Chapter Fifty-Nine
Miranda
Ignore that he was there?
Only a man who didn’t know just how attractive he was could say something like that. But everything about the confident, borderline cocky, way that Brock carried himself said he was very much aware of how hot he was.
Besides, even if he wasn’t so blessed in the looks-department, ignoring his presence would be impossible.
It had been longer than I cared to admit since I’d had a man in my apartment who wasn’t Cam. Hell, there were never any women either.
My apartment was my sanctuary, the place I could shrug off the public persona of Miranda Coulter, and just get to be Randi, a girl who still couldn’t quite believe what she’d accomplished with her life, who still enjoyed a box of store brand mac & cheese—powdered cheese packet included—like she’d eaten for dinner many times in her childhood, even though the adult version of her could have splurged on five-hundred dollars of sushi.
Or where I would opt out of my nice, silk pajamas and pick a pair of sweatpants that came from a big box store in horrifically unflattering bright primary colors. Or where I would do my own manicure.
I didn’t like inviting other people into my inner world where parts of the old me still peeked through on occasion.
But, I guess, if someone was going to be privy to that, someone that was being paid to be there was probably the least likely to judge or say anything. Client-employee confidentiality and all of that.
“I have a guest room,” I offered him a while later, after the food was mostly eaten, the dishes in the dishwasher, and the wine bottle finished. Mostly by me.
I could feel it shimmering in my veins, making me feel light and sparkly, but without the sluttiness that came with hard liquor for me.
“I saw that,” he said, reminding me that he’d been all up in my personal space when I wasn’t around to watch him.
He’d seen the cheap boxed mac & cheese. And the sweats.
Hell, he probably knew about my collection of battery-operated devices in the bottom drawer of my nightstand, and even drawn conclusions to how long it had been since I’d known the touch of a real, flesh-and-blood man, since I kept a damn bulk-sized pack of batteries in that drawer as well.
“I’d rather stay on the couch,” he added when I said nothing. “Closer to the door if there is trouble.”
“And if there’s trouble?” I asked, stomach clenching a bit. And, I swear, as illogical as it was, I swear the damn cut on my arm burned too.
“You lock your bedroom door, go into your bathroom, lock that door as well, then climb into that massive-ass tub of yours.”
“While you…” I prompted.
“Handle it,” he said, and there was something in his eyes, in his tone of voice, that told me he was more than capable of doing just that.
“Do you have a gun?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Should I have a gun?”
“Honey, I can’t answer that question for you,” he said, shaking his head.
And I did not get a little flutter at the endearment.
It was the wine, damnit. That was all. “Having a gun or not is a personal decision based on a lot of factors. Like your personal feelings on them, your knowledge on how to use and safely store them, and whether or not you think that, in the worst-case scenario, you could actually point one at a fellow human being and pull the trigger, being fully aware that you could remove them from the world.”
Well, that was a little… intense. But fair.
“I once bashed a man’s teeth out with a tire iron when he tried to assault me instead of help me change my tire like he claimed he was doing.”
“Good for you,” he said, giving me a small smile.
I never told anyone that story.
It was part of my old life.
And in my new life, you didn’t bash men’s teeth in with tire irons, no matter how much they had it coming. That was what security was for. What never changing your own damn tire because you had people to do that was for.
People in my current world viewed violence as base and low class, even if it was in self-defense.
So I just kept those types of tales to myself.
“I think I could do it. But it would take some research and practice before I felt comfortable with it.”
“It can all be part of the package,” Brock offered, shrugging. “If you want to go to the range to try it out, just let me know.”
“How is that part of the package?” I asked. “That doesn’t have anything to do with private investigation.”
“No,” he agreed. “But we are pretty full-service for our clients.”
I’d seen the paperwork from the contract that Cam signed. And, yeah, for the fees they were charging, I guess they’d better be full-service.
“Okay. Well, depending on how long this goes on, I might want to pencil that in.”
“Sounds good,” he said, nodding.
“Can I at least get you pillows and blankets?” I asked, waving toward the couch that I bought because it was pretty, not because I anticipated anyone sleeping on it. And pretty couches were not comfortable couches.
“That I can agree to,” he said, nodding.
