CHAPTER 18
EMILY
The first time he’d kissed me, it had been unexpected, unformed. It had been a first practice before we knew all the steps. This time he took it slow, brushing his lips over mine, only enough to waken the nerve endings. I pushed harder against him until I could feel the shape of his jaw when he opened his mouth, prying mine open to meet him.
He was a wave, a tsunami drowning me. My whole body tingled for him. My blood pumped fire from heart to fingertips, igniting on his gunpowder smell. Smoke and electric air. Fifth of July. New Year’s Day. The air after the fireworks at Santa Monica Pier. The explosive potential of combustion and danger. His tongue probed the mouth of a body alive and crackling for him. My resistance went pop pop pop, leaving the white smoke of desire in the air.
My arms were around him, and I was lost. My dress was around my waist, held up between our bodies. His hands were at my lower back. I shifted my body so I could feel his erection. I groaned into his mouth.
A sound outside. A crack or a snap. He pulled away violently and pushed me down. I hit the rug with the top of my marked dress bunched around my waist.
Carter shut the lights. I could see the entire backyard.
“Stay down.”
In half a second, he was gone.
I didn’t know what was going on. He’d left the bedroom sliding doors locked and gone out either the front or side door. I couldn’t see him in the yard. Just the leaves on the lawn furniture and the shadows of the big ficus that took up half the space. The front door of the garage was bright red and made me think again of the X on my white dress.
Nothing happened. I laid there forever, listening to my breath against the rug, waiting.
Carter was outside because of me. I didn’t have to be afraid for him, but I was.
I’d met Peter in the ER after Vince broke his nose. He wasn’t an asshole about it. He didn’t blame me, but he was a guy in glasses who’d worked his way up to the executive offices at Overland Studios from the mailroom. He had a communications degree from Michigan. He wasn’t an athlete or a fighter. He was the kind of guy who would make you laugh, put you at ease, and move so slowly to get what he wanted that by the time he asked for it, you threw it at him. And that was just what his boss at Overland said. I was pretty sure everything I liked about him had made him an easy target.
Vince had come from behind Peter with no warning. Carter wouldn’t let that happen. But if Vince was prepared to attack and Carter was distracted? That was an ambush, and it wasn’t fair.
And if Vince thought Carter was that much more of a threat than the sweet, artsy Peter, he was going to hit harder.
The motion-sensor lights flicked out, and the room was totally dark again.
My heart started pounding as I thought of Carter’s head snapping back from a crack to the face or him falling forward from a surprise blow from behind.
And. No.
No, not again. I wasn’t going to be the reason someone got attacked.
I got up and darted for the back doors. My dress fell, exposing me. I got my left hand through an armhole while I used the right to slide open the door.
I stepped onto the patio in my stockinged feet. Twigs and leaves snapped under me. The light from the studio went back on.
This was stupid. I was walking right into danger.
I put my hand through the right armhole and took a step down, leaving the glass door open in case I needed to run back inside.
On the other side of the hedges and cinder block wall, the traffic on Olympic was quieter than usual. I pushed the dress back up. Without the zipper to hold it, the shoulders kept sliding down.
“Hey!” A male figure on the edge of my vision.
My heart stopped. Or maybe it thumped too hard. But it hurt, and I sucked in a bunch of air as if it was my last breath. I snapped my head to the sound and stepped back.
“Carter! You scared the hell out of me.”
He was smiling. I was having a heart attack and he was smiling. His arms were crossed in front of him, and something furry poked out from between the folds of his sleeves.
“It was a cat.” As if she knew when she was being called, the cat poked her head up and meowed. She was a gray tiger stripe with green eyes. Either young or a runt. “I think she’s hungry.”
“Are you trying to get me to keep the cat?”
“You can’t leave her out here.”
“Carter. The last cat I had was named Socks. She wound up dead on my front step.”
The stray jumped out of Carter’s arms and hopped up on a lawn chair.
“Do you have any cat food around?”
Did I? And did it matter? I didn’t want a freaking cat.
But what was most disconcerting was Carter. The hard-ass man of few words softened like putty at the sight of a little gray cat cleaning her paws on my lawn chair.
“I think I have some under the sink.”
He snapped his fingers.
“This doesn’t mean I’m keeping it.”
“What should you name her?”
“Carter!”
He brushed by me and went into the house. The cat didn’t even look at me. She just ran her wrist over her face, over her tongue, and back again.
“You’re not staying. For your own good.”
She sat up straight and flicked her tail. Yawned as if my expensive bodyguard hadn’t just rescued her from starvation or whatever.
I waved my finger at her and went inside, closing the door behind me. Maybe she’d leave if I shut her out.
I got out of the dress and put on a shirt and jeans. Carter had made himself at home in the kitchen, pouring Meow Mix into the bowl that had been next to it, as if I wanted to feed a cat in the first place.
