Emotionally, he decided, like a woman who didn’t want to be a target. “I’m off the IV painkillers,” he said, keeping it as casual as he could manage. “Onto the pills now, and on the road to recovery. The walker’s gone. Well, it’s here, in case, but I also have crutches, see? If it all works out, I could be out of here in three more days. And if you’ll hang on a second, we’ll address my workaholism. Look on the tray there first, on the windowsill.”
She turned around and lifted the cotton towel. “Crikey. What’s all this?”
“Proof I’m not a workaholic.” Or an asshole, he didn’t say. “A workaholic can’t detach from work.”
“And you can? Mate. You’re in hospital and on your computer.”
“No, I’m not. It’s all the way over there. I’m not the one with the twelve-hour day, either. I’m flirting with a beautiful woman, eating a delicious dinner, and watching a movie. At least I will be if you hurry up and put that tray in your lap so we can start on all of this.”
She was opening containers. “From Manna Haven. Brilliant choice. Just what I feel like eating. How did you come up with this from here, not knowing the town? Or . . . anybody?”
“The partners sent over one of the admin people to bring me my laptop and arrange a few more things for me, and I sent her out for supplies. But I researched first. Always wise. It’s vegan, so I wasn’t sure, but it sounded good in the heat. What else happened today, besides the shark? Your food worked out. What didn’t?”
“Nothing. Well, possibly my own partner.” She stuck a fork into one of the salads and took a bite. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was. You don’t eat on the job, and after a while, you’re too hungry to feel hungry. Besides, smelling food can make you full by itself. Odd, that. And when I eat my own cooking, sometimes I’m too critical, especially if I’m tired.”
“Perils of the driven. Your partner what? And, wow, this is terrific. How do you make chicken taste this good?”
“I could tell you, if I wanted to bore you to death. I just bought into the company six months ago. Nourish, it’s called.”
“Bought in how? With a loan?” He snapped to attention like a dog who’d just got the scent, or like a money man who was thinking about money.
“No. I had an inheritance. Not much, just what my parents left. This was my big leap, when I was sure I was good enough.”
“But?” he asked.
“Oh, just—I thought it’d be best to go in with an established firm. Reputation, and besides, business isn’t my strong suit. But I asked my partner a question today, and she jumped down my throat. I kept thinking—shouldn’t I be able to ask?”
“What kind of question?”
A song blared out from her purse. Familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “Sorry,” she said, and reached for her phone. “I should take this.”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her. “Hey,” she told whoever was on the other end. “Can I ring you back tomorrow?” A pause, and she said, “I know that, actually. I’m here. How did you know?”
Her eyes flicked to his, then away. How did he know that she was talking to a man? He just did. His hand was tightening on his fork, the metal digging into him, and he set it down.
“Hang on,” she told the man on the phone. After that, he got the unwelcome sight of her setting her tray back on the windowsill and standing up. “I’ll only be in a minute,” she told him. “Go on and eat that before it gets cold.”
He recognized the ringtone, finally. Chalk up his delayed reaction to the painkillers and the fact that the song was older than he was.
You Sexy Thing.
Great.
“Wait,” Willow told her cousin Rafe when she was out the door and down the corridor a few paces. “This bloke whose hospital room I was just in happens to live in Sinful? What are the odds? How big is that town?” She’d never been to Rafe’s brand-new family base, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. Sinful, Montana, was on nobody’s list of international destinations. She’d never been to Rafe’s house in LA, for that matter. As far as she could tell, LA was the beach and the motorway. She had the beach, and she didn’t need the motorway.
“Small.” Rafe’s voice, as always, took up more air space than anybody else’s, his charisma radiating all the way down the line. “Lily told him about Byron a while back. They’re mates. He started checking it out, he got interested, and there you are. He’s got a nose for untapped potential, or so they say. I’d call it a nose for money, myself. I hope he’s not down there spoiling the unspoilt beauty.”
“Oh.” She felt stupid, and too slow. “I didn’t know he was Lily’s friend. Enough so she’d learn about his leg?”
