Chapter Six
“Quiet.”
The voice registered, and I slumped in defeat.
Ryan Strong.
Worse, Ryan angry outside my apartment in the middle of the night.
He dropped his hand covering my mouth but kept ahold of my arm and guided me to my front door.
“Inside,” he ordered.
Okay. He might’ve been angry and I might’ve been mortified, but barking at me . . .
Um. No.
I tipped my head back and to the side, braved his fury, and snapped back, “Take your hand off me.”
“In. Side.” Ryan doubled down with the syllable enunciation.
Two could play that game, or they could when one of them wasn’t dead on their feet. I managed to rally and narrowed my eyes to issue my own repeated demand, “Take. Your. Hand. Off. Of. Me.”
My tone didn’t have the same gravel as his and my squinty eyes no doubt looked more tired than ferocious, but my point was made.
Ryan dropped his hand. Unfortunately, now that it was free, he crossed his arms over his chest. The unfortunate part about that was he had a really great chest. Not that I’d ever seen him without a shirt on, but a few times he’d come into the bar after a run wearing one of those compression tank tops that should be outlawed—or at least it should’ve been illegal for Ryan to wear them.
Those tank tops were detrimental to my mental health.
And if that was the case, seeing him bare chested would probably send me straight into a life-threatening cardiac event.
“Chloe,” he hissed.
“What?” I didn’t hiss, I breathed now that my eyes had latched on to the clearly visible swells of his pecs.
“Open your door.”
I pulled myself from my mental undressing of my boss.
Yes, I know, highly inappropriate, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Why are you here?” I belatedly asked.
“It’s almost four in the morning.” He unnecessarily noted the time. My feet, not to mention my eyeballs were very aware I’d been awake nearing twenty hours.
“And?”
“And maybe we can have this discussion in your apartment instead of on the breezeway when your neighbors are trying to sleep.”
“Or maybe we don’t have this discussion now.” I tossed out an alternate plan I liked a lot more. “Or, say, ever.”
“Chloe.” His tone dropped to lethal, and I fought back a shiver.
It was bad enough I’d been carrying on a mental affair with Ryan for some time now. The last thing I needed was him becoming aware of our fake dating. Actually, we weren’t so much dating as we were banging—conceptually of course. This was all make-believe in my mind.
“Ryan, it’s late—”
“Yeah, honey, it is. So let’s get this done so you can get some sleep.”
The word mama popped into my head, and I nearly groaned at my ill-timed, newfound fondness of a word that should not be sexy, yet I still would’ve had a mini-orgasm if Ryan had used ‘mama’ in place of ‘honey.’
What was wrong with me?
I was too tired to consider all the ways my head was screwed up, too tired to stand outside my door and convince Ryan to leave, too damn tired all the damn time.
With an exhausted exhale, I unlocked my door. My breathing became less exhausted and more harassed when I flipped on the lights and my gaze landed on the pile of clean clothes I’d tossed onto the couch before I left for work. And if that wasn’t bad enough, that pile had joined last week’s pile.
Why? Just why did this have to be my life?
“So, obviously I’ve been a little busy.” I swept my hand in the direction of my clothes.
When Ryan didn’t say anything, I glanced back at him only to find him glaring at my laundry like it was steaming piles of dog shit and not clothes.
“I’ll just—” I got no further when fingers wrapped around my wrist.
“Leave it.”
I glanced back at the piles, making sure my unmentionables weren’t on display, deciding even if they were I was too tired to care. Unless it was my cotton that-time-of-the-month undies—then I’d have to discreetly hide those.
Ryan let go and made his way to the high-backed, worn leather chair I’d found at the Goodwill for a steal and sat his fine behind on the buttery-soft cushion.
I ignored how good he looked in that chair, in my space, and tossed my purse and keys on the coffee table before I shoved some clothes out of the way to make room on the couch.
“What do we need to discuss?” I prompted.
“You need to quit the Vault.”
I must have finally started hallucinating from my lack of sleep and stress. There was no way I’d heard him right.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“You need to quit the Vault.”
That’s what I thought he’d said, yet his insane directive still didn’t make sense.
