Candy Crush (13 page)

By the time she arrived at Brandon’s house
and despite walking in on her first dead body and the horrible
smell that accompanied decomposition, Gabriella was starving. She
nuked the leftover lasagna in the microwave and then sat outside on
the patio and ate the entire thing.

Normally, when Gabriella was stressed, she
could barely eat. She had actually lost nearly ten pounds in those
last few months living with Miguel. She hadn’t needed to lose
weight at the time, and she was glad to see that her jeans were
fitting a little better now, which meant eating at the Pizza Parlor
was likely something she would have to do in moderation in the near
future.

Unfortunately, she realized as she looked
down at her empty plate, finding dead bodies apparently had the
opposite effect on her. She took the plate inside, rinsed it and
put it in the dishwasher. She wandered around the house,
straightening up here and there, only dimly aware of the throbbing
in her knee. She took the laundry basket upstairs and put her
clothes away.

Because she noticed a pile of laundry on the
floor of the laundry room, she began washing Brandon’s clothes. She
rummaged around and found a cabinet full of cleaning supplies, and
then, because she wanted to stay busy, Gabriella began to
methodically clean Brandon’s entire house. The only room she did
not touch was his bedroom. It just seemed too personal of a space
to walk into without his knowledge or permission.

By the time the house phone rang at four,
the house was spotless, all of Brandon’s laundry was washed, dried
and folded, and she was getting ready to get into the shower.

Gabriella glanced at the caller ID, but all
it said was
cell phone
. She almost didn’t answer it, but
then she thought it might be Brandon, so she did. And then she
wished she hadn’t.

“What the hell is going on there?” He
demanded when she picked up the phone. “I have fourteen messages on
my phone, and they all say you found a dead body in your apartment.
Is that true?” He sounded angry.

“Yes.”

“Why the hell didn’t you call me?”

“I don’t have your number. Besides, why
would I call you?”

“Have you ever found a dead body before,
Gabriella?”

“No.”

“Me neither. But I imagine it’s not
something I’d want to go through by myself. I’d want someone there,
to help me deal with it. If you had called me when it happened, I’d
be home right now, helping you deal with this. Now I’m fighting
goddamned rush hour traffic and I know it will take me at least
another hour to get there.
Fuck
.”

Gabriella was both touched and startled by
his concern, despite the fact that he was also obviously angry. She
heard him take a deep breath. “How are you holding up?” he finally
asked in a more reasonable tone.

“I’m okay. I cleaned your house.”

“You cleaned my house? Why?”

“Because there was nothing else to do, and I
needed to stay busy.”

“Well… Thanks. I’ll have to figure out a way
to make sure you feel the need to stay busy about once a week.”

Gabriella giggled and he said, “Good, that’s
just the reaction I was hoping for.”

“It looks like you’re going to have a house
guest longer than you expected. The police told me the candy store
and the apartment are both off-limits, and they have no idea when
I’ll be able to get back in there.”

“I’m sorry, Gabriella. I know this is
screwing with your plans.”

Gabriella shrugged. “Well, hopefully it
won’t be for too long. I don’t know what they expect to find in the
candy store. I’ve cleaned the place from top to bottom. Oh, I guess
you should call your family and cancel for tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll do that.”

“And aren’t you glad we didn’t sleep
together yesterday?” she said, just a little too brightly. “You’d
be sick of me by now, and I’d have no place to go.”

“Okay, I’m hanging up now, because that is
the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard you say.” True to his word,
he disconnected the call.

Gabriella sighed and started walking up the
stairs. By the time she reached the top step, her knee was
throbbing badly enough to force her to take notice. She had
completely forgotten about her injuries in her frenzied cleaning
spree, and now both her knee and her abdomen were screaming with
pain.

Luckily, she just cleaned the bathtub. She
limped into the bathroom and pushed the door closed. Butter snuck
into the room just in time, and lay down next to the tub. Gabriella
turned on the taps and absentmindedly searched through the
cabinets, and was delighted to find bubble bath. She poured a
generous amount into the water and stripped out of her clothes.

