“You okay?” he asked.
Was . . . she . . . okay . . . ? No. He was disgracefully, disgustingly handsome, and her head still ached, she was still exhausted, and her numb foot was tingling painfully back to life. But that was really no excuse for gaping at him with her tongue hanging out, so she pulled herself firmly together.
“I’m fine. Just tired. Sorry.” She stepped back to let him in, running her thumbs over the line where her wrist supports ended and her skin began. Whatever’s gotten into you, Chloe Sophia Brown, exorcise it before you make a fool of yourself.
He gave her a sympathetic, head-to-toe glance that reminded her—as though she could forget—of how terribly pathetic she must look. “Were you asleep?”
“Ah, yes,” she admitted, trying for an airy laugh. It came out a bit too strained, but she forged on. “Now we’ve both caught each other napping, haven’t we?”
She’d thought that joke would make things less awkward, but he flushed abruptly, brilliantly red. Scarlet heat colonized his whole face from the throat up.
“Yeah,” he said after a strange little pause. “Napping.” He cleared his throat and nodded down the hall. “So, shall we . . . ?”
Right, yes. He was here about the list, and she’d decided last night while lying awake—in between chatting with Smudge and imagining violence against everyone who’d ever wronged her—that she would treat said list as a professional endeavor. Of course, her lack of preparation today put them off to a bumpy start, but as she led Red to the living room, she felt confident she could put things back on track.
“Nice tail,” he said from behind her.
She’d forgotten the onesie had a tail. Dear God, how could she forget it had a tail?
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, because she was committed to regaining control over this situation. She even arranged her tail carefully before sitting down on the sofa, just to prove how utterly unconcerned she was by it.
The corner of Red’s lips curled into a faint half smile as he watched. He hovered over her like an alien spaceship, seeming even huger than usual from this angle, his hair swinging forward to frame his sharp cheekbones. He didn’t say another word about her tail, despite his little smile. Instead, he simply asked, “Can I sit down?”
Oh—there wasn’t any more space on the sofa. She shoved away a few stray notebooks, two of her twelve pencil cases, an unopened bank statement, and a bar of sea-salt chocolate.
He snorted and sat. His weight made her sofa sink in the middle, like a marshmallow being poked. Her fleecy bottom started to slide toward the dip, closer to him. She grabbed the sofa arm and held on for dear life. Then she realized how silly that must look and let go.
“So,” she said brightly. “The list! Let’s discuss.”
He leaned back, propping his right ankle on his left knee in that way people did when they didn’t mind taking up space. Chloe had never really gotten the hang of it.
“Is that why I’m here?” he asked lightly. “For the list? I thought you were going to hold me down and sew a button onto my tongue.”
Good Lord, had she really said that yesterday? What on earth had come over her? She typically saved that sort of lunacy for her sisters. “Upon reflection, I decided that holding you down would be beyond my physical capabilities.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “You’re shorter than me, but you’re pretty tough.”
For some reason, the fact that he thought she was tough made a pleased little smile curve her lips. She wiped the smile away instantly, however, because it was ridiculous. She was tough. Basic facts being acknowledged should not make her chest all tingly and light.
She found the right notebook, a deep, glittering blue with black-edged pages, and turned to face him. “Since you haven’t actually called me that cursed name today, I think we can hold off on your punishment.”
His eyes caught hers, and he grinned in a flash of soft lips and white teeth. “I appreciate that, Button.”
She slapped the notebook against his chest, biting her lip so hard she was surprised she didn’t taste blood. “Shut up. Focus. We have a list to discuss.”
To her surprise, he actually obeyed, the humor in his gaze replaced by something calmer, more curious. He took the notebook, and for one breathless second his thumb brushed the side of her hand, just above the straps of her wrist support. Then he was opening the book, intent on the words she’d written inside, while she was left staring at her own hand like a ninny, wondering why it seemed to fizz.
“This it?” he asked, studying the first page—the only one she’d used. “Seems kind of short.”
“That isn’t the original version,” she told him, fiddling with the zip of her onesie. God, she was hot. “I wrote a new one that only includes the things you’ll be helping me with.”
Because she’d rather die than hand him the actual list, complete with item number five (meaningless sex) and the ticked-off item number seven (do something bad, e.g. spying on him). This safe, censored version only featured three things: riding a motorbike—which she’d included just to cross off, for the encouragement factor; a drunken night out; and camping.
“See?” she said, nodding over his shoulder. “Just like we discussed.”
“What about your traveling?” he asked, still studying the list. He had the most adorable frown of concentration, three vertical lines between his eyebrows. A tall middle one, and then two shorter ones on either side, like a hug.
Chloe blinked. She was losing her mind.
Clearing her throat, she said, “You can’t help me with traveling, so I didn’t include it.”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I thought we should talk about that. I want to make sure you realize that traveling the world with hand luggage is basically backpacking.”
She shrugged, unzipping her onesie ever so slightly. A tiny bead of sweat had started to drip down her spine. “Well, I was envisioning a rucksack containing a large supply of clean knickers, painkillers, chocolate, and a toothbrush. If that’s what backpacking is—”
“Close enough,” he cut in dryly.
