THOR (7 page)

Luke

The parking lot at the salon is pretty quiet. A few SUV’s and a sweet little souped-up mustang, but no motorcycles, certainly no vintage Triumphs. I park my bike beside Olivia’s convertible, take off my helmet and stroll into the salon.

When I step in the door, I take off my sunglasses and look around. Several women, including Olivia, are getting their hair done. Every single person stares at me, and the woman working on Olivia gasps. I suppose a six foot four guy wearing black leathers makes an impression in a girly hair salon.

Her head is covered with little folded pieces of aluminum foil that look like shiny roofing shingles and her pretty lips form a perfect little circle and then flatten into a frown.

“What are you doing here?”

Damn, I like antagonizing this girl.

Her tone is accusatory, like she caught me spying on her in the bathtub or something. The salon is pure estrogen and I’m treading on thin ice by venturing into this territory.

I descend the steps into the lioness’ den and ease into a salon chair.

“I was thinking of getting a haircut.”

She rolls her eyes. “Because your buzzcut is getting shaggy?”

Her hairdresser is a skinny blonde girl with hair pulled back in a severe looking arrangement. She’s rail thin except for her lips which look like they’ve had those injections women like to get. Needles in the lips. That’s got to hurt like a sonofabitch. It never fails to astonish me what lengths women will go to snare men.

The blonde goes back to wrapping strands of Olivia’s hair in little packets. It’s weirdly mesmerizing, like a lot of the stuff in here. Bottles of serums and potions and liquids. Things with colors and numbers scrawled across with a sharpie. They probably have a room in the back where they keep the eye of newt and tail of salamander.

“Remember I’m your bodyguard? Your lawyer
and
my Dad called this morning asking about you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Olivia fumes. “I can manage just fine on my own.”

I shrug. “I’m not arguing with my Dad. Not over this.”

It’s true. He’s tried to run my life for a long time, telling me what schools to go to, what branch of the military to join, and what to do when I get out. And for a long time I fought him. But, when I found out about the heart attack, I stopped rejecting everything he said.

After my mom died, he buried himself in his work. I was only fifteen and my way of dealing with her death was acting out, picking fights and flipping off teachers. His solution was to send me away to military school on the east coast. Our relationship has been touch and go since then, but a heart attack has a way of clearing the air.

It’s not like I mind shadowing Olivia. I’d like to do a lot more than shadow her. I won’t start work for Thornton Construction for another three weeks. Might as well follow Olivia around and keep her out of trouble, unless it’s with me.

That morning, a guy was at the gate asking to see her. One of the housekeepers told me about it. Said he didn’t want to leave a name. I need to talk to everyone at the house about not discussing Olivia with anyone.

Olivia glares at me. “I don’t want to look stupid. Like I need someone to hold my hand to finish the deal. I have a lot riding on this, Luke.”

I stretched my neck and grimace, her words making me think about the dream I had last night. Olivia was in it and we were doing a lot more than holding hands. I shift uncomfortably and the hairdresser glances at me, smirking.

“Speaking of a lot riding on things, I need to work out later. Hit some push-ups.”

She draws a sharp breath and flushes. When she presses her lips together, I know she’s trying to keep from smiling at me. Here, in front of her peers, she’s all cool and distant, but with a few simple words, I can make her remember the silly, fun and sexy thing we did yesterday.

I keep my gaze on hers as I recall the kiss we shared. She’s all I can think about. I can tell by her expression that she’s thinking about me too. Her bravado falters and she breaks her gaze for a moment. When she looks back, she gives a small shake of her head. She’s asking for mercy. Tapping out. But I’m not letting up for a moment.

“Okay, let’s give this a little heat,” the hairdresser says and whisks Olivia off.

My smile fades as I watch Olivia cross the salon. According to the lawyer, my father was up in arms about something. Dad’s supposed to be relaxing on the Queen Mary, not working deals over here in Texas. This isn’t even his deal to worry about, but I know he’s upset because Olivia is Julia’s kid. He’s got it bad for Julia. I never thought he’d settle down again, but if he’s happy, I’m happy.

