted this man with a gut-wrenching need that she had never experienced before in her life.
Great. Just what she needed at this point in her life. How the hell was she supposed to continue resisting him, now that they’d had that little revelation?
“Where will I find your pajamas?”
“Under my pillow.”
Brandon walked away and returned a moment later with a tank top and pajama bottoms. He held them up and said, “Do you need help?”
Was she imagining the hopeful quality to his voice? Of course not. The man hadn’t disguised the fact that he wanted to sleep with her, not once since the moment they met. She was the one still trying to deny the attraction.
Gabriella shook her head, needing to put space between them for a moment. “No, I think I can handle it, now that I’m in bed. Thanks.”
He handed her the pajamas.
“I’ll go get you an ice pack, some ibuprofen and water. Do you need anything else?”
“A shot of something wouldn’t hurt, either.”
Brandon grinned and said, “A woman after my own heart,” before he turned and left the room.
Gabriella took a moment to study the bedroom. It had a nautical theme. The bed frame was wooden and painted an antique white and looked to be about a thousand years old, likely on purpose. Or maybe it really was an antique. She had been in town long enough to know that the small village had a thriving antiques business, and Brandon had told her this house once belonged to his great-grandmother.
A small blanket chest sat at the foot of the bed, and it was painted the same antique, whitewashed color. One wall was red, one dark blue and the rest were white.
Her assumption upon entering the house for the first time had been right: his bedroom was pentagon-shaped, with the main point of the pentagon comprised almost entirely of windows, overlooking the front yard and the driveway running next to the house. The head of his bed was against the wall across from the windows. A flat screen television was affixed to the wall next to the windows. The sheets on the bed were white with tiny navy blue pinstripes, and the down comforter was navy blue. There were four pillows on his bed. Gabriella snuggled into them for a moment, before it occurred to her that she ought to get dressed before Brandon came back.
By the time Brandon walked back into the bedroom, Gabriella was panting from the pain and exertion of pulling on her pajama bottoms.
“I should have helped,” Brandon commented as he handed her a glass filled with amber liquid. “Drink this first, it will start working the fastest.”
She did as she was told and immediately succumbed to a coughing fit. When she recovered, Brandon remarked, “I guess you don’t do shots.”
Gabriella glared at him.
“Let me see that knee, so I can wrap it up.”
Without waiting for permission, he flipped back the blanket. His look of disappointment that she managed to get dressed before he returned was almost comical. She might have laughed if she were not so distraught over her own attraction to the man.
Brandon quickly and efficiently placed an ice pack on her knee and wrapped it with an elastic bandage, then handed her a glass of water and a couple of ibuprofen tablets. “Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, and it might actually dull the pain.”
Without further explanation, he climbed onto the bed next to her and used the remote control to click on the television. He plumped the pillows, took off his tie, loosened the top few buttons on his shirt, and made himself comfortable.
“What are you doing?” Gabriella asked, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.
“Relaxing after a hard day at work. Well, actually the day wasn’t bad at all, just that drive. God, rush hour sucks. Every time I do it, it reminds me how much I hate the idea of living in the city.”
“Oh.” Gabriella thought about her home, and how much she had once loved living in Dallas.
“So do you want to tell me about it?” Brandon asked casually, as he used the remote to rapidly flip channels.
Since he had deposited Gabriella into the middle of the bed, they were side by side and almost touching, even though it was a king sized bed. Gabriella could feel his body heat, and it was making her a little drowsy. Or maybe it was the shot of Maker’s Mark. Or the hour-long bubble bath. Or the fact that the adrenaline rush from finding a dead body was completely out of her system. Or, most likely, a combination of all of the above.
“I went up to the apartment to start cleaning. When I opened the door, it reeked. When I walked inside to open the windows, I saw a body lying in the middle of the living room. Milo Thomas, the hobby shop owner” – She glanced at Brandon and he nodded -- “Heard me scream and he came upstairs to see what was wrong. He said the body was Mr. Partridge.”
“The previous candy store owner?” Brandon asked with surprise.
Gabriella nodded.
“You found the previous owner’s body in the apartment? What the hell? He wasn’t there on Tuesday.”
