Chapter 14
“Who did this to you?” Carlotta asked.
“I think I told ya. Her name was Angel.”
She felt her temper rise and told herself it was only fatigue. What did she care that he’d risked his life for a woman? He was a philandering playboy who had abandoned her at the first dollop of trouble.
Very well, she admitted silently, maybe there had been a truckload of trouble. Maybe, in fact, he’d been under dire threat of death. But she’d spent a good deal of time nursing him back to health. Weeks bathing him, feeding him, hearing him cry out in delirium. And okay, maybe she’d thought they had formed some kind of a bond. But that didn’t matter. So what if he had raced back to his country without a backward glance. It didn’t mean a thing to her. But she wouldn’t allow her time to go to waste, wouldn’t let her ministrations be for naught.
“I see that her personality did not match her name,” she said and shifted to examine the backside of his arm.
“What?” he asked.
“Most angels, they do not bite their rescuers. It is a bite wound, is it not?”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “But what makes ya think Angel was the one doin’ the bitin’?”
“What woman would not be tempted?” she asked and, poking the puckered scar, didn’t bother to explain what she was tempted to do.
“Hey,” he said and pulled his arm away.
“It yet hurts.”
“A little tender maybe.”
She snorted, knowing a lie when she heard one. “Where is this Angel now?” she asked and stepped behind him to examine the wound from another angle.
“Alabama.”
She raised her brows at him. “What is it she do there?”
“She took a likin’ to Eric, an old buddy’a mine. They’re livin’ in a little Podunk burg south’a Montgomery, I think,” he said and shrugged as if it were of no great concern.
“What?” she asked. “You risk your life for her and yet she lives with another?”
“You seein’ a trend, too?” he asked.
You left me, she wanted to shriek, but she kept her tone level. “She has the sex with you, and then she choose your friend? To me, she sound more the puta than the angel.”
“I didn’t say we slept together.”
“So she refuse you!” She laughed as she dug around in her bag, found the glass bottle for which she’d been searching, and screwed off the metal lid. The minty scent of pennyroyal filled the air.
He scowled at her unlabeled concoction. “Turns out, I had no interest in sleepin’ with her.”
“Huh!”
“Ya don’t believe me?”
“No, I do not.”
“Because?”
“Because you are the man,” she said and eyed him dismissively.
“Glad you noticed that I… Hey!” he bellowed and jerked away, but she had already smeared the ointment onto his wound.
“Admit it,” she ordered.
“What the devil is that stuff?”
“Tell the truth.”
“It burns like hellfire.”
“Are you so much the coward that you cannot even admit your desires?”
“Rangers ain’t cowards, sweetheart. We’re the best’a the best.”
She laughed. “And yet this Angel turned you down.”
“Holy…” He jerked to his feet, still staring at his arm as if expecting smoke to rise from the puckered scar. “Are ya tryin’ to kill me?”
“When I am try to kill you, you will know it, Linus Shepherd,” she said and poked a finger at him. “Now, admit it, you wished to have the sex with her, but she did not compile.”
“She did not comply.”
“So I am right!”
“No, you’re not right. I didn’t have no interest in her. Not in that way anyhow.”
She watched him, thinking. “Then she was not pretty.”
“Funkin’ hell!” He yanked his forearm away from his ribcage as if hoping to prevent his torso from catching fire. “It’s eatin’ a hole in my skin.”
“Tell me the truth, and I will stop the burn.”
He jerked his gaze to hers. “What?”
“I have the cure just here,” she said and held up another bottle she’d mindlessly fished from her bag.
“You’ve poisoned me? Seriously?”
“Is the truth so hard to admit?”
“Alright,” he said. “Fine! I admit it. She was kinda a dog.”
She couldn’t stop the gasp. “How dare you—“
“Now give me that damned… Wait a minute.” He paused, rolled his shoulder, scowled at the wound. “I think it feels better.”
“How dare you call a woman such?”
“What is that stuff?” The bunched muscles that capped his shoulders had begun to relax.
“Have you no consciences? What would your mama think if she knew how you disrespect her sex?”
“I don’t disrespect nobody,” he said distractedly and poked tentatively at the wound. “Not even other species. Huh. Where’d you get that shit?”
“What?”
“Feels better than it has in months.”
“What you mean you do not disrespect other species?”
“Granddad was an ornery old sonofabitch.” He flexed his biceps. Muscles popped, heaping like magic beneath his sun-browned skin. “But he didn’t allow no mistreatment’a animals. Have ya got a patent for that stuff?”
“What do animals have to do with your wound?”
He glanced up as if surprised to learn they still debated such a tedious subject. “Angel’s a malamute.”
“¿Qué?”
“A malamute. Sled dog. Whatever. All white. Think that mighta been the reason for her name. Ol’ Eric’s had a weakness for the breed ever since we snuck into the Cinemax to see Iron Will.
“Ya got more’a that weird-ass tonic?”
“Angel was a dog?”
“Yeah.” He glanced up innocently, dimples etching inroads in his lean cheeks. “What’d ya think?”
“You joke me.”
“I wish,” he said and prodded the scar contemplatively. “Ya make that stuff yourself?”
“It is my father’s recipe. He make from the nectar of many different plants.”
“I thought he was a farmer.”
“Sí. He used it on our mule.”
“Well…” He rotated his shoulder again. “I’ve been called a horse’s ass before.”
“Why did this dog bite you?”
“I was tryin’ to get her outta the pit.
“Seriously, have ya considered marketin’ this stuff?”
“The pit?”
“Angel was a fightin’ dog. She and an Airedale the size’a a moose were goin’ at it like pissed off wolves. I suppose she thought I was just another enemy.
“Would this stuff work on old wounds?”
Carlotta reared back in outrage. “They yet battle dogs in this country?”
“Sometimes.”
“This is the barbaric.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
“What were you doing at such a place?”
“I went for the other fights.”
She scowled.
“Bare knuckle,” he said and, lifting his fists, made a few quick jabs. “Damn, I feel good. I got some buddies’d pay dear for this stuff.”
“Do not say it.”
He took a few more jabs, circled a little. “Say what?”
“You did not go to fight.”
His grin was little-boy charming, but his body was all another story entirely. “Didn’t I?”
“You are the idiota.”
“But a pretty fair street fighter.”
“And you think that is not barbaric?”
He lowered his fists. “No one forces men to do it, honey. Not like the dogs.” His expression hardened. “Shitheads should be horse whipped.”
She felt herself weaken. “So you refuse to let the dogs fight.”
His dimples popped again…part demon, part angel now. “You’d think I insulted their mamas the way they acted when I took her.”
“Then what happen?”
He shrugged. “I ran like hell, hangin’ onto her collar with her snappin’ at me like a damned crocodile. Got bit. Got shot at. Called the cops.”
She watched him, searching for lies. But there were none. She was sure of it.
Silence settled into the room as he tried a few more maneuvers with his arm. Maneuvers that caused every muscle to dance.
“You may sleep on the bed,” she said finally.
He paused, fists still raised, brows cocked up.
“But there will be no sex,” she demanded and, flipping up the coverlet, sidled onto her side of the mattress. “Or I will be forced to kill you.”