Chapter 3
three
I couldn’t sleep. I’d only gone into the bedroom because Ryan had upset me, so when I got too bored to lie there anymore, on his sheets, smelling his scent, I decided that Ryan and I needed to get a few things straight. Most of them involving the fact that I was tired of him treating me like a little girl who didn’t know her head from her backside. Along with the fact that he seemed offended and appalled by my body, which was seriously upsetting. Not at all the reaction I’d been hoping for. Him catching me in the shower had not been planned, but I certainly would have appreciated a different outcome considering I’d been crushing on him since the first second I’d laid eyes on him at my mom’s wedding to Mickey.
I knew I should get dressed before going out there, but I just had an overwhelming desire to finally get a rise out of him. Today I had the courage I’d never had before and I wanted to take advantage of it, or at least get some kind of reaction from him other than averted eyes.
It seemed like I should have a headache, but I didn’t. I just had… fogginess. I kept trying to remember the day before, two weeks before, today. Five minutes ago. But everything kept slipping through my fingers. I knew things. Just knew them somehow without thinking about it. But I couldn’t remember specific details.
It was a completely bizarre feeling, but oddly, not scary. It felt more like when you’re just about to drop off to sleep and thoughts roll in and out and you can’t get a hold of them. They flit in and flit out and you don’t mind, because your eyelids are heavy and you feel aware yet dreamily unaware. There was a bit of a knot on the back of my head, and it was tender when I touched it, but beyond that, I was pretty sure that once I got a full night’s sleep I would be fine and my sleepiness would abate.
Until then, who objected to not having racing thoughts and a giant to-do list? Not me. I felt like I’d spent the afternoon lying on the beach dozing, the sound of other people and the ocean waves a lulling white noise in the background. I felt oddly relaxed, and tactile. My skin felt alive, my breasts heavy, my body responding to being around Ryan. Because while I didn’t remember falling or going to the ER, I did remember that I had harbored many a secret thought about Ryan Harris and what he and I could do alone together, naked.
The minute I opened the bedroom door I hesitated, confused for a second. I thought I heard my mother’s voice, and briefly I was disconcerted trying to pinpoint how I’d gotten to Ryan’s, but then I saw him close his front door and turn back to me, and I forgot why it mattered. What mattered was letting Ryan know precisely how I felt about him.
“I can’t sleep,” I said.
“I see that.” Ryan’s jaw was stern, his eyes stormy.
He wasn’t classically good looking and was the very opposite of a pretty boy. Having grown up around beautiful Latin men, I liked the difference in Ryan, in his rugged dirty man appearance. He looked like he didn’t give a shit about what he was wearing, or about putting product in his hair, or wearing jewelry. He looked like he liked guns, fast cars, and fucking. It was exciting as hell to me.
“Was my mom here?” I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around why my mother would be there when I was supposed to be having sex with Ryan.
Ryan frowned. My feelings exactly. “Yes, she just left. You talked to her.”
“No, I didn’t.” I just stared at him, trying to piece together what had happened earlier, but I just had flashes, images of me being startled, of bright lights that hurt my eyes, and then Ryan. Maybe I had talked to my mother though. I was confused again. Nothing seemed to be making sense. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” I asked.
“Um, no. It’s only six thirty.”
“It is?” I glanced towards the window and sun was beating through the blinds. “Oh.” My head was starting to hurt. I had come into the living room to seduce Ryan, and now I just felt confused. “I didn’t mean to sleep though. I meant to do better things than sleeping.” I couldn’t let him distract me from the obvious.
“Is-“ Ryan made a face and rubbed his hand over his face. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re not yourself. You don’t want me to come to bed with you.”
That actually made me laugh. Was he joking? “Yes, I do. I always have.”
“Oh, God.” He sounded pained, and he tore his T-shirt off over his head.
Now we were getting somewhere. My breath caught in my throat. His chest was ripped, broad. Tantalizing. I wanted to run my hands everywhere over him. I wanted to dig my nails into his flesh and hold on while he pushed inside me. I started to move towards him, but suddenly his warm shirt hit me in the face.
