“Hehe,” she managed weakly, realizing it was patently obvious what she’d bought—a bag full of deterrents. “One can never be too careful in the big city. Always good to have something close for protection.”
When she’d gathered everything up, she threw an absent and very fake smile in his direction and took one last look around to be sure she’d gotten everything and then hurried away. “Thanks so much for helping! Sorry if I … uh … stepped on you or anything.”
She was so relieved when she made it inside her apartment and bolted the door behind her she felt like crying.
Settling her package and purse, she dragged her skirt up high enough to examine her shin and discovered without much surprise that she’d left DNA all over the stairs—blood and skin. It was more bruised than damaged, thankfully, and also her palm and knee.
She wasn’t sure which were fresh bruises and which were from her last close encounter with ‘the hunk’.
As if it mattered!
Now that he knew everything she was going to have stashed in her purse, she really doubted he would have any trouble figuring out a way around it.
All he would have to do would be to step out of the shadows and she would fall on her face and throw the damned stuff as far as she could fling it.
Chapter Five
Jarowd watched Marilyn beat a hasty retreat, frowning, struggling between anger and … well anger.
He was pretty sure he could dismiss any doubts that Marilyn was suspicious of him. In fact, she seemed scared enough to have suspicions that he was alien.
He damned sure had not ever seen her just fall down like that before when he had been admiring her from afar. Now he had only to appear and she collapsed.
He would have liked to continue trying to convince himself it was because she was nervous because she was attracted to him, but the hollow feeling in the pit of his belly gave the lie to that happy scenario.
She was scared.
What the hell could she have seen, though?
“Jesus!” His eyes! “Gods damn it to hell,” he muttered, whirling on his heel and heading back to his hab. Once there, he went to the mirror in the bathroom and studied the effect of having his glasses half off and concluded he was right.
He hadn’t been wearing his damned eye pieces—because it was miserably uncomfortable—and she’d bumped into him and his sunglasses and half fallen off.
He’d forgotten she’d looked up at him before he could straighten them.
Actually, not forgotten. He hadn’t realized he’d even noticed it until he’d replayed it.
He’d been way too fucking focused on how good it felt when she slid down him.
What to do about it, though?
He had not found a suitable place to relocate yet and even if he had he still had that group coming in. He could not afford to take everything apart when he had a scheduled landing.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he snarled and began to pace, thinking, thinking.
It was a hard thing to do when he got hard every time he thought about her, but eventually an idea occurred to him.
He would have to try to get closer to her and see if he could convince her that whatever she thought she’d seen was something else.
He had the memory delete, of course, but it wouldn’t be able to delete any memories from that far back without doing some serious damage, or at least a high risk of it, and he wasn’t willing to harm the sweet little thing. Besides which, it was only designed to delete maybe five or ten minutes and there would be no way to track back to whatever it was and selectively remove it.
So that was out.
He had to get close and find out what it was she’d seen or thought she’d seen and explain it away. He thought it was his eyes, but how the fuck would he know? It could be anything.
Little snoop!
Not but what he didn’t admire everything about her, that included—she’d make a hell of a ranger!—but it was damned inconvenient.
He settled in his favorite chair after a little bit and started mentally reviewing the reasoning behind his decision, but he honestly could not see an option.
It might work.
It might not work.
It might end up just getting him in deeper, but as far as he could see he had nothing to lose and everything gain.
He checked his chrono again and calculated the time difference and decided he had plenty of time to try a little horizontal tango.
Getting up, he headed to the door, but braked when he got there. Turning around, he headed to the bathroom and took out the damned eye pieces and used them to cover his eyes to make them look like human eyes.
They irritated the hell out of his eyes, but he could not count on the damned sunglasses staying in place if he got the chance to romance her.
He left then and strode down the hallway to her apartment and rapped on the door, cocking one ear to listen for footsteps.
She did not call out in response and he did not hear footsteps approaching.
He checked his chrono and decided he should head back to his place and give her a few minutes just in case she was in the middle of something and had not heard him.
While he waited, he scanned the apartment for any sign of anything in sight that was alien to her world.
There was the food senthisizer in the kitchen, but he decided it looked enough like a machine they used called micro wave that she probably would not notice.
And he would not allow her to use it so she would never know that it transported food for him when he was in the mood for human food.
The bed linens were relatively clean. He sprayed them down for good effect to make sure they were fresh smelling and sanitized and then haphazardly straightened the bedding. He checked the bathroom next and then completed the circuit in the living area by setting up service for a dinner on his low area table.
An actual dining table would probably have been more welcome, but he had what he had.
Satisfied, he headed back down the hallway and rapped on Marilyn’s door again.
* * * *
Marilyn was still so jittery after her experience that the hard knock made her jump and she nearly dropped the pan she’d just taken from the oven.
