by Aly Martinez
I rolled my eyes. “How about you put the dramatics aside and let me bandage you up?”
She laughed without humor. “Oh, right. I’m dramatic. I could have been killed. Meanwhile, your highness is up here having her bathroom renovated.”
I hooked my thumb over my shoulder. “I’d hardly call this a renovation. I couldn’t get the diamond-crusted floors or anything. Call the Enquirer. I’m being forced to make do with…” I leaned forward and partitioned off my mouth before whispering, “Running water.”
“Okay, while you get that, I’ll try not to let Meredith and Jewels cave in on me.” Turning on a toe, she stomped away.
Drew rounded the corner, jumping out of the way to escape being run over. “Everything okay?”
“A ceiling fan fell on one of the girls downstairs and she’s convinced that the building is crumbling, and I’ll be honest: I’m not sure she’s wrong.” I sifted my fingers through the top of my hair. “Aren’t ceiling fans connected to a stud or something? They can’t just fall from the sky, can they?”
He quirked his lips. “The sky? No. The ceiling?” He shrugged. “Depending on who installed it, and given that I’ve seen Hugo’s handiwork, anything is possible.”
I huffed, “Fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Pun intended?” he asked on his way over to me. He stopped, teetering on the edge of too close, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was just…Drew.
“Hardly,” I replied.
He smiled, his brown eyes warming like smooth chocolate. (So beyond not plain.)
“I have to go down there and patch her up. You guys okay up here while I’m gone?”
His eyebrows perked. “You want me to come with and take a look at the fan?”
“That would be…” The words died on my tongue when movement at the mouth of the hall caught my attention.
His lips were thin and his jaw was hard, but his eyes… They were molten.
Penn. And not the guy who had told me to stay away.
This was the Penn who had held me close and told me to unlearn it.
My whole body roared to life, the fine hairs on my arms standing on end as his penetrating stare drilled into me. That beautiful hum in my veins returned.
“Amazing,” I finished breathily.
Drew gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t worry—”
“I’ll go,” Penn announced so roughly that it was jarring—and mesmerizing. His molten eyes had turned to ash, the pupils so large that I could barely see the blue around them. He was staring at his brother’s hand—but there was no love in that glare.
He looked to me. “You good with that?”
“Absolutely,” I replied immediately.
Drew flicked his gaze back and forth between us in what I assumed was bewilderment, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Penn long enough to confirm.
“You sure about that?” Drew asked.
I had no idea which one of us he was talking to, so I whispered, “Yeah,” at the same time Penn declared, “I’ll take it from here.”
Drew chuckled, but Penn didn’t say anything else.
Penn
I. Was. Fucked.
Plain and simple.
My plan was fucked.
My head was fucked.
Worst of all, I feared Cora was fucked too.
Because this was not going to end well for any of us.
But, God, I was sick of fighting to stay away from her.
So there I was, alone in an apartment with her, feeling like I’d just bet my entire life on red and was waiting on bated breath to see where the roulette wheel would land.
“So, how old are you?” Cora asked as she swirled around the apartment, wearing a pair of ridiculous hot-pink dish gloves. She had a spray bottle of bleach that was burning my nostrils in one hand and a rag so dirty that it registered on the black spectrum in the other.
I readjusted my footing on the ladder and kept working to correct Hugo’s unbelievably novice attempt at hanging a ceiling fan. There had been exactly one screw mounting it to the stud in the ceiling—a screw that was too short. The rest were only anchored into the sheetrock, which made each spin of the blades a literal game of Russian roulette for anyone unlucky enough to be standing beneath it.
It was a miracle Brittany and Ava hadn’t been killed at least a dozen times. Or so I’d been told as Cora paced the room, furiously doing the calculations. Out loud. Explaining every single solitary variable as she solved for X. I didn’t figure she had much of an education, but when she started prattling off formulas and crunching the numbers in her head, I’d never been more intrigued by a woman in my life.
During my time avoiding her, which wasn’t really avoiding her at all—it was more like a lion watching over his lamb—I’d learned a lot about Cora.
She never walked anywhere. If her feet weren’t at least trotting, she wasn’t moving at all.
And she made amazing sandwiches. Soft white bread, deli-sliced ham, mayo, and the perfect dash of salt and pepper. She didn’t use any of the fanfare like lettuce or tomato. It was just a sandwich. But, damn, it was good. I hated that she made Drew and me lunch, catering to us like we were doing her a goddamn favor. Yet she did. Every day. Whether I was speaking to her or not.
She didn’t have the time—or the money—for crap like that.
I’d witnessed her going door-to-door twice, holding an empty coffee mug to collect cash to help one of the other girls buy whatever the hell they needed.
Meanwhile, Cora’s phone remained cracked, her car was rolling on three bald tires and a donut, and the strap on her purse was knotted to hold it together.
But if she cared about any of those things, she’d never let on.
Cora didn’t bitch or complain. Nor was she angry or bitter. Actually, she laughed—a lot.
