The big fix, p.18
The Big Fix, page 18
“What’s wrong?” I asked, sure the person at the front desk was a Connor Slate spy and had reported us and we’d have mere minutes to get back on the road.
He immediately stopped pacing when he saw me and closed the gap between us in three enormous steps. “Where were you?” He reached for my shoulders with both hands and shook them. He was too distracted to wince.
The panic in his eyes threw me for a loop. “I—I was across the street,” I stuttered. I dug my hand into the bag and pulled out a toothbrush. “I wanted to brush my teeth.”
He blinked at the blue plastic stick in my hand, like it took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. “A toothbrush?”
“Yeah. I got you one too. Along with some other stuff.” I dropped my brush back inside and held the bag open for him to see.
He studied the snacks and toiletries and closed his eyes to let out a big breath. “I thought something happened to you. I came out and you were gone.” When he dropped his hands from my shoulders, I immediately regretted their absence.
“Sorry. I was only gone for a second. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“It’s okay. Sorry I yelled at you.”
I softly smiled at him, feeling equally bad for upsetting him and warmed by the fact he cared enough to worry. “It’s okay. Tell me I get to take a shower in the next five minutes, and I’ll forgive you.”
He looked over his shoulder at the motel in all its desperate roadside glory and dug in his pocket. When he pulled out his hand, a single key looped onto a key chain, with a faded 4 on it, hung from his finger. “They only have one nonsmoking room available.” He almost sounded like he was apologizing. His cheeks turned pink, all the way to the tips of his ears.
I tilted my head in confusion, and then remembered. “Ah, right. Nevada. Home of public indoor smoking.”
“Yeah. I told them we’d take it for the night. There’s only one bed—but it’s a king, so . . .”
I suddenly understood why he was blushing so hard. I looked down at our feet and pushed my hair, which had grown limp and oily, behind my ear. “Got it. Well, I’m pretty tired and could probably sleep anywhere, so it’s fine.”
“Right. Me too.” He nodded and pivoted for the car. “We need to take everything inside.”
“Everything?” I asked as he opened the trunk. I wasn’t sure how I felt about sleeping next to a bag of guns. The tall, brooding man slinging the bag over his shoulder, sure, if I had to, but a bag of weapons made me uneasy.
“Yes. Safer to have it with us. We’ll only be here a couple hours anyway. I just need to rest.”
I realized then I had no idea what time it was. Probably close to 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. if we were all the way in Nevada, and Anthony said I’d slept for two hours.
“I can get them,” I told Anthony when he reached for one of the suitcases. I pushed his hand out of the way and heaved the money and the clothes out of the trunk. He let me, likely because the duffel bag looked like it weighed half a ton, and he was already struggling to carry it with his injuries.
Luckily, our room was on the first floor, about ten feet from where we’d parked. When he unlocked the door, a puff of musty but cool air burst out to greet us. The room had one king bed, as advertised, and not much else. A TV sat on a dresser, and two lamps flanked the bed on matching wooden nightstands. The bed’s duvet, with gaudy orange and burgundy stripes, looked fit for Lou’s suitcase. At least several cushy-looking extra pillows were piled at the headboard.
“I want to take a shower,” I said, suddenly bone tired at the thought of actual sleep.
“Me too. You go first.”
I dumped over the bag from the mini-mart onto the foot of the bed and grabbed the lotion, the floral-scented deodorant, a toothbrush, and the toothpaste. “Enjoy the spoils.”
The small bathroom had scratchy towels and a selection of generic shampoo, bodywash, and a milky conditioner, which all smelled exactly the same. But the water was hot, and I didn’t really mind it stinging the cuts at my wrists and ankles if it meant washing off the day. Once my skin was scalded pink and fresh, I dried off and slathered myself with the lotion from the mini-mart. I could already feel the dry air sucking the moisture from my skin. The tiny luxury felt indulgent and lovely.
