Oh, hell. Maybe her hand wasn’t the only thing to have been damaged earlier. Her common sense had taken a serious hit, too, if thoughts of him—or any man for that matter—as some sort of white knight come to rescue her from her stone tower were flitting through her head.
He helped her out of the helmet, and she prayed her cheeks weren’t as flushed from the ride as they felt.
“Come on,” he said, turning to walk up the porch steps. “Let’s get you inside before Hissing Ally wants to investigate the newcomer.”
Following him, she tried to run her fingers through the knotted ends of her hair before giving up, snapping an elastic off her wrist and throwing her hair up into a sloppy ponytail-bun-thing. “Who’s Hissing Ally?”
“A stray with an attitude problem. She hangs out under the porch.” Pulling open the squeaking screen door, he paused and gave her a half grin. “She’s okay with Xander and me because we ply her with chicken, but she’s not real friendly to strangers.”
“Maybe she’ll like me,” she said. “I’m pretty good with cats.”
He chuckled and opened the heavy door, holding it open to let her in first. “I bet you are.”
Kat walked in and looked around, trying to decide if the place matched what she knew of the man. It didn’t take her long to come up with an answer.
No.
If she were a real-estate agent, she’d advertise it as an open floor plan. Mainly because there weren’t any walls in the main living area. The kitchen on the right was sectioned off only by a small dining set sitting in the middle of the room. It looked like it originated from a secondhand store and had then been given to a pack of teething puppies as a chew toy.
The living room took up the left half of the room. A couch and loveseat upholstered in buttery-brown leather were placed perpendicular around a gigantic matching ottoman. Scratch that. The ottoman was merely large. The flat-screen TV was gigantic.
She briefly wondered if men were known to compensate for certain things with electronics like they did with fancy cars. The shirtless image of Irish stood proud and masculine behind her eyes… No way.
Along the back wall, three doors were spread out in equal increments as though they should have signs with bold numbers on them, offering people one of three choices like on a game show.
“This is nice,” she said lamely.
“Xander likes the creature comforts in life,” he said.
“Everything in here is his?”
“No.” He pointed to the dining set. “That’s my contribution.”
She smiled widely. “Ah. So that would make you Oscar.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, Felix and Oscar from The Odd Couple.” She waited for recognition to set in. When all she got was a hitch of his eyebrow, she added, “It was a Broadway play, movie, and TV show about two roommates. Felix is a clean freak who likes nice things and Oscar is super laid back and kind of a slob.”
He braced his feet shoulder-width apart and folded his arms across his broad chest. “Did you just call me an uncivilized slob?”
She slapped a hand over her mouth and felt her eyes go wide. He’d helped her more in the last six hours than anyone had in the last six years, and she’d insulted him in less than six minutes of being in his home. Her social etiquette wasn’t merely lacking. It was practically nonexistent.
“Irish, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I said that. I didn’t mean anything by it, honest.”
“I’m kidding,” he said, breaking his tough-guy routine with a sexy smile. “Besides, the Felix and Oscar thing is pretty accurate. Xan bitches at me all the time.”
He hadn’t gotten offended or angry. He hadn’t thrown back an insult of his own or kicked her out of his house to sleep with Hissing Ally under the porch. It was…not what she was used to. She actually had to stop and think how to react.
Kat settled on taking a deep breath and giving her muscles the command to relax. The breath went well. Filling her nose and lungs with the spicy scent of Irish’s home helped clear her mind, like hitting a mental reset button.
The command to her muscles was blatantly ignored, but she’d known they wouldn’t comply. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d ever felt relaxed. Constant muscle pain was her “normal.”
The feel of callused fingertips brushing her jawline from ear to chin sent shivers down her spine and goose bumps down her arms. But when those fingertips lifted her chin and his deep blue eyes found hers, the shivers turned to sparks, heating her from the inside out until every goose bump had melted back into her flesh.
“Kat?”
“Huh?” All coherence had fled her. She’d been lucky she’d made any sort of sound whatsoever. She’d never realized how beautiful he was. And she meant “beautiful.” Because for all of his ruggedness with the tattoos, the piercings, and the ever-present scruff he sported, Irish had very aristocratic features.
His forehead was wide and smooth until it revealed the three lines that creased from one side to the other whenever he raised his brows. High cheekbones framed a long, straight nose that refuted her assumption he’d lived a life where a few breaks from neighborhood brawls would be expected. His lips were a perfect match, equally full and tempting, and hiding in his barely there beard was a cleft in the center of his chin that deepened when he smiled.
But his eyes were the most stunning things she’d ever seen. Almond-shaped and lined with thick black lashes, they would have looked feminine if it weren’t for the hard edge emanating from them.
If someone asked her to describe the color, she’d call it “fire and ice.” Yes, she knew that wasn’t any color Crayola had ever defined, but that’s what they reminded her of.
Sometimes they were an icy blue that could freeze the biggest asshole in mid-swing and cause him to rethink his actions. Kat had thought his eyes were his secret weapon as a cooler on more than one occasion.
