Page 79 of The Woman in the Garage

With that, the two of them headed out, I locked up, and then I returned to Dasha.

“What...” she started, jolting when I brushed her hair off her face.

“Just me,” I said when she brought up her hands, pressing them to her aching head, then whimpering as her scraped palms hurt. “I was just going to tuck you in. But do you want to go to bed instead?”

“Bed sounds good,” she said, wincing as she spoke. Her throat was likely really starting to ache.

We walked upstairs together. “I should probably offer you a guest room, in case you want to be alone. I, of course, would rather have you in my bed. But if you want—”

“I want that too,” she rushed to cut me off. “And not only because yours is the only finished room,” she added with a light in her pretty eyes.

I put on the TV without asking if she liked to sleep with one on or not. Mainly because I really needed a distraction when she was right there beside me, curling toward me, sharing body heat.

“It’s nice to sleep in a bed without one of the springs jabbing into my side all night.”

“That bad, huh?”

“I’m pretty sure the mattress is older than I am,” Dasha said with a big yawn. “I’m going to sleep like the dead here.”

Then she did exactly that.

As for me, I was up for hours just enjoying her nearness as I tried to work through the situation with her and the garage.

All I could conclude in the end was… she was keeping something from me.

And I was going to have to ask her what it was.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dasha

It was the headache that woke me up sometime later, a little disoriented by the strange room and the only light coming from the purple glow of the TV across from the bed that had gone to screensaver mode.

It was the smell of cocoa and coffee that grounded me first. On the bed, on me, clinging to the man beside me.

Santo was still in sleep, his handsome face somehow just as masculine in the softness of rest. He was still wearing his clothes from earlier, though he’d undone a few shirt buttons, removed his belt, and set his watch on the nightstand.

Carefully, I slid off the bed, making my way into the bathroom, wincing at the harsh overhead light. I dug around in the cabinet and drawers until I found a bottle of acetaminophen to take for my aching head, then a spare toothbrush for my teeth.

I watched my unfamiliar reflection as I brushed, noting the way the bruises under my eyes, on my cheek, and my forehead had set in to darker shades of blue and purple. My nose looked a bit swollen too. And the band across my throat couldn’t be mistaken for anything but the outline of someone’s hand.

I had a pretty good hand at makeup, but even I wasn’t sure if I would be able to cover all the damage up. And some part of me really didn’t want to go back to work with proof of everything that happened to me right in everyone’s faces.

I especially didn’t want them to see if one of them was responsible for it. It was bad enough that they saw and heard and felt me at my lowest. It would be a power move to be able to walk back in there like nothing at all happened—and no evidence of it on my skin.

I rinsed and spit, then set my toothbrush in the drawer next to Santo’s before opening the door, getting a weird little tug in my chest at seeing it there. Like it belonged. Like maybe I did too.

Shaking off those thoughts, I reached down to slip off my borrowed pants. I’d been okay with wearing them with Santo’s family around, but I was so used to dresses that the material felt like it was, I don’t know, strangling me. Santo’s shirt was long enough to meet me mid-thigh, so I wasn’t being indecent or anything.

I folded them up and set them on the counter, then moved back out into the bedroom.

I hadn’t turned the light off when I opened the door and the brightness had Santo blinking awake, looking over.

“Sorry,” I whispered, turning the light off.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, holding up a hand so he didn’t get up. “Just wanted to brush my teeth.”

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