Nothing But Trouble (29 page)

The next slip of paper was a parts list
stapled to the list of parts received. The lists didn't match; in
fact they weren't even for the same job and had different dates.
Had she stapled these together? The handwriting was hers, and she
always kept her list of parts with the parts received stapled
together. But these two didn't make sense.

Quickly she realized the pile was all the
slip-ups she'd made. There had to be thirty to forty invoices and
work orders piled on the desk, and she hadn't made that many
mistakes had she? She'd always been very meticulous about her work,
and detail-oriented about everything. That's what the medication
was for. So she could keep up with everything.

No. There was nothing here to help her.
Coming into the shop had been a mistake. Not only did her visit not
solve anything, but she'd been forced to endure R.J.'s raunchy
rendezvous.

As she turned from the desk, Danielle caught
a glimpse of curly red hair through the office window. Her former
boss was pulling up his pants and smiling at the meddling doctor
bitch who'd ruined Danielle's life.

They'd screwed in the office several times
over the past two years, but he'd never looked at Danielle the way
he looked
her.
She was so disgusted that she couldn't even
bring herself to think the woman's name.

The woman who'd opened her big mouth and got
Dr. Gross in trouble.

Danielle's heart dropped to the bottom of her
stomach as R.J. caressed the other woman's cheek and pressed a soft
kiss to her mouth. Bile rose on her throat, and she fumbled in her
back pocket for the bottle of pills.

Obviously the one she'd taken this morning
hadn't been enough. Two more ought to do it. Just two more and she
could place her mind to more important things.

Things like making them pay. They'd done this
to her and, by God, she'd find a way to make them suffer for
ruining her life.

"You know, if
you
didn't have a career rebuilding cars, I'd say you could make it as
a chef," Rebecca stated.

The shirt she had on was one of his old ones
that she'd taken the liberty of digging out of his dresser. And
instead of dressing in her own clothes, she'd pulled his shirt on
and only fastened three of the buttons. The thing was huge on her
and hung off one shoulder and hit mid-thigh. Every time she moved,
the shirt slid father down her arm and came dangerously close to
exposing her left breast. The same breast he'd feasted on for the
past two hours. Also the same one she'd held his head to while he'd
ravished it with his tongue.

Rebecca was an incredibly responsive woman.
She had erogenous zones that drew him like a magnet and drove him
out of his mind. If it hadn't been for her growling stomach, R.J.
would have spent the rest of the night licking every inch and
discovering even more sensitive areas.

As it was, they'd already spent two hours
making love like two people on death row. And that was after the
impromptu frenzied sex on the hood of a 1968 Mercury Cougar.

He'd stayed away from her for her sake, but
after burying himself inside her tight body he found he no longer
had the strength or the desire to stay away. Seeing her in his shop
tonight had only confirmed what they both knew would happen.

And he couldn't say he regretted falling back
into bed with her, although leaving Rebecca had never been about
regret. In fact his only regret was that he'd inadvertently put
that very idea in her mind and caused her pain. He hated himself
for that and would do what he could to make it up to her.

After they pulled themselves from his bed,
R.J. had dressed in a pair of old jeans and cooked the two of them
some burgers. Rebecca had settled at the table next to him and dove
into the meal like she hadn't eaten in days. In the meantime, he'd
pushed his plate aside and used the opportunity to go over
paperwork from the shop. The same paperwork he and the guys had
been trying to make sense of.

"Seriously, these are really good," Rebecca
reiterated.

R.J. cocked a brow at her. "No need for the
flattery, you already got yours. Twice," he stated with a jerk of
his head toward the bedroom.

She took another bite of the burger and
swallowed. "Yes, that was nice." A smile pulled at the corners of
her mouth, which she attempted to hide with a sip of her drink. Her
poor attempt didn't fool him.

"Nice?" he repeated with a snort. "You
screamed so loud I'm surprised my neighbors didn't report a
domestic disturbance." Not to mention the scratches she'd left on
his back.

