“Don’t you dare touch me!” She flung her knee up.
He spun sideways in an automatic reflex to protect his balls, and ended up pinning her against the wall. It happened so fast, and suddenly his nose was full of her scent, her soft hair tickled his mouth, and her lithe curves were pressed against the full length of his body.
She was trembling. Scared of him.
He let go instantly and backed away, horrified. “Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I swear.”
She stared at him, panting. She put one hand over her mouth, then pressed both hands against the hectic blush that stained her sharp cheekbones. He prayed for her not to look down. Tried to hold her gaze like a tractor beam, willing her, don’t look down, don’t look—
She looked down. He was busted. Heat surged up into his face.
“Holy cripes,” she whispered. “You freak.”
“I’m sorry.” He held up his hands. “I didn’t mean to grope you. I don’t know what got into me.”
Her gaze flicked back down to his crotch, and she snorted. “Oh, I think I could maybe take a wild guess.”
He floundered around in his mind for a justification for his bizarre behavior, and found none. “I just didn’t want you to, uh, go away mad.”
She shook with a burst of dry laughter. “Smooth, McCloud. Very smooth. I’ve got a little social tip for you. Remember to take your anti-psychotic meds on schedule from now on, OK?”
The glass window with McCloud Martial Arts Academy stenciled on it rattled in the door frame with the force of her parting slam.
Chapter
3
Mikey was going to make her pay for leaving him at the pet hotel. The extent of his hurt and outrage was evident in the rigidity of his small body as she carried him up the steps to her porch. She braced herself against sick dread as she peeked into the shadows to make sure that something horrible wasn’t draped over her doormat.
Nothing today. Snakey the Sicko Maniac was taking the day off.
Air came slowly back into her lungs as she unlocked the door. She flipped on the urban blight light, a naked dangling bulb specifically designed to highlight water damage and plaster cracks, to say nothing of undereye circles and assorted facial blemishes. She loathed the thing, but her nice lamps had been smashed in the break-in. She was stuck with the urban blight light till she got her act together. Though the way her life was going, that day seemed to get more distant all the time.
She set Mikey gently on the floor. He shook himself and sniffed around with remote puzzlement, as if to say, What is this place? I scarcely remember it…or you. He turned his back on her and limped, slowly and pitifully, towards the kitchen.
Of course, he’d always limped, since the day she’d found him. She’d found him half-dead on the side of the road seven months ago, after her flight from California had finally landed her in Seattle. A car had fractured his back legs. The vet had recommended putting him down immediately, but she’d never been known for her propensity for following sensible advice. She’d nursed him through it with her own intuitive version of dog physical therapy, taking on the task of saving Mikey as if he were a symbol of everything in life worth saving. And if she pulled it off, things would eventually be OK for her again, too.
Silly and superstitious, maybe, but it didn’t matter, since Mikey the Wonder Mutt was his own reward. Smart, devoted, and the most shameless manipulator she’d ever known. His hitching gait made her heart hurt. He was probably playing it up to make her feel bad, but she knew from experience that aches and pains were worse when you felt depressed and abandoned. Why should it be any different for Mikey?
Besides, if he was faking it, she forgave him the ploy. He was a little dog. Old, too, in dog years. He had to use what weapons were available to him. Now there was a concept she could relate to.
She peeled off her clammy workout gear as she trailed into the kitchen after Mikey, and ran a basin full of water with a capful of laundry soap. Mikey climbed into his basket, did his compulsive three and a half turns, and flopped down with a dejected sigh.
She let out a dejected sigh herself as she dunked her spandex into the suds. A quickie shower in her mildewy bathroom was next, after which some sloppy sweatpants, her big Superman T-shirt, and she felt almost human. She rummaged for her comb in the basket on her dresser. Her fingers closed around the heavy gold snake pendant.
She pulled the thing out and tried to stare down the sense of dread it gave her. She wished the thief had taken this instead of her laptop. It was worth more money, and she would have been grateful to be rid of it. She should pawn the nasty thing. The money would be tainted, but she’d get over it. Vet bills had to be paid somehow.
