“Is Sharon okay for your hair?” Delilah asked.
Lilly nodded, still not meeting her gaze.
Delilah felt a strange tug in the region of her heart. “Big night planned with Mr. Huntington?”
Lilly’s eyes widened in surprise. “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps. I’m not sure.”
Delilah smelled an engagement coming. Or at least Lilly’s hopes for one. “We’ll have you looking so beautiful you will bring him to his knees.”
Lilly swallowed and if her face could talk, it would have said,
I can only hope
. She could practically feel the woman shimmer with nervousness. “Call these clients and reschedule their appointments. Miss Bradford’s services are on the house as always,” she said to the receptionist. “Come this way. Would you like a glass of wine during your manicure?” she asked Lilly.
Lilly hesitated then nodded. As they rounded the corner, Howard’s daughter came to an abrupt stop and she met Delilah’s gaze with a fierce anger her demure, uncertain appearance had completely belied.
“Don’t bother trying to make nice with me,” Lilly said. “You can’t bribe me to like you. You may have been able to sleep your way into getting my father to care for you and give you control of the spa, but I can’t stand the sight of you. And I never will.”
Delilah blinked in shock as Lilly whirled away. She shouldn’t feel hurt. It was natural for Lilly to dislike her. Everyone in Houston had believed Delilah was Howard’s mistress and he was her sugar daddy. It had been her job to make everyone believe. Unfortunately, even though Howard had died, it was still her job. She sighed. Deathbed promises were a pain in the butt.
Flirting is one of life’s least expensive pleasures and it can sometimes get you free dessert.
—D
ELILAH’S
D
ICTUM
A
fter a tough day at work, Delilah was looking forward to relaxing at home—and hoping that just maybe her dreadful neighbor would take a break from his renovations.
As she dragged herself to the elevator, Delilah heard the sound of fist pounding flesh and winced. The unsettling noise echoed from just two car rows away from her in the underground garage of her high-rise condo and reminded her of a different time in her life when she’d lived in a different, less safe neighborhood. She wished she could turn the other way. After her crappy day at work, every fiber of her was begging for a little peace.
Muggings weren’t supposed to happen here. This garage had video security surveillance. She glanced toward a camera and shook her fist, wondering who was sleeping in front of the monitor right now.
She heard a groan of pain, and helplessness shot through her. One step away from becoming a basket case, she couldn’t bear the idea of death. She glanced heaven-ward in dismay and whispered, “Don’t you know I’m not a good choice for this duty?”
If only she wasn’t plagued with this damned belief in responsibility. There was a reason she was here at this minute, and she’d better not screw it up or she would be paying for it forever.
Her stomach turned as she felt the unwelcome noose of responsibility tighten around her neck. Her mind whirled with crazy possibilities. She wasn’t packing a pistol and she wasn’t Superwoman. She glanced down at herself in a futile search for a weapon. In her short designer skirt and high heels, she was dressed to slay men—metaphorically speaking—and inspire women, not kill thugs. What was she supposed to do? Stab the bad guys with one of her heels? Her mind wandered. There had actually been that time when she’d had to stomp the instep of an over amorous client. She thought about her thong underwear. Thongs were usually a very effective distraction for men, but—
She heard another punch and couldn’t stand it. Time for a lie. Ducking behind a car, she covered her eyes and at the top of her lungs screamed, “Fire! Fire! Thank God there’s the police! Fire! Fire! Officer, over here! Help!”
When she took a breath, she inhaled with her pulse pounding in her ears. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of three hoodlums scurrying out the far exit of the parking garage. She tentatively stepped forward and peeked around the corner, spotting a man slumped on the ground.
She scrambled toward him, praying no thugs remained and swearing under her breath. “Are you okay?” she asked, poking gingerly at his shoulder. “Please be alive. Are you conscious?”
He gazed up at her and grimaced. “I think,” he said in a slurred voice. “Who—”
“We’ve got to get out of here. Be quiet and get in the elevator,” she said, dragging his tall frame to his feet and trying to support him as she urged him to the elevator. She felt muscles bunch beneath the tweed wool jacket he wore and she wondered if he had tried to defend himself.
She clumsily shoved him against the side of the elevator and punched the button for the floor to her condo. She would figure out what to do with him later. Now, she just needed to get them away.
