In Bed with Mr. Wrong

Chapter Eleven

Ryan still wasn’t ready to face Bri, especially after the way things had gone last night. But then he’d heard her scream and reacted. It was becoming a nasty habit when it came to her, but it was a little late to worry about it now. Not when she was slipping out the door with a bath towel clutched to her chest that didn’t cover nearly as much as she seemed to think it did.

It was an effort to keep his gaze glued to her face, but he managed. “There are some clothes in the closet.”

“Thank you.” She started inching down the hall toward the bedroom, and he had the sudden thought that if he let her go without saying anything else, it was entirely possible she’d spend the next two days locked behind that door.

“Bri—”

“Let’s just pretend it never happened, okay? We can’t get out of this cabin for the rest of the weekend, and I’d rather not spend it screaming at each other.”

No, there were definitely better kinds of screaming they could be doing. He shook his head, pushing the thought away. It didn’t matter how much he wanted her. He was serious last night—if she didn’t make up her goddamn mind about this thing between them, he wasn’t having sex with her again.

He realized he was staring. “Yeah. Of course.” He stepped back so she could walk down the hallway unimpeded and told himself it was for the best. As soon as the door closed behind her, he hopped in the shower and endured a five-minute freezing scrub-down. He made it out in time to hear Bri muttering up a storm. Ryan rounded the corner and froze at the sight of her scrambling to clean up the remains of three broken eggs on the floor. How the hell had she dropped so many? She glanced up, caught him standing there, and shot to her feet, her elbow smacking the spatula and sending it spinning across the counter to join the eggs on the floor.

“Would you like some help?”

“I’ve got it, thanks.” She turned around and went back to wiping the egg mess up. She should have looked sloppy in her oversize sweats and T-shirt but, fresh-faced and with her hair pulled back, it was everything he could do not to come around the island and strip her naked.

Good to know his resolve not to touch her was holding on.

“I’m not exactly a great cook, but I figured I could get breakfast started without too much trouble.” She motioned to a carton of eggs and a pan she was in the process of breaking them into.

Ryan choked as she dumped what must have been half the saltshaker into the eggs. “That’s great. I can take over if you want to use the bathroom to finish getting ready.”

She frowned. “Why would I need to ‘finish getting ready’?”

Well, shit. He glanced at the fridge, the stove, and the kitchen island, but none of them gave him a way out of the hole he’d just dug himself into. There was no safe answer to that question, but the line between her eyebrows was getting deeper by the second, so staying silent wasn’t an option either. Since he didn’t particularly want to fight, he tried to change the subject. “I make a mean breakfast scramble. I think I saw hash browns in the freezer.”

Bri moved forward, blocking his way. “You think I should go put makeup on or pretty myself up, don’t you?”

This was exactly the conclusion he hadn’t wanted her to jump to. Truth be told, she looked more edible than the eggs burning in the pan behind her. “You look fine without makeup.”

Instead of calming down, her eyes flashed. “Fine. You mean fine for a mousy librarian surrounded by books, right? Why would I bother with makeup since no one expects me to be pretty?”

Christ. He took her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “That’s not what I’m saying and you goddamn well know it. If you weren’t determined to be so fucking difficult, I’d have no problem dragging you to the bedroom right here and now.” But he wasn’t some sex toy, here for her enjoyment. Ryan let her go and stepped back. “Since that’s not going to happen, why don’t you sit back with your book or something while I toss those eggs and make a scramble?”

She backed toward the stove, like she thought he was going to jump around her and grab the pan. “What’s wrong with my eggs?”

“For one, they’re burning. For two, I just watched you dump a day’s sodium intake onto them.”

“They’re fine.” She wielded the spatula, her chin up as if daring him to contradict her.

She wanted to play queen of the castle? Fine. She could choke on the damn eggs. “Knock yourself out, then.”

Bri grabbed two plates and shoveled a pair of messed up–looking eggs onto each. She shoved one across the island to him. “Enjoy.”

So she expected him to suffer, too? Fine. He’d survived Hell Night during indoctrination. Nineteen hours of the worst torture training could serve up, and he hadn’t washed out. Eating two eggs should be nothing compared to that.

He was proven horrifically wrong when he took his first bite and was pretty sure his tongue would never be the same. Or maybe it was all part of her plan to make sure his mouth was too dried up to talk for the rest of the weekend. As plans went, it was brilliant. He got up, doing his damnedest to keep any expression off his face, and went to the fridge in search of some kind of juice to combat the horrible taste. Water wasn’t going to cut it today.

