Lissa- Sugar and Spice 1.6 - Final (11 page)

Then Nick swayed.

No,
he thought
, Christ, no
…

The crutch toppled and fell to the floor.

And Nick went down with it. Hard. Fast. Gracelessly, like a once-mighty oak now splintered by lightning.

Pain screamed like a banshee down the length of his leg. He had never felt anything like it, not since the day the IED had gone off under the Humvee.

Bile rose in his throat; for one terrible moment, his world went black and he started to go under, but Lissa’s shrill cry dragged him up and up and up, until he surfaced.

“Nick!”

He had landed on his side. Now, panting, gasping for air, he rolled onto his back. Lissa was on the floor beside him. She reached for him and he jerked away.

“I’m OK.”

The words sounded like the worst possible lie, even to him. To her, too, because she shot to her feet.

“Where are you going?”

“For help. I’ll get somebody—”

He grabbed her hand. “No.”

“But your leg—”

”I’m fine.”

“Nick. Please. I’ll go the bunkhouse. Ace will—”

He clamped his fingers hard around wrist.

“Find my crutch.”

“Nick. Let me help you—”

“Find the fucking crutch,” he snarled.

He raised his eyes to hers. She looked terrified. Why wouldn’t she? One second, he’d been a man making love to her; the next, he’d become a useless hulk all but sobbing at her feet.

His belly knotted with self-disgust. All he wanted was to get away from the look in her eyes that said, more than words ever could, that he was no longer a man.

“Nick,” she said helplessly, and he slammed his fist against the floor.

“The crutch, goddammit! Give it to me.”

She stared at him. Then she looked away, grabbed the crutch and held it out toward him.

He wound his fingers around the padded top.

His heart was racing like a frightened rabbit’s; his leg, from thigh to ankle, felt as if it had been run through with a hot spear. It took all the strength he had to jam the crutch against the floor and slowly, slowly work his way to his feet.

His vision grayed. The room swam. He could feel Lissa staring at him. Hell, why wouldn’t she stare?

He was nothing but a useless, pathetic piece of shit.

How could he have forgotten that, even for a minute?

At last, after what seemed an eternity, he was fully upright. He waited, head down, dragging air into his lungs. When he took his first step toward the door, the pain screamed through him again.

He could almost feel his bones turning hollow.

Lissa’s hand fell on his arm.

“Nick. Sit down for a minute.”

He shook her off and kept going, putting one foot after the other. Dragging one foot after the other, if accuracy mattered.

“Nick. Dammit, are you crazy? Please—”

He blocked out her voice. Somehow, he reached the door. Grasped the knob. The thing wouldn’t turn.

The door was like a bad joke.

Like his life.

Nick rattled the knob again, called it something nobody in his right mind would call a doorknob, and slammed it with the heel of his hand.

Lissa said his name again. Her voice shook. Wasn’t it enough that she had seen him like this? Couldn’t she have the decency to leave him alone?

She touched him again and, just as she did, the knob turned and the door swung open, but not fast enough to stop her from moving past him and blocking his departure.

The sight of her broke his heart, and wasn’t that amazing, that he still had a heart?

She was still half-naked, still beautiful and he wondered what in hell had made him think he deserved her. Because he didn’t. Never mind the ugliness of his leg.

He didn’t deserve the kindness, the goodness he saw shining in her eyes.

He wanted to tell her all of that, but then he’d have to tell her the rest, and she sure as hell didn’t need to hear it.

The best thing he could for her now was to get out of her life.

He drew a long, ragged breath.

“You want to help?”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Then you’ll forget this ever happened. Any of it. All of it. This place. Tonight. The whole thing never happened.”

Incredulity glittered in her eyes.

“That’s it?”

“Hank called a couple of hours ago. As long as the weather stays clear, he’ll be back at dawn. He’ll fly you out then. Now do us both a favor and step aside.”

She put her hands on her hips. There she stood, wearing nothing but those tiny lace panties and a look that said he was out of his mind, and she still looked tough and determined and so lovely that she made him want things he no longer had a right to want.

“Lissa. Get out of my way.”

“Dammit,” she said, “what the hell is with you? You think you can—you think you can just—that you can just—”

“Yes. Exactly. I
can
‘just.’ I’m Nick Gentry. I can ‘just’ whatever I like.”

Her eyes were filled with questions. And with pity. What else could that be but pity? It made him feel sick. He didn’t need her questions, and he sure as hell didn’t need her pity.