She’d felt like she was crawling with germs after she’d wallowed all over the floor and headed in to take a nice long hot shower with lots of soap and scrubbing. Feeling clean and relaxed once she got out, she decided to add a facial to the ritual since she’d leached all the oils from her skin and it was tight and tingling.
When she’d dried off, she’d thrown her robe on instead of dressing right away and searched her fridge for the makings of a meal.
Settling on meatloaf, she mixed it up and threw it into the oven and then headed into her bedroom to search for something loose and comfy.
The jogging suit she’d just gotten would have been just the thing, even if she wasn’t going jogging at night, but she hadn’t washed it yet and she didn’t particularly trust the store to have cleaned everything they put out for resale. Instead she grabbed a well worn, very loose t-shirt and an equally worn pair of loose knit slacks.
Padding barefoot into the kitchen area again, she’d just pulled her meatloaf from the oven to pour off the juices when someone pounded on the door of her apartment in a rude demand for attention.
Sucking in a sharp breath, she whipped her head toward the door, as if she could see through it, waiting.
When the pounding came again she decided it must be the cops. Nobody pounded on the door like they would break down except the cops.
“What the hell?” she muttered, but she set the pan down, closed the oven and hurried to the door. “Coming!”
She nearly passed out when she snatched the door open and discovered Jarrod was standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame.
He favored her with a slow, sexy smile. “Hello beautiful.”
The instant he said it, Marilyn remembered the facial.
Not before. After she’d answe
red the door with mud all over her face.
Slapping a hand to her cheek, she discovered that, yes, it was covered with goop, dried now, uttered a gasp of horror, slung the door toward closed, and took off to the bathroom.
Jarowd decided it must be an invitation since she had not actually slammed it in his face. Pushing the door open, he strolled inside, carefully closed the door behind him and waited patiently while she was in the bathroom, splashing in the water.
She let out a gasp on the edge of a scream when she returned with a towel over her face and pulled it down and saw him, jumping all over. “Oh my god! Jarrod!”
He favored her with another slow grin. “So … I’m thinking we should get better acquainted since we keep running in to each other. Maybe a providence thing. I came to invite you to dinner … My place.”
Marilyn gaped at him, so thrilled by the invitation that it took her several moments to begin to turn it over in her mind.
It sounded like a very straightforward flirtation, but could she really believe it? Just take it at face value?
The truth was, she didn’t just think he was drop dead gorgeous. She had been struggling with a nuclear attraction from the moment she’d first set eyes on him.
She desperately wanted to believe he was as attracted to her as vice versa—or even a little attracted—but doubt set in.
What if it was only that he realized she was suspicious and he wanted to invite her to his place and choke her and dispose of her body?
Actually, he was standing in her living room, she pointed out to herself. If that was his intention there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t do it in her apartment.
God! She’d let him in! In spite of the suspicions she hadn’t been able to put to rest, he’d knocked on her door and she’d let him walk right in.
And her purse full of deterrents was in her bedroom.
She went from hot and panting to cold and shivering and back again so fast and so many times from her wild thoughts that she began to feel a little dizzy. “I … uh … That’s really sweet but I already started cooking ….”
“Yeah?” he asked. Looking a little doubtful, he strode into her kitchen and looked at her half done meatloaf. “I have steak.”
“Well … uh ….”
He turned the oven off and headed back to her. “Come on,” he murmured, draping one arm around her shoulders. “You’ll enjoy it. Promise.”
Bad idea, Marilyn. Bad, bad idea. Don’t do it! Don’t go with him like a lamb to the slaughter!
And she still let him lead her out of her apartment and down the hallway to his place, telling herself that it was the chance to check out what was going on and she couldn’t just blow it off.
Contrary to her expectation, fear, hope, Jarrod didn’t immediately fall upon her the very moment he had dragged her into his lair. He didn’t even make a move on her.
He abandoned her by the door.
She could’ve turned tail and run right then.
But she didn’t.
“Sit where you like. I’ll do dinner.”
Marilyn stood stock still by the door for many moments, staring around at the apartment.
She didn’t know what she’d expected but this wasn’t it.
It was sparsely furnished and none of the furnishings were new-new, but also not ragged with use. So he’d either had it a while or he shopped the second hand stores like she did.
The place was also neat and surprisingly clean—almost like a movie set—just an ‘artistic’ jumble of odds and ends here and there.
After examining everything with her gaze, she followed him into the kitchen.
He had his back to her and seemed to be standing in front of a microwave, but at her entrance, he turned and gave her his full attention. Settling his arm around her shoulders, he walked her right out of the kitchen again. “My treat tonight. Sit down.”
Disconcerted, Marilyn found a place to perch.
She couldn’t actually see or hear what was going on in the kitchen, but she craned her neck in the attempt, moving to the very edge of the seat she’d taken.