Glad to have an excuse to leave the room, I went into the guest room to grab some pillows, blankets, and pillowcases.
Why I went into my own room to grab my perfume and spritz the pillows, yeah, that was completely beyond me.
I was going to go ahead and call it muscle memory, since I always sprayed my own pillows before I slipped the cases on.
Any other reason—like wanting him to smell me on them–would be borderline insane.
No matter how gorgeous he was.
“Is two pillows enough?” I asked as I walked back out with everything, finding him watching the darkened city out the windows that surrounded my apartment.
“Sweetheart, I’ve slept in mud puddles in pouring rainstorms,” he told me with a sweet smile. “Two of your very plush-looking pillows is more than enough.”
“I’m not used to having anyone else here,” I admitted to him as I set everything on the couch, figuring he would want to make things up himself.
“I can tell,” he said. And the worry must have been clear on my face because he shook his head at me. “I’m not trying to be offensive. You just don’t seem to know what to do with yourself in your own home. Which is usually how people act when they’re accustomed to being alone. That’s all.”
That was fair.
I’d spent several hours just walking room to room, putting random things away, fussing, not quite sure what I was supposed to be doing. It was going to feel extra strange to have someone sleeping on my couch.
Because while I did have a guest room, no one had ever stayed in it. Not even Cam. When we were working late. Or when we’d had too much wine. That was sort of the perk to living in the city, wasn’t it? Everything was a short cab ride away. No one had to stay because they were tired or drunk.
“There’s a TV inside that cabinet,” I told him, pointing toward it. “The remotes are in the box on the coffee table. I can’t sleep in silence,” I said, trying to make him feel comfortable with turning it on if he felt the same way.
“Thanks, babe.”
“And help yourself to anything in the… well… there’s nothing in there, I guess,” I said, wincing at the idea of him being hungry.
“Miranda,” he said, making my gaze move back to him. “I’ll be fine,” he assured me.
“Okay. Right. Good. I’ll leave you alone then.”
“Goodnight, Miranda,” he said, and I tried not to like the way he said my name too much.
“Right. Goodnight,” I said, making my way toward the hall.
Then I made my fatal mistake.
I looked back.
I looked back and saw this already too hot man reach up and pull off his damn shirt.
I always thought that thing about feeling weak in the knees was the stuff of fiction, or at least history, back when a glance at an ankle was scandalous, before hot, mostly naked men were splattered all over billboards across the city.
But, yeah, Brock put them to shame.
And those knees of mine?
Yeah, a little wobbly.
Because, well, goddamn.
I mean, yes, I’d known even with his clothes on that he was well-built, but I couldn’t have known just what sort of perfection was hiding under that tee.
The indents of his abdominal muscles, the deep little V cuts of his Adonis belt that disappeared into the waistband of his jeans, the breadth of his chest, the swells of his arm muscles.
There were also a few tattoos that I was too far away from to make out. And what looked like some scars.
I had to force myself to turn back around and make my way to my own room, closing the door, then leaning back against it, reminding myself that it was not possible to use one of those battery-operated devices of mine with him in the apartment, close enough to hear the buzzing.
“Get it together, Miranda,” I grumbled to myself as I walked through my bedroom and into the closet, picking out some pajamas. The nice ones. In case I decided to go out to the main area of the house before getting ready in the morning.
Then I got myself ready for bed, climbed in, turned on the TV to play repeats of an old favorite comfort show, then tried to drift off to sleep.
I expected it to be easy, after several restless nights in the hospital, but I tossed and turned for hours before I finally passed out.
I woke up without my alarm, as I always did, feeling disoriented and foggy.
So disoriented and foggy, in fact, that I found myself wandering out to the main area of my house, completely forgetting about the presence of a certain someone until I ran straight-on into his hot, shirtless self in my kitchen.
“Whoops,” he said, sounding amused as he put an arm around my waist, further disorienting me as my face met his bare chest, smelling a little spicy like cologne, but also a little bit like, well, him. “Not too sharp first thing in the morning, huh?” he asked.
And that hand wrapped around me?
Yeah, it started to rub.
“If it helps, the coffee just finished brewing,” he told me as I had to force myself not to take a deep breath and breathe his scent in.