Behind him, Bri made a choked noise. He glanced over as he grabbed the orange juice, schooling his face to show nothing. “Problem?” How’s that pride tasting now?

She coughed, a pained expression on her face. “Not in the least. How’re the eggs?”

How far was she willing to take this? Because if she thought she could outlast him, she was crazy. He’d eaten worse things than this—not many, but still. Ryan poured himself a giant glass of juice and smiled, though it felt more like a baring of teeth. “They’re great.”

She flinched, then seemed to gather her resolve. “If you’re enjoying them so much, I should make you seconds.”

The little brat. She would in a heartbeat, too, and smile sweetly while she double-dosed the salt. He took a long drink and nearly groaned with relief when it hit his parched tongue. “I’d never be so selfish. You must be starving, though. I don’t see how two eggs would be enough after the workout I gave you last night.”

Her mouth thinned, blue eyes sparking behind those glasses he still wanted to take off even though he kind of wanted to throttle her right now, too. “You know, that’s a fantastic idea. And since I’ll be cooking anyway, it’ll be no trouble for me to make us both more.”

“Awesome.” If he died from high salt toxicity, it was just one more thing to lay at the feet of Drew and Avery. It would serve them right to show up here and find him and Bri mummified, all moisture pulled from their bodies.

They ate with jerky movements, staring each other down. He kept waiting for her to flinch and back off, but she wasn’t showing a bit of weakness. And because of how things had played out between them up to this point, he couldn’t. So he forced down bite after bite of egg while he fantasized about bending her over this counter and fucking some sense into them both.

She finished her last egg and set down her fork, looking a little green around the edges. “You know—” Her hand flew to her mouth, eyes going wide.

Though part of him wanted to leave her to her much-deserved suffering, Ryan couldn’t do it. He slid his half-filled glass over. “Drink.”

“Thanks,” she whispered. Then she drained the entire thing.

He couldn’t let this go on. He wasn’t sure they’d survive a second helping. Even now, his stomach was making its unhappiness known��which was saying something since he’d eaten some questionable things over the years. He took a deep breath. “If you’re still hungry, how about oatmeal instead?” Hopefully it would soak up some of the salt.

For a second, he thought she’d argue or insist on the goddamn eggs, but then Bri offered up a sheepish smile. “That sounds a lot better than my idea.”

He hopped out of his chair and got to work. If he gave her too long to think about it, it was entirely possible she’d change her mind.

Once he disposed of the eggs and got a pot of water situated on the stove—and was facing away from her—he rubbed his stomach and grimaced. Pride might have been the name of the game, but it was pretty damn stupid to muscle down terrible food just to prove a point. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a thread of satisfaction that he wasn’t the first one to blink.

It was high time he got the ball back in his court.

…

Bri sat perfectly still, trying to convince herself she wasn’t going to throw up. There was a reason her oven sat mostly unused at home. She didn’t bake or roast or cook as a general rule. The only reason she’d tried this morning was because she needed something to do while Ryan showered, to distract herself from thoughts of water running over his naked body. She’d reasoned that he made dinner last night, so she might as well pull her own weight this morning.

She should have stuck with cold cereal.

But then he’d come in with his comments about her going to the bathroom to finish getting ready, and she’d forgotten all about trying not to fight. How was she supposed to keep her temper when his words felt tattooed on her brain? Mousy librarian. No matter what had happened since they met, he still thought of her like that.

Would he like her better if she wore makeup?

She gave herself a mental kick. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to be with someone who thought she needed to wear makeup every second of every day in order to be beautiful. Not that he’d ever called her beautiful. God, she was giving herself a headache with all this mental circling.

Or maybe that was the sodium overload.

If she hadn’t been so angry, she would have taken him up on his offer to make a scramble and just tossed the eggs, but she’d wanted to prove to him that there was something she could do right, even if it was something so small as fried eggs. She was horribly wrong on that count. From the moment she’d started cooking, things had gone sideways. And he hadn’t reacted at that first bite, or the second, or any of them. She already felt so out-of-control around him, admitting she couldn’t eat something that had been her idea in the first place was harder to swallow than the eggs. So she’d forced down the entire thing.

Looking back, it was the highest degree of stupidity, but he seemed to bring out that side of her like no one else she’d met. She’d never had a problem with controlling herself before, let alone to the point where she was having sex on her porch swing—or getting into car accidents. But with Ryan, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to climb into his lap and let him do wicked things to her. At least it did when they weren’t at each other’s throats.

Why, oh why, had she eaten those stupid eggs?