“Like I said, small town, and Brett Hunter could be the biggest thing in it. I’m trying to hear what else is behind that note in your voice, and I can’t. I should be worried about leaving my new bride alone in Sinful with Hunter’s charms, you reckon? Nah. Not worried.”
“Of course not. What are you ranked on the Hollywood earner list now, fifteen? Don’t be stupid. Anyway, it’s your beautiful face and charming personality that won her heart, obviously. I like Lily, despite her shallow taste in men. Where are you, then, if she’s alone again?”
“New Mexico, with Jace. He’s turning me into a commando. Shooting starts in March on Hard to Kill.”
“That’s exciting.” Jace, Rafe’s brother, had turned his years of life lived at the sharp end into a series of bestselling thrillers that had been picked up by Hollywood. The first would star his brother, Rafe, as Matt Sawyer, Aussie commando extraordinaire. And, yes, the two of them were the kind of brother act that was hard to follow, especially for a chef.
“Pretty cool, yeah,” Rafe said. “Never mind. Why were you in Hunter’s hospital room, exactly? I’m still struggling to understand that.”
“I was catering his event, if you must know. With him when he fell, and we’d met earlier.”
Silence for a minute. “Oh, no,” Rafe said. “Not happening.”
“What isn’t happening?” She was starting to get narky. “For that matter, why should you struggle to understand anything? I’m thirty years old.”
“And he has to be in his forties. I’ve seen him in action. He’s so far—” He cut himself off. “He’s not a match for you.” A rumbling noise nearby that was either an earthquake, a rockfall, or a once-and-always commando, and Rafe said, “Jace says the same, and you know how little attention he pays.”
“Hang on,” Willow said. “Let me make sure I’ve got this. So far out of my league? Is that what you’re both saying?”
“No,” Rafe said, not all his acting skill succeeding in making that sound like anything but a lie. “Of course not. But he’s got heaps of backstory as well as heaps of money, and he’s had both for a long time. He’s guarded as hell, and he’s about two hundred years old, soul-wise. He may actually be a vampire. Also, he doesn’t get involved. He gets interested, and I’m sure he gets plenty, but that’s as far as it goes. Not a good bet for your heart.”
“Pardon bloody me?” Her cousins were protective, loving, generous men. Most of the time. The rest of the time, they were as annoying a set of humans as you’d find from Australia to the Arctic. “Maybe I’m not interested in being his Cinderella. Maybe I’m just using him for sex.”
“Then you’re out of luck,” Rafe said, “if he’s broken his leg.”
She said, “I’m ringing off. Tell Lily you weren’t tactful.” And did it.
Willow came back into the room at the same time Brett’s phone rang. She asked, “Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“Let’s see,” he said. “Chances of it being somebody I’d rather talk to than you? Zero. Which makes that a no.”
“Crikey, you’re decisive.”
“It’s my thing,” he agreed gravely, and she finally smiled and sat down. She was still looking flustered, though. He wished he knew why.
His phone started to ring again, and she eyed it and said, “If you don�
��t answer, I’m going to think you’re married. You do realize that.”
He said, “Can’t have that,” and glanced at the display. “It’s not my wife.” At her answering glare, he laughed, pushed the button, and said, “Rafe. Hey.” Upon which Willow went poker-straight. What was that about? He told Rafe, “Hang on a sec,” and told Willow, “Rafael. Male name. Let me reiterate: I’m not married.”
“Hang up,” she said, sounding fiercer than he’d ever heard her.
He blinked. “What?” The pills were still making him fuzzy. Wait. Was Rafe Blackstone somehow, weirdly, Willow’s ex, and the reason for her caution? Blackstone was Australian. More than that—he was from Brisbane, just a couple hours north of here. But he’d been in the States for . . . years, surely. Brett wasn’t too up on his Hollywood gossip. “Rafe,” he said, deciding that for now, hanging up was his best plan, “good to hear from you, but I’m in the middle of something.”
Hollywood’s favorite werewolf didn’t indulge in any pleasantries. Instead, he said, “Willow Sanderson is my cousin.” His voice didn’t sound one bit friendly, either.
