One-Two Punch (18 page)

“Whatever,” she waved a dismissive hand at him. “You’re still my bitch.”

Harry laughed. “I told you, man—a monster.”

Over the next few days, they settled into an odd sort of routine. Ky was still sleeping with them but that’s all that was happening—sleeping. Actually, Beth acknowledged, the only thing that was happening was her
not
sleeping. Instead, she was just lying there, hot and aching, for endless, frustrated hours.

On Sunday afternoon, Beth had to get outside. Harry and Ky filled the loft with their big male bodies and a thick undercoat of sexual tension until she couldn’t think straight.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced to the guys, who were sprawled at either end of the couch watching a Broncos game.

“Sounds good.” Harry pushed himself to his feet. “I’ve eaten way too many cheese puffs. See? I’m orange.” He held up his cheese-stained fingers as evidence and turned to Ky. “Want to walk?”

Shrugging, Ky clicked off the TV. “Might as well. This game sucks anyway.” He stood up, stretching his arms to the ceiling.

“Um…” Beth wasn’t sure how to say it tactfully, so she went for straight on.

“Actually, I was hoping to have a little, well, alone time.” The guys just looked at her blankly. “By myself. Without either of you. Alone.”

“You’re not walking by yourself,” Harry told her. Usually Beth thought his protective streak was endearing and sweet but now it was just annoying.

“Yes,” she clipped out, “I am. I’ll see you guys in an hour.” She turned to leave but Harry had maneuvered so that his towering frame blocked her exit.

“God, you’re fast,” she muttered. “Now move.”

“No. It’s not safe for you to be walking alone.” He didn’t budge.

Beth was moving from irritation to outright anger. “It’s a perfectly beautiful, sunny afternoon. I am not five years old. I can walk around the fucking park if I want to.” She poked the hard chest in front of her at each snapped-off sentence.

Harry’s face was as hard as stone. “And I can walk around the fucking park too. So go.” He stepped back to let her pass. With a suspicious glare, Beth moved toward the door. Harry followed.

“If you even think about walking behind me,” she threatened, “I swear I will…I will…” Her mind blanked of all fitting punishments.

“You’ll what?” The amused note in Harry’s voice was the last straw.

“I’ll move back to my place,” she hissed and slammed the door behind her. The satisfying echo reverberated through the high-ceilinged space of the gym, even over the music, and the few members working out looked up, startled. Embarrassed, she hurried down the metal stairs to the gym floor.

“Hi, Charlie,” she greeted the lanky kid when she passed the front desk, receiving a casual grin and wave in return.

“Hey, Beth,” he said. “Which one of those two meatheads managed to piss you off?”

She had to smile at that. “Both of the meatheads.”

“Ah,” he nodded, giving her a commiserating nod as she headed for the door.

Once she was outside, her anger cooled quickly, allowing guilt to creep in. The image of Harry’s stricken expression when she threatened to move out was plastered on her brain, poking at her conscience. With a sigh, she resolved to apologize to him when she got back.

It was a cool day but the late afternoon sun warmed her bare arms and the top of her head as she walked the four blocks to City Park. She waved to a family basking in the sunlight on their front porch as she dodged two kids speeding down the sidewalk on bikes. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. The beautiful day made it impossible to stay mad at anybody, even two gorgeous, extremely aggravating meatheads.

As she meandered through the park along the sun-dappled path, Beth felt the rest of her bad mood fall away. She passed the playground, glancing over when a little boy shrieked in excitement as his dad pushed him on the tire swing. The dad looked up at her and smiled, eyeing her with interest. Beth gave a quick wave and hurried on. She had enough guy problems without adding any more males to the mix.

She walked to the front of the pavilion and sat by the lake, idly watching the fountain in the center shoot water high into the air. A pair of Canadian geese stalked her, hoping for a tasty handout.

“Aren’t you supposed to be migrating soon?” she asked them. They circled away warily at the sound of her voice. “Although I suppose Colorado, even in the winter, is a balmy place when you’re from Canada.”

Apparently deciding that she was not going to provide any food, the geese waddled off across the grass. Beth watched them go, a little jealous of their simple lives.

