All To Myself (2 page)

“Up here, just past the curve,” she said as the laundromat came into view.

He signaled, and the ride got bumpier as pavement gave way to a red dirt road. “Are you originally from here?”

“I grew up outside of Summerside. I stay here in the summer to work.”

“Have we met before?”

She bit her lip. She wasn’t ready to reveal that she worked for his father at The White Tip. “I don’t think so. We might have seen one another around. Not here, keep going.”

He had slowed in front of a small collection of luxury cottages, and Rory laughed to herself that he was in for a shock when he saw the place she called home.

“Nice little spot,” he said, then glanced at her. “Have I fucked you?”

Rory’s jaw actually dropped. She gaped at him, mouth open and a gurgling little sound struggling at the back of her throat. “N-no.”

“Did you suck me off?”

“Stop the car. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“I was just asking.” It drove her nuts that he sounded so nonchalant. “I’ve been coming here every summer. I’ve fucked a lot of local girls, though not so much lately. I’m getting older and they’re getting younger. You’ve been so frosty with me, I figured I might have fucked you at some point.”

“I’ve just been hit by a car, so excuse my lack of social intercourse,” she said with a sneer, “and if it’s a regular thing for women to hate you after you fuck them, then maybe you need to rethink how you treat them after you flush the condom.”

“You’ve got a point. What’s your name?”

“What does it matter?”

“I’d like to know the name of the girl I could have killed back there.”

He waited, and Rory couldn’t think of a reason to deny him her name. She could make one up, but it seemed like such a ridiculous thing to do.

“Rory.”

“Rory? ….”

“Mitchell.”

“Any relation to Francie Mitchell?”

She hadn’t expected him to know who her sister was, but then again, if his ass was in the vicinity to kiss, Francie would be on her knees in a shot.

“Yes, Francie is my sister.”

“Lucky you,” he said, and Rory couldn’t hold back her laugh at his dry tone.

“Yeah, she’s a fun one.”

“So, your sister works at The White Tip. Do you want to take a guess at who I am?”

Caught in a smile with him, Rory was suddenly ticklish and blushing. “I know who you are.”

His grin widened. “Who am I?”

“Your Dad owns The White Tip.”

They arrived at the end of the road where her little blue cottage waited. He cut the engine and held out a hand to her. “Noah.”

She shook, then reached for the door handle. Before she could wriggle her way out of the seat, Noah lifted her once more.

“I think I can make it to the steps,” she said, but her tone wasn’t as caustic as it had been. “And my key is in my backpack.”

“Let me take you up the stairs. I’ll come back for the backpack.”

She could have wriggled out of his grip, but as she held onto his shoulders she found she liked the closeness. She wasn’t exactly light, but he was strong. She could feel it in the way his muscles barely tensed as he carried her up the stairs.

He left her leaning against the railing as he went for the backpack, and he waited at her shoulder while she fumbled with the lock.

“Thanks,” she murmured, and gave him a quick smile.

“For running you off the road?”

“For bringing me home.”

He stood close as she undid the bolt, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She pushed open the door and he reached forward to hold it open, and she turned on the threshold.

“You don’t have to stay.”

“I’ve got to make sure you get patched up.”

“No, really--”

“Don’t make me pick you up again.”

She hesitated. She’d never been ashamed before. In fact, she loved her little cottage. It belonged to her grandfather and she’d spent every summer here for as long as she could remember. Now she paid her grandfather two hundred dollars a month for a view that could easily get him a grand a week from some summer tourists. It was clean and bright, and when she woke up in the morning she could sit back with a cup of coffee and watch the boats on the water.

But it was rustic. The only thing in the cottage that was younger than a decade was the mattress her grandfather had insisted on buying at the beginning of summer. Noah’s definition of a cottage was probably closer to the million dollar chalets that dotted the coastline. She didn’t want him inside.

She didn’t want him to see the stained kettle over the ancient stove or the frayed upholstery. She didn’t want him to look in the cupboard and see all the yellow store brand packages of instant food.

