Hot Winter Nights

by Jill Shalvis

  “Is it worse than dying?” Archer asked mildly.

  Shit. Lucas went back upstairs. He needed a shower, fresh clothes, and a clear head before he faced Molly, as well as a good story because apparently he couldn’t tell her the truth. He hoped to hell that a long hot shower would clear his brain enough to come up with something believable, because something else Molly was—sharp as they came. He stalked through his bedroom, hit the switch on the wall and froze.

  The brunette was still in his bed.

  At the bright light flooding the room, she gasped and sat straight up, clutching the sheet to her chin, her hair a wild cloud around her face.

  And not a stranger’s face either.

  Molly’s face.

  Molly was in his bed and his first thought was oh shit. His second thought tumbled right on the heels of that—he was going to die today after all, slowly and painfully.

  Chapter 2

  #TheyDontKnowThatWeKnowTheyKnow

  Molly Malone didn’t have a lot of experience at the whole morning-after scenario. She wasn’t big on going out much, mostly because all she wanted to do after a long day of work was take off her work clothes, chill, and not get dressed up and go out on some date with a guy who thought that by date three he should get laid.

  Last night had been different for several reasons, one of which happened to be standing at the foot of the bed, his short, silky dark hair tousled; scowl on his very hot, unshaven face; hands on his lean hips. He wore rumpled cargoes and the same black T-shirt he’d worn last night, the one that hugged all his sinewy strength and could make a woman’s mouth water.

  But not hers. Instead she lifted her chin into his terse silence. Lucas was a man of few words. He could say more with an annoyed exhale than anyone she knew. “What?” she asked.

  “I’m . . . confused.”

  Probably not an easy admission for a guy who always knew what to do or say. But she had to admit, seeing him a little off his axis, something she’d bet the tough, hardened investigator rarely allowed anyone else to see, made her want to mess with him. Yes, sometimes she liked to live dangerously. “And you’re confused about . . . ?”

  His warm, deep brown eyes met hers, but he didn’t answer.

  “You didn’t seem confused last night,” she said with more bravado than she felt.

  He scowled. But more interestingly, he also paled. Which, considering he’d gotten his sexy bronzed skin tone from his Brazilian mother, was quite the feat.

  “Maybe you should tell me what happened last night,” he said.

  “You first. What do you remember?”

  “We were at the pub.” He frowned. “And then I woke in bed with you.”

  Oh boy. After one of Hunt’s longtime clients had shown up and had lifted his glass with “this one’s for Lucas, who saved my ass and my life,” he’d tossed back his drink, clearly expecting Lucas to do the same.

  Which he had.

  Shortly after that, Lucas’s constant sharp edge had softened, though she’d been the only one to notice. To make sure he got upstairs to his place safe and sound, she’d taken him herself. He’d been both a smartass and a pain in her ass as she’d bossed him to bed, asking if she’d been mean Nurse Ratchet in another life.

  It’d been a direct hit because she’d played the hard-ass nurse nearly all of her life to her dad. She’d had to.

  “Molly,” he said tightly now, clearly out of patience.

  Fine. He wanted to know what had happened. A recap might be fun. “Well, for starters,” she said, “you told me you had a crush on me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Okay, fine, he hadn’t. And ouch. “You’re so sure about that?” she asked, knowing he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. By the time she’d gotten him here, he’d been really out of it. Having never seen him anything less than 100 percent in control of himself and everything around him, she’d been worried about him.

  And had been ever since he’d gotten shot two weeks ago on the job, the memory of which still made her heart clutch. According to Archer and Joe, Lucas had continuously denied being anything but “fine,” but there’d been shadows in his eyes last night and a new hollowness that she recognized.

  Deeply buried pain.

  Being shot had brought back some bad memories for him and no one understood that more than she.

  Still standing at the foot of the bed, hands on hips, his expression dialed to Not Happy, he blew out a breath. “Tell me what else.”

