by Julia London
Oh, no. No, sir. No, no, no.
Chapter Nine
Dax thought he was dreaming when he heard the tap tap tap on his door. He lifted his head and blinked and then looked around. Everything was as it should be—Otto snoring at the foot of his bed, the light from the streetlights near the lake weakly filtering in through his curtains.
He’d imagined it. He punched his pillow, then resettled.
The knock came again, only this time it was loud and insistent. Otto leapt from the bed, barking and sliding across the hardwood floor as he tried to get out of the room and head for the front door to rip someone’s head off.
The pounding came again, and Dax felt a slight panic. No one came knocking on a person’s door in the middle of the night except the police or home invaders. What time was it, anyway? He glanced at the clock. Half past twelve.
The knocking came again, and he shouted, “Just a damn minute!” He groped around, trying to find something to clock this person with. Finding nothing in the bedroom, he marched through the kitchen, saw some tools on the kitchen table, and grabbed a crowbar.
“This had better be good,” he muttered.
Otto was scratching at the door, barking. Dax had to lean around the damn dog to push aside the drapes and peer out. It was dark, and he could only make out a figure. And while he couldn’t see the person’s face, he knew it was Mrs. Coconuts.
He flipped on a light and yanked open the door. “What the hell?” he demanded, taking note of Mrs. Coconuts’s blazing eyes. In fact, if those lovely teak eyes had been guns, he’d be lying in a pool of blood right now. Otto chose that moment to leap up and plant his paws on the screen door. Stupid dog would have taken the shot for him. Dax shoved him aside. “What’s wrong?” he asked and pushed his fingers through his unruly hair. “Something happen to the kid?”
“You want to know what’s wrong?” she snapped and slapped a hundred-dollar bill up against the screen door. “That’s what’s wrong.”
He looked at the bill. Then at her. “It’s called a tip.”
“It’s called charity,” she said. “And I don’t want your stupid charity. Open the door.”
“Excuse me?”
“Open the door! Open it right now or I’ll put my foot through it!”
He didn’t think she was really capable, but he pushed the screen door open. Otto burst out with so much force that she was knocked backward, almost falling, but she grabbed onto the screen door, then used it like a slingshot to propel herself inside. She awkwardly slapped that bill against his bare chest and held it there. “I wanted to stuff it in your pocket and tell you to take a flying leap, but since you don’t have any pockets . . . take it.”
He glanced down and remembered he was wearing nothing but boxers. He fixed his gaze on her and all her craziness and covered her hand with his. “Okay.”
“All right.”
“Let go and I’ll take it.”
She yanked her hand free, then turned to go.
“I was trying to help,” he blurted. That’s all he’d meant by the tip. He hadn’t known she was waiting tables until he saw her at the bistro, and he’d thought of how much he imagined waitstaff made, and how the kid had wanted that purple octopus bath toy, and he’d left a big tip.
But Mrs. Coconuts whirled around so fast when he said it that it startled him. “By leaving me an unreasonably large tip? How exactly was that helping, other than contributing to the Kyra Kokinos charity? And why didn’t you acknowledge me?” she demanded. “You acted like you’ve never met me—or couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
“I didn’t act like that,” he scoffed.
“Yes, you did. You know you did. Why?”
Dax didn’t know how he’d acted to Kyra. He’d been too uptight about Heather. “I was on a date.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So?”
“Why didn’t you say something if you were so concerned about it?”
“I don’t know—maybe because you would hardly even look at me?”
Dax shrugged, feeling a little out of his depth here. Being on a date seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation to him. He wasn’t supposed to look at another woman while he was on a date, was he? Especially not one with a dark mane of hair and arresting eyes and an ass with the perfect amount of bounce. He feared he might get unreasonably hard just thinking about it.
“Are you embarrassed by me?” she asked.
“What? No,” he said. Where did she come up with that?
“Then why?”
He sighed. He dragged his fingers through his hair. Why was a difficult question to answer. All he knew was that when she’d looked at him like she had last night, he’d felt things stirring in him that he didn’t want to stir. He’d been sort of intrigued, sort of shocked, sort of scared, and the truth was, he still felt that way. He didn’t want . . . complications. He didn’t want to feel anything for her, and yet he couldn’t seem to bury the tiny shoots of feelings growing in him. Today at the bistro, he’d been confused about being confused and had felt very uncomfortable looking at Kyra while he was on a date with Heather. “I didn’t want you to be . . .” He whirled his hand around. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
Neither did he, but he went with it. “You know,” he said again.
She blinked. But then something sparked in those lovely eyes, and they narrowed dangerously. She said, in a low voice that probably set off male alarms across East Beach, “You thought I’d be jealous?”
Jealous? Was she crazy? Well, yes, she was—but there was no way she should be jealous of Heather.
“You thought that I would be jealous of a girl because she was at lunch with you?”
She shoved him in the chest with what looked like a supreme amount of effort on her part, but which barely registered on him.
“Calm down,” he said.
“If you want me to calm down, then don’t you dare patronize me!”
“Patronize.” He snorted. “I’m not patronizing you, Kyra. You’re acting crazy. You seem a little volatile.” He was grasping at straws, trying to figure a way out of this while his body was trying to figure a way in.
