“I don’t have a choice, Irish. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Let me help you.”
“What? No way. Are you crazy?”
“Probably, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Forget it. I’m not dragging you into this.”
“I’m already in. I got in up to my eyeballs when I put you on the back of my bike last night.”
“I know, and now if something happens to you…” Her chin quivered as she did her damnedest to hold back the deluge of emotions passing over her face. She must have decided to go with anger because suddenly, using her good hand, she hammer-fisted him in the chest several times for emphasis with her words. “Damn it, Irish, you should have minded your own fucking business!”
Aiden banded his arms around her and held her tight as she tried to fight him with an exhausted strength as fierce as the nickname he’d given her.
In mere seconds she gave in, accepting his embrace as silent tears fell unchecked over her cheeks and down his chest.
One hand tucked her head under his chin while the other slid up and down her back to soothe and hopefully slow her breathing to match his strokes. He surprised himself at how natural it felt to console her, to be there for her.
Crying women had always scared the hell out of him. He never knew what to do or say. Normally, he’d awkwardly ask them not to cry or try plying them with things to make them smile again.
But comforting Kat and holding her in his arms felt so…right.
After several minutes, her tears ran dry until she was simply tucked against him, her arms still pinned between their bodies. She whispered so softly, he almost didn’t hear her.
“You should have left me alone.”
If it wasn’t for the danger she was in, she’d be right. But it wouldn’t be for his sake. It’d be for hers.
“Something tells me you’ve been left alone enough,” he said against her hair, his voice coming out as little more than a raspy growl. “I’m stepping in, whether you like it or not, kitten.”
She tipped her head back, their gazes colliding. With a furrowed brow, she seemed to search for some sign she hadn’t misheard him. Aiden wondered how many people had let this woman down in the past to put that look of uncertainty on her face.
He vowed to himself never to be on that list.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Aiden gently held the sides of her face and wiped the last of her tears away with his thumbs. “I’m not walking away from this,” he said. “I’m not walking away from you. Okay?”
She nodded almost imperceptibly, but the understanding that dawned on her beautiful face solidified their unspoken agreement. She would let him help her, which meant he wouldn’t have to go behind her back to do it. Which was one less lie, one less hidden truth. The lower he kept that count, the better.
Aiden watched her gaze skim down his face and stop at his mouth. Now that the other stuff was out of the way, their current situation of a half-dressed, close embrace started stirring things up on a more physical level.
Her hands relaxed and flattened on his chest and grazed his piercings. The slight touch on his sensitive nipples sent a shock of heat straight to his balls. Their breaths became shallow and mingled together in the few inches that separated their lips. The smell of coffee mixed with her lilac scent created a potent mix of old and new addictions.
His heart raced and stomach clenched, and in seconds she’d know how much he wanted her as his cock grew harder between them at just the thought of tasting those sweet lips.
He shifted his hands so his fingers splayed into her hair and cradled her head, then he slowly lowered his face to hers. The pulse in her neck leaped. Her lids drifted closed. And though it felt like an eternity, his lips were finally, finally, a hairsbreadth from knowing her kiss.
But at the last moment, Kat turned her face to the side.
Reality crashed in around him and doused his arousal. Mostly. Aiden released her and stepped back. What an asshole. Not only was she vulnerable and probably not thinking clearly, but she had a boyfriend. Just because the guy was doing time and didn’t come off as much of a Prince Charming didn’t give Aiden the right to make a move on her.
Not that he was respecting the boundary for the guy’s sake. He could give two shits about him. But he respected Kat, and even if he couldn’t understand her reason, the truth of the matter was she’d chosen to be with Lenny. So he’d keep his hands—and his lips—to himself.
He might be a lot of things, but a man who took advantage of a woman wasn’t one of them. Being raised by his mother and helping care for two sisters ensured he acted like a gentleman, even if he’d never looked like one.
“Sorry, that was—” Aiden cleared his throat and stared at a knot in the wood floor. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay,” she said, folding her arms around her middle. “Don’t worry about it; it’s no big deal.”
Wanting more and more a woman he couldn’t have was a huge deal. But he’d just have to embrace the blue balls until this thing was over.
“Do you wanna take a shower? My sister left a pair of her sweats here, and you can wear that T-shirt I gave you. Not the fanciest of outfits, but at least it’ll be clean.”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
Aiden nodded, then crossed to the bathroom to get her set up with everything she’d need. Xander even kept extra toothbrushes on hand for when he had overnight guests. Aiden hadn’t needed anything like that. There hadn’t been a woman who caught his attention since he laid eyes on a certain redheaded waitress.
And at the rate his interest in her was climbing, he’d be lucky to look at another woman ever again.
…
Kat finger-combed her damp hair in front of the bathroom mirror and cursed her old habit of turning her face before a man could kiss her. Not that her aversion for kissing had magically gone away, but she could have guided his mouth somewhere else if she hadn’t let herself go on autopilot.
God help her, but Kat wanted Irish’s lips on her skin so badly. To know how it felt to have a man like him—a man who cared enough to help a virtual stranger in a dangerous situation—touch her. Not as something to be used and discarded. But as though she were his lover.