Somewhere along the way sex between them had
become more than just sex. And Rebecca had become more than just
that woman he had crazy lust for. The line between lust and love
had grown hazy to the point where he didn't know where one ended
and the other began. One thing he did know was that lust didn't
make his heart squeeze in his chest. It didn't make him lose track
of his thoughts or feel unsure about himself.

In the past, she'd been about scratching an
itch. But what did it mean when the itch didn't go away? And the
itch grew and grew until it felt dangerously close to the L
word?

Tonight had been more about getting laid, and
he'd known that when he'd taken her on the hood of the car. And
like an idiot, he'd done it anyway knowing that he'd be unable to
deny his own feelings afterward.

He loved her.

No, not just love. He'd fallen deeply,
head-over-heels, life-changing in love with Rebecca Underwood and
there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it

Despite that, he still felt like she deserved
better than him. What the hell did he know about being in a
relationship? More importantly, what did he know about taking care
of a woman? Especially one as special as the woman sitting next to
him.

"I may have over-exaggerated a bit," she said
in response to his teasing statement.

His answer was a snort as he glanced over an
invoice. Exaggerated? No one could fake a reaction like the one
she'd had in bed with him. R.J. was pretty sure no woman he'd been
with had faked it, and he'd like to think he could tell. But what
Rebecca had experienced had been far from fake. The trembling of
her body hadn't been fake. The hot juices that had milked him
hadn't been fake.

"You're awfully sure of yourself," she
added.

He picked up a pink piece of paper, glanced
it over and set it aside. "You're not going to sit there and tell
me that wasn't genuine."

"How would you know?" she countered.

"I just do."

When she didn't answer, he set his paperwork
down and leaned back in the chair. "So you're telling me all that
'Oh God, yes, R.J.' business was for my benefit?"

She lifted a brow and took a bite of her
burger.

"Okay, smartass explain this." He leaned
forward in his chair and pointed to a tiny red mark on his bare
shoulder from where she'd bitten him.

When her climax had slammed into her, she'd
clamped her teeth down on the hard flesh of his shoulder. Her teeth
had left actual marks, which had turned his skin red.

"See, I don't think you like to admit that I
can make you scream," he said in a low voice.

A gorgeous shade of pink colored her high
cheek bones. Busted. It wasn't that she didn't react to him. She
just didn't want him to know exactly how much she reacted to
him.

To prove his point, he leaned closer to her
and slid his hand along her bare thigh. Her position on the chair
had forced the hem of his shirt up to her hips. She shifted in an
attempt to move away from him, but his fingers at the juncture of
her thighs held her in place. Her nude body beneath his shirt
tempted him to abandon their meal and drag her fine ass back to
bed. If he did that, he wouldn't let her leave until morning, and
he had work to do.

Even still, she sucked in a breath when he
placed a soft kiss to the sensitive skin just beneath her ear.

"You can pretend all you want, Rebecca, but I
know you," he whispered in her ear. Her soft moan was like an
aphrodisiac to his overactive libido and fed the fire of his desire
for her. "Every time you move, you'll remember it was me who made
you scream," he taunted, just to remind her that she wanted him
just as much as he wanted her.

To drive his point home, he worked his
fingers to the liquid heat between her thighs and tested how ready
she was for him. And she was more than ready. All it would take
would be for him to slip the shirt over her head and she'd let him
do whatever he wanted to her. And he'd do it with a smile on his
face and an even bigger smile on hers.

She turned her head and caught his mouth with
hers. Her lips were soft and moist and immediately opened for him.
Their tongues slid around each other, slow and torturous and
driving him out of his mind.

When he lifted his head, her eyes were heavy
and her lips were swollen and still so very tempting. The pulse at
the base of her neck was rapid and matched her rapid and shallow
breathing.

"Just so we're clear," he said in a gruff
voice. Hell, she wasn't the only one affected. He'd done that to
prove a point to her and proven it just as much to himself:

That he couldn't touch her without losing his
head.

