Return of the Bad Girl (7 page)

Val stepped past her and looked around the empty rooms. “I can’t believe you don’t have any furniture.”

Caroline shrugged as she shut the door. “It made it easier to drop everything at a moment’s notice and move on.”

“Hmmm . . . so, who was that guy this morning?”

Well, that took a lot longer than expected.
If Caroline had walked into the kitchen in her skivvies and encountered a strange man, she would have asked then and there instead of running away to put clothes on.

“My new roommate. Remember how I showed up to get my keys and found out that some wires got crossed? Travis rented it to Gabe, the guy from this morning—”

“Wait, the douche with the crotch rocket is the same gorgeous man who was leaning against my sink, looking like sex on a fucking stick?”

Caroline rolled her eyes. “Yes, but—”

“Is that who’s in your shower?” Val asked.

Caroline had been so tuned in to her sister’s reaction that she hadn’t even heard the shower running. “Must be.”

“Well, I can’t wait to officially meet him. What changed, by the way? Yesterday you were ranting and raving, and now you’re sharing a bathroom. So, what’s he really like?”

Arrogant. Bossy. Hot.

“He’s just a guy. I haven’t even really talked to him, besides the initial argument about who this place belongs to and what our living situation is going to be like.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t run him out of here with an icy glare.”

“I tried. Seems I might be losing my touch.”

“There’s never been a man you couldn’t charm or chase off if you put your right mind to it,” Val said, chuckling.

Except for Daddy
. . .

That last fight with her father before she’d left, when she’d fought so hard to go to San Diego for a fresh start, had been a total surprise to her. She’d never thought her father would deny her the college of her choice.

“I’m not paying for you to go to a known party school two states away so you can squander my money and flunk out. Boise State is a perfectly acceptable school.”

It hadn’t been about the parties or the beach. She’d wanted to get away from her past and never come back. She couldn’t go to Boise State, not when Kyle was there. She couldn’t take the chance that she’d bump into him and have to deal with his knowing sneer. She tried everything, from begging to bartering, before finally delivering an ultimatum.

“If you don’t let me go, I’ll walk out that door and do it on my own. I will figure it out.”

She’d been bluffing, of course, hoping he’d change his mind to keep her in his life, but she’d overestimated her father’s fondness for her.

“This is my house, and you will follow the rules or you will get out. And there are no second chances, Caroline. If you leave, you’ll stay gone.”

So she’d gone. A scared seventeen-year-old whose bravado had backed her into a corner. She’d called Val to beg her for some money and a bag of clothes, just so she wouldn’t have to face their father again. Val had made her promise to call, but the calls home became fewer and farther between, partly because she had one of those pay-as-you-go phones for a while, and most of the time, she couldn’t pay.

The other reason was because every time she heard her sister’s voice or listened to her complaints, Caroline wanted to beg her father to take her back. Especially on the nights when she’d gone to bed hungry. But at the time, she’d been too stubborn to give up and admit that he might have been right, that she couldn’t make it on her own.

Like father, like daughter.

“I think the water turned off,” Val hissed, drawing Caroline out of the past and into an entirely new and dangerous train of thought.

Thinking about Gabe in the shower, water trailing down that brown skin, caused her nipples to tighten. Damn, she wished she would stop imagining what the jerk looked like without his clothes on.

Suddenly, the bathroom door opened and out stepped Gabe, a blue towel wrapped around his hips. Caroline’s heart stopped along with her breathing for half a second and then kicked back into high gear. His chest looked even better out of a T-shirt, and the tattoos intermingling along the muscles of his arms drew her gaze all the way up to those wide shoulders. Some of the designs were hard to make out, just swirls of color and black, but the one on his neck looked tribal. She scanned down over the top of his towel and a tiny, evil part of her wished it would fall open so she could see the rest of him.

“Sorry. Didn’t realize you were here.”

His deep voice jerked her eyes back up to meet his amused gaze. Damn it, she didn’t want to be flustered by him or his abs.

“Hey, I’m Caroline’s sister, Valerie. You might remember me as the screeching, half-naked lunatic from this morning,” Val said, her brown eyes twinkling. “You’re Gabe?”