I put the banana shirt and my underwear back on, but nothing else, seeing as it fell to my thighs and made for a nightgown anyway. When I rejoined Anthony in the room, he’d turned on the TV to a sitcom rerun and propped himself on the bed. His eyes were drooping closed until he heard the sound of my voice.
“All yours,” I said.
He snapped awake and eyed me in my makeshift pajamas, with my hair wrapped in a towel. He muttered something that sounded like Right. Sure, and climbed off the bed. His gaze took a brief tour of my legs before he looked away and stumbled toward the bathroom.
“Do you need help?” I called after him. “With your shirt?”
“No. I got it,” he muttered, and closed the door.
He was in there for an age. Long enough that steam leaked from under the door in wispy white clouds and I wondered if he’d lain down in the tub and had fallen asleep. Perhaps a shower with broken ribs was slow going.
After I treated the largest of my abrasions and cuts with ointment and Band-Aids from the new first aid kit, I noted an ice bucket beside the TV and got an idea. “I’ll be right back!” I called. I removed the towel from my hair and stepped into my pink shoes before slipping back outside. On the way into our room, I’d seen a vending machine and an ice maker, near the office. I filled the bag inside the little bucket with ice and carried it back.
Anthony had emerged from the shower when I returned. I tried to pretend I’d gained an immunity to seeing him in his underwear, but the flutter in my belly said I had not. As did the funny loop my blood took through my veins. He was pulling on a new shirt from the suitcase, this one a solid teal color and still ugly. “Where’d you go?” he asked.
“Ice.” I held up the bucket. “For your ribs. I also have something for that too.” I pointed at the now-exposed gash on his forehead. He’d removed the ripped-dress bandage to shower, and the wound was angry, red, and still wet-looking. “Sit.” I commanded and pointed at the bed.
Perhaps he was simply too tired to protest because he did what I said.
“Leave it open,” I said when he started to button his shirt. “For the ice.” I held up the bag when he gave me a curious look. I crawled onto the bed and knelt on his right side. He propped himself up against the pillows again, with his legs out in front of him. The muscular limbs were miles long and his boxer briefs very short. He set a pillow in his lap, and I ignored the significance of it. “This is going to be cold,” I warned, and gently placed the ice on his abdomen.
He immediately sucked in a breath and tensed.
I grimaced. “How is it?”
“Cold. But nice. Thank you.” His breath was minty and fresh. He’d washed himself with the identical shower products that I had, yet he somehow smelled better. Little water droplets clung to his collarbone, where he’d missed with the towel. It all did a number on my senses.
I stuffed another pillow under the ice to help hold it in place and reached for my other remedy. “Okay, I saw this on a TV show, so don’t sue me if it doesn’t actually work, but since you won’t go for medical help and you need stitches, we’re improvising.”
He dubiously watched me pull the cap off the little plastic bottle. “Superglue?”
“Yes. Supposedly, it’s the same as what they use in the ER.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“Well, it’s what we’ve got. Now hold still.” I leaned closer to him and aimed the bottle’s nozzle at the cut above his eyebrow. I was on my knees, and my bare thigh sat very near his.
“Is this ever going to come off?” He looked up at my hands hovering over his face, nearly going cross-eyed. I felt his warm breath on my skin.
“I don’t know, but a permanent glue patch is better than an infection.”
“Is it? You can clear up an infection with the right drugs. I’m not sure what can be done for glue.”
“Well, either way, this ugly mug of yours will have more character now. Either from a scar or a glue patch.”
“I think I’ll take the former.” He winced when I pinched his skin together to close the wound. “Ouch.”
“Sorry. Almost done.”
He grew quiet while I glued his face back together. His lashes tickled my palm when I got close enough. I felt his eyes studying me and had to concentrate to keep my hands steady.
“There,” I said, once I finished. “Now it needs to dry so you don’t glue yourself to the pillow.” I softly blew on it and felt him twitch. His right hand rested on the pillow in his lap and moved several inches closer to me. “How’s the ice?” I asked between breaths.
“Helping.”
“Good.” I kept blowing. I waved my hand to fan a small breeze.
