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.
P
UTTING HER
J
AGUAR
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 mus
cle, 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.
W
HAT 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 needed 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.
He returned the plug to the socket and let the Gorgonzola and mayo mix while he toasted a slice of brown bread before removing the single serving of tenderloin from the oven.
With Annabel looking on silently, he spread a diamond of toast with the Gorgonzola mayonnaise and layered the shaved beef on top. He handed her the open-face cocktail sandwich, but refused to let go until she looked up, and he knew he had her attention.
One timely pause and he stated the one single truth she needed to hear. “If it’s who I think it is, then he’s here to kill me.”
C
HLOE
Z
UNIGA PULLED
her lime-green VW Beetle into the parking lot of Three Mings. For a very long moment she seriously considered blowing off her appointment with Devon Lee and simply stuffing her face with General Tso’s chicken.
Fighting with Eric always made her want to eat. And not eat normally, but enough to drown her sorrows in pools and puddles of sugar and salt and vats of liquid chocolate. Alcohol, thank goodness, she only used when she partied. Alcohol was all about fun, and fun was not at all what she was having today.
Hell, who was she kidding? she mused, slamming the car door and adjusting her sunglasses in the glare of the winter sun. She hadn’t experienced fun in weeks. It was
getting so bad that she hated going to the office. All the newlywed, affianced and bloated pregnancy bliss was getting on her nerves.
Especially since Eric refused to talk about their own relationship, where it was headed, where they might want to take it, where he saw them a year, five, ten from now.
He accused her of being desperate and swept up in the lives of her girlfriends. He said her obsession with marriage and babies wasn’t about their life together at all, but a case of self-inflicted peer pressure.
He didn’t know shit about what he was saying, and she wasn’t going to apologize for slipping into her recently broken potty-mouth habit. Her desires were not a part of the gIRL-gEAR partners’ trend-setting reputation. She loved Eric and wanted to make a life with him.
And until recently, until he’d started working so many hours and coming home long after she was asleep, she’d thought he felt the same.
But since she knew food wasn’t going to do anything but kindle her heartburn, she headed for the stairs to the gallery and her appointment with Poe’s brother, unable to deny the thrill of anticipation where indigestion had once burned.
Devon Lee was a hell of a sexy man. He was a bit taller than Poe, with more of a sense of humor twinkling in his eyes. His Asian-American features were sharply defined, and Chloe couldn’t help but wonder about the root of the Caucasian half of his genes.
She climbed the stairs slowly, doing her best to rein in the runaway emotion she had no business entertaining. She was here for Poe, to give her friend a hand salvaging the party, and that was it. Whether or not Poe’s brother revved Chloe’s motor was not for consideration.
Even so, when she stepped through the front door of
the gallery, she could think of nothing but the unexpected sizzle of her last encounter with Devon and the trouble she’d had getting him out of her mind since.
Yet the simplicity of the gallery’s rooms was calming. She found herself unwinding, felt the upheaval that had unbalanced her since she’d left home this morning leveling out. She breathed deeply, inhaled a potpourri of aromas. Her stress ebbed to the point where she hardly remembered the source.
All she knew was serenity and, eyes closed, she smiled.
“It’s nice to see my patrons benefiting from the gallery’s ambience.”
She couldn’t help it; she shivered from the soothing sound of Devon’s voice. “Benefiting? How so?”
“Your shoulders are nowhere as tight as they were when you first came in.”
At the interesting revelation that she hadn’t been alone in her musings, she turned to him and asked, “Are you in the habit of stalking your visitors?”
He shook his head. “Not stalking. Observing.”
“A student of human nature?”
He inclined his head. His dark eyes twinkled. “I managed to get you up here to see my etchings, didn’t I?”
No. She was not going to fall for his charm, or the flirtatious banter she missed now that Eric rarely smiled anymore.