If Brett’s hackles went up, that was because he was a man, and this had “territorial” written all over it. “Well, that’s a surprise,” he said, keeping it cool. “But then, she’s also beautiful, a fantastic cook, and one hell of a brave woman, so I already know most of what I need to. Also, my Popsicle’s melting.”
“Your Popsicle?”
“It’s red,” Brett informed him. “My favorite. Got to go.” He hung up and asked Willow, “Why is your cousin ‘You Sexy Thing?’”
“Joke,” she muttered. “Doesn’t matter.” She was forking up bites of couscous salad in an aggressive manner that promised nothing good.
“Matters to me.”
She sighed. Loudly. “Do you both have to be so . . . blokey?”
“Well, yeah. We probably do. So there’s no . . .”
He made a circling gesture, and she eyed him and said, “I don’t want to know what that means. Of course not. He’s married. He’s my cousin. And for all intents and purposes, my brother.”
“Right.” He felt a whole lot more cheerful. Also hungry. “Here I am, with a gorgeous, sexy woman who happens to be wearing a dress with a slit up the side and has hair I wish I could take down, and she’s brought me chicken and dumplings she made for me at the end of her hard day. If she’d come sit up here on the bed beside me for this movie date, my life would be just about perfect. So why am I talking about some Hollywood star who’s thousands of miles away?”
“He’ll be ringing you again tomorrow,” she said gloomily. “Rafe looks like some kind of . . .” She made a gesture of her own. “Sexy pirate. Whatever. He’s not. He’s a family-first Aussie bloke with a gooey caramel center.”
“Who thinks,” Brett said, since for some reason, they were still discussing Rafe Blackstone, “that I’m too old and too rich and too ruthless for you. At a guess. Also, if Rafe Blackstone’s your cousin, so is Jace.”
“Who knows thirty-seven different ways to kill you quietly and bury the body,” Willow agreed, looking more cheerful, “so you probably don’t want to stuff up. And, yes, that’s the gist of the objection. Good thing we’re not entangled.”
The exact place he did not want to go. He had standards. He had scruples. Except that there was no ring on her finger, and whoever the other guy was, he wasn’t here fighting for her, was he? Brett’s specialty was winning hearts and minds, and there weren’t any of those he wanted to win more than hers. Why hadn’t he looked at it that way in the first place? Possibly because he hadn’t been on pain meds, and possibly for another reason that he didn’t need to examine right now. “Mm,” he said. “Good thing.” She started to say something and stopped, and he asked, “Yes?”
“You don’t really want me to sit with you,” she said. “It would jostle you.”
That was a weak objection if he’d ever heard one. “Except that there’s nothing I’d like more. And I picked out a date movie perfect for my fake girlfriend and temporary companion. The Proposal. Come up here and watch it with me? It sure would make me feel better.”
She hesitated a minute, but she did it. Did it hurt to scoot over? Sure it did, but who cared? He was wearing a black T-shirt instead of a hospital gown and had all his faculties intact again, and that was good enough for now. She’d kicked off her sandals, and now, she crossed her pretty ankles and let the dress fall away from her slim, muscular calves. When he put his arm around her, she rested her head against his shoulder like that was where it belonged, and he got a rush that had absolutely nothing to do with opiates.
He didn’t make any other moves. She was tired, she was too vulnerable under the breeziness and the toughness, and she still smelled like cake. Her fine hair was silky-soft against his neck, and the creamy skin of her shoulder was smooth under his hand. He held her there, warm and close, dimmed the lights, let the silly, sweet, absolutely implausible movie scroll on by, and appreciated the hell out of the whole damn thing.
“What the bloody hell is going on?”
Brett jerked awake, then wished he hadn’t as a word he hadn’t meant to say ripped out of his chest. He thought, Willow, even as she sat up fast, flailed around, and caught his nose with her elbow.
“Sorry,” she said as he clapped a hand over his nose, struggled to see out of watery eyes, tried to sit up, and got a stab of pain like a lance up his leg and into his hip. “What? Who?”
