Page 5 of Too Guarded to Love (Project VIPER #3)

O livia crossed the street, certain the stranger watched. Instead of turning around, she hurried through the water streaming down the pavement, too tired and too wet to argue with the police officer who’d just given his buddy a glowing testimonial.

I trust him with my life.

Apparently, she felt the same.

Within seconds of their encounter, she believed he wouldn’t harm her. Trusted that she’d never seen a more beautiful, broken man. What she didn’t believe? The overwhelming feeling she should trust him.

“You’d better not be a serial killer.” Only the wind heard the warning as she stepped onto the curb. If she fell victim to the tall, dark stranger with the pretty, sculpted face and survived, her brother would kill her for being too stupid to live.

And then the stranger, who looked like he’d been created by the gods, would be hanging out with angels because he’d be dead.

Again, she questioned the compulsion making her lean into his reassuring warmth while balking at his offer to help.

And again, she questioned her judgment, starting with her argument with Jonathan after she’d landed in DC.

She hadn’t told anyone at the hospital she was leaving town, but Jonathan had sworn he’d heard about her last-minute trip from her director.

“Liar.” She stomped into a puddle. It wasn’t like she had to request vacation time. She was suspended—for bullshit reasons—until her director scheduled a performance hearing.

Sloshing onto the curb, she kicked herself for asking Jonathan to help clear her name instead of calling her brother. Her pain-in-the-ass twin would never suggest she quit and find a job in a new city. She didn’t run when life got hard, even when the fight broke her heart.

Right now, she wanted a tow truck to come quickly. For her brother and his colleagues to uncover who’d been sabotaging her career. For the hospital to reinstate her position so she could save her reputation and fulfill the promise she’d made to Harlee.

Most urgently, for Tall, Dark and Godly to be the honorable man she imagined and not a murderer.

As she hurried up the steps of the weathered bungalow, the urge to study the stranger pulled at her like the rolling surf.

Instead of succumbing, she scurried under the deep porch that took up half the lot space, and why shouldn’t it?

Who wanted to be in the house when a gorgeous view and ocean breeze awaited outside?

Even tonight, the view stole her breath in a dangerous, alluring way she found as appealing as the man who she didn’t want to need help from.

“Hi, dear.”

Olivia turned to the weathered, strong voice. Mrs. Alvarez raised her hand in greeting from the shadows.

“Hi. Your, uh, neighbor…” Christ, she hadn’t caught his name thanks to the thunder. “Your neighbor said to tell you he checked your gutters. They’re fine. ”

Mrs. Alvarez swayed in her rocker. “He’s such a good man.”

Olivia squashed the urge to agree. He still had some proving to do when it came to being good.

As for the man part? The guy belonged on the cover of romance novels with dark, broody characters who said things like, “Who did this to you?” and vowed to murder the man responsible.

Wasn’t his “Who’s the asshole who didn’t let you lead?

” question kind of the same? Arousing for a book boyfriend, but a red flag in real life.

She’d just dumped a controlling idiot. She couldn’t be with another one, even if only until the tow truck came.

But what if he’d been right? What if someone had deliberately tried to hit her head-on? The sense that someone watched grew with each squeak of Mrs. Alvarez’s rocker as she leaned next to the front door and glanced back at the men across the street.

Joe hunched against the wind. The same sorrowful look she’d noticed in his red-rimmed eyes when they met mirrored his posture. She’d bet the stranger’s dark gaze, as beautifully brutal as the storm, burned with an unrest that rivaled the sea.

The two men embraced in a man hug and parted ways. She studied the stranger as he crossed the street with a fluid, confident gait and his head on a swivel. Her vigilante assessment didn’t seem so ludicrous now. Did the town have a Bat-Signal?

As he waved and smiled at Mrs. Alvarez, the mystery and danger that emanated from every hard line of his body softened.

Maybe he wasn’t a serial killer or a one-man neighborhood watch.

Maybe he’d been out for a run to blow off steam or think through a problem.

She did the same thing back home on her family’s farm.

Even though she could write herself a prescription for any ailment, the best medicine was a long, fast ride on her horse.

You know what else was the best medicine for one’s troubles?

No, she couldn’t go there. She’d spent the drive from DC to the beach vowing not to date jerks with an alpha complex, but damn. She’d bet her favorite spurs that one round of treatment with this man would trigger the most satisfying side effects.

