Heroes Are My Weakness: A Novel

She’d barely managed a step before he’d planted himself in front of her, his body an immovable wall of hard tendon and solid muscle. “You have two options,” he said. “You either need to get off the island . . .”

Leaving him the cottage? No way was she doing that.

“. . . or,” he said, “you can level with me and let me try to help.”

The offer seemed so genuine, so seductive. But instead of burying her face in his sweater as she wanted to, she channeled Crumpet at her most peevish. “What do you care? You don’t even like me.”

“I like you very much.”

He said it with a straight face, but she wasn’t buying. “Bull.”

One of those dark arched eyebrows inched upward. “You don’t believe me?”

“I do not.”

“Okay, then.” He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You’re kind of a mess. But . . .” His voice turned soft and husky. “You’re a woman, and that’s what I need. It’s been a long time.”

He was playing games. She could see it in his eyes, but that didn’t prevent the hot kick of her senses. The sensation was unwelcome and unsettling, but understandable. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed sexual fantasy come to life right from her books, and she was a tall, thin, thirty-three-year-old woman with a peculiar face, berserker hair, and a fatal attraction to men who weren’t as noble as they seemed. She fought his black magic with a crucifix of sarcasm. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I’ll take my clothes off right now.”

He was all inky silk and plush black velvet. “Too cold out here. We need a warm bed.”

“Not really.” Shut up! Just shut the hell up! “I’m plenty hot enough. At least that’s what I’ve been told.” She tossed her hair, grabbed her backpack, and swept past him.

This time he let her go.


WITH SOMETHING HALFWAY BETWEEN A grin and a grimace, Theo watched the stable door slam shut. He shouldn’t have baited her, even if she was in on the game. But those big eyes kept sucking him in, making him want to play games. Have a little dirty fun. There was also something about the way she smelled, not of the ruthlessly expensive perfumes he’d grown so used to, but basic bar soap and fruity drugstore shampoo.

Dancer nudged him in the shoulder. “I know, fella. She got me good. And it’s my own fault.” His horse poked him in the jaw in agreement.

Theo put away the tack and filled Dancer’s bucket with fresh water. Last night, when he’d tried to get into the laptop Annie had left at the house, he couldn’t break her password. For now, her secrets were her own, but he couldn’t let that go on much longer.

He needed to stop messing with her. Besides, baiting her the way he’d just done seemed to throw him off balance more than it bothered her. The last thing he wanted on his mind right now was a naked woman, let alone a naked Annie Hewitt.

Having her on Peregrine again was like being shoved back into a nightmare, so why did he look forward to being with her? Maybe because he found a certain bizarre safety in her company. She didn’t possess any of the polished beauty he was always drawn to. Unlike Kenley, Annie had a quirky amusement park of a face. Annie was also smart as a whip, and although she wasn’t needy, she didn’t present herself as being indomitable, either.

Those were her good points. As for the bad . . .

Annie regarded life as a puppet show. She had no experience with soul-crushing nights or despair so thick it clung to everything you touched. Annie might deny it, but she still believed in happy endings. That was the illusion trapping him into wanting to be with her.

He grabbed his jacket. He needed to start thinking about the next scene he couldn’t seem to write instead of the naked body lurking underneath Annie’s heavy sweaters and bulky coat. She wore too damned many clothes. If it were summer, he’d see her in a bathing suit, and his writer’s imagination would be satisfied enough so that he could move on to more productive thoughts. Instead he kept conjuring up images of the skinny teenage body he barely remembered and curiosity about what it looked like now.

Horny bastard.

He gave Dancer one last pat. “You’re luckier than you know, pal. Living without a set of balls makes life a lot less complicated.”


ANNIE SPENT A FEW HOURS researching the oldest of the art books she’d found in the bookcase, but none of them turned out to be rare, not the David Hockney volume, or the Niven Garr collection, or Julian Schnabel’s book. When she’d had enough frustration, she helped Jaycie clean.

Jaycie had been quieter than usual all day. She looked tired, and as they moved into Elliott’s office, Annie ordered her to sit down. Jaycie propped her crutches against the arm of the leather couch and sagged into the sofa. “Theo sent a text telling me to make sure you take the Range Rover back to the cottage tonight.”

Annie hadn’t told Jaycie about getting shot at, and she didn’t intend to. Her purpose was to make Jaycie’s life easier, not add to her worries.

Jaycie tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear. “He also told me not to send up dinner tonight. That’s the third time this week.”

