30DaystoSyn (11 page)

“You’re kidding!” she said. “They are my
absolute favorites!”

“I know,” he said. “Mine too.”

“My favorite song by them is
The Prince’s
Lost Lady
.”

“Sad love song but very beautiful. It’s
haunting.”

“Have you ever been in love?” she asked.

“No.” The rain stopped to a light sprinkle
and he turned down the speed of the wipers. He glanced at her. “You?”

“You mean to tell me you don’t know?” she
asked. “I thought you knew everything there was to know about me.”

He put his elbow on the edge of the door
and propped his head against his fist, the wrist of his right hand draped
loosely over the steering wheel. “I didn’t care if you’d ever been in love. All
I wanted to know was if there was a man in your life now. There wasn’t, so I
didn’t think twice about what went on before. To me the past is dead and should
be buried six feet deep.” He braked for a red light and looked over at her
again. “You didn’t answer me. Have you ever loved a man?”

“I loved a boy,” she said softly.
“Desperately loved him.”

“What happened?”

“His father,” she said. “He didn’t think I
was good enough for his son.”

He looked away from her. “Yeah, that shit
happens a lot.”

“Did it happen to you?”

“No, but it did to someone I once knew,” he
told her.

“Hurt like hell but I got over it,” she
said. “Broke my heart too.”

The light changed and he accelerated,
shifting the expensive machine casually and expertly. “Where do you see
yourself in a year, Melina?” he asked.

She laughed. “Sitting in a big white wicker
swing on a big screened porch reading a John Sandford novel while sipping plum
wine and munching on very sharp cheddar cheese and pepperoni wedges,” she said.

He smiled. “You’re going to spend some of
my money to buy a new house.”

“I don’t own the one I’m in and it’s
practically falling down around my ears,” she said. “The roof leaks. The rooms
stay cold in the winter and hot in the summer. The pipes thump in the middle of
the night and there’s a funky smell of poop coming out of the overhead vents.”

He looked at her. “Poop?”

“There have been raccoons up there and I’m
pretty sure the local mice and squirrels and the occasional bird uses the attic
for their public restroom.” She shrugged. “Hence the poopy smell.”

He frowned. “That’s not healthy,” he said.
“I’ll buy you a house.”

He could feel her staring at him but she
said nothing. When he looked over at her there was anger flashing in her eyes.
“What?” he asked.

“I may be your whore but I won’t—”

He whipped the car onto the side of the
road and braked so hard the engine died. He was thankful she was buckled in
else she would have hit the dashboard.
 “What is wrong with you?” she snapped, her hand on the dashboard.

He twisted around in his seat. “First,
don’t ever fucking put your hand out like that. You could have broken your
wrist if I hit something. Second, you are
not
my whore,” he said through
his teeth. “Don’t you ever call yourself that again!”

“What am I if not your whore?” she
demanded. “You’re buying my sexual favors so that makes me—”

“Don’t say it,” he warned.

“Would you prefer prostitute?” she
countered.

“
Hell, no
!” he shouted and saw her
flinch, press close to the door as though she thought he might lash out at her.
“You are not a whore or a prostitute!”

“Then what am I?”

“My…” He searched for how he thought of her
but couldn’t come up with the right description of how he viewed her. He shook
his head. “You’re…”

“What do you think this is, Kiwi?” she
asked.

He thought about it for a moment. “I
honestly don’t know,” he answered. “What it was when it started isn’t what it
is now.”

“What changed?”

“I changed,” he said. He wrapped both hands
around the steering wheel and rocked his palms back and forth over the leather
cover. “Fuck, Melina, I don’t know.”

“Well you should know,” she said, turning
her face from him. “If anyone should, it would be you.” She looked down at her
watch. “I need to get to the nursing home before they start showing the
Saturday matinee movie.”

“Why?” he asked. He started the car then
twisted his head around to see if there were cars coming before pulling back
onto the road

“They’ll wheel him down to the day room
even though he doesn’t want to go. He hates the movies they show. He won’t say
anything to them but I know he hates every minute of it.”

