by Linda Howard
He firmly closed the door behind her, not noticing the sly wink she gave me just as she slipped out. Then he stalked to my bedside, all aggressive, menacing male. His dark brows were lowered in a fierce glare that he pinned on me.
“All right,” he said evenly. “I want to hear all about how you were only interested in me because you wanted access to my SDS.”
I thought Wyatt and eat and felt my cheeks begin to turn pink. Yep, it was foolproof. Wasn’t that a useful thing to find out? I squirmed in delight. “Oh, you heard that?” I asked, glancing away from him and trying my best to look guilty.
“I heard.” His tone was grim. He seized my chin; he didn’t jerk my head, because even as angry as he was he was mindful of my concussion, but he made it plain he intended for me to look at him. I met his angry gaze, and let my own eyes go wide.
“I didn’t say I was only interested in your SDS.”
“But you wanted access to it.”
I batted my eyelashes at him, thinking it was time to throw him a hint. “In a big way. I thought you knew.”
“How could I know?” His tone was even darker, like a thundercloud about to break. “I—” Then he stopped, his gaze narrowing on me as the fluttering eyelashes and big innocent eyes registered with him. “Just what the hell is an SDS?”
I went with just the big eyes, savoring the moment. “Sperm delivery system.”
Chapter
Six
He stalked away from me and stood looking out the window, his hands on his hips as he took deep, controlled breaths. I watched him, almost fizzing with glee. Teasing him like this was almost more fun than teasing him the other way—almost, because the payoff was better with the other kind of teasing.
Finally he said, “You little shit,” and swung around to face me. The glitter in his eyes promised retribution.
I grinned at him.
With deceptive mildness he asked, “You and Siana were discussing my dick?”
“Only because you were eavesdropping. I thought you should hear something interesting, since you went to so much trouble.”
He didn’t look the least embarrassed at having been caught, maybe because snooping was his stock-in-trade. Instead he came to the bed, bracing his hands on either side of me as he leaned down. If he thought I’d feel uneasy being sort of surrounded and trapped that way, I wasn’t. For one thing, this was Wyatt. For another, well, this was Wyatt; I liked being surrounded and trapped by him. Fun and interesting things usually happened when he was this close.
I didn’t raise my head from the pillow, but I put my hand on his face, feeling the hard structure of jaw and cheek, the warmth of his skin, the prickles of his beard even though he’d shaved just a few hours before. “Gotcha,” I said smugly. Yes, I know it isn’t nice to gloat, partly because Wyatt isn’t a grin-and-bear-it sort of guy. He’d think of some way to pay me back, even if it was something as excruciating as finagling me into making a bet he could make certain I lost and forcing me to watch the World Series. I so don’t like baseball.
He gave me a smug smile in return, which put me on alert. “So you didn’t sleep with anyone for the two years we were broke up, huh? You were waiting for me.”
“Not really. I’m just picky.” Damn the man, he would find some way to turn this to his advantage.
“You were impressed by my delivery system.”
“I said that stuff because I knew you were listening.”
“You wanted access to it. You wanted to use it, if I recall correctly.”
That’s one of the bad things about cops: they remember stuff. He could probably quote verbatim my conversation with Siana. Besides, in various ways I’d made it plain I was very fond of his SDS. Please. If I don’t like something, it does not go in my mouth—or anywhere else in my body, if you get my drift.
Okay, sometimes the only way to regain control of a situation is to completely and utterly surrender. I smiled at him and trailed my hand from his face down his chest, down his stomach, until I was cradling his SDS in my palm. I was delighted to feel that he already had a semi-erection. That’s my Wyatt; mention sex and he’s ready. Great, huh? “You recall very correctly. I wanted it, and now I have it.” I shivered a little, because touching him was doing a number on me, too.
He leaned over me, his breathing faster, his eyes darkening as he pushed harder against my hand. There was no “semi” about him now, he was hard and ready. Then he said “Fuck” in a strained voice, straightening and moving away from me.
“Well, yeah,” I said. Hadn’t it been obvious?
He shot a burning glance at me as he turned back to the window. “You have a concussion,” he said very tersely.
Groaning, I saw the problem. No jostling around for me, for the next few days at least, and if anyone has figured out how to have sex without even a little jostling I wish you’d let me in on the secret. No sex yesterday, no sex today, no sex tomorrow—no sex for as long as this headache lasted, which was probably several more days. Now I was really pissed at that psycho bitch in the Buick, for causing this unexpected deprivation—not that an expected deprivation would be any better, because it wasn’t as if you could stock up on orgasms and keep them in the pantry until you needed one.
Which reminded me of something, and what better time to broach the subject than when I was hurt and he was in protective mode? It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. “I need to redo your house.”
That brought him swinging around. The crotch of his pants was still tented, but his attention was riveted on me. From the wariness in his gaze you’d have thought I’d said, “I have a gun, and it’s aimed at your heart.”
He stared at me for several seconds, running our conversation through his mind. Finally he said, “I give up. How did we get from talking about my SDS and your concussion to you wanting to redo my house?”
