“Nice meeting you, Ella,” she called over Franklin’s shoulder before they made their way down the long office hallway to a conference room.
Ella turned on her heel and headed for the elevator, pressing the button while her mind raced. Why was Marina so interested in Crosby’s whereabouts if they weren’t involved, and why had Harry lied about him being out of the country instead of just telling her he’d had an accident?
Moreover, why did Marina Preston need someone to protect her?
Things to ponder.
* * * *
“Harry?” Morton barked into the phone, peering into the reception area from the glass windows surrounding his office. He yanked the blinds down with a harsh tug.
There was a slight pause before Harry asked, “Something wrong?”
“Goddamn it, Harry, everything’s wrong! Look, we need to figure this out, and I mean soon. Ella’s no idiot, and it won’t be long before she starts snooping around now that she has a name.”
Morton virtually heard Harry’s blood drain from his face. “She knows about Marina?”
His grip tightened on the phone. “She just met her right outside my door. What the hell were you thinking, bringing her here to the office? All meetings are to be taken at her townhouse.”
There was a shuffling noise, as though Harry were closing a door to keep their conversation private. He cleared his throat. “She insisted, Morton. Insisted she come to the office to take the meeting. I think she was hoping to find Crosby even though I told her he was abroad. What was I supposed to do? Say no to the woman who holds the key to this damn mess?”
Morton clenched his jaw. “Well, we’re going to have much bigger trouble if Ella starts poking around, especially if Little continues to keep such a tight rein on Marina. At least when Crosby was here, we had a shot at keeping that scum of the earth out of this transaction. Now do me a favor, would you, Harry?”
“Anything, Mort. Anything.”
“Tell your secretary all calls from Marina Preston are to be redirected to me, and keep your big mouth shut!” He slammed the phone down, knocking over the engraved pen stand Ruthie had given him for Christmas.
Time was running out.
His contacts had tipped him off to some stirrings in the black market. If the tip he had on those potential foreign sales had anything to do with what Crosby had been investigating… Christ.
And if the merchandise really was what he’d been told…
He shuddered. No. He couldn’t go there. Wouldn’t.
It was unthinkable.
Chapter 4
“What are we watching again?”
“Hoarders,” Ella responded dryly, popping a piece of popcorn in her mouth and keeping her eyes trained on the TV. She was raw. Raw and agitated. Agitated because Crosby just couldn’t wear anything—any stupid thing—that didn’t look good on him. Not even her purple bathrobe with the splotches of ’70s flowers all over it. The color enhanced his dark hair and made his eyes a deeper green.
On her? Well, it just looked purple with white, splotchy flowers.
Dick.
As to the raw, that was due to the fact he just wouldn’t quit poking around. It would seem, even as an amnesiac, Crosby’s inner lawyer was lurking just beneath his forgetful surface. He’d asked her more questions today than a new-car buyer, and she’d responded with vague answers.
But what she really wanted to do was scream in his face, “I met your ho today, yo, and guess what? I like the bitch!”
He tucked the lapels of her robe under his chin and hunkered down on her deep brown sofa with the squishy, cushiony back. “Hoarders, huh?”
“Good times, right?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Crosby’s luscious mouth fall open again in clear horror when the TV flashed to a woman’s tiny apartment filled to the ceiling with useless items. “Did I watch stuff like this before I lost my memory?”
Squirming, Ella fought to keep the bitterness out of her tone and stick to only facts. “You never had time to watch anything but the occasional football game. You were always too busy working.”
As a result, she’d gotten good at amusing herself by watching marathons just like this while he’d burned the midnight oil. That he was now forced to watch with her was some kind of weird justice.
“Well, then. I can’t believe I didn’t stop and smell the Hoarders more often. Who’d want to miss this screaming freight train in favor of work?” he teased, nudging her with his elbow.