She sat on the chair she’d started to think of as hers and watched him dump a few cups of oats into the boiling water. Good Lord. Couldn’t he at least resort to the little microwavable packets? She knew she shouldn’t feel so damn irritated that he could cook, but it didn’t stop her from doing exactly that. “Are you trying to make me feel inadequate, or does it just come naturally to you?”

To her surprise, he gave her a small smile. “I don’t get a chance to cook all that often, and I’m kind of enjoying it. My team will eat damn near anything, so it’s nice to feed someone who might actually appreciate it.”

She blinked. When was the last time someone made something for her with the hope she’d appreciate it? Avery cooked from time to time, but she couldn’t care less if Bri and Drew ate or not. “You’re doing a whole lot better than I am at this point—except for the corn bread.”

“That would have been really great.” He grinned. “But I’m okay with how things turned out, jokes about burning this place to the ground aside.”

Her face flamed at the memory. “Can we please not talk about that?”

“You were more than willing to talk about it last night.”

Things had changed since then and he knew it. He was testing her. She straightened, but refused to take the bait. “Where did you learn to cook?”

For a long moment, she thought he might not let the previous subject go, but he shrugged. “I kind of learned as I went. Dad wasn’t much of a cook, even when he was around, and I got really tired of Drew’s burned grilled cheese sandwiches after the fifth straight day of eating them.”

She could sympathize. A few of her foster parents had stuck to meals that could be made in bulk and rotated on a weekly basis, while others hadn’t always worried about whether things were edible. But she’d never once considered taking things into her own hands the way Ryan apparently had. Which brought up the question… “What happened to your mom?”

“She died when I was two. From what people say, my dad wasn’t a bad guy before then, but he let missing her take over his life.” A shadow passed over his face, lingering in his eyes as he looked at her.

To get them off the shaky ground, she asked, “Why did you join the Air Force?”

He stirred the oatmeal. “I never really fit in here, even as a kid. Everywhere I turned, I had to deal with being Drunk Billy’s kid. Most people didn’t judge me for it, but there was no escaping the fact that everyone knew my dad spent more nights passed out in strange places than he did at home.”

He made a face as he set the pan on the oven and adjusted the heat. “But beyond that, I love history, and I’ve probably spent more time in that library of yours than you have, reading up on different places. All I wanted for as long as I can remember was to travel and see where history went down. I wanted to get away from a town where no one seems to get past something I did in high school.”

Bri folded her hands in front of her, feeling the ridiculous need to apologize for misjudging him, at least on one level. “It’s a funny story. People enjoy telling it.”

“It was a long time ago. When most people talk about the Flannerys, they’re thinking of how great Drew turned out, being sheriff and all. I’m just the kid who burned down the damn school, even though I’ve accomplished a whole hell of a lot since then.” He opened the fridge and poked around in the fruit crisper drawer. “Jesus.”

She peered over and couldn’t stop a laugh from escaping. “What in God’s name would possess them to put condoms in there?”

“I can’t decide if they thought we were actually going to have enough sex to justify what is obviously a Costco-sized box of condoms, or if they’re just fucking with us.” He pulled the condom packet out of the fridge and tossed it onto the counter farthest from her.

“It may very well be a combination of both.”

“Good point.” He pulled out a carton of berries and milk. “As to why I went with the Air Force, specifically, I picked the PJs because my uncle was one.”

She tilted her head to the side. “PJs? Is that the abbreviation for pararescuer?”

“Yeah. I used to beg him to tell me stories about the people he’d rescued.” He paused to look at her. “Something he said always stuck with me—it’s a whole lot harder to save a man’s life than it is to pull a trigger and end it. Though apparently my dad didn’t get that memo.”

Hearing his reasons sent a pang through her, a pang that only got worse when she realized what the last comment must mean. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if his dad had taken a gun to himself. Ryan hadn’t had a perfect upbringing any more than she had. A sense of kinship welled up inside her, snuffing out the last smidgen of irritation from the egg incident. “Your dad...”

“He killed himself a few years after I graduated.” He turned away. “I’ve never regretted leaving, even considering that, because joining the PJs was the best thing to ever happened to me.”

“You’re a hero.” More so than any man in her romance novels because he was real.

“I serve my country, same as any other soldier.”

Ryan took a package of brown sugar out of the cupboard and set it next to the stuff in front of her. “What about you? How did you end up in sleepy Wellingford? You’re from California, right?”

Though she didn’t particularly want to talk about herself, this seemed a safe enough subject. “I researched small towns with openings—or soon-to-be openings—within their library on the East Coast, and Wellingford was the top of that list. I didn’t expect Mrs. Cleaver to retire quite so quickly, but things just sort of worked out.”

