“Head.” She sighed again, but a chuckle overlaid that sound.
He ducked beneath the overhead wooden shelves that seemed purposefully positioned to smash unsuspecting foreheads. “Who put that there?”
“My dad. We were all short. He didn’t have six-footers in mind when he installed the shelves for my mom.” She followed him into the house. Her fingers brushed against the side of his body as she groped along the wall. Florescent lights flickered reluctantly to life, illuminating the kitchen in a pale white glow.
The kitchen was ordinary, even plain, its brown-tiled floors and laminate countertops worn from long use. A vase of artificial flowers decorated the island, and two place settings were set on the small round table in the breakfast nook. The cabinets were still filled with glasses and dishes; pots and pans hung from an overhead rack.
This house was not just staged. It was fully furnished. “How long did you say this place has been listed for sale? Five months?”
“Yeah.” Sofia cracked open a windowpane to air out the musty room.
“And you haven’t moved out yet?”
She shuffled her feet and looked away. “Well, sometimes, my friends like to visit D.C., and they stay here instead of at a hotel. No harm, no foul.”
Why did she sound so defensive over a simple question? Kyle frowned but tucked the question into the back of his mind as he explored the rest of the first floor. The dining room was small, but the charming living room, with its French windows that opened to the front and back of the house, more than made up for it. He peered out the window; the car-lined road was empty, but lights illuminated the town houses along the street. Within an hour or two, Dupont Circle would bustle with activity unique to urban neighborhoods—people walking instead of driving—but for now, the lack of movement was reassuring.
Kyle tugged the lacy curtains together and rolled his eyes at the lack of privacy. He glanced at Sofia. “Looks like a nice neighborhood, and the real estate market in D.C. is tight. Why hasn’t anyone snatched this house up?”
A grimace of pain twisted her lips. “It’s a long story and it doesn’t matter.” She traced the brickwork on the mantelpiece. Her touch was gentle, lingering, as if caressing memories. “The bedrooms are upstairs, and I could use some rest.” She raised her head. Unshed tears glistened beneath her long eyelashes.
Kyle frowned. “Sofia?”
She tossed her head like a restless colt, turned her back on him, and marched up the stairs.
Women.
By the time he followed her up the stairs, she had claimed a small bedroom. Though cleared of personal items, the room was prettily coordinated with a cream furniture set against rose-pink wallpaper. Sofia was replacing the sheets on the twin bed when he entered. She bent over to tuck in the sheets, displaying the shapely curve of her denim-clad butt. He grinned with appreciation but wisely held his tongue.
She straightened and turned around. “You can have the guest room next door. I’ll get you fresh sheets.”
“What’s that?” He gestured at a closed door across the hallway. “The master bedroom?”
She nodded once and said nothing else as she stood on tiptoes to pull a set of sheets from the armoire before handing them to him.
His arms laden with bedsheets, Kyle walked into the guest room adjoining Sofia’s room. The pale blue wallpaper was decades out-of-date, but it warmed him with memories of his adopted mother’s old-fashioned but welcoming home. The wooden Quaker-style bed, side tables, and dresser appeared even older, but were well maintained and polished into a gleaming mahogany hue. The air freshener plugged into an electrical outlet filled the room with the scent of cedar logs.
He smiled. A comfortable, albeit tiny, guest room in a lovely home beat out a cookie-cutter hotel room any day. He had spent nights in far worse places, and none of them had a cute, though stubborn and innocently wide-eyed do-gooder in the next room.
He was ten years older than Sofia, and she was, by extension, a client of Three Fates, which made her strictly off-limits. He shook his head. She’s wrong for me in so many ways.
Stifling a groan, he shrugged off his leather jacket, and grimaced as he probed his injury. Blood caked around the wound. Carefully, he peeled his cotton shirt away from his body. Fresh blood welled up. “Damn.”
Sofia’s quiet footsteps stopped outside the door. “I have towels—oh my God. You’re bleeding again.” She tossed the towels onto the bed and seized his hand. “Come with me.”
