Blindsided (2 page)

Suddenly, his body sagged, his eyes closed and he looked like he just wanted to sleep for a week. His anger dissipated, as if he lacked the energy to sustain it. Unfortunately, the change didn’t make him any less attractive. The slight vulnerability just made her want to stroke his face, ease the tension in his jaw line. Before Chelsea had time to ponder this fantasy any further, he resumed his glowering. If she wasn’t mistaken, he growled at her.

Squelching the urge to shake him, Chelsea took a deep breath. All she wanted to do was use his goddamn phone and he was babbling about autographs and having mood swings. Who did he think he was? Ok, so she didn’t spend too much time in this country and was a little behind on current movies. If he were really famous wouldn’t she at least feel that faint glimmer of familiarity? She wasn’t sure how to get through to him. If only she had paid more attention to her psych professor’s lecture about delusions of grandeur.

“Ok, look. For the last time, I’m not here to get an autograph or anything else,” she said in her calmest ‘I’m-not-here-to-hurt-you’ voice. “I just need to use your phone to call my brother. I need to get my car towed and get back to the city. Ok?”

While she spoke, she started edging around him to get nearer the door. She wasn’t above darting in and grabbing the phone before he could catch her. What kind of man would physically evict a helpless woman from his home? He looked her in the face with startling frankness, and even though he moved his body to block her entrance, his face softened. Well, that was a start.

Well, I know you’re a freak, Chelsea wanted to scream. She managed to keep it to herself, but only just. She was willing to ignore his overwhelming strangeness if he would just let her use his freaking phone. With another beleaguered sigh he ushered her into a huge kitchen complete with custom appliances and fresh flowers. At least all this weirdness was keeping her distracted from her anxiety.

###

Nate was pretty sure he’d lost his frigging mind. It was against all his better instincts. They had locked eyes out there in the rain and he’d melted, just a little bit. Apparently, a little bit was enough to make him an idiot. Sure, her eyes were a beautiful mossy green and her face was honest. Those were bad reasons to let his guard down.

Still, it was possible that her car had broken down. And, more remarkable to his ego, it was possible she had no idea who he was. He told himself that her open face was the reason he’d relented and let her in.

Had the fact that he could see her hard nipples through her wet sweater influenced him at all? Well, that too, he admitted. He found himself looking at her little round ass as she dialed the phone, but there was more to it than that. He had given up sex for sex’s sake and no one was going to make him forget it, least of all himself.

He grabbed another cigarette and lit it, hoping the distraction would break his eyes away from her backside. He managed to at least move his eyes up, to the white skin on the back of her neck, but that was as far as he got. Ah well. He took a drag and continued staring. He had never promised himself he couldn’t look at a woman, especially one who was standing soaking wet in his kitchen. She’d look better naked,
he thought before he could stop himself. Yeah, well forget about it, not happening. He let his eyes drop back to her ass all the same. It would be a waste not to.

She turned back to him and he managed to drag his eyes up to eye level before she saw where he’d been looking. Looking was one thing, getting caught was another. She looked nervous and uncertain for the first time since she had drawn herself up full height out front. It had been an adorable maneuver, as if any of her extra height gained by straightening up would close the foot between their heights.

It had been obvious he scared her. Hell, he was intimidating enough to other men, never mind a small woman with a broken car. And that was exactly what she had acted like; a woman with a broken car looking for help, not some groupie looking for a little action and coming up with a lame cover story. She hadn’t giggled while she tried to keep her details straight, hadn’t looked away to cover her lie. Either she was a really good actress or she was telling the truth.

“Um, I can’t get in touch with my brother,” she said, “So, uh, I guess I’ll just go back to my car.”

Her hands fussed with the bottom of her sweater and she chewed on her bottom lip. He almost offered to do it for her. What the hell was wrong with him? Now was not the time to revert to horny teenager.

She looked so lost, so confused, that Nate wondered if it was really all because she couldn’t get in touch with her brother. Why he should give a shit was beyond him, but he did. For one instant, he wanted to pull her to him and tell her everything would be ok. Nothing like a vulnerable woman to bring out the stupidity in a man. A moment later, the look was gone, replaced by a confident look he was pretty sure she pulled on like a mask with a force of will. He had to admit it, he was intrigued. Wonderful.

“You don’t have anyone else to call?” he asked while he stubbed out his cigarette and blew the last of the smoke off to the side.

There had to be a boyfriend, or a husband, or someone, didn’t there? Women like this were not single. Nor were they for guys like him, he thought with a stab of jealousy and aimless anger. This was getting worse every damn second.

“No. My brother’s the only person I know around here.”

He nodded. If he had an ounce of sense left in his head, he would let her walk out his door, into the rain and out of his life. She would get a tow truck or whatever she needed and be out of his sanctuary. But he wasn’t going to do that. Nope, he was going to go and be nice
.
Why? Because of that damn look of confusion and helplessness on her face and the way she hid it. She would sit in her car all night, and he’d be awake thinking about her. If anything happened to her, he’d would hate himself forever. Or, worse, he’d end up out there at three in the morning, trying to figure out how to help her. Better to just do it now and get it over with.

So instead of saying, so long, see you later, he said, “Maybe I can take a look at it. I’m pretty good with cars.”

Her uncertainty showed up again, but then she realized her back was up against a wall as far as her car was concerned. All this passed over her face in an instant. This woman could hide nothing. She really had no idea who he was. That made a difference. A small one, but enough to ease his defenses a bit.