“You don’t mean that.”

Rage, despair, emotions he’d kept at bay for months swamped him. He didn’t need to feel any of them. They were her fault, goddammit, her fault for intruding on his carefully constructed life.

“I always say what I mean, Duchess. Too bad you didn’t get that the first time, when I told you that the only payment I wanted for your room and board was a meal.”

She stared at him, the compassion in her eyes dimming.

Good, he thought, not only good but perfect.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His mouth twisted.

“Much as I appreciate the thought, a pity-fuck wasn’t necessary.”

Her face went white.

He wanted to cut out his tongue. Reach for her. Draw her into his arms. Tell her that he had not meant what he’d just said, that hurting her had been, in some ugly way, his only means of fully punishing himself for dragging her into the mess that was his life, but he stood his ground, kept his face expressionless.

The air between them hummed with tension.

He saw her hand jerk, then fist.

She wanted to hit him, but she wouldn’t. She’d already done that once, and she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d slug a cripple a second time.

“You’re right,” she said. “That’s precisely what it would have been. A pity-fuck, something I could write off on my 1040 as a charitable contribution.”

Any other time, he’d probably have laughed. The lady had some acting talent of her own.

But this wasn’t a time for laughter. Nick had been around Hollywood long enough to know a great exit line when he heard it, even if the line wasn’t his.

She stepped aside.

He hobbled past her.

The door slammed behind him, hard enough to make the house shudder.

He made his way down the hall to his own room, slammed his own door with equal vigor, dumped his crutch against a chair and fell heavily into bed, fully-dressed and wide-awake. There was a half-full bottle of bourbon on the table next to the bed and he reached for it, unscrewed the cap, brought the bottle to his lips and took a long drink.

His poison of choice.

“Be careful with the pain pills,” the docs had advised when he left the hospital. “You ache, you’re depressed, the Vicodin can become a problem.”

“The hell I’m depressed,” he’d said, and by then, the docs had given up arguing.

The pills hadn’t become a problem. He’d used them the first couple of months, but only when the pain had been unbearable.

Besides, he’d discovered that booze was better.

Drugs sailed him into a never-never land where the world was dreamlike and peaceful.

Booze just took him under, where the world was non-existent.

Much better.

Still, it didn’t work that well tonight. He didn’t drop into exhausted sleep until the old clock downstairs had tolled four, and that sleep didn’t last very long.

He was awakened not by the roar of the returning plane but by the roar of the returning storm, which had doubled back and finally, inexorably, turned itself into a blizzard.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
few minutes
after dawn, Lissa stood by the bedroom window, her expression glum as she stared out at the storm that held her prisoner.

She knew it was ridiculous to think of it that way, but she couldn’t help it.

The storm was like a great beast, roaring through the trees and around the house.

The snow was coming down like a thick white curtain adding inches to what had fallen yesterday, and according to the weather service, there was more to come. The wind was as fierce as any she’d ever experienced.

Who knew when she’d finally get away from this horrible place and this horrible man?

You couldn’t go anywhere in a blizzard.

Outside, the trees bent and swayed under the power of the wind. Nothing else moved against the stark white landscape except for a big black shape that had plowed through the snow a few minutes ago.

Brutus.

That, at least, had made her smile.

Brutus clearly loved the snow.

She’d watched as he rolled in the stuff, bit at it, flung it through the air. Then he’d stopped, cocked his head and looked back toward the house. Someone had to be calling him.

Gentry, probably.

At least he hadn’t let the dog out alone.

It was painfully easy to get lost in a storm like this one.

Yes, but Gentry wouldn’t let that happen to his dog. He cared for the Newf. Even more telling, the Newf cared for him. There was a time Lissa had believed that if a dog loved somebody, that somebody couldn’t be all bad.

“To hell with that theory,” she muttered as she turned away from the window, plopped down on the edge of the bed and tied her sneakers.

Gentry was a mean-tempered, nasty piece of work. What had happened last night proved it. He’d been making love to her and he’d fallen. She’d worried that he’d hurt himself, but his reaction—all that anger, how he’d refused her concern as well as her help, his attitude…

Ugly.

And then that vicious crack about why she’d been on the verge of having sex with him—and that was what it would have been, sex, nothing as prettified as making love, assuming
prettified
was a word and if it wasn’t, it sure as blazes should be.

That horrid remark.

What sort of woman did he think she was?

