A Little Too Hot

Chapter Eighteen

I SPIN AND find a wide-eyed Cooper standing at the elevator, his hands in the air, with what I’m beginning to realize is his regular expression, a frown. “Just wanted to tell you we’re all clear. The perimeter’s secure and the wire is hot. Jenkins and I are heading back.”

“Son of a bitch,” Blake mutters under his breath. I turn back and find him hopping on one foot as he reholsters his gun. He bends down to scoop up the beer bottle, which apparently didn’t smash to smithereens on the granite-tile floor only because it hit his foot first. His expression is dubious as he straightens up, holding the fizzing bottle over the sink.

I’m still frozen in place, shaking with the adrenaline rush.

“Everything under control in here?” Cooper asks, splitting a glance between us.

Blake nods, cutting him a look.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He steps into the elevator and the door slides shut.

I turn to Blake, finally finding my voice. “Can anyone just walk in here?”

He grabs a dish towel from the counter and drops it onto the puddle, swishing it around with his foot. “You need the opener to get into the garage, then a code and key for the elevator. Only Cooper and I have the openers, a code, and the key. So, no.”

“Do I get a code and the key?”

He looks up at me. “No.”

I frown at him. “So I’m trapped here.”

“Yep,” he says, going back to mopping up the mess.

My frown turns into a glare, and I’m tempted to pull the bottle out of the sink and pour the rest of its contents over his head.

He looks up, notices my expression, and his perfect lips pull into a smug smile. “Joking. You only need a code and key to get into the house. Just push the button to get out,” he says with a nudge of his chin toward the elevator.

I consider walking over there and doing just that, but where would I go? Instead, I lean my backside against the counter as Blake scoops the sopping towel up and drops it into the sink. “What does he mean, ‘the wire is hot’?”

He turns on the water to rinse it out. “The guy who lived here was serious about his security. You’ve seen the panic room, and there’s also an alarmed electric fence that runs through the hedges along the entire perimeter.”

I just look at him.

“That’s why this was the perfect place to bring you,” he continues when I don’t say anything. “No one’s going to get to you without doing serious bodily damage—and my knowing about it.”

The image of the guy with the gun, shooting at Jonathan and me, surfaces in my mind at the thought. I give the counter more of my weight as my legs tremble. Less than a week ago all I wanted was sex with Blake—who was still Harrison then—on the sofa at Benny’s.

And now we’re here.

He’s not my lover; he’s my protector . . . and my persecutor. This is real. This is all real. What I hoped would be a mind-blowing fling with a totally hot stranger has turned into this nightmare.

My head spins as my new reality comes crashing down on me. This is my life now. I can’t undo any of it. I stagger to a kitchen chair at the small table near the window and sit heavily, my legs no longer willing to hold me.

“Sam? Are you okay?”

I’m staring at some random point on the floor, unable to lift my eyes. “No.” It’s true. All of a sudden I feel adrenaline-charged and shaky as panic takes hold of me. I rest my elbow on my knee and hold my head in my hand as a cold sweat breaks over my skin.

“Is it your head?” he asks, supporting me with a hand on my shoulder while he snatches his phone out of his pocket. “Cooper, get your ass back here,” he barks into it.

I lift my head and slip the phone out of his fingers. “Cancel that, Cooper. Everything’s fine.”

There’s a snicker from the other end. “You giving Casanova fits, Jezebel?”

“Trying my hardest.”

He laughs. “Put Blake on, will you?”

I look up to see Blake staring at me, a scowl fixed on his face as he takes the phone back from me. “Yeah,” he says into it, then rolls his eyes and hangs his head at whatever Cooper says. “No. I think maybe she was in shock.” His eyes lift and scan up my body, finally coming to rest on my face. “She seems okay now.”

I reach out and pluck the phone out of his hand again. “Good-bye, Cooper,” I say, disconnecting.

“You’re okay?” Blake asks, his forehead creasing with concern as he reclaims the phone and stuffs it in his pocket.

“Yeah. I just . . . I can’t believe this has all happened to me. I mean, it’s been one hell of a month, you know? Getting fired from the pharmacy, getting arrested, this,” I say, gesturing around the room. “If my mom wanted to prove I’m a total fuck-up, she couldn’t have scripted it any better.”

He settles into the chair next to mine. “I don’t know what your mother was thinking, Sam, but she couldn’t have anticipated this.”

“She was thinking I’m useless. She’s always thought that.”

“I doubt that’s what she thinks,” he says.

“You don’t know her,” I tell him with a shake of my head. “She’s always thought she needed to tell me what to do every second of every day, like I would forget to get out of bed if she didn’t remind me.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Would you have?”