She stepped closer to peer at his wounds, touching his face, half of which was unmarked. Strong jaw, chiseled bones, he looked about thirty with dark hair and the one eye that was open seemed to look right through her. A good soul, she instantly concluded with the confidence of a woman who’d graduated with a PhD from the school of hard knocks. Her ability to read a man through his eyes had saved her butt more times than she could count. Her heart still hammering a mile a minute, she bit her lip as she took inventory. She started to chatter and couldn’t make herself stop. “Your left eye looks terrible. Swollen shut and red already. What’s your name?”
“Benjamin, Benjamin Hu—”
She made a
tsk
ing sound. “Oh, Benjamin, your mouth is bleeding. And your cheek—”
Benjamin didn’t know which was making his head spin more—the throbbing in his brain or the woman’s nervous talk. Just after his assailants had fled, he’d wondered if he was going to die. The next thing he remembered was spotting the most shapely pair of legs he’d ever seen in his life, quickly followed by a wild-eyed woman who’d dragged him into the elevator. He had the impression of being blown away by a hot Texas wind.
“Did they punch you in the stomach?” She touched his chest, then her hand fell to his belly, and he instinctively sucked in a sharp breath.
“What if you’re bleeding internally? You should go to the emergency room. Are you feeling dizzy or nauseated? You could have a concussion.”
“I-jus-got-back-from—” He swallowed and closed both his eyes.
“Omigod. Your voice is slurred. You could have a concussion. Your brain may be swelling. We have to—”
“—dentist,” he said, and pulled gauze from his mouth. “I just got a root canal.”
“Oh.” She grimaced in sympathy. “Helluva day.”
He stared at his rescuer with his good eye. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he couldn’t place it. He watched her brush a dark lock of her hair away from her eyes. She gnawed on her full bottom lip and his gaze traveled downward over curves he suspected had caused many masculine meltdowns. Her top fit her shapely breasts like air and her skirt was too short, too tight. She was the antithesis of every conservative well-bred New England woman he’d dated since he’d entered Harvard Law School.
The woman looked like sin. With heart.
The elevator dinged, signaling the end of their ride. His floor, he thought. How convenient. He could collapse on a clear spot in his condo if he could find one. His do-it-yourself renovations were supposed to provide him some sorely needed do-it-yourself therapy. After he collapsed, he planned to knock out a wall.
“Come with me,” she said. “I can at least get some ice on your eye while we figure out what to do next.”
“But I’m right down the—”
“Don’t argue with me. We need to figure out whether to call the police first or take you to the emergency room,” she said, nudging him down the hallway and unlocking the door to her condominium. “Take the sofa. I’ll get the ice.”
This was his
neighbor
, he realized. The woman who had shrieked at him last night?
The Wicked Witch of the West? Broom Hilda?
Surely more than one person lived here. He’d barely sunk down onto her ivory leather sofa before she returned with a frozen bag of peas. She gingerly lifted the bag to his eye.
He sucked in a quick breath.
“Sorry, but you’ll thank me in the morning,” she said in a husky voice.
If his head weren’t splitting in half, he might enjoy a few fantasies about how to spend the kind of night that would make him thank her in the morning. Instead, he met her gaze with his good eye. “I don’t have to wait. Thank you for screaming.”
“You’re welcome. What about your stomach and ribs? Do you think anything is broken?”
He slid his hands over his trunk and slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“We should call the police,” she said. “And make sure whoever is monitoring security tonight gets fired,” she added in disgust. “You just know that if someone had been having sex on the floor of that garage, those security dodos would have been plastered to the monitor. Heck, they’d probably be making copies of the videos for their friends, but what happens when someone gets mugged and—”
She broke off as Benjamin clutched his ribs.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, instinctively reaching out to him.
“Please don’t make me laugh,” he said in a voice that surprised her with the tinge of sexiness.
She blinked and took a quick reassessment. A different kind of assessment this time. He was just over six feet tall judging by the way she’d had to look up at him in the elevator. He had nice dark hair, although a bit mussed at the moment. Dark eyebrows framed his brown eyes. Expressive eyes. Well, one of them was expressive. She liked that. Great bones, she thought, taking in his chiseled facial structure, and she was trained to notice. Couldn’t tell a thing about the mouth since it was swollen and bloody. Broad shouldered, but lean with muscles. A runner, she guessed, or swimmer, looking at his shoulders again. She allowed her gaze to sweep past his thighs, down to his feet. Large feet.
Oh, my.
