Page 27 of Take Me Tender

A grin broke over his face as he fell for it—as he almost fell for it. Though he wanted her to be her usual prickly self, he couldn’t fool himself about it no matter how hard she tried. Those blue and green eyes, usually so clear and bright, looked as dulled as beach glass.

Dropping to the coffee table to face her, he grabbed the cup of hot liquid and pressed it on her again. “Drink, damn it. You look worse than it tastes.”

“I noticed you didn’t serve yourself any of this swill,” she grumbled, but he watched until she took another healthy swallow.

“I’m drinking my whiskey straight tonight.” He wasn’t drinking at all, knowing he was going to get back in his car and drive her home ASAP. He didn’t need booze affecting his driving ability or softening his resolve.

Get her story and get her out, Buchanan.

Her next swallow gave him the go-ahead to his plan. “Now, Nikki—”

“Are you sure Fern’s okay?”

Nice try. But he surrendered to the stall. It wouldn’t last long—he wouldn’t allow it. “I told you. While you went on your odd little adventure down the beach, God graced my masculine beauty and charm with cell reception. I got through to Fern and Marie’s mother, though that was admittedly a home landline, so I didn’t tax the Almighty as much as I might have. My cousin left the beach bacchanal earlier than expected and was watching a Veronica Mars marathon with her friend when I called.”

“Bless your beauty and teen detectives,” Nikki murmured, then took another sip of the medicine he’d made.

“Speaking of which, I called the cops when you were in the bathroom.”

Her gaze flew to his face. “Nothing happened.”

“Uh-huh.” Right. “Not to you, maybe, but that beach party was trouble waiting to erupt.”

Nikki sat back on the cushions. “You’re right. And you were right to call the police.”

Jay leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “Why didn’t you think of it?”

“I told you. Nothing happened out there to me.”

“I caught you in my arms after you were tearing down the beach like the devil was after you, cookie,” he said. “I know what I know.”

Her body, shaking as if buffeted by an arctic wind. Her heart slamming against his chest like it wanted out of hers, until he made her swear on all that was sacred, including Julia Child and that Italian guy, that she wasn’t physically hurt.

When that hadn’t cracked a smile, he’d been forced to clamp down on his own rising panic. A panic that he’d yet to get control over. He had a writer’s imagination, and he needed the details before he resorted to making them up himself.

“Cookie—”

“You know, I hate that nickname.”

“Learn to live with it.” Like he was having to learn with this new turn to his life. Christ, he didn’t let himself get personal enough to lift the hood of a woman’s car, and now he wasn’t going to be able to sleep until he probed Nikki’s past.

“‘He hurt her,’” he repeated back, remembering it word-for-word. “‘She didn’t want him to, and she told him no, but still, still, he hurt her.’”

A log in the fire popped and they both jumped. Jay closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Crap. Damn woman had him on edge and he was never on edge. He liked his relationships casual, simple, and for God’s fucking sake, unbonded. But now he was soaking up Nikki’s tension like a frickin’ sponge.

She put down her mug again and ran a hand through the tangled mass of her hair. It waved in matching agitation to their moods. “It’s really no big deal.”

He threw his head back and made a sound that was part snort and part sigh. “What a disappointment you are. Here I thought you were different. But no, now you’re going all girly on me. I hate that. ‘No big deal,’ you say, and I’m supposed to read your mind and correctly interpret that to mean you’re mad I’ve forgotten your birthday, or the anniversary of the hour we met, or your favorite ice-cream flavor.”

She stared at him. “You’re the one who insisted I wear pink. You’re the one who nixed my commando boots. You’re the one who’s made me hide my soul-deep devotion to Ellen DeGeneres.”

His eyes narrowed. “And you’re the one who isn’t so funny that I’m going to lose the point here, cookie.” She wasn’t moving from the couch, but all the same, she was scrambling. Why couldn’t he just let her off with her bullshit and leave it at that?