She led him to a clean, tiny bathroom across the hallway. There was hardly enough space for one person, let alone two, but she ushered him in. Reaching past him, she lowered the cover over the toilet seat. “Sit down. I’ll get the first aid kit from the car.”
“I brought it in. It’s in my backpack in the room.”
Sofia nodded and scurried out, returning moments later with the first aid kit. She glowered at him as she dabbed at the wound with antiseptic wipes. “Why didn’t you just let Danyael treat you as he offered?”
“I don’t like mutants.”
“What?” Her head snapped up. “You…” Her lips parted. Her eyes were wide and her expression vulnerable.
His brows drew together. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.” Her shoulders sagged on a silent sigh. “It’s nothing.”
Of course, it was something. Ah hell. Women were trouble. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice escaped in a hiss of pain. He bit back a curse.
“Just a bit longer.” Sofia applied an antibiotic cream to the injury and spread it across the angry red streaks radiating from wound. “You’re lucky. This could have been so much worse.” She applied a bandage and then stepped back. “Danyael would have done a better job than a first-year nursing student, but there you go.”
Kyle grunted his thanks and shoved to his feet. His chest brushed against Sofia’s fingertips. The tingle that sparked through him was completely unrelated to his injury.
Their eyes met.
Her unpainted lips, soft and moist, parted involuntarily.
Damn. To hell with Zara’s damn principles on non-client involvement. He wanted her. “Sofia.”
His voice ripped through the dreamy glaze in her soft brown eyes. She blinked hard. The vision of a young woman, on the verge of being seduced, vanished. She turned and scurried out of the bathroom before he could say another word.
Ah hell. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his back muscles. A dull pain tugged at his side, but it was bearable. A few hours of sleep would put him well on the path to recovery. Never mind that the sun was only just rising. He had been awake for twenty-eight hours. Unutterably weary, he dragged his hand over his face and sagged against the cold tiles of the bathroom wall.
Cloth rustled in the bedroom. What was Sofia doing? He left the bathroom and stood bemused by the doorway of his bedroom, watching in silence as she changed the sheets on his bed. When she was done, she turned around, her arms heaped high with bedsheets. She looked up at him, but the bright sparkle of her eyes seemed clouded and her smile was restrained.
“Go get some rest.”
“Sofia—”
“Goodnight, Kyle.” With a gentle hand, she stroked his cheek.
He turned his face into the palm of her hand. Her touch sent a tremor down the length of his spine. It had been too long if something so simple could turn him on. “Sofia…” His voice was husky, roughened by need.
Her eyes widened. She swallowed hard and took a step back, breaking contact. “I…should go…get laundry started.”
Sofia dashed out of the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
A tight grin spread over his face as he stretched out on the bed, closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the ache in his body. He had to find a way to change her mind, after he caught up on his sleep.
Sofia released her breath in a shuddering sigh and fisted her hands against her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking?
That, she grimaced, was precisely the problem
. She hadn’t been thinking. How could she have thrown herself so shamelessly at a total stranger?
All I did was touch his cheek.
Yeah, right. Her gesture was hardly innocent; she had wanted to touch him. She closed her eyes but could not block the memory of his muscled torso quivering beneath her fingers as she dressed his injury. Surely drooling over a patient was a violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
She tensed. Danyael. She had even forgotten that she had endangered an innocent man by going to his clinic. An innocent man—an alpha mutant—protected by an assassin who appeared to be as cold as she was unscrupulous.
Sofia inhaled deeply and released her breath in a jagged sigh. Her mind told her that Danyael would be all right. In her heart, she still worried.
Her footsteps tapped lightly on the wooden floors of the landing as she walked past the closed door of the master bedroom, her eyes averted. She carried the dirty sheets down to the laundry machine in the basement. A dull pang shot through her as she wobbled on the unstable wooden step her father had never gotten around to fixing. The bottle of laundry detergent was almost empty—she added it to her mental shopping list—but the washer still worked, rumbling and grumbling its way through its wash cycle.