And she kept doing, and doing, and doing for everyone else until she was dead on her feet. I’d caught her dozed off on the couch once. It made me an absolute creep, but I’d stood there, watching how peaceful she was. Her lips curled up even in slumber.
Her life wasn’t easy, but that fucking woman smiled while she slept.
Who did that?
In the understatement of the decade, it was safe to say that I was not emotionally equipped for going toe-to-toe with the likes of Cora Guerrero. But for no good reasons—and a lot of bad ones—I couldn’t stop myself.
“Thirty-seven,” I answered.
Her back shot straight, her head tipped back, and she aimed those dark-blue eyes, the ones that I feared would be my undoing, up at me. With two simple words, you would have thought I’d given her the world.
Her mouth split, revealing a brilliant, white smile that crushed my chest.
“He speaks,” she teased.
“Occasionally.” I turned my attention back to the ceiling fan.
“Thirty-seven, huh? Well, you don’t look that old.”
“She lies,” I mocked.
She giggled, soft and sweet, like I was learning everything about Cora was. She went back to trying to scrub the finish off the countertop. “So you know how to rip out walls, fix pipes, and hang ceiling fans. There has to be a job market for that out there? I get Drew. He’s fresh out of jail, and he was tight with Manuel, but why are you here?”
“To work.”
“You owe Manuel any favors?”
“No.”
“Does he have any dirt on you?”
“No.”
“On the run from a woman?”
My chest locked up tight. She had no fucking idea.
“No,” I semi-lied.
“Have you ever been to rehab? If so, for what drugs? Or was it alcohol? Any twelve-step programs in your past?”
“No. No. No. And No.”
She remained eerily quiet as I twisted the last screw in. When my peripheral vision told me it was safe, I glanced to see what had suddenly bought me the silence.
She had her head stuck inside the fridge. After a loud sniff, she shuddered an
d her long blond curls shook. “Holy shit. I think that milk was produced by the very first cow God created.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to hide my smile. It did not help my case when she was cute.
Without warning—thus without giving me time to prepare—she peeked over her shoulder and caught me looking.
“Are you smiling?”
So, apparently, biting my cheek didn’t help.
I forced my lips flat. “No.”
She crinkled her nose.
So. Fucking. Cute.
“Holy shit, the ever-stoic Penn Walker has facial muscles!”
I’ll be damned if I didn’t smile again.
She gasped, dramatically bringing her hand to her chest. “Dear Lord, he gives me an encore.”
I chuffed. “Jesus, you really are crazy.” Desperate for an escape—and a way to hide my growing grin—I shoved the screwdriver into my pocket, my head down like a moron, and turned away… “Fuck!” I boomed, my elbow landing hard on the floor.
The screwdriver stabbed through my pocket and into my thigh, causing a blast of pain to radiate through my entire lower body.
“Oh my God!” She jogged over and dropped into a squat beside me.
I pushed up onto my good elbow and grumbled, “I’m fine.”
“Did you slip?”
No, I was gawking at you and forgot I was standing four rungs up on a ladder.
“Yeah,” I replied instead of sharing that fun little tidbit.
She used the fingers of her gloves to pull them off. “Are you okay?”
With her that close? Not even a little bit. “Course.”
Cora was all kinds of beautiful. Any man with two eyes could recognize that from across a football field. But, with only inches between us, she was a different kind of beautiful.
She was real.
Not a job.
Not a plan.
She was just…
“Penn, roll over. Let me look at your leg. Shit, you’re bleeding.” She angled her body forward until she was all I could see.
I should have closed my eyes. Done the whole one-in-one-out thing.
I should have focused on the past. I’d been all too good at fixating on that for the last four years.
Instead, I stared.
Faint pink painted the skin beneath a light peppering of freckles on her cheeks. She had this tiny mole just below her bottom lip. Being that she was a woman, she probably hated it. And for that assumption alone, I fucking loved it.
A soft floral scent ever so slightly tainted by bleach wafted off her. It was a cheap store-brand lotion. I’d seen it in her bathroom once. But, on Cora, it was better than any high-price perfume I’d ever smelled.
Her silky, blond curls trailed over my forearm, causing the hollow ache in my chest to travel below the belt.
And when she looked up at me, her blue eyes sparkled in a way that made me wonder how spectacular they would look fluttering shut as I drove inside—
“Take your pants off,” she ordered.
“Excuse me?” I scrambled away, the damn screwdriver stabbing me all over again. Rolling to the side, I dug the bastard from my pocket and dropped it to the floor.
“I can’t see anything with your pants on.”
Wincing, I tried to stand. “You can see more than enough.”
In a real stinger to the ego, she grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet. “Stop being a baby. I’ve seen men’s underwear before.”
“Not mine,” I defended.
Bringing a hand to her mouth, she tried to hide her humor. It was useless in muffling her laugh.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “I’m not taking my damn pants off.”
She moved her hand, revealing an earth-shattering smile. “You know, I think this is the most you’ve spoken me to in a week and it’s because you’re afraid I’ll see you in your boxers?”
“No, I’m afraid you’ll see me not in my boxers. Who wears underwear anymore?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Like, ninety percent of the population.”