She cleared her throat and tugged at the hem
of the shirt. Her hands trembled when she picked up her burger. "So
glad we cleared that up."

A little while later, they were back in his
bed, naked and satisfied but far from exhausted. The comforter had
been kicked to the floor, leaving only the sheet to cover their
sweaty, limp bodies. They lay on their backs next to each other,
both of them staring at the ceiling and trying to get their
breathing under control.

R.J. had told himself, after they'd finished
eating that he wasn't going to take her again. That he was just
going to crawl beneath the sheets next to her and enjoy a night of
feeling her sweet body pressed against his. But then she'd peeled
that damn shirt off, allowing the thing to fall to the floor and
pool around her feet. He got one look at that sinful body and knew
there was no way he'd keep his hands to himself.

With a wicked smile, Rebecca had climbed onto
the bed, shoved him onto his back and took control.

Damn, but he loved a woman who knew how to
assert her dominance.

They'd ended with Rebecca on her back and now
they were trying to recoup.

"That was…" the woman next to him let out a
deep breath. "Incredible."

Incredible was an understatement, yet R.J.
couldn't think of an exact word to describe what they'd just
shared. Because he'd never experienced anything quite like
that.

He folded one arm behind his head and
smiled.

Yeah, it had been incredible. So fucking
incredible that he actually had no words, because he didn't trust
his voice to come out even. He didn't trust himself to speak
without spilling his guts like some lovesick teenager. And what
would he say? "I love you, but we can't be together?"

Some hero he was.

So why did Rebecca look at him as though
that's what he was to her?

She turned her head on the pillow and stared
at him out of those fathomless green eyes; eyes that drilled down
to his soul and saw way too much.

He kept his focus on the ceiling because he
didn't have the strength to look at her and see her love for
him.

"What're you thinking?" she asked in a soft
voice. Was that uncertainty he detected?

"Nothing."

The silence that stretched between them
hovered like a storm cloud. Rebecca's once relaxed body went stiff,
then slowly she sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest. The glass
of half-drank red wine, which she'd brought into the bedroom
earlier, was still on the nightstand where she'd left it. Without
saying a word, she reached over, grabbed the glass and took a slow
sip.

They sat in the quiet each trying to gather
their own thoughts. Only R.J.'s were too complicated to gather
neatly enough for him to understand. Part of him wanted to push her
back to the bed and wrap himself around her. The other part wanted
to run the opposite direction and continue to live with the denial
he'd been living in for more than a decade.

Rebecca's red hair was a mess of frizzy curls
and tumbled halfway down her back. He loved knowing he had the
ability to tousle her normally perfect locks. Against his better
judgment, R.J. reached over with one hand and fingered the ends of
the strands. They were so soft and silky, slipping through his
fingers like feathers.

His hand continued its exploration, going
from her hair to her back. Her skin was warm and satiny beneath his
fingers, giving him a gentle reminder of how she felt pressed
against him. He ran his hand in slow circles over her back, just
savoring the feel that was pure Rebecca.

She tossed back some more wine, then stared
down into the glass. "What are we doing, R.J.? How do we keep
ending up here?"

He lifted a brow and ran the tip of his index
finger down her spine. The small shiver that washed over her gave
him a minute amount of satisfaction. "You know how," he
responded.

"That's not what I mean."

Yeah, he knew that. But shit, what could he
say? She wanted more from him than he could give her.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, and the
look she gave him just about cracked his damaged heart open.

"I don't know what you want from me," she
said in a quiet voice.

Hell, he didn't know either. He wanted her,
but the thought of hurting her was like a tight fist around his
heart. "Rebecca," he said on a sigh. Sex with her was like having a
holy experience. She always gazed up at him with eyes full of trust
and glowing with love. Every time he emptied himself inside her, he
tumbled farther down the never-ending hole of unrequited love.