Torn Hart, page 2
He searched her face for a moment.
His belly grumbled again.
He needed to go let Diesel out.
He needed to shower.
He needed to fucking eat.
His bald head was covered by a black knit cap, but he pulled it off and ran his hand over his bare scalp. “I’m not in the habit of taking advantage of drunk women,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “So I can offer you some dinner—got enough Chinese food here to feed a family of six—but as far as sexy Rexy goes, I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no.”
Her face fell. “How old are you?”
Well, that was a random and abrupt subject change. Though, he was grateful for it none-the-less.
“Thirty-six. How old are you?”’
“Twenty-eight.” She pursed her lips. “So you reject me but then you offer me food. What the fuck?” Her anger was building, and without thinking, his gaze flitted to the door. She saw him, and he watched heat and embarrassment creep up her neck and into her cheeks.
Rex took a deep breath. Despite his hunger and how drunk this woman was, he could already tell she was a good person. Anyone who wanted to work with kids usually was. He’d already come up with a few ways that he might be able to help her. “What kind of qualifications do you have?”
“I told you. I have a degree in education and preschool teacher certification and a Montessori teaching certification. I’ve also taken courses to work with children with special needs and kids who are on the autism spectrum. I have my first aid certificate, a clear criminal record and a clean driving record. Why? Do you have kids that need watching?” She took a hard swallow before standing up and heading to her kitchen, where she ran the tap in the sink and filled a small tumbler of water.
“I don’t have kids. But I know a lot of people who do, and they are looking for childcare. It might not be completely full-time, but it will probably be close. Unless this is just you licking your wounds and allowing your ego to heal and you could go out and get another similar job tomorrow. Seems to me you’re crazy-qualified and people would be champing at the bit to hire you.”
Her eyes formed thin slits as she stood in her kitchen, her hip cocked against the counter as she sipped her water. “It’s hard to get hired in March for anything school-related. I lucked out with covering that maternity leave. And I was looking everywhere before I got that job. It’s slim pickings. And I don’t want to teach older kids.” She huffed. “Even if I did, the on-call teacher list is a mile long, and the school districts have put a moratorium on hiring new substitute teachers.”
Well, that was shitty.
His gaze drifted to the fur ball that had wandered into the living room from the bedroom. A calico cat with bright yellow eyes sauntered toward him and rubbed its back up against his leg. His mind immediately flew to Diesel upstairs, and he knew that he had to get to him and take him out for a walk. Poor guy was probably pacing the living room with a full bladder.
He made to stand up, but the intense look in her eyes had him pausing where he sat.
“I can’t figure you out, Rex Barry Hart. You turn me down for sex, then you offer me food, and now you might have a job for me? What’s your deal, dude?” Her words were only slightly slurred for someone who should be struggling to remain vertical if she’d consumed that entire mickey like he figured she had.
Relaxing his shoulders, he stood up, reached for his duffle bag, beer, coat and dinner. “I’m in unit four-eleven if you want to come up and have some dinner. I need to get my dog out first. But I’m more than happy to share my food with you.”
She stumbled back into the living room and squinted at him. She was either on the verge of passing out or puking. And even though he normally found drunk chicks to be nearly as intolerable as two cats mating at midnight, Lydia was a cute drunk. “What’s your angle … Rexly?”
Rexly? Oh lord.
His head shook. “No angle. Just a nice guy. Give me twenty minutes. I need to get Diesel out and then have a shower. I was just at the gym.”
Her eyes struggled to roam his body in a new way—a way of appreciation—but she finally smiled. “Maybe.”
He was not one for head games. If she didn’t come up, then so be it. More food for him. But if she was going to come up for dinner, she needed to get there before he ate it all.
His stomach made another noise of impatience and desperation. If he didn’t get something in it soon, it was going to start consuming him from the inside out.
“Am I not pretty enough?”
Oh, good lord.
This was one of the things he hated most about drunk chicks. The self-deprecation and melodrama.
However, Lydia was an unusual case. She wasn’t drunk simply to party. She was nursing a wound. She’d been fired out of the blue from a job she loved. She deserved to wallow for a night with whatever spirit was her vice, and he needed to cut her some slack.
“Lydia, you’re fucking gorgeous, and you know it. Let’s not play that game. But you’re also drunk as fuck, and I don’t fuck drunk chicks.” He paused for a moment. “Unless we’re already together and it’s a consensual thing, but you know what I mean. But I’m turning you down for sex because we just met, you’re drunk off your cute little ass, and you’re sad. The only kind of man who would tap you in that state is not a man worth knowing. If we have sex, I want you sober and knowing what you’re agreeing to. If I fuck you, it’ll be until you’re damn near cross-eyed, and forgive a guy for wanting the chick awake and aware for something like that.” He headed to her door and rested his hand on the knob. “I’m upstairs in four-eleven if you’re hungry for Chinese food and want to know more about the job.”
He went to open the door, but her voice had him pausing again. “I know what I want,” she slurred.
He highly doubted that.