Annie moved the vacuum to the front windows and said carefully, “I haven’t invited him, Jaycie. But Theo does what he wants.”

“He likes you. I don’t understand it. You say terrible things about him.”

Annie tried to explain. “He doesn’t like me. What he likes is giving me a hard time. There’s a big difference.”

“I don’t think so.” Jaycie pulled herself back up and fumbled with her crutches. “I’d better go see what Livia is up to.”

Annie gazed after her in dismay. She was hurting the last person in the world she wanted to upset. Life on an almost deserted island was getting more complicated by the day.


THAT EVENING, JUST BEFORE SHE went to get her coat, Annie saw Livia pull a footstool across the kitchen floor, climb up on it, and push a rolled tube of drawing paper into Annie’s backpack. She intended to investigate as soon as she got to the cottage, but the first thing she saw when she opened the door was Leo sprawled on the couch with a drinking straw tied around his arm like a drug user’s tourniquet. Dilly lounged at the other end, a tiny paper cylinder rolled like a cigarette dangling from her hand, her legs crossed like a man’s, ankle over knee.

Annie yanked off her hat. “Will you leave my puppets alone?!”

Theo wandered out from the kitchen, a lavender dish towel tucked in the waistband of his jeans. “Until now, I didn’t know I had such bad impulse control.”

Annie hated the thrum of pleasure she felt at the sight of him. Still, what woman with a heartbeat wouldn’t enjoy feasting her eyes on a man like him, lavender tea towel and all? She punished him for his ridiculous good looks by getting snooty. “Dilly would never smoke. She specializes in preventing substance abuse.”

“Admirable.”

“And you’re supposed to be out of here by the time I get home.”

“Am I?” He looked vague, a matinee idol prone to memory lapses. Hannibal wandered out from the kitchen and draped himself over Theo’s shoe.

She gazed at the cat. “What’s your familiar doing here?”

“I need him while I work.”

“To help cast spells?”

“Writers have this thing for cats. You couldn’t possibly understand.” He stared down his perfectly sculpted nose at her, his expression so deliberately condescending that she knew he was trying to rile her. Instead she rescued her puppets from their newfound vices and took them back to the studio.

The boxes were no longer on the bed but set along the wall underneath the taxi mural, which her research had proven to be worthless, like so much else. She’d begun going through the boxes’ contents, inventorying everything inside, but the only interesting items she’d found so far were the cottage guest book and her Dreambook, the name she’d given the scrapbook she’d kept when she was a young teen. She’d filled its pages with her drawings, Playbills from shows she’d seen, photos of her favorite actresses, and reviews she’d written herself of her own imaginary Broadway triumphs. It was depressing to see how far short her adult life had fallen from the fantasies of that young girl, and she put it away.

The smell of something delicious wafted in from the kitchen. After dragging a comb through her hair and dabbing on a little lip gloss because she was pathetic, she returned to the living room, where she found Theo lounging on the couch in the same place he’d positioned Leo earlier. Even from across the room, she could see he was holding one of her drawings. “I’d forgotten you were such a good artist,” he said.

Seeing him examining something she’d done to entertain herself made her uncomfortable. “I’m not any good. I do it for fun.”

“You’re selling yourself way short.” He looked at the drawing again. “I like this kid. He’s got character.”

It was a sketch she’d done of a studious young boy with straight, dark hair and a cowlick sprouting like a fountain from the crown of his head. Bony ankles showed beneath the cuffs of his jeans, as if he might be going through one of those preteen growth spurts. Square-rimmed glasses sat on a lightly freckled nose. His shirt was buttoned wrong, and he wore an adult watch that was too big for his wrist. Definitely not great art, but he had potential as a future puppet.

Theo tilted the paper, looking at it from another angle. “How old do you think he is?”

“No idea.”

“Twelve, maybe. Struggling with puberty.”

“If you say so.”

As he set the drawing down, she realized he’d poured himself a glass of wine. She began to protest, but he gestured toward the open bottle on the Louis XIV chest. “I brought it down from the house. And you can’t have any until you answer a few questions.”

Something she really didn’t want to do. “What are we having for dinner?”

“I’m having meat loaf. And not just any meat loaf. One with a little pancetta tucked inside, two special cheeses, and a glaze with a mystery ingredient that might be Guinness. Interested?”

Even thinking about it made her mouth water. “I might be.”

“Good. But you’re going to have to talk first. That means time’s run out, and you’re up against the wall. Decide right now whether or not you’re going to trust me.”