Page 44 of Never the Same

“Your bedroom,” he prompted in a low voice, shaking his head as if trying to pull both of us free of a silent but dangerous storm. He opened the door without another word and turned on the light.

There was a queen bed with a plain gray bedspread, nightstand, and dresser. Simple, but it’d work.

“Audrey ordered the furniture, insisting I might have a visitor one day. Picked out the bedding and the picture, too.”

A little hmph noise left my lips as I mindlessly fidgeted with the tail of my French braid that I somehow muscle-memoried my way into pulling off on the flight here.

I let go of my braid to chase away the goose bumps pebbling my skin as I studied the photo of a desert sandstorm over the bed, feeling caught up in the harsh winds myself.

“You’ll need to use my bathroom for a decent shower, unless you want to use the one in the hall where I give Ranger his baths.”

“While I don’t mind sharing with Ranger, something tells me he likes his space. But does his dad? How are you at sharing?”

“Horrible.” A wolfish grin crossed his face, and he immediately brought his hand over his mouth to physically wipe it away.

At the embarrassing growl coming from my stomach, I startled free of my thoughts.

“You not eat on the plane?”

“I was too stressed out about the whole turning-my-back-on-my-family thing, even if this is where I want to be.”

“You need to eat.” That sounded very order-like, and I didn’t even mind.

“Well then . . . are you cooking, or are we ordering in? In my dream, I wasn’t a good cook, and something tells me that’s true.”

He grimaced as if I’d somehow offended him. “What dream?”

Shit, I wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. It’d only make him ten times more uncomfortable than he clearly already was. “Nothing, just nonsense.” Now I’m lying, so this is going great.

He closed the space between us and started to reach for me but stopped himself. “You okay?” he asked while curling his fingers into his palm at his side.

Nope. I coughed up a plausible excuse to avoid the truth. “Jet lag.”

He checked his watch. “I need to keep you up for another hour or two so you don’t screw up your sleep too much.”

Something told me the old me would tease and joke, Keep me up, how? while lifting my brows a few times. “Might need a shower to wake me up, then.”

“Wash up while I fix dinner.” He caught me off guard, taking a knee by the bed. He retrieved a black metal box from under it. “There’s also a gun safe like this one in my room if you need to access a weapon.” He told me the four-digit code while punching it in, then stood and offered me the weapon.

I didn’t feel any hesitation to accept it. It was familiar. Painfully so. Part of me wished it didn’t feel so natural to hold such a thing. I’ve killed people with these things. Close kill count to Gideon’s, even. That last part was still hard to digest.

“Remember how to use it?”

I shivered, handing it back to him. “Unfortunately.”

“At my old place, I used to sleep with a Glock under my pillow. With Chase living down the street and coming over so often, I have to keep everything locked up.” He put it away and returned to stand before me. “I have a lot more weapons in the garage. I’ll show you tomorrow, just in case.”

“I figured those were gun safes, not tool chests,” I teased.

“What, don’t take me as handy?” He smirked, then quickly washed that smile away with his hand once again, as if pissed he kept having that reaction around me.

“Mm. Something tells me you’re also good with your hands.” So help me, I even followed the length of one slightly visible vein down his forearm and to his big, masculine hand.

“You really can’t help yourself, can you?”

Neither can you, mister, I wanted to hit him back with, because why the sexy rasp and hooded eyes?

“Don’t answer that,” he said before I could summon a worthy response. “Just go. Get naked.” He cursed. “Shower. I mean, shower.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and hung his head, muttering something incoherent. “I’m jet-lagged, too. Forgive me.”