After having turned Effie’s advice over and over in my head, I’d determinedly shoved the bitter anger that was desperate to take hold of me to one side, and clawed my way back to my fighting spirit.
My pulse raced at the sound of Caine’s footsteps coming up the stairs. The louder those footsteps grew, the harder my heart beat.
Suddenly he was in my doorway looking bone-weary. Like always, that aching pang made itself known in my chest at the sight of him. “Hey,” I said.
He gave me a tired smile. “Hey back. How was today?”
I shrugged. “Boring. How was your day?”
His face darkened. “Still nothing.”
“You’ll get him.”
Caine’s eyes flared with surprise that quickly transformed into gratitude. “Can I get you anything?”
I took a deep breath. Here goes. “How would you feel about vegging out with me? We could order takeout. Watch a movie.”
He hesitated.
“Oh, if you have work, I totally get it.” I smiled my way through the disappointment.
“No.” He shook his head. “It can wait. Vegging out with you sounds great. What do you feel like ordering in?”
I hid my pleased grin and shrugged. “You choose. Movie too.”
Not too long later Caine was stretched out on the bed beside me. He’d changed out of his suit and was now in sweats and a T-shirt. Chinese takeout boxes were strewn across the middle of the bed between us, and we were watching an old Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.
“Now, see?” I pointed to the screen with my chopsticks. “If you could do that you could quite possibly rule the world.”
Caine gave a huff of laughter. “What? I’m that close? I just need to learn how to do jump box splits and land on a counter in that position?”
“Yes!” I insisted. “Then total world domination will follow.”
“Then look out, world, I’m coming.”
I giggled. “You can’t do box splits.”
He threw me a mock-insulted look. “I can do anything I put my mind to, baby.”
Pretending not to be thrilled at the return of the endearment, I shook my head in amusement. “You know, your lack of confidence is really quite embarrassing. You should work on that.”
Caine just grinned and dug into some of my moo shu pork.
I slanted him a circumspect look.
Effie was right.
I could do this.
It was all about stealth.
I stealthed the hell out of Caine over the next week.
I was getting around a little better now. The doc had said I was supposed to get up and about—gentle exercise, he called it—and I was hanging out downstairs a lot more. Caine was growing progressively more frustrated as he and the police hit a brick wall on the leads for my attacker. I knew wanting to be there for me was taking its toll on his work too. The lack of late nights at the office and lack of business trips had to mean someone else was covering for him, and I knew he was enough of a control freak to hate that.
That meant that when he returned home every evening he wore his dark mood like a black shroud around him. He only ever began to relax once he was out of his suit and kicking back with me to watch movies. We did a lot of movie watching and talking. Yet we never talked about anything serious.
I didn’t know if the lack of gravity in our conversations was what was impeding my stealth attack on Caine, but as far as I could see, despite our closeness he still wasn’t any nearer to letting me in.
I thought perhaps I was being too stealthy, so one night while we were watching the Brad Pitt movie about Jesse James I decided to drop the stealth and go in for the kill.
Caine was sitting upright, his long legs stretched out before him on the coffee table. I lay at the other end of the sofa with my legs sprawled across his lap. I studied his profile while he watched the movie and, if I wasn’t wounded, going in for the kill would involve a far more physical approach.
Being verbally direct would just have to do.
“Can you deal with this?” I blurted out, meaning could he deal with just friendship between us.
Caine turned to me and I knew he heard something in my voice that alerted him to what I meant. His whole body grew taut. “Alexa.”
I smirked unhappily. “I’m always ‘Alexa’ when you’re not happy with me.”
“Not true.” His eyes glinted and my body flushed.
Oh yeah. Sometimes I was “Alexa” in bed.
“Speaking of …”
He looked back at the screen. “Don’t ruin this. Outside these walls, life is fucked right now. This here … it’s the only thing I have. Don’t ruin it.”
I hesitated, wanting to give him what he wanted since he was caring for me. But I couldn’t. “This here … it isn’t real.”
“Bullshit,” he snapped, glaring at me. He seemed genuinely affronted by my assessment of our friendship. “It’s the only real—” He cursed and cut off his words before returning his gaze to the television.
“If it was real, there wouldn’t be secrets between us.”
Caine’s answer was to gently remove my legs from his lap and walk across the vast room. He disappeared upstairs and all the while my stomach churned with anxiousness.
When he returned thirty minutes later he was dressed in a shirt and slacks, his hair freshly washed and brushed.
“I’m going out,” he threw over his shoulder before grabbing his car keys.
The door slammed shut behind him.
I closed my eyes and the movement put pressure on the tears that were filling them. They scored tracks down my cheeks and I burrowed my face into the couch so I could muffle my sobs.
A minute or so later I jerked at the gentle touch on my shoulder and peered out from under my hair to find Effie there. She was perched on the sofa, gazing at me compassionately. “Caine asked me to come sit with you while he went out.”
I shifted around with care so I could rest my head on her lap and I just cried harder, hating that the bastard had the power to hurt me so badly.
CHAPTER 29
“Well, it all looks good. No sign of infection,” Liz said.