Kissed Blind (A Hot Pursuit Novel Book 2) (5 page)

“Not going to be what?” he asked, ducking his head and searching for my eyes.

My gaze inched over his abdomen, and I took a deep breath. “Bashful.”

“Not a chance, baby. You know you can’t get enough of this staring back at you.” He made his pectoral muscles dance.

And like a snap of the fingers, the spell was broken. “I swear, sometimes I wonder what women see in you.”

“Yeah, well,” he started, but when he shifted in the chair, he winced.

“What’s that, tough guy? Thought you barely felt it.” I grinned with a cocked brow.

“All right, that might have been a slight understatement. Just do what you gotta do. It stings like crazy.”

I placed the basket on the table next to him, grabbed a kitchen towel, and dampened it with warm water. I pulled a chair over to sit across from him, scooted to the edge of my seat, and placed my knees between his. His chest, covered in course black hairs, was broad and powerful. His rounded shoulders squared as he sat up straight, popping out each roll of his scarlet-stained abdominal muscles. I chewed on the inside of my lip.

“Okay, I’m just going to wipe off the blood so I can see the cut. Looks like your shirt absorbed most of it though.”

He nodded, and I dabbed the towel against his skin. A low moan came from deep within his throat, and his head tilted back as he closed his eyes.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?”

“No.” The tension in his chest relaxed.

I continued on, patting warm water against his skin, clearing it of all traces of blood. When I saw the wound clearly, I placed the red washcloth on the table next to him. The gash was about four inches long and was at its deepest in the center. From the looks of it, if the man had slashed him with a little more oomph, I would’ve insisted we go to the hospital to get it stitched. He’d been lucky.

I grabbed a cotton ball and doused it in peroxide. “Brace yourself. This shouldn’t sting too bad, but I can’t make any promises.”

“I’m ready.” He palmed both of his thighs and prepared himself.

I blotted the cotton across the angry red mark, and it frothed with millions of tiny bubbles. His hand shot out and grabbed the arm I was using for support, and I fell into his lap. I managed to catch myself on his inner thigh, inches from an area many women had visited. My eyes found his, and gazing into them, I was reminded of the secret kiss only I remembered.

Five

Vance put his hand up to my swelling cheek, running his thumb below my eye. “Does it hurt?”

I glanced at his lips. In retrospect a stupid place to look when trying to not think about someone kissing you. “It’s okay.”

“And your…?” His eyes dropped to the other area I’d been punched.

“I might not be able to have children anymore,” I joked but pain grabbed ahold of his gaze. “Really, it’s fine. I haven’t had enough time to think about me yet. I was too worried about you.”

He shook his head and gave me a lazy smile. “Don’t worry about me. I can’t believe that asshole punched you.” His stare threatened to scorch my skin, tingling under his touch.

I willed myself to move from my awkward position between his legs, but the most I could manage was straightening my arm, which only brought me closer to his face.

“Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t have grabbed him the way I did. I practically put my face on a silver platter.” My eye started to pulse as if it had been waiting for the reminder that damage had been done.

“You did good work out there today. Don’t belittle what you did because you got punched. That was a helluva take down you managed. You went all
Karate Kid
on him. Look at me all bloody.” He caressed my tender, swelling flesh and stroked down to my chin, tipping it up and forcing me to look at him.

“Thanks for having my back out there.” I swallowed the throbbing pulse in my throat. “Proving once again that we make an excellent team.”

He exhaled, and I smelled his sweet, caramel scented breath. I glanced at his lips again, the unbidden memory plump and tempting. We stared at one another for a beat too long, and my racing heart threatened to short circuit my brain, but logic trickled in. From the wrestling matches at the gym, to compliments about the color of my eyes, and to this moment, he would eventually laugh and let me know he was teasing me. I pulled away.

“I… uh… sorry about that.” I smiled and dampened a fresh cotton ball.

“No, that was my fault.” He smiled crookedly. “You have a stick I could bite on?”

I shook my head. “I’m almost finished, you big baby. When it stops fizzing I’ll know I’ve killed all the bacteria that was on the knife.”

“Well, hurry up, woman.” He straightened his spine again and braced himself.

“Keep talking to me like that and I’ll take my sweet ass time.” I blotted peroxide over the wound a couple more times, and when it stopped reacting, I covered it with some gauze and taped it down. “There, all better. Now, it shouldn’t get infected.”

“I’m forever indebted to you for your services.” He snatched his blood-stained, stiff shirt off the table.