  She’d grown up in a house made of testosterone. It’d been just her dad, her brother, and herself, and she’d learned early on how to handle the male psyche. Her best strategy had always involved humor. “I don’t know if I should say. You look ready to have a mantrum.”

  He scowled. “What the hell’s a mantrum?”

  “It’s like a tantrum, only worse because a grown-ass man is having it.” She smiled.

  He did not. The muscles in his jaw ticked. “I don’t have mantrums. I want to know exactly what I said.” He paused. “And did.”

  So he really didn’t remember, which was both a disappointment and an opportunity. “You said, and I quote . . .” She lowered her voice to imitate his low base tone. “‘I’m gonna rock your world, baby.’”

  He closed his eyes and muttered something about being a dead man walking . . .

  But she couldn’t help noticing he didn’t doubt that he’d come onto her. Interesting. Maybe even . . . thrilling. Not that it changed a thing. She wasn’t interested in him, period. To be interested meant putting herself out there and being willing to fall. And to do those things, she had to be vulnerable.

  Not going to happen. Not ever again.

  Nope, at the ripe old age of nearly twenty-eight, she was done, thank you very much. Not that this stopped her from starting to feel a little bit insulted at Lucas’s attitude. “I’m not sure I see what the problem is,” she said.

  “Are you kidding me?” His voice was morning scratchy and sexy as hell, damn him. She could tell he hadn’t had any caffeine yet today.

  And neither had she. And worse, she’d not taken off her makeup the night before out of worry and stress over the man currently glaring at her, so she probably looked like a raccoon.

  A raccoon with really bad morning bed head.

  Ignoring him, she tossed back the bedding. And it was some really great bedding too. She’d need a raise from Archer before she could afford anything close to this quality.

  Lucas seemed to suddenly choke on his own tongue, prompting her to look down at herself. Not wanting to sleep in her one and only party dress, she’d . . . borrowed one of his T-shirts last night. It hit her at mid-thigh and was softer than any T-shirt she’d ever had and the truth was, he wasn’t going to get it back.

  “Is that my shirt?” he asked.

  “Yes.” The funny thing was that on the job, Lucas was the steady, unflappable, stoic one. Nothing got to him, nothing penetrated. He was “it’s all good” Lucas Knight. But he wasn’t all good now. He thought they’d slept together and though he was doing a great job at hiding it, he was freaking out.

  Craning his neck, he eyed the chair, and her dress on it. Her heels lay haphazardly on the floor, her champagne lace bra on top of them. Closing his eyes, he ran a hand over his scruffy jaw. “Just shoot me now.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t remember any of it?”

  He paused, dropped his hand and opened his eyes on hers. “Just how much of ‘it’ was there?”

  “Wow,” she said in her best pissy tone. She had no idea what she thought she was doing poking the bear like this, but his clear unhappiness at the thought of them being together felt like an insult.

  “Just, please God, tell me it was all consensual,” he said, not playing. In fact, he was more serious than she’d ever seen him.

  Well, if he was going to go all hero-like on her . . . She sighed. “Of course the evening was entirely consensual.”

  He nodded and sank to the chair holdi
ng her dress.

  “Hey,” she said, adding temper to insulted. “I didn’t say it was bad.”

  “How about we say it didn’t happen at all?”

  Oh no. No way was she going to let him off the hook that easy. She arched a brow. “Or did it?” She desperately wanted to get off the bed and dressed, but here was the thing. In the mornings, her right leg was particularly unaccommodating. Numb from her knee to the top of her thigh, it always took her a long few minutes to stand up first thing. And a cane, which she kept by her bed and hated more than green vegetables, and she hated green vegetables a lot. The whole thing involved a lot of whimpering and gasping with pain as she stretched and worked and coaxed the leg into working.

  But hell if she’d do that with an audience. Pride before the fall and all that. “I think I hear your cell buzzing from the other room,” she said.

  “Shit.” He turned to the door, but not before pointing at her. “Don’t move.”

