Cripes, he couldn’t back away from it now, not when the truth was so glaringly bright.
“Here.” Simon pushed Ryder’s half empty bottle of beer towards him. “Take a mouthful before you faint.”
Ryder blinked at him. “I’m not going to faint. Only sissies faint.”
“If I have to put your head between your legs, I’ll keep going and shove it up your arse.”
“Harsh,” Scott muttered. “But not a bad idea.”
“Up yours.” Reviving just a little, Ryder picked up the bottle, took a sip. “I think I need something stronger.”
“We don’t have anything stronger.”
Ryder looked down at the bottle in his grip before placing it back on the table. Shit, look at that, his fingers had a fine tremor. He fisted his hand, straightened his fingers again, studied them before picking up the bottle and having another swallow.
Becoming a little self-conscious under his friends’ gazes, he glanced up.
Kirk gave a slight smile, Scott was looking equal parts cautious and pleased, and Simon, well, that bastard who had pricked Ryder’s bubble without a qualm met his gaze full on.
“I ought to punch your lights out,” Ryder growled.
Simon grinned.
“Don’t think this changes anything.”
“We’re still friends?” Simon held up his little finger. “Pinkie swear?”
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
Simon’s grin faded, his gaze growing keen. “Speaking of hurt, how’s Dee?”
“Yeah.” Scott straightened from his slouch. “I heard she needed stitches.”
Glad to leave his chaotic thoughts and emotions behind for however brief a period, Ryder seized on the subject. “Yeah, she needed quite a few.” His gaze switched to Kirk. “Someone smashed the pots at her back door, she went down to investigate and fell, slicing her arm open on one of the shards.” Anger stirred inside him.
Kirk’s eyes sharpened. “Someone broke the pots deliberately?”
“That’s what Del told me. She doesn’t know who.” Ryder frowned. “When I find out, I’ll kick their arses so high and hard they’ll be farting out their mouths.”
“You should have called me as soon as you found out. There might be some evidence.”
“I was more worried about getting Dee to have the stitches, Kirk. That woman was determined not to have any and no one there could talk her into it.” Ryder shook his head in disgust. “All arguing with her. Anyone with half a brain knows you don’t argue with her when she’s like that, you just take control.”
“Most people aren’t willing to take their lives into their own hands,” Scott said dryly.
“And most people aren’t like Ryder,” Kirk added.
Ryder looked at him questioningly.
“In situations like that, Dee only listens to you. No one else could have made her have the stitches. Some wouldn’t understand her phobia.”
“Man, I remember how it all started. You would, too, Scott.” Ryder glanced at Kirk and Simon. “You didn’t live here then. When we were both ten years old, she cut her foot badly, needed stitches then, too. Bastard of a doctor we had back then wasn’t gentle, let me tell you. Here I am in the A & E with her, both of us shitting ourselves, blood everywhere. This doctor doesn’t tell her what’s happening, just stabs this needle into her foot. I can still hear her scream.” Ryder scowled. “I’m hanging onto her, she’s screaming, two nurses are holding her down. That bastard didn’t even wait for the anaesthetic to take full effect, he just started sewing. Man, her father came in and saw it, nearly laid that prick out. The only thing that stopped him was her mother hanging onto him, she knew Dee needed stitches, knew they had to keep going.” His hand fisted in memory. “By the time the doctor finished, Dee was a mess. Her mother had to pry her off me, she was hanging on like grim death, so pale I thought she was going to faint. Hell, even I had spots in front of my eyes, but I wasn’t letting her go. Her mother ended up dragging us both out clinging to each other.”
Simon grimaced, Kirk looked grim.
Scott lifted the bottle to his lips and took a sip, lowering it to add, “Then Mr Miller smacked that doctor right in the mouth. Punch lifted that bastard clear off his feet, he was air borne.”
“Yeah.” Ryder grinned a little. “I worshipped the ground Mr Miller walked on for a long time after that.”
“And the doctor left town soon after once word got around of what had happened.”
