He’d gone? Just like that? Not even arguing with her about it? The guy who could argue his way out of Chateau d’If, probably via hot sex with the prison warden’s wife?
She scowled and flung herself on the couch and stupidly started crying again.
Damn it. She scrubbed her hands over her eyes and stared at the ceiling, taking deep breaths.
After about ten minutes of trying not to contemplate the ruins of her reputation, she heard another knock.
Only masses of flowers were visible through the peephole. She hesitated.
But Lina or Célie might come by. In fact, she was kind of expecting—wanting? not wanting?—to have to deal with the sympathy and fury of her friends as soon as they could get to her.
So it might be them, right? She could tell herself that, anyway, as an excuse to open the door.
Boxing gloves bounced against it, where Chase must have left them dangling on the knob the last time.
This time, he shoved his foot in the door immediately, bracing it open as he lowered his arms to proffer the masses of flowers.
“What did you do, rob a florist?” she said. I hate you. But the cold and the tears must have defeated her, because she couldn’t get up the physical courage to break her other hand on him. And she’d be damned if she’d dull any more of her blades on him. She’d started her knife roll when she was fifteen. Buying her first precious blades, adding to it as she could, keeping everything carefully honed, her knives, her work, her life.
He sure as hell didn’t deserve to have any more of them dulled against the wall by his head.
“They didn’t have any bouquets I thought were worth you,” he said, so matter-of-factly it was confusing. It should have been a dorky attempt at a compliment. But it sounded as if he was just saying what he meant. “So I went for quantity to try to make up for it.” He thrust them at her.
She tried to close the door on him.
He blocked it with one big shoulder. “Hone—I mean, swee—I mean, Mademoiselle Gorgeous.”
She arched her neck and stared at the ceiling, counting to a dozen. The number of roses in one bouquet. The others were more creative—gorgeous combinations of flowers that she recognized from the display in front of the florist just down the street. Maybe she could stuff them all down his throat. “You can say ma’moiselle.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to pronounce the D if it’s too hard for you.” Although the careful four chunky consonants and drawled vowels of his attempt at mademoiselle were starting to grow on her somehow. If she didn’t hate him, they might be charming.
He stared at her a second. “I hate your damn language.” He thrust the flowers right into her chest, so that she had to either take them or drop them. “Except when you speak it. When you speak it, it’s beautiful.”
He let go of the flowers.
She dropped them.
“Damn it, Vi.” He bent to pick them up. “Now you’re just being rude.”
“You ruined my life.”
“I sav—” He bit the word off abruptly, turning his head away, jaw set.
“And on top of that, you used me!”
“I…used you?” For the first time since she’d met him, anger flared in those blue eyes. “Last I checked you had a really good time!”
She tried to slam the door on him again. It bounced off his shoulder.
“Look, nobody made you take me home last night! I would have been happy to take you out for a while first.”
She grabbed one of the bouquets from him and hit him over the head with it.
“You’re gorgeous!” He pulled the bouquet away, white petals from it clinging to his hair and on one cheek. “You’re so damn fine. Hell, you are fine. You’re so fine it makes my brain shrink little bitty and then explode.” He pressed his fingers into his forehead and then flared them out to indicate. “If you wanted to make me court you, you think I wouldn’t have done that? You chose to go fast. I did not use you.”
She glared at him, both insulted and stymied. Because she made all her own choices, and made them proudly. And it was true that she’d chosen him.
Knowing he was arrogant, cocky, uncrushable, stubborn, and doing something that was really out of line, knowing that he was challenging her and teasing her and deliberately misleading her, she had still taken him home. Because all the adrenaline in her just focused on him like he was where her energy could find its home. Because he was deliciously hot...and she was an idiot.
Plus, in her defense, she had watched way too many Hollywood films and halfway thought his behavior was normal for an American.
She made his brain shrink little bitty and then explode?
His blue gaze drifted over her, and all that hard energy slowly softened out of him. “You look like you could use a cuddle or a punching bag. I have more practice at the punching bag role, but I could definitely try the cuddle.”
“I hate you,” she said. “Go away.” But she didn’t try to close the door on him again, just turned around and trudged back into her apartment. Her slippers shuffled.