by Lissa- Sugar
He had titanium rods and steel pins and plastic in it now.
“Superman,” one of the therapists had joked.
Right. He was a fucking superman, except last time he’d checked, the Man of Steel had not limped, had not needed to hobble around on a crutch, had not been reduced, at the beginning, to getting up in the middle of the night to swallow one of a dozen different pills to quiet the pain that tormented him.
“You can start getting around with a cane soon,” the last physical therapist he’d seen had told him.
“What the hell’s the difference?” Nick had snarled. “And I don’t need advice from you.”
A cane. Crutches. What the fuck was the difference? He was a cripple, and it was a damn good thing his temporary guest had taken a room nowhere near his.
The last thing he needed was to have a woman hear him moan, not in the throes of pleasure but in agony.
Still, this was his house. Why had he left the choice of a room to her? He should have told her which to take. And yes, it damned well pissed him off that she’d make a selection based on its distance from his.
Did she think he’d try to seduce her if she slept one wall away?
Nick snorted.
The lady had a high-flown opinion of herself. She’d turned him on, sure, but that at this point, so would a store mannequin.
And that attitude.
Was it him she didn’t like? Or was it men in particular? She wasn’t a lez; the vibes she gave off were pure female.
Maybe what she needed was a man.
The bra-burners would kill him for such a thought, but he’d been around. He knew it was true. He knew that beautiful women—because, OK, the truth was that the Wilde babe was beautiful—sometimes needed reminding that they were women. Not goddesses. Not untouchables. Not royalty.
Just women, made for pleasure.
He could make her remember that.
Sweet-talk her until that la-di-da expression became a smile. Ease into her space. Not too close. Just a little. Just enough so he could gaze into her eyes. Make some skin-to-skin contact. A brush of his hand on hers, maybe; a stroke of his finger along her lips.
Lean in, breathe in the scent of her hair.
Entice her into a couple of kisses.
Soft kisses, to let her sense that he wanted her.
Then he’d draw her to him, let her feel his hardness against her belly. And when she caught her breath at the sensation, he’d bring her even closer. Stroke her tongue with his. Undo the zipper of her jeans, slip his hand under the waistband, slide his fingers over the sweet, smooth skin until he felt her heat, her wetness, her desire for him against his palm…
Christ.
Nick shuddered.
He had a hard-on the size of Montana, and for a woman he didn’t even like.
No problem. Not after this coming weekend. Hadn’t he already decided that?
For now, he needed a cook. Correction. That was tomorrow’s problem. Today’s was getting a meal of some kind, of any kind, out of Lissa Wilde. If she could cook, fine. If she couldn’t, which was what he expected, that was fine, too.
She could open a dozen cans of soup. Fry some eggs. A couple of pounds of bacon. She could put up a pot of coffee, couldn’t she? Damn right she could—
Bong.
Nick’s head came up. The clock in the hall coughed out the time. Man, it was five thirty! A meal on the table by six? Even one dumped out of cans?
“No way,” he said grimly, planting the crutch hard against the oak-planked floor and struggling to his feet.
Ridiculous, this entire thing. Did she actually think she was going to avoid responsibility for this mess? Either she or her agent was the person who’d caused it and since her agent wasn’t here, Wilde drew the penalty by default.
He hobbled toward the door, automatically paused to give Brutus a chance to catch up to him and then remembered that she’d somehow lured his dog upstairs.
Terrific. No cook. No dog.
“Enough,” he growled.
It was a tough growl, a sexy growl; it had thrilled hundreds of millions of female fans, but right now Nick didn’t give a damn about how it sounded. He only knew that his unwanted guest was about to learn that the good times were over.
Getting up the stairs was the usual endless battle of maneuvering crutch, handrail and steps. The private-duty nurse his doctors had insisted on had taken one look at the stairs and suggested he rent a hospital bed and set it up in the living room.
She’d been out the door twenty minutes later.
He didn’t need hospital beds, didn’t need to turn the house he already hated into a refuge for invalids, didn’t need anything but to be left alone.
At last, he reached the second floor. He clomped down the corridor, taking the same direction the duchess had taken hours ago, passing open door after open door until, yeah, just as he’d figured, he reached the last door and found it closed.
He was breathing hard. From exertion. From anger. From the effing disaster his life had become, and here was this stranger, this lying-through-her-teeth female, adding to it.
He raised his hand, formed a fist, banged it against the door.
Nothing.
Hell. This was his house. Did she really think she could ignore him?
“Wilde,” he said loudly.
No answer.
Nick pounded on the door again and he heard Brutus give a short, sharp bark. The Newf was a prisoner in there. Aside from everything else, did she think she could keep his dog from him?
“Wilde,” Nick snarled. “Open up!”
He hit the door again. Hard. It swung open…
His heart damn near stopped.
Lissa Wilde stood in the open door of the bathroom. Steam curled in the air behind her.
Never mind that.
Concentrate on her. On the naked woman who was more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen.
Her hair was pinned up, long wavy tendrils of it falling down and kissing her throat.
Her breasts were lush and round and, God, and perfect. Handfuls, lovely handfuls that a man could cup and caress.
