Hot Winter Nights

So he really didn’t remember, which was both a disappointment and an opportunity. “You said, and I quote . . .” She lowered her voice to imitate his low base tone. “‘I’m gonna rock your world, baby.’”

He closed his eyes and muttered something about being a dead man walking . . .

But, she couldn’t help but notice, he didn’t doubt that he’d come onto her. Interesting. Maybe even . . . thrilling. Not that it changed a thing. She wasn’t interested in him, period. To be interested meant putting herself out there and being willing to fall. And to do those things, she had to be vulnerable.

Not going to happen. Not ever again.

Nope, at the ripe old age of nearly twenty-eight, she was done, thank you very much. Not that this stopped her from starting to feel a little bit insulted at Lucas’s attitude. “I’m not sure I see what the problem is,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?” His voice was morning scratchy and sexy as hell, damn him. She could tell he hadn’t had any caffeine yet today.

And neither had she. And worse, she’d not taken off her makeup the night before out of worry and stress over the man currently glaring at her, so she probably looked like a raccoon.

A raccoon with really bad morning bed head.

Ignoring him, she tossed back the bedding. And it was some really great bedding too. She’d need a raise from Archer before she could afford anything close to this quality.

Lucas seemed to suddenly choke on his own tongue, prompting her to look down at herself. Not wanting to sleep in her one and only party dress, she’d . . . borrowed one of his T-shirts last night. It hit her at mid-thigh and was softer than any T-shirt she’d ever had and the truth was, he wasn’t going to get it back.

“Is that my shirt?” he asked.

“Yes.” The funny thing was that on the job, Lucas was the steady, unflappable, stoic one. Nothing got to him, nothing penetrated. He was “it’s all good” Lucas Knight. But he wasn’t all good now. He thought they’d slept together and though he was doing a great job at hiding it, he was freaking out.

Craning his neck, he eyed the chair, and her dress on it. Her heels lay haphazardly on the floor, her champagne lace bra on top of them. Closing his eyes, he ran a hand over his scruffy jaw. “Just shoot me now.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You don’t remember any of it?”

He paused, dropped his hand and opened his eyes on hers. “Just how much of ‘it’ was there?”

“Wow,” she said in her best pissy tone. She had no idea what she thought she was doing poking the bear like this, but his clear unhappiness at the thought of them being together felt like an insult.

“Just, please God, tell me it was all consensual,” he said, not playing. In fact, he was more serious than she’d ever seen him.

Well, if he was going to go all hero-like on her . . . She sighed. “Of course the evening was entirely consensual.”

He nodded and sank to the chair holding her dress.

“Hey,” she said, adding temper to insulted. “I didn’t say it was bad.”

“How about we say it didn’t happen at all?”

Oh no. No way was she going to let him off the hook that easy. She arched a brow. “Or did it?” She desperately wanted to get off the bed and dressed, but here was the thing. In the mornings, her right leg was particularly unaccommodating. Numb from her knee to the top of her thigh, it always took her a long few minutes to stand up first thing. And a cane, which she kept by her bed and hated more than green vegetables, and she hated green vegetables a lot. The whole thing involved a lot of whimpering and gasping with pain as she stretched and worked and coaxed the leg into working.

But hell if she’d do that with an audience. Pride before the fall and all that. “I think I hear your cell buzzing from the other room,” she said.

“Shit.” He turned to the door, but not before pointing at her. “Don’t move.”

Right. The minute he was gone, she slid out of the bed. Her right leg predictably didn’t hold and she dropped to her knees. “Dammit,” she whispered as nerve pain shot through her thigh in a series of bolt lightning blasts. “Dammit . . .” She grimaced through the cramp and slowly rose, breathing through the pain in short little pants as she’d learned to do.

“My phone wasn’t ringing—” Lucas broke off and then he was there, right there, steadying her with hands on her hips. “You okay?”

“Yes!” She shoved his hands away and tried to push his big body back too, but he was an immovable tree when he wanted to be and he stayed right here, supporting her until, finally dammit, she got her leg beneath her. She probably would have even relented and used her cane if it’d been here, not that she intended to admit it. “I’ve got this,” she muttered, stepping free, incredibly aware of how little she was wearing and how much he was.

And worse, the look in his eyes didn’t have anything to do with sexy times, but pity. “I said I’m fine.”

He lifted his hands. “I heard you, loud and clear.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“Hard to when you’re pale from pain,” he said. “Sit down.”

“No.”

“Molly,” he said in that frustrated voice again. But then he hit her with a zinger she didn’t see coming. “Please,” he said quietly.

Well, hell. She sat at the foot of the bed, and the fact that she did it just before her leg gave out again was her own little secret.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said very seriously.

“I’m not going to rate your performance last night.”

“That’s not—” He paused, his eyes sharpened. “Wait. What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“So you’re saying I did suck.”

She had to laugh. “Well, if you can’t remember it, how good could it really have been, right?”

She was only teasing of course, but he frowned like the possibility that he hadn’t been heart-stoppingly amazing had never crossed his mind until that very moment. “What did you want to talk about?” she asked.

Still looking distracted, he shook his head. “Two elves were waiting on you at the office this morning.”

She raised a brow. “Are you still drunk?”

“No, really. It was your neighbor and a friend. They were talking about their bad Santa.”

“Mrs. Berkowitz,” she said, remembering. “She’s been working at a small pop-up Christmas village in Soma and thinks there’s something nefarious going on.”

“You can’t take this case on, Molly. You’ve got to turn her down.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I know you didn’t just tell me what to do. Even if we did sleep together.”

She meant him to react to that and he did, with a grimace. “Okay, first, this”—he waggled a finger between them—“didn’t happen.”

“And you’re so sure about that, are you?” she asked.

Assuming by the way his mouth opened and then closed, he wasn’t sure of anything right about now. Now that they were both irritated, she got up again and dammit. Dammit, her leg still hurt. She paused, but didn’t see any way around letting him see her limp over to her clothes.