Kiss & Hell (Hell #1)

Right. An hour from now the entire East Village would be doing the wave in her honor because Delaney Markham’s dry spell was over. “I don’t make them up. And I’m telling the truth, Mrs. Ramirez, this isn’t—”

She flapped a pudgy hand in Delaney’s face. “Now, ju two go. Ees almost ti’ for deener. I watch de babies—ju go eat or someting. Ju take my Delaney so’where nice, hookay?” She patted Clyde on the back before rooting at her feet to scoop up dog number four to check his diaper. “Ju are wet, Meester Fancy Pants. We feex.” She gave Clyde and Delaney the stink eye. “Whe’ I co’e back, ju be gone.” She turned her back on them, making a beeline for Delaney’s bathroom and leaving no room for discussion.

Clyde held out his arm to her, his smile cocky and condescending. “So whaddya say we go and eat and you can attack my character, say, somewhere much more public? You know, so you can tell me how you really feel with a live audience.”

She pursed her lips, grabbing her coat and scarf. “You know, it’s not impossible that you’ve been lying to me, Clyde Atwell,” she said in hushed tones, letting him help her with her jacket. “This sudden blank you’ve drawn would be stupid of me to ignore.”

“Yep.” He sauntered to the storefront, opening the door for her.

“That’s it? That’s all the denial I get?”

“Yep. What good does it do me to defend myself when those wheels in your head are turning at a pace faster than the speed of light? It’s wasted energy.”

“Which is very practical,” she said, fighting the grin she wanted to let loose when he laced his fingers with hers. “However, not terribly passionate.”

“Passionate?”

“Yeah. Passionate. To defend yourself would show some passion.”

“To defend myself would be useless. You’ll think what you want whether I tell you differently or not. Until you have solid proof to the contrary, you want to find something to harp on me for, some imperfection, big or small, to make me a bad guy. That means when I go, which you were all about reminding me I have to do last night—you can console yourself with the fact that I was just a jerk. A liar. The other possibility is, if you can catch me in a lie, you don’t have to let your guard down. You don’t have to let me in. I get it.”

Delaney stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, ignoring the people who passed by. Right in front of Anthony’s (“All You Can Eat Kielbasa and Pasta”), she decided to let him have it. “Let you in? Where am I not letting you in to?” Besides her drawers. Done. She’d done that. In fact, she hadn’t just let him in, she’d thrown the door open for him.

The cool night air settled between them before he spoke. “Your life. Don’t kid yourself into thinking I don’t get you, Delaney. You’re as isolated as I ever was. My situation was work related, yours is just situational, but it’s the same damned thing. You haven’t had a relationship in a long time, and now you’re afraid. You’re ready to condemn me because it’s as good an excuse as any to stop any more intimacy between us. That means you can’t be hurt when I have to go. That’s because you like me. If this is your way of subconsciously telling me you’re freaking out because last night was that good, let ’er rip, but don’t hide.”

She didn’t even lower her voice when a young couple strolled past them hand in hand. “Wow, Freud, thanks. My life in a paragraph. And quit patting yourself on the back about last night, Dr. Love. You’ll pull a muscle.” She cast him a scathing glance, tucking her purse back over her shoulder.

“I’m only speaking the truth, and, I might add, I did it with passion.” He chucked her under the chin, then kissed the tip of her nose.

But she shook him off. “I’m not accusing you of lying because I don’t want to sleep with you again, Clyde.” Or was she? Was she just looking out for herself and the possibility that if she let Clyde have too much of her, she’d end up hurt because there was absolutely no doubt he was hitting another plane and soon? It dawned on her that she was afraid she’d become too attached. This fear she carried around didn’t solely have to do with the terror of retribution from Satan if he found out Clyde wasn’t breaking her.