“That’s what I told the police. They confirmed that there was evidence that he’d been moved. Plus, he’s apparently been on ice for a long time and only recently defrosted. Probably he really did die two years ago and someone put him in a freezer. Apparently to bring him out to scare the next owner.”
“That’s sick. Did it work?”
“A little,” Gabriella admitted.
“Sounds like the famous candy store jinx is more than just a jinx. You going to close up shop and hightail it back to Dallas?”
Was she imagining the edge to his words, the way he held his breath, as if her answer was exceedingly important to him?
Gabriella shook her head. “No. Although I can’t imagine why someone would not want a candy shop in downtown. It seems like a perfect fit.”
Brandon slowly released the breath he had indeed been holding. “I agree. And just so you know, I don’t care if the cops release everything back to you tomorrow, you aren’t moving into that apartment.” His eyes were dark and glittered like blue diamonds. There was no teasing note to his voice, no flirtation in his eyes. He was absolutely serious.
Gabriella sighed. “Now it’s my turn to say I’ve had a lousy day and I don’t feel like fighting with you.”
Brandon’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen before answering. “Jared,” he said, glancing at Gabriella. She smacked herself in the head with the palm of her hand.
Brandon smiled.
***
“Hey cuz, did you commandeer my date after all?”
“Actually, she’s been meaning to cancel on you all week. She just keeps forgetting. But tonight she’s legitimately recovering from finding Mr. Partridge’s body in her apartment.” He considered adding that she was currently cozied up next to him in the bed, but as much as he didn’t mind provoking Jared, he didn’t want to upset Gabriella. He was pretty certain that telling his cousin she was in his bed, no matter how innocent it may be, would set her off.
“No shit? I thought that was just a stupid rumor. Damn, is she hysterical or some shit?”
Brandon smiled because Gabriella was anything but hysterical. “Something like that. And just so you know, this one is off-limits.”
He purposely did not look at her when Gabriella snagged the remote and began channel surfing. His warning hadn’t exactly been subtle. He had no doubt she knew precisely what he was talking about.
Jared chuckled. “Mom said you’d finally been hooked. Guess there’s no more competition out there. Where’s the fun anymore?”
Brandon didn’t respond. He told himself it was because Gabriella was lying next to him and he didn’t want her to know what Jared just said. It certainly wasn’t because he really was hooked.
“Later, cuz. Let me know if you get back in the game. It’s a lot more fun when I’m trying to steal them from you.”
Brandon disconnected the call. “Are you hungry?” he asked, looking at Gabriella.
“Not reall
y. I finished off that lasagna.”
“I’m going to go downstairs to make a sandwich. Sure you don’t want one?”
Gabriella shrugged. “Okay, maybe a sandwich.” Brandon chuckled, patted her right thigh and climbed off the bed. Butter followed him out of the room.
When he returned, he carried a tray piled with sandwiches, a bag of chips, two bottles of water, a bottle of beer and another shot of Maker’s Mark. “Wow,” Gabriella said.
“I figure this will sustain us for the duration, and I won’t have to keep running up and down the stairs. I let the dog out while I was down there.”
They ate in silence. Brandon took the remote back and searched for a movie. He settled on a comedy and they continued to eat and watch in companionable silence. After she finished a sandwich and a handful of chips, Gabriella swallowed the shot of Maker’s Mark, with only a small coughing fit this time. She snuggled deeper into the pillows and he knew she wouldn’t make it through the movie.
“Are you sleeping here too?” she mumbled, her lips barely moving.
Brandon glanced down at her. He could tell she was moments from sleep. “No.”
“Why not?” she mumbled with her eyes closed. She turned her head and snuggled into his shoulder. He obligingly lifted his arm and draped it across the pillows, and she snuggled into the crook of his arm and slid her arm across his chest.
“Because we’ll end up having sex and I prefer to have sex with you when you are conscious.”
Gabriella giggled and then her breathing became even and steady as she relaxed completely into sleep. Brandon lay there for a long time, watching her as she slept. He marveled at how perfectly she fit into the crook of his arm, and how perfect she looked, sleeping in his bed. He had never imagined what she would look like actually sleeping in his bed. His fantasies had all revolved around the activities they would be doing in his bed. Strangely enough, he didn’t mind at all simply watching her sleep. He could hear Aunt Korina now: “I’m proud of you, my boy.”
CHAPTER SIX