by Alison Kent
“Sweetheart, as long as I’m on that list of things you must do, I can pull off anything.” He lunged for the crumpled sheets and pulled them away from her clutching hands, tumbling her back into bed, where she squealed. She actually squealed.
Oh, yeah. It was going to be a hell of a fine day.
PATRICK READILY EXPECTED the stares of other shoppers while he and Annabel cruised the aisles of Central Market on this busy Sunday morning. Being judged on his appearance was something he’d used to his advantage for years, from the first time he’d been made aware that his looks were worth a bundle.
As a cocky college frat boy, he’d found his blue eyes and dimples got him laid on a regular basis. The same way his shaved head and unfortunate expression of having lived a stark horror now sent women running.
He had to laugh. Good thing they couldn’t see his tattoo or the ring piercing his nipple. They’d be offended right out of their lily-white Keds. Hell, they should’ve seen him eighteen months ago, wearing no more than threadbare khaki shorts held on with a rope, his hair a knotted mess, his right thigh a palette of caked-on blood and colored ink.
It had taken Soledad months to complete the tattoo, but it had been a way to pass the time, talking, laughing, loving—
He cut off the thought because love hadn’t been a part of his relationship with Soledad. She’d been his sanity, yes, his bedmate and, in the end, his savior. But thinking about her now was akin to selective memory. She had been but a part of the overall horror. The one good part. The only good part.
And he needed to remember the bad if he expected to flush out Russell Dega and see to Annabel’s safety. Keeping that in the forefront of his mind was all that mattered.
“If we work this right,” Annabel said, interrupting his musings and bringing him back to the present, “we can have this entire store to ourselves.”
“How do you figure that?” he asked, dragging the two-tiered grocery cart behind him through the market’s bakery. He frowned at the display of baguettes and bâtards, thinking about the menu’s tenderloin cocktail sandwiches.
“I’ll send you on ahead to clear the aisles. We won’t have a single basket blocking our way.” Annabel read the label on a package of imported focaccia and tossed it into the cart, shaking her head as yet another shopper reversed direction to avoid them. “This is ridiculous. I can’t believe you have to put up with this.”
He followed as she continued browsing, shelving the focaccia while her back was turned, wondering about the impatience in her tone. He’d learned to shrug off the less than subtle glances he received from a large segment of the phobic public.
As bright as she was, she should’ve known a haircut wasn’t going to change things any more than losing the earring he wore. “I’ve gotten used to it.”
“So was I wrong?” she asked, frowning when she realized he’d replaced her focaccia with a loaf of brown bread and a fresh-baked bâtard. “Is the shaved look more off-putting than the wild Tarzan hair?”
“Hard to tell.”
“How so?”
“Having you here legitimizes me.”
“Really?” Displaying her fickle moods, her face brightened at that. She seemed to like the idea. A lot. “So, it’s as though I’m keeping you on a leash, then? And you can’t attack unless I let you go?”
She stopped and gave him a grin that staggered him like a left hook to the jaw. “Would that make you my bitch?” she joked.
“Funny,” he said with a growl, and she cocked her head in a bowing acceptance of the compliment. Even though he hadn’t meant it as one. “I like to think of it as having made a pact with the devil.”
They moved into the produce section, and Annabel huffed, handing him a plastic box of fresh dill. “If I were the devil, I would have long since corrupted you.”
“And you haven’t?” He brought the dill to his nose before placing the herbs in the cart. Then he bowed his nearly shaved head, running a hand from his forehead to his nape.
She huffed a second time. “A simple haircut is hardly corruption.”
“Simple? Simple?” With the tic in his jaw loud enough to hear, he rounded the cart that sat between them and backed her into the plantain and mango display. “What exactly about this haircut do you find simple, Ms. Lee?”
She sighed, a full-body capitulation that made his knees weak even while notching up his protective instincts. The reaction would’ve had him laughing if it didn’t feel so damn real. He was not going to let Russell Dega lay a hand on this woman.
“I know the haircut was my idea, but I didn’t want anyone judging you by your rather savage appearance,” she said, pressing her palms against his chest.
He loved the feel of her fingers, so strong yet so tiny. “And you don’t think that’s what they’re doing now?” He cast his gaze to the side, where more than a few of the shoppers who skulked near the bins of Rio Grande Valley grapefruits and oranges stole quick glances his way.
Annabel ignored all of them, boldly sliding her hands from his chest up to his shoulders, one palm moving to cup his nape. “You’re a beautiful man. It’s their loss if they can’t see that.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he scoffed, even while her compliment had his heart beating faster.
She tilted her head and studied his face. “I’m serious, Patrick. You’re observant about so many things. I’m surprised you don’t see your own appeal, even if others don’t have the sense to notice.”
He waited for one heartbeat, two, then a third before he stepped out of her clutches. “And what appeal would that be? The fact that I can fill your stomach and your body and kill both those hungers without thinking twice?”
“Must you always be so crass?” she asked from the other side of the cart.
“I’m simply acknowledging my appeal. I thought that was what you were urging me to do,” he said, knowing full well she wanted him to peel away the protective coat he’d worn the last four and a half years and expose the raw nerve endings beneath.
