She sighed, and doubt over any decision she’d made or might make in the future nagged. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.
She let out a long, disgusted-with-herself sigh. Rodie imitated her, drawing her gaze to his. Leaning forward, she kissed Rodie’s muzzle. His slim tail wagged, and his tongue swept across her chin.
“Your turn.” Rubi set her carton on the side table and picked up his doggie dessert. Rodie licked his muzzle in anticipation.
She fed him a spoonful over the towel covering her leg, grinning at the way the strawberry-ice-cream-like treat coated his black whiskers until he got around to licking them clean.
Love filled her heart, the feeling so sweet, so consuming, tears rose to her eyes.
She absently scooped another heap of the doggie dessert for Rodie, watching as he gave himself a pink mustache while licking it off the spoon. But her mind was mulling over Lexi’s words from the night before.
“You’re living off a script you put in your head a long time ago, one that doesn’t apply to who you’ve become.”
Maybe, but change that involved personal risk was no easy feat. Sure, Rubi would push her new Aston over a hundred and fifty miles an hour for an adrenaline rush, she’d screw a new guy, a virtual stranger now and then, she’d rather work for herself than for a secure company, but those were all relatively calculated risks—and none, not one, involved her emotions. She didn’t take risks with her emotions. And that was exactly what Wes wanted her to do. What Lexi pushed her toward. As if they both wanted her to continue her high-wire trapeze act after they’d taken away the safety net.
She set the ice cream on the table beside the sofa. “Enough thinking. Let’s put this stuff away before we make ourselves sick.”
As soon as she uncurled her feet from beneath her, Rodie jumped off the sofa, trailing her into the kitchen.
She opened the freezer at the same time she realized she’d forgotten the lids and spoons. As she turned toward the living room, a ping-ping sounded near the sliding glass doors leading to the deck and Malibu Beach beyond. The odd sound raised the hair on the back of her neck, and she immediately glanced at Rodie. He’d heard it too. His head turned that direction, his lopsided ears perked, his sleek, seventy-pound body of muscle tense.
Her heart kicked, but she talked herself down under the pretense of soothing Rodie, while shoving the ice cream into the freezer. “Shh, baby, just the wind.”
A storm had been brewing, and wind off the ocean often kicked sand against the house.
Still, without stepping from the safety of the refrigerator, Rubi reached for the lights over the sink, the only lights on in the kitchen, and shut them off.
Ping-ping-ping.
A rolling growl started low in Rodie’s throat, followed immediately by a vicious barking spurt. Rubi jumped. Fear skidded down her spine. Someone was out there. Rodie was never wrong. And he had his paws pressed against the glass now, his bark growing angrier.
Heart thumping, Rubi reached for her cell in her shorts pocket and realized she’d already changed for bed.
Feeling like an idiot, sure it was nothing but some late-night beach walkers, Rubi bent to conceal herself behind the kitchen cabinets and scurried back into the living room. When she reached for her cell on the coffee table beside her laptop, it was already ringing.
She looked at the display: Wes.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Relief and frustration merged. She pressed Answer and said, “Is that you giving my dog a heart attack?”
“Dude,” he said, the word filled with utter disbelief. “You have a dog?”
It felt too damn good to hear his voice. “A dog who’s going to rip off your face when I let him out those doors. You scared us. What is wrong with you?”
“He can have what’s left of my face,” he said, whatever the hell that meant. “And I didn’t take you for a pet person. Maybe a cat, you know, some furry little princess, but a dog? Really?”
His total shock made a laugh bubble from her chest. “You asshole.”
She disconnected and walked toward the glass doors, where Rodie was snarling and barking. She reached down and curled her fingers into his collar, glancing through the glass. The sight of Wes’s face shocked an ugly sizzle of fear through her chest. She jerked the door open.
“What the hell happened? Are you okay?” Rodie was still growling and dragged Rubi out onto the deck. “Rodie, no! Shit, Wes, are you okay?”
“I’m okay, baby.” He sounded tired. Resigned. “It’s old news. I thought Lexi would have told you about it by now.”
“She’s been busy all day fitting an entire wedding party, then went out to dinner with the family. What happened to you?”
“Nothing important. Let Rodie go. He’ll love me.”
She didn’t have a choice. Rodie pulled from her grip. “Rodie,” she warned, “be nice.”
She watched carefully, ready to grab him again as Rodie approached Wes in a partial crouch, the hair on his back prickled into a stripe from shoulders to tail.
“Hey, boy,” Wes said, his hand extended through the deck railing, not the least bit unnerved. “Aren’t you handsome?”
Rodie growled low in his throat while cautiously sniffing Wes’s hand. Wes was shirtless, wearing some kind of loose dark pants with a drawstring that hung entirely too low on that sculpted abdomen. And there was another bruise on his side.
“My God. I leave you alone for a day and look what happens.”
“I know, right?” Wes grinned up at her. “The only solution is to never leave me alone.”
