pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth and reminded himself that he was a calm, rational being (with a gun) and she probably hadn’t meant to insult him and his coworkers.
“Harper.” A swift rebuke, her name uttered as though it was a curse. He should have called her “ma’am” again, but since he’d teased her about how he’d gotten the apartment, formalities were out. “You’re seconds away from being arrested for public intoxication, because only a drunk person would say something like that.”
A relieved sigh left her. “The good kind, then. Otherwise, you’d try and convince me of just how good you are, rather than taking offense.”
“Harper.”
She swallowed. “Okay, fine. I told you I’m a painter, right?”
“An incredible painter.”
Her chin lifted, those haunting secrets in her eyes momentarily replaced by affront. “Well, I am,” she said, having to speak around her fingers. “Anyway, I, uh, hmm. I knew this would be hard, but wow, this is worse than the time I had to tell Stacy DeMarko her butt did, in fact, look fat in those jeans.”
I am not amused. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth.
The contact jolted her, and she gasped. It jolted him, too. Her skin was unbelievably soft, decadently warm, something out of a fantasy. Her pulse hammered erratically, every pound caressing him. He let her go, stepped away.
“Last chance, Harper. Just say what you came to say. That’s the only way to get what you need.”
She rubbed at the elegant length of her neck, the picture of feminine delicacy, and whispered, “I’m painting something … from memory, I think, and … the problem is … I don’t really remember, but it’s there, in my head, the horrible image, I mean, and … and … I think I witnessed a murder.”
2
Aurora Harper, named after Sleeping freaking Beauty—and if anyone dared call her by the awful name they’d soon get a personal introduction to the razor in her boot—sat “calmly” on her neighbor’s couch. He was peering at her, silent, waiting for her to answer his latest question.
Her tongue felt thick and unruly, unusable, and there was a lump growing in her throat, making it difficult for her to swallow. She hated talking about this, hated thinking about it, and would have given anything to slink away unnoticed, soon forgotten.
Thing was, Levi would not be forgetting her. After her grim announcement, he’d gone stiff and jarringly quiet, then had ushered her into his living room, gently pushed her onto the couch cushions and pulled a chair directly in front of her. He’d spent the next half hour drilling her for information.
She’d had no idea what to expect from him, had known only that he was the most rugged-looking man she’d ever seen. Oh, yeah, and every time she’d glanced in his direction he’d made her heart pound with an urge to fight him or to jump into his arms and hold on forever—she wasn’t yet sure which.
He had wide shoulders, muscled forearms and the hard, ridged stomach of an underwear model. Dressed as he was in black jogging shorts, she could see that he had scarred knees and calves. He was barefoot and his toes were strangely cute.
She forced her gaze up. Black hair shagged around a face honed in the violence of a boxing ring, or perhaps even the down-and-dirty streets, with still more scars crisscrossing on his forehead, his cheeks sharp and skirting the edge of lethal, and his nose slightly crooked from one too many breaks. A shadow of a beard covered his jaw.
He was just as bronzed up top as he was below, and she would guess his ancestry Egyptian. His eyes, though … they were the lightest green, emeralds plucked from a collector’s greatest treasure. Long black lashes framed those jewels, almost feminine in their prettiness.
Not the only thing pretty about him, she thought then. His lips were lush and pink, the kind her best friend and roommate Lana would “kill to have … all over me.”
And, okay, enough of that. Harper wasn’t here for a date, wasn’t sure she’d ever date again. The past few weeks, she could not tolerate even the thought of being touched. Maybe because every time she closed her eyes she felt phantom hands whisking over her, heard the laugh of a madman who enjoyed inflicting pain, and smelled the coppery tang of blood deep in her nostrils.
She could have written off the sensations as an overactive imagination, except … sometimes she fell asleep in one room and woke up in another. Sometimes she would be in her kitchen, or in her studio room painting, or anywhere, really, and would blink and find herself standing in a neighborhood she didn’t recognize.
The blackouts freaked her out, filled her with soul-shuddering panic, and each time she realized she was someplace new, her mind would paint her surroundings with blood, fill her ears with screams … such pain-drenched screams.
The only explanation that fit was that she’d witnessed a murder, but had suppressed the details. Suppressed until she painted, that is, the blurred images of horrors no one should ever have to bear taking shape and emerging unbidden. Either that, or crazy had razed the edges of her brain and she needed to be locked away for her own safety.
“Honey, I asked you a question and you need to answer it.”
The harshness of Levi’s voice jerked her out of her mind. Guess he was done calling her by her name and even the old-lady “ma’am,” and was now resorting to endearments that sounded more like curses.
“No,” she said, just to pick at him. “Not ‘honey.’ I told you. I’m Harper.”
One black brow arched into his hairline, and for a moment he appeared amused with her rather than accusatory. “Is that a first or last name?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah.”
She popped her jaw, finding strength in the familiarity of an irritation she’d never been able to shake. Her mother had named her after a fairy-tale princess and had expected Harper to mimic her namesake. Years of training in manners and deportment, followed by years of competing in a pageant circuit she’d despised, had nearly drained the fighting spirit out of her. Nearly. “Well, I’m not telling you the rest of my name.” He’d laugh; he’d tease her.
He shrugged those beautifully wide shoulders. “Easy enough to find out. A few calls, and boom.” He paused, clearly waiting for her to jump in.
“I will never willingly volunteer it, so you’ll just have to make those calls.”
A gleam of challenge entered those green, green eyes. “So be it.” He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned closer to her, the scents of minty toothpaste and pungent gun oil intensifying. Scents she really, really liked, if the flutter of her pulse points was any indication. “Let’s backtrack a bit. Tell me again what you think you’re painting.”
This was the third time he’d demanded that information, and she’d watched enough cop shows to know he was testing her, looking for any mistakes between her first and subsequent telling. If he found them, he could write her off as a liar.
“Shouldn’t
