NFH 03 Checkmate (14 page)

"Out," she said firmly as she closed the
bathroom door behind her.

He didn't say anything so she decided to
take that as an agreement. Now that he annoyed her first thing in
the morning he would be content on going about his day and leaving
her alone. By the time she stepped out of the bathroom he would be
gone and she would unfortunately be spending the rest of the day in
bed since the damn doctor opened his big mouth and told her
brothers that she shouldn't work today.

At least she'd get some paperwork done, she
thought as she used the bathroom and cleaned up. She hated doing
paperwork, but now that she was stuck in bed for a day she had no
excuses not to do it. That wasn't entirely true since she was
pretty sure that she could come up with a good excuse not to do it.
Maybe she should just suck it up and get it over with, she decided
as she opened the door and sighed with relief.

Connor was gone.

She didn't even bother wasting her time
trying to figure out what the man thought he was doing in her bed
this morning. It would just be one of those things that was best
left alone. Her stomach rumbled as she reached her bed and she
tried to ignore it, but it refused to be ignored.

Grumbling and admittedly bitching a little,
she padded barefoot out of her room, down the hall and down the
stairs as she prayed that her brothers hadn't hit her kitchen on
the way out. Her cabinets were mostly empty to begin with, but if
her brothers somehow forgot to make a side stop on their way out
the door last night she should be able to whip something up with
the half sleeve of saltines, third of a jar of olives and scrape a
teaspoon or two of peanut butter out of the jar that probably
should have been thrown away last year to make something somewhat
edible.

Her stomach rumbled approvingly at the
thought of an oily peanut butter and olive dip smothered over dry
brittle saltine crackers so she quickened her pace only to stop
abruptly when she passed the open double doors of her living room.
Knowing, hell, praying that she was wrong, she backtracked until
she was in front of the open doorway. She took a deep, calming
breath and slowly turned around until she was facing her living
room.

"They cleaned you out," Connor said as he
stared intently down at his computer screen, which was now on her
oak coffee table with about a dozen files scattered around it.

"What the hell are you still doing here?"
she demanded as she walked into the living room.

"Working."

"I told you to get out," she reminded him as
she crossed, well, tried to cross her arms over her chest, but her
left arm apparently wasn't happy with that move. She settled for
propping her hands on her hips and glaring down at him as he
continued to ignore her.

"I did," he said.

"No, you didn't!"

With a heavy sigh, he sat back on the tan
couch and finally looked at her. "You told me to get out and I
did."

"No, you only left the bedroom," she pointed
out, sounding a little irritated. "I told you to get out so you
should have left the house."

"You didn't clarify that," he pointed out
with a shrug.

"It was implied," she snapped.

"It really wasn't.

"Get out!"

"Sorry, can't do that," he said,
shrugging.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm waiting for my food to be
delivered and you and I have some work to do here since you decided
to lounge around all day," he said, gesturing to the computer and
the files before he flicked his hand lazily in her direction.

"I was not lounging around!"

"What do you call sleeping until one in the
afternoon then?" he asked with a frown as he once again focused on
his computer, clearly dismissing her.

"I call it being knocked out by painkillers,
you jackass!" she snapped even as she desperately tried to reign
her temper in, but it was always a difficult thing to do where
Connor was concerned.

Her stomach wouldn't stop rumbling, her head
was starting to pound and her damn arm was killing her. All she
wanted to do was get something to eat, grab some aspirin and go
back to bed, but she couldn't do that until her unwanted guest
left. If he didn't get off her couch and get out of here soon she
was going to-

"Come over here and sit down before you pass
out," Connor said, concern coloring his tone as he stood up and
gestured for her to sit down, taking her off guard.

"I'm fine," she said, casting a discreet
look around the living room as she wondered what his game was.
Connor O'Neil was not nice to her, never had been and as far as she
knew, he never would be. So she obviously found this little act of
concern a little unsettling.

"I need you conscious so that we can get
some work done," he said on an exaggerated sigh as if that much
should be obvious. While he took her elbow and led her to the
couch, she guessed that maybe it should have been. The man wouldn't
do anything unless it somehow benefitted him. Still........

Having Connor nice to her for any reason was
unsettling so while he settled back on the couch next to her, she
cast another look around the room, looking for hidden dangers.
Maybe he was going to get rid of her once and for all so that he
could have Strawberry Manor to himself, she thought.

"There's no poisonous spiders or snakes
ready to leap out at you," Connor said, sounding amused as he
handed her a bottle of aspirin. When she remembered a certain
incident at summer camp when they were twelve and he laced her
chocolate chip pancakes with laxatives she hesitated in taking the
bottle from him.

With a sigh and a few muttered words about
her being a big baby, he opened the bottle, popped two pills in his
mouth and swallowed them dry as he handed her the bottle.
Reluctantly, she took the bottle. When he handed her a bottle of
water she glared at him and swallowed her pills dry as well.

"No trust," he said, shaking his head in
disgust as he took the bottle from her and handed her a file.

"What's this?" she asked, opening the file
and nearly groaned when she realized he'd handed her a spreadsheet.
Since looking at numbers aggravated her eyes she shoved the file
back at him and settled for bringing her knees up to her chest and
hugging them while she laid her head against her arm.

She couldn't believe how badly her head
hurt. It seemed with each passing moment that it became
progressively worse. Between that, her arm and ribs, she really
wasn't in the mood to deal with Connor's bullshit today. She
suddenly felt tired, so tired. Hadn't she just slept all night and
most of the day away, she wondered as she felt herself drift off,
but she fought it with everything she had.

There was too much to do today. If she gave
in and fell asleep then she'd have to deal with a ton of paperwork
on top of all her other duties tomorrow and she simply didn't have
the time or patience for that. She needed to stay awake, throw
Connor out on his ass and get some work done.