***

Brandon walked through the back door an hour
later. When he didn’t find Gabriella anywhere on the first floor –
although he had almost been hoping to find her in the laundry room,
since that room had become synonymous with kissing her in his mind
– he walked to the base of the stairs. “Gabriella?” he called. When
he heard a muffled reply, he began climbing the stairs. Halfway up
he said, “Where are you?”

“In the bathtub.”

He reached the top of the stairs and said,
“Did you say in the bath
tub
?”

“Yes. Why do you have bubble bath?”

Brandon cursed under his breath. One of
these days he would have to go through his house and throw away
every possible leftover hint of his past dalliances. “Ah, it’s not
mine, exactly.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t stress out, Gabriella, it was a long
time ago. I can’t even remember her name.” By long time ago, he
meant at least definitely before Gabriella came to town.

He grinned slyly and said, “Would you like
company?”

“Yes.”

Brandon stumbled and grabbed the railing for
support. “Did you say
yes
?”

“Well, I don’t need company, exactly, but I
do need help getting out of the tub.”

“Just to clarify,” Brandon said slowly, “Are
you trying to turn me on or are you hurt?”

“I’m hurt.”

Brandon exhaled slowly. He knew it was too
good to be true.

“When I found the body, I fell and hurt my
knee. It seems to have seized up on me. I can’t straighten it at
the moment.”

Brandon stepped up to the bathroom door and
pushed it open. She was lying in the bathtub, bubbles covering all
the important parts. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a
messy updo. Beads of water clung to her face, her neck, what he
could see of her chest above the line of bubbles. He blatantly
swept his eyes over the scene, searching for any remote off-limits
area of her body that he could use for his fantasies later
tonight.

His eyes fell onto her left knee, jutting
out of the bubbles. He could see that it was already swollen and
discolored from bruising.

“You do realize it is my life’s dream to see
you naked, right?”

Gabriella rolled her eyes. “Yes, I do
realize that. But I don’t really have a choice here. I’ve been
trying to get out for the last twenty minutes. My knee is stuck in
this position.”

“You need ice, not heat.”

“Thank you, doctor. Now can you help me out,
and maybe get me some ice?”

Brandon reached down and flipped the lever
to open the drain. Gabriella did her best to keep as many bubbles
in place as possible, but it was a futile effort. Brandon did not
zone in on the body parts she probably expected him to, though.

“What the hell happened to your stomach?”
Gabriella glanced down and saw that a two-inch wide stripe across
the middle of her abdomen had already turned bright purple.

“I tripped and fell onto a chair. I hit my
knee and then my stomach. I really need some pain medicine.” Her
voice hitched as her eyes filled with tears.

“Well, hell. I can’t ogle you when you’re in
pain like this.”

He pulled two towels out of a cabinet and
draped them both over Gabriella’s body, hiding all the tempting
parts. Then he bent down and slid his arms under her upper back and
her knees and lifted her out of the tub.

“You weigh next to nothing,” he commented as
he held her steady and discreetly turned away while she clumsily
dried herself.

“Thanks, I think.”

He shrugged, then lifted her again and
carried her down the hall towards his bedroom.

“Where are you going?” There was alarm in
her voice.

“Relax, I’m not going to take advantage of
your indisposed state, as much as I would love to do just that.
There’s a TV in my bedroom. Since you’re about to be relegated to
bed for the rest of the night, I figure you might want something to
occupy your time.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Gabriella mumbled.

***

She was trying hard not to be distracted by
his arms, by the fact that they were wrapped around her
almost-naked body, or the body heat that radiated off of him as if
he were a wood burning stove that had been fed well-seasoned wood
for a great many hours.

Then she decided he served as a fine
distraction from the pain, so she relaxed into him. She felt him
suck in a breath and when he exhaled, his breath brushed across her
bare arm and sent shivers shooting all the way to her toes.
Gabriella realized that she wanted this man with a gut-wrenching
need that she had never experienced before in her life.