Sense of humor, good dresser, and he had a good soul. Interesting man. She wondered if a woman would be able to keep him in line.
She met his gaze and felt a surprising punch. He knew exactly what she’d been doing. Well, damn. Intelligence could really ruin the mix.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been strip-searched more thoroughly by a woman,” he said, sounding flattered.
She almost felt embarrassed. After all, the man had just taken a beating. She shrugged and shot him a smile that she knew had knocked at least a few men off-kilter. “I’m nothing if not thorough. Lean back, I’ll get you something to drink. Hard or soft?” she asked, thinking it might be fun to get him hard.
“Whiskey sounds good, but I’d probably better not mix the dentist’s meds with alcohol. Just water.”
Sensible too, she thought, as she walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a chilled bottle of spring water. What an interesting man. She liked his voice. She liked the way he smelled. She liked the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut, but his intelligence would likely cause problems. Intelligent men were harder to control and Delilah liked being in control.
“Here,” she said, unscrewing the cap on the water bottle and giving it to him. “I’ll get the phone. You can call the police.”
“What’s your name?” he asked as she turned away.
“Dee Montague,” she said, smiling to herself as she wondered what he would think of her given name. It never failed to provoke a reaction. “Delilah, actually.”
He paused. “Delilah?”
“Yes,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.
“It suits you,” he said slowly. “So how do I thank you for saving me?”
“I don’t know,” she said, dialing the number for the police. After speaking with someone, she returned with the phone to sit beside him on the couch. “Maybe we can put our heads together and come up with something later,” she said, pleased to regain her ingrained ability to flirt. “In the meantime, you should talk to the police.”
“I’ll return the favor,” he said, surprising her with his solemn tone. “I promise, if you ask me for something, I’ll do it.”
Delilah got a funny feeling in her stomach. She wasn’t accustomed to solemn promises from men. She wasn’t accustomed to believing promises many men made, but she had a strong sense that this one might keep his promise.
She held the bag of peas against his eye while he reported the assault in the garage. Listening to him with half an ear, she tried to place his aftershave. A man had designed it, she decided. It was the kind of aftershave created to make a woman hungry and wet.
“Benjamin Huntington III,” he said. “My address is Waterstone Towers, 533 Cary Street, unit 1428.”
Dee frowned. Puzzled, she wrinkled her brow. Had she heard correctly? The back of her neck tightened. As soon as he turned off the phone, she took it from him. “Did I hear you say you’re in unit 1428?”
He nodded. “That’s right,” he said with a half-smile that managed to be sexy even though half his face was pummeled.
She could have pummeled the other half.
Huntington. Unit 1428. Huntington. Unit 1428
. Delilah felt her chest tighten with resentment. The Huntingtons were one of Houston’s most prominent and wealthy families. Lilly was hoping to marry one of them. Delilah barely stifled the urge to shriek. On top of the trauma of the evening and everything else she’d been through during the last few months, this was just too much. She felt her composure begin to crack and pointed at him accusingly. “You’re my neighbor?”
“Right next door.” He lifted the bottle of water to his lips.
“And a Huntington,” she said in disgust. “I should have known it was some overgrown trust baby being so inconsiderate of neighbors. As a Huntington, you’re probably not used to having neighbors.”
“Now wait a minute—”
Delilah shook her head in disbelief. “You are the new neighbor who starts hammering or using some kind of loud machinery at six
P.M.
every evening and you don’t stop until well after midnight.”
“I’m renovating—”
She didn’t want him to explain. She wanted him to stop torturing her. “And you are the new neighbor who plays some kind of music that sounds as if the building is being stormed by torch bearers bent on destruction.”
He looked perplexed. “Russian opera?”
“And you play this music full blast despite the fact that I’ve left several notes requesting you to turn it down,” she said, gritting her teeth. “And it’s so loud I can’t even escape it when I take a shower.”
“Notes? What notes?”
“Oh, right,” she said in complete disbelief. “Just like you didn’t know your
renovations
left me without electricity when you went out of town weekend before last.”
He stared at her with a blank expression. Delilah didn’t believe it for one minute. The man had caused her untold misery. More than ever during the last month she had craved the solace of home, but for all the disturbance he had made, he might as well have brought a wrecking ball inside her condo instead of his. No one could be that ignorant. Then again, maybe this meant he wasn’t intelligent after all. Too late, she thought. She knew the truth. He was the most annoying neighbor on the planet, and like an idiot, she had rescued him.