Melting Into You (Due South Book 2) (29 page)

Showing his palms, West moved back two paces. “Okay-okay. Just looking out for my soon-to-be favo
rite sister-in-law.”

“And as your soon-to-be favorite sister-in-law and not your employee, I’d like to say—get the hell outta my kitchen and let me do my job.” She twisted her lip in a half smile and tossed her spoon into the sink. “Clean up on aisle five, Ben.”

Shaye turned away, stuffing a few wispy strands of escaped hair under her chef’s cap and blowing out a long breath. “Move your ass, Pipe. The salad won’t make itself.”

Danger averted. For now.

West darted around the counter to swoop on Piper.

Ben turned his back on the kissy-kissy noises and trudged into the storeroom to retrieve the mop. Things were changing too fast. Piper coming home. Finding out his dad used to be an alcoholic. Bill, who’d been a
second father to him, with kidney disease. Becoming an insta-dad and the owner of a yappy dog.

And now he’d lost his mind and gotten into some sort of
relationship
with a local woman.

What next? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse arriving on the morning ferry?

The only certain thing about change was sitting on your ass meant life passed you by. He didn’t mean to let Kezia slip by, so he’d pay her a visit after school let out.

***

“Think you can resist me,
puttana
?” Kezia wrestled with the slip nut under her bathroom sink. “Not a chance.”

Three sharp raps sounded on her back door. Kezia wriggled out from the vanity cupboard and rested on her heels
, glaring at the stubborn pipe.

“Don’t think I’ve finished with you,” she muttered, then louder, “Can you get that, Zoe? Mamma’s filthy.”

Footsteps thundered down the hallway, and Kezia turned a baleful eye on the plunger that had splattered her jeans and oldest tee shirt with stinky, goopy water. The problem with three long-haired females sharing a house was they shed like Persian cats and clogged up the drains. Her sink and shower stall couldn’t wait any longer.

She cocked her head at a male voice. Ben. He’d probably come to thank her for the cannelloni in his fridge, but hopefully, Zoe would take a message and he’d leave. The man failed to understand that the object of an Italian woman’s affection would never go hungry. Not while the woman remained breathing, anyway. But she’d limited herself to delivering a meal every few days, when really, she wanted to tie Ben to her kitchen table, shut him up with Tiramisu, and have her way with him.

Kezia fished a pair of pliers from her tool box and wriggled under the sink again. She applied them to the stubborn bitch of a nut, her butt sticking out at a weird angle since she needed both hands to work.

“What the hell?” Ben said.

Her heart whumped into her ribs, and she jerked, forehead cracking on the porcelain sink. She yelped, and the pliers clattered to the floor, vision flashing black before bright colors cartwheeled across her closed lids.

Gesù
, that hurt!

Two hands gripped either side of her hips and dragged her backward, her knees slithering over the bathroom tiles.

“Hey!” She slapped at his fingers and staggered to her feet, a palm clamped to her forehead.

Ben towered over her, crowding her against the van
ity unit. “Dammit, are you all right?”

She flapped a hand at him, and he weaved like a boxer, trying to glimpse her injuries. With an exaspe
rated huff, he grabbed her wrist and leaned in.

“Let me see.”

“It’s just a bump.”

He growled her name and ducked so they were face to face. “Zoe said you were unblocking the drain. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I can unblock a drain, Ben. I’ve done it many times.”

She’d become proficient in easy household maint
enance. Her brothers had helped in the first six months after Callum died, but life moved on. Brothers got busy, taps got leaky, and plumbers and handymen got expensive. Hence, the cute, sparkly toolbox at her feet.

Kezia’s one open eye slid from the scowl on his face to the strong cords of his throat. He smelled of sea spray and winter sunshine. Maybe it was the onset of concussion—but she wanted to whack him for startling her, then lick him.

“Mamma?” Zoe in the bathroom doorway, a cookie halfway to her mouth.

