Broken (10 page)

THE door slammed shut in her face.

Part of her wanted to be pissed off.

Part of her was scared, even though she didn’t want to be.

But there was an even larger part of her that wanted to cry.

God, his eyes
. . . The look in his eyes wasn’t one she ever would have expected to see from him. Desperation. Fear. Pain. Fury. Shock. His pupils had been mere pinpricks, and the hand gripping her wrist had been cold, clammy with sweat. And shaking . . . he’d been shaking.

Compassion, concern rose within her. She wanted to knock, wanted to follow him inside and learn what had put him in that state. Soothe it. Fix it.

But even though she usually sucked at doing the wise thing, self-preservation wouldn’t let her do what she wanted to. She’d just looked into the eyes of a man on the edge, and she wasn’t going to push him over.

She scrubbed her hands over her face and sagged back against the door. “I should have moved. The minute I looked at him, I should have just disappeared.”

It had been two weeks since she’d moved into the little apartment on the third floor of Theresa’s house. Two weeks of peace and quiet, the nights uninterrupted by shouts or sirens. Two weeks in which she’d only caught the occasional glimpse of her sexy neighbor.

Wounded warrior.
She remembered thinking that the very first time she’d seen him, thinking it, then dismissing it because it didn’t go with the man. Except she’d been wrong.

He was a wounded warrior and that blunt, gruff exterior, those blank expressions, were nothing but a mask. Something had shattered that mask today and when she looked into his gray eyes, she saw a deep, screaming hell.

Pain. A pain so deep and cold, it left her heart aching. With that mask shattered, when Sara looked into his eyes, she saw a million wounds, the slow-bleeding kind that led to festering and death.

Something hot touched her cheek and she reached up, startled to realize she was crying. Taking a deep breath, she wiped the tears away and then looked at her wrist. It was already bruising. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her—she knew that as well as she knew that if he
had
been trying to hurt her, she wouldn’t have been able to stop him.

There had been too much strength, too much speed, too much power in him. She’d touched his shoulder and in the blink of an eye, he had her pinned against the wall. It left her shaken how quickly he’d moved, how quickly he had trapped her.

She’d worked too damn hard to let somebody take her off guard like that. To let somebody get in close enough to hurt her, and she hadn’t so much as tried to strike back. Of course, she suspected fighting back would have been an exercise in futility.

Once more, she found herself wondering what in the hell it was he did. He didn’t set her cop radar off, but he sure as hell wasn’t the handyman type that Theresa had made him out to be.

Good advice. Shoving off the door, she started forward. Her bare foot brushed up against something and she glanced down, saw the large white envelope with the big UPS symbol emblazoned across it.

Scowling, she stooped and picked it up. That envelope was why she’d followed Quinn down to his apartment when he hadn’t heard Theresa calling him. She’d offered to run it down to him. With a sigh, she trudged back up the stairs.

She’d let Theresa handle the surly bastard.

But even as she thought it, she kicked herself.

He wasn’t a surly bastard.

He was . . .

Good advice.

ONCE upon a time, Sara had been very good at giving advice. She didn’t do it much now. The life she now led wasn’t the sort of life that put her in contact with many who would listen, even if quite a few of them could use it.

Still, she knew good advice when she heard it. Too damn bad she wasn’t very good at
following
good advice.

She’d told herself to avoid Quinn Rafferty. She’d told herself she just needed to move. But she hadn’t moved, she didn’t plan on doing so just yet, and now she was sitting in the backyard, watching one Quinn Rafferty and wondering about him. She was doing the exact opposite of avoiding him.

Brooding, she sat in the shadows on the deck, watching the man as he paced the backyard. She’d been sitting out there, just enjoying the cool night, staring up at the sky while the full moon played peekaboo behind a bank of clouds.

Then he was there. She hadn’t heard him leave his apartment, hadn’t heard the door shut. He moved too damn quietly. She pegged his height at a little over six feet, and that body of his was hard, solid muscle—he shouldn’t be able to move quiet as a cat, but he did. Restless as a cat, too, it seemed. He had been pacing and prowling the backyard for a good ten minutes.

She sighed and pushed up off the lounge chair. As she moved to the railing, he stopped his pacing and stared at her. She’d been wondering if he knew she was out there, but as their eyes met, she knew the answer without even asking.

He’d known she was there. Known she was there and had been ignoring her. Somehow, she had a feeling this guy was aware of just about everything that happened around or near him.

It was a thought that bothered her.

A lot. Sara had gotten by thus far because most people only looked at the surface, but that wasn’t Quinn. He looked below the surface and somehow, she suspected that the lies that fooled so many would be wasted on him.

Silence hung between them as they stared at each other. He started toward her, and Sara had to squash the urge to back away, dart inside the house, and run up to her apartment, lock herself inside. Maybe shove a chair in front of the door for good measure.

Five feet away, he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said, his words flat and hard.

Remembering the pain she’d seen in his eyes, she had to steel herself not to reach out to him. Whatever had been going through his head earlier, whatever ugly secrets his past held, she suspected he needed compassion and understanding and kindness. Things that he’d probably see as pity.

“You should be,” she said with a sniff. She was tempted to poke her lip out for good measure, but restrained herself.

He didn’t react. Just watched her. Then he nodded and went to turn away.

Sara did the same, brushing her hair back from her face with a sigh.

Halfway to the door, he said her name.