Cherished. Revered. Respected.
And she’d been so close. The spicy scent of his soap lingering from his shower had drawn her in like a magnet. Her stomach had fluttered as Irish had bent over her. It felt like five years rather than five seconds for him to close the space between them. She’d closed her eyes and lost herself in the moment.
When a sudden chill had settled over her, she opened her eyes to find he’d let her go and taken a step back, glancing everywhere in the room but at her. All thanks to old instincts.
Then again, maybe he’d simply come to his senses at the last second. Getting involved with a plain waitress in trouble with the Tennessee mafia—if that’s what they called themselves—wasn’t a good idea no matter how you looked at it. She never should have let herself think she could have even a sliver of the fantasy.
Stupid, stupid girl.
Kat checked her borrowed outfit one more time. What Irish referred to as sweatpants were actually a nice pair of black Capri yoga pants. The comical part was the large black T-shirt that hung to her knees with white block letters across her chest that declared her as Tattooed and Employed.
Clothing as a subtle thumbing of one’s nose at those who would judge a man by his cover. If she had to guess, she’d say it was either a misguided gift from a concerned relative or a gag gift from a good friend. Subtlety wasn’t exactly Irish’s way. She pictured him giving people the finger if they looked at him wrong.
She snapped off two of the several hair elastics she always had on her wrist and used one to throw her hair up into a ponytail. Then she gathered the excess material of the enormous T-shirt at her waist, doubled it over, a
nd used the other elastic to secure it so she no longer drowned in cotton.
Sighing, she grabbed the doorknob. She had to face her failed make-out humiliation eventually. Holding her head high, she entered the main room but found it empty. Disappointment at not seeing Irish squashed any remaining embarrassment.
He must have gone outside, though why he’d willingly go out in this heat she had no idea. Only one way to find out. Slipping on her shoes, she stepped onto the porch and took a second to acclimate to the suffocating humidity. In the distance, heat waves blurred the gravel drive lined with thick layers of moss-draped trees.
Clanging sounds came from the direction of the garage. Smiling, Kat jogged down the rickety stairs and halfway to the garage when something in the grass caught her eye and stopped her cold.
Five feet away from her, the biggest alligator Kat had ever seen was either sunning itself or laying in wait for a clueless city girl to happen by and offer herself up as lunch.
With its mouth wide open and making an awful hissing sound, the beast took a deliberate step in her direction.
She held her breath for fear even that might antagonize it somehow. What the hell was she supposed to do? Run? Stare it down? Play dead? Hypnotize it with a flute? She’d never watched Crocodile Hunter and couldn’t remember a damn thing from the one time she saw Crocodile Dundee.
It took another step.
Right then, Kat made a solemn vow to watch as much Animal Planet as possible until she knew how to survive every living species she would ever encounter, and even some she wouldn’t.
When she tried taking a step back, the alligator reacted with several quick moves in her direction. Which was when she fucking lost her shit and screamed like a little girl.
Irish, ever her savior, bolted out of the garage. “Knock it off, girl. Back up!”
She willed herself to obey, but the last time she tried that, it charged, so her body refused to comply. He bravely placed himself between her and the reptile, but the last thing she wanted was for him to get eaten protecting her. “Let’s make a run for the front door.”
“Nah.” He peered back over his shoulder. “She’s just being bitchy ’cause she doesn’t know you. I told you she doesn’t like strangers.”
“Who doesn’t?”
He nodded at the alligator. “Ally.”
The lightbulb over her head lit up. Her mouth fell slack. “Are you telling me that this gigantic lizard threatening to eat me and use my bones as toothpicks is Hissing Ally? You told me she was a cat!”
“No, I didn’t. You assumed she was a cat. I didn’t see any reason to worry you after the day you had yesterday. Come on.”
Irish grasped her hand in his much larger one and tugged her in the direction of the garage. She did her best to bring her pulse to a healthier rate along the way. By the time he provided a sturdy box for her to sit on and returned to his place on the stool by his Harley, Kat had nearly recovered.
Then he leveled those intense blue eyes on her and gave her appearance a once-over. It seemed a normal heart rate would be next to impossible when she was with this man. His gaze hovered over her chest, and her cheeks flushed with heat.
Trying to draw his attention somewhere else, she gestured lamely to the T-shirt ponytail she’d made. “Um, I hope you don’t mind. I did this to make it fit better. I’m smallish and you’re pretty huge…” He stared at her, not moving, not saying a word. She demonstrated by wrapping her hand around the bunched cotton. “I mean, look. It’s so big I can barely close my fingers around it.”
Irish coughed behind his fist as he shifted, like he was uncomfortable on his low stool. When he spoke, his voice came out even more gruff than usual. “Kitten, you’re going to inflate my ego to dangerous levels with all that talk about me being so big.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and wished for a hole to swallow her up. “Oh my God. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”
A low chuckle caressed her eardrums and slid into her brain. “Relax, I know what you meant. I was just giving you shit.”
He was teasing her? God, when was the last time she’d had some good-natured teasing? Probably not since Nessie, which was a lifetime ago. How sad was that? Irish mentioned having sisters. He probably teased them all the time growing up.