“I was thinking about pantries.” That wasn’t all I’d been thinking about, but I didn’t want to get into the whole stocking up on orgasms thing, when I was temporarily on the sidelines. Besides, he didn’t need to know every little detail of how I got to where I was, conversationally speaking.
He gave up on trying to make the connection. “What about pantries?”
“You don’t have one.”
“Sure I do. It’s that little room off the kitchen, remember?”
“You have your office in there, so it isn’t a pantry. And your house is all wrong, anyway. Your furniture is all wrong.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with my house? It’s fine. It has good furniture.”
“It has guy furniture.”
“I’m a guy,” he pointed out. “What other kind would I have?”
“But I’m not a guy.” How could he be so oblivious to something so obvious? “I need girl stuff. So either I redo your house, or we’ll have to move somewhere else.”
“I like my house.” He was beginning to get that digging-in-his-heels expression that men get when they don’t want to do something. “I have things just where I want them.”
I gave him a speaking look, which made my head hurt more, because you sort of have to roll your eyes to do a proper speaking look. “At what point is it supposed to become our house?”
“When you move in.” He said it as if that were the simplest, most obvious conclusion in the world. For him, I guess it was.
“But you don’t want me touching anything, buying a chair that fits me, fixing up an office for me, or anything like that?” My raised eyebrows told him what I thought of that idea—and again, raising my eyebrows hurt, but when you don’t use Botox it’s really hard to talk without any expression. For the next few days, though, I thought I might try really hard to imitate Nancy Pelosi.
He scowled. “Shit.” He saw the point of the conversation, which was that no way in hell was I satisfied with the status quo regarding his furniture, and if he wanted me living with him some adjustments had to be made, but he didn’t like it. His eyes did that narrowed, piercing thing ag
ain. “My recliner stays where it is. So does my television.”
I started to shrug, then stopped when I remembered that moving was not a good thing. “That’s fine. It isn’t as if I’ll be in there.”
“What?” He not only wasn’t pleased to hear that, he was getting pissed.
“Think about it. Do we watch the same things on television? No. You want to watch baseball; I hate baseball. You watch all sports. I like football and basketball, period. I like decorating shows, and you’d rather have splinters shoved under your fingernails than watch a decorating show. So if you want me not to go mad and kill you, I’ll have to have my own television and a place to watch it.”
The truth is, I don’t watch much television, except for college football, which I’ll actually go out of my way to catch. For one thing, some nights I don’t get home until after nine o’clock, and even when I do I usually have paperwork. There are a couple of shows I’ll TiVo and watch on Sundays, but for the most part I don’t bother. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to fight Wyatt for use of the television whenever I do want to watch something, and even less does it mean I’m willing to give up those few shows. Not that he needs to know how little I watch; it’s the principle of the thing.
“All right,” he said grudgingly, because after all fair is fair. “Though I’d rather have you with me.”
“We’d have to watch what I want to watch half the time.”
And what a disaster that would be. He knew it as well as I did. After a pause he abandoned that idea and gave in. “Which room will you use? One of the upstairs bedrooms?”
“No, because then I’d have to redo it again and move everything in a few years when the kids get their own bedrooms.”
His expression didn’t soften, but it filled with heat—the I-want-to-get-you-naked kind of heat, not the mad kind. “There are four bedrooms,” he pointed out, thinking of the process of making babies to fill those bedrooms.
“I know. We’ll have the master, we’ll have two kids—I’m not ruling out three, but I think probably two—and we’ll have a guest bedroom. I’m thinking the living room will work out best. Who needs a formal living room? Oh, and I’ll need to redo all the window treatments. No offense, but your taste in window treatments sucks.”
The hands were back on his hips. “What else?” he asked in a resigned tone.
Huh. He was giving in easier than I’d thought. Took some of the fun out of it. “Paint. Not that you weren’t smart to go with neutrals, since decorating so isn’t your thing,” I added hastily. “It’s just that decorating is my thing, so now you can relax and leave all those decisions to me. Trust me, a little color on the walls will do wonders for the house. Plants will, too.” He had no houseplants, a point I’d already made. How could any sane human live without houseplants?
“I’ve already bought you a plant.”
“You bought me a shrub. And it’s planted outside, where it belongs. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything with the plants, other than move them where I tell you to move them, when I tell you.”
“Why don’t you just put them where you want them and leave them there?”
Was that a male point of view, or what? “Some I will. Some I’ll put outside on the porch during warm weather and only bring them in for the winter. Just trust me on the plants, okay?”
He couldn’t see how I could do anything sneaky with plants, so grudgingly he nodded. “Okay, we can have a few plants.”
A few? He was so clueless. I loved him anyway.
“And some rugs.”
“I have carpeting.”
“The rugs go on top of the carpeting.”
He shoved his hand through his hair in raw frustration. “Why in hell would you put a rug on top of carpet?”
“For looks, silly. And there should be a rug under the breakfast room table.” The breakfast nook floor had the same tiles that were on the kitchen floor, and they were cold. A rug for there would be one of my first purchases. I smiled at him; smiling didn’t hurt. “That’s it.” For now, anyway.
