it across her forehead and cheeks.
When she was done, she wrinkled her nose at her image, turning her head from side to side to be sure she’d covered every inch of her face. Flipping on the faucet, she rinsed her hands, toweled them off and grabbed a clip, pulling all of her hair up on the top of her head to imprison it there.
It wasn’t a pointy Mohawk, but it was just as scary.
One last glance as the goo on her face began to harden. Okay, she assessed. This could work. Feeling only a shade less uneasy, she wrapped a towel around her neck and popped open the bathroom door, running right into Tag.
“Oh!” she yelped, putting her hands in front of her to find them flat on his chest.
Tag grabbed for her, wrapping his arm around her waist.
Marybell’s head popped up and she’d swear, if she ever retold this story, when describing his reaction to the hardening green mass on her face, she’d call it horrified quickly followed by the world’s worst acting job at covering up.
He grinned down at her, deep lines on either side of his mouth forming inviting grooves she had to stop herself from reaching up and touching to feel how deep they really were. “You okay?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, unsure if she was dizzy from the brush of their bodies or her cold. But the brush of his long length against hers, even with the flu, was a whoa moment.
Then, like every other moment she’d spent in his presence, the whoa factor passed and she remembered she was just a girl. Just a girl hiding for her life behind a flaking green face mask of goo.
Forcing herself to step out of his reach, Marybell nodded. “I’m fine, thank you. So, have you figured out the problem?”
He nodded, his eyes flickering over her face before resting on her mouth. “I have. You should be nice and toasty in three, two...one.” Tag held up his index finger just as a rush of air from the vent on the floor blew up her bathrobe.
Marybell smiled in relief, sinking her spine into the wall behind her to avoid making contact with him in the narrow space. “What was it?”
“Pilot light. It was out.”
She rolled her eyes in self-disgust, bringing on another wave of dizziness that left her groping for the wall in support. “Of course it was.”
“It’s an easy thing to miss.”
“It was a dumb thing to miss.”
“You’re sick.”
“Sick? Yes. Brain-dead? No.”
His teeth flashed white in the darkened hall. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
She snorted, congested and gross. “You’re too kind.”
He stared down at her, making her wonder how many times he’d smiled just like this and how many times the recipient of that smile had been a woman. It appeared his boyish grin was Tag’s standard default when he wanted his way.
Ridiculous thoughts likely brought on by her unstable, drugged brain.
“I also fixed the thermostat. The digital reader was broken. Anyway, I’ll let you rest now. Em called to remind me to remind you to take your medicine and get as much rest as possible. Hope you feel better soon.”
Suddenly he was leaving, just like that, his reign of unwitting terror over. And so soon. She put a hand on his arm, letting her fingers sink lightly into it. “Money,” she garbled.
Tag turned, cocking his head. “The root of all evil?”
“No.” She forced the word out, noting she’d left green flakes of goo on the arm of his sweatshirt, covering the roped muscle of his arm.
“Are we free-associating here?”
“I meant, let me pay you.”
“For igniting your pilot light?”
No. For lighting my hormone’s pilot. “Well, yeah. Don’t you charge an hourly wage?”
He chuckled. Rich. Thick. Slippery. “Not when Em’s hiring.”
But wait... “I can’t just let you light my pilot for free.” Smooth, Marybell. Since when did anyone do anything for free, especially a contractor? And what was this reluctance to let him leave? Twenty minutes ago, she been living for his exit.
Now she was every bit Thumper eyes and lobbing money at him.
He backed away, deftly avoiding her black bag with the silver spikes on it, lying on the floor in the nook of the sharp right turn into the living room. “You can, and you will. Feel better, Marybell,” he called out, the sound of the wind and then the door muffling his voice as it closed, greeting her ears.
Her shoulders slumped.
But they were warm when they did.
She wandered back into the living room, hands in her pockets, feeling strangely empty.
Tag had filled up an entire room, and when he’d left, which was exactly what she’d wanted him to do from the moment he entered, the space felt void of something.
Something.
As she pondered the something, she sat back down on the couch, pulling the throw over her legs, and that’s when she noticed it.
A freshly made cup of tea, sitting beside the bowl of decorative balls on her coffee table, complete with tendrils of steam lifting off the amber liquid in wispy waves of heat.
Tag Hawthorne had made her tea.
The corner of Marybell’s lips tilted upward in a reluctant smile, somehow evolving into butterflies in her stomach. Her schoolgirl smile cracked the thick layer of her green face mask until chunks of it fell into her lap.
Then she caught herself, the butterflies accumulating in the pit of her belly fleeing, replaced with dread. The green chunks were a warning. A symbol of what could happen.
Liking Taggart Hawthorne, even a little, would crack her carefully guarded life, turning it into a steaming pile of similar face-mask goo.
Nothing, especially not the temptation of a good-looking man, would ever entice her enough to do that.
Marybell gasped low and long, making his spine stiffen. “Ohhh, Fredrico! The things you do to me!” She cooed the words, following up with a customary moan Tag had become familiar with since he’d started eavesdropping at her office door like a stray dog hungry for scraps.
These constant thoughts about Marybell, this mystique he wanted to unveil, with no sense to it at all, were damn inconvenient. Unwarranted, and totally unwelcome.
Yet here he was, a week after meeting Marybell for the first time, exercising his right to
