14. Queenie
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
QUEENIE
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘MAYHEM’ BY CASSYETTE
It’s late evening when I wake up again to a full dark house. I shiver to myself and, grabbing my keys, drive to the diner for dinner. The moon is full out by the time I drive back to the cottage. I park behind the boys’ Jeep.
Noah’s standing next to the hood in grey sweatpants. They have a little cut to show off his named sneakers. Legs crossed at the ankle; his heavy cricket kit bag casually slung in one hand. His other hand’s in his jacket pocket. From a distance he looks polished, perfect…a worthy advertisement for cricket player. With his broad shoulders and solid looks and wavy hair…I’d develop a crush on this man if I saw him hit a century on TV.
“I thought you were gone.” He looks at me over the roof of the Jeep.
“I did go. To get dinner.” I hold up the takeout bags I’m carrying with my backpack.
Noah stares at the cartons of pies and sandwiches and soups. “What is this?”
“It’s dinner. A welcome home gift from me to you. All of you.” It was an impulse decision I decided to go with, once it hit me. After all, they left cookies and juice for me which I demolished after my shower.
“Full of surprises,” Noah murmurs. Then he holds out his hand and takes the food from me.
I open the door while Noah struggles with the food. I take some of the cartons from him and we enter together.
I stop in shock because my boxes are gone.
“We’ve been robbed!” I whisper-yell.
“What?”
“My stuff!” I wail and gesture at the floor where all the boxes and bags were piled. “I’d kept it here. It’s all gone now. This neighborhood is not safe!”
Noah chuckles. “Stop being so dramatic, Queenie. Your stuff is all there. I came home early from practice and almost broke an ankle on one of your boxes. So, I decided to put it all in your room before someone else fractured a body part.”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.
“You—you carried my stuff up two flights of stairs and put them in my room?” I ask weakly.
Noah nods. “Love the music collection. The DVDs…why do all women like those sappy romantic comedies? They’re so unrealistic.” He wrinkles his nose.
“They give us hope and a standard for men to act on,” I protest automatically. “There’s nothing unrealistic about true love, okay?”
Suddenly, he’s a shade too close. So close, I can feel the blast of his body heat, right against mine. His eyes are so dark, so velvety, as his lips form words. “Is that right?”
My stomach drops from the proximity.
“Are you back, Noah?” Ares yells from inside. “Get your arse in the kitchen and help season this meat, please. De Rossi is trying to kill us with the paprika.”
“Stop the domestic murder, boys,” Noah calls out lazily. “For tonight we feast on…” He checks the cartons. “Key lime pie and summer salad and…” He looks at the cartons in my hands.
“Cream of fresh mushroom soup and lemon chicken with rice,” I add.
He repeats what I just said. Twin cheers sound from the kitchen.
“I’ll get this to the kitchen and then take the world’s longest shower. Moving is exhausting. My legs are killing me,” I babble to cover up my nervousness and this sudden melt in my spine.
“Leave this with me. I’ll cart it to the kitchen, okay?”
I dump the food on the foyer table and dash upstairs. Glad to escape Noah Dumaine and his changeable moods.
I sit on the bed for a few minutes and get my breathing under control before I root through the boxes and bags, neatly lined up by the door (God, he’d cutely organized everything!) and extract fresh clothes.
I don’t own cute baby doll pajamas like Elle Woods. I’m more a boxers and torn tees kind of girl. But I am also aware I now live with three adult men. And parading around in my boxers is not a smart move.
So, I pick old leggings with holes and a loose t-shirt that slides off the shoulder. The tee’s loose enough I can forego the bra I strap on every day for work. Now, bras…bras are the devil’s invention. They are instruments of torture and backpain. And I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
I play one of my CDs – Fink’s new EP with Looking Too Closely on it.
In the bathroom, I look longingly at the bathtub but hop into the shower. The water pressure is insanely good and hot. I carefully bundle my hair out of the way and enjoy a hot shower with my special bath gel.
Then, I wrap my towel around my dripping body and walk out to get dressed.
“Hey…fuck!”
Noah almost drops the things he’s holding when he sees me in the towel.
I grip the fabric tightly and swallow the scream in. “What are you doing here?”
He holds up the stuff he carries. “I wanted to give you this linseed ointment for your leg pain. It’s what we use when we have muscle cramps. It’s really effective.”
“Oh… that’s…thank you.” I take the ointment from him, keeping a tight hold on the towel. Extremely aware of how completely exposed I am. My knees shake under the towel and water pools in the valley between my breasts. My shaky hair bun chooses this moment to slide down so my hair’s kind of framing my face.
