Page 10 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
“That’s not necessary.” It shot out of me. A barb of defense. “I can handle the arrangements.”
He glanced my way for one beat before his focus was back out the windshield.
His arm was stretched out, and the grim, black ink flexed over his straining muscles.
Craggy branches covered in half-wilted leaves crawled out from under his shirt sleeve and wound all the way down to his wrist. A thousand secrets were woven within them. Howlingfaces and tortured ghosts that peered out from the leaves as if they were trapped.
A viper curled down the branch as if it were there to devour them all.
“You have someone you know in town?” Theo pushed, his brow arching like he knew I wasn’t from around here.
Panic bubbled inside me.
“No, I just…don’t want to put you out. You’ve already done so much for us.”
He grinned this wicked grin that made me sure he was the most dangerously handsome man I’d ever met.
No man should be that appealing.
A single look shouldn’t cause tingles to go racing across my flesh.
I knew better than to allow my thoughts to go in that direction. I knew the type of men I was attracted to, and I could never be that reckless to give into it again.
“Making a call for you isn’t putting me out. It’s the least I can do.”
“I think the fact your clothes are soaked from the snow is proof that you’ve already done more than enough.”
“Maybe I’m just getting started.” That grin tipped higher, those moonlit eyes sparking like black diamonds beneath the bare light as he peered over at me.
My stomach twisted.
“Well, that is awful kind of you,” Nelly supplied before I had the chance to respond.
Her voice sagged with as much suggestion as Theo’s.
Though it was a prodding for me. A prodding that we could use the help. That we really were stranded in a strange place.
“There are a ton of scumbags out there who will bleed you dry just for the sake of doing it,” Theo said as he glanced at herthrough the rearview mirror. “My guy can be trusted. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of the way you should be.”
Before I could come up with a valid excuse, he shifted gears, delving even deeper into the places I couldn’t afford to let him go.
“You have a place to stay?” Those black eyes were appraising as they flitted over to me.
It felt like they were flaying me wide open.
Peeling back every layer to expose what was underneath.
Hysteria bubbled up beneath it.
I scrounged around in my brain for an acceptable answer, and again, any defense I could give was squashed by Nelly in the back. “Nope. We were just trying to find us a cute place to stay for a bit. A little vacation, you know.”
She giggled as she so easily spilled our secrets.
I cast her an appalled look from over my shoulder.
She just shrugged hers.
So innocent, when I knew what she was doing wasn’t innocent at all.