“Dee’s father never got charged for assault?” Kirk queried.
“Not when the nurses filed a complaint against him, and some other patients came forward with stories of his callousness. Mr Miller was hailed a hero.”
“Had a lasting impact on Dee, though.” Ryder thought back to the way she’d clung to him just a few hours before, the fear in her eyes. “She’s had a huge phobia about needles ever since. Her parents have had to pin her down for vaccinations. Now she’s an adult and her parents can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do, the woman won’t even have a flu shot.”
“Yet you were able to get her to consent to having stitches.” Simon looked steadily at him. “What does that tell you?”
Ryder didn’t reply. What he did know was that he’d been very protective of her, had taken control gladly, comforted her, been glad that she’d turned to him. Yeah, it told him a lot. It told him that he wanted her to turn to him when the going got tough. That he wanted to be the one to comfort her, protect her, sooth her fears, few as they were. The woman was strong, stubborn, and she drew him like a moth to a flame.
Sobering thoughts, and he wasn’t sure where he was going with it.
“Right.” Simon drained the can of Coke. “I reckon we better leave numb nuts here to his thoughts. He’s got a lot to think about, I can just about see his head ready to explode.”
“Yep.” Kirk pushed to his feet.
“But we’re taking one of these pizzas with us.” Scott flipped the lid shut on one of the boxes.
“Good idea,” Simon agreed. “I’m so hungry my stomach is eating my backbone.”
“I’m surprised you have any backbone left, you poor bastard. You only had a hamburger and large chips a whole hour before we came here. I don’t know how you’re still walking.”
“Is that sarcasm? Because if it is, it’s not working. Truth is never sarcastic.”
“You reckon?”
“Bloody oath.”
Ryder looked at the empty bottle of light beer in his hand before glancing at his friends. “Hey, I need a lift.”
Kirk dropped the empty bottles in the bin. “Where?”
Oh boy. He mentally steeled himself. “Dee’s.”
The three men looked at him.
“Look, she’s home alone, she’s had some trauma, I’m just going to bunk on her sofa.”
“She’ll make you sleep on the sofa?” Scott’s eyebrows rose.
“We’re not an item, okay? She doesn’t know I’m coming.”
“You’re going to wake her up?”
“No, dickhead. I’ve got the keys to her flat.”
“She gave you her keys?”
“No, I got them from Del.”
“Ah.” Kirk angled his head a little. “So you’re basically entering without permission.”
“You think she’ll let anyone baby-sit her?”
“I see your point of view.”
“I’m telling you, the only way that woman will have someone care for her is unknowingly.”
“Uh huh.”
Ryder ignored him, looking at Simon. “I drank a beer, even if it is light, otherwise I’d take my own car.”
“Sure.” Simon nodded easily. “What about Jezebel?”
“Oh yeah, hang on.”
Ryder hurried to the spare room, dragged out the big box he’d mentally marked for her kittening box, threw some newspaper in it and topped it off with an old blanket, then put it in the corner of his bedroom. Carefully picking Jezebel up, he sat her i
n the box.
“This is your birthing bed,” he told her. “Get used to it.”
She stared at him incredulously.
In the doorway of the bedroom, he looked over his shoulder at her. She didn’t even bother with the coy look this time, just sniffed the edge of the box, looked at him almost scornfully, got out of the box, twitched her tail and walked across to the bed, jumping up to land heavily on it. Plopping down in the very centre of the bed, she stared at him daringly.
Cripes, the furry little hussy was putting her furry paw down.
Simon looked over his shoulder. “Glad to see you can control her as well.”
“Shut your cakehole.”
“The respect is unreal.”
“Not as unreal as you’ll feel when you have no nuts left.”
“I don’t think you should be so violent in front of the expectant mother.”
Ryder glared at him. “I’m not forgetting that you dobbed me in.”
Simon smiled.
In the car, his friends made an effort to steer the conversation away from anything evenly remotely intimate, for which Ryder was grateful.