Kyra gasped. Her eyes sparked with so much fire that he was amazed she didn’t torch Number Two to the ground. And then she lunged at him. Dax had a split second of believing she was going to choke the life out of him, and he moved to grab her arms in case she had that in mind, and then he was kissing her.
He was kissing her, and oh God, it was good. It was more than good, it was hot. She was all lips and tongue and fingers raking through his hair, and he was all hands and mouth and hard. He was lit up like a holiday display, colorful heat flashing and glittering in his veins. This wasn’t just a kiss, this was an unexpected explosion of senses, and it was about to be an explosion of him. Dax was seconds away from pulling her shirt over her head, but the moment he realized he was on the verge of doing it, he swayed backward.
At the same moment, so did she. But not without one last shove at his chest. They stared at each other, their breathlessness in sync. “Holy shit,” she muttered.
Holy shit, Dax thought.
“I have to go.” She whirled around and flung the door open and tripped over Otto, who was patiently waiting to be readmitted to his den.
Dax didn’t move. He listened to the sound of her soft-soled shoes flapping down the porch steps. It was a moment before Dax realized that Otto was sniffing around his bare feet. He looked down and saw the crumpled one-hundred-dollar bill.
Dax scratched his head. He picked up the bill, shut the door and locked it, then went back to bed. But he didn’t sleep. Nope. His body was thrumming, wondering what the hell was up, wondering why he’d bailed before it had been satisfied.
It seemed like he’d only just fallen asleep when the teeth-clenching grind of an old engine woke him up. Ruuuummmp. Ruuuuummmp. Ruuuummmp.
Dax groaned. He pushed himself and got out of bed, pulled on some jeans, which he didn’t bother to b
utton all the way, slipped his feet into some sandals.
He walked outside, Otto darting out ahead of him, loping down to the lake for his morning swim. Dax made his way across the lawn. He leapt over the fence and headed for that damn car.
She saw him coming. He knew she did because she slowly bowed her head until her forehead touched the steering wheel. Like she was giving herself a much-needed pep talk. Like she didn’t want to see him. Too bad—he wasn’t listening to that grind anymore, and it wasn’t his fault that she’d gone bonkers and kissed him. He knocked on the window. She hesitantly rolled it down. He braced his arm on the hood of her car and leaned down. “Aren’t you getting tired of this car-grinding business every morning? I know I am.”
“It just needs to be primed a little,” she said. “Sorry.”
“It’s way past needing to be primed. Pop the hood.”
“That’s okay—”
“No, it’s not okay,” he said. “This car is depriving me of some much-needed beauty rest. Open ’er up.” He punctuated that with a slap on the top of her car.
Kyra muttered under her breath, but she pulled the hood latch.
Dax opened the hood and had a look. The battery cables were corroded and the battery was a Walmart special that looked a little old. If he had to guess—obviously he had to guess, but he was pretty good at this sort of thing—he would say the starter needed to be replaced. He shut the hood.
“What?” she said. She’d come out of her car and was standing beside him.
“You need a new starter.”
“Noo,” she said instantly, swaying backward, her eyes closed. “Please tell me that’s cheap.”
“It’s not cheap. You’re talking two to three hundred dollars.”
“Ohmigod,” she whimpered.
“For the part. Labor will run you another buck fifty.”
Now the blood drained from her face. “You have to be kidding.”
“I wouldn’t kid about a starter.”
“This is a freaking disaster!”
Dax looked at her hair, loose around her shoulders, and her plump, rose-colored lips. And her shirt, which fit quite tightly and left nothing to the imagination. He thought about that very unexpected kiss. It was a little crazy, but if a man could get past the unexpected craziness, that kiss was pretty damn hot. So hot that he said, “I can do the work if you can get the part.”
“What?” She looked up from her car. “You know how to replace a starter?”
“It’s not that hard. I learned it in the army.”
“You were in the army?”
She didn’t have to say it like she thought it was beyond the realm of all possibility.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll take that under advisement,” she said. She was moving back to the driver’s door. “But I have to go to work now, and as you have clearly noticed, it takes a little bit to get it to start.”
“Look,” Dax said, “you’ve got a handful of times left on that thing. Better you get it fixed now than find yourself stuck somewhere with the kid in the car. I’ll take you to work, and I’ll pick up a starter and fix your car. Then I’ll pick you up. You can pay me back after work.”
“But four to five hundred dollars?” she said and began to chew on her bottom lip. “I don’t have that kind of money right now.”
Dax hadn’t had to worry about five hundred dollars in a long time, but he remembered what it felt like, and he sympathized with her. “Just buy the part,” he said. “I’ll fix it for free.” This offer, he realized, was as much of a surprise to him as it was to her.
“What? No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s nice of you to offer, but I don’t want to owe you anything.”
“I know. I get it. But you just said you don’t have five hundred dollars lying around.”
She winced. “Yeah, well, I’m actually a little short, seeing as how I’m having to hand back tips.”
