help. He’s an okay guy, he’s just stressed, and Sharee’s mouthy.”
By all accounts, Martin wasn’t an okay guy. He was angry and aggressive, and he made Rainey as uncomfortable as hell. “I think he hits her, Mona. If I knew it for sure, I’d report it. And then you might lose her.”
Mona paled. “No.”
“You tell Martin that, okay? Tell him I’ll report him if he doesn’t keep his hands off her.”
Mona hugged herself and shook her head vehemently, and Rainey sighed. The authorities had been called out here no less than five times. But Sharee wouldn’t admit to the abuse, and worse, every time she and Mona were questioned, Martin only got more “stressed.”
“There are places you can go,” Rainey said softly. “Places you can take Sharee and be safe.”
Mona’s face tightened. “We’re fine.”
Rainey just looked at her for a long moment, but in the end there was nothing more she could do. “Will you allow Sharee to stay at my place on the nights you’re working?”
Without answering, Mona went inside.
Rainey went home. She made cookies because that’s what she did when she was stressed—she ate cookies. Then she showered for her date with Kyle. It would be fun, she decided. And she needed fun. She would keep an open mind and stop thinking about Mark. Who knows, maybe Kyle would be The One to finally make her forget Mark altogether.
She heard the knock at precisely six o’clock. She waited for a zing of nerves. It was a first date. There should be nerves. But she felt nothing. She opened her door and went still.
Mark.
Now nerves flooded her. “What are you doing here?”
“We left a few things unfinished,” he said.
“We always leave things unfinished!”
A car pulled up the street. Kyle. Inexplicably frantic, Rainey shoved at Mark’s chest. “You have to go.”
He didn’t budge. “Hmm.”
Hmm? What the hell did that mean? She looked around, considering shoving him into the bushes, but he leaned into her. “Don’t even think about it.” With his hands on her hips, he pushed her inside her town house and shut the door.
“You can’t be here,” she muttered. “I have a date.”
He let go of her to look out the small window alongside the front door, eyes focused on Kyle as he walked up the path. “I want to meet this guy.”
“What? No.”
The doorbell rang, and Mark turned his head to look at her, his eyes two pools of dark chocolate. “You still have shitty taste in men?”
“I—None of your business!”
The bell rang again, and in sheer panic, Rainey pushed Mark behind the door and out of sight, pointing at him to stay as she pasted a smile on her face and opened the door.
Kyle was medium height and build, with wind-tousled brown hair that curled over his collar and green eyes that had a light in them that suggested he might be thinking slightly NC-17 thoughts. Rainey stared at him in shock.
He smiled. “Surprised?”
Uh, yeah. He’d grown up and out, and had definitely lost the buck teeth. Plus he had a look of edge to him, a confidence, a blatant sexuality that shocked her. Kyle Foster had grown up to be a bad boy. “It’s nice to see you,” she said, surprised to find it true.
“Same goes.” He looked her over. “You look good enough to eat.”
From behind the door came a low growl.
Rainey didn’t dare glance over, but she could feel the weight of Mark’s stare. “Let me just grab my purse,” she said quickly.
“What smells so good?” Kyle asked, trying to see past her and inside her place.
“I made chocolate chip cookies earlier.”
“I love chocolate chip cookies,” Kyle said.
Was it her imagination, or did Mark growl again? Oh, God. “Burned them,” she said quickly. Liar, liar, pants on fire. She had a glorious tray of cookies on her counter, to-die-for cookies, cookies that were better than an orgasm, but if she let him in, she’d be forced to introduce him to Mark. “Sorry. If you could just give me a sec.” She shut the door on his face and winced. Then she glared at Mark.
“Let him in,” he said. “You can introduce us.” He said this in the tone the Big Bad Wolf had probably used on Little Red Riding Hood.
She pointed at him. “Shh!” She ran into the kitchen, grabbed her purse and strode past the six-foot-plus dark and annoyingly sexy man still standing in her entryway, throwing off enough attitude to light up a third world country.
“Your top’s too tight,” Mark said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Then your bra’s too thin.”
She stared down at herself. He was right—Nipple City. “Well, if you’d stop crowding me.”
He smiled, dark and dangerous. He had no plans to stop crowding her. “And your jeans,” he said.
“What’s wrong with my jeans?”
“You have a stain on the ass.”
She twisted around first one way, then the other, but saw nothing. “I can’t see it.”
“I can. Not exactly date pants, you know?”
“Fine! Don’t move.” She raced up the stairs and down the hallway to her bedroom, tore off the jeans, ripping through her dresser for another clean pair.
Nada.
Dammit! She yanked open her closet and settled on a short denim skirt, which meant she had to change shoes, which also meant she had to redo her hair. Running back down the stairs, she came to a skidding halt at the bottom.
The front door was opened but Kyle was nowhere to be seen, and neither was his car. Eyes narrowed, she followed a faint sound into her kitchen, where she found Mark leaning back against her counter, Zen-calm, every muscle relaxed…eating her cookies.
* * *
“NICE SKIRT YOU’RE almost wearing,” Mark said, and swallowed the last of his cookie. He brushed his fingers off, ignoring the death glare coming at him from the doorway. Rainey had changed out of the sexy jeans and into an even sexier short denim skirt, revealing perfectly toned legs that he wanted to nibble. He wanted to start at her toes and work his way up, up, up past her knees, past her thighs…to the heaven between them.
Something she most definitely wasn’t ready to hear. “You’re
