More Than Fiends (9 page)

Just to add the topper to all of this, the guy behind me in the parking parade whipped his Caddy into the now-empty space that my attacker had left behind.

 

Finally got the deposit made, listened to a lot of sympathy from the very people who had luckily moved their own cars out of the way before I got slammed, and then took my little yellow Bug to my favorite mechanic. Well, my only mechanic.

Joey Paretti went to school with me, and he always could fix anything. A few years ago, he'd taken over his father's shop, and he was the go-to guy for any car calamity. Thankfully, he too assigned me a million and one easy payments, and I left my poor Bug with him and drove one of his loaners home. A '97 Nissan Sentra, it was a nice enough car, but it felt way too much like a grown-up's car. Wasn't it bad enough I'd turned thirty-two? The sedate silver car didn't suit my style at all. Not that I actually
had
a style. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, Joey promised to get my baby back to me in a few days, and my insurance agent promised my premiums wouldn't go up. Right. And any day now, Prince Andrew would be dropping by my house for a quickie.

Still, after a so-far rotten day, my own house was clean, bills were paid (barely), and for lunch I had my bowl of microwave popcorn (movie butter flavor) sitting on the table in front of me. I dropped a handful of the popcorn onto the floor for Sugar, and while she made like a Hoover, I got up to answer the doorbell.

I tugged my black T-shirt down over the waist of my jeans, hurried across the room and smashed my little toe against a chair that had been in the same place for ten years. Pain whipped through me. With stars blinking on and off in front of my eyes, and still whimpering, I opened the door.

Oh God.

Devlin Cole, big as life and twice as yummy, was standing on my front porch. Tears were in my eyes, my toe was throbbing, and long-ignored parts of my body were suddenly alive and humming.

He was wearing all black today. Black slacks, open-collared black shirt and shiny black shoes. He looked way too good, and suddenly I was wishing I had taken more time with my hair, and maybe a little makeup wouldn't have been out of line.

“Hi.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Hi back.” I looked past him and saw a silver gray Porsche parked at the curb, and almost whistled. If the Marchetti boys across the street were home, any minute now they'd be outside drooling on Devlin's car.

Shifting my gaze back to the man still watching me, I managed to croak, “Did we have an appointment?”

“No,” he said, and his lips twitched as if he wanted to smile but was holding back. Too bad. He has a great smile.

“Then…”

“I wanted to talk to you about having your company do the cleaning at my house, too.”

Okay. This is good. More work, always a plus. But why come by my house? Why not call? And why did I care? There was a gorgeous giant of a man standing on my front porch, and I'm gonna be picky about why he's there?

I don't think so.

“Sure. Come on in.”

He walked into the house, and I got a good whiff of him as he passed. God, he smelled good. Almost better than chocolate. A second later, I heard the scrabble of Sugar's nails on the wood floor and tried to move fast enough to head her off before she could shove her nose into Devlin's crotch.

I was too late. When Sugar's on a greeting mission, she's hard to stop.

But then Devlin managed it with a word.

“No.”

The look of stunned surprise on the dog's face should have been funny. Sugar had never heard that word, but I could tell she didn't like it. She tried to put on the brakes, but couldn't find purchase. Her eyes got wide with panic behind her black- and-white hair, her nails skittered, her butt hit the floor, and her momentum sent her sailing past us to slam into the round table sitting beneath the front window.

The table tipped, and the blue glass vase I'd found at the swap meet upended, rolled to the edge of the table and crashed onto the floor, sending shattered glass, rust-colored china mums and water across the floor in a veritable river of destruction.

Sugar stood up, shook herself all over, then walked out of the room, head high, like she was trying to convince us she'd done that whole slide-and-spill thing on purpose just to entertain us.

I didn't even look at Devlin. It was his own damn fault for coming to my house. I project businesslike and competent when I'm out in the world. In my own habitat, it's a whole different story.

“Welcome to my world,” I said and dropped to my knees to gather up the remaining scraps of a crystal, cobalt blue antique vase.

“Your dog's clumsy,” he said and stooped beside me, giving me a hand with the cleanup.

“Yes, but on the upside, she eats enough for three dogs and poops with appalling regularity.”
Crap. Shut up, Cassidy.

I looked out the corner of my eye and found him watching me. “You don't have to help.”

He took the jagged pieces of glass from my hand and picked up what was left off the floor. “You get the flowers. I'll take this; you could cut yourself.”

Wow. Gorgeous
and
thoughtful. Okay, a little authoritarian, but nobody's perfect.

While he carried the trash outside, I gathered up the flowers I'd just bought two days ago and followed him to the kitchen. He'd already yanked off a handful of paper towels and was turning for the living room again.

“You know, with as good as you are at this, you don't really need someone else cleaning up after you, do you?”

He gave me a half smile that sent a few delicious little tingles bubbling through my veins. “I prefer having an expert.”

“Right. Well, that's me. Expert at cleaning. Of course, as you can see, I get a lot of practice around here.” Sugar was under the kitchen table, giving Devlin a death glare, like she blamed him for the entire incident.

My dog. In denial.

I took the paper towels from him, walked back to the living room and got busy cleaning up the spilled water. He was standing right beside me, and I could actually
feel
his eyes on me. My temperature spiked a little, and the small hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. Not in a bad way.

