Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (20 page)

Michael’s eyes widened, his pupils
dilated, and his mouth slid open.

“
Want to dance?” Raphael
said, clearly flirting.

I stood there and stared in awe. I had
no idea he was gay… or was he bi-sexual?

For crying out loud, I’d had a sex
dream… no, two sex dreams, about a gay guy!

Michael closed his mouth with a click
and gulped. But then he stepped back and gave Raphael a weary
smile.

“
You’re straight. I can
practically smell it on you.”

Raphael grinned and ran a hand through
his short Mohawk, tousling it.

“
You’re right. But just for
one song… you really don’t want to dance with me?”

I had to give him credit… the man was
good.

“
Okay…” Michael said. “One
dance.”

Raphael reached out and took
his hand, and pulled him behind him across the room and onto the
dance floor. A remix of Whitney Houston’s
I
Wanna Dance with Somebody
pumped and
thumped as they started to dance.

I just shook my head, not able to quite
wrap my head around how my night was going.

But just look at Raphael dance. I
smiled, thinking about two men named after archangels getting their
dance on in a Texas ballroom.

I looked over to the bar, and Greta and
Janine looked back at me, Greta holding up her flute of
champagne.

I hoped they didn’t think I’d gotten
him to say yes. All I’d done so far was get him to talk to me,
taken my services off the table—which wasn’t at all smart of me—and
then watched as my date stole him off to the dance
floor.

I glanced over to the dance floor and
saw Michael had his damn cell phone out again and was
texting.

Really! He was that close to Raphael
and could think of something other than sex?

Okay, I so didn’t just think that. I
was impartial. I was not going to start drooling over my arrogant,
irritating, sexy-as-hell neighbor.

Shiiit… I was already flashing back to
him shirtless in my side yard, that damn chainsaw in his hands—boy,
that had really made his muscular arms stand out.

I practically jumped when I saw that
Michael and Raphael were heading off the dance floor and right back
to me.

I put up my hands pleadingly. “Really,
boys… I don’t dance.”

Michael stopped right in front of me.
“I have to confess something.”

Oh god, he used to be a woman? He’s my
long lost brother? What?

“
I didn’t come here to let
Janine talk me into signing with her.”

I looked at him, puzzled.

“
I came to meet
you.”

Okay, he went all creepy on me again.
“But you said you want to keep your cover artist.” Where the hell
was he going with this?

He looked at his cell phone again and
thumbed in a text again.

That damn phone was going to make me
have a stroke!

He looked up at me and grimace. “I came
so Poe could come and see you.”

“
Huh?” Poe wanted to meet
me?

No… he’d said Poe wanted
to
see
me.

“
What do you mean see me? Do
I already know him?”

“
I sure hope you do,” a
chillingly familiar male voice said from behind Michael and
Raphael.

The two men parted and a tall, blond
man with haunting hazel eyes and a crooked smile looked back at
me.

The room brightened as if on a dimmer
switch, everything bathed in a retina burning glare. I felt my
insides tremble, and my heart started beating like it wanted to pop
right out of my chest.

The room dimmed back to normal, but I
was still shaking like a leaf.

And my scar was burning. I had my hand
clutched protectively around my wrist.

“
Hi Hope.” His smile was as
devastating and charming as ever. But all I could think was how
could I get away? I could just start running. But that would raise
too many eyebrows.

My scar burned even hotter, and I
wanted to start scratching at it to get it to stop.

I swallowed and licked my suddenly
parched lips. “Derrick… w-what are you doing here?”

He stepped forward and I stepped back,
banging against the buffet table hard enough to make some of the
plates and glasses clink.

Derrick stopped and held up his hands,
as if he were trying to get a wild animal to come to
him.

Suddenly a broad, tall wall of designer
suit stood between us. I shuddered and fell forward against the man
wearing said suit.

“
I don’t think Hope wants to
talk to you anymore,” Raphael practically growled.

“
Man, I don’t have any beef
with you, so why don’t you—”

I felt the muscles in Raphael’s back
tighten as Derrick’s voice cut out.

“
I said she doesn’t want to
talk to you,” Raphael repeated. “Do I really have to explain it to
you?”

I heard the scuffing of dress shoes on
the floor, and then Raphael turned and looked down at me, his face
grim and deadly looking. “You ready to go home?”

I nodded and he threw his arm over my
shoulder, guiding me through the ballroom like a bodyguard
extricating his charge from a melee.

I heard Janine call out my name, but I
wouldn’t look back to save my own life. I wanted out of that room
more than anything. I needed out of there. I wanted to go home and
lock the doors and windows, and hole up in my bedroom with a
baseball bat and a meat cleaver.

Most of all, I just wanted to dig a
deep hole and crawl into it, and stay there, hidden for the next
decade or two.

Before I knew it we were outside and a
valet had Raphael’s car pulled up to the curb. Raphael deposited me
in the passenger seat and then jogged over and slid behind the
wheel. Seconds later we were gliding through the streets of
Houston, and then roaring down the interstate back to San
Antonio.

Thankfully, he didn’t ask what had just
happened, or who that man had been. He just kept driving away from
where we’d been, every once in a while looking over to take a look
at me.

I was trying to keep the memories at
bay. If I let one surface I’d fall apart, or I’d die… maybe I’d
just start screaming.

“
That was my boyfriend… my
ex-boyfriend.” The words tasted like blood on my tongue. “When I
was going to college in California.”