She wondered if she could drop her defenses enough to remember how to tease him back. That could be fun. Normal, even. And wouldn’t that be a miracle.
He’d changed into a holey pair of faded jeans and white tank, both of which were smeared in grease with his shirt sporting the bonus V of sweat in the front and back. His hair fell over his forehead in small chunks at different intervals.
Needing a distraction before she started drooling, she scanned the garage. A makeshift table made of plywood and construction horses held various tools and gadgets and grease-stained rags. Several buckets held other tools and tool accessories, but nothing seemed to be in any sort of order.
“You haven’t been here very long. How’d you get all this stuff?”
“This is all my stuff from home. Xander brought it with him.”
“How do you find anything you need?” she asked.
He glanced around the room as though trying to figure out what she meant. “I know where everything is,” he said defensively as he set down one tool and went to grab for another. But just short of picking anything up, he paused, furrowed his brow, and looked around several times. “Mostly,” he mumbled.
Kat tried muffling her chuckle, but it didn’t work. He narrowed his eyes at her. “This further proves your Oscar theory, doesn’t it?”
“Just a little,” she said with a wry smile, showing him about an inch gap between her thumb and forefinger. “Honestly, though, I don’t even know why that reference came to mind. I haven’t thought about that show since I was a little girl. I used to watch it late at night as a distraction from…”
“Distraction from what?”
No way was she finishing that sentence, much less that thought. The memories of watching the show with Nessie were good ones. But the reasons they watched it weren’t, and she had no desire to revisit them any time soon.
Or ever.
“Why is your left arm covered in images of ocean life?”
Irish arched his brow in a way that told her he recognized the blatant subject change. Luckily, he was nice enough to go along with it. “My uncle lived in the Florida Keys and ran a scuba diving business. He’d send my mom these gorgeous pictures of the things he saw while diving.” He studied his tattoos as though reliving seeing the pictures for the first time. “And, I don’t know. I guess only ever seeing my neighborhood growing up, I was intrigued by the idea that something like that existed. It wasn’t just another place, but a whole other world.”
Kat understood what he meant. She’d felt something similar. Only, instead of wishing to see dolphins and sea turtles, she’d wished to know what it was like to have loving parents. But that wasn’t something you permanently inked in your skin.
“So,” she said, “the tattoos remind you of the daydreams you had as a boy of experiencing that life for yourself. Of the fascination you had with a world other than the one you knew.”
He half grinned before turning his attention back to his bike. “You make it sound kinda girlie, but I guess that’s about right.”
The sentimentality hung over them like a heavy blanket, making it hard for her to breathe. She needed another subject change. Preferably one a little lighter in nature.
“You know, I thought about what you said earlier. You’re right. Moving to Mexico is a horrible idea. I mean, look at me. I’d stick out like a sore thumb. But Scotland, on the other hand, is the perfect place for me to blend in. No one would look twice at me there.”
“What about your boyfriend?” he said with a quick sidelong glance. “Don’t you think you oughta wait till he can go with you?”
She recognized the set-up question because she got it all the time. It was a way for people who didn’t
know her well to gauge the circumstances of her relationship with Lenny.
Some of them wanted to know their chances of getting in her pants. Some wanted to know if they could shake her down for information. Some wanted to know how much she meant to him so they could use her for leverage to get what they wanted from him. The question-asker always had an agenda, and her ability to determine which one they had so she could answer appropriately was a necessity for survival.
But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out Irish’s agenda. A voice in her head screamed at her to tell him the truth, if only about this one thing. So she did.
“Lenny’s not really my boyfriend.”
That got his full attention. “He’s not?”
She shook her head. “Well, he was a long time ago, but not for the last…” She counted back in her head. “Eight years or so.”
“So why do you tell people you’re together?”
Kat shrugged and absently studied her nails. “Easier, I guess. It’s not like I was in the dating pool or anything.”
“I don’t get it. Why would you stick with him for so long, then?”
“Because I was too scared to live on my own, and I had nowhere else to go.” Wow, that sounded a lot less pathetic in my head.
“Nowhere?” he asked skeptically.
It was a loaded question, whether he knew it or not. Technically, she could’ve gone to Nessie—how many times had her sister asked her to come live with her?—but Kat never let herself consider the option. Vanessa had been studying to become a lawyer and then working getting her career off the ground. She didn’t need her broken younger sister dragging her down in the process.
And now that Kat was in serious trouble with a man who made hurting people’s loved ones look like a hobby, she sure as hell wasn’t bringing any of that to Nessie’s door. So that left only one answer to his question.
“Nope. Nowhere,” she said. “But since Lenny went to jail, I’ve learned that I can stand on my own two feet. So that’s exactly what I plan to do. I need to live for me now.”
A couple of minutes passed before he answered, so she started to think she’d said something to upset him. But then he gave her a warm half grin and said, “I think you living for yourself is a great idea. And if you wanna move to Scotland when this is all done, that’s fine. But first we’re going to make sure you’re free and clear of this Sicoli guy, so you don’t have to look over your shoulder. Okay?”