“You smell like a Popsicle,” he said.
“A Popsicle?”
“Mmm-hmm. One of those orange ones with vanilla ice cream in the middle. I love those.”
“That would be thanks to the mini-mart’s finest available skincare.”
“It smells good.”
The air took on a new charge between us. One that may have always been there, but never at an intensity that felt like standing on a very high cliff and wanting to leap, simply for the thrill of the rush.
“Penny,” he said as I recapped the glue bottle. The lights were low. His eyes soft. My heart trilled somewhere high in my chest.
“What, Anthony?”
He blinked his long lashes. “I want to say I’m sorry. For all of this. I never meant for you to get involved.”
I held his gaze and realized telling him it was okay would be lying because nothing was okay. So instead I did what I most wanted to do in that moment and kissed him.
If he wasn’t expecting it, he didn’t show it. He kissed back almost immediately. So quickly, in fact, I pulled back in surprise and began apologizing in a fluster.
“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean—Was that okay?” My words came out disjointed and messy, and I was mortified, but he looked at me like it was the most ridiculous question he’d ever heard.
“Are you kidding me?” he said, and shoved his hand into my damp hair, palming the back of my head and pulling my mouth back to his.
Our second kiss landed with purpose, and I sank into it. It was hungry and soft and fiercely hot all at once. He bit at my bottom lip and then sucked it between his. I rose on my knees and leaned into him with my hands on his shoulders. His right hand swooped down to my hip. The fabric of the banana shirt slipped beneath his grip as he pulled me closer. I heard the ice crunch between us before I felt the cold, but the feel of his tongue sweeping mine melted it away.
I got greedy and kissed him deeper. He reciprocated, drawing me in like he was drinking me. I nibbled at his lip and slid my hand lower on his chest. It summoned a moan from deep in his throat, which turned into a wince.
At the sound, I pried my hands off and paused. “Sorry!”
His lips were swollen and wet; his cheeks flushed. But he was clearly in pain. “It’s okay.” He reached out for me, but I held back.
“Anthony, I think we should stop.”
“But I don’t want to stop. Do you want to stop?”
“No!” I shook my head. My heart was still pounding. “Not at all. I just wonder if maybe we should come back to this when your ribs aren’t broken.” I indulgently traced my finger over the contours of his chest. The hairs tickled. I bit my lip.
“Please don’t do that.”
“What?” I asked, suddenly embarrassed for taking liberties.
“Bite your lip like that.” He reached up and used his thumb to release it from my teeth, where I’d bitten it again. “It’s unbelievably sexy, and I will end up breaking all my bones tonight if you don’t stop.”
The flush that scorched my cheeks was hotter than a desert summer day. I bashfully looked down and tried to straighten my hair for distraction.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Sorry. I don’t even notice it.”
“I do,” he said, and reached for my chin. He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip in the smoothest, slowest stroke, and I thought I might burst into flames.
I groaned in frustration and flopped my arms on my lap. “Well, now what am I supposed to do? You can’t say things like that and expect me to go to sleep,” I whined.
He softly laughed and adjusted the ice bag. “It’s probably a good idea that we stop, given my state. You just have to hold back like I’ve been doing.”
“You’ve been holding back?”
“Penny, I’ve wanted to kiss you since the candlesticks.”
I was going to die. He was going to kill me. This half-naked man, lying up in bed next to me, with the world’s most kissable lips and melt-me eyes, muttering romantic nothings, would be the end of me. Forget the bag of guns and the whack jobs chasing after us. Anthony Pierce was going to murder me with lust.
“You are impossible,” I said. “Can we kiss for, like, five more minutes, and then go to sleep?”
He laughed and clutched at his side. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Three?”
“Penny.”
“Okay, two. Final offer.”
“Fine. Deal.”
I lay down with a smile. He carefully rolled over on his side and scooted down on the pillows to face me.
“Hi,” he said. His minty breath fluttered against my face.
“Hi.”
