Smittened (6 page)

Especially didn’t watch.

But when he got back to Dahlia’s house with the pizza, she was conked out in the chair, her head tilted into her shoulder, glasses crooked, arms tucked in as if she were giving herself a big ol’ hug. A section of her red-streaked dark hair fell across her round, rosy-hued cheek. Even with her lips twitching as though she was dreaming about kissing, she looked fresh and innocent as a snowflake. One cat was in her lap, another on the seat back behind her, the third sprawled across her feet. All three eyed him as though they were thinking of making him their dinner.

Even the devil cats couldn’t stop his visions of picking her up, tucking her into bed, kissing her hair, and wishing her sweet dreams.

She took care of people, and they took advantage of her. Wasn’t right. Yeah, she was probably using him to get Will to her ice cream thing, but Mikey’s visit with Will had confirmed what he suspected: His buddy was staying in Bliss until he’d worked out his past. So to take his mind off Will’s problems, Mikey had called an old fling this afternoon, someone who knew how to find things and do things, and had her do some digging.

Not too surprisingly, Dahlia was hanging on by a financial thread.

And there were hints she’d done this before, bailing out other people—at the expense of her own bank account. He was fixin’ to hit something if those
people
were all ex-boyfriends.

Girl needed a keeper.

Mikey tiptoed past her and into the kitchen. The lizard eyed him over a plate of lettuce, and two of the three cats were still tracking his movement from their perch in the living room.

Dahlia, though, slept on.

Mikey pulled two slices of pepperoni from the box, grabbed a napkin, and headed back to his bedroom. Because the more he thought about the girl needing a keeper, the more he thought it was his business.

He didn’t do long-term. He lived on the road, he had good friends and family who loved him despite his faults, and he never lacked for female companionship. Didn’t need to get involved with a small-town girl who kept her own small zoo but couldn’t manage her life.

Except Mikey wasn’t on the road and he didn’t have any friends or family to hang with tonight, which meant hitting a bar was the smartest thing Mikey could do.

Get out, talk to some girls, grab as much normal as he could to remind himself why getting to know the ice cream lady any better was a bad, bad idea.

There was exactly one woman in this world who got to tear Mikey up emotionally, and it wasn’t Dahlia.

He paused on his way out the door to drape a blanket over her and the two cats sitting on her.

Yep. Finding some fun was exactly what ol’ Mikey needed. So he hightailed it on out of Dahlia’s house and over to a little place he knew.

For a bar in the middle of nowhere, Suckers wasn’t a bad joint. An hour after he arrived, Mikey was digging the purple mood lighting, the curved steel bar, and the red stools.

He was trying to dig the single ladies crowded three-deep around him, listening to him tell the story of the time he and Billy and the rest of the band played in a freak September snowstorm in South Dakota. Put all the right emphasis on almost losing his fingers to frostbite but putting on the best show for the fans anyway, and the ladies were eating it all up. Petting him, offering to kiss his long-healed boo-boos, doing all the right things to make a man feel worshipped.

Usually everything he wanted out of a night out with the ladies.

But tonight—tonight, he was thinking about soft curves, round rosy cheeks, and dark eyelashes. He was wondering if Dahlia woke up and got any dinner. Or if she woke up and moved to the bed where she’d be more comfortable. Or if she’d fed her cats.

Her
cats
.

Mikey was thinking about her cats.

When he should’ve been soaking up all the attention from fourteen ladies who would’ve each loved to give him a different place to stay tonight.

He took a swig off his Bud Light and then winked at one of the two blondes to his right. “And if you think that’s bad, wait till you hear about the time our stage almost collapsed.”

They all oohed and squealed and begged for more, and Mikey gave it to them.

But forty-five minutes later, having bought them each one last drink, he turned and waved down the little redhead tending bar. “Check please, sweet pea.”

Because he might’ve looked in his element, but he didn’t have the stamina to keep it up another couple of hours.

Fighting decreased lung capacity thanks to standing outside watching that fire burn too long last night, he told himself. Or maybe feeling the effects of too many days in the bitter cold Northern winter.

“You sick?” Little Red said. “Or are you heading over to the karaoke bar?”

No room to be offended. Little Red’s sister Saffron had played fiddle and backup guitar with Will’s band for a lot of years. No doubt Little Red had heard plenty of stories. He winked at her, then leaned further over the bar and lowered his voice. “You been here long?”

“Since last July.”

“You know the Milked Duck lady?”

“Dahlia? Yeah. She patched my nephew up after he took a tumble in the park last fall. And she volunteers at the shelter all the time. She has the sweetest guinea pig. Have you met him? He’s
adorable
.”

Yep. Everybody loved Dahlia. “Haven’t had the pleasure. Heard she had a boyfriend a while back. You know anything about that?”

Little Red’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Asking for Billy. Thought we heard the guy knew his way around a keyboard, and we might could have some use for him,” Mikey lied.

Little Red shrugged. “Don’t know anything about him.”

“Not even a name?”

“Oh, well, yeah. I know his
name
.”

She peered at him expectantly.

Yep, everybody wanted something. And he was being a big ol’ dummy caring, but he wanted to know who’d cheated Dahlia out of her money.

So he could track him down and pound the guy into the ground.

Wasn’t right. Hadn’t felt like doing that since Mari Belle announced she was getting divorced.

Mikey reached into his wallet and pulled out an extra twenty.

“I don’t want a big tip, you dolt,” Little Red scoffed. “I want to know every trick Saffron ever played on you guys when she was touring with you. I could use a new idea or two this year. Need to get back my family prankster crown. And, you know, avoid Saffron getting the better of me now that she’s living close and all.”