I bet they never have longings for threesomes with a hostile ex-soldier goose
, she thought, and then shook her head and pushed to her feet. This was her time alone, when Harry and Ky were not allowed along—and that included not permitting them to take up space in her brain.

She crossed through the park, past the delivery entrance to the zoo and the back side of the science museum. Late afternoon thunderclouds were gathering, blocking out the warming sun, and Beth shivered. She should probably head back, she realized, reluctant to return to deal with the consequences of her mini-tantrum.
Apologizing sucks
, she thought morosely, making a face.

With a sigh, she turned toward home. She had just taken a few steps when a fat raindrop plopped onto her arm. Peering at the ominous sky, Beth sped up to a jog as the rain began to fall in earnest, cold spatters hitting her face and shoulders, leaving wet circles on her t-shirt.

“Ow!” A small pellet of hail had smacked against her cheek and she broke into an all-out run toward the street bordering the park. Spotting a bus-stop shelter, Beth angled her path to meet it. Ducking inside the glass enclosure, she flopped down on the bench, struggling to catch her breath after her rain-drenched sprint.

A trickle of water ran down Beth’s temple. She brushed it away with the back of her thumb. The rain and hail hammered against the shelter and ran in rivulets down the glass sides, blurring her view to outside. When her breathing had slowed, she stood up to peer through the water-streaked glass at the kaleidoscope of cars flying by.

Her breath fogged the glass in front of her face and Beth absently drew a heart with her finger. Inside the heart, she wrote “H + B”, paused for a second, then added “+ K”.

“Are you twelve?” she muttered under her breath with a huff of self-conscious laughter and started to lift her fist in order to scrub out the entire heart.

“Excuse me?”

The man’s voice startled Beth and she whirled around to face the stranger who had joined her, unnoticed, in the shelter.

“Sorry—didn’t mean to scare you,” he told her with a smile. Beth, not reassured, nodded distantly and moved to stand closer to the opening.

“Waiting for the bus or just trying not to get wet?” he asked, undeterred by her standoffish demeanor.

“The latter,” Beth eventually answered, unable to be rude enough not to respond at all, even though the man creeped her out. He was perfectly nice looking, with blond hair plastered to his forehead by the rain and straight white teeth, but something about him made all her instincts shriek that she should get away. She bit her lip, eyeing the downpour, debating whether to leave the shelter and brave the weather or stay and brave the stranger.

“Don’t run away,” the man wheedled. “I don’t bite—unless you want me to.” He laughed at his own tired joke, flashing his oversized teeth at her again.

Beth felt a flare of irritation. She had found a perfectly good way to stay out of the rain—and do a little doodling—and this annoying guy had to ruin it by making her all uncomfortable. “I should get home,” she muttered, scowling out into the rain.

“Why? Is there a boyfriend waiting for you there?” His voice was greasy, she decided, greasy and false.

“Two,” Beth threw back at him over her shoulder and darted into the rain. The wet weather definitely seemed like the preferred option now. The rain soaked her again, running uncomfortably through her hair and down the front of her tank top. Hail bit at her bare arms and the back of her neck as she tucked her head and ran along the muddy trail that paralleled the road, heading in the general direction of home. Glancing behind her, she saw the stranger had left the bus shelter and was following her. She sped up.

“Beth!”

She squinted through the downpour at a white van that had pulled over to the side of the road.
Who do I know who owns a van?
she wondered. The driver had lowered the passenger-side window and was leaning across the seat, gesturing for her to come over.

She hesitated, throwing another glance over her shoulder. The stranger was only twenty feet away and moving closer. Taking a few steps toward the van, she recognized the man—it was Ed, her bus driver.

“Hop in—I’ll give you a lift,” he called, pushing the door open. “Hurry up—the seat’s getting wet.”

She swung into the dry haven of the van, pulling the door closed behind her as Ed closed her window with a button on his door. Beth looked out the window at the soggy, disappointed stranger and felt a surge of relief. That had been a little scary. If Ed hadn’t come along, she really might have had to try out her self-defense skills.