  Right. The minute he was gone, she slid out of the bed. Her right leg predictably didn’t hold and she dropped to her knees. “Dammit,” she whispered as nerve pain shot through her thigh in a series of bolt lightning blasts. “Dammit . . .” She grimaced through the cramp and slowly rose, breathing through the pain in short little pants as she’d learned to do.

  “My phone wasn’t ringing—” Lucas broke off and then he was there, right there, steadying her with hands on her hips. “You okay?”

  “Yes!” She shoved his hands away and tried to push his big body back too, but he was an immovable tree when he wanted to be and he stayed right here, supporting her until, finally dammit, she got her leg beneath her. She probably would have even relented and used her cane if it’d been here, not that she intended to admit it. “I’ve got this,” she muttered, stepping free, incredibly aware of how little she was wearing and how much he was.

  And worse, the look in his eyes didn’t have anything to do with sexy times, but pity. “I said I’m fine.”

  He lifted his hands. “I heard you, loud and clear.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “Hard to when you’re pale from pain,” he said. “Sit down.”

  “No.”

  “Molly,” he said in that frustrated voice again. But then he hit her with a zinger she didn’t see coming. “Please,” he said quietly.

  Well, hell. She sat at the foot of the bed, and the fact that she did it just before her leg gave out again was her own little secret.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said very seriously.

  “I’m not going to rate your performance last night.”

  “That’s not—” He paused, his eyes sharpened. “Wait. What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So you’re saying I did suck.”

  She had to laugh. “Well, if you can’t remember it, how good could it really have been, right?”

  She was only teasing of course, but he frowned like the possibility that he hadn’t been heart-stoppingly amazing had never crossed his mind until that very moment. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked.

  Still looking distracted, he shook his head. “Two elves were waiting on you at the office this morning.”

  She raised a brow. “Are you still drunk?”

  “No, really. It was your neighbor and a friend. They were talking about their bad Santa.”

  “Mrs. Berkowitz,” she said, remembering. “She’s been working at a small pop-up Christmas village in Soma and thinks there’s something nefarious going on.”

  “You can’t take this case on, Molly. You’ve got to turn her down.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I know you didn’t just tell me what to do. Even if we did sleep together.”

  She meant him to react to that and he did, with a grimace. “Okay, first, this”—he waggled a finger between them—“didn’t happen.”

  “And you’re so sure about that, are you?” she asked.

  Assuming by the way his mouth opened and then closed, he wasn’t sure of anything right about now. Now that they were both irritated, she got up again and dammit. Dammit, her leg still hurt. She paused, but didn’t see any way around letting him see her limp over to her clothes.

  But for the record, she hated it.

  Incredibly aware of his quiet gaze on her as she moved, she didn’t look at him. This was why she didn’t do morning afters. Well that and morning breath.

  “Do you wake up like this every morning?” he asked quietly.

  “No. I usually wake up with a good attitude, but then idiots happen.”

  “I meant your leg,” he said, ignoring her outburst. “You’re hurting.”

  She sighed. Honestly, she was always hurting. “I’m fine.” She stepped into her dress and pulled it up under his T-shirt, working like a trapeze artist to not flash him as she got it into place. Leaving his T-shirt on—she was so keeping it—she moved to the door. “Gotta go.”

  “Wait.” He caught her at the door. “About last night.”

  “I know. You don’t want it broadcasted blah blah.”

  “Whatever happened last night,” he said, eyes very intense. “It can’t happen again.”

  Something deep inside her quivered in . . . disappointment? And here was the thing. She knew what had happened last night. Nothing. But it still made her mad, so she snorted. “Don’t worry. With lines like ‘I’m gonna rock your world, baby,’ it most definitely won’t happen again.”

  He started to nod, but stopped. Winced. “Did I—Shit.” He stared down at his work boots for a moment before meeting her gaze again, his disarmingly concerned. “I made it good for you, right?”

  Her every single erogenous zone got a little wiggly at the thought, which annoyed the hell out of her. She shrugged.

  He looked horrified. “I didn’t?”