And other times—like right now—they reminded her of blue fire, the hottest part of a flame, with the power to melt anything in their path. Including her.
“Kitten,” he whispered, “you with me?”
Nickname, plus three simple words she’d started to believe were only for her, equaled butterflies and warmth in her chest she couldn’t remember ever having before.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I’m with you.”
“Good.” His hand lowered and wrapped around her good one. “You’ve had a long coupla days. We can talk about things after you’ve gotten some rest. You can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She’d barely opened her mouth to protest when he held his hand up and started leading her to the door on the left she’d thought of as Door #1. “No arguments. I might be rough around the edges, but I’m not a total asshole.”
Kat’s heart raced as they got closer and closer. His bedroom. His bed. His domain. Locked door. No escape.
She teetered dangerously between flight or freeze. Most people had flight or fight responses, but she’d learned a long time ago that fighting only made the inevitable worse. If she didn’t force herself into flight mode fast, she’d freeze, and then the safety she’d felt so far with Irish would vanish like a morning fog burned off from the sun.
Digging her heels in and yanking her hand from his, she said, “No, you don’t understand. I can’t.”
He narrowed his eyes as though trying to crack a code on an encrypted message, which was as close to the truth as anything. “You can’t?”
She took two small steps back while shaking her head. “I’ll be fine on the couch, really.”
“Kat,” he said gently, “I’m not gonna come in there, I swear. I’ll stay out here.”
She believed him, she really did. But she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t willingly put herself in a position of such vulnerability for bad memories to come crawling out of the shadows to haunt her.
“Please, Irish. Just let me take the couch.”
Chapter Six
After
showering and throwing on a pair of black jersey shorts, Aiden sat at his shitty kitchen table, drinking a cup of black coffee, and tried not to stare at Kat sleeping on his couch. He’d given her one of his shirts to wear, but it lay unused on the ottoman. Her beat-up tennis shoes sat in an orderly fashion on the floor next to her. The lightweight blanket he’d brought out for her was wrapped tightly around her and her knees were drawn up to her chest.
She looked like a human chrysalis, but he had a feeling she would awaken no different than before: scared, troubled, and extremely distrusting.
Please, Irish. Just let me take the couch.
When she’d pleaded with him like that, his gut twisted and he wanted to murder whatever haunted those light blue eyes.
He lifted his mug and took a big swallow of the bitter brew. Looked like he’d jinxed himself when he told Jax that odds were nil of anything happening with Kat, and now Jax was unreachable for two fucking weeks. He’d have to figure out how to help her on his own.
Man, he’d really fucked up. He’d agreed to watch Kat for a few weeks and report back to her sister, not get involved in her life. That was exactly the thing he swore five years ago he wouldn’t do anymore. Instead of helping, he only ended up hurting them.
Or worse.
But despite that promise he made himself five years ago, he couldn’t stay away from a certain red-haired woman with eyes like brilliant topaz.
As though they’d sensed his thoughts, Kat’s eyes opened to look at him from across the room.
He glanced at the clock on the microwave. Quarter to two. Good. That meant she’d had about ten hours or so. “Afternoon, kitten.”
Her arms emerged from her blanket cocoon, and she pushed into a sitting position in the corner of the couch. She kept her knees up to her chest. He wondered if that was simply a comfortable position for her or an unconscious attempt to protect herself.
She tucked her long hair behind her ears before wrapping her arms around her legs. “Hi. I’m sorry I slept so long. You should have woken me.”
“Only been up about ten minutes myself. You sleep okay?”
“You know,” she said, her brows drawn in, “I did actually. Usually I don’t sleep much if I’m not in my own place. I must have been really exhausted.”
“You want coffee?”
“Mmm, God, yes. Black, please.”
She unfolded from the couch and padded barefoot across the hardwood floor. Even un-showered and sleep-tousled, she managed to look beautiful. For the few seconds she passed through the window’s slanted square of sunlight, she transformed into some kind of sun goddess. Her hair blazed like fiery embers and her freckles looked backlit by the glow of her translucent skin.
When the shadows in the room dulled the mystical features his overactive imagination had given her, Aiden gave himself a mental right hook. The typical mental slap wasn’t near what he needed to tamp down the insanity that was becoming a regular thing in his head around this woman. He needed to man the fuck up and see her as what she was: his friend’s future sister-in-law in need of help. Because that was all she could ever be to him.
Aiden poured her a cup of coffee and set it in front of her. She grabbed it with both hands, blew across the surface for a few seconds, and then took a small sip. Her eyelids slid closed and she made a sound that made him think of anything but drinking coffee.
Before his imagination got carried away (again), he decided it was time to get answers. He’d involved himself in something big, and if he had any hope of keeping them both above water, he needed to know what they were dealing with.
“It’s time we talk, Kat.”
The blissed-out look on her face disappeared. She lowered her gaze, bit the corner of her lip, and drew up one leg to hug to her chest. But then nodded her agreement.
“Who were those guys tailing us last night? What do they want?”