The lawyer said my father didn’t know the half of it, that even he’d gotten a strange letter making vague threats about the sale of Olivia’s club.

I’m guessing this is all about a rejected admirer or lover. Maybe she had a sugar daddy. Now that she has some money coming her way, she’s snatched away his supply of sugar, so he wants to torpedo this sale. Keep her dependent.

A few of the girls ask if I want a haircut. I tell them no and one of them brings a glass of water with a piece of cucumber in it. The little wedge actually does make the water taste like cucumber. I drink it down and feel my anger ebb.

I wasn’t raised with cucumber water or visiting high-end places like this prissy salon. We’ve always had plenty, but while friends from school were touring European museums over summer break, I was driving a dozer at one of dad’s construction sites. Or wiring a high-rise. Or swinging a hammer.

Olivia is crossing the salon with a look of pure venom in her eyes. She’s moving so fast some of her little silver shingles blow off her head.

“You took a picture of me while I slept?”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

She shoves the phone at me. “You’re the only one who had the chance.”

This has the attention of every hairdresser in the salon. Even the customers look from their phones or magazines.

I take the phone and swipe the screen. It’s a picture of her, taken at night. The flash has washed out her skin. Her lashes rest on her cheeks and her lips are parted. She wears a nightie that dreams are made of and I can see the curve of her breast. A groan escapes my lips but then I see the words below.

Can’t stop watching you.

My mind slips gear and I look from the picture to the words and back to the picture.

“Fuck!” I’m on my feet and striding out of the salon, jamming my thumb against the call button. The call picks up on the third ring.

“Who is this?” I snarl.

There’s a pause. The guy didn’t expect another man to call him, I’m sure. The line goes dead.

I look at the image again. Whoever took it was probably a couple of feet away from her, but maybe he was across the room and zoomed in. Olivia always has a certain vitality that makes her come across as confident and poised, but when she’s asleep or passed out like she was the other day, she looks smaller, younger and fragile.

I scrub my hand over my face. Something inside me goes pure fucking Neanderthal. One of her boyfriends, a boyfriend she claimed not to have… one of those fuckers was at the house and took this picture. I linger on the outline of her perfect breast barely visible on the gritty picture. I want to kill this guy. But then I realize the bed in the photo is not her bed upstairs. The sheets have a design on them, but hers upstairs are solid blue. This wasn’t taken at Dad’s house. Also, I want to see her in this just so I can tear it from her. With my teeth.

The door to the salon bursts open and Olivia erupts, her black cape streaming behind her. She looks so mad, I half expect sparks to fly from her eyes.

“Give me back my phone,” she hisses.

I hold it out to her. “I didn’t take this picture.”

She snatches it and storms back into the salon.

I trail behind her, trying to make sense of what I just saw. When I was asked to skip the last few stops on my trip to get back to Texas, I was both irritated and intrigued. I assumed any threat to her came from her own bad choices and that annoyed me. I was intrigued by the possibility of having wild sex with Olivia, too. There was always that.

Now everything has shifted into a far more ominous territory. The guy bothering Olivia is a certifiable nut and sending pictures that would frighten any woman. Clearly, he’s a former lover. The story she told me about only sleeping with one guy is a lie. Maybe she hasn’t slept around but she’s definitely had more than one boyfriend. My hands curl into fists.

I return to my seat beside her in the salon.

“I’m packing up my stuff when I get home,” she says, in a sugary sweet voice. “I’m going to Charlotte’s or Sage’s. Maybe Ashley’s.”

She’s positive I’m the one who took the picture and I’m positive she’s lying to me about a bunch of stuff.

She keeps her gaze fixed on her phone as she texts someone. Sage or Charlotte or Ashley. I don’t know who the hell these women are. The blonde hairdresser keeps shifting her nervous attention from me to Olivia. She probably thinks I’m a wackjob. Some crazy creeper who likes to snap pictures of sleeping woman.

Olivia’s phone pings and she reads the message then gives me a smug look as she sets her phone aside. She just got an offer to spend the night at one of those girls’ house.