They pulled up behind the shops, all of them getting out to look at the broken pots. Simon pulled a torch out and Kirk walked around slowly with it, studying the area in the strong beam of light.
Finally he shook his head. “Nothing here, but I’ll come around tomorrow and have a talk to Dee, see if she knows anything.”
“She doesn’t,” Ryder said.
“She might suspect.”
“Then she’d be there now, ripping someone’s throat out.”
“The little Rottweiler’s had an accident, remember?” Scott pointed out. “Wait until she feels better then watch her head for the hunt and kill.”
Ryder pursed his lips. “You’ve got a point.” He nodded to Kirk. “Okay, come around but not too early.”
The look the cop levelled at him spoke volumes.
“Goddamn it, I meant as in let her sleep. Don’t get her up at the arse crack of dawn.”
“I don’t start until seven.”
“On a Sunday that’s the arse-crack of dawn. The woman gets up at five-thirty, six days a week. Let her sleep in. The pots aren’t going anywhere.”
“A little protective, huh?” Simon drawled.
Ryder flipped him the bird.
Scott glanced up at the dark windows of the flat. “Let’s go. If we keep chatting out here she’ll wake up.”
“It’s pretty dark in there,” Simon observed. “How’re you going to get up the stairs without falling over and breaking your neck?”
“I need a torch,” Ryder said.
Kirk handed him the one he held.
“That’s mine,” Simon reminded him.
“Thanks for the loan,” Ryder said. “You’re so thoughtful.”
He waited until his friends left, the lights of Simon’s car cutting through the night and turning onto the street, then he let himself in the back door, locking it behind him and pocketing the key. Creeping up the stairs, he peeked into the bedroom to see Dee lying in the bed, the light sheet pulled up to just under her arms, her blonde plait flung out on the pillow, her soft breasts under the cotton nightie rising and falling as she breathed slowly and deeply.
He was tempted to crawl in beside her, tuck her securely against him and go to sleep, but commonsense reigned and he went into the lounge. Toeing off his boots, he shrugged his shirt off, slid his belt free and dropped down onto the sofa.
Even though it was a three seater, it still wasn’t long enough for him. He propped his head on one of the dainty little cushions tucked into a corner of the sofa, made himself as comfortable as he could and closed his eyes.
At least he knew Dee was safe not far from him, close enough for him to hear if she called out during the night or needed help.
It took a long time before Ryder dozed off. He spent a long time staring at the dark ceiling, his troubled thoughts turning over and over in his mind.
Just what was he going to do about the revelations he’d discovered about himself and Dee? Was Simon right, did Ryder love Dee? Sure as hell he wanted her, he knew that now, knew it without a doubt. Just the thought of her in the other room, all soft and sweet and warm, was enough to make his blood heat. His concern for her was also real, but then that had always been present when she was upset or hurt.
But what troubled him even more was what, exactly, did Dee feel about him in return? And where did it leave them both? He’d always been a love ‘em and leave ‘em man, he’d never really planned for a future with a woman.
It took him a long time to finally fall asleep.
~*~
Hands on hips, Dee studied the man zonked out on her sofa, big feet in black socks hanging over one end, dark-haired head resting on one of her cushions, big body sprawled a little uncomfortably the full length of the three-seater sofa.
And what a body. She looked her full of Ryder while he was asleep, drinking him in like a thirsty woman denied water for three days and suddenly given a tall, cold glassful to drink.
Actually, licking along all those hard planes and swells of muscle was a tantalizing thought. Trailing her fingertips up that six pack, fingering the small hoop that pierced his right nipple, scratching lightly along the sun tattoo that loving cupped his substantial left pec. Oh yeah.
The memory of that hot, hard body against her, above her, inside her, had her mouth going dry. For one hot night he’d been hers, she’d been his.
But it was only one magical night.
One night.
It didn’t give her the freedom to touch and taste him, the right. Dee swallowed, straightened, took a step back as she folded her arms under her breasts. God, she wished she did, she wished she had every right to touch and taste him. She blinked back the sudden burn of tears.
