Page 119 of Girl in the Water

He didn’t go around. He knelt on the curb in front of her. “Who did this to you?”

The bastard was so fucking dead.

She flashed a goofy smile. “Hard liquor.”

He could definitely smellthaton her. “Your little call knocked ten years off my life, you know that?” He could almost breathe normally. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Her beautiful eyes hung on his face. “Could you please take me home?”

“Sure.”

“To your place,” she added.

He leaned in, fastened her seat belt, then closed the door on her.

All the way home, she didn’t say anything. She just closed her eyes and sank into the seat, her bloody hands on her lap.

When he got to the condo, he lifted her again and carried her up.

She lay her head on his shoulder. “I can walk.”

“I don’t care.” He carried her straight to his bathroom and sat her on the closed toilet lid, rummaged around for peroxide in the mirrored cabinet.

He cleaned her hands, disinfected the scrapes, put on waterproof bandages. He brought her one of his T-shirts. “Take a shower.”

Then he left her.

Then he paced his bedroom, a million thoughts exploding through his brain.

She came out fifteen minutes later, the T-shirt hanging off her shoulders, the hem coming to her knees. She looked halfway between a sex symbol and a waif.

He stepped to his bed and pulled down the covers. “You’re sleeping here tonight. I don’t think I can stand letting you out of my sight.”

She climbed into bed.

He kicked off his shoes and got in next to her. He left the light on.

He tried to take her into his arms, but he was on top of the covers, so it didn’t work. So, with a muffled curse, he got under the covers with her. Then he did take her into his arms, and she turned into his chest, and his world began to reassemble itself.

“Now tell me what happened.”

She did. And then she made him promise that he wouldn’t kill Bobby. “You can’t kill him for not wanting to sleep with an ex-whore.”

He took her chin and forced her to look at him. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

She rolled her eyes and parroted back the words he must have told her a thousand times after he’d first brought her to the US. “There’s not one thing wrong with me or bad about me.”

“Damn right.”

She lowered her head. “You don’t want to sleep with me either.”

Christ.He gently took her chin, brought her face back up again, and then he kissed her.

And kissed her, and kissed her, until they had their legs wrapped around each other, and he had his hand under her T-shirt, on her perfect breast, and he was so hard, he thought the top of his head would blow off from all the pressure building inside him.

He pulled back, catching his breath. “We can’t do this tonight.”

Immediately, the hurt of rejection was back in her eyes.