She turned and headed to the refrigerated cases of fresh and packaged seafood. “You know I was talking about your physical appeal. And, yes. Your looks are simply one part of the total picture. But you have this bad habit of using your appearance to intimidate.” She finished considering the smoked salmon and moved to the shrimp. “You could use it instead to get what you want.”
She was baiting him, and he would gnaw his leg off to keep from being caught in her trap. “Isn’t that rather shallow?” he asked, though he’d admitted to himself moments ago that he’d done that very thing for years. “Expecting my wishes to be served on a silver platter because of my nose, my eyes and my all-American jaw?”
“Of course it is,” she readily agreed. “But it’s the way of the world. It’s refreshing, at least, to see that you recognize the value of your deeper qualities.”
He wasn’t doing so well with the gnawing. “What? You think I actually have redeeming values?”
“I’ve always known that you do.” She gestured to one of the fish market’s employees. “I just wanted you to acknowledge them,” she added, quickly flipping her attention back to Patrick before he could say a word. “And I’m not talking about your kitchen or bedroom skills.”
“I’m pretty sure I was there last night when we signed our catering contract.” A fool’s contract. “And I’m fairly damn confident those two reasons are the only ones you gave for keeping me around.”
“Do you want to call this off then? I need to give the caterer my decision by Monday.” She stepped back to let him select the shrimp and the salmon, as if choosing the seafood would be the formal binding seal on their agreement. He would cook, she would serve and then good night, Saigon.
With his forearm braced on the chrome butcher case, his other hand at his hip, he stared at her, standing there with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips bowed up in the snotty pout he adored and hated, her weight leaning into one cocked hip.
The fingertips of one hand t
apped the opposite forearm while she waited for his order to be weighed, wrapped and priced. While she waited for him to give her an answer that was about a whole lot more than catering. That was about cleaning up his attitude and getting the hell on with living his life.
He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, and was faced with the swift death of breaking things off with her now, or the sweet torture of two more weeks in her company. Not quite the live-or-die situation he’d faced with Dega—
Dega.
The one word put an end to Patrick’s hesitation.
The salmon and shrimp joined the breads and herbs in the cart, which he twirled around and dragged behind him with one hand, his other wrapped around Annabel’s upper arm. He propelled her toward the coffee bean alcove and sent another three shoppers scurrying away as he rounded the corner with his cargo in tow.
Her chest was heaving when he faced her, and he knew it wasn’t exertion because neither one of them had exerted much of anything on the quick trip through the store. Yet his own chest rose and fell just as rapidly. This woman made it damn hard for a man to breathe.
“I’ll cook for your damn party, but you’re mine until then. Anytime, anywhere, any way I want you. Agreed?”
He saw her swallow as, wide-eyed, she nodded. “Agreed.”
“Good.” Because sticking to her side was his best guarantee of keeping her alive. And he would keep her alive. He’d failed with Soledad. He wouldn’t fail again.
PUTTING HER JAGUAR into gear and pulling out of the market’s parking lot, Annabel wondered what the hell she’d just agreed to.
Patrick Coffey was a train wreck, the sort of unfolding disaster that piqued curiosity while inspiring charitable instincts. Yet she’d agreed to his mad scheme because, more than any man ever had, he made her feel alive.
A totally emotional response that had no place in their…agreement, she supposed was an apt description, because she refused to think of what they shared as a relationship.
When he’d first come into her life, she’d dug out and shaken off the savior complex she’d stored years before, after realizing the futility of helping those unwilling to help themselves.
Her mother had taught her that lesson so well, Annabel had graduated with honors. No refresher course was needed, no matter how many times and with how many arguments her body insisted otherwise. Just like her mother, Patrick would continue to live in his insular world as long as he was coddled.
Kicking him out of her life represented her defiant refusal to coddle.
So why was she less than confident about her plan’s chances for success?
The ride back to the loft from Central Market continued to pass in total silence. No. That wasn’t quite right because, as she drove, she heard everything Patrick wasn’t saying. She maneuvered her Jaguar back down Westheimer, seeing the expression on his face that said he was plotting the many ways he could use her.
She hated him for that, for making her shiver and sweat with the heady anticipation. For making her weak with wanting him. Because she was. And she did.
She pulled into the garage and parked, popping the trunk and wordlessly reaching for the grocery bags. Patrick, cursing under his breath, slammed the car door and followed. Having apparently given up his vow of silence, he grabbed all but the one bag she already held.
She closed the trunk, lifted a brow, prepared to demand that he leave his attitude here in the garage or she would send him packing now and agree to Newvale’s replacement caterer, last-minute hassles be damned. She had no idea what was going on in Patrick’s shaved head, but she was tired of his mood swings, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens that raised her hopes when she knew better.
She knew better.
But just as she opened her mouth to speak, Patrick’s head came up. His eyes grew wide. His body froze. And then his head, nothing more, slowly turned. His eyes blinked once, then narrowed. His nostrils flared as if he were a fox sniffing the air.
“Patr—” was all she got out before he cut her off with one sharp shake of his head.