“Ok, um, if you don’t mind,” she said, “It looks like the rain has let up. Maybe we should go now.”

Nate looked out the window, surprised to see the rain had stopped. He had been paying so much attention to her ass that he hadn’t noticed the weather change. It wasn’t sunny by any standards, but it was less soggy and the sky looked vaguely blue. Well, a dark gray that suggested blue to the optimistic viewer, but it was as close as they were liable to get.

Chelsea’s horny little voice insisted on interjecting as they walked back out to the road.
Wanna go in the woods? How about we hit the backseat when we get there?
So far, she’d managed to keep these suggestions to herself. He was, as she kept reminding herself, a bad boy, and bad boys no longer held anything for her. Sure the sex made you look ten years younger, but the crying gave you wrinkles, so it was a wash when it came to including them in part of your beauty regimen.

“What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

She could have been more cheesy, more nosy if she’d put some effort into it, but it would have been hard. Her cheeks burned up and she was glad that the air was cool and crisp now that the rain had gone. The solid wall of clouds was slowly dissipating, allowing patches of actual sky to show through. In the month she had been staying in Seattle with her brother, Chelsea had almost forgotten that the sky was blue.

Nate raised his eyebrows. Whether he didn’t quite understand what she was asking, or he couldn’t believe that she had asked something so utterly ridiculous was unclear.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” he asked.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and had it lit in a series of practiced, fluid movements. Great, he was graceful, too.

Chelsea grabbed his hand before he could get his hand back in his pocket. A jolt of electricity shot through her when their skin met. His was hot to the touch, the flesh beneath it hard and sinewy.

“Could I have one,” she asked, “Please?”

She was suddenly desperate for a smoke, flustered as much by what passed between them as by her stupid question. He glanced back and forth between her hand on his wrist and her face. There was a hint of glare in his blue eyes, but it was covering something much hotter. Was his gruffness hiding lust? That jolt was too strong to have been one sided. He stared at her a few seconds longer, appraising her. She suddenly felt naked and didn’t mind a bit.

“Sure,” he said finally.

He retrieved a cigarette, and to Chelsea’s surprise, leaned closer and put it between her lips and lit it with a strange tenderness. The scent of him surrounded her. Struggling not to close her eyes and breathe him in, Chelsea looked at the ground. She tried not to think about lying under him, burying her nose in his neck and smelling the musky, earthy smell emanating from him. It didn’t work. She’d always had a damnably vivid imagination.

He backed away from her and for a moment she thought she’d embarrass herself completely and follow him, lean her head against his hard chest… Enough, she chastised herself, forcing herself to focus on something besides the heat radiating from him. She tried to focus on the fact that it was very possible he was crazy. What other explanation was there for his insistence that she was there not to use the phone, but to get an autograph?

“You didn’t answer my question. What do you mean by a guy like me and a place like this?”

His look was stern, just bordering on angry, but the emotion didn’t mar his features. His words gave Chelsea the jerk back to reality she needed just the same.

“Well,” Chelsea started, deciding to just go on the offensive, “You can’t tell me you don’t know it’s a little odd to find a large, tattooed man in a little country cottage with beautiful gardens. Walking up the driveway, I swore I was in for tea and cookies with a grandma. Then you appeared.”

She gestured wildly with her hand, taking in Nate Stone in all his ungranny-ish glory. For a second Chelsea thought she had gone too far and ruined her chances of getting her car fixed, but then the glowering look on Nate’s face morphed into a grin. It was a street sexy, lopsided affair that made him look more mischievous than happy. Chelsea’s heart flopped in her ribcage, the glint of teasing promise stealing her breath. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the fizzing hot feeling in her veins. A fizzing hot feeling that had a very distinct center between her legs.

He was attractive enough when he was glowering, but the disarming, boyish grin that flaunted his dangerous charm while suggesting hidden sweetness was brutal. It was the bad boy’s secret weapon and it did her in. She had fallen for it countless times and she had learned her lesson, finally. The grin was an act of war.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, seduction dripping from the damn grin, “I guess I know that. But not many people know I’m here. In fact, only about 5 people know about this place. If you must know, I like to garden. It relaxes me.”

He leaned forward again, enveloping her in the sweetness of being let in on a secret. The revelation of a bad boy’s soft side. Oh, he was good.

“Oh,” Chelsea said, a little dumbstruck. He gardened?

The fact that his grin had sent most of her blood far from her head did not help her ability to think or create a valid response to his words. After struggling through what felt like a thick haze, Chelsea managed to put her thoughts back together and force some of her blood back to her head. She accomplished this mostly by looking at the gravel, rather than at Nate’s face.

“Do you have a stressful job?” Chelsea asked finally.

This was safe ground, something she could relate to that would perhaps take her mind off of Nate’s smile – and the fine ass showcased in his jeans. She had all but written the book on stressful jobs. To hear her mother tell it, her job had nearly killed her. What her mother didn’t know was that Chelsea very nearly died on almost every one of her trips.

Death was no longer a mysterious, vague shape to Chelsea. He was more of a seat mate and she’d grown used to the idea. Odd food, sketchy airplanes that had seen little in the way of maintenance and the constant threat of warring peoples met Chelsea everywhere she went and fully occupied her mind. God, she missed her job.

He looked at Chelsea in disbelief. Either he was crazy, or Nate was famous in enough to expect everyone would recognize him. Politics?
If that’s what’s running for office these days, we have been out of the country waaaay too long,
the little voice said. She’d already discarded the idea that he was a movie star.