He grinned suddenly. “Okay, that sounds fairly painless.”
A horrible suspicion began to form. Had I been played? Had he been messing with me? Now, as a general rule, at least half of what I said was because I enjoyed messing with him, pushing his buttons and trying to get a rise out of him, but that’s part of the fun of dealing with a man as alpha as he was. Trust me on this. Teasing Woody Allen wouldn’t be half the thrill that teasing, say, Hugh Jackman would be.
But just because I enjoyed pushing his buttons didn’t mean turnabout is fair play.
“Have you been talking to Daddy?” I asked suspiciously.
“Of course I have. I know I’m taking on a big job, marrying you, so I’ll take all the expert advice I can get. He told me to pick my battles, not to start feeling territorial over crap I don’t really care about. As long as you leave my recliner and television alone, I’m okay.”
I didn’t know whether to sulk or feel relieved. On the one hand, Daddy wouldn’t steer him wrong, and my life would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to do all of Wyatt’s training myself. On the other hand, well, I’m a button-pusher.
“You can just write a check for me to get started,” I said cheerfully. “I’ll let you know when I need more. I know this great carpenter, and though he probably won’t be able to get started right away I can meet with him next week and show him what I want and let him get started on the plans.”
He stilled, going wary again. “A check? A carpenter? What plans?”
One great big button, duly pushed. Life was good.
“You do remember how this conversation started, don’t you?”
“Yeah. You and Siana were talking about my dick.”
“Not that conversation, this conversation. The redecorating one.”
“Got it. I still haven’t made the connection between my dick and window treatments,” he said wryly, “but I’ll go with it for now. What about how this conversation started?”
“A pantry. You don’t have one. I need one.”
An incredulous look entered his eyes. “You’re evicting me from my office? And you expect me to pay for it?”
“I expect you to pay for the lion’s share, yeah. You have more money than I do.”
He snorted. “I drive a Chevrolet. You drive a Mercedes.”
I waved that away. Details. “I’m not evicting you. I’m moving you into a new office. We’ll divvy up the space of the living room.” It was a big room, and I didn’t need all of that space for a home office for myself. The biggest portion of it, yes, but not all of it. “You need a bigger office anyway, you have so much crammed in the pantry you can barely get yourself in there.”
That was nothing but the truth. It was a mystery to me why, when he’d done such an extensive remodeling of the house when he first bought it, he hadn’t included an actual office for himself. The only explanation was that he was a guy. At least he’d put in an adequate number of bathrooms, though that could have been the building contractor’s idea; certainly the idea for the pantry hadn’t come from Wyatt.
I watched him wrap his mind around the idea of a bigger office, and realize I was right—he needed more space, and I needed a pantry. “All right, all right. Do whatever you want, and I’ll pay for it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I came here to tell you about the security tapes, and somehow I end up spending twenty thousand dollars, at least,” he muttered, mostly to himself.
Twenty thousand? He wished. I kept that part to myself, though. He’d find out soon enough. “You got the parking-lot tapes?” I was a bit incredulous. “I didn’t think you would, since she didn’t hit me. Did the mall just hand them over?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah, but I could have gotten them anyway.”
“You’d have needed a warrant, and no crime was committed.”
“Reckless endangerment is a crime, honey.”
“You didn’t say anything about reckless endangerment last
night.”
He shrugged. In his view, cop stuff was his business, in sort of the same way keeping the lap pool at Great Bods properly chlorinated was mine; I didn’t discuss every detail with him, and come to think of it, he discussed very little cop business with me. I didn’t exactly agree, because cop business is way more interesting than pool chlorination, which was why I snooped through his files every now and then. Okay, whenever I got the chance.
I waved away his lack of communication, which, regarding his work, he had no intention of remedying anyway. “What did you find?”
“Not much,” he admitted, frustration glinting in his eyes. “To begin with, the mall has an outdated system that uses tapes instead of being digital. The tape is worn out; I couldn’t make out a tag number, just that the car was definitely a Buick. Our tech guys said the tape should have been replaced a month or so ago, it literally has holes in it. They couldn’t pull anything really useful from it.”
“The mall doesn’t replace the tapes with new ones on a regular basis?” I asked indignantly. The mall was lax? I felt betrayed.
“A lot of places don’t, at least until something happens. Then whoever is in charge of the surveillance system will catch hell, and for a while the tapes will be changed out the way they should be. You wouldn’t believe some of the crap we’re given to work with.” His tone was hard. Wyatt didn’t cut much slack for people who didn’t do what they should.
He reached under the sheet and clasped the inside of my thigh, his hand hard and slightly rough, and oh so warm. “She missed you by inches,” he said roughly. “I damn near had a heart attack, seeing how close it was. She wasn’t trying to just scare you, she literally tried to kill you.”
Chapter
Seven
Mom came in shortly afterward with my clothes, hanging them in the minuscule closet and dropping my keys back in my purse. “I can’t stay,” she said, looking frustrated and harried and incredibly beautiful, because that’s just Mom, she can’t look any other way. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
