“That’s because I’m a dickhead. You’re a nice guy. Nice guys always get the girl.”
For some reason, that made him think of Maya. They didn’t always get the girl. “Sometimes the dickheads get the girl.”
“You find that girl, you send her over.” Jonas dropped their empty bottles into the recycling bin in the kitchen and bent into his refrigerator to get a refill. “Expect a full report next Friday, Sergeant.”
Rather than answer, Connor saluted, smiled, and shut the door behind him.
Back at his place, he keyed in the code and let himself inside.
“Just me,” he announced.
But Faith didn’t hear him. And the reason she didn’t hear him was because of the headphones plugging her ears, connected to a tiny mp3 player on a band around her arm. The TV sound was muted, but she was bent, ass in the air, following the moves of the women stretching on-screen. He was suddenly a big fan of yoga.
Watching her move in those skintight pants, he couldn’t help staring. There were a lot of places to rest his eyes. Where her slender thighs met the swells of her perfect ass, for starters. And the way her legs tapered to delicate ankles. The way her ponytail practically touched the ground as she deepened her stretch.
How the hell was he supposed to concentrate on protecting her with this sort of distraction?
From her position upside down, she caught sight of him beneath her outstretched arms and gasped. Standing abruptly, her long blond ponytail swung behind her shoulders. Her navy eyes were round, perfect pink lips matching in a frozen “O” beneath flushed cheeks.
God. Cute.
She rested her hand over her chest, her small breasts lifting and falling with her hectic breathing. The tight tank top she wore wasn’t leaving a whole helluva lot to the imagination. And those pants…Every yard of stretchy fabric clung to her long, long legs.
“You scared me.” She tugged the headphones out of her ears and looped them around the mp3 player she tossed unceremoniously on the chair. She flicked off the television next.
“Me?” He shut the door behind him. “Those pants nearly gave me a heart attack.” Faith may be lean, but those graceful, slender limbs curved in all the right places, thickening in the thighs, rounding at her perfect butt.
“Thanks. I think.”
“Welcome.” Reluctantly, he dragged his gaze from her body to her face and found her eyes had gone from round to narrow.
“How was your errand? Your mystery errand since you didn’t tell me where you were going. Have another hot date?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He liked having secrets from her. Mainly because it forced her to ask him questions. “Left you here afraid; thought I would come home and find you curled up on my chair, a blanket over your head.”
“I work out when I’m nervous.”
“Lucky me.” He strolled to the refrigerator. “Get you something to drink?”
“I have wine. I packed it.”
“You packed wine?”
“Yeah. I packed wine. Don’t start. I don’t have a problem.”
No, he had a problem. The problem was somewhere in the vicinity of the front of his pants, and it was growing into a bigger problem the longer he was in the room with her. The woman was decked out in Lycra.
God help him.
Bottles of beer lined the bottom shelf of the fridge and he bent to grab one, musing over her question about a “hot date.” It had been a while since he went on a date, actually—a real one—not fixing his sister’s car. Had been some time since he’d stayed overnight with a woman, or had a girl here. He uncapped his beer and frowned in thought. How long had it been? He chewed on the side of his lip, calculating.
Man. A while. He seemed to remember it being cold…Snow on the ground…
Shit.
“I can take the recliner tonight. Really, I don’t mind. You need your sleep.”
He snapped out of his thoughts and refocused on Faith, who was walking toward him. She was graceful. Each elegant step like a dance move. Normally, she was in her work clothes whenever she was at the mansion—streamlined pantsuits or dresses that fit as if they were tailored to her. But tonight, her hair was in a sloppy ponytail rather than flowing over her shoulders, and a few stray strands had come down around her face. Her fair skin was free of makeup, her cheeks slightly pink from exertion.
“How are you this beautiful after you work out?” He had not planned on saying that out loud.
Her dark blue eyes opened wide, then blinked at him.
Pull it together, man. He cleared his throat, averted his gaze. “I get done working out, I stink like a pig. I’m a sweaty mess.”
“That’s not a bad thing. You forget I’ve seen you landscaping the grounds at the mansion.” Her mouth opened like she might continue, then those cheeks tinged a little pinker and she fell silent.
Oh really?
And here he thought he was the only one suffering from a bout of errant attraction.
“Do not smile at me.” But she smiled at him as she gave the order.
One hand around his beer, he slid his other hand into his front pocket and took one step closer to her. She didn’t back away. A good sign. “And what do you see when I’m landscaping the grounds at the mansion?”
She rolled her eyes, but her mouth twitched. Yeah, she was about to lie to him. The cute kind of lie. A lie to save her from embarrassment. But she didn’t lie. Rather than answer, she changed the subject. “Like I was saying, I will be more than happy to sleep on the recliner.”
Not contented to stop teasing her, he dipped his head in the direction of his favorite chair. “Recliner’s my bed most nights. You can sleep in my room. That’s against a lot of rules I have, one in particular being if there is a woman in my bed, I’m in there with her.”
“You really don’t give up do you?”
“You want me to?”
Her face fell.
Too far.