“Put my shirt on. Please. I’m literally begging you,” he said.
That was not at all the reaction I’d been hoping for. I peeled the fabric off my face. Suddenly I felt such a hot stab of disappointment, I thought I was going to cry. “Why? Don’t you think I’m hot enough for you?”
His hands fell to his side and curled into fists. “Are you fucking kidding me? That is not the problem. The problem is you took a hit to the head and you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve never, ever expressed interest in me before and I would be the biggest asshole on the planet if I took what you’re offering right now.”
“So you do think I’m hot?” That made me feel better. It was the only thing that seemed to matter out of everything he had just said. My head was hurting even more.
Ryan swore under his breath. “Yes. I do think you’re hot. Now please, put that fucking shirt on before I hate myself.”
He sounded so emphatic that I obeyed automatically. I slipped the loose cotton over my head, breathing in his scent as the fabric passed over my nose. Ryan smelled like a man should smell. Earthy. Musky. Sexy. When the shirt dropped down, it caught a little on my breasts, but I tugged it and watched Ryan watching me. He had hazel eyes, but they were dark now, and filled with lust. I could tell even from three feet away he did in fact find me attractive, before he schooled his features again, and masked that longing. But it was enough to satisfy me that I wasn’t the only one who wanted something to go down between us.
“My head hurts,” I said, because suddenly I just felt weary. Ryan wasn’t going to touch me but he wanted to and that seemed like enough for me at the moment. I decided I could sleep after all.
Ryan came closer to me and put his hands on both my upper arms. He massaged my skin reassuringly. “It’s okay. You just take a nap, for real this time, and if your head still hurts when you wake up I have pain medication the doctor prescribed for you.” His voice was gruff, yet soothing. “Everything is going to be fine.”
His lips weren’t close enough to kiss, but I was fixated on them anyway, wondering if he was a rough kisser, or gentle. His fingers on my bare arms were callused, large, but he seemed to know his own strength and was able to hold it back. He was a big man, and only a foot away from me he filled my space, looked down on me. My neck was craned way back to see his face and I wondered exactly how tall he was. So I asked. “How tall are you?”
“Six five.”
“That’s tall.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s not short. Come to bed, sweetheart.”
That sounded nice. My eyelids felt heavy. The pain behind my eyes had increased and the sleepiness had turned up a notch, so I felt a little woozy. “Okay.” I reached out for Ryan, to take his hand, because I was unsteady on my feet and it just seemed like I should hold onto him.
He took my hand and he led me down the hallway back into the bedroom. The bed was rumpled and I went to lay down and instead fell, a full face plant. I didn’t mean to do that, but once on the cool sheets, I just turned my head so I could breathe and let sleep take me under.
Isabel was asleep and I needed a cold shower. She was down for the count, but my shirt had pulled up on her back when she flopped down, exposing her upper thighs and the curve of her heart-shaped ass. She was right. It wasn’t much more than current fashion would expose, but still. Fucking hell.
I needed to get my head in the game and figure out what had happened to Isabel so I could send her home to her mother. Far away from me. I figured her odd behavior was just related to her concussion, but opening up my laptop while sitting on the couch, I did a little research just to make sure. Disorientation, dizziness, confusion. All common. It didn’t explain the whole Julia thing but maybe she could sleep that bit of weird off. Reassured, I set the alarm on my phone to wake her up in two hours just to make sure she was responsive.
Then I took a look at Isabel’s phone again, but I didn’t find anything unusual. I called her friend Brandy on my phone but she didn’t answer, so I called her again, using Isabel’s phone.
“Hey, Is, what’s up?” she answered.
“Hi, Brandy, this is Ryan Harris, Mickey Harris’s son.”
“Uh… hi? Why are you using Isabel’s phone? Is everything okay?”
