“You can’t just march up to them with a loaded gun,” I replied. “Unless you’re planning on shooting them and spending the rest of your life in prison?”
I closed the curtain and turned to him. “Lie back down,” I suggested. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”
Brody raked his uninjured hand through his dark blond hair, his mouth caught in a tight grimace. “I can’t just lie down when –”
“Yes, you can.”
Despite my guilt at eyeballing a grievously injured man, I couldn’t help but reassess his physique. As he wore only hisjockeys, his broad chest with a small amount of hair between his pecs was on full display. As were his muscular biceps, long shapely legs, and the heavy, bulging package below his navel.Holy mother of god, this guy is hot.
I gulped and shifted my gaze from his body before he noticed. “Are you hungry?” I asked, stepping past him. “You slept quite a while.”
Brody, his jaw tight, turned to follow me from the window. “I don’t know that I can keep anything down.”
He sat on the couch where he’d been sleeping, his hair tousled from sleep and his hand. “What if they bust in here?”
I showed him the Glock I’d tucked into the small of my back as he slept. “That’d be a piss poor decision on their part.”
“Okay.” He drew in a deep breath. “Okay.”
Tugging the blanket over him despite the house being warmer than I liked, he lay down. “You sleep with that thing?”
“Yep.”
“Who’s after you?”
“Right now, your drug dealing pals,” I replied, walking toward the kitchen. “I’ll fix some soup. You should try to eat.”
He grumbled something under his breath I couldn’t catch and would have ignored, anyway. I checked to make certain my doors, front and back, were securely locked with deadbolts.What I need is a Rottweiler. Maybe after I move to the next place.In the kitchen, I opened cans of chicken soup, thinking such might be easy on Brody’s stomach.
I leaned against the counter as it heated, my arms folded. What am I doing? I can’t get involved in Brody’s criminal troubles, but here I am, involved up to my eyeballs. Ready and willing to shoot Austin and his friend if they busted into my house. I shook my head at my inner thoughts.
I couldn’t have let them kill him, cut him to shreds when I could stop it.
“I need to stop second guessing myself,” I muttered. “I did what I had to do, regardless of the consequences. It was the right thing.”
The soup hot, I took a bowl and a spoon into the TV room, expecting Brody to be asleep. He turned away from the window as I entered, his ass revealed starkly in the white shorts.
“They left,” he said, limping back to the couch.
I set the bowl and spoon on the table. “I’d better get you some clothes. You’re rather, um, distracting without them.”
He grinned. “I’d sure like to see you in your undies.”
“Never happen.”
I returned to the kitchen for my own soup, then brought my bowl from the kitchen to eat with him. He ate slowly, carefully, no doubt favoring his nausea. I had little appetite but ate my soup, anyway. I craved instead to drink until I fell asleep, forgetting all this shit that’s happened in the past two days.
Including my own shit.
“It’s good,” Brody murmured. “My stomach is calming down.”
“I sure have no desire to clean your puke off my rug.”
At his sudden flinch, at his darkening face, at how he quit looking at me, I knew my comment stung him deep. Only then did I realize how crass that sounded. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just stressed. I didn’t mean to be so rude.”
“You’re right,” he replied, again without looking at my face, “you shouldn’t have to clean up after me.”
“You’re a guest in my house. I should behave as such.”
