Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [27]
She could have let go. He was steady and perfectly capable of standing on his own. But she didn’t. She stayed there, with one hand splayed on his back, the other on his stomach, her fingertips perilously close to the waistband of his pants.
His breathing grew choppy again, though not because of any phantoms in the windows or strange smells. It was entirely due to her—the warmth of her body pressed against his, the brush of her hair on his cheek.
Once again, her closeness reminded Simon how very much he missed human contact. Eroticism.
He wanted to drag her sweater off, and his shirt along with it. To lay her down on his desk and explore every inch of her body, feasting on those magnificent breasts, burying his face in her stomach. And lower.
“You’re too thin,” she murmured, her fingers tracing patterns on his hip. “Hard as a rock, but you look like you’ve been sick.”
He said nothing, trying to work up the strength to tell her he was fine and she could let him go.
Or to just grab her hand and bring it to his mouth to kiss her palm and nibble her fingertips.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
Knowing she was asking about much more than his unsteadiness, he remained silent. He wasn’t about to bring this beautiful woman into the hell of his reality. Better to have her think he’d been in some kind of accident than to know the truth about him. The dark, vicious truth. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, keep your secrets,” she murmured. Then, with a frown of regret, she stepped away. “But if you’re feeling dizzy, maybe it’s because of whatever incense you were burning in here.”
Though he’d been about to step away from her, Simon suddenly couldn’t move. His whole body rigid, he asked, “What did you say?”
“Well, I guess it was incense. There’s a funny smell in here.”
He grabbed her wrist, holding her tight. “You smell it?”
Nodding, she didn’t tug away, didn’t look at him as if he were crazy or hurting her, which he knew he might be.
He released her wrist. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Then she turned and looked around the room, sniffing again. “It’s gone. But I would have sworn I smelled this sweet, nasty odor, like overripe fruit when I first came in the room.”
“Oranges,” he said, keeping his voice low and steady, not revealing just how much her words meant to him.
“Yes, that’s it. Like orange blossoms dying on a tree.”
Simon didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t say anything for a moment, so he merely stared at her.
For three months now, he’d been associating the strange smells with his migraines—figuring they were figments of his imagination, his brain’s way of preparing him for the onslaught to come.
That was the easier explanation. The other was that he was simply losing his mind, going crazy out of guilt and rage. Smelling things that weren’t there just as he’d been seeing and hearing things that weren’t there.
But now this beautiful dark-haired woman was telling him she smelled it, too. He hadn’t imagined it, his brain hadn’t invented it. Which made him wonder just what the hell was going on in his house.
“Lottie,” he murmured, not even thinking about the words before he said them. “Why don’t you stay awhile?”
5
Lottie
I WAS STAYING.
Even though I had no idea why Simon had changed his mind, I wasn’t about to argue with his suggestion that I stick around. Especially not after what had happened in his office, when I’d realized just how unsteady on his feet he’d really been.
I had been hot for the man since the minute I landed in his arms when I arrived. Now, though, I was feeling something else for him. Concern, protectiveness, I guess. Funny, since he did his best to project this big, angry, growly guy persona. But I knew, somehow, that he was in trouble.
With five older brothers and loads of male cousins, I knew how men reacted to being sick. They hated being helpless, and usually raged forward through fevers or accidents until they fell over in a heap and were no good to anybody, including themselves.
Something told me that’s what Simon Lebeaux had been doing. I hadn’t been kidding when I’d said he