“She had an accident and took a blow to the head and she doesn’t seem to know what happened to her. She’s okay, but we just want to make sure it was an accident and not an assault so do you have any idea what her plans were for today? I saw she texted you about noon.”
“Oh, my god, are you sure she’s okay?”
“She’s rattled and a little mixed up,” I said. And really determined to be sexy, but I kept that to myself. “But she’s okay.”
“Isabel was supposed to meet Juan tonight, which I told her not to do because he’s an idiot. She’s only gone out with him a few times, but that was more than I thought she should, but she always feels guilty saying no.”
Interesting. Juan was potentially a suspect, and Isabel didn’t like to say no. Damn, that was not good, and yet so very, very intriguing. I wondered how many guys she hadn’t said no to? I rubbed my head again. That was none of my business and I wasn’t going to have a fucking forehead left if this didn’t get this whole mess cleared up immediately. “Okay, thanks. Do you know what her school schedule is on Fridays? Or what time she normally gets home?”
“She has anatomy lab and entomology. She’s done by one and usually just goes home. She only works at the pet shop on Saturdays.”
That was more than I knew about Isabel all together. Though I had no damn clue what entomology was. I didn’t even know how to spell it. I could picture Isabel working at a pet shop though, given how much she clearly loved her dog. Which made it strange to me that she hadn’t asked about him. Or her. Or him. It was a white fluffy thing, I had no clue what it was, breed or gender. “What does she do when she gets home, do you know?”
“She takes Buster for a walk then works out.”
That explained the tight ass if she worked out every day. “Do you know if she and Kim lock the house?” I was surprised that my father hadn’t installed surveillance on the house at some point over the years. I made a mental note to ask him about it.
“I think so. I don’t know. I never noticed.”
“Okay, thanks, Brandy.”
“Is she home? I want to go see her.”
“She’s at my apartment with me. You can stop by tomorrow. She’s sleeping right now.” I glanced back at the closed door. “Hey, uh, do you know why Isabel might call herself Julia?” It seemed more likely to me a best friend would know that than a mother of a twenty-one year old.
“Julia? Are you shitting me? That’s her drunk name.”
“Her what?” I stared at my laptop screen, trying to interpret what Brandy was saying.
“You know, a drunk name. It’s your alter ego when you go out drinking. Like, if you’re shy like Isabel, when you drink you get wild and chatty and whatever, so you give your drunk-self a drunk name. So the next day, it’s not like you did it, but your alter ego instead. I mean, it’s a joke. But anyway, my drunk name is Mary Kate and Isabel’s is Julia.”
Girls made no goddamn sense to me. Why would you need a second name for going out? That sounded like something my co-worker buddy Alejandro would do, though he would do it so women couldn’t track him down after the fact. He was nothing if not a player. But not being exactly a huge partier myself, it had never occurred to me to have a second, more fun name for my more fun self. Because I was pretty sure I didn’t have a more fun self.
“Okay, thanks.” So Isabel, having taken a blow to the head, thought she was Julia, her sexier self? Now that was messed up. Unnerving. Dangerous. And hopefully fixable. Like immediately if not sooner.
It also made me wonder if she was going to remember any of what she had said or done while at my apartment. I was torn between wanting her to forget so we could go back to being mere friendly acquaintances brought together by our parents’ relationship and wanting her to admit and acknowledge that she had hit on me. Why, though?
Because then I could do something about it? Not. I couldn’t. So it didn’t matter.
I called my father. “Someone needs to do surveillance on Kim’s house. And why don’t you have a camera there anyway?”
“Kim didn’t want it after I left. I think she was worried I would be watching her. Which, to be honest, I probably would have been.”
I had kicked my shoes off and without bothering to get my flipflops I stepped out of my apartment and leaned over the exterior railway. I needed some fresh air. There was a killer breeze and for a second I swore I could smell the ocean, which I couldn’t. But it helped to clear my head. “Dad. I don’t understand how you get women, I truly don’t.”
“I’m charming. You should try it. You always look like a raging bull. Chicks don’t dig that.”
