“Oh, right! I totally forgot.” She smacked herself in the forehead, laughing. Then stumbled into the bedroom. He listened to drawers opening and closing and a few muttered curses before the telltale sound of her small body hitting the mattress.
He finished the pasta, dished some into a bowl and grabbed a spoon big enough for a drunk to hold. On his way to the bedroom, he stopped by the bathroom to turn off the shower she’d started.
“Remi?” He knocked on the partially closed bedroom door.
It was dark in the room, and she was curled in a ball on top of the covers. At least she’d managed to dress herself. The Mackinac PD hoodie was huge on her and it was on backward, the hood bunched under her chin. He let out a sigh and put the bowl on the nightstand. “Come on, Rem. Get under the covers before you freeze.” He managed to pull back the quilt and sheet and stuff her under them without coming into too much contact with her bare skin.
“Do you want to eat or do you want to sleep?” he asked, smoothing the covers over her.
“Will you turn the lights on?” she asked in a small voice.
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
He paused. “Are you afraid of the dark, baby?”
“Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered. “I just need to be able to see him coming.”
Him.
“Who, Remi? Who are you afraid of?”
Fuck temporary promises. If there was a man out there who scared her, he wouldn’t rest until the scales were balanced.
“This is why I came back,” she murmured against her pillow.
“Why?”
“You make me feel safe.”
He stood there staring down at her, hands fisted at his sides as a wave of possession knocked into him.
He made her feel safe.
She’d come back to be close to him. That made whatever problem she’d gotten tangled up with his problem. And he was going to solve it as soon as he pried some answers out of her.
He turned on the lamp on the nightstand, then did the same with the overhead light before lighting the fireplace to chase off the chill in the room.
She was sprawled out on her stomach like a starfish under the covers. Unable to help himself, he brushed her hair back from her face and spread it out over the pillow.
She was bewitching. Even drunk and snoring, all that fiery red hair, that smooth ivory skin made her seem so touchable.
This is why I came back.
Her words echoed in his head. He knew he was going to get more involved. Hell. He was involved the second she’d turned the aisle in the grocery store. He was going to do the thing he’d promised himself he’d never do: Get close to Remi Ford.
Because there were no witnesses, and because he desperately fucking needed it, he leaned down and brushed his lips over her furrowed forehead. The lines disappeared, and her expression eased as if he’d taken away her worry with the brush of his mouth.
He was so fucked.
He forced himself to walk out of the bedroom before he did something stupid like climb in next to her and cuddle up against that soft, warm body.
Back in the living space, he turned down the fireplace and shut off a few of the lights. He dumped the rest of the mac and cheese into a container, washed the pot, and put it back in its cabinet. Next, he got the coffeemaker ready to go because a hungover Remi required almost a full pot of caffeine before she was functional again. He fished out one of the rainbow of cereal boxes and put it on the counter next to a bowl and spoon.
He heard an insistent buzzing and found her phone faceup on the table.
Pain in My Ass.
It was late. It might be a friend calling with an emergency. Or it could be a guy calling to “Netflix and freeze” or whatever the kids were calling it now. He debated for two more buzzes before his desire to know more got the best of him, and he swiped to answer the call.
“Yeah?”
There was a brief silence on the other end, and then, “You have got to be kidding me. She got a new number and didn’t freaking tell me? Unbelievable.” It was a man’s voice. An annoyed one. Frankly, if he was dialing Remi’s number and sounding annoyed, Brick couldn’t blame him.
“Who are you looking for?” he asked.
“Alessandra. Well, technically a brat named Remi. I don’t suppose you know her?”
“Remi isn’t…available,” Brick said, choosing his words carefully.
“So this is still her number?”
Seeing as how the guy was in her contacts and had called the number looking for her, Brick felt okay with confirming. “It is. Can I take a message?”
He heard the sound of something like a pen clicking repeatedly on the other end. “Just tell her Raj called and she can’t avoid me forever.”
“Maybe you should take the hint,” Brick suggested dryly.
“Maybe you should take the message, Secretary Boy.”
“Maybe I see why she has you in her phone as Pain in the Ass.”
Inexplicably, this caused Raj to guffaw. “Ah, that ungrateful little twerp,” he said with what sounded like affection. “Tell her I called. Tell her to call me back or at least answer her goddamn emails.”
Raj—whatever kind of name that was—disconnected the call without any of the usual pleasantries, leaving Brick staring down at the phone in his hand. His gaze flicked to the bedroom. It had been a stupid move, answering the call. One a sober Remi would have his balls for.
He needed a game plan. One that had her opening up to him rather than him sneaking around behind her back.
The easel set up in the center of the room caught his eye. He wandered over to inspect the blank canvas and wondered why she’d bothered setting it up at all if she was supposed to be using his space for her studio.
An idea struck him. If he could make the studio space inviting enough—instead of just shoveling things to the edges of the room like he’d done—it would give him more time with her. And more time together meant more opportunity to drag some answers out of the woman.
It also meant more time resisting his insatiable physical attraction. But he’d spent fourteen years building a tolerance to it. He could handle a few weeks of proximity. Couldn’t he?
After a quick tour to check window and door locks, he was satisfied. Remi was safe. He could go home and for once not stare out his fucking window, wondering what the hell she was doing at 3 a.m. with all the lights on.
Instead, he’d go home and start clearing a space for her.
He was halfway across the street when he realized whose sweatshirt she’d worn to bed.
15
One second, Remi was miserably shoveling rainbow unicorn cereal into her mouth as a replacement for the dinner she’d forgotten to cook or order. The next, the Joy of Painting rerun she was watching went dark, as did the rest of the house. Her spoon flew out of her hand onto the rug.
“It’s just a regular ol’ power outage,” she told herself. “No deranged murderer is out there in this squall cutting the power just to break in and commit a homicide.”
Though maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a weapon of some sort on hand. Just in case. The wind that had been whipping the island since yesterday gave a particularly creepy howl outside the windows.
She tiptoed her way around the couch and into the kitchen, where after a brief, blind rummage through drawers, she found a pair of kitchen shears. Tucking them into the pocket of her sweatshirt, she began a search for candles and a lighter. She found one taper candle and a box of matches that had apparently gotten wet sometime in the last five years and were basically useless.