Sofia laid an affectionate hand on the machine. The town house in Washington, D.C., was as much home as the one in Chapel Hill. She knew when to watch her head and where to watch her step. She would miss the house when it was sold, if it was ever sold. On the advice of her real estate agent, she had cut the price three times. The house she had inherited from her parents was priced well below comparable properties, yet it didn’t sell.
It was tainted.
She ground her teeth. Tainted was a horrible word. It negated her parents’ existence, as if all the good they had done over the fifty or more years of their lives was completely undone by how they had died.
Then again, perhaps tainted was an accurate word after all. What else could explain her refusal to enter the master bedroom, the room where they had died?
The house seemed to close in, constricting like the coils of a boa tightening around her chest. She had to get out. Tears brimming in her eyes, she fled from the basement, snatched up her backpack, and stumbled out through the front door.
The blast of sunlight reminded her that the world continued to revolve, heedless of her personal troubles. She swallowed the lump in her throat and continued down the street. The familiarity of her surroundings comforted her—the promise that normality would soon return in spite of the plastic-encased microchip tucked in the pocket of her denim jeans.
She walked past adults in business suits, joggers in sweat suits, and dogs on leashes. A cat coiled on a sun-drenched windowsill yawned at her. Saigon Moon, the Vietnamese restaurant, was still around, as was the Dupont Diner. She would have to stop in for brunch one of these days. The grocer’s store at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and Rhode Island Avenue was not open yet, but Jose Garcia, the owner, was inside. She waved at him through the glass door. With a smile, he bustled over and flipped the lock on the door.
“Chica!” He enveloped her in a hug before stepping back. “I’ve not seen you in so long.”
“I’ve been in Chapel Hill.”
He nodded, his brown eyes gentle with understanding and sympathy. “How you doing?”
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“I heard you went back to school.”
“Nursing.”
“You enjoy it?”
She mustered a thin smile and nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
He patted her on the back. “Your parents would be proud of you.”
She liked to think so, too.
Jose’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “But what are you doing here? Hasn’t school started?”
“Oh yes.” She scrambled to pull together a credible excuse. “Just an overnight visit.”
A grin split his face. “Well, good to see you again.”
“Thanks, Jose.” She glanced over her shoulder and surveyed his well-stocked shelves. “I know you don’t open till ten, but I need to stock the pantry.”
He frowned. “You’re back at the house? Are you okay there?”
“Sure,” she lied. “It’s furnished, and electricity and water’s still running.”
He shook his head. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
She laid a hand upon his beefy arm. “I’m fine, I promise.”
He sighed, but waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed his store. “Go ahead.”
Sofia grabbed a basket. Kyle seemed like a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Unfortunately for him, she was a beans and rice kind of gal. Perhaps they could compromise on gourmet pasta served over grilled chicken breast. Mouth pursed, she planned several meals as she wandered down the aisles before hauling her full shopping basket to the checkout counter.
“Wow, you having a party, chica?” Jose asked as he tallied up the bill. “Not inviting me?”
She handed him her credit card and grinned. “You party too hard, Jose. I am trying to sell the house; I can’t afford to wreck it.”
“Pssh.” He waved off her concerns. “Haven’t trashed a house in over three months.” The door buzzer went off with a violence that rattled the windows. He peered over her shoulder. “The newspaper’s here.”
“You still stock those?” she asked as he moved past her to unlock the door for the newspaper deliveryman.
“Some folks still like their news on real pages. Hey, Kent. How’s it going?”
“All good.” The deliveryman hefted a bundled stack of newspapers off his dolly and placed it in the wire newspaper container next to the checkout counter. With a tip of his baseball cap to Sofia, Kent strolled out, whistling tunelessly.