His eyes narrowed. “If you’d kept that tip like I told you, you’d be halfway to a new starter.” This was the thing about his neighbor—she could be so damned attractive and sexy and appealingly quirky, then do something ridiculous, like throw away a one-hundred-dollar tip.
She opened her mouth—to argue, he presumed—and he quickly threw up a hand to stop her. “But you didn’t, and now it’s in my wallet and not coming out. So I guess it’s settled, isn’t it? Get your stuff. I’ll be waiting for you in the truck.”
She began to chew on her lip again as she considered it, and Dax couldn’t take his eyes from that lip. He wanted to kiss it. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do all sorts of things to her that were too absurd to even contemplate. He was going to fix her starter like he fixed her door, then be done. But this time he meant it—done. As in no entanglements.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay. It would be much appreciated if you can drop me off, but I’ll get a ride home.”
“Whatever,” he said. “Let’s go.” He walked away before he kissed her.
He didn’t know how long it took to get someone’s work stuff together, especially when they’d seemed in such a hurry, but he bet five minutes passed before Kyra showed up and opened the passenger door. She tossed a backpack and a tote bag full of books onto the floorboard, then climbed inside. “Thanks,” she said sheepishly. “This is surprisingly nice of you.”
“Not that surprising,” he muttered.
Kyra shrugged a little. She crossed one leg over the other. Then she tucked hair behind her ears. Then she folded her arms tightly across her middle and turned to the window.
“I can be nice,” he added, a little miffed that she didn’t seem to believe it. “Contrary to the popular opinion in Number Three.”
“That’s not fair. Ruby likes you,” she said to the window.
Now he was curious to know the full opinion of him in Number Three. He turned his head to back out and wondered why she was wound up as tight as a spring. “Your body language says you’d rather ride in back. Is there something you’d like to say?”
“Nope,” she said quickly. “I’m just . . . I have a lot going on.”
He put the truck in drive and looked at her again. She still wouldn’t look at him. “All right, I’ll lay it out there—are you thinking about last night?”
“No,” she said instantly and vociferously.
Oh, she was thinking about it, all right. Well, that made two of them. He was supposed to call Heather today, which he didn’t really want to do to begin with, but Kyra’s kiss had given him mountains of second thoughts. He couldn’t imagine sweet, bubbly Heather kissing like that. He couldn’t imagine sweet, bubbly, talkative Heather ever launching herself at him like Crazy Pants Kyra had.
He stole another look at his passenger. She had not unwound herself.
All right, he was man enough to admit it—he wanted another kiss like the one last night. But bigger. And more explosive. Mind-bending. But he wouldn’t do it, because he definitely was not getting involved with someone who got that wound up about a big fat tip. Or who lived right next door. Just say, for argument’s sake, that they kissed again. And maybe it wasn’t as great a kiss as last night’s, and there she was, living right next door. That would be awkward. Or say it was even better than last night. And there she was, still living next door, only then making him want more.
Then again, what if he decided to date Heather? He wasn’t exactly leaning that way, but what if? Kyra would still be next door, and they’d have this kiss thing between them, and she’d see Heather going in and out of his cottage, and she would wonder what was going on, and he’d have to tell her.
Or maybe he could invite her and the kid, and the McCauleys, to a barbecue and introduce them to Heather. That way Kyra would get that he was dating Heather. Problem solved.
God, no, he was not having a barbecue. What the hell was the matter with him? And he was not going to date Heather, was he insane? “Do you like barbecues?” he blurted.
Her head snapped around. “What?”
<
br /> “I asked if you liked barbecues. Not that I’m going to have one. Last thing I’d do. But do you like them? I mean, would you go to one if you were invited?”
Her brows dipped. “What the hell are you talking about?” she asked irritably.
He noticed the color in her cheeks was high. “You are thinking about last night.”
“No, I’m not!” she said loudly. “I’m thinking about money, if you must know.”
“Okay. So you’re thinking about last night and that Benjamin.”
“Who?”
“The tip.”
“I am so not thinking of that tip,” she said, twisting toward him now. “You don’t get it, do you? I would go live under a bridge before I’d take that tip from you.”
“That seems like an extreme reaction for a waiter to have toward a tip,” he said as he turned onto Juneberry Road.
“The tip was way over the top, Dax. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. I said what I had to say.”
“And you punctuated it with a kiss,” he said, although he wasn’t entirely certain who had done the punctuating. “That’s what I call returning a tip.” He winked at her.
Wow, a wink, too? Dax didn’t know who he was right now, or why these words were coming out of his mouth. Or why he thoroughly enjoyed the way she huffed when he said it and sank deeper into her seat and stared out the window to avoid looking at him. He felt like a kid on the playground, pulling her hair. It was bizarre but oddly satisfying.
He didn’t say any more than that on the way into town, and she sure didn’t. He pulled up in front of the Lakeside Bistro and leaned over her to have a look out the window. “It doesn’t look open.”
“It’s not,” she said. “I usually do laundry in the morning.”
“Don’t know how I forgot that. So what are you going to do?” he asked, and pictured her sitting on a bench like a vagabond with her two big bags.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said curtly. She flung open the door, grabbed her things, and said, “Thanks for the ride.”
“Kyra?” he said before she could slam the door.