Oh, dear God—Zoe!
She tried to push Ben away, but her efforts were as pointless as throwing herself against a tank and expecting it to topple like a bicycle.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Zoe’s eyes filled.

“It’s all right—I hit my silly head on the sink and Ben”—she arrowed him her most stern, one-eyed teacher glare—“Ben’s…”

“Ben’s trying to help.” He jerked his chin at Zoe. “Tell her not to be such a baby, and let me see.”

“Go on, Mamma, let Ben help. You’re braver than you think.”

Felled by the mantra she’d once whispered over and over as she sat beside a hospital bed. She’d gnawed the inside of her cheek bloody so she wouldn’t cry at the poisons enter
ing her daughter’s little body.

Kezia lowered her hand.

Ben brushed the curls away from her brow. “Ouch.”

Zoe picked across the floor for a closer look. “You’ve got a big bump on your head.”

“Any arnica in the first aid kit?” Ben asked.

Kezia nodded, then winced.

“I’ll get it. It’s in the kitchen.” Zoe scurried from the bathroom.

As soon as Zoe left, Kezia shoved both hands against Ben’s chest. He didn’t budge. Not even a step.

Ben grabbed her waist and lifted her onto the vanity, positioning himself between her spread thighs.

“Stop it!” She swatted his arm. “Zoe will see—”

“If you stop fighting to get away, all Zoe will see is me looking after a friend while she’s hurt. What’s wrong with that?”

Man logic—
gah!
So frustrating when they were right.

“Nothing.” Only a
little bit of sulk in her tone.

A friend caring for you shouldn’t involve becoming more and more turned on—why the devil did he look so
good, smell so good, feel so damn good? She stopped wriggling, and he stepped backward. Enough that she could breathe without sucking down more sexy-man smell, anyway.

“So.
Wanna explain why you didn’t get help to unblock your drains?”

Folding her arms—partly to hide the wet patches on her tee shirt, partly to disguise her granite-hard ni
pples—Kezia sucked in her cheeks and inhaled. Her forehead throbbed in protest. “West and Ford are busy, and as I said before, I know how to unblock my own drains.”

“It never occurred to you to ask me, the guy you’re sleeping with?”

Actually, it had. Ben’s name popped into her head all the time—anytime she thought about anything. But she couldn’t make that call. Asking him to tackle some chores around her house—and boy, did she have some revolting jobs, like gutter-clearing, on her list—would signal they’d crossed a line from sexy-fun-times into a relationship. And if Ben scented in the wind that she’d fallen for him? That would be the end.
Finito
.

“The guy I’m sleeping with has enough work of his own—and keep your voice down.”

Zoe’s off-key singing drifted along the hallway, and a chair screeched as she dragged it to the pantry where they kept the first aid kit.

Ben raked a hand through his sandy hair, leaving it in snarls. “I’m not too busy to help you out,
Kez. You don’t need to ask West or anyone else to fix your plumbing—it’s bloody insulting.”

“Just because we’re s
leeping together doesn’t mean—”

“Doesn’t mean what?” He paced. As much as a big man trapped in a tiny bathroom could pace. “Doesn’t mean I can’t care if you get hurt? Doesn’t mean I can’t help you around the house? Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t accept all the amazing meals you leave in my fridge? Or is that only so Jade doesn’t starve?”

“No.” She licked her lips. Ben said he cared about her—and how pitiful that her heart rolled belly-up at such a little scrap of emotion.

“I thought as much. So if you’re telling me it’s sex between us and nothing else—no caring, no friendship, no nothing except bumping
uglies when the mood strikes…”

She flinched at his gravelly voice.

“Then I’ll walk out of this fucking house right now and not look back.”

Kezia stared at the black streaks of gunk on her jeans where she’d wiped her fingers. The idea of returning to virtual strangers coated ice on every vertebra. Maybe caring was a poor second to love, but however pathetic it made her—she’d take it.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I don’t know what this is—what we are. But it’s more than just sex, and I…” Her throat thickened, and she swallowed hard. “I don’t want you to walk away.”