When she still couldn’t see, she gave up and transferred her attention to the area around her, trying to decide if she could see anything that might indicate … something nefarious, she supposed.
She saw a work area, but it didn’t look like bomb making. It looked like he might be working on some sort of electronics. “Are you a repairman?”
He came to the door of the room carrying two plates and glanced from her to the worktable. “Inventor,” he said succinctly.
He continued across the living room while Marilyn gaped at him in surprise and lowered the plates to a coffee table that she saw already had napkins, glasses, and utensils for two.
“You were very confident,” she murmured, smiling faintly.
He glanced at her and then at the table and shrugged. “Not exactly. I just figured I would ask you over and if you came it would be good to be ready.”
The response eliminated the tension that had tightened with the suspicion that he was convinced she would just fall into his hands like a ripe plum.
Which she had, she thought, embarrassed, realizing he had every reason to be confident and none to doubt his abilities.
Transferring her attention to the plates he had put on the table when he straightened and headed back into the kitchen, she gasped.
She hadn’t even heard him cooking and the plates held steaming potatoes and broccoli and a sizzling steak!
How in the world had he managed that?
Had he cooked the meal before he’d come to ask and just stuck it into the microwave to heat up when he got her into his apartment?
It seemed the only reasonable explanation and yet everything looked perfectly evenly heated and she knew you couldn’t get that just sticking an assortment of food in the microwave all at the same time.
“You’re amazing,” she commented when he returned with a bottle and settled on the floor in front of one of the plates.
He grinned at her cockily. “Women usually don’t say that until the next morning,” he joked.
Chapter Six
It was nothing short of amazing that the comment was so easy to take as a joke instead of an insult. She laughed, even knowing it was entirely likely that it was true.
Well, maybe not.
He was amazing to look at, but that didn’t mean he was any good in bed.
He probably hadn’t practiced anything but pleasing himself.
“I meant the food,” she said mockingly.
“Oh.” He tried to look disappointed, but he was focused on opening a bottle of wine.
Dismay flickered through Marilyn when she saw what it was he had. She really didn’t process alcoholic beverages well and beyond that she was well aware that men referred to alcohol in any form as pussy-lube.
Which it was, because it lowered inhibitions in some and made for a great excuse for others.
In her case it didn’t just lower her inhibitions it transformed her into an idiot.
On the other hand, she was just feet away from her own apartment and she thought she should be fine if she only had a few sips.
And she hated to throw a sour note into what was a first date.
Maybe.
“I could never, never eat a steak this big. Ever. Let me just cut off a piece I can handle and give you the rest? I’m sure you need more. You’re a big guy.”
“Eat what you want and don’t worry about it,” he said dismissively.
She shrugged inwardly, but instead of just tucking in, she cut the piece off that she wanted and moved it to the other side of the plate.
It was seasoned to perfection and cooked to perfection and so tender it was like butter. “Oh my god! Now I’m really impressed. I’ve never had a steak like this in my life!”
His brows rose, but he focused on tasting his own. “Damn! You’re right. This is good.”
Setting his utensils down he poured her glass full, ignoring he
r attempt to stop the pour, and then filled his own glass.
Marilyn found it easy to focus on the food—not the wine—sipping tiny sips and she still had a buzz before she was half way through. “What do you invent?” she asked after a few moments.
He shrugged. “This and that. Whatever comes to mind, you know.”
She didn’t, but she could see his point. She supposed inventors only made things when they discovered a problem that needed to be solved. “Sounds like it would be … challenging,” she said, thinking about how hard it must be to get by financially until one made something that made money.
But that explained the job thing, she realized. He must be living on money already made!
“I have a confession,” she said after she’d had a few more sips of wine.”
“Yeah? What kind of confession?”
She snickered. “I had this idea you were an actor.”
He chuckled, but then it occurred to him that she’d actually pegged him pretty closely. He’d spent years undercover as a galactic ranger and that had taken acting. It was the main reason, he supposed, they’d decided to place him as a guardian when they’d pulled him from the field because of the raid that had gone down sideways.
The raid where his partner had been killed.
He dismissed it. He preferred not to think about it. It was easier to deal with it that way.
You mean pretend it never happened, his therapist had asked? That’s not the way to handle grief.
And what the fuck did he know about it? Like he’d ever lost any damned body!
Besides, it wasn’t grief. He was pissed about it and he felt a lot of regret that things had gone down like they had, but he hadn’t killed the bastard that had murdered his partner because he had. He’d killed the bastard because he’d been trying to kill him.
He downed his glass of wine in the hope of washing the thoughts from his head and refilled his glass.
Then he discovered that Marilyn was lounging on the floor.
“You alright?”
She sat up. “Fine. Just tired. Guess I should go home.” She seemed to think for several moments. “Sorry. I just don’t handle alcohol very well. It makes me really sleepy or really … uh … wild.”
Guardian Page 4