She was okay with the flirting and teasing until it went the direction of serious. Then she backed off. He watched as her shoulders tightened and her arms crossed, her entire body going rigid. “I admit, it would be fun…”
Well, that was not what he expected her to say. He tried not to let the surprise he felt show. He kept his mouth shut and ignored the stir below his belt buckle.
“Really fun,” she said, almost to herself.
Fun. Hell yes, Faith in his bed would be fun.
She blinked out of her thoughts. “But where would it go, you know? You and me? I’d like to think we’re friends and—”
Yeah, this, he couldn’t do. Before she continued down a list of why she would not be crawling into bed with him tonight, he put a hand on her shoulder. He gave her a squeeze, grounding himself at the same time. “You don’t have to dump me, Cupcake. I wasn’t being serious.”
Not all the way serious, anyway. Though, if she had replied in the positive, he’d have her flat on her back in his bed right this very minute. He took a long pull of his beer.
Then another.
Down, boy.
“Sorry. This may sound pretentious, but I’m used to turning men down…” She cringed. “Now I sound like I’m full of myself.”
“Stop apologizing, Cupcake. You forget I know you. I know you’re not full of yourself.” The opposite, actually. Besides, he had no doubt, not a single one, that she turned down men by the dozen. She had been single since Michael dumped her for a cheap thrill, and looking the way she did, all that blond hair and lethal body…Hell, Connor knew men were probably lined around the block the second word got out she was no longer engaged.
“Open your wine, and don’t apologize for wanting that, either.” He gestured to his recliner. “I’ll be in here if you need me.”
* * *
Well. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut.
Connor’s teasing had gotten a little real all of a sudden. Or maybe it was just her. She’d been under a lot of stress lately, and being in close q
uarters with the man who looked as fantastic as the man she was temporarily living with could really mess with a girl’s head.
She focused on the task of opening her wine, turning over the memory of him calling her beautiful.
How are you this beautiful after you work out?
“Beautiful” was something she’d heard a lot over the course of her life. And it wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the compliment, but sometimes she wished people would see her as more than pretty.
Then again, recently, she’d been wondering if she was anything other than pretty. Her identity used to be wrapped up in Michael. Wrapped up in the idea of being half of a whole. Wrapped up in the idea of proving her mother wrong, of proving the Shelby curse to be a silly old wives’ tale in their family.
Now she wasn’t really sure who she was. She had successfully moved out of her mother’s house to live on her own, and no sooner was she there than she was being ushered out of that house and into Connor’s. And yes, she understood why. She even approved it. She had no desire to be on the receiving end of whoever was trying to get into her apartment for whatever reason.
Still, it kind of made her feel like her road to self-discovery had come to an abrupt end. A dead end.
With a juice glass full of merlot—Connor, not surprisingly, did not own a wineglass—she went into the living room. The recliner, the television, the boxes. He stood and gestured toward the chair. “Have a seat.”
“I’m not kicking you out of your seat. Although”—she took a look around the barren space—“you could use another piece of furniture or two. I guess you don’t have company very often. I mean, except the girls you insist on joining you in your bedroom.” She batted her lashes.
Something flashed in his eyes, something dark. She couldn’t quite read his expression. Rather than have a snappy comeback, rather than look as if he were full of confidence, he looked almost chagrined. Or pained.
“Well, Cupcake, you could always sit on my lap.” Ah, there it was. The teasing was back. And quite frankly, she preferred the teasing. Teasing was much easier than the darkness that settled between them for a fraction of a second, or the tense energy she’d felt firsthand moments ago.
“Tempting. But I doubt you’re as cushy as your bed. You seem to be made up completely of rock-hard muscle.” Oops. Did she say that out loud?
He crossed his big arms over his chest, not taking her seriously. “Now you’re teasing me.”
She lifted a shoulder into a careless shrug. But it was not careless. The shrug was meant to disguise the sexual tension radiating between them. Right about now, on a scale of one to one hundred, it was cranked up to eleventy million.
They watched each other for a few moments, and then he came a step closer. Then one more step. “I like how tall you are. If we ever make out, neither one of us would have a sore neck afterward.”
Subconsciously, she wet her lips, her eyes going to his mouth. His bottom lip was full, capped with a perfect top lip, and at once she wondered what the beer would taste like on his lips. Good, she’d bet.
Really good.
“Too bad neither of us is interested, huh?” he asked.
The question was rhetorical, she knew, but she still had to blink a few times to reset her brain. “Right.”
He grinned. “Right.”
“Well.” She took one step away from him just in case she spontaneously pressed her lips to his. “It’s better to have friendship, don’t you think?”
“I do.” Brushing by her, he crossed the room, hooked a kitchen chair with one hand, and dragged it to the living room. He turned it around and threw his leg over it, straddling it and folding his arms over the back. “I get to pick the first hour.” He snapped up the remote and flicked the channel. “And during your hour, I get a veto. You are not watching that housewife shit tonight.”
Like that, they’d gone from flirting to friends, making it over another hurdle.
