Troublemaker (21 page)

She nodded at the Glock. “Are you feeling the need for protection?”

“Not particularly, but you can never tell. Besides, now that I'm stronger, I can take Tricks out if you're busy. I've noticed that you've started taking your pistol with you when you walk her.”

She had; now that the weather was warm, snakes were coming out. She wasn't optimistic about being able to actually hit a snake with a shot, so she also carried a walking stick, and kept Tricks closer to her.

“Common sense,” she said.

After she took Tricks for an extra-long walk in the fragrant spring evening that they both enjoyed—and, yes, she took her pistol—she made certain the guest bedroom and bath were ready for an occupant. His clothes were already hanging in the closet, so he'd not only taken everything upstairs, he'd had enough energy to unpack.

She went out on the balcony that ran the length of the upstairs and called down over the railing, “Have you been sandbagging?”

He was watching TV with his long legs stretched out and feet crossed at the ankle. Instead of turning around he simply tilted his head back. “How so?”

“You hung up your clothes. After climbing the stairs—
twice—
you should have been exhausted.”

“I managed,” was all he said, then he went back to watching TV.

Meaning he'd pushed himself, the way he'd been pushing since that first awful day, because that was what he did. Most people would rest when they got tired; he took it as a sign to do more.

She hid her antsiness by following her regular routine. Morgan had a beer, one of the six-pack of Miller he'd given her the money to buy to tide him over until her truck driver friend made another run through Alabama and could pick up some Naked Pig. After that first grocery run she'd made when he first arrived, he'd insisted on paying for all the groceries, and she'd let him. She liked that he'd thought about it.

She did some work, but she'd so devoted herself to staying busy these past several days that after an hour she finished the project—
very
early—and didn't have another one ready to start yet. In the name of staying busy, she'd inadvertently worked herself into having some down time.

Now what?

She did some busywork. Then Tricks wanted to play her version of soccer, and after a minute or two of watching, Morgan took over the game, which freed her to do something else, meaning busywork in the kitchen, neatening the silverware drawer.

He played “soccer” with her for so long that Tricks finally called a halt and ran to her water bowl. Morgan said, “I guess she's finished,” and resumed his seat on the sofa.

Tricks drank long and deep, then immediately trotted to Morgan. Bo was a few seconds too slow to react. She started to say, “Don't let—” but it was too late. Tricks had held extra water in her mouth and taken it to Morgan, where she gave it to him right on his knee.

He jumped up with a muffled “Shit!” Tricks backed up a few steps and sat down, looking incredibly pleased with herself because she'd shown her new friend how much she cared for him by taking him some water.

Having been the recipient of Tricks's water gifts many times before, Bo succumbed to a fit of the giggles. She tried to stifle them, but the look on his face was so funny and helpless she couldn't help it.

“Why did she do that?' he demanded.

She coughed and fought down any further giggles. “My best guess? She was thirsty from playing so long and thought you must be thirsty too, so she brought you a drink. She's done it before, but only to me and a few other people she really likes.”

He looked down at his wet jeans, then at the dog sitting there beaming at him, if a dog could be said to beam. He muttered, “This better not be a joke.” Then he cleared his throat, leaned down to stroke her and rather gruffly said, “Thank you, Tricks. That was very thoughtful of you.”

She gave a doggy grin and wagged her tail, as if she knew how clever she was.

At bedtime, they all went upstairs together, which felt so weird Bo could barely say good night. If he'd gone upstairs ahead of her, or come along later, it would have been okay. The together thing was as if they were a family, which made prickles of alarm explode all over her body.
They weren't even friends. They were acquaintances who happened to be temporarily living together, emphasis on
temporarily
.

She firmly closed the bedroom door behind her and considered locking it, but she refused to be silly about the whole situation. He was now able to climb the stairs, so whether or not he slept on the sofa or upstairs in the guest room made no difference. If she'd thought he was a threat to her that way, she'd never have allowed him in the house to begin with.