Sofia smiled at his back, but the smile drained from her face when her gaze fell upon the headlines. “Accused murderer discovered at IGEC raid of nightclub.” Finger trembling, she picked up the newspaper and scanned the tiny print. Her chest heaved with each unsteady breath. No…that’s impossible.
Jose’s concerned voice tore her out of her bemusement. “Sofia? You okay?”
“Yeah, I…” She folded the newspaper, added it to one of the brown paper bags Jose had packed with her groceries, and dug two dollars out of her purse to pay for the newspaper. “I’ll see you around.” She seized the handles and rushed out of the store.
The fifteen-minute walk back to the town house seemed too long. By the time she arrived, her arms ached from carrying the two heavy bags, and her mind was in turmoil. The house was quiet. Desperate loneliness clawed at her. She needed someone, and just then, the only someone was Kyle.
She left the groceries in the kitchen and ran up the stairs. Without a sound, she twisted the knob of the guest room door and eased the door open.
Kyle was fast asleep. He had kicked off the comforter and was lying on his side. She stared at him, a smile inching across her face. He was gorgeous. He did not possess Danyael’s supermodel features, but Kyle’s rough-hewn features made him feel more—Sofia groped for the right word—solid. And when he smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement, he could make her stomach twist into intricate knots.
Somehow, he made her feel safe.
Sofia reached for the blanket to tug it over his body, but the movement jostled him slightly. Still asleep, he turned onto his back. His groping hand grasped her lower arm. A vulnerable half-smile flickered across his face. “You’re here…” he whispered.
“Kyle?”
“Lydia. You came back…”
She would have to be deaf to miss the pain in his voice. Was this the same man who had so brashly thrown himself into a gunfight to save her life? And who was Lydia? She shook him gently. “Kyle, you’re dreaming. Wake up.”
Green eyes flashed open. He blinked several times. “So-Sofia?”
The acute disappointment in his voice raked her even though she had no reason to expect otherwise from a man she had known for less than twelve hours. She leaned b
ack, a fractional movement away from him. The room was suddenly stifling; she needed space. “I have to put the groceries away.”
“Groceries?” In an instant, he was fully awake. He sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “You went out?” The hint of aching loss in his voice was replaced by sharp demand.
Her chin tilted up. “We needed food.”
“Are you out of your mind? The Rue Marcha and IGEC are still looking for you.”
She shook her head and scowled at him. “I needed fresh air.”
Kyle gritted his teeth. “Next time, why don’t you just hand the damn microchip over to them and be done with it?” He reached for his smartphone on the bedside table and glanced at the time. “How long were you out?”
“About an hour. A bit less.”
“Anyone see you?”
His abrasive questioning ground on her nerves. Her reply was frosty. “Yeah, about a hundred people going about their daily business.”
“How the hell am I supposed to protect you if you don’t tell me where you’re going?”
“I thought your job was to protect the microchip.”
He sneered. “You’re an extension of it.”
She glowered at him. When he was awake, he was as much a cold-hearted ass as Zara. “When you’re done being mad at me, you can come downstairs for a breakfast we wouldn’t have if I hadn’t gone out for groceries.” She spun on her heel and stalked out of the room.
The last sound she heard coming from Kyle’s room was a four-letter expletive.
Chapter 6
Kyle’s hands fisted into the bedsheets. All right, perhaps he had been hard on her, but hell, she deserved it. What had she been thinking, leaving the house unescorted, unprotected? Was he supposed to applaud her gutsiness or smack her for her idiocy?
She deserved the former, but the latter would have been a great deal more satisfying.
He settled for getting out of bed and stepping into the shower. The hot water ran cold faster than he would have liked, but it was enough to reset his sour mood. With a towel wrapped around his waist, he returned to his bedroom and pulled on a clean shirt and pants that he had dug out of his backpack. If his unexpected stay lasted beyond the weekend, he would need several new changes of clothes. He snorted. Perhaps he could send Sofia out on another shopping expedition.
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