She sat down on the recliner, curled her legs underneath her, and sipped her wine. But she didn’t watch the show on television as much as she watched the flickering television highlight the planes of Connor’s handsome face.
* * *
Faith woke in the morning wrapped in navy-blue sheets. She was a little disoriented, if not a tad hungover. Normally, she didn’t make it a habit of finishing an entire bottle of wine, but the more she drank, the more relaxed she felt. The more relaxed she felt, the more fun it was to argue with the man of the house over what to watch next.
How many shows about catfish hunting could a girl endure, anyway?
She stretched, enjoying the sunlight sifting through the simple venetian blinds covering the two bedroom windows. Then pulled on her yoga pants and strolled out into the hallway. After a quick trip to the bathroom, she pulled open the door to find Connor standing in the threshold.
Wearing a white towel.
Wearing only a white towel.
She couldn’t keep her eyes on his face. Her gaze snapped from his mussed, still-damp, sandy-colored hair, trickled across broad shoulders, and landed on an even broader bare chest covered in a smattering of light hair. For a little too long, she inspected the tribal tattoo circling one bicep.
Then there was the matter of the towel. Tucked in just over one hip, it appeared to be hanging there by not much more than a prayer.
“You done? I still need to shave.”
“I—um.”
Earth to Faith.
Before he could catch her drooling over his near-nakedness, she slipped by him in the doorway and hustled for the living room. And yes, she grazed the terrycloth covering what she could only imagine was underneath.
And boy, did she imagine.
She imagined it all the way through pouring herself a glass of water, through nibbling on a piece of toast, through climbing into his truck, and during the ride to the mansion.
For some reason, he didn’t mention her finding him almost nude. And that made her wonder more. It wasn’t like him not to tease her about something. Unless he really didn’t find it a big deal to wander around in the nude. Maybe he thought the towel was enough of a barrier between them.
If so, he’d be wrong. Yes, she’d lived with a man who had exited the bathroom in only a towel. But Michael didn’t have that chest. Those shoulders. Or the thighs straining against the—
“I’m going to reinforce your windows and door until you can get a decent security system installed at your place. We can stay there tonight,” Connor said, driving up the long lane and into the driveway of Pate Mansion.
She turned her head and her visual of him this morning was replaced with the way he looked now. Long-sleeved waffle-style henley, jeans, boots. No less attractive covered up. How about that. “I thought you were my security system.”
“Even so. Not leaving you as bait without me.” He winked over at her. “You’re stuck with me, Cupcake.”
There was an idea.
“I think whoever’s been trying to break in might come back if they haven’t already,” he said.
She felt her eyebrows lift. “And you want to be there when they do?”
“Yes. I would like to catch this person so you can sleep soundly in your apartment.”
She wanted that, too.
“Do you have any enemies?” he asked.
She snorted. Brady had asked her the same question when he stopped by, but she couldn’t think of a single person who wanted to do her ill. Except for maybe…“Cookie?”
“Did you have words with her when you caught her and Michael together?”
Oh, how she had wanted to, but the shock of what she was seeing had tied her tongue.
“No.” Faith shook her head and looked at her lap. “I just slunk away like a coward.”
He parked the truck and shut the engine down. The next thing she knew, he was facing her fully, his index finger crooked under her chin. Her eyes met his concerned expression.
“Promise you’re going to stop referring to yourself a
s a coward, Cupcake. I don’t like it. And it’s not true. What that rat-bastard did to you was wrong. What Cookie did to you was wrong. Make no mistake, what they did? That was done to you. No one knows what to say in a situation like that.”
He spoke like maybe he’d experienced a similar situation. She wondered if he had. They never talked about his past relationships. They didn’t talk about much of anything other than his work or hers. What they had was a little bit deeper than “how is the weather,” but not by much.
A small smile pulled her lips. “Okay. I promise.” It was high time she stopped reacting like a kicked puppy. If she was supposed to move on with her life, she better start freaking moving on. “My house tonight.”
“That’s my girl.”
He let go of her chin and turned to get out. She sat there for an extra second or two letting the words “my girl” roll around inside the cab of the truck. Something about being Connor’s girl was really appealing.
And really scary at the same time.
CHAPTER 7
By five o’clock, the mansion’s kitchen smelled like cinnamon.
He’d been in the kitchen having a beer with Donny when Faith appeared, practically floating in, her nose in the air.
“My mouth is watering,” she announced.
“Cinnamon rolls,” Connor said.
Her blue eyes grew in circumference.
“A pan of pinwheel heaven,” Sofie said, strolling into the kitchen via the utility room. “You two staying for dinner?”
Connor looked to Faith who nervously looked to Sofie. “I…”
“We have time, Cupcake.” He could use something not takeout, that was for damn sure.
“I can’t turn down dessert,” Faith told Sofie.
Donovan put on a faux expression of authority and said, “After you finish your dinner, young lady.”
Table set, and food piping hot and plated, the four of them sat down to eat. Connor had been eating Donny’s cooking since his brief stint working at the Wharf. At the seafood restaurant, his buddy sneaked him food so he didn’t have to pay for it. Now that he thought about it, not all that different from now.
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