“Hey, look.” Her face is full of amazement, as if she has no idea why she is bleeding, and she sways back and forth. “Blood.”
I have no choice but to catch her as she falls.
Chapter Two
RILEY
A SEA OF SILVER swims in front of my eyes when I finally pry the lids open. I blink, willing my vision to clear. But my eyelids feel gritty, raw, like sandpaper scraping over my corneas.
Pushing myself up onto my elbows, I rub my fingers over my eyes until the grainy sensation stops.
But the silver is still there. It’s everywhere, in fact... in the embossed wallpaper that stretches up fifteen feet, in the plush looking carpet that invites me to sink my toes in. It’s in the gauzy curtains that hang at the window that spans an entire wall, and in the satin covered headboard that’s propping me up from behind, the one with antique looking studs.
It’s even in the chandelier hanging over my head—holy hell, yes, that is a full on crystal chandelier, a giant death trap, right above me.
For some reason I fixate on that first—on how this giant piece of uselessness could kill me if it falls—before my brain allows me to contemplate the fact that I have no idea where I am, and that I feel like I’ve been drugged.
Shifting on the bed, I take note of the satin sheets—silver, of course, mustn’t mess up the color scheme—and frown. My sheets, before I gave up my apartment at least, were threadbare in several places, and a heinous bright plaid. They clashed spectacularly with all the other colors that I crowded in. But I’d always craved that kind of visual chaos.
The kind that was the exact opposite of my current surroundings.
Toto, something tells me we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Sucking in a deep breath, I close my eyes, press my fingers to my temples, try to remember. The airport—the scream of an elderly woman—bright pain—blood.
And strong arms catching me as I fell.
“Shit.” Pulling back the sheet, smoothing my snarled hair back from my shoulder, I find it—the place where the knife sliced through my flesh, concealed by a wide square of gauze secured with surgical tape.
I grimace as I peel back the sticky edges. The gauze is stuck to my skin, crusted with dried blood, and when I pull it away I can’t stop from crying out as it tugs on the wound.
The cut itself is puffy, a long line the exact shade of my favorite Cadmium Red oil paint, telling me that the blade went deeper than I’d initially thought. But it’s sewn up neatly with blue thread, the stitches marching tidily along the angry slice in my skin, and I can see the shiny gloss of ointment.
The wooziness I feel likely comes from medication of some kind... an antibiotic, which always makes me nauseous, and maybe a painkiller.
Panic is a thousand tiny needles jabbing into the softness of my belly. I can’t afford medication, or the doctor’s bill—I just graduated from art school. I’m broke, having spent my last available cash on my flight home.
When the rest of the scene in the airport flashes through my mind, my heart clenches, then sinks. I scrimped and saved and aggressively hunted down that bargain airfare, my ticket back home. I gambled, knowing it was non-refundable—but I hadn’t been able to think of a single thing that would keep me away from that flight.
And now it’s gone. I have no apartment anymore, no money, no job. No way home. And no one at home to help me out.
I am well and truly fucked.
And, I realize as I squirm in the bed, I am naked. In what I assume is the bed of Mr. “I’ll Pay Your Bills”.
“Oh, shit.” What the hell happened after I blacked out?
A low chuckle disrupts the still air, and I whip my head in the direction of the sound.
It’s him. The guy who got my blood all over his sweater, one of those garments that you just know cost more than my entire year’s tuition.
I’ll never be able to replace it for him, no matter how much I hate owing anyone anything. Just like I’ll never be able to pay him back for the medical attention that I’ve clearly received.
Not with money, anyway. The thought makes me stiffen, a rod of steel snapping into place in my spine.
I open my mouth to say something... probably to give him hell, because he’s done exactly the opposite of what I told him to do. Instead my brain chooses to narrow in on the one thing that’s making me super uncomfortable.