"Shhh, go to sleep, Rory," Connor said
soothingly as he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer,
but she resisted until she was too tired to fight. Then with a soft
sigh, she allowed him to pull her close. Once her head rested on
his chest she found that she didn't want to fight it any longer. He
felt too good to push away and oddly enough she felt safe in his
arms. That should have frightened her, but she was too tired to do
anything more than curl up against him.

"I always knew that you wanted me," Connor
said, sounding smug so of course she called up her last reserve of
energy and did what any woman in her position would do.

"Ow! Leave my nipples alone, woman!" he
snapped and she fully expected him to push her away. Instead, he
pulled her closer, mumbling something about rules and nipples as
she fell asleep.

Chapter 12

"No," Rory said as she snatched the slice of
mushroom and meatball pizza right out of his hand.

"What the hell do you mean by 'no'?" he
demanded, snatching back his slice of pizza. He took a huge bite
out of it, making his claim on the slice, but of course the damn
woman snatched it right back and took a bite out of his pizza. If
that wasn't bad enough, she washed it down with his Coke.

"I don't think that's going
to work," Rory said, gesturing to his laptop's computer screen
with
his
slice of
pizza.

Glaring, he snatched it out of her hand and
took a huge bite out of it as he pointed at the design he came up
with while she’d slept. He still didn't know what he'd been
thinking. He should have just sent it to McGill without showing it
to her, but he needed her co-operation. If he was going to keep her
under his thumb then he had to play nice, or at the very least
pretend.

"What about the generator?" she asked,
stealing the pizza crust out of his hand and nibbled on it as she
gestured to the blueprint he designed earlier while she'd slept.
Well, he did that and of course he had a look around.

He just couldn't resist. Not that he tried
to resist all that hard. For years he'd been dying to know what her
house looked like and when she conked out and he really had to use
the bathroom after a few hours of holding her in his arms he may
have taken a detour and explored her house.

The master bathroom had been a bit of a
shock. It was a rather pleasant surprise after all these years to
discover that there was a secret side to Rory, a very feminine
side. Instead of having a straightforward bathroom that met minimal
needs like his bathroom, a guy's bathroom, Rory's was without
question a woman's dream bathroom.

The tiled wall was comprised of every shade
of pink imaginable while the floor was a combination of light pink,
dark pink and white tiles. Her shower could easily fit ten people,
had four shower heads and a built in marble bench that lined the
wall. She also had a two person light pink Jacuzzi bathtub. What
really surprised him were her built-in shelves that held dozens of
body sprays, lotions and a whole shitload of girly products.

He didn't check out her medicine cabinet or
drawers since he wasn't a snoop or some weird pervert. There were
some lines that he wouldn't cross even with Rory and snooping
through her personal things was definitely one of them

The style was very close to what he'd chosen
for his own house, which surprised him. He really thought she would
have gone for a more contemporary look. Instead, it appeared as
though she restored the house to its glory days with a few modern
touches. He loved her den. It had a nineteenth century feel to it
with an eighty inch flat screen built into the wall that
surprisingly didn't wreck the effect. Somehow she managed to blend
the television in with the rest of the decor. Now, the stack of
chick flicks he found surprised him since he couldn’t picture her
watching them, but he decided to ignore those.

Not that he would ever tell her, but he
loved her house, maybe not as much as he loved his own, but hers
was a close second. There were a few things he would have done
differently, but overall the house was truly beautiful. She'd
probably raised the value of the house by a hundred grand with all
the work she'd put into it. He couldn't help but wonder how much of
it her brothers were responsible for. Probably most of it, which
was just another reminder that he had to get his ass moving and
convince the James brothers that it would be in their best interest
to come work for him.

"You know they want the 458, but you have
the schematics set up for the 310," Rory said, pointing to the
small computer monitor as she stole the last slice of pizza.
Grudgingly, he allowed her to have it since she'd slept through
lunch. Plus, he was a little distracted at the moment to really
care.

"What the hell do you mean they want the
458?" he demanded, trying not to get pissed, but it was pretty damn
difficult at the moment. He'd spent all day redesigning the wine
room and the rest of the basement and now she was telling him that
they wanted a refrigerating unit that not only would need a
stronger feed, but it also wouldn't be able to fit in the space
he'd designed for it. It also meant that he'd just wasted ten hours
of his time for bullshit and that he'd be spending the rest of the
night and early morning redesigning the basement to meet the rest
of their specifications.

"It was in the fax," she said with a shrug
as she took a big bite of pizza.

"What fax?" he asked as he considered
snatching her slice of pizza away just on principal now. If there
was a fax then he should have been told about it, especially before
he wasted his day.

"They sent it yesterday morning," she said,
taking another bite of her pizza before she continued. "There's
about a dozen changes they want made," she said with a somewhat
apologetic smile that did nothing to calm him down.

"Why the hell didn't you give me the fax?"
he asked, giving up on glaring at her and stole the rest of the
pizza out of her hand.

She rolled her eyes as she snatched it back.
"Because you weren't there for one thing," she said, taking a huge
bite and quickly finishing it off. "And I planned on having the new
plans for the basement done last night so there really was no point
in telling you."

"It's my project too, Rory," he bit out
slowly.

Another shrug as she finished off the pizza
and his glare returned. It was one thing for him to keep her in the
dark, but it was a different story when she pulled that bullshit on
him. This was his project and he should have been told about the
fax. Hell, she should have delivered the damn thing to him while
wearing a smile and something skimpy, he decided. He forced himself
to turn around in his seat and stare at his computer screen as he
wondered how he was going to adjust the space for the refrigerating
unit and not fuck up the rest of the plans.