“Yeah, I’ve been positively lovesick for years,” she mocked right back, even going so far as to bat her eyelashes at him with such outrageous excess that he would have smiled…if he’d been a smiling man. But he wasn’t.
He focused his attention on the soup. It was good. It wasn’t until he saw the satisfied grin on her face that he realized he’d just guzzled down his chow like a raw recruit at boot camp. He dropped his spoon so abruptly it clattered on the wooden table.
“Don’t get too comfy here,” he warned her. “You’re leaving first thing in the morning.”
His pronouncement was accentuated by a crack of thunder.
“Sounds like a doozy of a storm,” she noted a second before the lights flickered and went out. “Good thing I’m not afraid of the dark,” she calmly added. “How about you?”
“I’m a Marine. I live for the dark.”
That didn’t surprise Kelly. She’d sensed the darkness in him from the moment he’d opened the door. There was a new edge to him, a sharper dangerous edge that hadn’t been there before. Brought about by his years in the Marines or by his accident? Or a combination of both?
She could hear him breathing. There was something surprisingly sensual about being caught in the darkness with him, surrounded by velvety shadows illuminated by flashes of lightning. The harsh bursts of light captured the angles of his face, lending them new definition. It was the face of a man who wouldn’t step aside if trouble got in his way.
She reached for his empty bowl only to have her fingers collide with his. Heat shot through her, as powerful as a lightning strike. The storm outside dimmed as her senses shifted to the storm raging inside of her body. She could feel the excitement burning in her like a wild thing.
“There’s something I should warn you about this beach house,” Justice said, his voice silky soft. “There’s only one bed.”
Chapter Two
“Only one bed, huh?” Kelly frantically tried to hide the fact that her heart had just kicked into overdrive. She couldn’t afford to let Justice know that he was getting to her. That wouldn’t do at all.
For one thing, Justice clearly didn’t think of her that way. He viewed her as a nuisance. For another, she couldn’t get involved with him. He was a patient. Or about to become one. Not to mention that he was her sister’s ex-husband. A definite hornet’s nest there. Way too much baggage.
The lights came back on, and as they did, Kelly knew what she had to do. She had to be sensible here. She also had to keep her sense of humor. It had gotten her through in the past whenever things were tough.
With that in mind, she gave Justice a deliberately mocking look. “Well, I suppose I could arm wrestle you for the bed, but as it happens I brought a sleeping bag with me. And I noticed that your couch in the living room looked pretty comfy.”
“Comfy? Do not get comfy here,” Justice warned her. “You will not be staying.”
His irritated words rolled right off her back. She had her “sensible” coating on now, and nothing he could say should get to her now. The realization comforted her. So did the fact that her smile threw him as she patted his left, uninjured arm. “You know, it’s a good thing I’m not the sensitive kind or I’d be hurt by your eagerness to get rid of me. I know, however, what’s behind it.”
He gave her one of those aggravated looks men give women they don’t understand. “I’ll tell you what’s behind it, the fact that I want you out of here.”
“So you’ve said. We’ll talk about it in the morning, if you’d rather.” She started cleaning up after their meal, taking their dirty bowls to the kitchen sink and running the water.
“I’d rather you were gone.”
Thunder boomed one final time, rattling the windowpanes with its bass reverberations. Despite the rumblings, the storm was actually weakening. Just like Justice. He was rumbling like the thunder, but it was more bark than bite. “You’re starting to sound like a broken record, Justice.”
“I can’t figure out why you’d want to stay somewhere you’re not wanted.”
“Besides being a glutton for punishment, you mean?” She squirted dishwashing liquid into the sink. There was a dishwasher, but she felt the need to scrub. “I’ve already told you, your mother asked me to come check on you.”
“So now you’ve checked. I’m still alive.”
“Have you called her on your cell phone yet?”
“What are you, my keeper?” His voice was really irritated now.
She turned to face him directly as she issued her challenge. “I thought Marines didn’t need keepers.”
He automatically straightened. “We don’t.”
“Then act like it, and call your mother.”
Justice looked like he wanted to strangle her, before he pivoted and marched out of the room to what she presumed was the only bedroom. The fact that he didn’t slam the door but instead closed it with controlled precision didn’t fool her for one second. The man was furious with her.
Kelly paused in her nervous tidying to sink onto a nearby kitchen chair. Okay, so maybe Justice wasn’t weakening like the departing storm. Maybe she’d been a little overconfident thinking she had things under control.
Only one bed…
His words kept replaying in her mind as she quickly took stock of her surroundings. The living room she’d walked through had a gorgeous pine floor but little furniture aside from the neutral-colored couch. The kitchen was equally no-frill. There was no particular color scheme, the walls were white as was the woodwork. The bathroom was at the end of the hallway, right next to the bedroom with its one bed.
She could easily picture Justice on that bed, his lean fighter’s body tangled in satin sheets….
Rats. Only in the beach house for an hour and already she was having sexual fantasies about Justice. Not good.
Time to remind herself yet again why she was here. Because of Mrs. Wilder. Kelly would do anything for the older woman, including walking over fire. And it looked like dealing with Justice would come darn close to that fiery fate.
Kelly would manage. It’s what she did best. Her older sister, Barbie, looked gorgeous and Kelly…well, Kelly managed. Barbie brought men to their knees in adoration and Kelly managed not to care that she faded into the wallpaper whenever her sister was around.
“It’s a good thing you’re so smart,” their father had often told Kelly when she was growing up. “Because you’re not as beautiful as your sister, so you need something else to make things balance out.”
But things had never felt balanced to Kelly. Growing up, she’d often felt like a forgotten member of the family. Her mother, a beauty like Barbie, had referred to Kelly as her “foundling child” because she hadn’t inherited their blond-and-blue-eyed coloring and instead had taken after her father with brown hair and eyes.
When her mother died in an automobile accident, Kelly had been devastated. She’d despaired of ever being anything but the gangly, awkward thirteen-year-old she was, of ever showing her mother that she was her daughter and did belong.
And there was no depending on her sister during that time, because Barbie had spent every moment with Justice, accepting his marriage proposal only a few weeks after their mother’s death.
Justice and Barbie had been going together throughout high school, but even so, Kelly was surprised that Barbie had agreed to marry Justice. He’d already signed up to join the Marines after graduation. Barbie had told her that she was off to live an adventurous life.