Caroline heard the tone of her sister’s inquiry, as if she had told Val so much about him, and she gave Val a dark look.

Val ignored her and slid her gaze up and down. “You weren’t at all what I was expecting.”

Gabe grinned as he took the hand Val held out, and Caroline got a closer look at his tattoos. The one that drew her attention first was the barbed wire wrapped around his bicep, a cliché that still looked massively sexy on him.

Stop thinking about how sexy he is!

But the barbed wire continued down, wrapping around his whole arm like a rope until it stopped at his wrist, and she saw the red drop on the back of his wrist. As if the tattoo had pierced his skin. Within the loops of the tattoo were smaller colored images, but she didn’t have a chance to study them further before he pulled his arm back.

“Really? You weren’t expecting a man in a towel?” Gabe asked Val, glancing at Caroline with his eyebrow raised. “Then what were you expecting?”

“Definitely not you,” Val said.

“She is just messing with you,” Caroline snapped when Gabe’s gaze drifted back to Val. “I just said you were my new roommate.” She didn’t like the way his face softened as he checked out her beautiful, petite sister. Like he was wondering what she’d be like in bed.

Why do you care?

Because Val has no business flirting when she has a serious boyfriend.

Right.

Even the voice in her head was condescending. Awesome.

“It’s true; she did just say you were her roommate. I was the one who brought up your hotness,” Val said, smirking.

Could you plead justifiable homicide if you strangled her?

“Well, thanks,” Gabe said, that small, arrogant smile in place, the one he’d given Caroline the first time they’d met and was getting on her last nerve.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” Caroline said abruptly, and her cheeks warmed with a blush when the two of them turned to look at her, one amused, one exasperated.

“Thanks, Caroline, for making a friendly introduction awkward as hell,” Val snapped.

“First of all,
you
were flirting,” Caroline said, ignoring Val’s attempt to protest. “I’m just letting
him
know, in case he had any ideas.”

“I was just being polite,” he said.

Polite, my ass.

“Her boyfriend is also a former marine,” Caroline added, wishing her brain could override her mouth. The arrogant ass probably thought she was jealous or something.

Which she wasn’t. At all.

“Both of my sisters are off limits, regardless.”

Gabe ran his free hand over his strip of hair, as the other held onto the top of his towel. “Got it. You’ll have to introduce me to the other one so I’ll know who to stay away from.” Nodding at Val, he said, “It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise,” Val said as he turned and went into his bedroom.

When they were alone, Val laughed. “You are in so much trouble.”

“No, I’m not,” Caroline argued.

“Are you kidding me? He is H-A-W-T.”

“I’m going to tell Justin.”

“No, you won’t, and besides, I’m just making an observation. I love Justin, and I know he’s it for me.”

Caroline’s chest tightened. She was so happy that her sister had found love after everything their father had done to keep Val and Justin apart. Val deserved it.

Just then, she thought of something. “That reminds me, I was hoping I could stay at your house one more night. My bed comes tomorrow, and as uncomfortable as your couch is, it’s better than the floor. Unless you’re going to be with your man, in which case I am stealing your bed.”

Val looked sheepish. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I came over tonight.”

“Good, then can we get out of here? I want to avoid run-ins with my unwanted roommate as much as possible.”

“Sure you do.”

Caroline wasn’t amused.

Chapter Six

“If one person says it, it’s a rumor. If two people say it, it’s gospel.”

—Miss Know It All

“Y
OU’RE LIVING WITH
Caroline Willis
?”

Gabe’s beer stopped inches from his mouth when he caught the look on Katie Trepasso’s face. It was as if he’d just told her he’d decided to go on a homicidal rampage.

“Yeah. Something I should know?”

Katie’s big blue eyes swallowed up her face as she cleared her throat and got up from the patio table. “Nope. I’m just surprised. She just got back and everything. I figured she’d be staying with her sister.”

And before he could ask her anything else, she high-tailed it into the house. Giving Chase a questioning look, Gabe waited for an explanation.