“You want to borrow a shirt? I have something that should fit you.”

“You mean put on one of Gabe’s shirts? No thanks, it might burn my skin.”

He began slipping his shirt over his head, and I snatched it out of his hand. “Oh my God, you’re so stupid.” I tossed the shirt in the trash, despite his protests, and found an old t-shirt in my closet. I handed it to him while he sulked. “Just put it on already. I swear egos and pride are man’s biggest downfalls.” 

He pulled the shirt down over his chest, and it clung more tightly to his form than it did Gabe’s. “You should put some ice on your eye. It’s getting pretty red.”

“I will.” I gathered the soiled items off the table. “Just what I need, a black eye.” I tossed everything except the towel into the trash. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and put them up to my eye. “You wanna play some cards?” He hesitated, but I cut him off before he could speak. “Let me rephrase that. We’re playing cards. Turn your chair around and get ready to get schooled.”

He did as I asked and glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re not spending the night with Mr. Wonderful?”

“Knock it off, would you? He’s working late, so lucky for you I’m all yours tonight.” I dug through my kitchen drawer and grabbed a deck of cards.

“He’s been out of town and working lots of late nights lately.”

“Yeah, so?” I shrugged.

“So, you sure he’s working?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My fingers halted their search, and I jerked my head back.

“I’m just saying those are some pretty standard responses that can mean something else.”

I curled my lips, and a bitter tang entered my mouth. The thought of Gabe cheating on me was one I’d never entertained. I slapped the cards down on the table. “He’s not cheating on me. That’s completely ridiculous. Shuffle the cards.”

“All right, if you say so.” He turned the deck of cards over in his hands.

“God, I do. Quit trying to start trouble. Things have been great between the two of us lately, really great.” I walked around the table and sat down in my chair, slamming it to the floor while I scooted forward.

He held up his hands. “All right. Forget I said anything.”

“Thanks, I will. But like you’d even understand what it’s like to be in a relationship.”

“Oh God, can we please not come back to this discussion again?” He groaned.

“Ho, ho, ho… sounds like I struck a nerve.” I gave him a tight-lipped smile.

“No, it’s just that we’ve talked about this before… plenty of times.”

“Yeah, so? You’re still bed hopping. Nature has us wired to find a mate, you know?”

“Look, you have no idea what I’m doing, and whether I’m bed hopping or not. Nature tells you to find a mate. Maybe it tells me something else.” He flipped open the deck and spilled the cards into his palm.

I shook my head. “I’m not buying that. It’s a copout.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I asked you a while ago when the last time was that you were in a relationship and you brushed me off with some bullshit answer.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Shut up, please, and quit trying to get off topic. I actually thought about something recently and I have a theory.”

He groaned. “Here we go. Give it to me, Dr. Phil.”

“Didn’t you date that Stacie girl in high school for a little while?” In one of my late night think sessions, I vaguely remembered Vance having had a girlfriend in high school. One of my friends at the time gushed over how cute he was but was destroyed because he was off the market. That was the only time I could ever remember him being with someone longer than five minutes. It was a blip on the radar, but shortly after that, Vance was never tied down to anyone again. Something had to of happened.

“Oh please, I don’t need your psychoanalysis. That was a million years ago.”

“Hmm, I think I might be onto something here. Seriously, what was her name?”

“Fiiiiiiine,” he sighed. “Her name wasn’t Stacie, it was Stephanie. And so what about her?”

“So what happened? That was the only time you’ve ever had a girlfriend.”

“It was no big deal.” He squirmed in his seat and gathered the cards into a pile. “Do you have anything to eat besides ramen?”

I glared at him, got up, and went into the pantry. I grabbed a bag of Cheetos and dumped some into a bowl. I got two beers from the fridge and set them down in the middle of the table. “Now, why was your last relationship in high school?”

He twisted the tops off both beers. “I just didn’t like it. We went out for a couple of months, and I didn’t like being tied down to one chick. It’s not my thing.”

“And that’s all?” I squinted as Vance looked down, shuffling the cards, but he flipped a few onto the floor. “No, there’s more to the story.”

He growled low, and it grew in intensity. He gathered the dropped cards. “You won’t let this go until I tell you, will you?”

“Nope. I will be a festering boil on your ass until you tell me.”

“Fine. I really liked her and she cheated on me.”

I almost fell out of my chair. “What?”