Sara stopped and turned back around, waiting as he mounted the steps. A faded blue T-shirt stretched across his chest and shoulders, clinging to his muscled form. His blond hair fell into his face and her fingers itched to brush it back.

As he moved into the pool of light cast by the porch light, she tucked her hands into her back pockets. He stopped in front of her, closer this time. Too close. No more than two feet away.

Without saying a word, he held out his hand.

Sara frowned at him.

“Let me see your wrist,” he said.

There was an odd strain to his voice, and he was so tense, the air around him all but vibrated.

“It’s fine,” she said huskily.

“Let me see.”

He’d stand there all night if that was what it took. Rolling her eyes, Sara pulled her hand out of her pocket and held her arm out in front of her. There was a ring of dark mottled bruises around her wrist.

His breath hissed out between his teeth. “Fuck.”

“It looks worse than it feels.” She started to let her hand drop back to her side, but he caught it in his hand, gently lifting it up so he could see it better.

A perfectly innocent touch, but for some reason, her heart started to race. She shot him a look from under her lashes. That brooding look on his face was entirely too appealing. Sexy brooders were dangerous.

Mouth suddenly dry, she tugged against his hold and said, “Look, I bruise easy. I always have.”

He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t release her wrist, either. He turned it this way and that, like he was memorizing every last detail of the bruise. His thumb stroked over the flesh and he asked, “Does it hurt?”

“Some, but don’t worry about it.” Awkwardly, she shrugged.
Geez, get your hormones under control.
Why in the world had her libido just now decided to wake up? She shot him another nervous glance and this time, he looked away from her wrist at the same time.

Their gazes locked. Her heart skipped another beat and she tugged once more on her wrist. He finally let go and she immediately stepped back. It didn’t help, putting that distance between them. Hell, it didn’t even help that he’d let go of her wrist. She could still feel his hand, warm, his palm calloused, the slow glide of his thumb stroking over her flesh.

Forcing a smile, she said, “I’ll just have to make sure I remember not to come up behind you anymore.”

“Trust me, you’re better off just staying the hell away from me period.” Something flashed across his face.

For a brief second, she caught another glimpse at what lay behind that mask he wore, but then it was gone. Quietly, she said, “You didn’t mean to do it, Quinn.”

“Tell me something, Sara,” he said, a cold, ugly smile curling his lips. “Do those words just come naturally to females?”

“What do you mean?”

A weird light glinted in his eyes as he stared down at her. “ ‘
You didn’t mean to do it
,’ ” he quoted back, his voice thick with mockery. “You’ve got a bruise on you that I bet hurts like hell no matter what you say and how do you respond? ‘
You didn’t mean to do it
.’ It’s got to be second nature or something. I’ve heard that line one too many times—a woman gets banged up by a man and she just excuses it away.”

That hit a little too close to home. She buried her instinctive response down deep and calmly said, “I’ve got a bruise on my wrist, sugar. It’s just a bruise and I can guarantee you I’ve done worse to myself just putting away groceries. It’s a pretty far sight from you belting me.”

He flinched. Like she’d belted
him
. His mouth spasmed and he turned on his heel.

Unable to stop herself, she reached up, touched his shoulder.

He froze.

Moving to stand in front of him, she tipped her head back and studied him. That beautiful face of his, all hollows and angles, was cast into shadow.

“It was an accident—you didn’t know I was there and I caught you off guard. You can’t really stand there and tell me that you
meant
to put a bruise on me.”

“Doesn’t matter if I
meant
it or not,
sugar
,” he said sarcastically. “I did put a bruise on you.”

“Yeah. You did. And you’re beating yourself up over it enough. I don’t really see any reason to add to it.” Planting her hands on her hips, she glared at him. “If it would make you feel better, I suppose I could wail a few times, squeeze out a few tears, or slap you.”

He blinked, looking a little startled. Then he smiled—at least she
thought
it was a smile, a faint twist of his lips, there and then gone almost as quick as it had happened.

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Wanna bet? You know what, come to think of it, it might be therapeutic for both of us if I slapped you once.”

“Oh, I bet you could slap me . . . although I got a feeling you’d be more likely to punch than slap.” He averted his gaze, staring off behind her. Big shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath. When he looked back at her, he had that blank, composed mask settled firmly back in place. “But I was talking about wailing or squeezing out a few tears. I don’t see you doing them on command.”

“Good point. But if I get mad enough, I tend to cry sometimes. And when I’m pissed off, I can wail like a banshee.”

That faint grin twisted his lips again.

It made her heart skip a beat or three. Man, she wondered. Did he ever smile?
Really
smile? She was probably better off not knowing, though. She didn’t know if her heart could handle it.

“Is that your subtle way of telling me that I’m pissing you off?” he asked.

“I’m not much for subtle. If you piss me off, I’ll let you know.” She rolled her eyes and said, “Stop beating yourself up already. It
was
an accident—we both know that. If you’d intended to hurt me, if you didn’t care that you had, you wouldn’t be beating yourself up over it and you wouldn’t be warning me to stay away.”

In the faint silvery light cast by the moon, she could just barely make out his face, his eyes dark and unreadable, his mouth unsmiling. A muscle jerked in his jaw and he said harshly, “You don’t know me.”

“No . . . I don’t. But I know the kind of men who get off on hurting others, and I know the kind of women who’ll just excuse it away. You’re not that kind of man. I’m not that kind of woman.”