She knew why she hung onto it, though she didn’t like to admit it. The pendant was the only key she had to the nightmare puzzle her life had become. It was like a magical talisman. If she got rid of it, she might be trapped in this lonesome gray nowhere forever. No way out.
Whoops, don’t go there. She couldn’t let herself think that way, even briefly. The only way to keep her sanity was to stay focused on the present moment. Breathing in, breathing out, and grateful to be alive.
She headed into the kitchen and hunkered down next to Mikey’s basket, fully prepared to grovel. He’d curled up into a ball, graying muzzle buried between his paws. Eyes tight shut. No wags, no licks, no yips, no friendly interaction of any kind. It was the doggie deep freeze.
“Hey. Mikey. Don’t you want some dinner?” she asked.
Mikey was far above such obvious bribery. He didn’t twitch so much as a whisker. Margot got up and rummaged through the cupboard for the dog treats. She waved one in front of his nose.
He opened one slitted eye and gave her his patented “as if ” look.
“This isn’t fair,” she told him. “I’m leaving you at that kennel to protect you from Snakey, you ungrateful little snot. I can’t afford it, either. I’m still in hock to the vet for your last fight. That dog was ten times your size, but did you think about that before you got mouthy?”
Mikey indicated with a snuffling grunt that dogs will be dogs, and she could stick her budget problems where the sun didn’t shine.
“Besides, you owe me,” she reminded him. “You’d be roadkill if it weren’t for me, fur-face.”
No go. Mikey wasn’t coming down off his high horse tonight.
Margot sagged down next to his basket and concentrated on petting him the way he liked best, a gentle stroke from brow to nape with an extra against-the-grain rub around the ears on the upswing. He allowed her touch, but refused to respond to it. She ran her fingers through his silky hair, careful to avoid the shaved spots around his stitches. A relic from his run-in with a bad-ass stray in the park.
Mikey was a scrappy little guy. She admired that about him, even when it cost her money. He didn’t know when to shut his big mouth. A lot like yours truly, so it’s not like she could point fingers.
She was whipped, but she really should work on her web design business, or plod away at her private amateur murder investigation.
The thought zipped through her mind before she remembered that she no longer had her laptop. The rat bastard thief had it now.
Gah. She was squeezed dry tonight anyhow. Nothing left but pulp. Up before dawn to get Mikey to the pet hotel before her waitressing shift, then she schlepped downtown to do a lunchtime body sculpting class and aerobics class at a health club that catered to corporate types, and then the evening classes at Women’s Wellness. She was woozy, too, after a week on the new crash diet. The kennel fees and vet bills had bitten deep into her already lean grocery budget.
And yet, her butt still hadn’t gotten any smaller. Go figure.
Time to start foraging. It took character and a sense of humor to make a meal out of what was left in her kitchen. She heaved herself to her feet and opened the cupboard. Crumbs in the bottom of the cornflakes box. Whatever she might still be able to scrape out of the Skippy’s jar. There was a
third of a bag of peeled baby carrots in the fridge, and she was hungry enough to actually eat them tonight, not just tell herself that she should. God, it would be great to just pick up the phone and order in something wickedly high-caloric and delicious.
That made her think about Davy McCloud’s offer of Mexican food. A whoosh of something potent and scary shivered up her spine.
She’d been checking the guy out ever since she’d started teaching at Women’s Wellness. Your typical stern, taciturn Nordic warrior type; studly, gorgeous and as cold as ice. Apparently uninterested in her, but oh, so fascinating. The lure of the unattainable, and all that crap.
She stared at the black pepper and the teabags while the images played through her mind; McCloud’s powerful body moving over the tatami with the swift, lethal grace of a thrown spear. He was so well-proportioned, you didn’t notice how huge he was until he was right in your face—and then, whoopsy daisy, it was too late.
He was way too big for her, though. Big guys made her nervous. On those rare occasions that she did indulge her baser instincts—that would be way back in prehistory when she still had the nerve—she picked mellow, scrawny guys who made her laugh. Guys she could put into a hammerlock, if need be. Craig had fit into that category.