She inched to the right on the couch, pushing into the puffy arm until she was almost hanging over the side. The scent of Crosby alone was enough to drive a were-girl mad, but couple that with his long, thick thighs poking out from beneath her robe and it was just too much. Just his presence had her girly bits on fire with need. “Hoarding is a serious affliction.”
“Says Ella the Nurse.”
“So sayeth she.”
“So did you know me before I had this accident?” He wiped his luscious mouth with a paper napkin, smiling over it before balling it up and lobbing it at the coffee table.
“Hey! You know, there’s a garbage—”
“Can for that,” he finished for her—then caught her eyes, surprise in his return stare. His chin lifted. “I think you knew me before my accident. Did you?”
Ella forced her eyes back in the direction of the TV. They’d finished each other’s sentences often. Well, before there weren’t any sentences to finish because Crosby had become so uncommunicative. “Everyone knew you.”
“That’s not what I asked, Ella. I asked if you knew me.” He poked a teasing finger to her waist, walking them along her side and up to her shoulder.
One more time. One more time Crosby touched her, and she was going to jump right out of her skin. She stiffened. “I did.”
“Did you like me?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“I’m just wondering what kind of person I was. Was I a nice guy? Was I as charming and witty as I am now?”
Torture. If the pack had sawed off her fingers one at a time while they yanked out her teeth and dripped water down her throat, it couldn’t be worse than all the questions Crosby had suddenly begun to ask.
“What do you think? Do you think you were a nice guy?”
Crosby turned to face her with one of those disarming grins. “Again, you’re deflecting. I asked if you liked me.”
“You were nice enough.”
“Really?”
“Ish.”
Now his eyes, almost always so pleasant and rather vacant of much but amusement lately, went hawkish. “That was a hesitant ish. This werewolf thing makes it easy to pick up on changes of mood. Your mood changed when you answered.”
“That’s because you’ve asked me a million questions today and it’s like hanging out with a nosy fifth grader. Now let’s have some quiet time. Intervention’s on next.”
“How about we talk about you? For instance,” he said, sliding closer to her on the couch and pointing to her cell phone. “I don’t think Hairofthedog is your OBGYN. I think you like him and he likes you. Will he be mad that we, you know—did it in the kitchen?”
Well, she wouldn’t know that because Hairofthedog had officially left Twitter-ville. Probably another cheating bastard. Why she’d even bothered to check if he’d tweeted her after a tweetless two weeks had to be chalked up to the fact that she was desperate for a good diversion.
One more night on the couch with Crosby, watching TV in this suddenly intimate setting after they’d had dinner and a bottle of wine, was going to have her running screaming from this house.
It was brutal to sit with a man you’d loved since you were twelve and he was eighteen and act as though you hadn’t spent long nights in bed together. Paid the bills together. Laughed together. It was brutal that the universe was taunting her with the man she’d been so head over heels for only to realize that, at any moment, it could all change.
And she refused to fall for this
cosmic joke.
“We didn’t do it-do it. We kissed. Period. That’s different than doing it.”
He barked a laugh. “Don’t I know it.”
“So stop making something out of nothing then,” Ella chastised.
Crosby planted a chin on her shoulder and blew in her ear. “So do you like this Hairofthedog? Like, like-like?”
She batted a hand at him with a frown, ignoring the hot shiver along her spine. “He’s funny, and we have great conversations. Or he was.” And he was sweet and thoughtful, and he always asked how her day had been.
“So you’ve met him?” he purred at her earlobe.
“Nope. He’s just a Twitter ID as of now. I’m sure the image I have of him in my head wouldn’t be the same as what he’s like in real life anyway. I was just passing the time.” She tilted her head up and away from his mouth, only to find he was now closer to her breast.
Crosby grinned, the light of the end table lamp making his teeth white in his tanned face. He laid his head against her breast and hunkered down. “So you’ve never seen his picture?”
