“Aren’t you the hypocrite?” she tossed at me with fire in her eyes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
“Do you know how many nights you came back drunk to this very house?” she asked. “Or to Truck’s cottage while I was staying there?”
I sighed, looking up at the ceiling so I didn’t have to stare at her creamy nakedness heaving at me. Tempting me to touch it. Tempting me to remove my hands but replace them with my lips.
“That was different,” I told her.
“Why? Because you’re a guy?”
“I was twenty-two and fucked up. That isn’t me anymore,” I pushed.
“I’m twenty-one and fucked up,” she shot back.
“You are not fucked up.”
She shrugged, pulling at the brandy bottle, but I refused to let it go.
She went to push her braid back. A habit that was so entwined with my memories of Vi that I couldn’t remember a sarcastic, teasing moment when she hadn’t done it. But tonight, her hair was down. As if she’d suddenly realized it, she pulled a hair band from her wrist where it had tangled with her medical alert bracelet. I watched, enthralled, as she loosely twined the strands together before tying it off at the end and letting it fall over the opening in the coat.
Goddamn, I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted another woman.
There’d been plenty. I’d washed through them like water in high school, leaving trails of hearts behind with a careless recklessness. There’d been plenty after Violet as well. In Dax’s world, I’d been surrounded by women whose main goal in life was to shove as much enjoyment into it as possible, including sex.
But I’d never once been tempted to keep any of them. Never had a true girlfriend. Which reminded me that Vi was a girlfriend…that there was a guy tagging after her.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” I asked.
“Silas is not my boyfriend. And he left today. Went home to Palo Alto. Thank God.”
I tried not to react to the relief in her voice. I tried not to let the relief and her tantalizingly sexy appearance push me into stupidity. So, he was gone. It didn’t change anything. She was still off-limits. My relief gave way to reality. She was out alone?
“You were out at a bar, drinking by yourself?” I growled.
“No, I’m not stupid, Dawson. Jada was with me.”
That hardly made it better, especially considering how out of control Jada seemed these days.
The smallest of smirks lifted the corners of her mouth as she seemed to take me in for the first time. Bare-chested with sweats falling from my hips. I had to curl my toes into the throw rug to prevent myself from pulling her to me and kissing that quirk right off her face. Kissing her until she forgot there was ever a Silas.
As she scanned me, her eyes stalled at my waist, and she was suddenly pushing a finger into my bare chest. Not at all the touch I was craving. “A gun, Dawson? Really?”
I’d forgotten the Glock I’d slung at my waist. While it was always with me, it was usually hidden away just like the three phones.
“Why do you have a gun?” she demanded.
“You should always have a gun at sea. Pirates are still a real thing, you know.”
“First, we aren’t at sea. And second, do you even know how to use it?”
It was my turn to snort. “My brother is in the military, and my dad is a sheriff. What do you think?”
Neither one of them was the reason my aim was damn near perfect, but I couldn’t tell her that. Dick and Truck had each taught me how to handle a gun, but neither of them had taken me to the range. My flawless ability to hit a target came from the part of my life no one knew about. No one could.
“Do Mandy and Leena know you keep one here?”
“I don’t keep it here. It goes with me wherever I go,” I told her.