Yeah, that’s not fucking happening.

She narrows her eyes and her perfect mouth curves into a happy, fuck-you, look. Crossing her legs, she leans back in her chair, lounging like some spoiled sex kitten and starts bouncing her foot.

Temporarily, I’m distracted by her delicate foot and how it’s clad in high heels. I can see the shadow of her instep. Sometime soon, I’m going to bite her there. Not hard.

“You can just get back on your bike and head out from wherever you came from,” she says.

The hair dresser jerks her head around as if I might create a scene right there. Throw my cucumber slice or something. Her eyes are wide and part of me wants to bare my teeth just to freak her out.

“It’s been great staying with you,” Olivia sneers. “You can go find some other girl to stalk now because nothing’s changed since the first time we met. No matter how much you want to pay me, I am most definitely
not
on the menu.”

The oxygen leaves the salon with the collective gasp that follows on the heels of her words. The silence is loud and edged with notes of alarm and indignation. When I walked into this place, every single woman was trying her best to eye-fuck me and now not one will meet my gaze.

They think I’m a bastard. They have no idea. I almost want to laugh at Olivia’s gullibility. She thinks I’m going to shrug off her crazy picture and let her go fend for herself. This thing might have started out a favor for Julia and my father, but it just got a whole lot bigger.

Olivia

Luke tails me the whole way home, following me on his motorcycle, making me angrier with each passing mile. Mentally, I go back through all the pictures and messages I’ve gotten. Sick, nasty, desperate things. This is the man I kissed and flirted with.

He’d made it clear he thought I was trash the first time we met. All my alarm systems went code red and I ignored everything that warned me he was dangerous. I’m a complete fool.

His touch and his teasing convinced me he cared. The memory of his kiss makes me shiver. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to forget the way he looked when I told him about my first time. There’s something about him that makes me weak and needy. I want to escape him, I want to fall into him so hard it scares me.

When I pull up to the gate, I see him in my rear view mirror.

A jolt of awareness hits me and my skin prickles as I imagine that I’m about to walk into the house with him a few steps behind me. The staff is gone by now and we’ll be alone. For a moment, I imagine gunning the engine and leaving him behind, but that would be foolish. There’s no way I’d outrun his motorcycle. When I stormed out of the salon, he made it clear to me he planned to stick to me like white on rice.

I pull through the gate and up the driveway. Late afternoon sunlight slants through the trees, dappling the ground with shadows. Mentally, I go through what I need to get of the house. Most of my meager belongings are in a short-term storage unit. I’ll just throw a few things into a duffel bag and head to Charlotte’s. Make-up, a change of clothes, my laptop. I can be out in less than five minutes.

His footfalls are just a few paces behind me. His big biker boots hit the ground with a force and I imagine he wants to intimidate me, keep up with this mind-fuck he started months ago.

I punch the security code into the pad and he keeps a respectful distance from me. This freaks me out a little more and by the time I push the door open my hands are slick. My heart has crawled partway up my throat.

He follows me down the hallway and up the stairs. “Who is he, Olivia?”

His voice is soft, edged with threat. I swallow hard. All I need to do is grab a few things and get out of here.

“You tell me, Luke.”

He’s two steps behind me, until suddenly he isn’t. I get to my room and realize he’s not right on my ass. Weirdly, I feel bereft. I pause in the hallway and look around, seeking him out, but he’s not there. Holy shit. I have Stockholm syndrome and he hasn’t even touched me.

I shake off that crazy thought and hurry into my room. I throw a couple of pairs of jeans, some t-shirts and a hoodie onto my bed. I go to the closet to look for a bag. My heart crashes against my ribs. I want him to stop me from leaving. To tell me it wasn’t him sending the pictures. I want him to swoop in and tell me it’s all going to be okay.

That’s totally what I want until I turn around and see him standing in the doorway of the closet, a dazzling smile curving his lips.