“Nope. But he’s a terrific conversationalist and quick with a comeback,” she said on a gulp, palming his head to give it a shove away from her, even as her belly pooled with heat and she wanted to do nothing more than let him wrap his lips around her breast.
Crosby changed tactics and let his fingers drift to her thigh, caressing it through her legging. “Something all women of your ilk need.”
“My ilk?” she asked as her eyes began to drift closed and his fingers crept closer to the apex of her thighs.
“Yeah. The cranky, snarky ilk.”
Ella’s eyes snapped open. She flicked his hand away from her thigh. “I’m not cranky.”
Crosby shoved his hands under her and hauled her to his chest, making her arch her back. He smiled down at her. “You’re the crankiest person I know, Ella Stills.”
Her breasts pressed to his hard chest so enticingly, so achingly, she wanted to give in. So wanted to give in. Instead, she put her palms on his shoulders. “I’m the only person you know, Crosby Nash.”
Crosby let his nose press to hers, his teasing smile in place. “Yeahhhh,” he said. “And you always have that sourpuss on. But when you smile, everything changes. It’s golden. And apparently, when you were scrolling through the old tweets you shared with the Dog, he made you happy. So I say you let me make you happy. Because I’m a real guy, right here, right now, not some Twitter dude you don’t know thing one about.”
She tried to escape his arms but they were bands of steel. And okay, fine. She wasn’t really giving it her were-girl all. Shit.
Even as she said the words, she knew she was going to eat them. “That’s not going to happen, Crosby. Have you even considered the fact that you don’t remember anything about your life, and getting involved with someone is crazy at this point?”
“I’ve considered that you told me I didn’t have a girlfriend and that means I’m not a douchebag cheater. I’ve also considered that you’re apparently single and not just a saucy wench, but smokin’ hot. I’ve considered that I don’t understand how much about me could possibly change once I get my memory back. I’ll still be the same guy I am right now. Except I’ll have a job… Wait. I do have a job, don’t I?”
Ella writhed under his heavy weight, unable to squirm free. “You do. You’re a lawyer.” It couldn’t hurt to tell him that much.
“Oh, good,” he said, sagging against her and pressing his lips to her neck. “My self-esteem was precariously swaying like a rope off the side of a cliff. Do I have a place to live, too? Can I see it? Maybe it’ll jog some memories?”
He had a back room at his office since their separation. It might not be a good idea to share that much just yet. “You do, but that’s phase two of getting your memory back. It could be dangerous to push too hard. I’ve seen shifters with amnesia experience flashbacks that can be pretty brutal. It could hamper your recovery, and some, due to the trauma, never shift back at all. Which would suck, because you’d have to live outside all the time. You shed a lot in your were-form. There aren’t enough vacuum cleaners in the county to keep up with you. So I call, as your nurse, we wait on pushing too hard.”
Crosby lifted his chin as though he were considering her explanation, and then he shrugged. “Okay. I say you know best. Anyway, after I considered all these things I mentioned, I considered something else, too.” Crosby slid a hand between them, trailing his fingers over the waistband of her leggings.
Oh, will. Wherefore art thou? “What else did you consider?”
He cocked his head and wiggled his eyebrows. “May I be bold?”
She fought a sigh when he ran his hand along the curve of her hip, kneading the flesh, sending ripples of pleasure to every nerve in her body. “Like if I said no, that would stop you? It was you who never even asked if I wanted to be kissed at the kitchen sink, wasn’t it?”
Crosby let his lips hover above hers, mere inches away. “That was definitely me. Which leads me to the bold part of this conversation.”
Ella held her breath just after swallowing hard. God, she wanted him to kiss her. Rip her sweater off. Consume her.
He leaned in and touched his mouth to hers, but his eyes remained open, compelling her to look at him. “I can’t stop thinking about how hot your mouth is and how much I want to put mine on yours. You’ve been the visual subject of many a night spent wide awake while I think about it, in fact.”