Raphael didn’t say anything; he just
nodded.

I told him about Derrick. How we’d
started off as friends at school, and then became more, moving in
together—he’d been my first.

Everything was great… until he started
coming home in the middle of the night, high on drugs.

“
He said he could handle it,
and I was too young to know better. I was going to leave him, but
before I could…” Oh god, that night was so dark, so sticky with my
fear and blood. That damned song by The Black Keys,
Everlasting Light
, playing
so loud I hadn’t heard him.

“
One night, when I came home
after working at the diner where I waited tables, he dragged me
into the bedroom and held me down. He was crazy… his eyes were.” I
shook my head and gulped down some air. “He kept on screaming that
I was cheating on him, and I wasn’t going to get away with
it.”

He’d pulled out a chisel I used to open
paint cans and to contour my brush strokes. It was clean and
shining as he held it up to my face. I couldn’t breathe, his weight
constricting my chest as he laid on me. He let go of my one wrist,
using his free hand to hold my right hand pinned to the
floor.

I struggled, tried to push his face
away…

And then I felt the steel of the
scraper dig into my wrist. It hurt. And it went in deeper and
deeper.

I remember hearing my screams echoing
in my ears. Like they were the screams of someone else…

He was going to kill me…

“
How did you get
away?”

I turned and looked at Raphael. The car
was stopped and we were in the parking lot of an Olive Garden. When
had we stopped?

How much had I really told
him?

All of it; I’d told him all of
it.

How had I gotten away?

“
I head butted
him.”

Raphael stared, stone faced, but a lazy
smile started to pull at the side of his mouth. He started to
laugh: slow, strangled laughter.

I smiled and felt tears stream down my
face, hot and dripping.

“
I have a really hard head,”
I said.

“
That I already know.” He
leaned back, holding his six pack abs as he snorted.

“
I once head butted my
brother so hard he landed in the ER and needed stitches.” I laughed
again. It felt good to laugh.

“
So you head butted him.
What did you do next?”

I shrugged. “That knocked him out, so I
had to push him off me, and then I…” I still had my hand clutched
around my wrist.

“
You pulled the chisel
out?”

“
I didn’t know
better.”

“
You could have bled to
death.”

And if I’d gone to the hospital maybe I
wouldn’t have had the nerve damage I ended up with. I’ve never been
able to paint since. The closest thing to art I had now was my
photography.

“
Fucking
bastard…”

I looked over at Raphael, his eyes were
like coal and his face looked carved out of stone.

“
It was a long time ago,” I
said dismissively. “I don’t know why I reacted like
that.”

He looked at me incredulously. “Because
he hurt you, Hope. You reacted that way because he freaking abused
you and you were all alone and had to defend yourself against him.
That’s why you started shaking.”

I had started shaking, hadn’t
I?

I looked at the neon lights of the
Olive Garden, and the happy families and couples going in and
coming out of it.

“
Can we just go
home?”

His stone hard features softened, and
he nodded. “Of course.”

Chapter 18

My hands still shook by the time we
made it back home, and Raphael gently took the keys from my grasp
and opened the door for us. He went in first, turning on the lights
and walking through the house.

I know it was stupid, but having him
here really did make me feel better.

I followed him into the kitchen and
watched as he filled my coffee pot and started a fresh
pot.

“
You hungry?”

“
No, not really.” It was
hard just to take a deep breath. I didn’t want to think about
eating food.

“
You haven’t eaten in five
hours,” he said. “I know you have some frozen waffles in here
somewhere.” He pulled my freezer section open and rifled through
the half eaten tubs of ice cream, and boxes of Toaster
Strudel.

“
In the back behind the
orange crème pops,” I said, sitting down on one of the stools
around my floating island.

Five minutes later I had coffee and
perfectly toasted Eggo waffles, smothered in melted butter and real
maple syrup.

Raphael ate with me. I couldn’t imagine
he could eat like this and keep his rock hard physique.

Maybe he exercised?

He rinsed the dishes and stacked them
in the dishwasher, and then turned it on.

I went up stairs and changed
into a pair of pajamas—these were a dark blue, and had Eeyore
from
Winnie the Pooh
on them. I didn’t think Hello Kitty would understand how I
felt, but the pessimistic donkey would. I just knew he
would.

When I came downstairs again Raphael
had his suit jacket off, hanging from the bottom banister of the
stairs. He was sprawled on my couch, the sleeves of his shirt
rolled up, his long, muscular arms stretched out over the back of
the couch.

The TV had a rerun of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
flickering on it. It was the episode where Faith rolls into
town, being chased by an ancient, gargantuan vampire that wanted to
rip her to shreds.

“
How did you know I love
Buffy?” I slid onto the couch and tried not to lean into him, but
he was there, and I was still shaking… and it was my
couch!

“
I didn’t. I’m just a big
Joss Whedon fan.”

I snorted. “Got a big boy crush,
huh?”

He laughed silently, grimacing. “You’ve
got this fantasy of me being gay, don’t you?”

“
Well,” I finally gave in
and leaned into him. He was warm and strong, and strangely soft in
all the right places. I didn’t know muscle could be soft. “You did
do a pretty good impression of one at the party.”

“
I was taking one for the
team.” His arm wrapped around me and he pulled me closer. His scent
enfolded me, and I sighed as I rested my head on his chest. His
heart beat slow and steady.