“Then a backpacker I shall be.” She had this wild idea that it would feel more like an adventure if she was missing most of the things she needed to survive. She’d be an intrepid lady version of Indiana Jones.
He looked up, and she swallowed. It turned out his concentration frown was even more arresting when it was aimed at her. “It just doesn’t seem like your thing. That’s all.”
“It isn’t. That’s the point.” She did want to travel, but the “only-hand-luggage” part was supposed to be a challenge. “Once I’ve completed the rest of the list,” she told him, “I’ll be so used to daring exploits that backpacking will seem completely manageable.”
He laughed, then realized she was serious. “Ah. Okay. But aren’t you worried about your—?”
“If you ask about my health I will strangle you.”
He choked down another laugh and nodded gravely. “Fair enough. You know what you’re doing.”
Debatable, but she was working on it.
“All right,” he said, with that abrupt firmness that usually indicated someone was ready to take action. “You got a pen?”
Her mind blanked with confusion for a second—she really wasn’t firing on all cylinders today—before she nodded and found one among the debris. Smudge had moved, at some point, from the PlayStation to the equally forbidden coffee table. She shot him a warning glare, which he haughtily ignored, before handing Red the pen. It was gold, with a clear little ball at the top filled with glitter and pink stars.
Red held the pen up to the light for a moment, staring at it with the oddest expression on his face—a sort of quiet, bone-deep pleasure, his smile slight and fond. He asked, “Where’d you get this?”
Of all possible interests they might share, she hadn’t expected pretty pens to be one of them. But she supposed an artist would like beautiful things. “A shop on Etsy. I can email you
the page.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking the pen, watching the glitter dance. “Thanks. Can I write in this?” He tapped the notebook.
“You can.” Although she really hadn’t expected him to.
“All right. Let’s see . . .” He flipped over to a clean page and wrote something down, those sharp eyes narrowed, his big, work-roughened, paint-spattered hand dwarfing the golden pen. “You free tomorrow night?”
“No. I promised my sister I’d watch My Fair Lady with her to make up for my lack of commitment to karaoke.”
Red looked up, his expression a cross between confusion and wry amusement. “Uh . . . what?”
“Nothing,” she muttered, waving a hand. Apparently, she overshared now. Wonderful. Very cool, extremely professional, everything was going swimmingly. Kill her now.
“Okay,” he said slowly, a knowing light in his eyes. “Babysitting Eve. Got it. Saturday?”
She didn’t ask how he’d known the sister in question was Eve. “I’m free on Saturday.”
“Great. I’ll take you out for drinks then.”
For some reason, it wasn’t until he said those words that she realized where he was going with his questions. Or rather, where he’d already gone. Her mouth dried up as if she were hungover in advance, and her onesie grew even warmer, like a furry torture chamber. “Saturday night,” she laughed nervously. “So . . . so soon.”
He looked up again, his three-line-frown back. “Is that okay?”
“Oh, yes. Why wouldn’t it be?” she squeaked. Saturday night, drinking and dancing, just as she’d planned. Lovely. Delightful. The stuff of dreams.
“Because,” Red said slowly, “if you don’t want to do it—”
She sniffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He ignored her. “—you could just . . . not do it.”
“Preposterous.”
“Since this is your list and all,” he finished gently.
She glowered. “The list is not up for debate. I look forward to Saturday, when we will go to various shady establishments and drink far too much alcohol together.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly, scribbling something on the page. “I bet. Anywhere in particular you want to go?”
She wracked her brain, trying to remember the places she and her friends used to visit—back when she’d had friends. But she’d been at university then, in another city. She had no idea what was good here, where was fun. She sat up straight, cleared her throat, and said calmly, “I shall leave all major decisions to you. Just—make it, you know. Edgy.”
He arched an eyebrow, scribbling a few more lines. “Edgy. Aye aye, Captain Button.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Next,” he said, “camping. Want me to handle that, too?”
Since he was turning out to be surprisingly organized, it wasn’t difficult to say “Yes.” He was supposed to be helping her, after all. And, since he was ordinary in all the ways Chloe and her family were not, he presumably had a touch more experience in outdoor pursuits than she did.
“All right,” he said, then seemed to stop and think for a second, all his swirling vitality pausing along with his hands. She recognized this considering stillness from the nights she’d spied on him.
But she wouldn’t think about spying on him. She was overheated enough without guilt adding to the issue, and one of the many curses of fibromyalgia was an inability to maintain homeostasis. If she got too hot, she’d simply pass out. She decided to open a window while Red was too distracted to ask why. He was staring at nothing beside her, running his knuckles back and forth over his lower lip.
She’d never seen him do that before. How fortunate that, the first time she witnessed it, there was a mountain of fleecy fabric in place to hide the way her nipples reacted.
She opened the window—ah, sweet air—and returned to the sofa just as he started writing again. His voice absent, he asked, “How long did you want to camp for?”
As little time as possible. “Oh, just a night should do,” she said awkwardly. “I know you’re very busy.”
“I could do Saturday to Sunday, next week?”
She didn’t need to check her schedule to know she was depressingly unengaged on those evenings, and most evenings, forever after.
