Chapter 19
Felicity gave up after her second attempt at leaving her intoxicatingly comfortable apartment couch. “I’m tired.”
“I know,” Nic said from beside her. His neck had melted into the cushion behind him and his eyes were closed.
“I want sleep. I want a cupcake. Why isn’t sleep-eating a thing?” Her body slithered into a more horizontal position with her back on half the couch and legs slung over the arm away from Nic.
“It is a thing, but it’s called choking and ends in dying; thus, I don’t advise it. Why haven’t you had one yet?” Nic lifted his head to frown down at her in confusion. “I gave you one earlier.”
“I know you did, but then Sam called with more stuff I needed to do, plus I needed to go home and shower before the event. She’s so mad the doc is keeping her on bed rest, by the way.
Anyway, I set down the cupcake and when I came back someone else had eaten it.
I tried to get one a few other times, but Holly and Courtney kept kicking me out of the kitchen.
” She was staring up at his Adam’s apple, watching it bob, feeling a strange urge to take a nibble out of it. Totally normal.
“That’s because you have intense energy that shouldn’t be around hot objects and kept trying to fix things that weren’t even broken. Joel said you were even back-seat bartending.” He brushed her staticky hair away from her face.
“I have absolutely no idea what you mean by intense energy.” The main intense energy Felicity had right now was about the hot man-thing who was half passed out beside her on her couch.
“I certainly didn’t back-seat bartend. I just was asking if the egg white in that one signature cocktail was pasteurized.
My microbiology class left a few core memories. That was it.”
Nic’s head relaxed into the cushion again, a small crease at the corner of his mouth evidence of a stifled smirk. “Holly said you almost set your hair on fire on the stove. And kept checking the gas lines.”
“That C’est la Vache kitchen is a hazard. Literally nothing in that space is up to code. My dad would have a conniption if he saw the wiring. I hate that you’re cooking in there.”
“You’re sweet, Felicity. I’ve cooked in much more dangerous places.” He squeezed her hand. Somehow her hand had ended up in his after she had extended it over her shoulder to stretch.
“I—” A colony of butterflies took flight inside her. “I really don’t want to know, do I?”
“Nope.” He sighed. “Your dad taught you how to fix things?”
“Yep. What did you do back in Texas when your stuff broke? Didn’t you run a restaurant there too?
” She still hadn’t heard the full story of what had happened, why he was here.
Nic was oddly cagey about it. He was mildly cagey about everything in his past, actually.
When she googled him—yeah, she was definitely that girl—nothing salacious came up.
The most recent article before C’est la Vache only said that chef Nic Holm-Bozic handed over the reins of his most recent kitchen to another chef he’d trained.
Seemed like he bounced around businesses a lot.
The business owner probably didn’t want any details in the press if something sordid had gone down.
Nic had worked all over Texas, per the press releases she’d found.
But she hadn’t found any evidence of a criminal record or any type of legal drama.
Still, all those changes between restaurants had been a very mild red flag. Maybe that explained the friend zoning.
Felicity had fallen for enough bad boys and bad girls—usually of the blond, green-eyed variety—over the last decade-plus that she knew to do a modicum of homework before deciding how far to let her fantasies take her during her private time.
For the record, her new vibrator had no complaints about the work hours.
But beyond multiple jobs, Nic Holm-Bozic had no cyber red flags, except that whatever had happened at his last restaurant had sent a man with an actual Michelin star to shill macaroni and cheese in ceramic cows in Kansas.
Nothing intrigued Felicity so much as a mystery.
Well, that and the prospect of getting some couch time with Nic’s penis flytrap.
“My dad never taught me anything useful, so I have an extensive rolodex of handymen. None of whom required entrepreneurial liaisons, by the way.”
Felicity made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snore.
“That stepcousin of yours is a menace.”
“He’s mostly harmless. Meet his mom, and you’ll understand why Toby is the way he is. It’s sad more than anything.”
“Aunt Jeannie still left him her house?”
“Aunt Jeannie thought everyone deserved a second chance. She liked to give people what they needed to get one. She married his dad when Toby was fifteen, I think. The deck was stacked against him.” Felicity turned over onto her other side somehow, without rolling off the couch.
He was as reclined as possible with his feet on the ground and shifted himself to offer her three-quarters of the couch instead of half.
He shook his head. “That can’t be a good angle for your neck or your shoulder.
” Nic pulled her toward him so that her head rested on the thin pillow he’d put on his lap.
She would complain, except the angle really was a lot better for her spine.
He reached to the back of the couch and draped a quilt over her.
She felt her eyebrows drawing together as she looked up at him.