“Where are my clothes?” I blurt out, clutching the sheet tightly to my chest. I’m not a prude or anything... but this is the closest I’ve ever come to being naked with a member of the opposite sex. It’s like by taking my clothes, he’s taken away my carefully constructed defenses.
He laughs again, low in his throat. The sound sends a shiver skating over my skin, and the sensation isn’t entirely unpleasant.
Oh, who am I kidding? I haven’t even heard him speak yet, but his voice, with its mocking edge, still makes my girly parts sit up and pay attention. Combine that with the way his stare rakes over my body, which is one hundred percent naked under this thin silk sheet—the way he looks at me isn’t lecherous, but more like he has the absolute right to look, like he knows I’ll let him.
The feminist in me wants to be affronted. But the rest of me is undeniably affected by the heat in his eyes.
If I were a different kind of girl, I would be able to answer that heat with some kind of flirtation, some sexual undertones. But I’m not... I’m the kind of girl who buys her clothes from flea markets, who considers it a treat to be able to afford some salumi to the cheap bread that is available everywhere in Italy.
The kind of girl who knows only too well what this kind of man might demand as payment for the favors—the unwanted favors—that he has bestowed upon me.
“What’s going on?” I despise the shakiness in my voice. I’m stronger than that. But I’ve also been through a lot in the last... however many hours it’s been.
The thought of being unconscious, of being in the care of stranger’s hands, makes me very, very nervous. I’ve fended off enough of my mom’s sleazeball “boyfriends” to know exactly what kind of trouble can be found if a girl doesn’t have her wits about her at all times.
It was stupid, chasing down that guy in the airport. But what the hell else was I supposed to do? Somebody had to do something.
The look that this guy gives me as he leans casually against the doorframe tells me that his thoughts haven’t strayed all that far from my own. Yeah, I just bet that the women he knows wouldn’t be crazy enough to chase after a knife wielding druggie in an airport. It would wreck their Louboutins.
“What do you remember?” His lips curl upward in a smirk, the expression both arrogant and freaking hot—hot enough to that I’m momentarily distracted from his accent.
Here in Italy, I’m the one with the accent, and I’ve grown accustomed to the seductive flow of the romantic language. But hearing English, my native tongue, coming from that sexy mouth reminds of why so many women are such suckers for accents.
It’s not helping the heat that’s gathering in my nether regions, and when I shift in an attempt to get myself under control, that smirk only grows wider.
He knows—he knows just what effect he’s having on me. I bet there’s not a woman alive who is immune to that smile, that voice.
In defense, I clutch the sheet tighter to my chest. The silk is cool against my breasts, and when I feel the tips pucker, I want to groan.
He clears his throat, pulling me out of my inner monologue. I can feel my skin flush with embarrassment.
I am so out of my league here.
“You were telling me what you remember?” Pushing away from the doorframe, he crosses the room. Moving a heavy leather chair up to the side of the bed, he takes a seat, rests his elbows on his knees. My nostrils flare as his scent drifts to my nose—some kind of expensive cologne, and beneath it, a male musk that sends my hormones into overdrive.
Not that they need the encouragement.
“Ahem?” The sound is mea
nt as a gentle prod—no, I correct myself. Gentle isn’t a word I would apply to him.
He’s tall.
He’s hard.
He’s dark.
There’s nothing gentle about him. And yet, even as my instincts scream intruder as he leans forward beside the bed, invading my space, I’m pretty sure that he won’t hurt me.
It takes a certain kind of person to throw themselves into a situation like we were in at the airport. And even though he hesitated, he nonetheless did it.
And he took care of me after. So much so that I’m pretty sure we’re in his house.
And that’s a good reminder to start talking.
“I remember everything that happened at the airport.” I start slowly. My throat feels like I’ve swallowed a handful of gravel, and I wince.
He reaches into what I assumed was a bedside table but turns out to be a cleverly disguised mini-fridge. Removing a bottle of water, he unscrews the cap, then hands it to me.