She shivered and water trickled down her collarbone. “I’m afraid that I’m going to get your seat even wetter than leaving the door open would have,” she apologized, buckling her seat belt before pushing soaked strands of hair out of her face. “Do you have a towel I could sit on?”

Ed shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. What were you doing out in this weather anyway?” He turned the heat up and Beth sighed with pleasure as the air warmed her chilled skin. It was cozy inside the van, with hail clattering on the roof and the rhythmic whoosh and thump of the windshield wipers.

“Oh, I argued with my boyfriend—” She cut herself off before she could make it plural. “And went out for a walk. I guess I wasn’t watching the weather.”

Ed didn’t respond except for a short nod.

“Thanks for picking me up,” she babbled into the uncomfortable silence. She had never really had a conversation with Ed that went past pleasantries, so she searched her mind for something to say. “It was lucky you were driving by. Where were you headed?”

“The zoo,” he told her and Beth looked at him in surprise. He had never struck her as the animal-loving type but, then again, she really didn’t know him.

“I hope you were able to spend some time there before the rain started,” she said.

He shook his head. “I never got there. Waited too late, I guess.”

Beth’s eyebrows met in a puzzled frown. When he pulled over to pick her up, he was headed away from the zoo, not toward it, she realized. An uneasy prickle started in her belly. Why would he lie about something as silly as that?

“Here’s my street—turn right.” She rushed her words, suddenly anxious to get out.

The cozy security of the van now felt stifling and claustrophobic. “In fact, the rain is lightening up. Why don’t you just drop me off here and I’ll walk the rest of the way.

Good exercise, you know.” She gave Ed a forced smile but he didn’t see it. He stared straight ahead and drove past the turn.

Craning her neck to look back at the missed street, she felt the uneasy feeling explode into straight-up fear. “Ed, let me out. Now.” She tried to make her voice forceful but a nervous quaver had snuck in.

“Can’t do that,” he said neutrally.

“Sure you can,” Beth told him, wincing at the shrill note of hysteria in her voice.

“Just turn at the next street and loop around. It’s coming up fast—okay, now turn…”

She twisted in her seat, gesturing at the missed intersection, beginning to panic as familiar landmarks of her neighborhood grew tiny in the rearview mirror and then disappeared.

“Ow!” The sharp pain in her thigh brought her head whipping back around. As Ed pulled his hand back, something glinted between his fingers.

“What did you…” The words felt fuzzy in her mouth. She turned her head toward her door and the colors in her vision blurred. She couldn’t focus her eyes or her brain but she could still feel the frantic need to escape. Her fingers scrabbled against her seat belt buckle, desperate to find the release button.

Ed caught her hand, stopping her clumsy struggles. “Relax,” he told her, his voice oddly gentle. “Just let yourself go.”

She stared at the pale blob of his out-of-focus face.
Why is he doing this to me?
she wondered plaintively just before her world went black.

Harry was pacing. Ky had been watching him wear a track across the floor for—he checked his watch—eighteen minutes.
Two more minutes before he goes after her
, Ky estimated, glancing at Harry’s set face.
Or less.

“Was I unreasonable?” Harry asked him, jerking to a stop and planting his fists on his hips.

Ky shrugged. What could he say? He didn’t blame Harry for wanting to protect Beth. Fuck, Ky had already fallen into bodyguard mode around her and he had known her—what, a week? Normal people didn’t understand it, though, didn’t recognize that danger was everywhere, that injury and heartache and death could easily be around the next corner.

“Well?” Harry demanded, obviously not placated by a shrug.

Ky gave him a look. “Why are you asking
me
what’s reasonable?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Harry scrubbed his hands across his head. “I want to go after her but—” He looked at Ky, his normally cheerful face tight. “Do you think she’d actually do it?”

“Do what—move out?”

Harry winced at the words. “Yeah. You should see her apartment building. No security, no
light bulbs
, for fuck’s sake—she has a stalker, you know.”

Ky’s head came up in surprise.

“Yeah—some asshole who drops cards at her place while she’s at work, sends her flowers.” Harry resumed his pacing. “She thinks learning to fight is fun, a hobby, something she’ll never have to use. She doesn’t understand that not everyone’s
nice
.”

Ky pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said, heading toward the door.