“Don’t ask me. I’ve lived here over a year and never heard of her.”

Gabe let it go and looked out over the flat farmland behind Chase’s white house, searching for something to say. Things had been tense between the two of them since he’d arrived for dinner half an hour ago. He knew he had a lot to make up for, but he hated that it was so hard. So awkward.

The elephant in the room loomed over them both, but neither wanted to talk about it. Katie came back outside then, carrying a platter of chips and salsa and another beer for Chase. Setting down the platter, she handed him the bottle over his shoulder. “Here ya go.”

“Aw, thank you, beer wench,” Chase said, looking up at her with a wide grin.

She reached over his shoulder to slap his chest, and he grabbed her hand, pulling her forward. When her head was almost on his chest, Chase turned his head to kiss her.

Gabe looked away. He’d never been comfortable with public displays and such. Of course, the last woman he’d ever been with long enough to get like that had been Cherise, but that hadn’t lasted much longer than it had taken him to get back on his feet after being released. Cherise had been one of those women who liked to take care of people, to fix them. When she’d realized he didn’t want or need her help, she’d lost interest in him. It was nothing to break his heart over.

Not that he had been looking for the white picket fence, the sweet wife, or the handful of kids since he got out. Things that everyday Joes—and now, even Chase—had just weren’t in the cards for him after what he’d done.

He’d lost any chance he had at having a normal life the minute he’d driven his bike that night.

“So, Gabe, Chase said you want to open a custom motorcycle shop?”

“I said
bike
,” Chase said, pulling Katie down onto his lap, despite her yelp of protest.

“But you hate that word,” Katie argued.

“When you talk about
my
baby, yes, but we’re talking about his.”

Gabe laughed while Katie rolled her eyes.

“I was actually hoping your husband might want to stop in a few days a week and help out with some of the artwork. He designed the emblem on the first bike I built from scratch.”

“How old were you?” Katie asked, leaning across Chase to snag a chip.

Gabe didn’t miss the shadow that passed over Chase’s face. “Seventeen.”

Seventeen. They’d been seniors and best friends, getting into trouble and partying together.

Only . . . the last few months of high school had tested their tight bond. All Gabe had been able to think about was how Chase was getting out, but he was going to be stuck there, working for the local mechanic, with nothing but a small-town future ahead of him. Something he could only dream about now, but at the time, he’d envied Chase so much that his jealousy had started to consume him.

And then he’d caught Chase kissing his baby sister, and he’d lost it. How could Chase make the moves on Honey when he was just going to take off and leave her? Like he was leaving Gabe.

He’d been a fucking idiot.

The scene still played through his head like it was yesterday, even though sixteen years had passed.

“Come on, man, I’m sorry,” Chase had said, stepping back from Honey, his hands in the air. Gabe had been too drunk to care that Chase was his best friend; he’d just been kissing his sister. His sister, who was only a sophomore. She was smart, talented, and deserved more than a guy who was just going to take advantage and then leave her behind when he took off.

The bastard had to pay.

“Fuck your sorry,” Gabe had roared, charging Chase and knocking him to the ground.

Sitting on his chest, Gabe had thrown punch after punch until his sister had jumped on his back, screaming in his ear, “Stop, Gabe! I like him!”

He’d climbed off Chase and grabbed Honey’s arm, dragging her to his motorcycle. Chase had yelled at him, tried to stop him from driving, but he hadn’t listened.

It was no wonder Chase was reluctant to accept his apology, even now. The day after the accident, Gabe had woken up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed. Chase had been sitting in the corner.

“What happened? Where am I?”

Chase had stood up grimly. “You’re in the hospital. You wrecked your bike last night and broke your arm.”

Dread had pumped through him as he’d tried to remember, to shake the clouds from his brain. His bike, Honey flying through the air . . .

“Where’s Honey?”

Chase’s expression had darkened. “She was stable and talking when they brought her in, but then she started seizing. They missed a bleed on her scans, and her brain swelled. They took her back up to surgery and put in a shunt to drain it, but they aren’t sure if she’ll wake up. And if she does . . .”