No. Not forever. You’re getting a life, remember?
“That should work for me,” she said brightly.
“Cool. I have a place in mind, but I’ll look into it and let you know.” He finally put the pen down. His writing, she noticed, was surprisingly neat. There was wildness there, but it was carefully restrained. Every now and then it trickled from the swooping curl of a g or y, burst from the seams of an I. Before she could stare any longer, he snapped the notebook shut and put it on the coffee table, along with the pen. “There’s something I need to ask you.”
The slow, deliberate way he said those words, as if he were plotting his way through a booby-trapped room, put her on her guard. “Yes?” she asked crisply.
He turned his whole body toward her, his right knee disturbingly close to her thigh. She could feel the heat and the life and something else, something that tightened her belly, radiating off him and sinking dangerously deep into her. She stiffened and stared straight ahead.
“Come on, Chlo,” he said softly. “Don’t do that. We’re . . . friends, aren’t we?”
She didn’t know what surprised her more—that casual shortening of her name, the kind of easy intimacy she’d had from no one but her sisters in years . . . or the fact that he thought they were friends. “A week ago you barely even liked me.”
Most people would probably deny that, but he just shrugged, smiling slightly. “You didn’t like me, either. But now that I know you better, I think you’re funny and secretly sweet, and I do like you. I’m hoping you like me, too.”
A weightless, tingling warmth suffused her as she battled a big, silly smile. Yesterday, she’d almost convinced herself that the dizzying tone of his emails was just his natural charm, the one she’d seen him flashing around like fifty-pound notes plenty of times. Apparently not. Apparently, he’d meant the little jokes and the kindnesses.
What a relief, since she had, too.
But her pleasure at his words, at the way he described her, was too enthusiastic, so she reined herself in. Changed the subject. Reminded herself he wanted to ask difficult questions. “Fine. We’re friends. Now what is it?”
His smile didn’t waver, as gentle as his words. “I know you’re sick,” he said. “I’m not trying to get full details, or anything. But if you’ve never done this stuff because of your health, I need to know what the risks are. What to do if you need help. All that shit.”
Sigh. “I have fibromyalgia. Chronic pain, chronic fatigue, migraines, random periods of muscle weakness. Physical exertion can result in flare-ups, but I know my limits.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Except for the times when you climb trees to save cats.”
“I knew my limits then, too,” she sniffed, relaxing a little, leaning closer to him. God, why was she leaning closer to him? “I simply decided I wanted to rescue Smudge more than I wanted to be sensible. But I wouldn’t do that with you,” she added quickly. “And I won’t need to. I’m not physically incapable of completing those tasks, though I might require accommodations that others wouldn’t. I don’t need your help because of my disability. The list is about . . . something else.”
Red nodded slowly, his gaze focused on her like a laser. There was an unexpected warmth in that gaze, one that tricked her into speaking further when she should have shut her mouth.
“I didn’t used to be, you know . . .” She waved a hand. “A socially inept control freak.”
His lips curved. “That’s not exactly what I’d call you.”
“I’m sure you’d choose something more blunt.”
“No,” he said, but that was all he said. And now she wanted to know what he’d been thinking. Too late; he swept the conversation along. “So what changed? What m
ade you start thinking of your life in two halves—before and after?”
Her heart stuttered for one dangerous moment. “I . . . how did you—?”
“I have some experience with that feeling myself,” he said, raking a hand through the silken sunset of his hair. He sounded vaguely sad. “I guess I recognize it in you.”
“Yes,” she murmured, because that made sense. “I see it in your paintings.”
His eyes widened for a moment and color appeared on his high cheekbones. “Oh.”
Now she was blushing, too. She hadn’t meant to embarrass him. She certainly hadn’t meant to admit so much knowledge of his art. She got too comfortable around him and things slipped out when they shouldn’t. “I only meant—I was researching, for the website, and I found some of your older work, and there’s a distinct—”
With a kindness she didn’t really deserve, he cut her off. “I know what you mean. It’s fine.” He studied her for a moment as if her skin were translucent, and he could peer inside her head if only the light hit her just right. She felt uncomfortably like the light was hitting her just right. “You know, for someone who happily admits to being rude, you seem to care a lot about hurting my feelings.”
Her derisive snort was automatic, a familiar shield. “Don’t flatter yourself. I care about everyone’s feelings.”
“Yeah? What about your own?”
She sucked in a breath to say something cutting or witty or otherwise distracting, only it got caught in a tangle at the back of her throat.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, his proximity turning her pulse into a tempest. “Tell me about your before.”
Chapter Ten
Red didn’t know why he was pushing, why he felt so ravenous for any scrap of the woman sitting before him. But when she curled her knees under her and faced him completely, when those spilled-ink eyes met his and her velvet voice wrapped around him, it felt right. It felt like exactly what he’d wanted.
Even though her quiet words ripped into his chest.
“I used to have friends. I used to have a fiancé, even.” She said that with a wry smile and an arch of those winged eyebrows, like she thought that might surprise him. It did, and it didn’t. She wasn’t a social person, exactly, but she was damned hypnotic. Of course she’d had friends. And yet, apparently, she’d also lost them.