The thought that he might not have gotten into a brawl if she’d met him at Lure instead of taking space made Rubi’s stomach bunch. “Please tell me Bolton didn’t do that to you.”
His laugh was heavy with yeah-right attitude. “If he had, he’d have gone to the ICU instead of jail.”
That dark streak he flashed every now and then never failed to shoot hot lightning through her body. Yet, in the next second he was cooing to Rodie like he had a heart as soft as a cloud.
“Jail?” she said. “Why didn’t you use your bribing magic to keep him out?”
“Because security called the cops, and the cops found a bag of coke on him. No bribing him out of that. As soon as I saw uniforms, I stepped back and washed my hands of the fucker. I might be slow, but I’m not stupid.”
“What’s going to happen to filming?” Rubi asked, immediately calculating the hit Renegades would take with a stall like this.
“Jax is working on it,” he said while patiently letting Rodie smell him. “That’s it. I probably look kinda scary right now, don’t I? Are you keeping your mama safe? What a good boy.”
His voice was smooth and light and calm. Within two minutes, Rodie’s tail went from still as stone to a slight wag. Then his tongue lapped out against Wes’s hand in a taste test. Rubi was about ready to do the same.
“What do you think?” Wes asked, his grin growing. “Your mama seems to like the taste of me.”
Want fisted in her belly. Rubi clenched her teeth against the quickly climbing lust.
When Rodie licked Wes again, his laughter, light and joy filled, tightened her chest. Rodie’s tail was now wagging ferociously, his tongue attacking Wes’s face. “Hold on there, boy, my face isn’t in any shape for that kind of attention.”
While Rubi had been certain Rodie wouldn’t bite Wes, she hadn’t expected him to like the man. Rodie liked very few people other than Rubi. He was a rescue. A dog with a neglected puppyhood that made him protective and defensive, just like her. And, just like her, she realized with frustrated wonder, Rodie seemed immediately magnetized to Wes.
“Man, you’re cute.” Wes scratched Rodie’s neck. “You’re all bark, aren’t you?” His gaze darted to Rubi again with that sexy, lopsided smile. “Lot like your mama, I think.”
His gaze moved down her body, making her aware—and embarrassed—of her too-big, ugly T-shirt hanging to her midthighs and the crazy mess she’d made of her hair when she’d thrown it into a ponytail.
“If Bolton didn’t give you that eye, what happened?”
“He’s an angry drunk and started another damn brawl. Some other angry drunk got in a lucky shot while I was trying to stop the asshole—Bolton in this case—from yelling obscenities and making it worse.” He pressed his thumb against his temple with a look of pain flashing over his face. “I’m sure as hell glad you didn’t come over like I asked. I might have become homicidal if I was worried about you.”
After a lifetime of fending for herself, it felt good to have someone care about her safety and well-being.
“Come in, let me look at your face.”
“I’m okay. Lexi patched me up last night,” he said without moving from his spot behind the railing, “but I’d still like to come in, maybe get some Tylenol to layer on my Advil. This sonofabitch hurts more than it did last night.” He hesitated. “If…I mean…I’ve given you enough space.”
Too much damn space. “Come in.”
He glanced down, then back to her face, unsure, and lifted the rig he’d built for his brother from where he’d been holding it down by his side. “Can we…maybe…talk about this?”
The tilt of his head, his open and hopeful expression, was the most adorable thing she’d seen since Rodie was a pup. And all this desire welling inside her was probably really, really dangerous.
“I knew I wouldn’t sleep until this stopped throbbing”—he gestured to his face—“so I thought I’d take the chance you were awake. I wasn’t sure if this was your house or not. They all look so different from the beach. But when Rodie started barking, I was sure I had it wrong. I was afraid I might be spending the night in jail.”
“Come on.” When she stepped aside to let him in, she saw shells strewn over the deck at her feet. “You threw shells at my window to get my attention? What are you, twelve? You didn’t think to call first?”
“Sorry.” He released Rodie and made his way to the bottom of the steps. His movements were slow and stiff. When he came around the banister, she saw he was barefoot, his pants rolled halfway up his shins and wet along the bottom. “I didn’t think I’d scare you. I’m blaming it on the fight and a few rattled brains.”
He paused, holding both sides of the railing as if giving her the chance to change her mind. But the sight of his swollen eye, the cut across his nose, that bruise along his ribs, turned her stomach inside out.
“Oh, Wes.” She wanted to undress him, lay him on her featherbed, and kiss away every ache and pain. “Did you go to the ER? You could have some breaks—”
“No, I’m okay. Really. In the scheme of things, this is minor. If anything’s broken, it’s not something they could fix or cast. I’ve broken enough bones to know. But if my injuries make you go all soft, I’ll take any pampering you want to give.” He climbed the steps slowly, and Rodie went to meet him, tail wagging. “Tell me about this monster pup of yours.” He reached down and scratched Rodie’s head, the dog’s lopsided ears waggling with the movement. “Those ears kill me.”