She got ready for bed, petted Tricks and told her to go to bed, and turned out the lamp. She knew she was too edgy to go to sleep right away, but she could try.

Within a minute Tricks was whining, going from the bed to the door and back again.

“No. Don't start this crap,” she muttered. “Tricks, go to bed!”

But Tricks had an eerie way of identifying the arguments she could win and the arguments she couldn't because she persisted. Back and forth, from the bed to the door, back again to whine and poke Bo with her nose in case the whining hadn't gotten the message across. She knew Morgan was upstairs, and that was something new and exciting. She wanted to go visit. If Tricks had done the same thing during the day, Bo would have been stern with her, but it was bedtime, she was tired and wanted to go to sleep, and the whining was annoying.

After five minutes of relentless whining and poking, she surrendered.

“All
right
!” she groused, throwing back the covers and getting out of bed. The room was dark, but there was still enough light coming through the windows, and from the electric clock, that she could see Tricks bouncing up and down with joy that her hardheaded human had finally understood what she wanted.

Bo didn't turn on the lamp. Completely exasperated because she wanted to calm down and get some sleep, she threw open her bedroom door, stepped out onto the landing, and practically yelled, “
Morgan!
”

Almost before the first syllable was out of her mouth, there was a burst of movement onto the landing, along with the abrupt flaring of
the overhead lights that almost blinded her because her vision had already adjusted to the darkness. She threw up her hand to shield her eyes, then squinted—and found herself staring straight at Morgan crouched in a firing stance. She was looking down the barrel of the big Glock, held in a two-fisted grip, and right above them a pair of piercing, ice-blue eyes boring a hole into her.

Her muscles locked; her blood ran cold. She'd always thought that was just an expression, but now she found that it wasn't. She was staring death in the eye, and her body felt icy from the inside out, as if her blood had indeed frozen. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage so hard she could feel the fabric of her tank fluttering, and all she could do was stand there waiting to be shot.

Delighted, Tricks started for him and Bo almost died from terror, afraid that in his state of hyperalertness he'd shoot the first thing that moved, which was Tricks.

Instead he barked, “What's wrong?” as he straightened and with a short, sharp motion of his wrists snapped the barrel upward and held it pointed toward the roof. Bo's sense of relief was overwhelming, as debilitating in its way as her terror; her vision dimmed for a second, and she almost sagged to the ground before she caught herself.

Tricks was wagging her tail so hard her butt was twitching back and forth. She reached Morgan and licked his kneecap, then thrust her nose into his groin to make sure it was him. He grunted a little but didn't move, his gaze moving swiftly from point to point, searching for the threat.

Bo tried to breathe, tried to suck in a much-needed deep breath. In a thin voice, which was all she could manage to squeeze from her constricted throat, she said, “Tricks.”

His face was still set in stern, hard lines as he looked down at the dog, who was looking up at him with bright eyes and an “Aren't you glad to see me?” expression.

“What's wrong with her?” he asked sharply.

Even his voice was different, deep and hard and clear. He'd lost the shallow weakness in his voice he'd had when he first came here, though
so gradually she wasn't certain when the quality of his voice had changed. He wasn't full strength but he was still lethal, and for the first time she saw that in a way she hadn't before, not even when he'd accidentally tried to choke her.

“Nothing,” she managed, her own voice shaking. She was shaking all over, head to foot, so acutely aware that she or Tricks, or both, could be lying in a pool of blood right now—and the whole situation was her fault. She knew what he was, yet she'd still jerked the door open and yelled his name, without considering what his trained reaction would be. You don't poke a gator and expect it not to snap, but she'd done just that. “She . . .” Her voice trailed off as her terror faded enough that she could see him, all of him and not just the pistol and his eyes. She reeled under a second shock, completely different in nature from the first one but just as devastating.

He wore only a pair of boxer shorts.

