Dangerous Lovers (119 page)

I realized the room was entirely too quiet. I glanced around. People were staring. Everyone was staring. Except for the men who were bent over the man I pummeled.

I hadn’t been trying to kill him. I was just trying to forget.

And then I realized if he were dead, I would have broken yet another one of G.R.’s rules: kill no one but a Target.

I’d gotten away with it once… many years ago. Something else I really didn’t want to remember. Afterward I’d walked around in a state of panic thinking G.R. would find out and Recall me. But he never did.

I didn’t think I would get that lucky twice.

The man in the ring moaned and relief poured through me. He wasn’t dead. It wasn’t really that I valued his life so much—I had no value for life at all.

I just didn’t want to make this job any harder than it already was.

Chapter Twelve

“
Bandage - a strip of material such as gauze used to protect, immobilize, compress, or support a wound or injured body part.”

Frankie

The best part about today? It was almost over. The lines at the DMV today had been longer and more hellacious than usual. Or maybe my mood was just more hellacious that usual. Starting my day with a demanding, self-important moron banging on my door at the crack of dawn just set me off on the wrong path.

On my way out the door, I rummaged through my endless bag of things I might need but never actually used, searching for my keys. When I couldn’t find them, a little tingle of panic shot through me, the kind of panic I always felt when I thought I lost something important.

Except I didn’t lose my keys.

I didn’t have them because I didn’t drive to work today.

“Ugh!” I burst out, stomping my foot on the pavement, and turned to go back into the building. A flash of red caught my eye. I did a double take over my shoulder and sure enough, my Jeep was sitting in the parking lot.

I had no idea how it got there, but I wasn’t about to complain. Now I didn’t have to call a cab. I hurried over to the driver’s side and opened the door; my keys were in the ignition.

Charming had to have done this. He’s the only one that knew I hadn’t driven to work. He’s also the only idiot I knew that would park my Jeep in the parking lot and leave the keys in the ignition.

“Well, I guess that’s better than him actually walking inside. Then I would’ve had to see him again,” I said out loud, disgust lacing my tone.

“Are you referring to me?” someone said from the back seat.

“Agh!” I practically fell out of the Jeep as I was climbing in.

“What are you
doing
?” I demanded, swinging my purse behind me to whack him on the leg.

He dodged the blow and sat up. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m
not
doing and that’s being comfortable. The back seat in this thing is worse than a Porta Potty on a hot day.”

I snorted. “Like you ever use a Porta Potty.”

“I brought your Jeep here because I knew you didn’t have a way home. I was trying to be nice.”

“Please. You aren’t nice. What do you want?”

“Can we go now?” he asked, sitting up from his reclined position. “I left my car at your apartment.”

I turned around to glare at him, but my glare fell away. “What happened to your face?”

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. He had an angry red gash on his eye that was starting to blacken. “You need to put some ice on that.”

“I’ll do that. Just as soon as I get out of this torture chamber.”

I started up the Jeep and pulled out of the parking lot. “Let me guess, you treated someone else to your winning personality and they punched you in the face?”

He grunted but otherwise said nothing else.

At my apartment, I pulled up behind his Porsche and parked, moving the seat so he could climb out of the back. I started to walk away but then stopped. “Thanks for bringing my Jeep. The cabs around here take forever.”

“Did you make that phone call yet?”

Ahh, and there it was. The real reason he brought my Jeep. It was just an excuse to check up on me.

I sighed. “No.”

“I’m not leaving until you make the call.”

“Fine. Come upstairs. I’ll call her inside.”

At my door, I used my keys to unlock it and let us in, pausing once the door was open. “You left the door unlocked this morning when we left.”

“You locked it when you left, then?”

He nodded. “Leaving your doors unlocked isn’t safe.”

I almost made a quip about him not caring about whether or not I was safe, but I didn’t bother. I was tired.

He sat down in the nearby club chair and dabbed at his eye.

I went in the kitchen and grabbed an icepack and towel. “Here,” I said, jabbing it in front of his face. “That looks like it hurts.”

“I’ve had worse.”

I leaned in and looked at it. It was still oozing. “Did you even clean it?”

“I rinsed it out. You gonna make that call?” he asked, holding the ice up to his face. He didn’t even wince when the pack made contact with his wound.

I grabbed up my phone and dialed Rosalyn’s number. I was aware of Charming’s brooding stare as the phone rang. Rosalyn answered on the third ring.

“Hello?” Her voice was a little questioning, probably because my number was new.

“Hi, Rosalyn. This is Frankie. We met the other night…”

“Oh, yes! How are you?”

“I’m great. How are you?”

“Nothing wrong that a greasy slice of pizza can’t fix.”

I laughed. “I don’t think there is anything pizza can’t fix.”

“Hey, you wouldn’t want to grab some in a bit would you?”

“Oh. Well…” Charming appeared next to me and nodded. “I’m just getting off work—” Before I could finish my sentence, he snatched the phone out of my hand.

“Rosalyn,” he purred into the line. “This is Charming. We met the other night.” He grinned at whatever she was saying. “Yes, I’m here with Frankie. She was having some car trouble so I picked her up from work.”

