heart pounding as if it were going to shake apart, she gripped her stiletto and whirled around. As a weapon, it wasn’t quite as lethal as she’d like, but she leveled him with her most intimidating glare. A glare, Clark had said, that could scare small children, ward off vampires, and cause even the most impatient of patients to take a seat.
Clearly, ax murderers were immune. Or hers was, because he lifted a single brow and she swallowed—hard.
Huh. Simple, but effective.
“Who the hell are you?” She took in his bare chest, boxers, and bedhead—no sign of the ax. “And why are you sleeping in my bed?”
His eyes took in her attire while his lips kicked into a crooked smile. “I was about to ask you the same thing, Goldilocks.”
Chapter 3
Emmitt Bradley was exactly two days out from a three-week stint in Shenzhen’s finest ICU, and already he was experiencing some disturbing symptoms. Hallucinations being the most concerning.
She was certainly the sexiest little hallucination he’d ever conjured. He’d take it over the blinding headaches any day. Hell, maybe he was still overseas, and waking up to find nothing but cream lace and toned skin traipsing around his house could be some kind of medically induced wet dream.
No, he remembered the explosion, the crushing force of the blast that had leveled both him and the subbasement of the concrete factory he’d been covering. The ride to the hospital and following few weeks were a bit fuzzy, but the cold sweats and stabbing pain as the cabin pressurized on his flight home would be forever branded into his memory.
The doctor had warned him about flying before he was ready. Even gave him a strict list of things to avoid upon being discharged:
Work.
Whims.
Whisky.
Women.
Okay, the last had been his addition, because without bossy women he wouldn’t be sidelined while someone else covered his story. Something he didn’t want to talk about just yet, which was why he’d kept his homecoming on the down-low.
Maybe he’d gone to the local bar and invited some barfly back to see if his bed was too big, too small, or just right. In his condition it was doubtful, but not out of the realm of possibility.
He sized her up with a single glance. Nah, a woman who looked like this one didn’t hang around the Crow’s Nest looking for one-night flings. And guys like Emmitt never offered more.
He was back to the coma theory. And if there was one thing Emmitt knew how to do better than anyone, it was testing a theory.
“Normally, I’d say the more the merrier.” He ran a hand through his hair and—damn—even his follicles hurt. “But tonight’s not good for me.”
Her fear was immediately replaced with contempt. “I’m so sorry to intrude on your precious man-time,” she said, then slung her heel at his head. “Now, get out!”
“Jesus.” He ducked, because hallucination or not, that thing looked dangerous. Bright red, pointy toed, and sharp enough to pierce steel, or—he looked up at the spot on the wall where his head had been two seconds earlier—wedge itself into sheetrock.
“Seriously, who put you up to this?” he asked.
“What?”
“It was Levi, wasn’t it? All self-righteous about dating, telling me my luck was bound to run out and I’d end up attracting one of those Crazy Cuties.” He took his time giving her another once-over, paying extra-special attention to her panties—cheeky cut, if he were a betting man. “You don’t look like one of those. But I’ve been wrong before.”
“Crazy?” She snatched the remote control off the coffee table.
“See now, Goldilocks, you’re missing the whole cutie part.”
She stood there, straddling that threshold between retreat and retaliation, remote poised and aimed for complete castration, and contemplating her next move.
Emmitt stepped closer, dwarfing her with his size, then leveled her with a Come at me, I dare you look that would scare most grown men shitless.
This woman was neither scared nor intimidated. Stubborn, narrowed eyes met his and made him wonder where the meek people-pleaser he’d heard on the phone had disappeared to. There was nothing meek about the woman standing in front of him. She looked like a genie who’d broken free from her lamp. Not that blond babe who granted wishes either. No, this genie looked as if she had a thousand years of anger stored up and ready to unleash on some poor SOB.
“My name is Anh Nhi Walsh. Or Annie if that’s too cosmopolitan for you to manage.”
He was about to inform her that his passport had more stamps than a philatelist when she decided he was the poor SOB.
Clutching the remote for all she was worth, she pulled back and smiled. Emmitt knew that smile well. He’d invented that smile.
In fact, he was the grand fucking master of smiles, with double-barreled dimples that he’d hated as a boy and exploited as a man.
Emmitt Bradley was a certified chameleon who could comfort, intimidate, or seduce with a simple twitch of the lip. But her particular smile promised war—painful and bloody.
So he took that smile and raised her a grin—Cheshire with a just enough How you doing to make her pause—and that was his window. Without giving her time to react, he did some quick maneuvering, pressing her against the adjacent wall, her hands pinned above her head.
With a startled gasp, she looked up at him with eyes that had to be the darkest shade of brown he’d ever seen.
“Let go,” she shouted, her breath coming in erratic bursts. With every breath she took, the lace of her corset brushed his chest, reminding him that, between the two of them, they were barely wearing enough fabric to floss their teeth.
“You done?” he countered. When she narrowed her gaze, he took the remote from her hand, then tossed it on the chair. He gave her wrist one last warning squeeze. “We good?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to take your word for it.” He studied the stubborn set of her chin, her full pouty lips, and those dangerously dark and tempting bedroom eyes that could make a man forget his good sense. She was trouble. And, damn, he loved trouble—almost as much as he loved women. “You break that trust and try to throw anything other than panties my way and I’ll pin you to the floor. Got it, Anh Nhi Walsh?”
She froze the moment he spoke her name. And yeah, it had been good for him too. Kind of slid right off his tongue, coming out more a promise than the threat he’d intended. But hey, he’d go with it. Everything behind his boxers was demanding he rethink that no-women rule.
“Annie’s fine. And my panties aren’t going anywhere.”
He stared her down for a long minute, then let her wrists go. He didn’t back up though. He could pin her to the floor, but