  The truth was, if he set his mind to it, she had no doubt he could make it good for her without even trying. Not that he was going to ever get the chance. Yes he was smart, resourceful, confident, and incredibly quick-witted. On the job, he was doggedly aggressive with razor sharp instincts that rarely failed him, things that no doubt suited him in bed as well—and the women lucky enough to be there with him. All very sexy, attractive traits in a man . . . for a normal woman.

  But she wasn’t normal. So she gave him one last vague smile and reached for the door.

  He put a hand flat on the wood, holding it closed.

  “Move,” she said.

  “You’re still wearing my shirt.”

  And if she wore it to work, everyone would know they spent the night together. She yanked it off, threw it at him and tugged open the door.

  “Molly.”

  There was a touch of exasperation in his voice, and also possibly regret. Since both made her want to punch him, she kept going.

  “The elves,” he said to her back. “The bad Santa case. Tell me you’re not taking it on.”

  “I can’t tell you that, since I’m no longer talking to you.” She made her way down the stairs and to the courtyard, walking past the pet shop, the office supply shop, and the new day spa, heading right for The Canvas Shop. One of the people who worked there, Sadie, had given Molly her one and only tattoo, and a friendship had been born of the experience.

  Sadie waved at her. She wasn’t alone. Ivy was with her. Ivy operated the taco truck on the street along the back of the building. Like Molly, Ivy sometimes ducked into The Canvas Shop for some calm sanity, which Sadie always provided along with a side of sarcasm.

  Both women had become new friends even if it felt like they’d known each other forever.

  “How’s things?” Molly asked.

  “Given that it’s a work day . . .” Ivy shrugged. She hopped down off of the counter and headed to the door. “Try to have a good one!” she called back before vanishing.

  “And you?” Molly asked Sadie.

  Sadie gazed at the shop’s small Christmas tree, under which were a nice stack of wrapped
presents, and sighed. “Well, none of the gifts with my name on them have barked yet, which is disappointing . . .” She took in Molly’s appearance and her eyes widened. “Whoa. Wait a minute. You were wearing those same clothes when I last saw you. Yesterday. Am I witnessing the rarest of creatures, Molly Malone making the never before seen Morning Walk of Shame?”

  Molly grimaced.

  And Sadie grinned. “Yay, Christmas came early for me. Did all your parts still remember how to work?”

  “Okay, it’s not what it looks like.”

  “Bummer,” Sadie said.

  “Can I borrow your shower?”

  “Absolutely,” Sadie said, nodding so that her jet black hair, streaked with purple, flew around her face. “And in exchange for the deets, I’ll even throw in some clothes.”

  This was a good deal because Sadie had amazing clothes. Today she was in a pretty flowy top, skintight jeans, and some seriously kickass ankle boots that would have had Molly drooling if she wasn’t already completely thrown over the night and morning she’d just had. “No deets,” she said firmly. “But I’ll buy you a coffee and muffin from the coffee shop on my first break if you have Advil.”

  Sadie pulled a small bottle from her purse. “Welcome to adulthood, where having Home Advil and Purse Advil is everything. Who was he?”

  “Who?”

  Sadie rolled her eyes and Molly sighed. “I’m not telling.”

  Sadie cocked her head and studied her. “Lucas.”

  “What the actual hell,” Molly said.

  Sadie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Are you serious? I’m right?” She laughed with sheer delight. “Nice choice,” she said approvingly.

  “No. No, he’s not a ‘nice’ choice, or any choice,” Molly said. “He’s . . .”

  “Hot?” Sadie inquired.

  Well, okay, yes.

  “Perfect?” Sadie asked.

  “No,” Molly said quickly. “Not perfect.”

  “Good,” Sadie said. “‘The One’ should never be perfect.”

  “And he’s not The One either,” Molly said. “That’s absurd.” For many, many reasons, not the least being that while Lucas was incredibly serious on the job, off the job he was . . . not. He joked around nonstop and women tended to flock to that charming flirt thing he had down pat. But not her.