Noah manfully keeps his eyes trained on mine. But a muscle ticks in his cheek.
The heat from his gaze singes me anyway. I feel it on the tops of my shoulders, which are rounded because I’m hunched in front. The tips of my breasts, which are suddenly heavy and poking through the towel… because of the air differential.
And not because Noah’s in the room with me. Alone.
I curl my toes into the carpet to gain some traction and friction. It helps to ground me in this moment…away from his magnetic pull.
I resist the urge to swallow and betray my discomfort. “This is very nice of you. All of this…” I cast a look at the boxes. “You’ve been amazing to me, Noah. Thank you so much for all the help.”
“It’s no problem, Queenie. And…” He rubs a hand over his face. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about the mess I got you in. With the video and everything.”
I take a tentative step toward him and the towel slides down half a centimeter.
His devil black eyes laser in on the skin revealed. I lick my lips quickly before he looks up. I am a cauldron of confusion and unruly, untimely desire. I keep seeing two Noahs – the guy who coerced me into this arrangement and the one who’s been nothing but decent and done everything to make this arrangement comfortable for me.
I don’t know which Noah to trust. To believe. To want.
“That wasn’t about you, at all. Moronica has it in for me, actually. She’s the Joker to my Batman,” I murmur helplessly.
“Moronica?” His lips quirk up. He even makes my swear word sound sexy. Damn his Aussie accent. “That’s cute.”
“It’s vindictive,” I correct him. Unable to look away from him.
“Vindictive can be cute too, Hellcat.”
I laugh, breathless. “I’m not a hellcat.” I tuck my hair behind my ear.
“You fight like one, desi girl.”
“Only when I’m provoked, Aussie boy.”
He steps toward me. And because he’s exponentially taller, it brings us almost within touching distance. “I want?—”
I grab the other thing from his limp hand. “What’s this?”
“That’s a jersey,” his reply is gruff. Almost guttural. “My jersey. With my name on it.” He opens it and shows the DUMAINE stenciled on the back of the jersey.
“This is…” I swallow. “This is a match jersey.”
“Yeah, it’s what I wore when I made my international debut for Australia.”
Noah plays for the Australian team? How come I’ve never seen him? Is he a player I don’t know about?
“It was just the one game, and I never stepped foot on the grounds,” he continues. “So, it’s not a playing jersey.”
“Okay…Why did you give it to me?” I am confused why he brought it for me. I already have all my clothes with me.
“You can wear this when you come for my first match on Saturday.”
“You want me to wear a jersey with your name on it to a match you’re playing?”
Noah nods.
“But that would mean…” I can’t say the words out loud. Even as I think the words in my head.
“The world knows you’re mine. And Moronica won’t fuck with what’s mine again.”
My chest goes concave at the soft words, even as my brain immediately protests against it. “That’s barbaric. Caveman-behavior. I don’t want to do it.”
“You signed a contract, Queenie.”
“But these weren’t the terms we agreed to.”
“So, I’m amending them,” he says simply.
“It’s not fair,” I snap at him.
His eyes dip to my legs and travel up. Slow, excruciatingly slow. It’s almost like he’s touching me…slow, excruciatingly slow.
I’m immobile as he looks at me with heat and intent in his expressive eyes.
He blows out a single breath through hollow cheeks before going expressionless. “None of this is fair, Madhavan. So, let’s just make the best of it, okay?”
“I’m not your property, Dumaine,” I snarl at him, tightening the hold around my towel so hard I feel red welts around the skin.
“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re not. You see.” He places the jersey on my shoulder without touching any part of me. “If you were, you’d have been out of this towel and on that bed the moment I saw you come out of the bathroom.”
“Get out!” I point at the door with shaking fingers. “ Now !”
Noah smiles, slow and knowing and so sexy my nostrils flare with rage. It has to be rage.
It can’t be want. I don’t want Noah Dumaine, he’s the enemy. And he plays for the one team I can’t stand.
I hate him.
“Okay. I’ll get out.” He walks to the door and says over his shoulder. “But next time you’re in the shower, lock the door, Hellcat. You don’t want me getting any ideas about your tits, right?”
The door shuts with a thud as his wretched jersey hits it.
Just when I let my guard down around Nice Noah, The Asshole makes an appearance and reminds me why I cannot trust him.
At all.
This is just a game to him. Another sport he plays.
And I’m going to win this one, no matter what it takes.