“So,” he said when I'd finished and was standing up again, clutching sodden paper towels in one hand and catching the drips with the other, “can I interest you in coming to the house to take a look around?”

“Now?”

“Unless you're busy.”

“No,” I said, then realized I should have said I was all backed up—so many customers. But then he'd think I didn't want his business or I was too busy for it, and the truth was, I really wanted to see his house. Like his club, Devlin's house was a mystery. Big and beautiful, it sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and every time I drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, I looked at it and wondered what it was like inside.

I was a little surprised he didn't have a housekeeper. A man alone, a place that size. So I asked.

He shrugged. “Actually, I do.”

“So why do you need me?”

He reached out and tucked a strand of my hair behind my left ear, and when his fingertips stroked against my skin, I swear I saw fireworks. Big red and blue ones bursting in front of my eyes. I really hoped it wasn't blood vessels exploding.

“Truth is,” he said, “I don't need you to clean my house. I just wanted to see you again and needed a reason.”

Whoa.

This is more than Flirting 101, Cass,
I warned myself.
This is graduate courses. This is, like, master's-caliber flirting. And you are so not prepared.
I'd been spending most of my time over the last few years with kids and dogs and dirty houses. Not exactly the life of the party. Hey, I'd
never
had a man like Devlin flirt with me. This was some serious pressure.

Think of something clever to say. Be brilliant. Witty. Or at least, not mute.

“I, uh…”

Great. Good one.

“You seem surprised.”

“Kind of,” I admitted and knew an instant too late that that was the wrong attitude to take. I should be acting like I go through this all the time. Like every day I have to beat off rich, gorgeous men with a stick.

Oh.

Maybe I should reword that a little.

“Why?” he asked and took a step closer. Was it hot in here? Seriously. Did all the air leave the room? Because I suddenly couldn't catch my breath, and it felt like my eyebrows were smoldering from all the extra heat shooting off the top of my head. “When we spoke yesterday,” he was saying and swept me up and down with a gaze hot enough to set fire to my jeans, “I felt…something between us. Didn't you?”

Lust?
Could it be
lust
he felt between us? 'Cause, hey, I was right there with him. Bone-numbing, blood-firing, mind-expanding lust that was at this moment setting up shop in my hoo-hah and limbering things up, just in case.

Cassidy, you slut.
My stern, talking-to-myself voice was silent, but effective. Just a few hours ago, I'd been drooling over Logan. Now here I was letting my hormones do a two-step, trying to get Devlin's attention.

Slut.

For sure, I was going to Hell.

God. I squeezed the wet paper towel in my right hand, and my left filled up with water. Moving on automatic pilot, I scurried to the kitchen, tossed the mess into the sink, then grabbed a dish towel to dry my hands.

Devlin was right behind me. He was probably following the thundering pound of my heartbeat. Man, I really had to get out more.

“You know,” I said when I thought I could speak without slobbering, “it probably isn't a good idea for us to have a personal relationship if we're working together.”

“We're not.”

“We're not?” Crap. Should have had Thea do the bid up last night and hustled it over to him today before he could back out. Visions of lovely piles of money were fading right before my eyes and even took some of the shine off the nice little body buzz I had going.

I turned to face him. He was wandering around the kitchen, and I wished I'd put all the bottles of demon spray out of sight. But then why care about the little shit?

“But, I'm doing a bid for you,” I said.

He grinned, and my knees turned to liquid. Oh boy. Really hard to stand up straight when your bones are all slippery.

“We haven't signed a contract yet.”

“True.”

“And if you're as interested as I am…”

Interested?

I'd have to be
dead
six months to not be interested. The question here was, why was
he
interested? This man moved with the rich and famous and the nearly famous who loved to be photographed. This man was why paparazzi had been invented. This man was—

—staring at me like I was the last double-fudge brownie on the dessert cart.

Oh boy. If he was feeling what I was feeling, then it was a wonder he could still talk. On the other hand, who needed chitchat?

He walked closer, and with every slow step, my heartbeat hitched a little higher and faster in my chest, and my mouth went just a little bit drier. I grabbed hold of the counter behind me, gripping both hands around the edge as if it meant my life.

I generally keep my business world separate from my real-life world. It's neater. Takes less time to sort through; and, hey, none of my other customers ever really hit on me, so it had never been an issue. Now suddenly it was, and I knew that I should just say, “Gee thanks for stirring up my hormones, but you should be going now.” And I also knew there was no way in hell I was going to say it.

I was about to do something really, really dumb. Ordinarily, I try to avoid stuff like that on general principles. But this time, I was willing to make an exception.

“I heard you were in an accident this afternoon,” he said, catching me completely off guard.

“Uh, how'd you hear that?”

He paused for a second, then shrugged and said, “Small town.”

“Oh…Right.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No,” I said and marveled at that simple truth. Apparently this Demon Duster strength thing was good enough to keep me from feeling whiplash. One small blessing in an otherwise—up till now—crappy day. “Just mad. My car got crunched.”

“A shame, and yet, it could have been far worse.”

His eyes looked almost black, and something inside me shivered. He'd only made a statement, but somehow, it felt almost like a warning. Weird.