Out Of Control. Shannon McKennaЧитать онлайн книгу.
the old opposites-attract cliché. His attitude of rigid discipline and authority rubbed her the wrong way. Made her want to goad him. Like, hey, who died and made you boss of the universe, pal?
Then she’d strip him naked, rub him down with oil, knock him onto his back and ride him off into the sunset. At a hard gallop.
Whew. She opened the fridge, fished a carrot out of the bag and chomped it. Might as well give all that extra saliva an honest job to do.
She should cut herself some slack. Lusting over McCloud was a lot more fun than fretting about Mikey’s big, hurt eyes when she left him at the money-sucking pet hotel, or feeling like she was going to urp with dread every time she peered into the shadows of her own porch. It was better than worrying about Snakey lying in wait for her in the dark. Or obsessing about what had happened to poor Craig and Mandi.
She grabbed the Skippy’s jar and the bag of carrots and flopped down next to Mikey’s basket, curling up tight around the cold, sick ache in her belly. Sometimes curling up helped. A little bit, anyway.
She ran a carrot around the rim of the jar and crunched it with grim determination. She needed a new brillant scheme, but Snakey was hogging all the RAM in her brain. There wasn’t enough room left on the hard drive to run the kapow! knock-your-socks-off creative solutions program. She’d just started to drag herself out of this tar pit a few weeks ago, when she’d landed a job in a new graphics design firm in Belltown. The fake references she’d bought for her new identity had eaten up months of meager savings, but it had seemed well worth it at the time.
It had lasted exactly ten glorious days before the studio had burned to the ground. It was like she was cursed.
Screw this. She was going to hunt down this joker who was playing tricks on her, and rip his limbs and any other loose appendages off his body. Then she would spring Mikey from the joint, clear her name, and get her act definitively together. The details were fuzzy, but that was the plan. Having a plan was a good first step, right? Right.
She stared at the phone, tempted for the gazillionth time to call Jenny, or Christine or Pia, her best girlfriends from her old life. Just to let them know she was alive, and that she missed them.
Fear and guilt squelched the impulse. She couldn’t put her friends in danger, after what had happened to Craig and Mandi. Loneliness was not a good enough excuse. No matter how awful it got.
She wished she could talk to Mom. Mom had been gone for eight years now, almost nine, carried off by lung cancer. Maybe she was floating around in the ether somewhere, keeping an eye on her luckless, clueless daughter. A vaguely comforting thought. If a wistful one.
She must have been insane to go over to McCloud’s gym today. Desperate to unload at least a highly edited chunk of her tale of woe onto someone who wasn’t a dog. Mikey was a good listener, but not much for feedback. The kickboxing teacher, Sean—she could hardly believe that laughing, dimpled clown of a guy was the scarily gorgeous Davy McCloud’s brother—had waved aside the no-money issue like it was no big deal. Besides, she’d been trolling for an excuse to get a good long look at Davy McCloud up close. Food for fantasy. She needed it bad. The nights were long when a girl was scared to go to sleep.
It was a damn shame he was so big. Couple of cans short of a six-pack, too. The bizarre things he said. Dragon spirit, her big ol’ butt.
Mikey lifted his head to growl. Every hair on Margot’s body stood up. Then she heard the sharp, commanding raprap-rap, and the terror that had spiked inside her eased down, leaving her wobbly.
Snakey would never knock like that. In fact, Snakey wouldn’t knock at all. He would slither through a sewer pipe like a foul vapor. Slide out the bathroom drain with a wet-sounding pop.
Oh, ick. Nice job, lame brain. Now she’d grossed herself out.
Rat-tat-tat, there it came again, crisp and businesslike. Mikey clambered out of his basket, barking. Margot looked down at herself as she followed him towards the front door. Boobs flying wild and free under the Superman T-shirt. Hair damp and snarled and all over the place. Her face, naked of all cosmetic enhancers or concealers, left to fend bravely for itself in the unforgiving urban blight light.
She couldn’t be more at a disadvantage if she’d deliberately tried.
Mikey’s toenails skittered on the linoleum, his limp forgotten. Margot lunged for her comb in the bedroom and dragged it through her hair as she peeked through the peephole. Yep. Him. Her heart went ka-thud. She peered out again, studying the sculpted lines of his jaw, that grim but incredibly sexy mouth. The grooves around it were evidence that he knew how to smile. Maybe he only did it in the dark when no one was around. Emotionally blocked, no doubt. Strong, silent types usually proved to be dull, stolid types, in her experience.
She’d told him to get lost. He was too big, too strange, too serious for her. Too curious, too. She couldn’t trust him with her bizarre story.
She should be furious. She was going to have to fake it. That took energy, and where the hell was she going to find it, under a rock?
Rat-tat-tat-tat. Would you listen to that, his exalted Highness was getting impatient. That gave her the boost she needed to yank the door open and glare balefully out at him. “I said no, buddy.”
Davy looked around her porch. “Is this where you found the dog?”
Her fake anger evaporated into nothing. She gulped, and nodded.
“Any other incidents?”
There was a brisk, businesslike tone in his voice, as if he’d flipped a switch and a whole big mechanism was starting to crunch and grind.
“Hey.” She stuck her hand through the door and waved it in front of his face. “Did you hear what I said? Thanks, but no thanks. And how did you find me, anyhow? I’m not listed in the—oh. My. God.”
He held up a big paper bag. Fragrant steam rose from it.
“Enchiladas,” he said. “Tamales. Chile rellenos. Barbecued pork tacos. Chicken in mole sauce. Shrimp in butter and garlic. And…”—he lifted his other hand—“a six-pack of ice cold Dos Equis.”
She clutched the doorjamb. The scent of rich, spicy food almost made her faint. But damn, she should have at least as much pride as her own dog. Mikey never compromised his principles for food.
She swallowed, hard. “Uh…”
Not quite a smile, just a teasing hint of one, changed the landscape of his lean face. “If you blow me off, I’ll toss it into the Dumpster while you watch,” he warned. “Just to spite you.”
“That’s sick and wrong,” she told him.
“Yeah, sure. I was counting on getting here before you had dinner. I know how I feel about dinner after teaching two classes in a row.”
“Five, actually,” she said.
His eyes widened. “Five? Wow. Intense.”
“Two gyms,” she admitted. “Five classes. Some days I do more. Hush up, Mikey. He’s got Mexican. Don’t bite him till we get some.”
Mikey rose onto his hind legs and sniffed at the bag. He smelled McCloud’s shoes, his ankles, and yipped a shrill order.
“Mikey just invited you in,” Margot said. “He likes shrimp.”
A slow grin spread over his face, activating a bunch of gorgeous smile lines and a startling flash of heated sensuality that sucked the air right out of her lungs. “Mikey’s invitation isn’t enough. I want yours.”
She forced herself to drag in some air. She was outmaneuvered.
“Oh, come on in, already,” she grumbled.
Faris’s stomach rolled with anxiety as the door closed behind McCloud. He forced himself to exhale, to think clearly. He had to be patient, to remember how desperate she was, how defenseless and alone. Marcus had ordered him to search her house and tap her