“Probably not,” I say, throwing my hands in the air, “but it was everything with her. I wore my skirts too short and my hair too long. I either had the wrong friends or not enough of them. She corrected my homework every night all my life, and got mad when I refused to send her my college assignments. She didn’t trust me to do anything right without her input.”

“So, she was a little overbearing. At least you knew she cared.”

“Then why did she throw me out? That’s, like, the opposite of running my life. Everything to nothing.”

He presses back into his chair. “Maybe it was as much for her as it was for you.”

I glare at him. “Okay, Dad. Thanks for that useless pearl of wisdom.”

“I just mean, maybe she realized you would never learn to be responsible for yourself if she didn’t let go.”

My whole body tenses as I fight to contain my frustration, because if I have a hot button, it’s my mother. Nothing makes me want to punch something quite so much as someone defending her to me. But, deep inside, I’m totally relieved he’s making it so easy to hate him. “You think I’m irresponsible?”

He shrugs. “All I’m saying is, there comes a point for everyone when you pretty much need to sink or swim.”

I stand and glare down at him. “I was swimming just fine before the DEA decided to drown me.” I spin for my room. “I’m not very hungry. I’m going to take a shower.”

“Fine.” He moves to the counter and starts aggressively cracking eggs into a bowl. “If you want dinner, it’ll be ready in a few.”

I lock my door, then pull off the sling holding my arm against my ribs. When I straighten it, it’s stiff, and my shoulder’s a little sore, but not too bad. I throw the sling in the trash, deciding I’m done with it.

I strip, using my right arm gingerly to help, and toss my clothes on the floor as I move to the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror over the sink isn’t a pretty thing. I step closer and press my fingers to the bruises at my shoulder. They’re that in between color, transitioning from dark purple to green—the same color that surrounds the white gauze bandage taped to the right side of my face and fills in the semicircle under my right eye.

I lean into the counter and slowly pry back the bandages. Underneath, there’s a gash, held together with some sort of clear tape. The redness and swelling that were there the first time I saw it are mostly gone, and it’s just a thin red line with a little dried blood. I poke at it and it’s tender but not too bad.

I brush my teeth with the fresh toothbrush and new tube of toothpaste on the counter, then step into the hot water. The shower helps me to relax a little, and I stand in it for a long time after I’m done washing up, letting the warm spray massage out all my knots. When I’m finished, I wrap myself in a towel and move to the bedroom.

The room is dark, the sun having set sometime during the hour I spent in the bathroom. Out the window, San Francisco sparkles like a jewel across the black swath of the bay. I push open the French doors and the smell of fresh air and roasted vegetables wafts in on the gentle spring breeze.

My stomach gurgles like a drowning man, but I decide to skip dinner. There are definitely some things I need to figure out, and if I’m stuck here for months with Blake Montgomery, how I feel about him is one of the biggest. I can’t do that when I’m looking at him, because the memory of that body pressed against mine jumbles my thoughts.

I drift out the French doors, expecting it to be cold after the hot shower, but the air’s unseasonably warm tonight. A thin crescent of a moon hangs over the city, casting almost no light, and below it, a blanket of fog is rolling in off the water. The only thing that ruins the beauty of the scene is the country music wafting out the open French doors of the living room balcony.

“My eardrums are going to rupture,” I mutter.

“Give it time. It grows on you.”

I jump and look to my right. On the balcony off the living room, I see a dark silhouette, leaning on the rail. I pull my towel tighter and back a step toward my door. “I didn’t know you were out here.”

Blake pushes off the rail and moves to my side of his balcony. “You have everything you need?”

I nod, then realize he probably can’t see that gesture in the dark. “Yeah.”

“Good.” For several beats of my heart neither of us moves, but I feel the weight of his gaze traveling slowly over me. “How’s your arm?”

I roll my shoulder in a circle. “A little sore, but okay.”

“I’m glad it’s better.” He backs toward the open French doors behind him. “There’s dinner in the fridge if you want to warm some up. I’ll be downstairs . . . if you need anything.”

“I’m fine.”

He hesitates again at the door. “Good night, Sam.”

His smooth drawl roughens into something that says sex, even though those weren’t his actual words, and it turns the tingle in my tummy into an ache. “ ’Night.”

He slips through the doors and closes them behind him, and a minute later the music stops and I hear him on the stairs across the hall from my room. I step inside and move to my closet. There’s no way I’m going to wear the granny gown, but a tank and a pair of underwear will do. I reach into the drawer and pull out a pair of the white cotton panties, and that’s when the red strap of something deeper in the stack catches my attention. I dig to the bottom of the stack and pull out a strappy red thong, very similar to the one that peaked out from my black satin shorts the night I met Blake.

I drop my towel and slip it on, then pull a long white tank top over it. And as I pass my bedroom door on the way to my bed, there’s one thing I know for sure.

Nichols didn’t pick out all my new panties.