CHAPTER SIX
HE SHOULD HAVE let her go. Charlie knew it without question as she started away from him, all that mess and fury visible in every sweet line of her body. It was like some kind of blazing neon sign, telling him to stay the hell away from her.
Those were the kind of gut feelings that had kept him alive after his stepfather’s death, when he no longer had the old man’s protection back there in his very rough part of Texas. He’d learned fast to always, always pay attention to his gut.
In the case of Maya, his gut was clear. He needed to walk away.
So there was absolutely no reason that he should have found himself lunging after Maya as she stormed off, out of the old tunnel beneath the church and up an ancient stairway that rose steeply between two pastel pink buildings.
He caught up to her on the next uneven landing and didn’t think it through. Maybe he was beyond thinking, too bound up in all this rage—and this had to be rage, because he wouldn’t let it be anything else—that churned in him with no acceptable outlet. This wasn’t Texas. He couldn’t pick a fight with the wrong fool in a dangerous bar to let off a little steam. He couldn’t follow the worst of his impulses, not here in this tiny little tourist town where his reputation had to stay more in line with the hotel than his own bad decisions.
And still he spun her around, backing her up against a wall that had been right here since long before there was anything called Texas.
“Don’t you throw your shit at me,” he growled. “I didn’t leave you at the altar or anywhere else.”
But she wasn’t smiling back at him the way she always had been before. Not today. Her eyes were stormy and dark, and she tipped up her chin like she thought she could fight him.
It amazed him how much of him wished she would try.
“I think we both know it’s only a matter of time.”
“We had sex, Maya. I don’t know about you, but that’s not exactly revolutionary for me.”
“Then go have more,” she invited him, her voice like acid straight down his back. “You’re the one chasing people down and manhandling them because you don’t like a little dose of reality in the middle of your nonrevolutionary sex.”
“You didn’t seem to mind how I handled you before. If that’s changed, all you have to do is say so.”
“Don’t worry, Charlie.” And her voice was too bright. Too sharp. “I don’t expect anything from you. You’re just some guy who works with his hands and thinks that makes him special. What do I even know about you?”
“Not a goddamned thing.”
She leaned forward, and she was smiling again. Not nicely. “I know you like to smile because you think that if you do it enough, no one will notice all the other things going on in there. I know you think that sex and emotion aren’t connected, and if you fuck enough, you won’t feel. I know that you talk about loyalty, but only in the past tense. And that’s fine. You don’t owe me or anyone else a thing.”
Charlie agreed with her. He didn’t owe her anything. She still didn’t know who he was. He liked it that way. There was no reason whatsoever he should feel like she’d sucker-punched him.
He couldn’t explain why he had his hands on her shoulders. Why he was leaning over her, somehow unable to just let go and walk away. The way he knew he should.
“You really think you’re going to shame me into doing what you want?” he demanded, his face much too close to hers.
“It wouldn’t occur to me that shame was something you were even remotely familiar with.”
“I didn’t ask you for anything. You were the one who approached me.”
“Right, yes. You were a poor innocent handyman, trying only to do your job half-naked in the sun, when the big bad lawyer stormed in from Canada and forced you—”
Charlie didn’t think he moved. He didn’t mean to move. But one hand left her shoulder and found its way to her jaw, and then he was tipping her head back. He didn’t like anything about the situation, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
And he couldn’t seem to make himself let go.
They were all alone on the landing, the staircases above and below them empty this late in the year and the shutters closed tight against the cold. There were echoes in the distance. The sounds of footsteps, the odd muscular car engine and the bells from the church. But all Charlie could really hear was his own breath, the clatter of his heart inside his chest and what felt like a drumbeat in his cock.
Most people had the good sense to keep their distance when he had a temper on.
But Maya held his gaze like she was the one daring him. He could feel that she was trembling, a light fluttering beneath his fingers, but there was nothing but fire when she stared back at him.
He tried to keep it calm, but his own voice sounded rough, there in the narrow space between old, high buildings. “You keep poking at something you don’t understand, Maya, and you’re not going to like the response you get.”
She continued to glare straight at him as she lifted up her hand, slowly extended two fingers and then poked him in the chest.
Hard.
“You’re not very smart, are you?” he asked, his voice soft with menace, and he could see the shiver she fought back.
“I always thought I was very smart, actually, but I apparently left my brain on the plane when I landed in Italy.”
She angled her head to one side as she stared up at him, as if she didn’t care at all that he had his hand right there on her face and her back to the wall.
And then she proved how little she cared when she poked him again. Harder.
“I’m not your bottle of vodka, Maya. You’re not going to like this hangover.”
“You know what I like most about vodka?” she asked, her eyes glittering. “It doesn’t talk.”
And Charlie was...undone.
He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had challenged him, not without firepower and half an army at their back, anyway. Certainly not a woman.
And he didn’t want to feel a thing, because he didn’t do feelings and he certainly didn’t do this. He didn’t want anything she was hurling at him to hit its mark and the fact it might have was a problem he should have been off fixing. With prejudice.
But it was like he didn’t have a choice.
He crushed his mouth to hers, right out there in the open. Anyone could run up the stairs or come down from above, but he didn’t care the way he knew he should have now that he was all respectable. And known. And the things he did might actually affect the lives of the people who worked for him.
Responsibility pissed him off. And somehow made him harder, too.
