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“Givenchys.” Her gaze lifted to his. “My shoes. Famous French desig
ner. You’ve never heard of him?”
“French?” What the hell was she mumbling about? And why wasn’t she still naked? “Ah, no. I’m a guy, remember?”
He sat back on his heels as she shook her head like he was an idiot, took the toilet paper from his hand and dabbed at the bottom of her foot. Her skin was dewy and soft, her blond hair curling around her shoulders as it dried. With her foot still propped on her knee, he could just see the long line of her bare thighs hiding the treasure nestled in the shadow between her legs. The memory of touching her there exploded in his head, followed by her cry of pleasure as she came against his hand.
His blood pulsed, and warmth circulated in his veins, slid down his torso to pool in his groin. Don’t let history repeat itself. . . .
Okay, he needed to back off. Like . . . now. So why wasn’t he moving?
“What?” Lauren asked, looking away from her foot to glance at his face.
“What, ‘what’?” he tossed back, startled by her voice. Was he sweating? He reached for the wet washclon the edge of the tub and swiped it across his face, wiping away the sweat and dirt and dried blood.
“You’re watching me.”
He dropped his hand, frowned. “I thought we went through this before. It’s my job to watch you.”
Her knowing blue eyes held his before glancing back to her foot. “And I thought you set me straight on that kind of watching.”
He flashed back to their conversation in her suite earlier in the day, and the proposition she’d offered him then. Warmth turned to white-hot heat. Why the hell had he turned her down? God, had that been only a few hours ago? It seemed like days. Weeks.
He swallowed hard, trying to keep his brain from shorting out. She smelled really good. Fresh. Clean. Like God intended.
“You’re watching me again,” she said.
He was. He couldn’t seem to look away. He tried to change the subject. “Why aren’t you freaking out?”
“Should I be?”
He tossed the washcloth into the tub behind her, braced both hands against his thighs. “Considering everything? Yeah.”
She dropped her foot to the ground, focused on his eyes. “Will it do any good?”
“No, but . . . most women would be, after everything you’ve been through tonight.”
“You’ve been through it, too, and you aren’t freaking out, are you?”
She had a point, but in his experience women like her behaved one way, and one way only.
She stood up. “You’ve met my brother, Finn. Freaking out isn’t part of the Kauffman doctrine of life.”
He picked up the knife, slid it back into his pocket as he stood and carefully studied her eyes. They didn’t look wild, didn’t look dilated. If anything, they looked normal. In control. “I don’t see how that—”
“While I’ll admit running from crazy men isn’t part of my normal, everyday routine, freaking out about it isn’t going to do me any good. We need to figure out what happened and why, who those guys were and why they killed Javier.”
Okay, that sounded way too rational. Why wasn’t she melting?
“I’ve seen death before,” she said with more confidence than he expected. “Granted, it wasn’t like what you did to those guys on the roof, or what happened in the club, but it was still death. I was with my parents the night our car was hit by a drunk driver and they were both killed. I watched the light go out of my father’s eyes, saw the gruesome details of my mother’s death. I even survived the loss of my grandparents when I was in high school. For a long time it was just me and my brother before he went off to figure out his own life.”
“Yeah, but—”
She held one hand out to the side. “This is not the product of a pampered upbringing like you and a lot of people think. I fell into this gig in college when they were filming a commercial on campus. One day I’m walking through the quad and the next I’m being offered a modeling contract. When you’re thirty thousand dollars in debt, you don’t have much of a family to lean on and the job market isn’t looking all that promising, sometimes you don’t question the whys of things, you just take the opportunity that’s being offered.”
He couldn’t quite keep up with her. “I thought—”
Irritation flashed in her eyes. “You thought what? That because I’m a model Im some sort of diva? That’s your problem, Tierney. You thought wrong.” She took a step toward him and jabbed her index finger in his chest. “I’m good in a crisis, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve got brains, and even when this body’s different, I’ll still have those brains. I’m not some spoiled princess who needs you to hold her hand.”
