Tied Up in Knots (25 page)

I shrugged. “It’s his job.”

“Yes and no,” he let slip. “But go home and come back.”

“If I don’t it means I passed out, all right?” I said, turning for the door.

“Then don’t go yet. Eat first. Let me get you a towel. I’m afraid you’re going to pass out with only alcohol in you.”

“How do you know I drank tonight?”

“Miro, my friend, you smell like smoke and beer.”

“Gross,” I said, chuckling. “I really should go home then.”

He studied me. “You’re not drunk, though.”

“There’s still a bit of a buzz left, but not much. Any food will soak up the remainder.”

“Well, then let’s get you fed, and after you eat, you better strip down and take a nap in my guest room. I think you need a keeper tonight.”

“Ian’s jealous of you,” I said, because my filter was nonexistent not from alcohol but instead due to a profound lack of sleep.

He grinned slightly. “Ian should be afraid, but not of me, per se.”

“Afraid?”

He put an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry about it. Can you walk?”

“I was running,” I quipped. “You just saw me.”

“Yes, but I think you’re fading just a bit.”

I scoffed even as I felt my knees wobble ever so slightly. Eating was not the worst idea ever.

Barrett’s friends were nice. They were a few guys from his gym, and some people from work who brought their husbands/wives, another partner at his firm and his husband, and a friend from college who’d come in from New Jersey and was staying with him through the weekend—like Janet would be with me—upstairs on the phone at the moment. He’d apparently been there since Monday.

“So you must be the hot guy who lives next door that Barrett’s been telling us all about at work,” a woman said as I inhaled my burger, far hungrier than I’d realized.

“I think he was probably talking about my boyfriend,” I teased with a wink.

She smiled back. “Perhaps.”

Barrett coughed, clearly uncomfortable. “You know you can have another one, right?”

I nodded as I chewed.

“Jesus, Miro, you need someone around to make sure you eat.”

Not normally.

As I stood in the kitchen, damp but drying, close to the vent pumping out warm air, one of the men coming in for another beer stopped in front of me.

“I know you,” the guy said.

“Wow, that’s a great line,” another of Barrett’s friends said, smiling at me. “I think I know you too.”

I shook my head, swallowing and tipping my head at the handsome man in front of me. “You don’t, but he does. He was my doctor a few years back when I was in the hospital. What was your name again, Doc?”

“Dr. Sean Cooper,” he offered with a smile as he got closer. “But just call me Sean, all right? And you’re Miro, I heard Barrett say.”

“Yeah.”

“Here,” Barrett said as he put a large glass of ice water down in front of me. “Drink this, let’s get you hydrated.”

The last of my buzz was slipping away. “I swear I’m good.”

“Drink the goddamn water.”

So I did as I hoovered down the burger.

“Dr. Benton is your friend,” the movie-star handsome man said, returning my attention to him, as he very gently lifted my chin. “And you were shot in the line of duty.”

“I was,” I replied with a shrug. “And I’m sorry if she came off bossy that day. She gets that way when she’s scared.”

“She’s a phenomenal surgeon.”

“And bossy,” I reiterated.

“In the line of duty?” the other man asked, having latched on to those words. “What kind of law enforcement?”

“Miro’s a deputy US marshal,” Barrett answered absently, tucking a piece of hair around my right ear. “You have bruises all along your jaw here.”

I grunted.

“Yeah, I was noticing that,” Sean admitted, trailing his fingers down the side of my neck to the collar of my Calvin Klein dress shirt and lifting it so he could see the skin underneath. “Oh, Miro, you’re bleeding.”

I shook my head, shoving chips in my mouth now that the burger was gone. “It’s old,” I said without swallowing. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not at all fine.” Sean glowered at me. “How much have you had to drink?”

I came clean. “A lot, but it was a while ago now. I’m 90 percent sober.”

He nodded. “Okay, I think we need to go to the hospital.”

“I just need to go to bed.”

“How about if Barrett comes with us?”

“Nope. I’m going home now anyway. I just came to eat and run.”

Sean’s eyes flicked to Barrett. “I think you need to insist.”

“Miro,” Barrett began, slipping his hand around my bicep. “Were you in a fight?”