“Two minutes,” he warned with a stern look, like he was telling himself as much as me.
I bit my lip and excitedly nodded.
It might have been the best two minutes of my life. His hands, his mouth. The heat of his body as he pulled me close to tangle his legs with mine. It was two minutes so good it erased my awareness we were in a scuzzy motel on the run from kidnappers. I felt completely at peace when we fell asleep together in ugly shirts and our underwear.
I woke when a beam of light cut across my face with a blast of heat. It pulled me from the warm, dreamy fog of sleeping next to Anthony. At one point in the night, I’d woken and felt his hand on my hip and his chest against my back. The slow cadence of his breath had lulled me back into a bottomless sleep, where I’d never felt so safe. Now he wasn’t beside me, and I wondered if it had all been a dream.
I sat up, exhaustion still clawing at me, and shielded the light with my hand. “Anthony?” I said as I blinked the sleep from my eyes. I saw his silhouette at the window, peeking out a slit in the curtains and holding a gun down by his hip. I gasped and pulled the sheet tight to my chest. I was suddenly wide-awake. “What’s wrong?”
At the sound of my alarm, he turned and let go of the curtain. He was fully dressed and looked like he’d been awake for a while. He set the gun on the nightstand and came to sit next to me. “Nothing. But we should get going soon.”
I nervously chewed my lip and felt his eyes studying my face. I could feel that my hair was a tousled mess from sleeping on it wet. I remembered what he’d said about biting my lip and released it from my teeth. “If it’s nothing, then why are you looking out the window with a gun in your hand?”
“I’m only being cautious.” His voice was serious, his eyes hard. The soft, pliable man I’d fallen asleep kissing seemed to be gone.
I tucked my knees up to my chest and squeezed them, remembering why we were in this motel room and feeling foolish for thinking last night was anything other than a stolen opportunity created by the circumstances. “Okay.” I sounded defeated and sad, and I felt an ache in my chest that whatever heat had blossomed between us had died. My vulnerability got the best of me. “Was last night real?” I asked in a quiet voice. I squeezed my knees again.
He slightly leaned back and considered me with a tilt of his head. A layer of scruff a shade darker than yesterday coated his jaw, and I wondered if he normally shaved every day and I’d simply never seen him having skipped one. I rather liked the unkempt look. “It felt pretty real to me.” His eyes flashed with a glint of the flame from the night before.
“Really? I mean, you weren’t just high on expired trunk pills and kissing me because we were stuck here?”
A smile curved half his mouth, and he reached for my hand. “Penny. Since the candlesticks, remember?” He laced his fingers between mine, and a swell of winged creatures swarmed my empty belly.
“Are you sure?”
He reached for my face, his left arm more mobile now, and pulled my lips to his. The kiss was soft and polite, but held a deep hunger that made me want to tackle him. The rough scratch of his chin sent my blood looping dizzily.
“Does that answer your question?” he said in a low growl when he pulled back.
“Uh-huh.” I’d lost the capacity for more sophisticated words.
He kissed my hand that he was still holding and stood from the bed. “Get dressed. We can grab something at the diner before we leave.”
“How much farther are we going?”
“Not much. We’ll be there later today.”
I reeled in surprise, somehow having convinced myself this journey was never-ending. “Really?”
“Yes. I actually need to make a phone call.” He fished the burner phone out of his pocket.
He’d reminded me I needed to make a phone call too, and as much as I wanted to stick around and eavesdrop, I desperately needed to pee, and I had to prepare for what to say to my sister.
By the time I brushed my teeth, washed my face, found another hideous shirt, and blotted the grape-colored bruise on my temple with some probably toxic mini-mart makeup, I was ready to call Libby. Anthony was carting luggage back to the car while I sat on the bed. He’d left the phone at the bed’s foot like he knew I was going to ask to use it. It was 8:00 a.m. My sister and her kids would normally be done with breakfast by now, although I couldn’t say how normal anything was, given the situation.
Libby’s phone number was one of the few I had memorized. She answered on the third ring.
