Page 33 of Play Fast (Brooklyn Dawn 2)

Feeling at loose ends, I went in the kitchen to make Daisy a sandwich. I nabbed a piece of the ham but didn’t bother making one for myself. Not yet. Seeing Daisy bleeding had taken several years off my life. Add in the bruise on her cheek, and my appetite had vanished. I was a big guy though, so I knew it wouldn’t stay away forever.

I came out and she wasn’t in the living room. I found her in the bathroom on her hands and knees, scrubbing at minuscule spots I’d already cleaned up.

“Seriously? The floor is fine.”

She huffed a hank of blond hair that had escaped her topknot out of her face. “Gives me something to do anyway.”

“Right, with your injured arm. I still wish we’d gone to the ER.”

“Yeah, well, I wish you’d realize this morning was an accident and stop beating yourself up about it. We all want things we can never have.”

“I made you a sandwich.” How that related to what she said, I wasn’t sure. Except that I’d probably be trying to make up for what I’d done for twenty years.

Right, because she’s going to be in your life for twenty years? Not likely. It’s a miracle she hasn’t taken off already.

She sat back on her heels and tossed the sodden hunk of paper towels in the trash. “Guilt-induced food preparation?”

“I figured you have to be hungry.”

“What about you?”

I shrugged. “I’ll eat later.”

She rose and rinsed off her hands, then dried them on a towel she’d pulled out from beneath the sink. “You’re still set on calling Lila?”

“She always finds out anyway when shit goes down. I’d rather she hear it from me.”

“As if you’re responsible for me somehow.”

“This is my cabin. You came here in my truck. I left you alone. You’re also one of her people. Yeah, I’m responsible.”

“Right, because you control the universe, Superman.” She rolled her eyes and brushed past me to go back into the living room.

I rubbed the growing ache in my forehead and followed her. She sat at the small square dining table, eating the sandwich as if she was on the verge of starvation. I’d loaded it up with pickles and she shot me a look as she picked each one off and ate it. But I didn’t miss how she winced a couple times, probably due to her nicely swollen cheek.

Jesus, I was an asshole. Who the hell swung like a boxer when they were coming out of a dream?

Just fucking me.

“Soon as I finish, we’ll call.”

I nodded and moved to the couch. Neither of us spoke for what felt like an eternity.

She finally rose to clear away her dish, ignoring me when I told her to leave it. Then she returned to sit beside me on the sofa, producing the satellite phone from where she’d tucked it in the pocket of her shorts.

My shorts, drooping off her curvy frame. They barely stayed on her sexy ass and hips. And my tank top was the same, huge and baggy except around her tits, where the material stretched just a bit tighter. The knot at her hip kept coming loose, and every time she fixed it, I glimpsed a slice of her perfect belly and the slash of her navel.

I couldn’t swallow from the dryness of my throat, and it wasn’t just because I couldn’t stop looking at her bruise or the bandage on her arm.

She was stunning. And completely off-limits.

She held out the phone. “You want to talk to Lila, you call.”

I nodded and did the honors, unsurprised when Lila answered on the second ring despite it being mid-afternoon back in California. I knew she usually took a red eye out after our shows on the rare times Lewis’s jet wasn’t available so she could get home to her kids and her husband as quickly as possible. That domestic life had always seemed crazy to me. I couldn’t imagine being that eager to get back home when the stage had always been my draw. The only time I wanted to be exactly where I was.

In twenty-four hours, so much had changed for me. I hadn’t become a family man, but I was certainly looking at a lot of stuff differently.

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