It didn’t matter.

The entire incident had been one huge, terrible mistake. Nick Gentry was not the kind of man she’d ever sleep with; hadn’t she had enough of self-important Hollywood pretty boys?

There it was again. That word, pretty. A word, a concept to be avoided.

If only she could avoid Gentry.

It was going to be embarrassing to see the man. To be hit with the image of herself, naked in front of him, naked and kicked to the side of the road like—like trash.

Dammit.

“Get hold of yourself, Melissa,” she said.

Or at least keep your metaphors straight. She had not been kicked to the side of the road, not even metaphorically. She had been treated to an ugly display of male ego. The man had a banged-up leg, it had given way and instead of dealing with it, he’d snarled and spat and headed for his man cave.

It was good that things had not gone any further. The only thing worse than ending the night the way they had would have been actually ending it in bed.

Except—except she couldn’t get the memories out of her head.

The way he’d held her.

The heat of his hands, cupping her breasts.

The taste of his mouth. Of his skin.

The hardness of him against her, all that taut male power…

Somebody pounded on the bedroom door. Lissa jumped and shot to her feet.

The door was locked. Damn right it was locked, but she didn’t have much confidence in either the door or the lock or—

“Wilde!”

It was Gentry. Well, who else would it be? There was nobody in the house except for the two of them and Brutus. Besides, none of the ranch hands would have banged on the door and yelled her name like that.

“Wilde. You awake?”

She drew a deep breath. Then she marched across the room and undid the lock. She considered only cracking the door, abandoned the thought and swung it wide open.

No way was she going to let him think she felt intimidated.

“Awake? After that bellow, everybody between here and Yellowstone is awake. What do you want, Gentry?”

“There won’t be a plane today.”

“My oh my,” she said sweetly. “And here I was just about to go downstairs to wait for it.” She slapped her hands on her hips. “I don’t how to break it to you, but I figured that out all by myself.”

“Yeah, well, you never can tell.”

“No. You never can. I mean, why wouldn’t I stand up to my ass in snow, waiting for Hank’s plane to touch down?”

Gentry flashed a big, phony smile.

“Maybe because they don’t get blizzards in L.A. And as long as we’re exchanging info, that isn’t Hank’s plane, it’s mine.”

“If Hank works for you, he has my sincere condolences. And as long as we’re, as you put it, exchanging info, here’s some for you. I didn’t grow up in L.A. I grew up in Texas. North Texas. You want to talk about blizzards? Try spending a winter there sometime.”

“Try Brooklyn,” he said, and he turned his back and made his way down the hall.

“Despicable SOB,” she muttered as she slammed the door.

But at least he was on his feet. After that fall last night—not that she cared. For all it mattered to her, Mr. Despicable could spend the next few days in the emergency room, except that he’d never get there in weather like this.

And she’d never get out of here.

No plane.

How long before there’d be one? It depended on the weather, meaning there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Meanwhile, she was stuck here with a man who had all the charm of a mongoose and when she finally headed home, it would be to no job, not even any job prospects.

Not good. Not good at all.

But she wasn’t going to let herself think about that. Or about last night. She was going to keep busy. Keep occupied.

The question was how.

Fortunately, the answer was simple.

She’d cook.

Not for Gentry. Let him scrounge for himself. She’d cook for the six ranch hands, the cowboys who had been so effusive in praise of her Spam casserole last night. They were downstairs now; she’d heard the back door open and close several times, heard the murmur of male voices.

As for what she’d cook…

She had no idea. Last night’s search through the kitchen hadn’t turned up much, but she’d find something and, by God, she would cook it. What was the name of that amazing food writer who’d written a book about basically turning nothing into a meal?

If M.F.K. Fisher could do it, so could she.

Lissa pulled on an extra sweater, yanked her hair into a ponytail, and headed downstairs.

* * *

She found the men milling uncertainly in the dining room, mugs of steaming coffee in their work-roughened hands.

They turned toward her as she walked briskly into the room, their weathered faces sporting immediate grins.

“Mornin’, Ms.Wilde,” six voices chorused.

“Good morning. I see you all managed to get here from the bunkhouse.”

Ace nodded. “Yes ma’am. We got a roped path we follow. Amazin’ how a body can get lost tryin’ to walk twenty feet in a whiteout like this without somethin’ to guide him.”

Lissa nodded. That was a basic heavy-snow, blowing-wind survival skill. You grew up on a ranch or a farm in snow country, you heard all the warnings by the time you were a toddler.

