Page 10 of Edge of Ruin
I was still shaking my head, almost desperately. “I don’t want to put you to?—”
“Look,” he said. “This is a necessity for me. I won’t be able to eat tonight if I know you’ve got no food up there.”
“Well. That’s, uh, sweet of you,” I said, flustered.
“No, just practical. If you fast, I have to fast, too. It’s the law. And fasting makes me crabby.”
That was a new concept for me. I didn’t know what to do with it. He took my baffled silence as assent, scooped up my coffee cup, and took it to the sink. “Be ready in half an hour?”
I opened my mouth to argue but stopped when my stomach rumbled. It sounded thunderously loud. He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a smile that dazzled me.
And oh, for God’s sake. Whatever.
“Thanks.” I mustered all my dignity and still somehow tripped over the rug as I left.
Chapter Four
Jack
To shave or not to shave.
It took me ten minutes to work out that philosophical conundrum. I’d been letting my stubble grow out, figuring what the fuck, but after assessing myself in the bathroom mirror, I decided that I looked scruffy and shabby. I couldn’t go into town with her looking like a bum. Not if she was going to wear that green thing.
I should take her out to dinner, I thought, as I lathered up my face. The thought made me as nervous as if I were a teenager, asking a hot girl out to a dance. But it wasn’t about that. Not at all. It was just a neighborly gesture.
Right. What the fuck was I going to do with her now?
My dick had some very good ideas, but none of them were smart.
The way she’d talked about the flower she’d seen in the winter garden surprised me. That combination of toughness and a good attitude in the Winter Aconite. She’d seen it. That was rare. Most people saw plants as a commodity, a decoration, a means to an end, if they saw them at all. Not many saw them as entities in their own right.
Yeah, and maybe she was a woo-woo earth-mother type who would want to commune naked with the nature spirits, or something terrifying like that. Jesus. I had to stop shaving for a minute to banish that fleeting image from my mind, or else risk nicking an artery. Pathetic, sex-starved mountain man that I was.
It had been so long for me, I didn’t even want to do the math.
I could always make the situation go away by pissing her off until she left in a huff. She was proud, prickly. Shouldn’t be too hard. But the idea did not appeal to me.
I wiped off shaving cream as I thought it through. I could make crude sexual advances. Infuriate her into leaving. Duncan would kick my ass, but hey. A man had his limits. And it wasn’t like I would be kicking her out. She would do all the heavy lifting herself. All I had to do was be the asshole.
But excitement flooded me at the thought of touching her. Stiff dick, red face, pounding heart. I gripped the sink with both hands and grimly thought it through.
Bad idea. Too volatile. She might press charges against me for sexual harassment, which would be embarrassing and stupid. And absolutely justified. That would suck.
Worse yet, who knew? Maybe she’d reciprocate. God help me then.
And there was the danger issue, too. Entirely aside from the evil Nazi art freaks, it was flat-out insane for a gorgeous woman like that to wander around alone in a fucking van, flaunting her sexy little body right and left. Any ignorant redneck dickhead who saw tattoos and a nose ring would instantly draw his conclusions and make a pass.
Repeat after me, I told myself grimly. Not. My. Problem.
It was the mantra for the day.
Chapter Five
Vivi
I opened to Jack Kendrick’s knock. He’d shaved, and combed his wet hair back off his face, which was even more striking now that I could see the stark, lean angles of his jaw, his chin. And those eyebrows, wow.
I suddenly wondered how long I’d been staring.