She tossed her feet up onto the couch and slid down into a horizontal position, her eyes closing like a vintage doll when her head hit the orangey-pink checkered throw pillow. His mother would probably call that color coral.
Turning the knob, he opened the door but glanced back into her apartment. “Well, if you still want it tomorrow when you’re sober, you know where to find me.”
But she didn’t reply. A low and very unladylike snore rumbled up from the sad little drunk woman on the couch, while her cat hopped up and snuggled up next to her leg.
Rex took a deep breath, closed the door again and stepped back into Lydia’s apartment. The glass she’d been drinking water from was empty on her counter, so he filled it again. Then he opened up a couple of kitchen cupboards until he found a bottle of Advil. He shook out two tablets and carried them and the water over to her coffee table.
Reaching for the baby-blue knitted blanket off the back of her couch, he draped it over her, making sure not to disturb the cat. “I hardly know you, but I don’t like how sad you are. I’d like to help,” he whispered.
Chapter 2
As much as she loved Pia, the cat seemed to have the most impeccably bad timing for waking up Lydia. And today was no different.
A meow, a purr and then some very aggressive, very painful claw retractions on Lydia’s hip caused the dirty dreams she was having about a bald beast of a man, with deep dimples and a killer smile, to evaporate into the ether before she even had a chance to remove the sexy bra she was wearing in her dream.
Her eyes opened to a dark living room. A quick glance at the window showed that it was dark outside.
What time was it?
She found her phone on the coffee table—next to a glass of water and two tablets of Advil.
Huh?
Her phone said it was nine thirty—at night.
Had she slept for over twenty-hour hours?
No. Pia wouldn’t let her get away with that. The cat was on her like dirt on a toddler to get her meals ready, and if Lydia was even ten minutes late, Pia was clawing at the furniture and knocking valuables off high places.
She glanced outside. It was late March in Victoria. The dark sky made sense. But what didn’t make sense was why she was passed out on her couch at this time of day with a blanket over her.
She spied the paper bag on the table and grabbed it. An empty mickey of cheap rum fell out onto her lap.
Oh yeah. That’s why she was asleep on her couch at this time of day on a Wednesday.
Because she’d been fired from a job she loved by a bitch with an ax to grind, then she got drunk and had a very interesting and possibly somewhat embarrassing conversation with a man too sexy to be real.
That’s the part where her dream and reality got a little hazy.
Was Rex real?
Or had she dreamt him up completely?
Her damp panties and the flashes of her dream a moment ago said he had to be real, because never in her life had she conjured a man that sexy into her thoughts without having seen something in real life for inspiration.
And she’d definitely noticed him around the building. The man had dimples for days and calf muscles she’d love to sink her teeth into.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, lay back down on her pillow and pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She’d propositioned him, hadn’t she?
She thought harder but couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes.
Yes, she had.
Fuck.
Groaning, she rolled off the couch, causing Pia to leap off onto the floor, obviously perturbed. She popped the Advil into her mouth and drained the full water glass before crawling on all fours, like the cat who’d been digging its claws into her flesh a moment ago, the twelve or so feet to her bathroom. She didn’t feel like she needed to puke, but she did want to see what kind of a train wreck she was dealing with visually.
Using the counter to pull herself up, she flicked on the light for the bathroom. At the sight of the woman who stared at her in the mirror, she gasped like she’d just been stabbed in the back with a dagger.
Her makeup was smudged around her eyes so bad she looked like she’d been punched, her auburn hair was all over the place and tangled, and she had salty tearstains on her cheeks, which were also sporting some pretty deep pillow creases.
Had she been drooling in her sleep too?
That would round out things in the devastation department quite nicely.
She needed a shower.
Peeling out of her clothes, she made a point of not glancing at herself in the mirror any more than was necessary. Then when the water was hot enough, she leapt in and stood beneath the spray until she started to feel human again.
She was just rinsing the conditioner from her hair when the gentle knock at her front door had her jerking where she stood and flailing her elbow out, which only knocked the shampoo bottle into her bodywash, sending them both to the floor in a mighty crash.
“Fuck.” Mumbling more curse words, she bent down to pick up the bottles.
Knock. Knock.
“Lydia? I’m checking to make sure you’re still alive.”
She gasped. But that only caused her to suck in air—and water—from the shower and start coughing.
Fuck.
With the bright lights of death and the afterlife blinding her, she managed to catch her breath, put the bottles back up on the ledge and turn off the faucet. Now if she could only exit the tub without tripping and cracking her head on the edge of the granite counter.
Wouldn’t that be a sight for the firefighters to find.
Her, naked and dead on her bathroom floor, with a cracked skull and a starving Pia eating her eyeballs to survive.
“Lydia? You okay? I heard a crash. The door’s unlocked, but I don’t want to come in if you don’t want me too.”
Double fuck.
“Just a second!” she called through the open bathroom door.
She did a mediocre towel-dry of her body, found her fluffy hot pink robe and flung it on before twisting her hair up into another towel on the top of her head. Then, making sure she’d gotten all the makeup off her face and she didn’t have big black tracks down her cheeks, she took a deep breath and headed to open the door.