“Thanks.” I drink greedily, the frigid water soothing the ache in my throat. Some of the clear liquid rolls down my chin, falls onto the sheet clutched over my naked breasts, and I can feel myself turning redder still.
Classy, Tremaine.
But he doesn’t seem disturbed. No, instead he looks... intrigued.
Just wait for it, buddy. Or rather, don’t. You’re the most interesting thing that’s happened in my entire life.
“He was on drugs. The man who stole the purse.” I remember seeing the tremor in his hand as he whirled on me with the knife. Rubbing a hand over my wound, I grimace, even as pity washes over me.
I’m all too familiar with how drugs can make a person change—make them become someone else entirely.
This man, the one in front of me, scowls. “What, precisely, were you planning to do once you caught him?”
I blink, startled. This isn’t what I expected him to ask.
“I did what I planned to do,” I retorted, setting the now empty plastic bottle on the bedside table. He’d poked right at a soft spot—my tendency to act before thinking things through. “I got the purse back.”
He huffs out an exasperated breath. “You were stabbed while doing it. It could have been worse. What are you—five foot two? One hundred twenty pounds?”
One fifty, my inner voice corrects. Thanks to the local gelato. But no need to tell him that.
Besides...
“What does my size have to do with anything?” Once again, his eyes take a leisurely stroll down the length of my body.
I’m the kind of girl who always has something to say—in less polite terms, I have a big mouth. And yet when that stare of his reaches my face, I find that my command of the English language has disappeared entirely.
“You are a small woman.” Damn it, that voice. Like whiskey on ice, hot and cold at the same time. “You could have been hurt much worse. You should leave things like that to men.”
I’m floating a bit from his comment about me being small, which I’m not, not really. But the latter half of his sentence brings me crashing back down to the ground.
“Leave things like that to men?” Oh, there she is—my inner feminist coming out to play. She’s outraged. “I’m perfectly capable of doing anything that a man can do.”
He smirks again, and I see red.
“I’m not trying to keep down your right to vote, or attempting to put you barefoot in the kitchen, or whatever else it is you women folk get tied in knots about. Though the kitchen would likely be safer.”
“What did you say?” I gape; I can’t help it.
“My point is that some differences between men and women, they are biology.” His stare catches my own, and though his expression is mild, his words, the most subtle shift of his body in that chair, serve to demonstrate exactly what he means.
He is a large, well-muscled man.
I am a small, soft woman.
No matter how much of a fight I put up, he could overpower me in about three seconds.
Some cavewoman part of me purrs at the notion, and I gasp, appalled at myself.
He takes my gasp as outrage, and the expression on his face shifts... becomes darker.
“Shall I take that to mean you need a demonstration of just how different we are?” He slides forward, lays his palms flat on the bed. Though I do my best to suppress it, the image of him overpowering me, pressing my naked body down into the slinky sheets of this bed floods my mind.
What is wrong with me?
As he moves, the dim light of the room dances over the fine bones of his face. His left eye is cast in shadow, a shadow that doesn’t move when he does. Not a large bruise, but noticeable enough.
“Where did someone like you get a black eye?” I blurt out, mostly to break the tension. Raising an eyebrow, he eases back, and the spell is broken.
I’m left with a pulse that thunders through my veins. I inhale, then exhale slowly, trying to calm it.
The question seems to set him back, if only for a second, and then he has that smooth mask back in place. He even smiles wryly.
“You don’t recognize your own handiwork?” He sounds amused. I, however, am appalled.
“Shut up.” It’s American slang, using those words to say that you don’t believe something, but his affronted expression tells me that he doesn’t understand. Realizing I have shoved my foot in my mouth, I hurry on. “I’ve never punched anyone in my life.”
Not that I wouldn’t, if I had to. I try to do what’s right, what the moral compass inside each of us—the one that my mother has always so blithely ignored—says is wrong, and what is right. But I cannot think of a single reason that I would swing at this stranger. Even if he clearly got me medical attention that I do not want.