“You’re always cold when you’re tired. No decent person would let you lie there shivering.”
“What did you want to tell me?”
His chin dipped, then lifted again, as he was making up his mind about something. “Nothing important. It can wait until you’re not half-unconscious.”
“I’m completely awak—” Her mouth gaped in a yawn.
“So convincing.”
She reached up and flicked his ear. She meant it to be teasing, but somehow her thumb ended up stroking along the angle of his jaw all the way to the cleft in his chin. The most platonic of touches.
It was the second time they’d ended up this way. Except on New Year’s when it had happened, she’d woken in his bed the next morning, and he’d slept on the couch like some sort of stupid gentleman.
He shifted his weight, and she grabbed her hand back and nestled it under her head so she wouldn’t do something stupid like pull his mouth down to hers. This angle would not be good for kissing even if Felicity didn’t have a busted cervical spine.
As if in punishment for her lasciviousness (another good L word), a spasm shot down her shoulder. She rubbed it with a groan.
“Is your pain bad after today? I can tell by the way you move sometimes…”
“Not really. It’s more the twisting. I’ve gotten better about not moving in ways that tweak it.
I forgot about doing my PT stuff for a few days.
” And probably all this sexual tension was leading to muscle tension.
She wondered how she’d explain that to her physical therapist if she ever went back while visiting Maryland.
Welp, Carlos, my back’s more fucked than ever because I’ve had to use every muscle in my body not to fuck a hot blond Texas Viking man six ways to Sunday.
With the way Felicity’s mouth filter worked—or didn’t work—she’d probably end up saying some iteration of that sentiment aloud and end up being banned from the only physical therapist who accepted the crappy workers’ comp policy the hospital had offered her.
“About your back—”
“What did your dad teach you?”
“What?”
“You said he never taught you anything useful.”
“Oh, right. Mostly just the value of learning Latin.”
“Christ, do all the pretty ones learn Latin?”
“Pretty ones … eh?”
“Don’t let it go to your head, Nicolas.” She loved the way Nic smelled; every inhale reminded her of his kitchen.
The idea of his dad knowing Latin didn’t quite fit with the few other facts she had gleaned about his family.
Although when she stopped to think about it, she knew almost nothing about his parents.
“That’s all he taught you?”
“That and how to avoid the full impact of a right hook when I needed to.” He yawned.
“God…” Her eyes opened. She turned over to stare up at him, trying to keep the rage at this new revelation in check. “That’s…”
He tapped his fingers on the back of the couch. “We all have our things. Long time ago. The bastard’s dead now.”
Felicity grabbed that fidgeting hand and threaded her fingers through his.
“Nic?” His name was a soft breath over her lips.
“The man was a soldier.” His thigh muscles tightened beneath her, as if every time he thought of his dad his body became poised to escape. “His father was the same way. It was all he knew.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He bent to brush the barest whisper of a kiss across her forehead. He smoothed the worry lines that had formed across it. “Okay if I nap here for a bit before I go home?”
“Yes.” She brought his hand around her and tucked it beneath her chin, turning onto her side with his forearm held tight to her body. She felt his long, relaxed sigh on the back of her neck.
As the rhythm of their breathing synced up, Felicity’s mind sank into a hazy sleep.
As she woke, panic surged through her. She struggled. She was choking. There were hands around her shoulders. Her neck. And sirens.
There were sirens last time too.
Shrill, blasting sirens that blocked out every attempt she made to scream.
Hands held her arms, gripped her so tightly she’d never get free.
She could scream now. She could breathe. She just needed to force the air into her lungs.
“Felicity. It’s just Nic. It’s okay.” The voice was soothing. It was familiar. It was safe. It was …
More sirens blared. She covered her ears and curled into a ball. She wasn’t on concrete. The pain was her normal pain. The pain wasn’t what it was when …
It wasn’t a brick wall behind her. It was a warm body wearing a T-shirt smelling like cinnamon and garlic.
“Felicity.” She blinked. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Nic was behind her on the old couch, but he’d stopped trying to hold her.
Her breathing slowed. “I’m s-sorry. I’m sorry.” She leaned back against him. “Sorry.”
Tentatively at first, he lowered his large hands to hold her shoulder. “Nightmare? Night terror?”
“It’s…”
Another round of sirens threatened her brittle calm.
There were actual sirens. That hadn’t been part of a nightmare.
Blue and red lights flashed from outside her window.
She shoved off the couch and ran to the window, still fueled by that hit of post-traumatic terror that had dragged her from sleep.
She peered through the threadbare curtains.
Nic stood so close behind her she could feel his breath on her neck.
“That’s Samantha’s house. The baby. Oh god. ”