“What kind of movies does he like?”

“Sci-Fi and fantasy,” she said, folding her
arms over her chest in a defensive posture. “Anything that’s big and sweeping
with loud music—which the home won’t allow—and…”

“We’ll get him a seventy-inch flat screen,
a DVD player and a good set of headphones with a long cord when he gets over to
Cedar Oaks,” he told her. “A man should have his little pleasures in life.”

“Yeah,” she said, the bitterness evident in
her voice. “I’ll buy him those things with the money you pay me for being
your—”

“Don’t say it!” he snapped, whipping his
head toward her. “I mean it. Don’t do it.”

“For being your mistress,” she said and her
defiant look made him want to turn her over his knee.

“Stop talking,” he said, and when she
grunted and turned her head to stare out the window, he wanted to break
something.

Why she was surprised they knew him at the
nursing home, greeted him by name, flirted with him didn’t register until they
were walking down the hall. She stopped, reached out to grab his arm and bring
him to a stumbling halt.

“Have you been visiting my brother?” she
demanded.

“Yeah,” he replied. “So what?”

“You’ve been visiting my brother,” she
stated in a flat voice, searching his eyes.

He shrugged. “I’ve come over a couple of
times.”

“And?” she pressed. She was aware she was
digging her fingers into his arm but she didn’t care.

“And what?” he countered.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to meet him. He’s a neat
kid. Reminds me of—”

“What do you do with him?” she asked and
watched him bristle.

“Use him as a doorstop?” he snapped. “What
the
fuck
do you think I do with him?” He shook off her hand then put his
up to cover the place where she’d gripped him. He rubbed at the red marks her
fingers had left behind. “We play checkers. We talk.”

She thought her head would explode she was
so angry at him. “About what? What do you talk about?”

“We discuss in length how I’m abusing his
sister and loaning her out to all my nastiest, disease-riddled friends,” he
said, eyes narrowed. “I’ve told him how I plan to sell you to this Arab sheik I
know who likes smart-mouth twits.”

“Screw you, McGregor!” she snapped. She
looked around to make sure no one was listening in on their conversation. “I
want to know what you talk to my teenage brother about!”

“We don’t talk about you if that’s what you
want to know!” he told her. “Shit, the boy doesn’t even know who the hell you
are, Melina! How could I talk about you to him?”

That was true but it didn’t make her feel
any better. She opened her mouth to ask him again but he gave her the answer
she sought.

“We talk about baseball and football and
basketball,” he said, a muscle working in his jaw. “We talk about the Game of
Thrones books and Dean Koontz and John Saul. We talk about rap music and cars
and—”

“All right,” she said, her temper easing.

“He’s a boy, Melina,” he said. “He may be
nineteen years old but he’s still fourteen in his head. I would never,
never
say or do anything to hurt him or—”

“I said all right,” she told him.

“I’m not a bad guy, Melina. Give me a
little credit for being somewhat of a decent human being,” he said. He turned
around and headed back down the hall, hands dug into the pockets of his jeans.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll wait in the car,” he said without
looking around. “Take as long as you like.”

“What are you going to do in the car?” she
asked, taking a few steps after him.

“If my Glock is under the seat I’m going to
blow my fucking brains out,” she heard him mutter.

He knew why she might have been suspicious
of his motives for going to see her brother. Jono had warned him she might not
like it but he had wanted to get to know the boy. After all, it was his money
that would basically be taking care of him for the rest of his life. He hadn’t
counted on really liking Drew Wynth and wanting only the very best for the
young paraplegic. That more than his desire to have Drew’s big sister
completely under his control had made him pay for the young man’s place at
Cedar Oaks—a spot that would be opening in a few weeks.

Slumping down in the car seat, pressing the
back of his skull hard into the headrest, he doubled his fists and pressed the
back of them over his eyes.

“Infuriating little witch!” He named her.
His palm itched to connect with her bare backside.