He cocked his head to the side. “One weekend we went to a party, she disappeared, and I found her in a bedroom with another guy. That pretty much sums it up.”

“Like, found her how?”

“Shoving her tongue down some other guy’s throat.”

I gasped. “Vance! That makes so much sense.”

He acted as if I’d slapped him. “Thanks a lot.”

“No, I mean it makes sense now why you avoid relationships. She scarred you.”

“You’re putting way more thought into it than it deserves. I’ve just never found anyone I wanted to be around for more than an hour or two since her… well, other than you obviously.”

A toothy smile spread across my lips. “Ever? In all these years?”

“Yeah, never.” He leaned back in his seat and rolled his eyes. “Look, I get plenty of this crap from Ma and my sisters, all right? All I’m doing is making sure Gabe is treating you the way he should. He doesn’t have the best track record. I didn’t mean to walk into the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Well then, I guess you’ll think a little harder before insinuating he’s cheating on me next time.”

“You’re too much.” He split the deck in his hand. “What’s the game?”

“
Bitch Rummy
… since you’re being a little bitch.” I stuck my tongue out at him.

A glow radiated from his eyes, and he laughed. “You want to play Nonna’s cards?”

Nonna was Vance’s grandmother. She had been blind as a bat, hard of hearing, and was tough as nails, but she could whoop anyone’s butt in a game of Bitch Rummy, her game, which is a cross between Spades and Gin Rummy.

Nonna had been the central matriarch in the DeLuca family for as long as I’d known Vance, but she’d passed away a few days into January. Vance had had a hard time coping with the loss. In light of everything happening with his dad, I thought playing Nonna’s game would make him happy.

“I have a fond memory of playing cards with you, your dad, and her that one Thanksgiving. Even though she did kick everyone’s butt.”

“She always won. I have no idea how she did it either. She was an amazing woman.”

The air in the room had gotten heavy, and I needed to lighten it up. “She was.” I narrowed my eyes and smirked. “So let’s see if you have the balls to beat me.”

His lips curved into a salty smile. “Honey, if the queen had balls, she would have been the king. Game on.”

We laughed as he dealt the first round of cards. The object of the game, contrary to a standard game of rummy, was to wind up with the least amount of points in your hand. Thirteen rounds of cards are played, and the person with the fewest points at the end wins. There are also a lot of other little rules, which Nonna would have never let you forget.

Vance and I took turns dealing, and at the end of twelve rounds, the score was neck and neck. I’d won more rounds, but when he’d won, he’d caught me with more points in my hand, which he rubbed in my face every opportunity he got.

I dealt the final round and kings were wild. This was the round Nonna always loved the best for some reason, probably because the odds were usually stacked so high in her favor no one stood a chance of beating her. After I dealt the final card, I looked at my hand. I organized them from lowest to highest. I had three wild cards, nothing short of phenomenal for the last hand. I was so going to win and smash it in his face forever and ever. But since I dealt, he played first.

“All right, do your worst.”

He wore an overconfident grin. “Oh, I will.”

He drew a card from the deck, and after some consideration, laid a run of six cards down out of the eight in his hand, discarding one, and leaving him with a single card. I almost died on the spot. Wild cards have extremely high point values, and he almost caught me with over one hundred and fifty points. It would have been a landslide of a victory. I suspected Nonna was in the room and stacking the deck for him.

I needed to unload my points, but the problem was I couldn’t. My palms started to sweat, and I tucked my hair behind my ear.

“What’s going on, getting nervous over there?”

“Shush. I’m thinking.” I drew my card from the deck and kept reorganizing my hand, looking for some kind of miracle. The best I came up with was to lay four cards down, but I was still stuck with three after discarding, and they would be enough to give him the win.

“That the best you got in there?” Vance said with a smug smile.

“You know, sometimes I want to throw things at your face. Your arrogance can be extremely annoying sometimes.”

“I know. Gets under your skin, doesn’t it?” He twitched his brows.

He drew a card, and I knew almost instantly he’d won by his expression. He threw a card over into the run of cards I had in front of me and slapped his last card face down into the discard pile.

“In your face, queen!” He laughed.

“No, in yours.” I threw my remaining cards directly at his smug nose, and his smug eyes, and his smug smile. I got up from the table and walked into the kitchen. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I couldn’t stand to look at him. I opened the fridge and searched for some food. Or something to drink. Or anything at all so I didn’t have to listen to him gloat. I rifled through the deli drawer, which was practically empty anyway.