“Deputy US marshal,” I apprised him, cocking an eyebrow for his benefit. “It comes with the territory, right?”

He took a breath. “Could Sean just look you over?”

“I think he did already.”

“How about you go upstairs, shower, and you can borrow a T-shirt and sweats from me, and then he can—”

“I’m just gonna go.” I yawned. “I don’t wanna take off my gun holster till I get home.”

“You have a gun?” another friend of Barrett’s asked.

I was going to say “marshal” again, but I let it go. “I do, yes.”

“You’re drunk,” Sean said sharply. “And you’re carrying a gun?”

“I’m not drunk at all, and yes, I’m carrying a gun. Not firing it.”

“Maybe you should give the gun to me,” Barrett offered with not quite a condescending smile, but close. It was like he thought I was simple or too stupid to understand what he was saying to me. Thing was, I followed all too clearly. I was sleep deprived, yes, but as I’d just said, not drunk.

“Miro, I think—”

“I gotta go,” I informed Barrett, because now I was irritated. How dare they question me? I’d never put anyone in danger on purpose. How many other people could say that?

He caught me at the front door.

“Stop, don’t leave because you’re mad.” He chuckled behind me.

I had it opened a crack before he banged it shut.

“Miro—”

“No,” I barked, rounding on him, pointing into his face. “How dare you second-guess me or how I perform my job. You and your doctor friend don’t know shit about the training that any agent of the federal government goes through because we carry a gun twenty-four seven.”

“No, I—”

“I’ll have you know that I was on my way home and the guys on my team made sure I was. They would never leave me alone. We all have each other as a safety net, so you questioning me is you questioning them, and I don’t fuckin’ like it.”

This was why, beyond the four women who were more family than friends, I didn’t have people in my life beyond the guys I worked with. No one else understood that you could never let yourself completely go, never let your guard all the way down, and never take off the holster until you were home.

“Miro, come on, I—”

Leaving him while he was still talking, I walked back through the living room toward the kitchen, moving fast.

Sean stepped into my path. “Hey, Miro, I really think that—”

I went around him and got to the back door, unlocked it, and went out on Barrett’s back patio, down the steps to the cobblestone path that led to the small garden the last owners had put in, and then off into the lush, wet grass.

I bolted to my back steps that simply ended in the grass, went up them to the deck that was the second thing I had built when I moved in, and was fumbling for my keys, thankful for the porch light that went on automatically at dusk, when I heard Barrett yell my name.

I didn’t turn. I just kept trying to get my keys out but the pants were tight anyway and now they were sticking to my sides like a second skin.

“Miro,” Barrett said, arriving at my side. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not capable or that you would ever do anything foolish. Please, I’m just worried.”

“I don’t need you to worry about me,” I almost snarled, finally getting the ring out of my pocket. “I have Ian for that.”

“Oh? Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right!” I flared, glancing over at his covered back porch and seeing the crowd clustered there. “And you should go back to your party.”

“I don’t want to go back to my party, I want to fix this with you,” he insisted, grabbing my bicep and yanking hard to get me to turn to him.

“It’s fine, it’s fixed.” And it was. He and I were done except for me to wave at him as I passed his house or saw him on the street. No one got to second-guess my job or the guys I worked with or how I conducted myself.

“No, it’s not, you’re mad because I questioned you and now because I’m questioning Ian’s commitment.”

“Don’t worry about Ian,” I warned him. “Ian and me are great.”

“You’re not great, because he’s never here.”

“He’s here more than enough,” I said, slipping the key into the bottom lock, opening it and then going to work on the dead bolt with another key.

“What do you expect?” he asked curtly. “Here you are all alone night after night, this handsome, sexy, dangerous man who needs a keeper more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m just supposed to do what? Never say anything? Never put the idea in your head that you have other options, that you deserve a better one?”

“Fuck you, Barrett,” I spat, disgusted. “You’re supposed to be my fuckin’ friend! You don’t tear Ian down when he’s not here, that’s total shit!”

He shoved me back against the door… or tried to. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I had a lot of muscle on him and there was no way I was moving.

“Go home,” I said, pushing him off me.