I wondered if he would like a gash on his left eye to match the one on his right.

“Pizza?” he was saying. “Sure, we’d love to.” His eyes slid to mine and he smirked. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a soda out of the fridge and sat down at the table. This day just kept on getting better.

A few minutes later he pulled out a chair across from me and sat down. “Hope you like pizza, sister dear, because we have plans.”

“Can’t you just tell her I’m sick?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Too bad. You’re the one who told her we were related. Then you told her I was gay. You’re going to come tonight and tell her I’m not. That you were just being an overprotective sister and didn’t want your only brother to get hurt.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because once she knows I’m not gay, I can start dating her and then I won’t have to use my ‘sister’ as an excuse to see her.”

Well, at least then I wouldn’t have to see him every five minutes. Maybe once he wasn’t watching my every move, I could actually come up with a plan to get rid of him.

I got up and pulled out a small first-aid kit near the sink and returned to the table, pulling my chair directly in front of his. “At least let me clean up that eye. I don’t want to have to look at it while I’m eating.”

When he didn’t protest or make some nasty comment, I tore open a small cleansing wipe and reached up to dab at the corner of his eye. I expected him to wince or suck in a breath, but he didn’t do either. He just sat there staring at me without blinking as I worked.

“It really does look like someone punched you.”

He grunted.

“Was that a yes?”

“It was a ‘you should have seen the other guy.’”

I paused, wondering if he was being serious and deciding I really didn’t want to know, then finished dabbing at the cut and dropped the wipe on the table. “So, the other night… when I was in your apartment—”

“You mean the night you broke into my house?” he interrupted.

“Yeah, that one.” I said, opening up a butterfly bandage and reaching for the antibiotic cream. “You moved really fast. How’d you do that?”

I dabbed a little ointment around the edges of the cut. His shoulder’s tightened, but he made no other acknowledgement about my movements.

“It’s one of my abilities.”

“Moving fast?”

“Sort of. It’s called kinetic absorption. It’s the ability to absorb energy from other people and things around me. My body then can use the extra power by converting it to extra strength, super speed, or even sometimes using it to create power blasts.”

“Like from your hands?” I asked, forgetting I was cleaning his eye and just sitting there listening to him.

He nodded.

“Wow. I never heard of that before.” It might even be unbelievable if I hadn’t seen him do it. Or if I didn’t know the Grim Reaper existed.

“So is that all you can do?”

“I have super hearing too.”

“So that’s how you knew I was in the house.”

He shook his head. “The energy level in the house changed. You have lots of energy.”

I glared at him. “You used my energy that night?”

He shrugged.

“But I didn’t feel tired.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I take the
extra
energy; I don’t suck all of yours away.”

“Oh.” I picked up the bandage.

“Actually, that ability pretty much is the only one I have beyond the hearing. But it allows me to do a lot. It pretty much turns me into a super-powered human.”

“Human is debatable,” I muttered.

His shoulders began to shake with his laugh.

“Hold still,” I commanded and leaned closer to apply the bandage.

He smelled good. Like really expensive cologne. I knew it was expensive because all the cheap ones were overpowering; they smelled too strong. But this one wasn’t like that. It was light and clean with just a hint of spice.

I cleared my throat and sat back. “It’s actually not that bad. The cut, I mean. Those kinds of things always look worse than they are. The swelling will probably be gone in the morning.”

I began gathering up the supplies and wrappers. When I turned from the trashcan, he was inches from me. I gasped. “Just because you can move that fast and apparently silently doesn’t mean you should.”

“Frankie,” he said. He leaned down close, so close I could see the different shades of green that all worked together to create the vibrant shade that made up his eyes. I swallowed; my stupid heart began to race with his closeness.

“What?”

“Don’t forget what you’re supposed to do tonight. At dinner.”

I made a sound of disgust and shoved him away. I swear he laughed beneath his breath. “Oh, I won’t forget.” I promised, leaving the room.

At this point I would tell her anything he wanted just so I could get a little space.

Chapter Thirteen

“
Fiber - the parts of grains, fruits, and vegetables that contain cellulose and are not digested by the body. Fiber helps the intestines absorb water, which increases the bulk of the stool and causes it to move more quickly through the colon.”

Charming

We met at a small local pizza place that specialized in wood-fired pizza. Frankie refused to ride with me and I wasn’t going to argue. I had enough of her already to last me an entire lifetime.

I don’t know what I’d been thinking telling her about my abilities. Talk about giving away the home court advantage. One minute she was putting that shit that burned like hell on my face and the next I was answering her questions without even thinking about it.

It had to be the head injury.

It was making me behave foolishly.

But after tonight I wouldn’t have to see her as much. My
sister
could just be a topic of conversation between the Target and me while we were out on dates. I wasn’t fool enough to think that the minute I announced I wasn’t actually gay she would jump into my wholly available and waiting arms.

I had no doubt that her people would be running background check after background check on me. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t find anything other than what I wanted them to see. To her I was just a businessman who worked in real estate and property development. I went to an Ivy League college and worked my way up to the self-made millionaire that I was today. I was divorced (because a guy like me would have to be damaged goods to never have been married before) and I had no kids.