Her waist was slender, her hips curved. Her thighs were firm. Creamy. The ideal frame for pale curls she had not been foolish enough to shave or wax into submission.
Nick’s heart did a shuddering restart; he could hear the pulse of his blood in his ears. His brain began functioning again; it told him to turn around, go out the door, pretend that he had not seen her, that the urge to go to her, sweep her into his arms, claim her mouth, her body, was not beating through him.
“Get out!”
His gaze swept to her face. She had gone pale; as he watched, she reached behind her, grabbed a towel, covered herself with it.
“Did you hear me, Gentry? I said—”
“I heard you.” Nick cleared his throat. Turned his back because, heaven help him, how could a man who’d damn near wiped himself out just climbing a flight of stairs have an erection? “Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to—”
“GET OUT!”
Something sailed past his head. A book. A hairbrush. Whatever it was missed him and he stumbled into the hall.
The door slammed behind him.
He all but fell back against the wall.
What the hell had just happened?
Sex had been the furthest thing from his thoughts. Besides, weeks of celibacy or not, he wasn’t a kid. The sight of a naked woman wasn’t enough to do him in. He was long past the days when a Playboy centerfold could bring him to his knees.
Nick shut his eyes. It didn’t help. The image of Lissa Wilde was seared on the inside of his eyelids.
He had seen naked movie stars, nipped and tucked to perfection. Lissa Wilde didn’t measure up to any of them.
And yet she was more beautiful.
She wasn’t a sculptor’s creation or a surgeon’s idealization. She was real.
And, Christ, he owed her an apology. An explanation. She’d reacted as
if he’d stormed her room…
Her door opened.
An inch.
Nick looked up. Met a pair of blue-green eyes that blazed with fury. Heard a voice that was frigid with hatred.
“I am going to put a chair under this doorknob,” she said. “If you try to force the door open—”
“What?” Nick shook his head. “Why would I do that?”
“If you try… There’s a lamp in here made of brass. Or something. I don’t know what it’s made of and I don’t care. All I know is, if I use it, it looks heavy enough to dent even a skull as thick as yours. You got that, cowboy?”
“Look.” He stepped forward. “I didn’t mean to—”
“One more foot and you’re a dead man.”
“Ms. Wilde. Lissa. I knocked. You didn’t answer. I guess you were in the shower and you couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t know that so I knocked again and the door—this house is old, see, and the doors don’t always—”
Lissa flung the door open. He had time to see that she was wrapped in a robe the size of a tent before she rushed him and pounded her fist into the center of his chest.
A Hollywood stunt man would have been proud of her, Nick thought, even as he stumbled back, hit the wall…
And went down.
A sharp cry of pain burst from his lips.
He collapsed at Lissa’s feet.
Good, she thought grimly. Let the SOB break his stupid neck.
She stalked back into the bedroom, slammed the door, turned the lock even though Gentry had already proved that the gesture was meaningless, jumped as something big bumped against her backside.
The dog. His dog. Whining and moaning.
“Traitor,” Lissa snarled.
She jerked the door open and the Newf flew to his master.
Lissa slammed the door and fell back against it, panting.
The rat. The SOB. Was this the reason he’d told her she could spend the night in his house? Did he think he could take advantage of her?
Except, he hadn’t looked like a man who was up to taking advantage of anybody or anything.
Something was wrong with his leg. Something bad.
And she’d punched him. Put him flat on his ass.
Well, look what he’d done. Forced his way into her room. An accident, he’d said…
Maybe.
It was an old house. She’d had a tough time getting the door to close, the lock to work.
She turned. Put her ear to the door.
Nothing.
Lissa chewed on her lip.
She’d downed a guy who used a crutch. Who limped. Who was—to be blunt, if not PC—a cripple.
She breathed in. Breathed out. Then, carefully, she undid the useless lock, cracked the door and peered out.
What she saw was not good.
Nick Gentry was still sitting on the floor, his legs sprawled out. His crutch was half a dozen feet away. The Newf, whining piteously, stood over him.
Lissa opened the door a couple of inches.
“Are you OK?”
Gentry looked at her. Rage glittered in his eyes.
“Get the hell out of my face, Ms. Wilde.”
“Mr. Gentry. I didn’t mean to—”
“You have difficulty understanding English? Get away from me!”
Lissa stared at him.
That wasn’t rage she saw on his beautiful face—because why pretend that he wasn’t beautiful? He was, and what she saw etched in its classic lines was pain.
Despite herself, her heart twisted.
Yeah, well, so what? She’d always been a sucker for creatures that were needy and hurting…
Hell.
There was more than pain there. There was anger and the humiliation of destroyed pride.
She knew the look; she knew the anguish that went with it. She’d suffered it before, most recently, most terribly on the night Raoul had brought her dreams to a shattering end.
Of endless different emotions, humiliation was the one that could tear you apart.
She ran through what had happened again. Her, in the shower, the water pounding down. Gentry’s claim that he hadn’t burst in, he’d only knocked at the door she’d had trouble closing and locking. Well, he hadn’t knocked. He’d banged—but he probably had knocked, first, and she hadn’t answered—and hadn’t much the same thing happened downstairs, when the Newfoundland had burst through that door?
