Page 16 of Wicked Me
My eyes narrowed. What the hell happened to this kid? He used to be such a little sweetie, had even been a sort of library comedian just hours before. Now he was looking at me as if I were the enemy. It hurt to see him like that, so much so that I had to look away, though I could still feel his gaze on me.
After several quiet seconds, I shoved away from the island and said, “Do me a favor and get out your phone.” He’d set out a package of bacon in his drunken haze, so to continue the quiet, I took over.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to make you a BLT sandwich.”
I’d spotted a tomato and lettuce in the refrigerator during my earlier raid, and a BLT seemed like a good thing to suck the alcohol from him.
“And you need my phone because...?”
“Because you’re going to do something for me in return.”
He watched while I rummaged through drawers to find the aluminum foil and a shallow baking pan.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked, and I didn’t miss the husky note of curiosity in his voice.
“Program my number into your phone.” What did he think I was going to say? “If you get drunk again, you call me and I’ll call you a cab.”
“I could jus’ call myself a cab,” he said.
I set the pan down on the island a little too loudly and stared at him. If his eyes weren’t so bloodshot with an enormous bruise shadowed over one of them, I would be able to see that startling shade of baby blue a little better.
“Then why didn’t you?” I asked.
An almost smile tugged at his mouth as he reached for his phone inside the pocket of his baggy jeans. “Okay. You win.”
Damn right I did.
When my number was safely tucked away in his phone, he said, “I didn’t act’lly drive like this. A friend drove. I’m not that much of an idiot.”
“Really,” I said. A friend? It was none of my business if that friend was male or female, yet I found myself really wanting to know.
“Yeah. Really. You sound like you don’t believe me.”
I shrugged while I lined the pan with foil. “I believe you, but you’re still not old enough to drink. The law is a law for a reason, so I hear.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time, and I thought he might have passed out until I glanced at the island behind me. No, he was awake, his head propped up on his arm and a sloppy grin on his face while he stared at me. I quickly turned back around, a blush flaming over my cheeks.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Making bacon,” I said. “What’s it look like?”
“That’s not how you make bacon.”
“It’s howImake bacon. I put it in the oven to bake, and that way it doesn’t splatter everything with grease.”
“Okay.” Sam leaped from his stool—maybe fell off was more like it—with his hands out in front of him like he expected me to attack him with the box of aluminum foil or something. His legs wavered beneath him, but he caught himself on the corner of the island. “Put the bacon down and no one’ll get hurt.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why?”
“I’m very particular about my bacon. The grease splatter’s jus’ part of the experience. I’ll cook it so you don’t get...” His gaze roamed down to my bare legs, then inched back up again, and he trapped his bottom lip with his teeth. “Splattered.” He swayed to my side, his large frame towering over me, and slowly reached for the bacon.
His fingers sizzled a current up my forearm as he touched it, and I held my breath to keep from gasping. Riley had said Sam was never here, and after what happened between us earlier today, a topic which I noticed we were skating large circles around, I had hoped he wouldn’t be here. But he was, and I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about that.
With his precious bacon gripped tight, Sam concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other toward the stove.
I followed to cut up the tomato on a nearby countertop and to make sure he didn’t burn the house down. “So bacon, huh? Is it a special kind of relationship between you two?”