“I hear they need wet food once in a while,” he said, rolling the bag closed.
“You can feed her whatever you want when you bring her home.”
“I can’t.” He put away the bag of cat food. “You still have a litter box and litter under here.”
I’d thrown away Socks’s toys, but I didn’t have the heart to toss the practical things. Maybe I thought she was coming back.
“Why can’t you take her?”
“Come on. Let’s see if she likes it.”
He swooped up the bowl, put his arm around me, and we all went to the back through my bedroom.
The cat was still there, waiting like a customer in a fancy restaurant.
Slowly, showing both hands, Carter made his way to the cat and put the bowl on the floor next to the lawn chair. Then he stepped back until he was next to me.
“What should we name her?” he asked when he was beside me.
“Carter’s cat?”
His face, when he looked down at me, was a side of him I’d never seen before. He wasn’t an ex-cop or protector. He wasn’t Mr. Business. He was just a guy who wanted a cat.
“Are you going to tell me why you can’t have a cat?” I asked.
“No.”
The cat had slinked down and was getting her fill of Meow Mix.
“Then her name will be secret.”
“You’re naming the cat after a deodorant?”
“That was not even a joke.”
I kneeled down and ran my hand along the soft length of the cat’s spine.
“Emily.” He sat on the lawn chair with his legs spread and his elbows on his knees. He tapped his fingertips together and bowed his head. “I’m going to be honest. My life is complicated.”
The first thing I thought in that unguarded moment before bad news dropped was that he was married. Engaged. Otherwise attached. The thought cut through me so deeply it landed like an inevitability.
“Really?” I didn’t look at him. I kept my voice noncommittal and flat. I didn’t need to say it for him. If he was going to tell me he was married, he was going to say all the words without help.
“And you. You’re . . .” He paused as if he were looking for words. The space annoyed me. He was softening some kind of blow, and I was in no mood. I’d had a shitty evening already. “You’re amazing and beautiful. You’re—”
“Stop it.” I said it definitively. I had no time for this line of bullshit. He was putting camphor on a muscle that hadn’t been pulled yet.
“I want you to know—”
“Carter Kincaid.” I stood, putting my feet apart and my hands on my hips. “Just say it. Say the thing without stroking me. Neither of us has the time for this.”
Say you’re married.
He looked up at me, elbows still on his knees, big blue eyes asking forgiveness for a sin he wouldn’t confess.
He took too long. I’d been jerked around before, and I wasn’t playing this time.
“Time’s up.” I spun on my heel and crossed the deck, grabbing the handle of the sliding glass door and using my torque to close it. I didn’t look back, but I knew the door didn’t meet the jamb. I didn’t hear the satisfying snap behind me.
“Emily,” he said, but I kept walking. I grabbed the stool and went for the front door. He caught me by taking a wood leg and jerking it toward him.
“I want you,” he said. The statement melted me just enough to encourage him to continue. “Every time you’re near me, I stop thinking. I stop making sense. But I can’t have you.”
“How dramatic. What’s the actual problem?”
“You’re my principal. I can’t protect you and let my guard down with you at the same time.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you think happened back there? How do you think you got attacked? I wasn’t watching you. I wasn’t protecting you. I was thinking about getting my face between your legs. I was giving you a dozen orgasms. I failed because I was worried about another guy touching you on the dance floor. I wasn’t paying the right kind of attention, and next time it might be more than a dress.”
I yanked the stool, and he let it go. “I won’t be jerked around. I won’t be toyed with. If your life is so complicated and you can’t tell me the real reason, then maybe you shouldn’t be protecting me.” I opened the door and put the stool on the front step. “Hour and change left in your shift. Go for it.”
He went outside and turned around at the doorway, as if he wanted to say something. The next step was for me to close the door, but he was so close to the edge that no matter how softly I shut it, I’d look as if I was slamming it in his face. That was too much. I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t take back.
“I’m closing the door,” I said.
“I’m driving you in the morning.”
“I’ll see you then.”
He nodded, head tilted at the angle of kindness, but his eyes were elsewhere, as if he was thinking deeply about something. He snapped out of it and reached into the house, toward me. A twitch of hope flicked in my chest. Was he going for me? Trying to touch me? Or was I just all turned around from the horrible night?
Where Vince had marked me.
What was I doing?
He rested his fingers on the doorknob as if he wasn’t ready to go just yet.
“You know what?” I said. “You’re right. This won’t work. Not because I don’t like you but because I do. Tonight reminded me that I’m damaged goods. I have this crazy person obsessed with me, and anyone I bring into my life is going to be in his sights.”
“Don’t insult me. I can handle him.”
“Carter, you just said we couldn’t be together, then I agree, and now you’re insulted that I’m agreeing so we can keep you off his radar?”
I crossed my arms.
“I’m going to figure it out,” he said, “and when I do, Vince isn’t going to be part of the equation. Trust me.”
He closed the door.