For a moment, Carlise considered ignoring the ringing, now that she knew it wasn’t some type of alarm. Answering Riggs’s phone seemed even more wrong than going through his drawers. But the caller was clearly insistent. He or she had called back three times, and she had a feeling they weren’t going to stop until someone answered.
Looking over at the bed, she thought about waking Riggs so he could talk to whoever was calling, but he was still out of it. The noise hadn’t even made him stir.
Making her decision, Carlise clicked on the green button on the front and brought it up to her ear. “Hello?”
There was a tense pause before a very pissed-off-sounding man said, “Who the hell is this and where’s Chappy? You better put him on the phone in two seconds or there’s gonna be a shitload of trouble.”
Swallowing hard at the anger in the man’s voice and realizing her entire body had tensed as if preparing to protect itself, Carlise couldn’t speak for a moment.
“I’m serious. Who are you, and why are you answering Chappy’s phone? Where is he?”
Carlise frowned. “Who’s Chappy?” she blurted.
“Who’s Chappy?” the man echoed. “Shit. I’ll ask again. Who the hell are you, and why do you have my friend’s phone?”
“I’m Carlise. Is your friend Riggs?”
There was yet another beat of silence on the other end of the line before the man asked, “Riggs?”
“Yeah. That’s what he told me his name was.”
“Wow. Okay. No one calls him that. But you still haven’t said what you’re doing there and why you’re answering the phone instead of him.”
“He’s sick. Or he was. He’s getting better now,” Carlise told the mystery man. The longer they spoke, the less her voice shook. She wasn’t sure, but considering the man was so concerned about Riggs, it made her think he might be one of the three guys Riggs had been calling for when he was delirious.
“He’s sick? What’s wrong with him?”
“He had a fever for a few days. But it finally broke just this afternoon. Are you . . . Cal, Bob, or JJ?” she asked hesitatingly.
“JJ. How’d you know my name? Or the others?”
“Riggs was calling for you. During his fever, he had nightmares. He’d wake up and cry out, wanting to make sure you were safe. I just assumed . . .”
“Put him on the phone,” the man ordered.
“Um . . . ,” Carlise hedged, looking at the bed where Riggs was sleeping. His mouth was open slightly and his limbs were starfished, so he took up nearly the entire mattress.
“I mean it. Put him on right now, or I’m coming up there—with Cal and Bob—and we’ll find out firsthand who the hell you are and what you’ve done to our friend.”
“I haven’t done anything to him,” Carlise protested. “He’s fine. Well, he will be now, I think. And it’s still snowing.”
“I don’t care if there’s an alien invasion and the Earth is burning from an apocalypse. If you’ve hurt Chappy, or done anything to incapacitate him, there’s nowhere you can hide. We’ll fucking find you. Do you hear me?”
Damn. This guy was intense! Despite his threats, a tendril of jealousy swam through Carlise’s veins. To have someone that loyal, that concerned about her well-being, wasn’t a concept she was familiar with.
Yes, her mom loved her, but she was fairly meek when it came to speaking her mind or sticking up for herself and others. Of course, the abuse she’d suffered for years had made her that way. Still, there’d been many times in her life when Carlise had wished her mom was more assertive.
Her best friend, Susie, was someone Carlise could count on. She’d been her rock ever since the stuff with Tommy had begun . . . but she still couldn’t imagine her being as forceful as JJ in wanting to talk to his friend.
“He’s sleeping,” she told the man as she stepped toward the bed. “But I’ll try to wake him up.”
“There’d better not be any try about it,” the man said under his breath.
“Riggs?” Carlise said as she sat on the mattress.
The second her fingers touched his shoulder, Riggs moved, rolling until he’d thrown his arm over her lap, one of his legs over hers, and buried his face against her hip, as he’d done a few times in the last couple of days.
As much as she loved how he immediately turned to her, she really needed him to wake up and talk to his friend. She had no doubt JJ would somehow make his way up to the cabin if he needed to, if only to make sure Riggs wasn’t being held hostage and tortured.
“Riggs!” she said, louder this time, trying to rouse him.
“Ummmm,” he sighed.
Carlise froze as his hand eased up her thigh to her hip—then under the shirt she wore.
He’d never done that before. His hand seemed huge on her waist, and his thumb brushed against the sensitive skin of her side in a slow caress.
It felt good. Better than good. Her nipples immediately hardened, and the sudden longing for his hand to move higher was almost a physical ache.
“Riggs, JJ is on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”
His hand stopped moving as her words sank in. His head tilted back, and he stared up at her. They stayed frozen for a heartbeat, his warm hand on her bare skin, his leg pressing against her own, his gaze suddenly piercing in its intensity.
“What?” he asked in a croak.
“Your friend. JJ. He’s on the phone. He’s worried about you. You’ve been sick for days, and he wants to make sure I haven’t gone all Misery on you and tied you to the bed or something. He’s threatening to come up here if he doesn’t get to talk to you. And trust me, that wouldn’t be safe. The storm is still crazy out there, and there’s at least two feet of snow on the ground. The drifts are probably double that. I’m not sure he could make it if he tried . . . although I’m guessing that wouldn’t stop him. Please, can you wake up enough to reassure him that you’re okay, and I’m not holding you hostage or something?”
Carlise knew she was babbling, and that JJ could hear every word she was saying, but she was more nervous about the way she felt with Riggs wrapped around her than she was about this JJ person’s opinion of her.
Taking a deep breath, Riggs removed his hand from under her shirt and rolled over onto his back, breaking their physical contact.
Carlise felt almost cold when he held out his hand for the phone.
This was it. The beginning of their end. Not that there’d ever been anything between them, actually. Not really. He’d been delirious, for God’s sake. It was immoral and ridiculous to think there’d been any kind of connection while the guy was out of his mind.
She was starting to scoot off the bed, to give Riggs as much privacy as she could in the one-room cabin—maybe she’d go into the bathroom—when his hand shot out and wrapped around her thigh, holding her in place.
Carlise froze, a frown on her face as she stared down at her leg, where Riggs was holding her. Vaguely, she knew she could break his grip, but she was so startled that she simply sat still.
“JJ?” Riggs said in a husky voice after he’d brought the phone up to his ear.
Carlise couldn’t hear his friend’s side of the conversation, but she held her breath, hoping both men would be reassured after speaking with each other.
“Yeah . . . I feel like crap . . . uh-huh . . . I don’t know . . . what day is it? Seriously? Damn. Yeah, I felt it coming on when I heard something on my porch. Went out to investigate and saw a pathetic dog. It wanted me to follow it. I did, and that’s when I found Carlise.”
He met her gaze, and Carlise inhaled deeply. She’d been wondering what in the world had brought a very sick Riggs out into the storm. It seemed the dog truly had saved her. He’d led Riggs right to her.
She was extremely relieved that he seemed to remember. Glad she wouldn’t have to explain who she was and why she was in his cabin in the middle of a storm.