The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (20 page)

“Fine,” she said, drawing herself
up and setting her jaw, her eyes flashing in the darkened hallway.
 
“I’ll be back tonight.”

“I’ll wait with bated breath,” I
snapped.

Layne turned on her heels and she
stormed back down the hallway.
 
She
hadn’t come in for a change of clothes, and would probably get pneumonia from
the unseasonably freezing rain.
 
I was
about to call after her to stop, but then I was too angry to voice anything.

So I slammed the door.

But I didn’t get any sort of
satisfaction from that.
 
I’d seen her hunched
shoulders just before I’d shut that door.
 
She had maintained the coolness in front of me, the professional
exterior, but for a fraction of a section, that mask had slipped, and genuine
pain had been made evident, her body curling forward like she’d been kicked in
the stomach.

I pressed my back against the door,
leaning against it as I covered my face with my hands, pressing the heels of my
palms against my eye sockets, willing the tears to stay inside of me and not
spill.

But I began to cry anyway, great,
big, fat tears that ran down my cheeks with abandon as I felt my heart cracking
and aching inside of me with an acute pain I was fairly certain I’d never felt
in my life.

What a terrible day.
 
What a horrific day that I wished I could
wipe from my memory forever.

How could I have been
so stupid
?
 
I took a great, ragged breath and shook my
head, pressing the heels of my hands harder against my eyes as a wracking sob
escaped me, and I sunk down a little against the door, my good leg shaking.
 
Maybe this
entire time
, she might not
have been attracted to me, and I’d just hurled myself at her like I was
desperate.
 
And maybe I
was
desperate, just a little, but it was desperation for
her
.
 
There was something about her that made my
blood run hot, that drew me to her, and I couldn’t explain it away, and I
couldn’t stop it from happening.
 
Each
day that passed, I knew in that honest moment with myself, I was falling more
in love with Layne O’Connell.

And, God, how I wished I wasn’t.

There are things you don’t
understand
, she’d said.
 
What could
I
possibly
not understand?
 
I
knew I’d drive myself crazy if I went over and over and over every moment of
the morning again, but I couldn’t help myself.
 
Had my father made Layne sign a contract that said she wouldn’t date me
or sleep with me?
 
Was Layne already
with someone?
 
Was I simply ridiculous
to ever have hoped she would be attracted to me, too?

I found my thoughts looping over
and over on possible explanations for the sudden and intense passion she’d
shown me in that kiss to her extreme shift of cool detachment.
 
How she kept saying “I can’t.”
 
What did that even mean?
 

And, oh, God, how could I have been
so stupid?

All of my worst nightmares of it
“not working out” between us, what I’d told Tracy I feared, had happened
without even anything nice to remember it by.
 
We hadn’t dated, we hadn’t gone to bed.
 
We’d simply kissed, and now it was as bone-achingly sad and terrible as
if we’d done all those things, and it had gone bad in the end, anyway.

I took up the crutches from the
side of the door where I’d left them, and I pulled myself up.
 
I used the crutches to hobble over to the
couch where I sat down, not caring that I was pretty drenched, and my couch
would now sport an Elizabeth-sized wet spot.
 

I undid my braid and ran my fingers
through the long, dripping strands of my hair and tried to think about anything
that could take the painful weight off of my chest, could take the pain from my
heart.
 
I contemplated, briefly, having
a nice, long, hot shower, ordering pizza, and then watching about two dozen of
my favorite comfort movies, or practicing for the concert tomorrow in my
pajamas, but all of those actions required a tiny bit of effort on my part, and
it was infinitely easier to stay sprawled on the couch and feel utterly and
completely pathetic and sorry for myself.
 
Which, I finally decided, is exactly what I would do.

Which was, of course, exactly when
there was a knock at my apartment’s door.

I wondered if it was Layne, back
already.
 
But she had a key to my
apartment, and for some reason, I didn’t think she’d knock, not even after the
argument we’d had.
 
But maybe it
was
Layne.
 
I really wasn’t expecting anyone else.
 
Maybe she’d come back to apologize, to tell
me that it had all been a mistake, that it had been, in fact, a silly reason
that she’d broke the kiss off.
 
Maybe
she’d come back because she wanted to kiss me
again
.
 
Maybe she’d push me against the wall in the
entryway, and…

Before I could get too far along in the fantasy, I
stopped myself.
 
I knew I was torturing
myself now.
 
I shook my head, feeling my
cheeks grow pink at the very thought of Layne pressing me against anything, and
I struggled to get up.
 
It probably
wasn’t Layne at the door.

And it wasn’t.
 
Through the peephole, I saw a woman in what
looked to be dull gray jumpsuit with the apartment company’s logo, Stellar
Suites, embroidered on the lapel, along with an embroidered nametag that read
“Sheila.”
 
The woman was a little
shorter than me with bright red hair that was carefully pinned to her head, and
an astoundingly pretty face, with full lips, high cheekbones, and almond-shaped
eyes that were a sparkling green.
 
She
was carrying a toolbox.

I threw the security latch open and
opened the door.

“Hello,” said the woman brightly,
her smile deepening when she saw me.
 
“Are you Ms. Grayson?”

“Yes,” I said, finding myself
returning her smile, though a little strained—I had to smile because hers was
purely infectious.
 

“I’m Sheila—I’m from Stellar
Suites,” she said, her brows furrowing a little.
 
“I’m so sorry, but there seems to be a leak coming from your
kitchen pipes, and effecting your neighbor downstairs.
 
I know this is terribly inconveniencing to
you on a Saturday, but I really must get that leak fixed—could I come in for
just a little while?
 
I’ll be super
quick.”
 
She held up her toolbox and
grinned again.
 
“I promise.”

