Which might be why she had an unfortunate tendency to find that characteristic so hot.
But most cocky guys didn’t care about anyone their arrogance rode tank-like over. Caring about getting her in their bed and satisfying their own ego was not the same as caring about her.
Yet here he was, sitting on her floor, awkwardly and carefully trying to stitch together the sleeve of her favorite jacket. Instead of just buying her a new one, and by doing so dismissing what mattered to her as insignificant.
“If you weren’t so annoying, I might like you,” she said.
One corner of his lips kicked up. “Too tepid. Who wants to be liked?”
She rested her head on her folded arms, watching him work. His thigh was warm against her knee, under the table. “First time?” She nodded at the sewing without lifting her cheek off her arms.
“I’m a little OCD about my gear. So not entirely. But now that we can use Steri-Strips, I don’t get nearly the practice sewing in the field that I used to.”
Steri-Strips…for pulling wounds closed instead of setting stitches. She searched his face. “Uh…is that a joke?”
“Dark humor.”
Hmm.
Dark humor filled the kitchens. They were, after all, dealing with dead bodies all the time. But…animal bodies.
Flames and burns and knives and tempers but not bullets.
She dropped her splinted hand under the table and let it rest on his thigh, the thumb and fingertip that were mobile stroking his jeans in a soft, repeated motion.
“You ever seen a magician do one of those tricks where he holds up something tiny—his closed fist or whatever—and then starts pulling a scarf out of it?” Chase said suddenly, roughly, focusing hard on the sewing.
What? She nodded against her arm, waiting.
“And the scarf just pulls and pulls and pulls until silk is flooding everywhere? This impossible amount to have fit into that tiny a space?”
“He’s got it on him all the time. Hiding it up his sleeve or something. That’s the trick.”
Chase pushed that comment away with a motion of his hand. “I kind of like to keep the soft, silky, fragile things in a really tiny space.”
“Things?”
“Emotions,” he said very roughly, trying to push the word away with his hand even as it came out. “Whatever. But it’s like you’ve started pulling. And I’m a little afraid of how much you might pull out.”
Yeah, no freaking kidding. What a perfect analogy. She tightened her belly, to prepare for the blow. “So are you going to run away?”
He gave her a look that said he’d never run from danger in his life. “You wish.”
Well…sometimes, maybe, she wished he would run. It was scary for her, too. He’d brought so much havoc to her life already. What if he got to her? What if she ended up letting soft, fragile things out and he ripped them? Or then ran off with them? Took a casual knife to them without even taking the time to find out if they were important?
Came back and tried to mend them.
“See, the first night,” he said, “that was easy. Hot blonde in leather throwing knives at me…of course I could see you were the woman for me. And trust me, it really was no hardship to go all out after you. But then—”
“I know how hook-ups work,” Vi cut him off. The last thing she needed was to hear him spell out his thought process the next morning. Well, I tapped that and now I’m ready to move on. “I know all about how easy it is for a guy to fall for me and how hard it is for him to deal with the actual me.”
He stopped his work on the leather to look at her a moment. His eyes narrowed. “Pff. You’re easy.”
Vi sat straight up. “I’m what?”
“All I have to do is make you mad. You love being mad. I’m talking about me. I’m hard. In fact, right this second, I can’t figure out how to deal with me at all. If you keep pulling all those emotions out like that, I’m actually”—he dropped his voice dramatically, peering over his shoulder as if to make sure no one could overhear—“deathly afraid I might be complicated.” He shuddered.
“You think you’re more complex than I am?” Vi demanded, outraged.
A tiny smile curved his mouth. “See? I told you you liked to get mad.”
Vi folded her arms, her splint getting in the way. “You are harder to deal with than I am,” she stated, incredulous. She pretty much defined high-maintenance, damn it!
He slanted a glance at her. The creases showed in his cheeks. “I’ve got you wrapped around my little finger,” he bragged outrageously.
Vi pounced up onto her knees. “You have got me wrapped around your little finger?”
He held up one pinky and made a twirling gesture, smug.
“Allow me to demonstrate exactly how simple and easy you are.” Vi leaned forward.
Chase gave her a look of polite interest. While struggling to hide those dimples.
She laid her hand flat on his chest, fulminating.
He looked down at it. His mouth curved like the cat that swallowed the canary.
She pushed.
He didn’t budge.
She pushed harder.
It didn’t even seem to affect him. No yield in his body at all.