OK.
The probability was that she’d over-reacted. Gentry had seen her in the raw. So what? Bodies were bodies. She had breasts, hips, all the parts every woman had, and it wasn’t as if she’d never been looked at by a man before…
But not like he’d looked at her.
He’d been as shocked by the unexpected encounter as she’d been—and then she’d seen his shock turn to something else. Desire. Need. Hunger.
Lissa gave herself a quick mental shake.
Gentry was trying to get to his feet. He had both hands flat on the floor, but he couldn’t stand, not without some sort of leverage.
She grabbed the crutch and held it toward him.
“Here. Use—”
The Newf shoved his big body between them, looked up at Lissa and gave a soft but distinct growl.
Et tu, Brute? she thought, but what the hell, the dog was his, and good dogs were loyal. Besides, the dog made all the difference.
Gentry grunted, worked his fingers through the dog’s collar and slowly got to his feet. The expression on his face was thunderous, but she stood her ground and offered him the crutch again. He snatched it from her and jammed it under his arm.
“Mr. Gentry,” she said, “I, uh, I may have misinterpreted your actions. I mean—”
“I told you my men would want supper at six.”
His voice was flat. Cold. It had the sharpness of a boning knife.
“I know. It’s just that… Look, about what just happened—”
“If you know, then what were you doing sashaying around naked?”
He saw her face flush. It was like watching the sun sweep across a pale sky.
She’d been behind a closed door. Naked was her business, not his. And she hadn’t been sashaying. He wasn’t even sure what the word meant.
The only certainty was that she’d slugged him. And it had been a slug to be proud of. It was just too bad it had taken his legs, what passed for his legs, out from under him.
That wasn’t what a man wanted. Getting dumped ass over teakettle by a gorgeous, naked woman—
“Here’s news that’s bound to shock you,” she said, her chin lifted, her eyes flashing, the color in her cheeks now a deep rose. “Most people are naked when they get out of the shower. And I wasn’t sashaying. Besides, no matter what I was or wasn’t doing, nothing gave you the right to beat down the door and—”
“I didn’t beat down anything! This miserable old house is falling apart. Things collapse if you breathe on them.” Nick narrowed his eyes. “And I wouldn’t have had to come up here at all if you’d been doing your job.”
“My job? My job?”
She blew a still-wet curl back from her eyes. Despite his anger, his chagrin at not being the man he’d once been, it was hard not to notice that she had beautiful hair, a dozen different shades of gold, even something he’d call champagne.
“I do not work for you, Mr. Gentry. Please keep that in mind.”
“You do work for me, Ms. Wilde.”
“I most certainly do not! Tomorrow, first thing—”
“But it isn’t tomorrow. Not yet. And you have a meal to cook—or did you think I wouldn’t hold you to that commitment?”
So much for feeling sorry she’d embarrassed him.
“I said I’d prepare supper,” she said coldly. “And I will.”
“When? At midnight?”
“You said your men eat at six.”
Nick raised one dark eyebrow. “And?”
“And, what? I don’t need more than an hour to make a meal.”
&nb
sp; Her chin rose another notch. She took a step toward him; the enormous robe slipped off her right shoulder, exposing pale skin and a couple of errant drops of water before she righted it.
Damn.
What a time for a man’s libido to decide to come back on line.
Nick shifted the crutch, hoped it would provide cover for his third erection of the afternoon—which just happened to be the third in the months since the accident.
“Your sex drive will come back,” one of his doctors had told him. Not that he’d asked, but the guy had read between the lines.
Yes, but what good was a rampant libido when it involved a woman with all the charm of a badger?
“Trust me, Mr. Gentry. Supper will be ready at six. Sharp.”
Nick checked his watch, looked at Lissa and flashed a grim smile.
“You must be one hell of a cook if you can have a meal on the table in less than fifteen minutes.”
“What are you talking about?” She swung away, marched to the nightstand beside the bed, snatched up her watch and strode toward him. “Evidently, you’re as bad as telling the time as you are at knocking on doors. Take a look. It’s not even five o’clock.”
A smug smile curved his mouth. “This is Montana, Duchess.”
“I hate that name! And what’s that supposed to mean, anyway?”
“It’s a little matter of time zones. Mountain time versus Pacific time.” The smirk faded. “It’s going on five in California, Ms. Wilde,” he said, with heavy emphasis on the Ms. “But it’s going on six here.”
Her eyes rounded. Her mouth fell open. He thought about what it would be like to close the couple of feet between them, bend his head and capture that mouth with his. A stupid thought, though, because he wasn’t a kid and he knew that men and women didn’t stop at kisses.
Kisses, real ones, the kind he wanted from her, led to bed. And bed was not a place he could afford to go.
Not with Lissa Wilde.
CHAPTER SIX
Sometimes, life was like a really bad riddle, the kind Lissa’s brothers had tortured her with when she was little.
Why is the finger on that statue of Davy Crockett eleven inches long?
Because if it was twelve inches it would be a foot.
When is a door not a door?
When it’s ajar.