“It has to be hard to live so far away from your family.”

She stared at her nails. “I don’t have any.”

He must have picked up on her reluctance to go deeper into the subject, because he didn’t push the issue. “So you did the equivalent of throwing a dart at one end of the map, then up and moved? That’s pretty spontaneous.”

If he had any idea what she would have done to get out of Los Angeles, he wouldn’t have thought so. Even though she knew it wasn’t the city’s fault her parents died in that car crash, she couldn’t help hating it. Wellingford was something fresh and new and untainted by her past. “I suppose, though it didn’t feel like that at the time.” She took the offered bowl of oatmeal and dosed it with milk and brown sugar. The first bite nearly made her eyes roll back in her head. “Every time I’ve tried to make oatmeal from scratch, I always end up with mush. This is so much better than mush.”

He laughed. “Practice and self-preservation.”

“Thank you.” Thank you for cooking for me. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your past. Thank you for listening to a sliver of mine and not pressing for more.

The peace between them lasted the rest of the fifteen minutes it took for them to eat the entire pot of oatmeal. For all the anxiety still swirling inside of her, the silence was…comfortable. Maybe they’d reached some sort of common ground?

Ryan stood and reached for her bowl.

Bri held on when he tried to pull away. “What are you doing?”

Ryan gave it another yank, a familiar frown settling over his face. “The dishes.”

“Absolutely not. You cooked. I can do the dishes.”

“It’s fine. I’ll take care of them.” He tugged on the bowl.

Apparently now that sharing time was over, he was back to making her feel completely inadequate. She tugged back harder, not even sure why she was bothering. She hated the dishes. They were one of those necessary evils that marrying a billionaire reformed playboy would solve. Not that she’d know what to do with one if she met him. “I said I’d do the dishes, and I will.”

“You’re just arguing to argue. Again. Knock it off.”

“You knock it off.”

“Just let it go, Bri. With your luck, you’ll probably find a knife to cut yourself on.”

She was so surprised, she let go of the bowl. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Considering how well things went this morning, I believe it’s pretty self-explanatory.”

When she’d fantasized about meeting her very own alpha male, she hadn’t stopped to consider that they were giant pains in the backside. Not that Ryan was hers, but the same principle applied. The women in her books never seemed to have problems like the ones she kept coming across. “I’m not some damsel in distress who needs to be saved.”

He gave her a look like she was stupid. “I didn’t say that. You’re a grown-up. I’m sure you manage to get dressed each morning, pay your bills, and show up to your job on time. What you can’t do is be left unsupervised in a kitchen.”

“Says the man who can’t be trusted near an open flame.”

Jaw clenched, he dumped the rest of the dishes in the sink and turned on the faucet. “If you want to keep me away from anything flammable, go grab some more firewood from the lean-to so we don’t have to cling to each other to keep warm.”

“I’d rather freeze to death than touch you again.”

“You’ve said that before.” He didn’t even look at her. “Good thing I chopped a shitload of firewood, huh?”

Bri stomped back to the bedroom to look for her boots, because the alternative was to grab one of the cast-iron pans and try to pound some sense into his thick head. She slammed out of the back door, not sure what she was so angry about, only that it was Ryan’s fault.

Everything was his fault.

If he’d just been some nice guy—like Drew and Avery claimed—then she could have smiled politely through their interactions up to this point and gone on her way. Even being stuck in this cabin with a nice guy wouldn’t be so terrible. But no, from the moment he’d shown up at her door looking like temptation personified, he’d proceeded to push her buttons, then turn around and shake her world to its foundations by making her feel things she never could have anticipated.

As if that wasn’t bad enough—and it was plenty bad—he’d gone and changed the game. How was she supposed to keep her distance if he insisted on showing her glimpses of a childhood not so far off her own? Hadn’t she run from LA like the hounds of hell were chasing her? The similarities weren’t comfortable.

Nor was the idea of keeping her hands off of him.

Instead of clearing her mind, the cold air made her more acutely aware of her body. Her stupid nipples hardened, which only made her think of how good it felt when Ryan put his mouth on them. “Stop it.”

Wonderful. Now she was talking to herself. She shouldered through the back door and stalked across the room to dump the firewood in the metal holder. Her ire lasted only as long as it took her to turn around and catch a glimpse of Ryan washing the dishes with the same single-minded intensity he had when his hands were on her body.

Heat chased the cold from her skin and left a flush in its wake. Oh, this wasn’t good. If she stood here much longer, she was going to end up walking over there and seeing just how serious he was about holding out on her.