Her breath hitched, making her chest heave against his. She couldn’t move or she’d break apart in a million pieces from the tension…the need. Her limbs froze in place in a bizarre war with the white-hot heat engulfing her nerve endings.
“Too much?” But Crosby didn’t give her a chance to respond. Instead, he ran his deft fingers over her thigh.
Her throat was dry and her heart crashed against her ribs. Yet here she was, arching against his hand, moaning her pleasure, letting her eyes slide closed when his tongue caressed the inside of her mouth. She had no self-control where Crosby was concerned.
When he touched her, nothing else mattered. Nothing but his hands on her, his tongue, slick and rasping against her desperate flesh.
Ella pressed upward, against Crosby’s chest and against her will, clenching her eyes shut and gritting her teeth just before she pulled herself away.
But Crosby drew her back in with his next words, possessive and so sinfully erotic, they made Ella dizzy. “Why do I feel like your mouth is mine, Ella? Like I’ve been here before?” he growled, his warm breath fanning her face.
The reminder of what they’d once shared made the sting in her heart sharpen and burrow deep.
The rigid heat of him seared through the thin material of her leggings, her breasts scraped against the robe he wore until she wanted to rip everything off. The sight of his bare chest beneath her purple bathrobe made her fingers itch to touch.
Crosby looked down at her as though everything between them was right on the tip of his tongue. The moment was vulnerable and fleeting, and she couldn’t bear his apparent confusion.
Reaching up, she cupped his face, and pressed a quick kiss to his lips before their reality sank back in.
When he looked at her like this, Ella could almost forget what had passed between them. In fact, it was the perfect way into her panties. But it would only make absolutely everything worse if she gave in.
Recrimination stabbed her in the gut before she forced herself to give his shoulders a shove. “We are not making out again, Crosby.”
His head popped up, his grin typically mischievous. “I hear your indignation and return it with a renewed sense of rage for my total impulsiveness.”
Ella grimaced, ashamed she was so damn weak. “You’re not at all sorry, Crosby Nash.”
“Why, no. No, I’m not. I don’t know why you have to be. It’s harshing my afterglow,” he teased, nuzzling her neck. “But I do have to use the facilities. So I’ll remind you to keep your n
ursing and all your recriminations to yourself. It’s bad for the patient’s self-esteem.” He plopped a kiss on her cheek, sat up and moved off her, rising to head toward the bathroom.
Ella closed her eyes, shutting out the image of a rounded, sculpted ass attached to thick thighs riddled with sinew. Pulling a pillow to her chest, she came to a decision.
She loved Crosby Nash—still.
But he couldn’t stay here anymore. Her self-respect and her will to keep her hands off him were fading. Had faded.
Maybe she could talk her BFF Lola into hiding him at her place, with her own occasional check-ins?
A loud crash startled her from her misery and had her bolting from the couch and running for the bathroom door.
She knocked on it with her knuckles. “Crosby? You okay in there? You’re holding up my nighttime ritual. If I don’t moisturize, I flake from all the shifting back and forth. Hazard of the were,” she joked, hoping to keep things light when she felt anything but.
No answer. She tried the doorknob, only to find it locked.
Concern welled in her while her stomach lurched. “Crosby!” Ella cocked her ear and still heard nothing. Yet her nose picked up the scent of fresh air—and blood.
Crosby’s blood.
Positioning her shoulder at the door, she rammed into the solid wood, wincing when pieces of it splintered and flew in the air in every direction.
She fell into the bathroom, tripped over her robe and crashed soundly into the edge of the pedestal sink, where something caught her eye. She looked up and flinched.
Just to the left of her sink was a window.
Was being the operative word.
Now it was just a hole in the wall.
A big, gaping hole with tufts of black wolf hair clinging to the sharp edges of broken glass.
Hoo boy.
Amnesiac werewolf on the loose.
Were there Amber Alerts for that?
Chapter 5
“Ella?” Max Adams howled into the wind.
Bad Case of Loving You Page 5