God, he thought, the woman was getting
under his skin like an STD! He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t
stop daydreaming about her during board meetings. It was a good thing his chair
swiveled and his staff was familiar with his habit of turning to the window
when one of them had the floor.

“Go on,” he’d tell them. “I’m listening.”

That wasn’t the truth of late. Since he’d
been meeting Melina in the Room, he was away with the fairies, paying less and
less attention to his work and more to what he ached to do to her. He
fantasized about her while he lay in his bed at night. When he watched her on
the monitors in his den, it was all he could do to keep his hands off his cock.
He was quickly becoming a lust-struck teenage boy all over again. Next thing
that would happen would be a ginormous zit popping up on the end of his nose.

“Fuck!” he snarled and pounded the steering
wheel with his fists.

He leaned forward and put his forehead on
it, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, his hands wrapped around the leather
cover.

The car door opened and he swiveled his
head to look at her. She had a sheepish look on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He was still hunched over the steering
wheel, his temple pressed to the cover. “For what?”

“For insulting you,” she said then looked
down. “For hurting you.”

He liked the way stray wisps of her dark
hair escaped the tight constriction of the French braid hanging over her
shoulder. He longed to sweep them behind her ear.

“Who said you hurt me?”

She looked around at him. “I could see it
in your eyes.” Her lips almost formed a smile. “You have the saddest eyes I’ve
ever seen and every emotion you have is broadcast through them.”

He sat back with his hands still around the
steering wheel. He laid his chin on his arm and stared at her. “And you are the
most confusing woman I’ve ever known.”

“I’ll confuse you even more,” she said. “I
want some ice cream.”

He blinked, sliding his hands from the
wheel. “Excuse me?”

“I want an ice cream cone. A big swirly
one.”

For a long time he just stared at her. She
looked back at him with a carefully blank face, giving nothing away. At last he
nodded, started the car and said, “All righty then.”

She was accurate about confusing him. She
had dumbfounded him as well by asking for an ice cream cone. As he drove, he
kept cutting his eyes over to her but she was staring out the window at the
passing scenery—saying nothing. When he turned into the parking lot of the
Dairy Barn he shot her a glance.

“Inside or outside?”

“You trust me not to drip ice cream on your
car seat?” she countered.

“I’ll make you lap it up if you do,” he
replied and at her mischievous grin he felt his cock harden.

“Then outside,” she replied. “I hate
sitting in there. It’s even more depressing than a burger joint.”

“True that,” he agreed.

He angled the car toward the drive-thru
lane. “Whatcha want?” he queried.

“Medium swirl sugar cone,” she said. “My
treat.”

“Unh unh,” he said, shaking his head,
pressing the button to lower his window.

“My treat,” she state firmly. “As a peace
offering.”

“Not necessary.”

She reached over to put her hand gently on
his thigh. “It is to me.”

Where she touched him through the fabric of
his jeans, burned and sent a shock of desire directly into his groin. He knew
she couldn’t help but see the leap of his cock because she quickly removed her
hand.

“Welcome to Dairy Barn. Would you like to
try our new double Italian melt?” came the bored voice over the drive-thru box.

“No thanks,” he said. “Could we have one
medium vanilla and one medium swirl? Sugar cones.”

“Will that be all?”

“Yep.”

“That will be three eighty-six at the
window. Please pull forward.”

He saw her fishing around in her purse and
wanted to deny her paying but he kept his mouth shut. He’d already pissed her
off enough for one day. She handed him four dollar bills when he pulled up to
the window. Reluctantly he took the money.

The girl who handed him the vanilla swirl
smiled at him like she knew him well or at the very least wanted to—in a carnal
way. Her smile was predatory as she licked her lips and when he took the cone,
she deliberately slid her flingers along his. He had a wild urge to wipe his
hand on the leg of his pants. When he gave the cone to Melina, she lifted one
finely shaped brow in amusement.

“I have that effect on women,” he
whispered.

“Obviously,” she said and took a swipe of
her cone.

His cock made an instant attempt to break
free of his fly and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.