First time all night Mikey felt a real smile on his face. “You’re the baby of the family, right?”

“I prefer to think of it as the best,” Little Red said.

Exactly like Saffron would’ve said about her own position in their big family. “Name now, list of pranks tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe this weekend, if you want everything. Billy might remember a few things I forget.”

She grabbed a napkin and scribbled something, then clapped it into his hand. “Deal. And if you don’t follow through…”

“Trouble like I ain’t ever seen,” Mikey finished for her. He had a notion he’d seen some of that trouble from Saffron on the road. Usually funny, unless it was aimed at him. “Got it.”

Little Red gave him a sassy wink. “And this stays between us.”

“Every last word,” he agreed.

Because if anyone found out Mikey had gone to the trouble to find out a girl’s ex-boyfriend’s name, he might have to face what wanting the information really meant.

And he didn’t know what bothered him more—that he cared, or that she wouldn’t care that he cared.

Because Mikey Diamond was a lot of things, but an upstanding, follow-through kind of guy for a woman he barely knew wasn’t one of them.

Especially a woman who was only using him to get to
Billy
.

Life was craptastic like that sometimes.

THE SOUND OF a key scraping a lock jolted Dahlia out of a sound sleep. Parrot dug her claws into Dahlia’s leg and flung herself away, except she didn’t make it. Instead, she tumbled in a ball of fluff, caught up in the blanket she was pulling off Dahlia, bringing a chill to Dahlia’s skin. Sam shot out from his perch at her feet, and Dean growled low behind her.

The room was dark, save for the soft glow from the light in Hank’s cage in the kitchen. The front door swung open. Cold air swirled into the room. A tall dark figure clomped inside.

“Freeze,” Dahlia said. “Show me your hands.”

Because all she had on her side was the element of surprise.

“Holy shit, Dahlia, it’s me,” a familiar voice said.

“Oh. Right.” She helped Parrot untangle from the blanket, then pulled it back up to her chin.

Wait.

She hadn’t gotten herself a blanket.

Which meant—“You’re a nice guy sometimes,” she blurted.

He snorted. “Yeah, I’m a prince.”

Dahlia ignored the stomping and grumbling. “What time is it?”

“Bedtime.”

For once, there wasn’t a hint of suggestion in his voice. She watched his shadow track toward the bedrooms. “Are you sick?” she asked.

His shadow stopped, and even in the dark, she could feel his flat, not-amused gaze. “No.”

Dahlia’s belly grumbled. She huddled into herself in her chair. Obviously not the best time to ask if he’d brought pizza. And it made her mad that she wanted more to ask if she’d done something to offend him.

He wasn’t hers.

He wasn’t her
problem
, she corrected herself.

His problems weren’t her problems.

He stopped in the doorway to the short hallway leading back to the bedrooms and reached up to hook his fingers on the frame. “You get dinner?” he asked.

A little gruffly, but still.

He’d asked.

“I’m fine.”

He snorted again. “Right.”

That did it. She pushed to her feet and hit the light. He squinted. She did too, but she also poked a finger in his direction. “I
am
fine,” she said. “I might be an idiot when it comes to men, but I’m fine, and you looking down your pointy, warty nose at me won’t change that.”

He touched the tip of his smeller. “Warty?”

She wished. And it wasn’t pointy either. It was actually a very nice nose. Straight. Distinguished. With a small scar on the bridge that she’d noticed while he was in The Milked Duck earlier. “I was speaking metaphorically. And you know what else? When I
do
have relationships with men, I don’t simply eat them like candy. I take the time to get to know them. To
savor
them. To
appreciate
them. Because they’re human beings, and all human beings deserve respect.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his gray eyes had gone dark. “Even the ones who go and steal all your money?” he said.

“They don’t
steal
. I give it to them. Because people are priceless. Money’s just paper.”

“Necessary paper.”

“I make do. You use having it as an excuse to be a man-whore.”

His eyes went darker and his cheek twitched. “For the record,” he said smoothly, “I was a man-whore before I made it big.”

“Before
Billy
made it big.”

“Before
I
made it big.” He crossed the carpet, slow as a panther and every bit as deadly. “
I
write half of Billy’s songs.
I
got a touring gig before the world had a clue who
Billy
was.
I
sent money home to my momma before
he
finally pulled his head out of his ass over that damn divorce lawyer here. Hell, I kept him alive. Don’t tell me I don’t know what people are worth.”

He was right in front of her now, a seething mass of solid, offended male. Subtle scents of beer and frost and new leather wafted off him, and the storm rolling in his eyes made the pit of Dahlia’s belly squeeze.

She should’ve asked about the divorce lawyer, kept him talking about Billy, but she was trapped between Mikey and the chair, and she didn’t mind nearly as much as she should’ve. She put her hands on his chest to push him away, but the act of pushing was harder than it should’ve been.

Perhaps because his chest was harder than she wanted it to be.

Her fingers lingered on the soft, warm fabric of the cotton T-shirt beneath his open jacket. “My bad,” she said, all breathless, brainless female.

Just as she was anytime anything with a penis and a pulse showed any signs of needing saving.

Usually, they didn’t need saving from
her
though.

“Yeah,” Mikey said, his voice huskier and lower than it had been a minute ago. “Your bad.”

There was still a glimmer of insulted ego turning his lips down, but his dilated pupils were aimed at
her
lips, and he made no move to push her away.

She needed to back up before she really stepped in it. Because Mikey didn’t
need
anything from her. He didn’t
want
anything from her.

Nothing he couldn’t get from any other willing, able-bodied female anywhere else in the world.