Great. Just what she needed at this point in
her life. How the hell was she supposed to continue resisting him,
now that they’d had that little revelation?

Brandon carried her straight to the bed. He
managed to peel back the covers – Gabriella was unnecessarily
pleased to see that he made his bed in the morning – and as
carefully as if she were a newborn child, he placed her in the
center of the bed and pulled the covers up to her chest.

“Where will I find your pajamas?”

“Under my pillow.”

Brandon walked away and returned a moment
later with a tank top and pajama bottoms. He held them up and said,
“Do you need help?”

Was she imagining the hopeful quality to his
voice? Of course not. The man hadn’t disguised the fact that he
wanted to sleep with her, not once since the moment they met.
She
was the one still trying to deny the attraction.

Gabriella shook her head, needing to put
space between them for a moment. “No, I think I can handle it, now
that I’m in bed. Thanks.”

He handed her the pajamas.

“I’ll go get you an ice pack, some ibuprofen
and water. Do you need anything else?”

“A shot of something wouldn’t hurt,
either.”

Brandon grinned and said, “A woman after my
own heart,” before he turned and left the room.

Gabriella took a moment to study the
bedroom. It had a nautical theme. The bed frame was wooden and
painted an antique white and looked to be about a thousand years
old, likely on purpose. Or maybe it really was an antique. She had
been in town long enough to know that the small village had a
thriving antiques business, and Brandon had told her this house
once belonged to his great-grandmother.

A small blanket chest sat at the foot of the
bed, and it was painted the same antique, whitewashed color. One
wall was red, one dark blue and the rest were white.

Her assumption upon entering the house for
the first time had been right: his bedroom was pentagon-shaped,
with the main point of the pentagon comprised almost entirely of
windows, overlooking the front yard and the driveway running next
to the house. The head of his bed was against the wall across from
the windows. A flat screen television was affixed to the wall next
to the windows. The sheets on the bed were white with tiny navy
blue pinstripes, and the down comforter was navy blue. There were
four pillows on his bed. Gabriella snuggled into them for a moment,
before it occurred to her that she ought to get dressed before
Brandon came back.

By the time Brandon walked back into the
bedroom, Gabriella was panting from the pain and exertion of
pulling on her pajama bottoms.

“I should have helped,” Brandon commented as
he handed her a glass filled with amber liquid. “Drink this first,
it will start working the fastest.”

She did as she was told and immediately
succumbed to a coughing fit. When she recovered, Brandon remarked,
“I guess you don’t do shots.”

Gabriella glared at him.

“Let me see that knee, so I can wrap it
up.”

Without waiting for permission, he flipped
back the blanket. His look of disappointment that she managed to
get dressed before he returned was almost comical. She might have
laughed if she were not so distraught over her own attraction to
the man.

Brandon quickly and efficiently placed an
ice pack on her knee and wrapped it with an elastic bandage, then
handed her a glass of water and a couple of ibuprofen tablets.
“Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, and it might actually dull the
pain.”

Without further explanation, he climbed onto
the bed next to her and used the remote control to click on the
television. He plumped the pillows, took off his tie, loosened the
top few buttons on his shirt, and made himself comfortable.

“What are you doing?” Gabriella asked,
trying to keep the alarm out of her voice.

“Relaxing after a hard day at work. Well,
actually the day wasn’t bad at all, just that drive. God, rush hour
sucks. Every time I do it, it reminds me how much I hate the idea
of living in the city.”

“Oh.” Gabriella thought about her home, and
how much she had once loved living in Dallas.

“So do you want to tell me about it?”
Brandon asked casually, as he used the remote to rapidly flip
channels.

Since he had deposited Gabriella into the
middle of the bed, they were side by side and almost touching, even
though it was a king sized bed. Gabriella could feel his body heat,
and it was making her a little drowsy. Or maybe it was the shot of
Maker’s Mark. Or the hour-long bubble bath. Or the fact that the
adrenaline rush from finding a dead body was completely out of her
system. Or, most likely, a combination of all of the above.