He slowly lowered the grocery bags to the concrete floor, soundlessly crept along the length of her car. He stopped beside the support post in front of the Jag’s bumper. She heard the click of his knife blade latching in its grip, and her heart shot into her throat.
Knees locked, she stood unmoving at the rear of her car. He peered around the post’s corner to the street below. He was so still it was as if his heart had stopped beating. As if his lungs had ceased to inflate. As if his eyes no longer needed the blinking wash from his eyelids. He was a jungle cat, the picture of a predator, stealth standing on two feet.
And she could barely breathe.
Her hands grew damp as she instinctively waited for his word that she was safe. Safe from what, she had no idea. But Patrick’s demeanor left little doubt that he sensed a real threat. She’d never seen him like this. Frightened barely defined what she felt. She couldn’t even work her throat to swallow.
His body flat to the concrete pillar, he switched his lookout from right to left. Annabel hadn’t moved a muscle, wasn’t sure moving a muscle was even a possibility. Her arms burned from holding herself and the groceries unnaturally tight and still.
He looked down then, dropped to one palm and one knee and reached beneath her car. She heard the sharp scratchy clinck of metal on concrete as he stabbed the knifepoint into the garage floor. Seconds ticked by before he pushed himself back to his feet and pocketed the blade.
Dusting chalky dirt from his knees, he walked back to where he’d left her standing. He took the bag she still held and she shook her arms until tingles of feeling returned.
Rolling her head from side to side on her shoulders, she nodded toward his free hand. “What did you find?”
He opened his palm to reveal a cigarette butt.
She stopped moving; her rapid heartbeat resumed its pounding against the wall of her chest. “All of that for a cigarette butt?”
He shrugged. “I thought I smelled something burning.”
She was going to kill him. Kill him where he was standing. “For God’s sake, Patrick. It’s just a cigarette butt.”
He brought the brown-papered butt to his nose and inhaled. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
But Annabel heard his voice, saw his eyes. And she knew that wasn’t even half the truth.
WHAT HE HADN’T TOLD HER was that the cigarette butt wasn’t cold. It wasn’t hot, but it hadn’t been out long. And if the aroma of that tobacco blend hadn’t been a part of his life for three years, he’d never have noticed it at all.
He carried the bags of groceries from the elevator across the loft’s main room to the kitchen and dining alcove, setting the whole lot on the dividing bar. Annabel helped him unload the menu ingredients straight to the red-and-aqua-tiled countertop. No need to shelve what he was about to use.
She picked up the first paper bag and began to fold it along its original lines. “Patrick?”
“Annabel?” He tried to match her tone of inquisitive accusation as he reached for the breadboard and bread knife.
“Tell me what just happened.”
“Well, we bought smoked salmon, fresh dill and brown bread, for one thing.” He counted out the items, using the knife as a pointer. “I’m not sure I want to use a branded crème fraîche or make my own—”
She grabbed the loaf from beneath his extended hand. “I’m not talking about our shopping trip.”
He thought about hedging, but gave up after a quick self-reminder of who he was dealing with here. “The garage.”
“Yes. The garage.” She set the bread off to the side and picked up a second bag to fold.
“The garage.” He reached over and turned on the oven to heat up the precooked beef tenderloin he’d chosen from the market’s kitchen. He’d cook his own for the party, of course, but for this test-drive—
“The garage, Patrick. The garage,” Annabel repeated, threatening him with the wedge of Gorgonzola he need
ed for the mayonnaise.
First divesting her of the cheese and moving the green-olive flatbread out of her reach, he pulled the food processor from the bar’s storage well. When he straightened and faced her, he knew he owed her at least a partial truth.
“I’m not sure what happened. I only know that for at least a week now I’ve felt as if I were being watched.” Honest enough. Vague enough. It worked. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her.
“Watched,” she repeated. “Watched by whom?”
He shrugged, measuring out the gourmet mayo he’d purchased and enough Gorgonzola to keep the flavor combination on the mild end of the spectrum. He hit the puree button; the motor whirred…then stopped as Annabel pulled the plug from the socket.
“Who would be watching you, Patrick?”
“No one you would know.”
“I see.”
She didn’t see, of course. She no doubt thought he was out of his mind, headed for the loony bin, a fruitcake of the first order. Interesting, however, how he saw nothing in her expression that smacked of fear, or even a tentative reticence to challenge his claim.
It wasn’t exactly that she didn’t believe him, more a case of been there, done that, yet…“You don’t believe me.”
“What’s to believe? If you say you feel as if you’re being watched, then you feel as if you’re being watched.” And at that, she shoved the food processor’s plug back into the socket.
Patrick jerked on the cord and nearly pulled the entire faceplate from the wall. Whatever the hell was going on with her, he wasn’t up for her games. “The cigarette butt is a Jamaican brand. I found another one across the street from the balcony.”
Annabel lifted one shoulder, hardly impressed. “It’s a culturally diverse neighborhood. I’m sure you would find several others if you walked the block.”
She was right, of course. Then again, so was he. What they had was a classic standoff, a no-win situation, a silent and tacit agreement not to voice the frustration each felt at the other’s refusal to remove head from ass and wake up.