She bit her lip as he jogged up the stairs and opened the screen door.

“I can wait on the porch.” She backed toward a lounge chair. “I don’t want to drip on your floor.”

“It’s Joe’s floor, and we are going to drip on it.”

His words tingled down her spine. How did he manage to be a gentleman while he said “we,” as if rain wasn’t the only reason she was dripping wet?

He stepped aside and gestured her in. “It’s up to you if you want to stay out here, but it’s cold and I’m going to build a fire.”

She stopped herself from swaying toward him and his heated intentions. How could a man let her lead, yet make her feel like she wasn’t in control? She needed to be in control right now, in this stranger’s house, because everything else in her life was total chaos.

Maybe controlled chaos was the best she could hope for.

Sighing, she stepped over the threshold and into the small living room. In the darkness, she could barely make out a couch on the wall and a recliner next to the fireplace. As she moved farther inside, the screen door slammed behind her. She flinched and let out a little shriek.

The stranger brushed his hood back. Short, dark, wavy hair curled onto his forehead. “It’s okay. I swear you’re safe with me. ”

“I’m not afraid of you.” Somehow, she felt safer in this house than she did outside. Safer than back in Atlanta. She didn’t feel safe from herself, though, not with those hooded eyes that promised wicked ways to satisfy a woman.

Not that she knew what being satisfied felt like these days. It had been a long time, and especially not with Jonathan.

The stranger pointed to a room to the left of the front door. “There’s a bathroom in there if you need to use it.”

Nodding, she ducked inside and locked herself in.

She emerged a few minutes later in a dry sundress, her wet boots in one hand and her bag in the other.

Dropping her duffel by the entrance, she stepped toward the warm blaze in the fireplace.

The stranger crouched with his back to her in front of the hearth.

The glow cast his dark hair into shades from charcoal to indigo to black as the devil.

She inched closer. Her boots dropped from her hand.

The crackle from the fire muted the thud as he rose.

Whoa. She fanned heat that had nothing to do with the fire away from her face.

Outside, he’d appeared dangerous. Intriguing.

Inside this tiny house, with the fire creating an aura around his glorious body, he looked like he’d risen from a place reserved in hell for angels who sinned in the most heavenly ways.

“Beautiful.” She breathed the word in silent admiration, afraid if she made a sound, he’d turn to her and say something polite or mundane.

She didn’t want him to be a typical guy.

Regular men didn’t consume the space in a room, nor did their broad shoulders seem to expand just because they’d taken off their raincoats.

She licked her lips as she followed the lines of his back that tapered to a mouthwatering V.

Miles of muscle strained under his long-sleeve black T-shirt as he flexed his shoulders.

Her hungry gaze landed below his waist. Dammit, why did his rain pants have to hug a perfect ass?

How was a girl supposed to control herself around that?

You don’t.

A half dozen arguments surfaced at once. Each time, her impulsive side silenced each one. She’d never see him again after tonight. He wouldn’t hurt her. More importantly, he wouldn’t break her. Not her career, her confidence, and definitely not her heart.

The jittery feeling that hijacked her body when everything in her world felt wrong kicked into hyperdrive. What if the breathtaking stranger, whose name she really should learn, wasn’t interested in a cranky wet sea hag? What if he was a threat?

As if he sensed her spiraling thoughts, he reached a hand behind his neck and bunched his T-shirt in his fist. Pulling it up, so slowly it should be a crime to tease a woman with anticipation, he revealed his bare back, inch by tantalizing inch.

Forgiving his imagined injustices, she stared at muscles with more definition than a dictionary.

She could name every length of corded sinew under his golden skin.

Recite their function. Knew how they worked together to create the strong, exquisite specimen before her.

She ached to conduct a thorough hands-on examination.

He angled his body toward the recliner and reached for a sweatshirt on the seat. His right arm—black, hard, and not human—came into view. A gasp hummed from her throat. The vibration rippled down her body and into her core.

“Oh my God.” She stared, catching her breath from the weight of uttering those three words. “Are you…?”

He turned from the chair and fully faced her. His smile, the first genuine one she’d seen all night, blazed bright and sinful, like he truly was made in heaven but played in hell.

“What do you want me to be, sirena? ”

That voice, as equally flirty as his smile and as tempting as his body, crashed into her like a wave and sucked her misgivings into a riptide.

Screw it. She knew exactly what s he wanted him to be.