She didn’t want to be embarrassed by what was hers.

He didn’t give her a choice. He pushed in, one hand on her arm, and took a quick look around. If he had any thoughts about her living conditions, he kept them to himself. He honed in on the sofa and guided her towards it.

“Bathroom?”

She pointed at the narrow doorway off the kitchen, and hugged herself through her embarrassment. The bathroom was tiny, with just a dingy little shower stall. She heard him rooting around in there and her chest ached when he emerged with the small red emergency kit she kept under the sink and one of her dollar store face cloths.

“You really,
really
don’t have to do this,” she said as he dropped the kit on the floor in front of her and moved to the kitchen sink. She wished she had done the dishes after her morning shift at her other job. If she hadn’t flopped out on the sofa, he wouldn’t be running the cold water over the scummy remnants of her boxed macaroni and cheese lunch.

“Stop complaining. If you’re not smart enough to ask for help after being hit by a car, I don’t trust you to be smart enough to clean yourself up before slapping a bandage on there.”

He returned to her and knelt. Dripping washcloth in one hand, he drew her legs apart with the other.

She wanted to clip her knees back together. His expression was all business, but for Rory it still felt like such a
dirty
move.

“So where were you going today?” he asked as he swabbed the wound.

“Work.”

“Where do you work?”

She curled her toes in her cheap canvas sneakers and flailed for an answer that wasn’t The White Tip. He looked up at her with a grin. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”

“Sorry?”

“I saw your uniform when you went for your key. You work at The White Tip, like your sister.” He refolded the washcloth into a clean square, then wiped up the dried river of blood that ran from her knee to her ankle. “Why didn’t you want me to know?”

“I didn’t want to get fired,” she said, but it wasn’t true. She couldn’t say for sure why she didn’t want him to know. As soon as she’d realized who he was she’d wanted to scurry away and not be a bartender working for squat.

“I hit you. If anyone is going to get fired, it’s going to be me.”

“Fired from what?”

She hadn’t meant to sound so derisive, but seriously? From surfing? From sunning himself? From fucking?

“I’m shadowing my father this summer. I … well, I had a work term last year and screwed around too much. I can’t graduate until I put in the hours somewhere and get a decent evaluation, so rather than wait until next semester to start from scratch, I’m getting a crash course from my father.”

“I’d heard you already graduated.”

“That’s what my folks are telling people when they ask. It sounds better than, ‘Noah? Yeah, he’s a screw up barely scraping by with a C-average, and he called in sick for sixty percent of his work term.’”

“Why didn’t you just work for your dad in the first place?”

“I did, at the ski lodge in Ontario. He gave me a shitty evaluation and told me he wouldn’t hire me to clean toilets.”

He rose up and returned to the bathroom. She listened to the water running and worried her stomach into a gurgling mess wondering if this role at The White Tip would put him as her supervisor at any point. Hopefully he’d be relegated to the office and stay the hell out of the lounge.

“And what’s your story?” he asked when he returned, and gave her leg another rubdown.

“I work in the lounge.” There was no point in hiding it now that he knew she had been on her way there. “This is my last summer. I’m going to the mainland to go to school.”

“Undergrad?”

“Community college.”

“Doing what?”

“Human resources.” It sounded so small and insignificant coming out of her mouth now compared to his expensive albeit spectacularly wasted education in business.

“Do you really want to work with a bunch of people complaining about their benefits?”

“I like people, and there are no jobs here. I don’t want to stay and serve drinks all summer, then go work in the grocery store all winter.”

“I don’t like people,” he admitted, and set the wet rag aside. “I like them if they do what I say, but otherwise I don’t like them.”

“And you’re going into the family business? All hotels and resorts?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. After four years of university, I still don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

He unzipped the first aid kit and produced an alcohol swab.

Rory scuttled back. “I don’t need that.”

“The cut was filthy. You don’t want to get infected.”