“Then let me in,
Kez.” His voice softened. “It’s okay to ask me for help. It’s okay to lean on me a little.”

She offered him a trembling smile. He cared for her, but would he hold fast through the kind of storms she’d weathered? No. Lust and affection faded and grew bri
ttle with time. It wasn’t okay to lean on him. Because leaning on him, depending on him now her heart was involved? Fool-proof recipe for disaster.

“Found it!” Zoe’s footsteps clattered down the hal
lway, and she burst into the room with the arnica cream. “Here you go.” She handed the tube to Ben.

“I can do it,” Kezia said, then pressed her lips t
ogether as he unscrewed the cap.

He shot her a
you seriously wanna go there?
look.

Ben gently smeared the cool cream on her forehead. “Zoe, why don’t you put the kettle on and find one of those flowery tea bags your mother likes?”

“Okay.” Zoe’s grin turned sly. “But aren’t you going to kiss her bump better? The cream won’t work, otherwise.”

Heat prickled Kezia’s cheeks. “Zoe! Ben doesn’t have—”

“I don’t want to get into trouble for not taking proper care of Oban’s favorite teacher, right, Zoe?”

Zoe giggled, and before Kezia could object further, Ben kissed her brow—with the foresight to aim just b
eside the sore spot.

“Better?” he said.

She nodded, and her skin tingled—and not from the hot, aching lump on her forehead.

Zoe examined them with the same concentration she’d give bugs in their gard
en. “You missed the bump, Ben.”

“I don’t want to hurt your mamma, and the stuff on her head stinks.”

“Then you should kiss her somewhere else…” Zoe scuttled into the hallway, her dark eyes dancing. “I’ll put the kettle on for Mamma’s tea. Oh—and I’m watching a DVD in the family room
so I won’t hear anything
.”

Ben made a noise caught between a huff of amus
ement and choking distress as Zoe disappeared.
Splendido
. Now her daughter suspected. Maybe Zoe hadn’t cast them yet as Buttercup and Westley from her favorite movie,
The Princess Bride
, but it wouldn’t take her long to build impossible fairy-tales around the two of them. “True wuv” and all that nonsense.

A t
hroat cleared in a deep rumble.

Dammit—she’d been staring at the man’s chest for the last ten seconds. Kezia scrubbed damp palms down her
jeans. “She’s, ah, subtle.”

Ben cupped her jaw. “She likes the idea of the two of us together.” His thumbs traced gentle circles on her flushed cheeks. “I like the idea of the two of us toget
her.”

And he smothered any objections with a toe-curling kiss.

The jug’s steam-train whistle jarred her eyes open a few minutes later. She didn’t want to release her grip on Ben’s shoulders. The shock that she’d let him kiss her—and kissed him right back, with Zoe nearby—rendered her speechless.

What had she done? Fuelling Zoe’s happy-family fantasy by staying in the bathroom with Ben instead of marching into the family room and explaining that she and Ben were only friends?

Strong hands lifted her onto her feet. “I’ll finish up in here, you make your tea.”

Ben crouched and picked up her dropped pliers. The tool looked like a kid’s toy in his big palm. “No self-respecting handyman has pink tools, for Christ’s sake.”

He glanced up, brown-eyed gaze flashing hot. “Go on now.”

Kezia fled. If she stayed another moment, the tem
ptation to do him on the bathroom floor might be too hard to resist.

***

The text came in at a minute to nine—a strategic ploy on Piper’s behalf, as she knew Kezia wouldn’t have time to argue.

Girls’ lunch @ 12, table booked. No excuses. Be there or I’ll choose the bridesmaids colors
.

Served her right for having an ex-cop as a friend. An ex-cop who’d spot her nervous tension a mile away.