God grant me patience. “Night.”
Rixton ducked out before my heel slapped the porch as the last can was crushed. That might have ended okay for me had I not then leaned forward to gather the discs for the recycling bin. The forward motion intensified the sloshing in my head until I tipped forward and landed on all fours.
I must have been picking at my French braid while in my rocker, because a curtain of hair slid forward and carried with it the rancid smells from the crime scene. I didn’t reach the edge of the porch before the first heave brought sour mash into my mouth. As I christened the new planks with the contents of my stomach, I caught motion out of the corner of my watering eyes.
Cole did his looming thing again, in human form, standing well out of the splash zone.
I heaved again, but this time nothing came up but regret. “Hey.”
The porch groaned as he shifted his weight. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.” I shook my head, and my eyeballs swam in their sockets. “I’m good. I just…” I caught another whiff of my hair and barked out a wet cough. “It’s the smell. In my hair. Making me sick.”
Cole hooked his hands under my armpits and set me on my feet. I swayed without his support for the split second before he heaved a sigh and scooped me against his wide chest. Careful to keep his hands away from my arms and the delicate coils of metal between my shoulders, he carried me into the kitchen and sat me on the counter sideways so the basin was at my back.
After cutting the sink on, he held his hand under the stream until he appeared satisfied. One of his massive palms then cupped the back of my skull while his other pressed between my breasts, and he started lowering me down onto the quartz slab.
“What are we doing?” I tried focusing on his face, but his flat expression gave nothing away.
“Hold still.” He tugged the sprayer from its holder and started soaking my hair with water just shy of too hot then squirted half the bottle of dish soap onto my grungy curls. His strong fingers massaged my scalp, his short nails scratching in small circles that left me a puddle under his hands. Rinsing took forever, but I didn’t complain. And when he wet a cloth and scrubbed my face and neck clean, I didn’t fuss about that either. “I don’t know how to do that girly twist thing with the towel.”
“That’s okay.” I pushed upright while he fetched a clean towel from the bathroom, then I slid to my feet and twisted the sopping wet length up on top of my head. “Do you mind if I get out of these clothes?”
I got the feeling he wasn’t budging until I had been tucked in, which was fine with me, but I didn’t want to wear my uniform up to my room. I was too beat to shower, but I wanted pajamas all the same.
“Let me get your boots.” He knelt in front of me and untied the laces, and when his wide palm wrapped the back of my left calf to tug the boot off that foot, my remaining knee almost buckled. “Now the other.”
Once I was standing in my socks, he escorted me to the laundry nook, a former linen closet Dad had converted into a space wide enough to fit a stackable washer and dryer set. There he pulled clean clothes out of the dryer I couldn’t have reached without swaying like a palm tree caught in a hurricane.
“I’ve got it from here.” Cole took all of about two steps before turning his back on me and planting his feet, giving me a view of the muscles flexing in his shoulders while I struggled out of my clothes and into a matching tank and shorts set. “I’m decent.”
Without another word, he picked me up and carried me through the sheeting and up the stairs to my bedroom where he laid me down. I didn’t bother with cover, just rolled onto my side and basked in the luxurious sensation of having an actual mattress beneath me. The problem was, this position gave me an eyeful of the ancient rotary phone presiding over my nightstand, and its silent accusation kicked my heart into a quicker rhythm. I had left it behind, like anyone would steal the ugly thing, like it did me a damn bit of good having it three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year. And yet… having Cole and the phone in the same room together set my skin crawling.
No. That was ridiculous. I was not going to allow a hunk of avocado-green plastic to guilt trip me for having a man in my bedroom. Even if the silver tab on its dial glinted with disapproval under the lights.
I am never drinking this much ever again. Never ever. No way, no how.
“Sleep it off.” Cole stuck out his hand, and for a second I thought he was grabbing for the phone, and I forgot how to breathe, but he gestured at the towel. “I’ll be outside.”
Untangling the twisted fabric from my hair required great effort, and when I passed it over, our fingers brushed. With the phone in my periphery, the wires in my head crossed until the worst possible question popped out of my mouth. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”
Cole stared at the towel concealing our hands like he was visualizing the pinpoints of heat where our fingers touched then dropped it like I’d passed him a bag of snakes. “No.”
He breezed out of the room and clomped down the stairs, slamming the front door on his way back into the darkness beyond the porch. I stared at the discarded towel until its blue and white stripes flashed behind my eyelids with each blink and even those stark lines faded to black.
CHAPTER THREE
Pounding woke me, and it wasn’t in my head. Or at least not all of it. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I touched a clump of tacky hair knotted at my temple. Raking my fingers through the mass didn’t help. The texture was dry and stiff like I had forgotten to use conditioner or…
Hazy memories from last night bombarded me, and I shot upright in bed.
Cole had washed my hair and put me to bed. And recalling that dredged up the reason for his kindness, and my gut twisted so hard I had to lean over the mattress and dry heave. Nothing came up. I was on empty. But the memory of those little teeth had etched themselves behind my eyelids, and there was no amount of blinking I could do to escape their silver glint.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The rhythmic thudding dulled the sharpest edge of my grief, a small mercy, and a headache blossomed when I stood, but I had to get up and investigate all the racket. Surely the crew wouldn’t have started without me. I hadn’t inspected the order or given approval. They had no right to begin without even verifying if I was at home.
I took the stairs two at a time and skidded to a halt in the middle of the living room.
War had smashed through the original bay window while in her true form, that of a colossal alligator-like demon, and taken a chunk of the wall with her. Turns out demons are good at demo. Interior design? Not so much. I had framed out the section in question yesterday so that all the guys had to do was anchor the supports, pop in the new panes, and go. I had planned on doing the trim on my own to save money, but it looked like I had missed the boat. All I could see were dollar signs superimposed over the energy rating stickers.
The front door had been propped open, not that the AC was running, but the violation of my privacy rankled. I stomped onto the porch, glared at the white pickups parked in the yard, and whirled toward the first stooped male figure I spotted with a snarl on my lips. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He took another measurement and drew a pencil line. “Hand me that caulk gun.”
“Santiago?”
“Never mind.” He grunted, his dark brown eyes flashing with annoyance, and reached around me. “I got it.”
“I don’t understand.” All my indignation drained out of the soles of my feet as I stared at the back of his tanned neck. “Why are you here?”
“Word is Mommy and Daddy kissed and made up,” he said, his thin lips curling in a vicious smile, “so you’ve been granted visitation rights.”