“Why would I do that? I just got that job, and it pays a shit ton better than dog walking and cleaning office buildings.”
“Dog walking?” he growled.
“Yes, you know, the cute four-legged creatures.”
He glanced around my apartment. “You have a dog?”
Without thinking, I covered my face and half groaned, half grunted. When I’d accomplished that very unladylike sound, I bent forward, rested my face on my knees, and grumbled, “Why are we talking about dogs?”
“Because you brought them up.”
Oh, right, I had.
Dog walking, one of the extra jobs I’d been doing for extra money. One I no longer had to do now that I was making on average five hundred dollars a night at the Vault—the place Ryan wanted me to quit.
“I’m not quitting,” I grumbled through my hands still covering my face.
“Chloe.”
“No freaking way, Ryan. If you’re worried about it interfering with my shifts at the bar, you have nothing to worry about.”
“You sleep talking says otherwise.”
I wasn’t sleep talking. I was mostly lucid and following along with what he was saying.
“I’ve been working two, sometimes three jobs for the last nine months,” I told him. “And I’ve never missed a shift.”
I straightened and yawned, turned my head, shifted my hands so I could rest them on my knees, then bent in half again and rubbed my cheek over my knuckles.
What I wouldn’t give for a bed and a solid eight hours of sleep.
With the money I made at the Vault I was almost there.
I just needed a few months, then I’d have the money back in the bank I’d drained when times had gotten übertight, and I could cut back to only three nights at the Vault instead of five and easily keep up with my share of my dad’s health care costs and maybe afford to keep my fridge stocked.
I closed my eyes and saw my dad—a much younger version of him—smiling back at me. Back when he recognized me ten out of ten times when he saw me.
Almost.
I could keep this pace for another few months.
I had to.
“Chloe.”
“Mm.”
“Chloe.”
God, I loved his rough, deep voice. Especially when it wrapped around my name like warm honey.
I clenched my thighs. I knew what came next—my clothes would be torn off.
There was nothing slow about the way Ryan undressed me.
It was always frenzied. As soon as he got his hands on me, he went into hyperdrive, like he couldn’t wait to get to the good stuff.
Fabric ripped, hands roamed, teeth scraped down my neck.
“Chloe.”
Impatient as always. I reached out, wanting to feel his hot skin under my palms. But instead of bare flesh my hand encountered rough material.
“Why are you wearing clothes?” I grumbled.
My wrist was seized. Unyielding fingers pressed into my skin. Now we were getting somewhere.
I moaned my appreciation. Anticipation pooled in my belly. Next, he’d pin my wrists above my head, his lips would tease their way down my throat, over the swell of my breast. His tongue would circle my nipple until I begged him to continue.
Suddenly a shrill noise made me jolt upright. Strong hands curled around my shoulders at the same time my eyes popped open, and Ryan’s face filled my vision. Confusion and fear battled for the top spot in my groggy mind.
My gaze dropped to my bed, his jean-covered thighs, then to my ringing phone in his hand.
What in the world was happening?
“Am I still dreaming?”
“As much as I’d love to hear about what we were doing in your dream, I think you need to answer this.” He held up my phone. “This is the third call in a row.”
“What? How? Why?”
“Chloe. Answer your phone.”
I shook off some of the sleep and took my phone. My mother’s name on the screen made the last vestiges of grogginess evaporate.
With my heart slamming into my ribs, I quickly answered her call. “Mom? Everything okay?”
“That’s my question. I’ve been here almost an hour.”
“What?”
“Chloe, sweet tart, if you can’t make it today, that’s okay. Your dad is—”
“What time is it?” I asked, but I was already searching out my alarm clock on my nightstand.
Ten!
I blinked, willing the numbers to change, not understanding how it was ten o’clock in the morning. Mental math wasn’t my strong suit, but if my arithmetic was correct, I’d been asleep for six hours.
Six hours!
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I rushed out.
I scrambled to get up, Ryan’s big hulking body sitting on my bed, blocking my exit, necessitating me climbing over him. Once I’d accomplished that task, I stood next to my bed, not knowing what to do next.