Taking a deep breath, she said, “They work for a man Lenny owes money. We skipped town to avoid his debt, ended up here, and managed to stay off grid.”
“Until your boyfriend got arrested and it went on public record?”
She nodded.
“So when did they show up in Alabastard?”
She quirked a brow in his direction. “Not a fan of the city?”
“Not particularly, no.”
The chipped edge of the table suddenly became of great interest to her. She poked at it with her nail. “I don’t know how long they’ve been here, but they made themselves known on Friday night just before I left work.”
“The note you said wasn’t yours.”
“Yeah,” she said before taking another drink of coffee. “I found it on my windshield.”
“How much does your boyfriend owe this guy?”
He wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone with as light a complexion as Kat’s to pale. She lifted the mug to her lips and took a fortifying sip as though the strength of the beans could give her the strength to continue the conversation. Apparently it didn’t give her enough to meet his gaze.
Boring a hole through the center of the table, she said, “Twenty thousand.”
He let out a low whistle. “That’s a decent amount of scratch. They charging interest?”
Her eyes finally lifted. “Do they do that?”
“Depends on who you owe, I suppose.” Her foot still on the floor started bouncing. “Look,” he said, leaning over his forearms on the table. “I’m gonna do whatever I can to help you, but you gotta tell me what we’re up against here.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to help me?”
Aiden leaned back in his chair, wondering what to say when he didn’t know the answer himself. He drummed his thumb on the table a few times, then half shrugged. “Maybe I have a superhero complex or I’m an adrenaline junkie. Or maybe I find it hard to turn my back on a friend in need.” Even if you’d be better off if I did.
“You barely know me.”
“I know you don’t deserve to deal with the repercussions of your boyfriend’s bad decisions by yourself.”
Kat seemed to be turning things over in her head. Probably weighing options and consequences. He drained the rest of his now-cold coffee and tried to practice the patience he didn’t have. Old feelings bubbled just beneath the surface. The ones that demanded he act and make her threat go away by whatever means necessary.
“His name is Antony Sicoli,” she said at last. “He used to be a big-time mob guy in New York before he decided he preferred the picturesque mountains of Tennessee. Lenny borrowed money, gambled big, and lost even bigger. Now Sicoli wants his money back.”
He dragged a hand over his face and scratched his jawline. He’d been hoping she’d say it was a small-time bookie, but he’d known better after what he had to do just to shake the apes the night before. “Then, yeah, you can expect them to want more than twenty grand for skipping town. The mob typically takes offense to that sort of thing. And if I’m not mistaken, the note said they’ve got someone on the inside with the cops and you have until tonight to come up with the money?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“How much do you have?”
“None. Since Lenny got locked up, all I have is an emergency fund so I could get out of here. Something tells me they won’t be amenable to settling with a few measly hundred bucks.”
Aiden got up from the table and poured himself another cup of coffee while he let things roll around in his head. That anyone could expect an innocent woman to take the fall for her asshole boyfriend’s mistakes was seriously fucked up.
Unfortunately, morals didn’t come into play when dealing with callous criminal bosses like this Sicoli character. The only people who mattered to a guy like that were his own family members. The rest of the world consisted of pawns to move around in his game of making money, and if any pawn dared lose his money, the pawn was taken out of the game.
Permanently.
Turning aroun
d, he leaned his hips against the counter and took a sip of coffee. “So what’s the plan?”
Kat let out a half-scoff, half-snort sound. The kind made when desperation clashed with hopelessness. “You mean, short of robbing a bank?”
Aiden studied her as she got up with her mug and crossed to the counter next to him and placed it in the sink. Then she ran the water and started washing it. He would have told her she didn’t need to do that, but she had the same look Mary Catherine used to get. He could always tell when something bothered his younger sister. She cleaned until you could see your reflection in every surface.
As she soaped and rinsed the mug for the third time, she said, “My plan was to give them the slip last night and leave town.”
Absently wresting his full cup from his hand, she emptied it and restarted her process. He supposed he didn’t need the extra caffeine anyway.
“Which,” she continued, “I guess I did, but not in the way I’d expected. Now I don’t know how I’m going to get any of my stuff, or the money, or—”
“Kat.” Aiden cut her off before her anxiety reached critical mass. Taking the mug from her, he put an end to her nervous ritual and turned her to face him. “I know it sounds tempting, but you can’t spend your life running from your past.”
Yeah. He didn’t miss the irony of him doling out that particular brand of advice. At least his past could only haunt him mentally and emotionally. Kat’s would kill her if it ever caught up with her.
“I didn’t plan on running forever,” she argued. “Just until I make it to somewhere I can hide. I hear Mexico is lovely this time of year.”
“Sweetheart, the devil himself wouldn’t vacation in Mexico in the middle of August.”
Crossing her arms and lifting her chin, she said, “That’s not the point.”
“You’re right, it’s not. The point is, if you run now, you’ll wake up every day for the rest of your life wondering if today is the day they find you. Looking over your shoulder will become something you do so often you’ll forget which direction is forward. That’s no way to live, Kat.”