Dear God, had she ever been drunk earlier. Never in a million, trillion and the made-up word bajillion years would a sober Lydia have had the cojones to proposition, let alone flirt with and talk to, a hunk of burning love like Rex Hart.
How damn deep did those dimples go? How blue were those eyes? And they weren’t like your typical sky-blue either. No. They were like midnight with a thousand stars. With white flecks around the pupil and an intensity that made her lady parts tingle.
She’d never been big into bald men—well, except for The Rock, Vin Diesel, Jason Statham—okay, maybe she did have a thing for bald guys or at the very least the actors of the Fast and Furious franchise. But none of those A-listers could hold a candle to the man standing in her doorway with a plate of food and a sexy smile.
“I figured you might be hungry,” he said, offering her up a plate covered in aluminum foil. “I also wanted to check to make sure you were still alive. How are you feeling?”
Without a word—because her tongue had quadrupled in size and was having difficulty navigating its way around her mouth—she took the plate from him and stepped inside. He followed.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked with a grin that brought the dimples out into full-on attack mode. Like seriously, those things should not be legal. He should need a permit for those babies or a license to carry or something. At the very least, he should be required to issue a warning to all females in a certain proximity before he busted them out. They were about as lethal to her resolve and the existence of dry panties as the sun was to a Popsicle.
Pia wandered into the living room and wove her way around Rex’s ankles.
And another thing, he was wearing goddamn gray sweatpants and a fucking white T-shirt that showed off EVERYTHING he had to offer. Including the nipples that appeared to be tight and pointing directly at her.
Dear God, it’d been way too long since she’d been with a man.
Way. Too. Long.
She’d also done a damn good job of scrubbing any memories of that last guy from her brain. So her spank bank was so empty, the echo of a pin dropping there would sound more like thunder.
His smile faltered, and his eyes turned cautious. “Are you okay? You do know who I am, right?”
Speak, you idiot woman! Speak!
She nodded. “Yes, I know who you are.” She lifted up the plate of dinner. It was warm. Her belly rumbled. “Thank you.”
That seemed to mollify him a bit. “How are you feeling?”
“Not great,” she said, pulling out the stool for the bar slash island in her kitchen and taking a seat while removing the foil from the plate. Dinner looked incredible. Sweet and sour pork, chow mein, lemon chicken, chop suey, fried rice, and he’d even left a spring roll for her. She dove in.
Rex entered the kitchen and pulled out the other barstool, making her more than aware of not only his size but his heat and scent as well. Fresh from the shower with just a hint of … was that almond? It wasn’t overly sweet, but it definitely smelled like almonds.
Interesting. She’d never met a man who used almond-scented bodywash.
But the man could probably wash himself in bubblegum bodywash and it wouldn’t detract from his raw, animal magnetism for a second. It’d probably add to it and make him all the more mouth watering.
“I reheated it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you had a microwave or not.”
She thanked him again, her mouth full of food.
She did have a microwave, but the fact that he was thoughtful enough to reheat it for her on the off chance she didn’t have a microwave was very touching.
“So do you remember our conversation before you passed out?” he asked with a hint of a smirk.
She didn’t remember much.
Not that she really wanted to. She knew she’d propositioned him for sex—that she remembered but would sooner forget. Maybe her brain was doing her a solid and blocking out the even more embarrassing stuff from her memory.
She kind of hoped it wasn’t and that she hadn’t made an even bigger fool of herself.
“I’m going to take your silence as a no.” He stood up, went to her cupboard and pulled down two water glasses. Then he filled them both from the tap and brought them over, setting one in front of her and taking a sip of the other. “I told you I might have a job opportunity for you.”
Right!
The nanny job. Not that she was keen on being a nanny, given all her education, but she could do it even just for a few months, to get her through the summer.
She sipped her water. “Yes, I remember that.”
“Good. Anyway, I called my brothers, and both their women are interested. My buddy James, his wife, Emma, would like some help as well. She’s trying to head back to work part-time, and my one sister-in-law Krista is a cop and doesn’t like relying on my mother so much for childcare. She’s a nana, not a babysitter, and they don’t want to abuse the grandmother generosity, if you know what I mean?”
She did. Not that she had a family life like that, since it’d only ever been Lydia and her mom for the most part, but she understood what he was saying.
“I mean, obviously, they’ll want to meet you and see how you mesh with the kids, and want some references—you don’t have to include Odette on that list—but at least it’s a start, right?”
Right. At least it was a start.
She had enough money in her savings to pay rent for two months without a job, but after that, she’d be searching for coins in the couch cushions of the doctor’s office if she didn’t find a way to make some money.
“So how sober are you right now?” he asked, finishing his water and setting the empty glass on the island. A bead of moisture clung to his upper lip, and Lydia found herself mesmerized by it. Like a diamond glinting in the sun, it seemed to almost shimmer on his lip in the glow of her kitchen track lighting. His forehead wrinkled, and he cocked his head to the side. “You okay?” His tongue darted out—oh mama—and swept across his lips, taking the droplet with it.