Her mind shied away from poor Craig. She focused her attention back on the far more appealing image of Davy McCloud’s half-naked body. Nobody could put McCloud into a hammerlock. She had a tough time imagining him laughing, either. The thought of those piercing eyes made heat rush into her face—and various other parts of her body.
Strange, to have such a raw sexual reaction to a guy she barely knew. She’d been off men for months. Waking up naked and bewildered in a strange hotel room after witnessing a brutal murder could do that to a girl. Real libido crusher. Turned those hormones off like a faucet.
And God, she would really, really rather not think about that tonight, or she’d start feeling slimed, and have to take another shower.
A hot, juicy sexual fantasy starring Davy McCloud and her trusty vibrator would be a fab distraction. He was pure fantasy, though, and she’d better not forget it. With his angular face, his grim mouth, his hair cropped off into that sweat-stiffened brush cut, he looked almost military. Too severe for her. Once his hard-on was taken care of, she would drive a guy like that bonkers with her smart mouth.
Must be the old opposites-attract cliché. His attitude of rigid discipline and authority rubbed her the wrong way. Made her want to goad him. Like, hey, who died and made you boss of the universe, pal?
Then she’d strip him naked, rub him down with oil, knock him onto his back and ride him off into the sunset. At a hard gallop.
Whew. She opened the fridge, fished a carrot out of the bag and chomped it. Might as well give all that extra saliva an honest job to do.
She should cut herself some slack. Lusting over McCloud was a lot more fun than fretting about Mikey’s big, hurt eyes when she left him at the money-sucking pet hotel, or feeling like she was going to urp with dread every time she peered into the shadows of her own porch. It was better than worrying about Snakey lying in wait for her in the dark. Or obsessing about what had happened to poor Craig and Mandi.
She grabbed the Skippy’s jar and the bag of carrots and flopped down next to Mikey’s basket, curling up tight around the cold, sick ache in her belly. Sometimes curling up helped. A little bit, anyway.
She ran a carrot around the rim of the jar and crunched it with grim determination. She needed a new brillant scheme, but Snakey was hogging all the RAM in her brain. There wasn’t enough room left on the hard drive to run the kapow! knock-your-socks-off creative solutions program. She’d just started to drag herself out of this tar pit a few weeks ago, when she’d landed a job in a new graphics design firm in Belltown. The fake references she’d bought for her new identity had eaten up months of meager savings, but it had seemed well worth it at the time.
It had lasted exactly ten glorious days before the studio had burned to the ground. It was like she was cursed.
Screw this. She was going to hunt down this joker who was playing tricks on her, and rip his limbs and any other loose appendages off his body. Then she would spring Mikey from the joint, clear her name, and get her act definitively together. The details were fuzzy, but that was the plan. Having a plan was a good first step, right? Right.
She stared at the phone, tempted for the gazillionth time to call Jenny, or Christine or Pia, her best girlfriends from her old life. Just to let them know she was alive, and that she missed them.
Fear and guilt squelched the impulse. She couldn’t put her friends in danger, after what had happened to Craig and Mandi. Loneliness was not a good enough excuse. No matter how awful it got.
She wished she could talk to Mom. Mom had been gone for eight years now, almost nine, carried off by lung cancer. Maybe she was floating around in the ether somewhere, keeping an eye on her luckless, clueless daughter. A vaguely comforting thought. If a wistful one.
She must have been insane to go over to McCloud’s gym today. Desperate to unload at least a highly edited chunk of her tale of woe onto someone who wasn’t a dog. Mikey was a good listener, but not much for feedback. The kickboxing teacher, Sean—she could hardly believe that laughing, dimpled clown of a guy was the scarily gorgeous Davy McCloud’s brother—had waved aside the no-money issue like it was no big deal. Besides, she’d been trolling for an excuse to get a good long look at Davy McCloud up close. Food for fantasy. She needed it bad. The nights were long when a girl was scared to go to sleep.
It was a damn shame he was so big. Couple of cans short of a six-pack, too. The bizarre things he said. Dragon spirit, her big ol’ butt.
Mikey lifted his head to growl. Every hair on Margot’s body stood up. Then she heard the sharp, commanding raprap-rap, and the terror that had spiked inside her eased down, leaving her wobbly.
