Gritting his teeth, he battened down his emotions and blocked out the raw fear and guilty doubts that plagued him.
Lightning flashed overhead and thunder crashed a second later. Kelly didn’t even flinch as she added salt to the soup.
Her calmness irritated him even further.
His life was in a mess, and she was cooking soup.
Yeah, she might have grown up, but she was still as much a nuisance as ever. And he wasn’t about to let her into his life. No matter how good that darn soup was starting to smell.
First thing in the morning he would send her packing. But first he’d eat. He needed food to regain his strength, and there was no contest that what she was cooking had to be better than the stuff he’d been eating lately.
But she wasn’t staying. No way. He’d have her off-island on tomorrow’s every-other-day ferry to the mainland.
“So what’s the deal with you and my mother?” he demanded, carefully lowering himself into a straight-backed kitchen chair.
Kelly looked guilty. His eyes narrowed. Something was up here.
Kelly tried sidestepping the issue once again by repeating her earlier mantra. “Maybe you should ask her.”
“I’m asking you,” he said, grimacing as he removed the sling in order to use his right hand. He couldn’t afford to keep babying it. This was his shooting arm. He had to regain his mobility ASAP. Regardless of what the doctors said.
She placed a huge bowl of soup in front of him along with a few thick slices of what looked like homemade bread. “And I’m saying you should ask your mother. You have a cell phone with you, right? So you can call her and let her know you’re all right.”
“Why this sudden concern?”
“It’s not sudden,” she denied, putting her own bowl of soup on the table across from him.
“So you’ve been pining for me all these years?” he mocked, and was surprised by the flash of something in her eyes. Such big brown eyes for such a little thing. Well, maybe not such a little thing, he silently revised, remembering how the top of her head had brushed his chin as she’d slipped past him to get into the house.
“Yeah, I’ve been positively lovesick for years,” she mocked right back, even going so far as to bat her eyelashes at him with such outrageous excess that he would have smiled…if he’d been a smiling man. But he wasn’t.
He focused his attention on the soup. It was good. It wasn’t until he saw the satisfied grin on her face that he realized he’d just guzzled down his chow like a raw recruit at boot camp. He dropped his spoon so abruptly it clattered on the wooden table.
“Don’t get too comfy here,” he warned her. “You’re leaving first thing in the morning.”
His pronouncement was accentuated by a crack of thunder.
“Sounds like a doozy of a storm,” she noted a second before the lights flickered and went out. “Good thing I’m not afraid of the dark,” she calmly added. “How about you?”
“I’m a Marine. I live for the dark.”
That didn’t surprise Kelly. She’d sensed the darkness in him from the moment he’d opened the door. There was a new edge to him, a sharper dangerous edge that hadn’t been there before. Brought about by his years in the Marines or by his accident? Or a combination of both?
She could hear him breathing. There was something surprisingly sensual about being caught in the darkness with him, surrounded by velvety shadows illuminated by flashes of lightning. The harsh bursts of light captured the angles of his face, lending them new definition. It was the face of a man who wouldn’t step aside if trouble got in his way.
She reached for his empty bowl only to have her fingers collide with his. Heat shot through her, as powerful as a lightning strike. The storm outside dimmed as her senses shifted to the storm raging inside of her body. She could feel the excitement burning in her like a wild thing.
“There’s something I should warn you about this beach house,” Justice said, his voice silky soft. “There’s only one bed.”
Chapter Two
“Only one bed, huh?” Kelly frantically tried to hide the fact that her heart had just kicked into overdrive. She couldn’t afford to let Justice know that he was getting to her. That wouldn’t do at all.
For one thing, Justice clearly didn’t think of her that way. He viewed her as a nuisance. For another, she couldn’t get involved with him. He was a patient. Or about to become one. Not to mention that he was her sister’s ex-husband. A definite hornet’s nest there. Way too much baggage.
The lights came back on, and as they did, Kelly knew what she had to do. She had to be sensible here. She also had to keep her sense of humor. It had gotten her through in the past whenever things were tough.
With that in mind, she gave Justice a deliberately mocking look. “Well, I suppose I could arm wrestle you for the bed, but as it happens I brought a sleeping bag with me. And I noticed that your couch in the living room looked pretty comfy.”
“Comfy? Do not get comfy here,” Justice warned her. “You will not be staying.”
His irritated words rolled right off her back. She had her “sensible” coating on now, and nothing he could say should get to her now. The realization comforted her. So did the fact that her smile threw him as she patted his left, uninjured arm. “You know, it’s a good thing I’m not the sensitive kind or I’d be hurt by your eagerness to get rid of me. I know, however, what’s behind it.”
He gave her one of those aggravated looks men give women they don’t understand. “I’ll tell you what’s behind it, the fact that I want you out of here.”
“So you’ve said. We’ll talk about it in the morning, if you’d rather.” She started cleaning up after their meal, taking their dirty bowls to the kitchen sink and running the water.
“I’d rather you were gone.”
Thunder boomed one final time, rattling the windowpanes with its bass reverberations. Despite the rumblings, the storm was actually weakening. Just like Justice. He was rumbling like the thunder, but it was more bark than bite. “You’re starting to sound like a broken record, Justice.”
“I can’t figure out why you’d want to stay somewhere you’re not wanted.”
“Besides being a glutton for punishment, you mean?” She squirted dishwashing liquid into the sink. There was a dishwasher, but she felt the need to scrub. “I’ve already told you, your mother asked me to come check on you.”
“So now you’ve checked. I’m still alive.”
“Have you called her on your cell phone yet?”
“What are you, my keeper?” His voice was really irritated now.
She turned to face him directly as she issued her challenge. “I thought Marines didn’t
