Page 29 of The Love Destroyers

I’ve needed a push. Wanted one.

I clear my throat. “So she knows about the restraining order?”

“No,” Nicole says.

“Whendid she hire you?” I press.

Her smirk looks almost pitying. Ihatepity. I want to murder it and bury it an unmarked grave.

“The day of your brother’s wedding. Efficient, right? She got one kid sorted and moved on to the next. We couldn’t get started right away, but we did some early brainstorming.”

Which must be why Nicole had talked to me that night.

Was Seamus involved from the beginning, too?

I turn to look at him, and he holds a big hand out to me. I’m caught off guard enough to present my hand to him, and he takes it in his cold, callused grip and starts gently pulling on the glove as if I’m a doll to be dressed. Different shivers course through me as his skin glances over mine, the combination of his touch and the soft fabric of the glove almost overwhelming.

I feel almost choked up as I watch him, but I clear my throat of the sensation and say, “I don’t need help putting on outdoor wear.”

“Evidence suggests otherwise,” he says as he finishes with the first and starts with the second. His fingers don’t linger on my cold skin, but they radiate heat and pressure nonetheless, warming something inside of me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man who’d bother to take care of anyone, himself included, but here he is putting on my gloves for me.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask, studying him. “What’s in it for you?”

He lifts his eyebrows. “Money, of course.”

I expected as much, but it disappoints me for reasons I don’t care to dissect. He’s not my type, and I’m guessing I’m not his, but there’s still an attraction. A buzzing, snapping, annoying-as-hell attraction that makes me five times more aware of my body whenever he’s around it.

Maybe my mother was right about the women-in-their-thirties thing and this is totally hormonal. Or driven by my obvious self-destructive streak when it comes to men. The powerful lawyer didn’t work out? Fine. Why not go for a ride on the self-admitted former criminal? Let’s see how many ways I can get myself disbarred.

Nicole releases a sound that’s part snort, part laugh, and all obnoxious. “Come on, leather jacket. You’re doing it for the thrill. I can see you.”

He shrugs, his gaze falling on my face and then settling on my lips. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You’re probably also hoping to get laid,” she adds.

He raises his eyebrows, very pointedly not looking at me. “Sure. Ellie’s hot. I’d take one for the team.”

He glances at me then, when there are probably steam lines of rage rippling from me.

I want to stomp on his boots. Knee him in the balls. Back him into a wall and…

His smirk confirms he’s poking at me on purpose. I shake my head at him. “You’ll do anything to get a rise out of me.”

“I’ll just bet he would,” Nicole says, her voice full of insinuation. She waves a hand at us and then the trash can. “But it smells like someone’s holiday dinner is rotting in there. I’m going inside.”

He starts to follow her, but I touch the sleeve of his coat with my mittened hand. His halt is immediate; his gaze is hot. “Aren’t you going to have a cigarette?”

He gives me a look I can’t interpret before his lips curl up. “I quit. Someone told me it’s a nasty habit.”

For a second my mouth gapes open—did he really quit because I told him he should?—but I quickly get control of myself. He’s working me. Playing me like a fiddle—and here I am, falling for it, like dozens of other women. “Well, she certainly sounds like the most sensible person you know. I’m surprised you listened to her.”

He laughs, the sound vibrating through me. “Let’s go upstairs so they can hold their intervention.”

“This is an intervention?” I ask, flabbergasted. “I figured I’d at least get to go on a bender before I got one of those. All I did was fix up my mother’s house.”

He grins at me, his expression wolfish. “She mustn’t like what you did.”

“You saw it before. There was no making it worse.”

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