She'd thought of him as thin, and he was—but only in comparison to the powerful musculature he'd sported before, going by how his clothes hung on him. His body as it was now looked like a swimmer's body, still muscled, but sleek. Had he retained that much muscle, or had he truly been pushing himself so hard in these past two weeks that he'd already packed some back on?

She had been cold, but abruptly a wave of almost suffocating heat swept over her. She wanted to look away, she wanted to open her mouth and tell Tricks to stop nudging him in the balls, she wanted to say, “Sorry,” and go back into her bedroom. None of these were viable options, though, because she literally couldn't move. She was as stunned as if she'd been slammed by some invisible force that had knocked her stupid.

She could see the lines of muscle clearly delineated in his arms, his long legs that still looked powerful. Holy crap, she could see something else clearly delineated in his boxers, and thank God it was sleeping. Swallowing hard, she jerked her gaze upward to the broad plates of his lightly haired chest muscles—and she stopped, staring at the obscenely long red scar that bisected his chest, and other lines that looked shattered and puckered, almost like a broken windshield. The scar—well,
she'd seen surgical scars before, even those of heart surgery, and a scar was a scar. But what in hell were those dark lines radiating out from the scar?

She was still so stunned that she pointed at his chest and blurted, “What's that?”

His dark brows drew together in a scowl. If she was still in shock, he was still in attack mode, without any outlet for the adrenaline pouring through his system. “Scars,” he said curtly. “You remember. Bullet. Surgery.”

She gave her head a little shake. “Not that. Those lines.” She moved closer, frowning at his bare chest in the brightness of the overhead light that he'd flipped on as he charged out of his room. “They look like . . . a spider web?”

He glanced down at his chest and grimaced. “Oh, that. That's what's left of my tattoo.”

A tattoo! She blinked. Okay, that made sense, even if the pattern didn't. “Why a spider web?”

He scowled again. “It isn't a spider web,” he growled. “It's a bull's-eye.”

A . . . bull's-eye. She blinked, then blinked again. A freakin'
bull's-eye
?

She snapped from bewilderment to fury so fast she had no way to rein herself in, no way to retreat behind her walls. Her mouth fell open, she hung there motionless for a second, and then she blew. “You drew a damn
target
on your chest!” she shrieked. “You
moron
! Do you have a death wish? Did you think it was
funny
when some knuckle-dragger nearly killed you?”

He moved closer, his chin lowered, squaring up against her like a fighter about to go a round or three. His gaze was locked on her face, fire simmering in his own eyes, but he gave a negligent shrug. “I thought: ‘Shit, this messed up my tattoo.'”

She felt as if her eyes might bug out, as if her hair were standing on end. The only other time in her life when she'd been this angry was when Kyle Gooding had punched her in the face and she felt the same, as if her skin couldn't contain her body. In her outrage, she poked the
gator again, literally, jabbing his left pec with her forefinger as she glared up at him. “
Idiot!
”

She saw a flash of his eyes, glittering like glacier ice, and then he kissed her.

She had no warning. He wasn't kissing her, and then a split second later he was. His right arm was around her waist, holding her up on her toes against him, and she could feel the coolness of the weapon still in his hand as it pressed into her hip. His left hand cupped her jaw, holding her face tilted up while he lowered his head and slanted his mouth over hers.

Something cataclysmic happened inside her. It felt right, as if every other kiss she'd had in her entire life had been wrong. All of her senses, everything she knew or felt, was swamped by this. The taste of him filled her, the mint of the toothpaste he'd just used underlaid by something raw and hot and powerful, something that made her heart pound and her blood, which had been so cold, sear her veins as it raced through her body. There was the heat of his skin, most of it bare, against her and under her hands. The tank shirt she wore was a single, flimsy layer of cotton between them, inadequate for protection but suddenly feeling rough against her nipples, nipples that were no longer soft but tightly pinched and erect. And below . . . he was erect now, too, a straining hardness pushing against the softness between her legs. There was heat there, his as well as hers, blood pooling and throbbing and burning.