Snakey would never knock like that. In fact, Snakey wouldn’t knock at all. He would slither through a sewer pipe like a foul vapor. Slide out the bathroom drain with a wet-sounding pop.
Oh, ick. Nice job, lame brain. Now she’d grossed herself out.
Rat-tat-tat, there it came again, crisp and businesslike. Mikey clambered out of his basket, barking. Margot looked down at herself as she followed him towards the front door. Boobs flying wild and free under the Superman T-shirt. Hair damp and snarled and all over the place. Her face, naked of all cosmetic enhancers or concealers, left to fend bravely for itself in the unforgiving urban blight light.
She couldn’t be more at a disadvantage if she’d deliberately tried.
Mikey’s toenails skittered on the linoleum, his limp forgotten. Margot lunged for her comb in the bedroom and dragged it through her hair as she peeked through the peephole. Yep. Him. Her heart went ka-thud. She peered out again, studying the sculpted lines of his jaw, that grim but incredibly sexy mouth. The grooves around it were evidence that he knew how to smile. Maybe he only did it in the dark when no one was around. Emotionally blocked, no doubt. Strong, silent types usually proved to be dull, stolid types, in her experience.
She’d told him to get lost. He was too big, too strange, too serious for her. Too curious, too. She couldn’t trust him with her bizarre story.
She should be furious. She was going to have to fake it. That took energy, and where the hell was she going to find it, under a rock?
Rat-tat-tat-tat. Would you listen to that, his exalted Highness was getting impatient. That gave her the boost she needed to yank the door open and glare balefully out at him. “I said no, buddy.”
Davy looked around her porch. “Is this where you found the dog?”
Her fake anger evaporated into nothing. She gulped, and nodded.
“Any other incidents?”
There was a brisk, businesslike tone in his voice, as if he’d flipped a switch and a whole big mechanism was starting to crunch and grind.
“Hey.” She stuck her hand through the door and waved it in front of his
face. “Did you hear what I said? Thanks, but no thanks. And how did you find me, anyhow? I’m not listed in the—oh. My. God.”
He held up a big paper bag. Fragrant steam rose from it.
“Enchiladas,” he said. “Tamales. Chile rellenos. Barbecued pork tacos. Chicken in mole sauce. Shrimp in butter and garlic. And…”—he lifted his other hand—“a six-pack of ice cold Dos Equis.”
She clutched the doorjamb. The scent of rich, spicy food almost made her faint. But damn, she should have at least as much pride as her own dog. Mikey never compromised his principles for food.
She swallowed, hard. “Uh…”
Not quite a smile, just a teasing hint of one, changed the landscape of his lean face. “If you blow me off, I’ll toss it into the Dumpster while you watch,” he warned. “Just to spite you.”
“That’s sick and wrong,” she told him.
“Yeah, sure. I was counting on getting here before you had dinner. I know how I feel about dinner after teaching two classes in a row.”
“Five, actually,” she said.
His eyes widened. “Five? Wow. Intense.”
“Two gyms,” she admitted. “Five classes. Some days I do more. Hush up, Mikey. He’s got Mexican. Don’t bite him till we get some.”
Mikey rose onto his hind legs and sniffed at the bag. He smelled McCloud’s shoes, his ankles, and yipped a shrill order.
“Mikey just invited you in,” Margot said. “He likes shrimp.”
A slow grin spread over his face, activating a bunch of gorgeous smile lines and a startling flash of heated sensuality that sucked the air right out of her lungs. “Mikey’s invitation isn’t enough. I want yours.”
She forced herself to drag in some air. She was outmaneuvered.
“Oh, come on in, already,” she grumbled.
Faris’s stomach rolled with anxiety as the door closed behind McCloud. He forced himself to exhale, to think clearly. He had to be patient, to remember how desperate she was, how defenseless and alone. Marcus had ordered him to search her house and tap her phone to monitor who she was in contact with, and so far, the answer had been no one. She’d been all alone in her dilapidated little rented house on Capitol Hill, waiting for him to complete her. Until tonight.
Out of Control Page 3