“That coffee smells wonderful.”

Gus blushed. “I jes’ made it,” he said, nodding his head at the huge pot on the sideboard. “I’d be honored to pour you a cup.”

“Not just now, thank you. I want to check out the pantry. I’m hoping I missed something that I can turn into breakfast.”

“Maybe there’s still some flour,” one of the men said hopefully, “and lard and sugar.”

“Hens probably laid us some eggs,” another man said.

Lissa nodded. She could turn that into pancakes of one kind or another.

“Good thinkin’,” Ace said. “Let’s go check the henhouse.”

Both men pulled on heavy jackets and gloves and headed for the back door. Lissa headed for the kitchen. No Gentry underfoot, thank heaven. The last thing she needed was to see him again—and what was that bit about Brooklyn? What would a man like him know about—

She came to a dead stop.

He was there, right in the middle of the kitchen, leaning back against the worktable, cradling a mug of coffee in his hands.

“What are you doing here?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I live here, or hadn’t you noticed?”

She ignored the fast answer, went to the pantry and retrieved the flour, sugar and lard.

“Planning on making yourself some breakfast?”

“The men are hungry.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I know. I’m gonna have to get into town for supplies.”

“Can you? I mean, the snow…”

“Worried about me, Duchess? I’m touched.”

Lissa swung toward him, eyes narrowing when she saw the smug grin on his face.

Despicable was too kind a word for him.

What made it worse was that he didn’t look despicable. Dressed in a dark blue sweater, faded jeans and those omnipresent well-worn boots, he looked—he looked—

Dammit.

He looked gorgeous, like the movie star he was, especially with that early-morning stubble on his jaw. She’d never thought stubble sexy, but it turned out that it was.

Could a mongoose be sexy?

No, she thought coldly, it could not.

“You’re in my way,” she snapped.

He didn’t move.

“I said—”

“Want some coffee?”

“If I do, I’ll get it the next time I go into the dining room.”

“There’s better coffee right here.”

She looked at him, followed his gaze. A Chemex half filled with dark chocolate-brown coffee was on the counter near him.

“It’s my one kitchen skill. The men think it’s sissified, but I have this strange thing about preferring coffee that doesn’t taste like old socks.”

She almost laughed. That was what she’d thought last night after she’d tasted Gus’s coffee. It even smelled that way—her comment a few minutes ago about its smelling wonderful had been more a courtesy than reality.

She considered turning down his offer, but what was that old saw about cutting off your nose to spite your face? Coffee was one of the basic food groups.

There was a clean mug next to the glass pot.

“Yours,” he said. “I figured you for a coffee-as-lifeblood woman.”

What he’d said was so close to what she’d been thinking that she smiled. He smiled, too, and she turned her smile into a frown as she filled the mug.

“You’re very sure of yourself, Gentry. Doesn’t it ever occur to you that you might be wrong?”

“Rarely.”

She turned and glanced at him. He was smiling again. It was a devastatingly wicked smile, but she’d be damned if she’d respond to it.

“And when it does occur to me,” he said quietly, “I’ve even been known to admit it.”

“Really.”

Her tone was flat and cool, but he knew he had her attention.

Do it, Gentry. Just say that you’re sorry. You don’t have to go into detail. You don’t have to grovel. You just have to say two words—I’m sorry— and then you can excuse yourself, go hide in your office, put last night in a deep, dark closet where it belongs.

“I made an ass of myself last night.” It wasn’t what he’d intended to say, but it was accurate. “I know I must have looked like an idiot, but—”

“Excuse me?”

“Falling down the way I did. Like a clumsy—”

She slapped the mug on the counter.

“Is this an apology?”

“Well, yeah. I mean—”

“An apology about you looking foolish.”

“Yes.” He hesitated. She didn’t seem pleased. But he’d apologized. What more did she want?

“I fell, and I know—”

“That’s why you’re apologizing? For falling?”

His eyes narrowed. “Didn’t I just say that?”

“And the rest of it?”

“The rest of what?”

Lissa stared at him. Was he serious?

“Oh, I don’t know. The way you bit my head off for being foolish enough to offer to help you.”

His jaw tightened. “I didn’t need help. I got up on my own just fine.”

“And what you said to me. I suppose that was just fine, too.”

“What I said—”

“About the reason you—you fell. About why you were in my room in the first place.”