It was true. But “Julia” seemed to like me well enough. How ironic was that? “Thanks for the advice. I’ll get right on it.”
“Don’t act like you don’t get any ass. I highly doubt you’re sleeping alone every night.”
“For the most part, yeah, I am. I steal the covers.” While I was intentionally sidestepping what he was implying, the truth was I didn’t really like sleeping with someone else all night. I didn’t like to cuddle and I slept like shit when someone was touching me. Raging bull might be accurate. “So who are you going to send to do surveillance?”
“I’ll send Jax. He’s not on assignment right now. Did Wester get Kim?”
“Yep. So any idea who might be cruising around your house?”
“I have a few ideas and I’ll handle it. What did Isabel say?”
“Nothing that means a whole lot. She’s out of it.”
After hanging up with my father a few minutes later, I stared down at the street. There was a loan shop across the street, and a dive restaurant that served primarily empanadas. The guy who owned it was a douchebag. He always acted like he was doing you a favor by selling you food. I liked to think of it as local flavor. Customer service wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list in Miami unless you were mega rich. Rap stars could get the royal treatment but the rest of us were just living our lives eying each other warily.
I wasn’t sure how to proceed with my night. Normally I would go for a run after work or hit the gym. I also had a secret addiction to blueberry muffins and sometimes I jogged to the coffee shop to score one. Then on weeknights it was TV and bed, since I was usually up by five in the morning. Days off were different. I’d hit the beach or go fishing or let Alejandro talk me into going to some dumb club in South Beach.
Now I felt trapped in my own apartment and I didn’t like it. The urge to go for a run to sweat off the lust I was feeling was massive, but I couldn’t leave Isabel alone. I felt like a caged bull in addition to a raging bull. Sitting still wasn’t something I excelled at and I had all kinds of heat pumping through my veins as I stood there, toe-kicking the metal railing and picturing Isabel standing in front of me looking like a goddess brought to life to torture the hell out of me.
I’d never given much thought to her body before because she had seemed so young and the nature of our parents’ relationship just made her off limits to me. I had seen her as a kid. Holy hell, had that been a miscalculation. Now that I had seen her naked and wet, I knew there was nothing childlike about those curves.
Casting my thoughts backwards I tried to remember every conversation I’d had with Isabel. I just remembered she had been awkward and I had been awkward because she had been awkward. I couldn’t tease women into feeling comfortable. It wasn’t in my DNA. I was what my ex-girlfriend had referred to as the strong, silent type. Which at the end had morphed to her calling me dead dull. Just because I didn’t talk to hear the sound of my own voice didn’t make me dull. I just didn’t waste words.
Frustrated as hell, I went back into my apartment and locked the door. I dropped down on the floor and did a hundred sit ups, then fifty push ups, just to sweat off my excess energy. It didn’t work. So I took a shower and gave myself a quick jerk off in hopes I’d stop wanting to drive my spike in Isabel. It helped for about thirty seconds. Then after drying off, I put a towel around my waist and went to check on her. It was about that time to make sure she was still responsive.
Opening the door to my room, I was unnerved to see her sleeping in my bed. She looked quite at home there. I’d pulled the covers over her after she had tumbled onto the bed, and she had settled in during the intervening two hours. Her dark hair spread across my gray pillowcase and she was making praying hands. It was fucking adorable and sexy and all kinds of disturbing.
Carefully so I wouldn’t scare her, I padded over to her and gently touched her shoulder. “Hey, Isabel.” Then I remembered. “Or Julia. Whoever you are right now. Wake up for me.”
She didn’t open her eyes or shift so it freaked me out. I shook her hard. Her eyes flew open, then smiled in sleepy recognition. What was I supposed to ask her? I couldn’t remember what I’d read online. Just that I needed to make sure she was responsive.
Isabel reached out and tucked her fingers right into the knot I’d made with my towel. Right above my dick. She yanked it.
Oh, she was responsive all right.
And so was I.