Page 12 of Scorned Beauty

“Someone’s coming to get you?”

“Your fridge is empty. I’m starving.”

“Dom!”

“What?”

“You can’t just bulldoze your way into my life and disrupt my plans.”

He raised the remote and flipped through the channels. “What are your plans for later?”

“I have to pick up a cat and I’ve got errands to run.” And I had no idea why I told him.

“Hmm…not too fond of cats. They shed.”

“Well, luckily, it’s not your problem.” I crossed my arms. Exasperation with this man was zooming to a whole new level. It would be another three hours before I could whine to Bianca. Seven a.m. sounded reasonable enough, right? Except I had to remember I was the person who made shit happen.

Dom was a mere aberration.

“Look. I’m all out of juice. My clinical rotation lasted ten hours, and I had to do Grigori’s job. Can you please have someone pick you up?”

His face changed, softening, and that sent a different kind of fluttering in my stomach. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”

He was apologizing? I should be suspicious, but there was a thoughtful and sincere expression on his face. Up to this point in our interactions, Dom always put me on the defensive. Our first encounter was him waving a copy of my pitiful finances in front of my face. I held that grudge and still despised him for it.

“Go on and sleep,” he said. “I got this.”

“Dom…”

“I’ll call someone.”

Thank God.

“There’s water in the fridge,” I offered.

“Thank you.”

And I considered that a win and retreated into my bedroom, closed the door, and locked it.

An alarm blasted me awake.

It wasn’t my phone, but my smoke detector. An odor of something burnt invaded my nostrils. Panicked, I jumped out of bed and raced out of the room.

Smoke billowing out of the kitchen catapulted my heart into my throat, but when I stepped into the kitchen, confusion hit me.

A man in gray sweatpants and a white tee was fumbling through the drawers while a roaring fire burned in a pan. His broad back was to me and he was barefoot.

“Dom?” The events of the night came crashing back.

He turned and shot me a grin. “Hang on a sec, baby.”

Hang on… What the hell is baby?

“You’ve got exactly two seconds to explain?—”

He found a lid and, cool as you please, dropped it on the angry flame, effectively killing it.

“Make that smoke detector stop screaming.” He handed me a kitchen towel.