“I overslept,” I admitted. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Chloe, you don’t sleep enough. Go back to sleep. We’ll meet—”
“No, Mom. I’ll be there. Twenty minutes.”
With a sigh that only a mother could pull off, she made me feel equal parts guilty for being late and loved, because she’d rather me sleep than rush to meet to her.
“It’s not a good day, Chloe,” she gently told me.
There hadn’t been many good days as of late, and I hated that she was there without me.
“I’ll be there soon.” I tried to inject as much understanding into my tone as possible, knowing there was no way I could ever understand what my mother was going through.
I was losing my dad. She was losing the love of her life.
Same ocean, different boat.
“See you soon.”
My mom disconnected. I turned to face off with a man who shouldn’t have been in my apartment, let alone my bedroom.
“What are you doing here?”
“You fell asleep folded in half, with your head on your knees.”
I went back to last night—Ryan surprising me on the stairs, pushing his way into my apartment, telling me to quit the Vault, frustrating me, then nothing.
But now I was not on my couch, which was the last place I remembered being.
I was in my bedroom, wearing yesterday’s clothes.
“How’d I get into my bed?”
I held my breath, praying he hadn’t witnessed me crawling through my apartment in search of my bed.
“I carried you.”
Oh God. That might’ve been worse than crawling. But only because I hadn’t been conscious. I’d missed out on experiencing being in Ryan’s arms. I wanted to kick my own ass; however, that was short-lived. I had more important issues to resolve.
“Back to why you’re still here.” I took in my unmade bed and changed my mind. “Did you sleep in here?”
Please say yes.
Scratch that, please say no. If I’d missed out on my one chance of having Ryan in bed with me, I wasn’t going to kick my own ass, I was going to slap myself silly.
“You fell asleep before we finished talking.”
I impatiently waited for him to say more. When it was obvious he’d said all he was going to say, I decided to take the bull by the horns and end this once and for all.
“I told you last night I wasn’t quitting. My answer hasn’t changed, and now I’m late, so you need to leave.”
“Chloe—”
“No, Ryan. Unless my job performance at the Plank suffers, you have no right to tell me where I can and can’t work. And even then it’s debatable if you’d have a say. And I’d debate, it’s never your call. If you think I’m slacking at work, write me up.”
“You need to listen to me.”
Hell to the no.
Not only did his statement incense me, but his tone infuriated me.
“The only thing I need to listen to is the front door shutting behind you,” I bit back. “I have shit to do and I’m late doing it, so now would be the perfect time to end this and for you to leave.”
I held Ryan’s irate stare for three beats. Yes, I counted—that was what one did when they were biting their tongue to stop themselves from lashing out at their boss.
On beat four he declared, “We’re not done talking about this.”
“We are.”
With a shake of his head and predatory grace, he closed the distance between us. “No, baby, we are not.”
Baby?
I didn’t want to swoon. I wanted to hold on to my anger, but Ryan made it impossible with all his stupid good looks and manliness that I also wanted to hate but couldn’t.
“See you tonight.”
Oh, no. If he thought he was ambushing me again, he had another thing coming.
“Tonight?”
“You work at five,” he reminded me.
Shit. Goddamn. Son of a motherless goat.
“I’m at the bar to work and make tips. Not have annoying conversations with management.”
“Tonight, you’re doing both.”
With that maddening declaration, he stalked out of my room. I didn’t want to watch his ass while he exited my bedroom, yet my eyes latched on to his fine backside and stayed planted there until I lost sight of him.
The front door opened, closed, then I sprang into action.
First up, I needed clothes. And since my couch was currently doubling as my closet, I rushed into the living room, skidding to a stop when my gaze landed on my laundry.
I think I heard angels singing when I took in the neatly folded piles on my coffee table.
I glanced at the couch, seeing the throw that was normally on my bed crumpled on the cushions.
So that was where he’d slept—not in my bed next to me.
My disappointment was second to my relief.
I went back to staring at my clothes.
He’d folded three loads of laundry, something I hadn’t had time to do in the last week.
And I’d been a total bitch to him.
Damn.