A light turned on with a blaze bright as noon. Both of them jumped that time. Willow’s hair had come down some, and the bodice of her white dress was askew. Strap down her arm again, probably. She wasn’t moving fast, possibly because she’d fallen asleep thirty minutes into the movie. She’d been meant to stay asleep, too. Until morning, if he’d had anything to say about it. Which he didn’t. He gave the dress a tug for her, eyed the tousle-haired, ice-blond, tanned guy who was standing there like some kind of ad for surfboards, dressed in lime-green board shorts and a Vegemite T-shirt, and asked, “Would you be the entanglement?”
“Oh, bugger,” Willow said, scrambling off the bed and flashing plenty of thigh. “What are you doing here, Gordy?”
The surfer had his arms folded and, Brett judged, a fair amount of alcohol under his nonexistent belt. “What am I doing here?” he asked. “What am I bloody doing here? What are you doing here, more like? Why did I come through your window like always, and nobody’s there? Why aren’t you anywhere in the whole flat, because you—my girlfriend—are out, at one o’clock in the morning? Why did Azra look at me like something the cat dragged in and tell me to leave, like I was some wanker who’d wandered in off the street?”
“Because,” Willow said, “it’s her flat? Because you’re pissed? Because I wasn’t there?”
The surfer stabbed with a forefinger. “Exactly. Exactly. Because you weren’t there. Because here I was, big night at work, big night, the girls falling all over me, and I’m saying, no, I’ve got a girlfriend.” He nodded owlishly, then seemed to forget he was doing it, until he looked like a bobblehead doll. “And when I come around, she’s not there, and her flatmate says she’s gone to hospital to be with some bloke. My bloody girlfriend.” More with the stabbing finger. “With somebody else.”
Willow was standing on the other side of the bed now, looking agitated herself. Brett had never wanted to stand up more. He said, “Hang on,” but before he could get started, Willow was talking.
“Yeah, mate,” she said. “Some date. Some boyfriend. Coming through my window at one in the morning isn’t a date. It’s a booty call. And I worked a wee bit myself this week. Maybe I wanted to be pampered, did you think of that? Maybe I wanted to be treated. Maybe I wanted to be special.”
“How’s that not bloody special?” The guy—Gordy—was advancing around the end of the bed, and that wasn’t all right. It wasn’t all right at all. “I came over. I turned down a three-way for you, and you weren’t even there! Instead of that, instead of waiting
for me, you’re here dressed like you’re looking to hook up, in bed with Granddad! What the hell, Willow? What the flaming hell?”
There was plenty of color in her cheeks now. “Did I say yes?” she demanded. Brett considered the walker and discarded the thought. He’d be steadier, but he’d also look eighty years old. He grabbed the crutches instead, eased out of bed, and did his best to get between the two of them. Holy shit, but moving fast hurt. Superheroes were never this slow.
“What?” the surfer asked as if he didn’t even see Brett. “What do you mean, did you say yes? I told you I was coming! You heard me!”
“You still have to ask,” Willow said through her teeth. “Every time. You still have to ask about me. You still have to call me.”
“What, like he does?” The surfer finally seemed to register Brett as more than an inanimate object, possibly because he’d moved within punching distance. If he hadn’t been on crutches, that is. “Who are you, arsehole? Somebody’s dad?”
Brett took a beat, got himself centered, and drew every bit of power he could summon from his battered body down into himself. “I’m the guy,” he said, “who’ll kick your ass.” Probably not tonight. Sounded good, though.
“Brett.” Willow had come to stand beside him. “Stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Could be,” he said, “but first, I’ll hurt him.” Of that, he was sure.
“What?” the surfer asked, and laughed. All right. That was it. “You? Nah, mate.”
He made a grab for one of Brett’s crutches, but Brett was raising it as Gordy lunged. He shoved him back with it, and he shoved hard. Of course, all the guy would have to do was push him over and he’d topple like a bowling pin, but he’d give it his all along the way.
If he’d had a chance, he would have, anyway, because Willow was shoving Gordy in the chest herself, then backwards, herding him around the bed like a sheepdog with a bad attitude. “You bloody useless wanker,” she said. “You are such an arsehole. What was I doing? What was I thinking? Out.”
Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3) Page 10