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He feigns a yawn. I chuckle, then remember to press hard against his wound. He grunts again.
“Sorry. Romance?”
My face heats as he reaches out and curls a lock of my brown hair around his knuckle, rubbing the strands with his thumb, and… crap. I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
“If you like.”
Please god, let him not be married. “Okay, I give up. What do you normally read?”
“Threats, mostly.” A smirk flashes across his face, here then gone. “But a man can change. Which isyourfavorite genre, bella?”
I start to answer, but across the store, the bookshop door slams shut. Footsteps thump along the carpet in quick strides, and a man appears between the shelves in an open black coat. He’s gripping a leather medical bag in one hand and he looks pissed as hell.
With tanned skin and wavy dark blond hair, thick framed glasses and a square jaw, the man staring down at me is clearly very handsome.
Even more worrying, then, that I only have eyes for the sharp-tongued jerk bleeding all over Aunt Karen’s armchair. “Um.” I shuffle closer to the wounded stranger. “Is that your doctor?”
He’s still holding a lock of my hair, and he tugs gently on the strands. “Yes, that’s Raul. Don’t worry about him, bella. He’s a pussy cat.”
He doesn’tlooklike a pussy cat. He looks like an angry mountain lion in glasses.
I turn to the man stroking my lock of hair. We’re closer than I realized, my body wedged between his spread thighs. “Andyouare?”
“Nico Falasca,” the newcomer answers for him, striding closer and dropping his medical bag with a thump. “Since he’s feeling so free with names.” The two men exchange loaded looks, and my heart sinks.
Okay, I definitely know too much. Will they kill me for this? For helping?
Will anyone tell Aunt Karen what happened to me? Will anyone else even care?
I always figured my life would be quiet and cozy and kind of dull. Not that it would end with a watery grave.
“I’m Leah,” I say, in case it humanizes me or whatever. “And, uh. I’m very good at keeping secrets, I swear.”
Three
Nico
“Don’t even think about it.” Raul’s hands are much rougher than the pretty bookshop owner’s, manhandling me into a better position on the display table. The wood is cool against my bare back, and pain lances down my side as I stretch out.
The neat stacks of hardbacks that were here before must have taken Leah a long time, but she cleared them with a single barked order from the doctor, piling them neatly on the store counter. Didn’t complain about my getting blood all over another piece of furniture, either.
She’s scrubbing at the stains on the armchair now with a bowl of hot soapy water and a cloth, pretending not to watch us through the curtain of her hair.
Her soft, silky hair.
Fuck.
She smelled so good when I had her close. Like brown sugar and spice. Would she smell like that everywhere if I peeled off her bottle green shorts and Doc Martens? Her slouchy white sweater that I already stained with blood? Is she soft and creamy all over?
“I mean it,” Raul mutters, reaching into his bag below the table, then placing a whiskey bottle by my elbow with a thump. “Don’t get attached. You know how that story ends.”
Yeah, yeah. Are all doctors miserable as sin? I glare at mine as he tosses his coat over a nearby display stand then rolls his shirtsleeves to the elbow. Raul’s knees crack as he crouches, rummaging in his medical bag, and I unscrew the whiskey bottle and prop myself up to take a long swig.
It burns all the way down, scorching a trail through my chest. I take another and another, because one thing’s for sure: this is gonna hurt.
When I tip my head back with a groan, the ceiling is blurry. Better.
“This won’t be fun,” Raul promises, pulling out a fresh needle and surgical thread and a small bottle of clear alcohol.