“Well, I assure you, I am not mistaken.” He rubs his hand over the stubble on his jaw, eyeing me thoughtfully. That stubble, the dark shadow, lends him a human edge that he was missing when I first saw him in the airport—a well groomed, dark companion to Italian Barbie.
“You passed out from blood loss. The ambulance came. You woke up just as we arrived at the hospital. You were quite insistent that we not go inside, so you took a swing at me.” He shrugs, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s a bit embarrassed that I—a woman—managed to land a hit. “I did not wish to upset you further, so I asked them to instead bring you here. To my home. I had my family doctor come to treat you.”
The family doctor of some man I don’t know, examining me while I’m unconscious. Great. “Why were you in the ambulance?”
I know, from the times I’ve had to ship my mom off to the hospital to get her stomach pumped, that only family members are allowed to accompany a patient in an ambulance—and then only one.
A quick look around serves as a reminder that this man likely has enough money to bend all kinds of rules.
And the air of arrogance that he wears as comfortably as he wore that dark blue sweater earlier makes me think that he wouldn’t have any problem bending them. Which is why I’m surprised to see that confidence falter, just for a split second, but impossible to miss.
“It is my fault that you needed the ambulance.” His words are stiff, colored with the faintest hint of... guilt?
Say what?
“How do you figure that?” I sit up straighter, which causes the sheet that I’m holding to me to slide down slightly. I don’t care, but I do notice that his eyes dip briefly to the hint of cleavage that I now have on display before rising back up. “It’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the man with the knife.”
The man shakes his head, completely dismissing my words, and anger rises inside of me. “No. It is my fault. I hesitated. If I hadn’t, I would have reached him first. The blade that hurt you should have been meant for me.”
As he speaks, he reaches across my lap. Sliding the heavy locks of my hair back so that it hangs behind my shoulder, he traces a finger over the line of my cut.
I stiffen, then shudder—his finger is cool against my feverishly hot sk
in.
I shake my head in disagreement, knowing as I do that somehow there will be no changing his mind.
“I can’t afford any of this.” Shame, that ghost that has haunted me my entire life, becomes a visible apparition. “I am—well, was—a student. The ambulance. The doctor. The medicine.”
“Well, I can.” Pulling away from me abruptly, he stands. “It is my responsibility. My fault. So you will stay until you heal.”
Hell no. I know that I don’t actually have any other options right now, but instinct is its own entity, honed over long years of watching my mother make promises that she could never fill, anything to get her next fix.
I slide over to the edge of the bed. I have to get up. I can’t owe him any more than I already do.
The abrupt movement causes my stitches to pull tight, tugging on the healthy skin surrounding the wound, and I cry out in pain.
“Lie down.” The word is a full-on command, infused with the authority of a man who knows that he will be obeyed.
Again, instinct tells me to rail against it. But someone else—something either much smarter or much more idiotic—has me doing as he says.
He scowls down at me, an expression that suits him better than the smile, though I like the smile far better.
“I am not holding you hostage.” He points to a cordless phone that rests on the bedside table. “You are free to call whomever you wish, so that they do not worry. But you will stay until you are healed. I assure you, the money—it is nothing.”
Looking at the room around me, that is easy to believe. And easier to focus on than the fact that I have no one to call.
No one who cares.
Every fibre of my body wants to protest this arrangement. No matter how well-meaning this guy seems, he’s a stranger. And I do not want to be in his debt.
I don’t see that I have a choice.
Huffing out a sigh of exasperated surrender, I flop back against the pillows. “Do you always get your way?” I’m irritated, or at least I would be if I could gather enough energy.
The longer I’m awake, the more that the pleasant fog from the painkillers dissipates. Right at this moment, I kinda feel like I’ve been hit by a semi.
A Bride for a Billionaire Page 2
