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Returning her focus to him, she said the first thing to pop into her head. “You’re doing pushups.”
“What? I think better when I work out,” he said without slowing. “It’s a right brain, left brain thing.”
“Like the Arrow.” That didn’t sound like she was about to pass out from hotness.
Not. At. All.
He paused mid-pushup, the stillness emphasizing the way his biceps bulged in the position, then continued the downward movement without commenting on the superhero comparison. “Another LARPer is the obvious choice, but what if it’s not about the LARP but about you? Has this asshole broken into anyone else’s apartment?”
She shook her head. “I guess I’m special.”
He adjusted his hands to form a diamond and continued with his next set of pushups, setting off a wave of movement in a different section of his back muscles. “Why?”
“Don’t use up all your charm,” she managed to get out, even though her mouth had turned to chalk.
“You know what I mean.” He jumped to his feet and shook out his arms. “Why you? What is your connection to the vestments that’s different than the others?”
Not for the first time since the muggings had started, she asked herself that question. Unfortunately, the only answer she ever came up with was pretty damn lame. “I made them.”
He paced the room, alternating between swinging his arms and popping his knuckles, which had to be arthritic considering how much he abused them. “Okay, but then you gave them out to the rest of your court.”
Mika mmm-hmmed “Everything but the leftover material.”
“Leftover?” Carlos stopped in his tracks, turned to face her, and rested his hands on his lean hips.
She nodded.
“How much is left?”
Mika crossed over to the stack of boxes and trailed her finger down the labels until she hit the one that read mbdv. She reached up to remove the boxes on top of it, but Carlos reached over her and moved them. For the briefest of seconds, his arms surrounded her, and she watched the byplay of the muscles in his forearms as he plucked three boxes from the stack.
Any other circumstance—any other man—and she would have followed her natural impulses, just like she always did when it came to fashion or fun. But this time it was different. It wasn’t just the danger presented by the mugger, it was the threat lurking in her mind’s shadow of trusting a man who hid behind false pretenses. She’d made that mistake with Keenan, and her little sister had paid the price. Carlos wasn’t a killer, but he wasn’t the über alpha-hole he was pretending to be, either.
Her hands shook the slightest bit as she took the mbdv box down. Inside was the large spool of silver thread that she’d woven into her court’s vestments.
Carlos peeked over her shoulder. “What about the material?”
She didn’t trust herself not to lean back against his bare chest, so she ducked under his arm and walked to the east side of the room. The mini kitchenette took up half the wall. Eight-feet-high pantry doors dominated the rest, but instead of canned goods, her pantry held bolts of fabric. She moved a few bolts of yellow cotton, black silk, and antique ivory chiffon over to reveal the dark purple aubergine of the broadcloth she’d used to make her court’s vestments.
“What’s so special about this material?” Carlos asked.
“Nothing really.” She ran her palm down its smooth surface. “It’s my favorite color, and I have a fabric importer I work with who gives me a discount. I was looking for a fabric that would be stiff enough to give the feel of a kind of armor in the decorative vestment. It wasn’t exactly what I’d wanted, but it was close enough that I wasn’t about to pitch a fit, considering he sold it to me at cost.”
“Is it valuable?”
She shrugged, unable to come up with anything special about the fabric. “It’s not fast-fashion priced, but it’s not couture, either.”
Carlos leaned against the kitchenette’s counter and crossed his arms. The move did everything to draw her eyes to the arm porn on display. Damn, it was her trigger. She clamped her hand down on the bolt of stiff broadcloth, less than satisfied with the tactile sensation it offered. Keyed up by the mix of an adrenaline rush from the alley encounter and the attraction tugging her closer to Carlos, she chewed the inside of her cheek.
Maybe that will bring me back to reality.
“You can’t think of any reason why someone would want this specific material?” he asked.
“Not unless the person is expecting a run on purple broadcloth.” Which had happened before, but with a specific pattern of black lace that everyone and their mom was using for designs that walked the runway during Paris Fashion Week. But purple broadcloth was a helluva lot different than handmade Italian lace designed in honor of Princess Diana.
“Okay, what about you?”
All thoughts of biceps, black lace, and stiff broadcloth disintegrated at his question. “Me?” Her voice had gone up half an octave between the single word’s first and second letter.