“It’s fine,” she said, and when he grabbed her ankle she pulled it back. “I don’t like pain.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

He regained his hold on her and tore into the package with his teeth. Rory braced herself as he propped his wrist above the cut. She could feel the sting even before he made contact.

“Motherfucker! Ow! Ooowww! Cocksucker!”

Noah burst out laughing. “You’ve got one hell of a mouth on you.”

“I told you I don’t like pain!”

“Stop being a little bitch and take it like a woman.”

She gripped the edge of the sofa and bucked up as he cleaned the wound.

God, was there any worse pain than this? Water torture and cigarette burns had nothing on the sizzling pain of alcohol meeting on wounded flesh.

“It’s really not that bad,” he said, and she almost kicked him.

“No, you’re wrong. It hurts.”

“I mean the cut. You were bleeding like hell, but now that it’s stopped and I can see the cut, it’s not too bad. Your knee is pretty puffy, though.”

“Can you please hurry up?”

He laughed again, and then bowed his head and began to blow on the cut.

The agony disappeared instantly. Without its bite to focus on, Rory was keenly aware of his proximity. His hand formed a fist midway up her thigh. The other gripped her calf. Her thoughts, scattered by the pain, came together in her mind as a buzzing mess.

The cottage was so quiet, the only sound the slight whistle as he soothed her ache. He wore a concentrated frown, but when he looked up at her his expression changed.

A smile teased the corners of his puckered mouth. His grip on her softened. He splayed his fingers across her calf and held onto her gaze while he pressed his lips to the wound.

It wasn’t a simple peck. It was a kiss that lingered soft against her skin. The pleasure it gave paralyzed her. She was trapped in her own body as her heart thumped into her throat and her face filled with heat, and nowhere else was she more throbbing than between her legs.

Noah lifted his head and grinned. “I always wanted to kiss and make it better.”

“Uh huh.”

As he went for a bandage, she wondered if he was oblivious to what he had just done to her or if he was being gentlemanly. She concluded that it was neither. He seemed to be quietly basking as he sorted through the bandages. After his bluntness in the car when he’d asked her if he’d ever fucked her, she suspected his chivalry didn’t extend to his dick.

Still, his actions were G-rated as he stripped the paper from the bandage and pressed it to her knee, then looked up at her. “Ice?”

She shook her head. “Not now. I’m
really
late. Francie is going to hand me my ass.”

“You shouldn’t go to work.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

He frowned. “I can make you take the night off.”

“No, you can’t. I don’t take orders from an intern.”

“Maybe not, but I can call my father.”

She tilted her head and raised her brows. “Seriously? That’s the hand you’re playing? You’ll call Daddy to get me to do what you want?”

“Are you stunned or something?
You were hit by a car
.”

“You just bumped me. I’ve had worse slips on wet pavement.”

Seconds ticked by as they glared at one another. Finally, he grunted in defeat. “Fine, but after I drop you off I’m having a word with Francie about getting you some help at the bar.”

“And split my tips? No way.”

As he stuffed the contents back into the kit, she tried bending her knee. It was like trying to squeeze an invisible volleyball.

Then his words hit her. “Wait, what? Who said anything about driving me to work?”

He ventured back into the bathroom. “You said you were late.”

“That wasn’t my way of asking you for a drive.”

“What’s the problem?” he called.

She took a second before answering him. Again, she considered lying, but there was something in his tone that suggested he already knew why she objected.

“Because people might think I did fuck you.”

His laughter filled the cottage. “Yeah, that would be pretty terrible
.”

“You have a reputation, and so do the girls you’re seen with.”

He emerged wiping his hands. His amused expression was infuriating. “What repressed time warp did I drive into? Is dancing illegal, too?”

“It’s a small town. We smile to the tourists and talk shit about everyone else behind their back.”

“Let me tell you something. All of those girls--no,
women--
I’ve hooked up with weren’t exactly flaunting their purity rings.”

He draped the towel over a kitchen table and folded his arms over his chest. She tried not to notice how gorgeous his forearms were. Tried, and failed, and bit down to keep from whimpering a little with wanting to touch him.