Ryder wasn’t the kind of man who was looking for ever after. He seduced, he shagged, he left for the next conquest. Cripes, he probably had a date all lined up for tonight.
And she was ‘just Dee’.
That thought hurt, cutting deeply, but she took a deep breath, steadying her emotions. That was Ryder, she knew it, shouldn’t expect anything different.
Just as she shouldn’t read anything into the way he’d strode into the A & E the previous night, the concern in his eyes mixed with determination. Where the others argued with her, he just took control, and she found his control soothing, drawn to his no-nonsense determination, the calm knowledge in his eyes. His embrace had protected her, the way he’d pressed her face to his throat, enabling her to breath him in while hiding the sight of what was happening to her arm.
Only Ryder knew how much she hated needles. Even her own brothers laughed at her, teased her, her parents while understanding sometimes growing a little impatient. But not Ryder, never Ryder. He’d always been there after a vaccination, waiting outside the doctor’s office when her parents finally released her from there. He’d patted her shoulder, held her while she cried, and taken her to the café for a fortifying drink. He’d busted a few noses of their fellow schoolmates when they’d dared to laugh at her. It hadn’t taken long for the other kids to learn to leave her alone or they’d face Ryder’s wrath and fists. Even if he did lose against bigger boys, he’d still inflict some damage. Though he’d never hit a girl, none of them had wanted to make him mad at them, and why would they? Most of the school girls vied for his attention. Not to mention she’d scruffed up a couple and none of them wanted to get on the wrong side of her. She was known for her cutting tongue even back then. Good friend, bad enemy.
Dee sighed. Ryder might be her protector but that was all as far as he was concerned.
That thought was enough for her to call, “Ryder.” When he didn’t answer, she took another step closer. “Ryder.” When he didn’t move an inch, she shook his foot.
He rewarded her by shuffling on the sofa, wriggling that muscled backside around as he again settled down.
The man could sl
eep, no doubt about it.
Smiling a little, she moved up beside him, stopping at his side to bend over, reaching out to gently shake his shoulder. “Hey, Prince Hotness, time to rise and shine and tell me what the hell you’re doing on my sofa.”
His eyelashes trembled.
“Did you lock yourself out of your house?”
The heavy eyelashes opened slowly, dark blue eyes slightly unfocussed.
God, he had beautiful eyes. Mysterious, deep, hot. Combined with his sensual mouth and the strong planes of his face, he was sinfully handsome. No wonder he could have almost any woman he wanted with just one wicked wink. That wicked wink had even made great grandmothers giggle.
His gaze slid across her face, making her heart thump faster when a slightly roguish grin curved his lips. He crooked his finger at her.
She froze. It was like time had stripped back, only this Ryder wasn’t drunk. This Ryder was still sleep-fogged. And seductively dangerous to boot.
“C’mere, babe,” he whispered huskily.
Oh boy. It was stupid, a dumb arse move, but for the life of her she couldn’t stop from leaning down, caught in the snare of his deep voice, his dark eyes, his lazy, sexy demeanour.
His hand moved lower as she neared, long fingers curling into the neckline of her nightie to draw her even closer.
Close enough that their lips were mere inches apart, the blue of his eyes filling her vision as she saw her own reflection in the dark depths.
For a heart beat they stayed like that, then Ryder lifted his head, captured her lips, and it was almost as though the years rolled back in an instant.
His lips were still firm on hers, his hold still strong, but this was no drunk teenager. This was all man, sleep befuddled or not, and he took her mouth with finesse, assuredness, taking her breath and leaving her wanting, yearning for more just as she had when he’d kissed her all those years ago.
That one earth-shattering kiss that had changed everything, had swept her off her feet to pitch headfirst in love with the most popular boy in school, now one of the most eligible bachelors in town.
That teenage love had matured, deepened. On her side.
His mouth was hot, moist, his kiss carnal, and when he finally released her lips enough for her to draw a fraction back, his eyes were as hot as his kiss.
Lie to Me Page 24