“Oh, of course, don’t even worry
about it,” I assured her, hobbling backward and holding the door open for
her.
 

“Oh, my goodness, are you all
right?” she asked, stepping smoothly through the door and cocking her head to
the side as she took in my foot that I was holding above the ground a
little—I’d failed to grab my crutches from the couch.

“It’s nothing, I was just in a
little accident,” I said with a shrug, shutting the door behind her.
 
I was suddenly acutely aware of the fact
that I was dripping, that there was, in fact, now an Elizabeth-sized wet spot
on my couch, clearly visible, that I was standing with really no great balance
on one foot, and wobbling like I’d had one beer too many.
 
“My kitchen’s over here…”
 
Since I’d left the crutches back on the
couch, I now found myself hopping on one foot in the general direction of my
kitchen, praying with all my might that I could keep my balance.

My face, I realized, also probably
looked like I’d just had a really good cry, all splotchy and red like it
usually gets.
 
This day really couldn’t
get any better.

I hobbled for another step, but
then was stopped by a hand on my shoulder.
 
“Please, let me help you,” said Sheila softly, and then a firm, strong
arm was around my waist, her hand against my stomach, and she was propelling me
toward the kitchen.

Normally, a pretty woman holding me
tightly around the waist would do an awful lot for my morale.
 
But I found, strangely, that I wasn’t really
in the mood for this sort of thing, as friendly and helpful as it was.
 
Also, I’d like to point out,
I was
soaked.
 
“I’m all right,” I managed,
flashing her a smile as I disentangled myself from her arm.
 
I paused beside the couch, leaning over and
fishing up my crutches from where I’d left them, precariously tossed against
the right couch arm and right next to that enormous wet spot.

“Of course,” said Sheila, her
bright, wide smile staying firmly planted on her face.
 
Wow, she must use a lot of whitening strips
to make her teeth that damn…white.
 
They
could probably be seen glowing white from
space.
 
Or maybe she was a model in her spare time.
 
She
was
ridiculously beautiful, like
the kind of beautiful you see on television, in the movies or in magazine
ads.
 
She was too beautiful,
really.
 
I’d never been more aware of
the fact that I was dripping a puddle onto my living room rug, that I’d just
cried a river, and that I’d never felt more sorry for myself in my entire life.

Not the best day to have a
model-gorgeous repairwoman stop by on a surprise house call.
 
My confidence was currently in need of life
support.
 

“The sink’s through here,” I said,
hobbling toward the kitchen, then, in my crutches, Sheila following close
behind.

She was actually following pretty
darn close behind me.
 
When I paused
again, her hand not holding the toolbox actually brushed against my rear.

I wouldn’t have probably even
noticed if her hand hadn’t
remained
on my rear for about a minute.
 

“Uh…”
 
I said, trying to sidestep her.
 
It was such an odd moment.
 
She
wasn’t wearing gloves, which I felt would probably make it easy to accidentally
touch someone’s rear—it was her bare hand against me, she
must
have
known what she was doing.
 
But when I
turned to glance behind me at her, her eyes were wide and innocent.

Though maybe her smile
had
taken on a tiny bit of a mischievous slant.

To be perfectly honest, it kind of
felt like a porno was about to break out in my kitchen.
 
Wasn’t it the perfect setup?
 
A devastatingly attractive woman came to
“fix” a “leak,” but really came to get it on with the apartment’s
inhabitant—wasn’t that the totally cliché way almost every porn got its
start?
 
A repairwoman or a pizza
delivery woman or something like that?

But it wasn’t exactly an
attractive
feeling I was getting from this woman, oddly enough.
 
Yes, she was beautiful,
dazzlingly
beautiful, with the
stray curls of red bouncing along her perfect skin and gently sculpted
cheekbones, the way her jumpsuit strained against her chest and hugged her hips
tightly.
 
But there was something about
the fakeness of her smile, and the sheer wideness of it, like she’d pasted that
grin on the first moment she’d gotten up in the morning, and had kept it on,
and now it was causing her face extreme strain to keep smiling.
 
But she kept smiling anyway.

“So,” I said, my brows furrowing
together when she didn’t move toward the sink, her hand
still
on my
rear.
 
I hobbled to the right, and her
hand fell away from me.
 
I felt so
flustered for a long moment that I didn’t even know what to say, but then I
gestured toward the sink.
 
“There…it
is.
 
The sink.”

“Oh.
 
Oh, yes,” she said, her smile not faltering for a second as she
knelt down and deposited her toolbox by her left knee.
 
I was actively relieved that she wasn’t
touching me anymore.
 
She gazed up
winsomely at me and practically batted her eyelashes.
 
“I’m sorry to ask this of you, but do you, ah…have a drink of
water?”

I blinked.
 
“Yeah, sure.
 
I mean, there are glasses in that cabinet there,” I said, nodding
toward my glassware cabinet.
 
“And, I
mean, the sink’s right there…help yourself.”

But she didn’t move from her
position, kneeling on one knee in front of me.
 
Her hand was still gripping the toolbox handle, and her smile—her really
creepy
smile, I was now realizing—hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch,
had in fact grown
wider,
it seemed.
 
In movies, someone who smiles this much is usually about to kill you in
fun and interesting ways, usually before the opening credits roll.

I stared at her for a long
moment.
 
Maybe she’d just had jaw
surgery or something, and she wasn’t very good at moving her facial muscles
yet, I thought, inching past her just a little.
 
I’d like to point out that my apartment kitchen is kind of tiny,
and when I moved past her, where she was still kneeling on the floor and not
budging an inch, I had to brush my body right past her, and practically against
her, my left thigh connecting with her shoulder in a much more intimate gesture
than I would have ever liked.