“Miro, just listen to—”

But the door opened, which cut him off and startled me as we were suddenly both looking at a very beautiful, very angry man standing in the doorway.

“Yes,” Ian ground out, his tone dead and flat. “Go home.”

Barrett’s eyes were huge as he regarded the man I loved, but Ian’s focus was solely on me, as evidenced by the way he fisted his hand in my wet shirt and yanked me into the house. He slammed the door so hard behind me that the glass rattled.

“You’re home,” I breathed out.

The way he was looking at me, predatory and hungry, should have really scared me, but a shiver of anticipation ran through me instead. “Where the hell have you been?” was the first thing out of his mouth.

It wasn’t warm or loving, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. He was home.

I STOOD
there dripping in the living room, smiling like an idiot and wiping the water out of my face and eyes. “I’m so happy to see you!”

He scowled at me.

“What?”

“If you’re so happy, come the fuck here.”

“But I’m all wet,” I said, shivering not with cold but with happiness.

“Yeah, I don’t care,” he murmured, lifting his arms.

I lunged at him, grabbing tight, and he hugged me back just as hard, the both of us trying to absorb the other. “I’m gonna explode I’m so happy.”

His grunt was all Ian, smug and sexy. “Don’t do that. I like you all in one piece.”

I kissed the side of his neck, his jaw, and then took his mouth so he’d know he was missed and cherished and so very needed.

“You taste like scotch,” he said, breaking the kiss, needing air, “and salt.”

“Potato chips,” I said, grinning, just looking at him, his face, his hair, and his eyes. God, he was pretty.

“The fuck are you wearing?”

My clothes? “Why, do I look weird?” I asked, taking several steps back, checking my wet shirt and pants, not sure what he was seeing.

“No,” he said gruffly, his hot gaze traveling up and down my body before returning to my face. “‘Weird’ is not the word I’d use.”

“Oh no? What, then?” I pried, taking a step forward, bumping into him, letting the warmth rolling off his solid muscular frame sear into me. I had expected steam to erupt when we touched before, as opposite as we were at the moment, me so cold and wet, him a simmering flame.

“Decadent,” he whispered, huffing out a breath. “You walked around lookin’ like that all night?”

He wanted me.

It was there in the rich, thick growl in his voice, all smoky and seductive, the dangerous glint in the depths of his eyes, and the way he wet his lips like his mouth had gone dry.

“Yeah,” I purred, grinning as I knocked him back into the door, pinning him there with one hand, bracing him, making sure he couldn’t move. “All yesterday, all today I had a hundred things to tell you, but right now I can’t think of even one.”

“How come?”

I whimpered involuntarily. “You’re finally home.”

His breath hitched as he lifted his hands to my face, touching my skin, skimming over bruises and contusions, smoothing over my eyebrows, tracing my cheeks as he looked with both his eyes and his fingertips. “Where were you?”

It was a loaded question, but I knew what I was really being asked. “Where do you think I was?”

“No,” he growled, the muscles in his strong, square jaw cording as he continued to scrutinize me, missing nothing. “You fuckin’ tell me.”

“Well, first I was with the guys, and then Janet called, and then I was almost home when I stopped at Barrett’s.”

“Why’d you stop?” he prodded, slipping a hand inside the collar of my shirt so he could stroke over my skin before trailing his fingers first to my collarbone and then to the base of my throat. “Why didn’t you come straight here?”

“I didn’t know you were home. I couldn’t get you on the phone.”

“I know. We weren’t allowed to call, and then—I just wanted to get back here.”

“Oh?” My heart was pounding and my throat hurt and my mouth was dry and all of that was Ian’s fault. Such simple words, that he wanted to get back to me, had me in knots of anxious, frantic happiness. I really was going to fly apart at any second.

He was silent for a moment and then said simply, “It hurt to go.”

“Yeah?” I pressed, because holy fuck, Ian
never
said anything like that. There were so few confessions from his soul that when one did happen, I pounced.

“You know it did,” he grumbled. “You know I hate to be away.”

“From me?”

“Of course from you, who else would I—are you drunk?”

I shook my head as he began unbuttoning my sopping-wet shirt. “Not anymore. I was maybe a little tipsy a few hours ago, but now, no. Exhausted.”