“Baby,” he drawls. His tone is x-rated. It rolls with all sorts of things your mother, your girlfriends and everyone in between warned you about. Pure invitation to sin. In his right hand, I see both my car keys and my phone. I don’t remember setting them down but I’m not exactly thinking clearly. I left them on the bed. How I could be so stupid? No phone. No keys. He’s got me right where he wants me.

“Did you send that picture?” I ask, my voice tremulous.

He takes a few steps closer, pressing me against the back of the closet. His cocky expression fades. He closes the distance between us and gathers me close. He takes my hair and fists it and tips my head up to receive his kiss. The kiss is lewd. Dirty. He strokes his tongue against my lips pushing them apart and then he gives me a kiss that’s probably illegal in a few places. I sag against him and he tightens his hold, pressing me against his hard, hot erection. I feel like he’s branding me with his heat. When he breaks the kiss, he gives me a predatory grin.

“And this is the part,” I whisper, “where you say, ‘of course not’.”

He scoffs. “I didn’t take that picture. Here, look again.” He holds up my phone, but he doesn’t let go. “Look at the sheets. Now look at your bed.”

“Shit. That’s an old picture.”

“If I wanted to hurt you, I’ve had plenty of chances. You need to think about all the little admirers you’ve picked up along the way. And by admirers, I mean psychos. Who the fuck is this guy? All you need to do is try to remember who you’ve slept with. Or is that too big of a number?”

I recoil, hitting the cold, hard wall of the closet. There isn’t anything he could have said to me that could cut me deeper. His eyes blaze with fury because he thinks I’ve slept with so many men I can’t remember. The crazy thing is I really have no idea who took that picture, or when it was taken.

“Someone came to the gate looking for you this morning,” he says. “Who knows you’re here?”

“Just Charlotte.”

He shrugs. “I’m taking you out of here. We’re going to the cabin. Might want to pack a few night’s worth of clothing. Something warm because we’re expecting a cold front.” He nuzzled my neck. “Don’t forget a nightie. Want me to help you pick one out?”

“I fucking hate you.” I spit the words and he laughs.
Laughs
at me. Then, he nips the tender skin of my neck, not hard, but not gently, either. As if it’s punishment for saying that I hate him.

“And I’m fucking crazy about you, Olivia. You, sweetheart, are about to get an education.”

Fear crashes against my heart. His words frighten me because I can’t believe he’d do anything to hurt me, even though what he’s telling me sounds almost threatening.

“What do you mean?” I whisper.

My hands move of their own volition, pressing against the hard bands of muscle along his back.

“I’m going to take over everything until you finish your deal. Protect you. Guard you. Take a bullet for you if I need to. For the next two days, every move you make will be with my say-so.”

His words should frighten me, but strangely they don’t. Part of me just wants to go with him. Be with him. Charlotte has offered to keep me, but I don’t think I’m going to her house. What I really want is to go with my dirty-talking, often rude, possibly psycho step-brother.

“I don’t know what to do, Luke. Usually, I do. Usually, people ask me what to do, but, for once, I have no idea.”

He smiles. “I think it’s adorable that you think you have a choice. You don’t. I’m giving you five minutes to pack.”

“I don’t think-”

“Exactly, Olivia. This is not the time for you to
think
. It’s time for you to
do
, exactly what I say.”

I stare at him. Part of me wants to tell him about the presentation I gave the Chamber of Commerce a few weeks ago on employee retention. I’m not used to taking orders.

His gaze darkens. “I don’t see you moving, sweetheart. Want me to pick out some things for you? If you leave it up to me, I’ll pick your flimsiest nighties. You want to be stuck in a cabin with an ex-Marine wearing something skimpy?”

Yes, I think.
I almost say it, but I hold back. He thinks that if he drags me out to his cabin, I’m his for the taking. His arrogance makes me wish my nightgowns were double-thick flannel PJ’s, not whisper thin baby dolls.

“Get. Moving.” He says, his tone clipped.

Shit.

I turn away from him and gather the last of my things. I feel his eyes on me the whole time and a combination of fear and arousal hums inside my body. I glance at him a few times and each time he regards me with a sexy smirk. He’d take a bullet for me. No one’s ever said that to me before and the last of my defenses crumble.