“Women maybe.”
“It’s been a while since I had any firsthand experience, but I’m pretty sure men wear underwear too.”
It made me an asshole, but I felt every word of that little “it’s been a while” confession ghost over my skin like heat licking off a bonfire.
“Well, not this one,” I replied, heading to the door before I had a chance to do something stupid. Like…actually drop my fucking pants.
Because she was stubborn as hell—a trait I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated—she followed after me. “I’m a nurse, Penn. And you need someone to look at your leg.”
Things I knew about Cora Guerrero:
She was twenty-nine.
Gorgeous—not important.
She mothered thirty-ish prostitutes like the biggest, grizzliest mama bear out there.
Each morning, she drank coffee like it was the only thing keeping her alive.
And while tearing out the wall between her bathroom and pantry, I’d found no less than ten boxes of cookies she’d hidden. And I knew they were hers because, when Drew had tried to relocate them to the kitchen counter, she’d come through denying they were hers but then carried them to her bedroom for “safe keeping.”
But a nurse?
“You’re not a nurse.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Not like with a degree or anything. However, I’m currently the only other person standing in this room and you’re injured. It’s the law of default.”
“I’m not sure that’s the way it works.”
She tsked, her tongue making a spectacular appearance against her teeth. “Hate to break it to you, but around here? It is. I’m a nurse when people are hurt. Security when fights break out. A chef when people need to eat. A therapist when they need to talk. A chauffeur when they need to get to a job. And just a heads-up, if a nuke suddenly appeared that needed to be disarmed, I’d magically become a nuclear engineer too. So, speaking as a professional whatever-the-hell-I have-to-be-at-the-moment, I’ll get you a blanket to cover your manly bits, but you’re dropping your damn pants.”
Not at all how I’d thought this day was going to go when I’d rolled out of my sleeping bag that morning. But I had to admit, in the history of days I’d had, a beautiful woman ordering me to drop trou wasn’t even close to being one of the worst. In an alternate dimension, where she wasn’t her and I wasn’t me, my pants would have been on the floor along with hers the first time she’d touched me.
But here? Now?
“I’m fine,” I grumbled, once again making a break for the door. I had my hand on the knob when she caught my forearm.
“Okay, okay. Can I at least give you some gauze and antibiotic cream so it doesn’t get infected? I can’t risk you coming down with gangrene. It’s been a while since I’ve had to be a surgeon.”
Incredulous, I glanced at her over my shoulder. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
She winked. “I’m kidding. But!” She lifted a finger in the air. “Not about the gauze or cream.”
I may or may not have stared at her ass as she walked over to the first aid kit she’d used to patch up our sleeping ceiling fan victim.
“I’m almost out of gauze though. Between my nose and Brittany’s shoulder—”
Ice hit my veins and the words were out of my mouth before my brain had fully processed them. “What the hell happened to your nose?”
“I had a little run in with—”
I took a long step toward her. “Marcos?”
Her wide eyes snapped to mine. “What? No!”
Another step. “Dante, then?”
Her hand went to that tiny silver star she always wore around her neck. “No. Why? Are they planning to stop by?”
“I have no clue.”
She blinked at me, her hand dragging that star back and forth across the chain as though she were trying to start a fire. “Would you tell me if they were?”
“
Absolutely. Would you tell me if they hit you again?”
Her face paled, and the movement at her neck stopped. “How do you know about that?”
“You had a bruise the day we got here. Wasn’t hard to put two and two together. If they come back—”
“You can’t do anything,” she rushed out, closing the distance between us. “If and when they come back, stay out of it. Okay?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not gonna happen.”
She lifted her hand toward my forearm before thinking better of it and dropping it to her side.
I wished like hell that she’d have followed through.
Her voice softened. “Penn, I’m serious.”
“So am I. So we’re making a deal. I’ll tell you if I hear anything about them heading this way. And, if they do, you come find me.” I leaned toward her. “Immediately.”
Her eyes searched mine, the most beautiful disbelief crinkling the corners. “Why would you care?”
Because you hold the answers to end my miserable existence once and for all.
And because no woman deserves to live in fear—but especially not you.
“I just do.” I extended a hand in her direction. “Now, tell me we have a deal.”
The confusion on her face slayed me. Christ, this woman was so far gone that she couldn’t fathom why someone would want to protect her.
But I did—fiercely.
I pushed my hand out farther. “Say it.”
She tipped her head to the side and eyed me warily. “Not until you tell me why you care?”
I wanted to tell her. She deserved at least that much. But neither of us was ready for that venomous snake.
So I told her a different truth. “The world is an ugly place, Cora. It’s filled with more sinners than saints. More hate than love. More chaos than kindness. And that’s not because the world is filled with bad people. It’s because the good ones stay silent.”
Her whole incredible body jerked in surprise. “Is that why you sit outside my door?” She lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. “Are you trying to…protect me?”
“I won’t keep quiet. I won’t turn a blind eye. And I won’t stay out of it. No man should ever put his hands on you. Please tell me you know that?”
Her breath hitched. “Who are you?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