But he’d held her to him, her heart racing against his, her cheeks so cold she’d scared the hell out of him. His arms crossed his chest as he quoted once again. Damn his good memory. “‘He hurt her. She didn’t want him to, she told him no, but still, still, he hurt her.’”

A moment passed. Then Nikki looked down at her lap, looked up. “Okay. Fine. Here’s the thing. In high school, I had a friend.”

He let that sit for sixty seconds, then pinned her with his glare. “And I was voted Prom King and Most Likely to Sleep With the Playmate of the Year. Friends and admirers galore. Move on, cookie.”

“I just had a bad moment, okay? At that party tonight, I was remembering something about my friend.” Beneath the yellow blanket his grandmother had crocheted a million years before, one shoulder lifted and fell in a shrug. “We…we were at a party. People were drinking. I lost track of her for a while. I thought she was with her boyfriend. She had a boyfriend—did I mention that?”

“At party with a friend. Check. Friend with boyfriend. Check.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “A boyfriend, Jay. A close boyfriend.”

God, it was going to be morning before he squeezed this story out of her and got her home and finally out of his hair. “Okay. Close boyfriend. Meaning they engaged in sexual relations, I suppose.”

“And…and…my friend didn’t think it—the sex—was all that it was cracked up to be.”

“Oh, bummer. Because teenage boys are so well known for their technique.”

“But he told her it was how she proved her love—and how he showed his. So how could she change the nature of the relationship?”

“Uh, ‘no’? Or, ‘Gee, I’m not happy with how things are’?”

Her hand lifted. Fell. “But there’s the problem. Some people don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Ah, fuck. Of course, Jay had thought it might be something like this. He’d wanted the details because he hadn’t wanted it to be this. His eyes closed. “How old was your friend?”

Shit. Friend. There was a crock of crap.

“Fifteen.”

She hadn’t even hesitated before slaying him. The damn woman had gone straight for the jugular. Fifteen. Fifteen-year-old Nikki with a boyfriend she’d been sleeping with within a year of losing her mother. And then, one night the son of a bitch hadn’t taken no for an answer.

There was a special jail cell in hell for bastards like that, right?

Then he remembered Nikki’s general jumpiness. The way she sometimes skittered away from him if he came up on her from behind. The near-violent reaction she’d had that time he’d placed his palm over her mouth. It all made sick sense—and made clear that the night her Romeo hadn’t taken “no” for an answer, there’d been more coercion involved than “pretty please.”

Now Jay felt sick.

Ignoring the riot in his gut, he shot to his feet. “We’ve got to go now. I need to drive you home.”

She straightened, too, his grandmother’s sunny throw falling off her shoulders. “Only to my car—I left it at Cassandra’s shop.”

“I’ll drive you to your place. You’ve been drinking bad coffee. And didn’t I hear you tell Fern you have a fish? I need to bring you home safely to your pet.”

She laughed a little, but the sharp sound cut. “It’s plastic, Jay. You wind it up and the fish circles around the bowl. I don’t need to feed it. It doesn’t even know I’m gone.”

He stared at her. He was gone. He was a goner. Because despite all his single dude instincts, right now he could not let this blue- and green-eyed woman, this bruja, go home to an empty apartment and a plastic fish. Not tonight.

Shit. Damn. Fuck. What was the bet he’d made with Jorge? It didn’t matter. He’d fallen under her spell.

Temporarily, anyway. For this one night.

She made a little sound of protest as he settled back on the couch beside her. He kept to his side of the cushions. “Shut up,” he said, “and now tell me exactly what happened out at Zuma.”

She huffed out a frustrated sigh, then gave in. “Oh, fine. This young man on the beach…he…he grabbed me and kissed me. That’s why I spooked.”

Jay refused to look at her. “Should I go find the SOB and beat him up?”

“No. It’s kind of funny, now that I think of it. He sounded appalled when he realized I was a stranger. He’d mistaken me for someone named Connie.”

“I don’t mistake you for anybody.” It was the uncomfortable truth. Jay couldn’t seem to dismiss her from his mind like all the other women who had come before. Settling back against the cushions, he propped his feet on the table in front of them.

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