His Lover to Protect - Katee Robert Page 0,6
was all too easy to imagine dragging her behind him and pinning her against the nearest wall to teach that mouth of hers some manners.
Christ, he was in serious trouble. He’d bet the last thing Flannery had intended when he called Luke was for him to get into a compromising position with Alexis. But the brakes were gone, and he was dangerously close to losing control. “Who said I’m not planning on doing just that?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, it’d certainly be in character, wouldn’t it? You’re not exactly a bundle of surprises at this point.”
This woman had taken one look at him and acted as judge, jury, and executioner. It made him twitch, though hell if he could decide if he wanted to toss her out on her ass or kiss her until she got off her high horse—or just got off. Thoughts he couldn’t afford to be thinking, especially about her, but Luke couldn’t let it rest. There was something about this woman that scraped at his control, and he’d be damned before he let her get the last word. “Says the woman who’s one giant cliché after another.”
“Excuse me?”
“Look at you.” He waved a hand in her direction and somehow managed not to focus on her breasts again. “You have no connection to reality. I bet you just woke up one day and thought it’d be a lovely idea to jaunt halfway across the world and see some of Europe.”
“I had my reasons.”
Warning bells went off in his head, but he was too far gone to shut up now. “So you’re running from something—in the most cliché way possible. What, did you read Eat, Pray, Love and figure that if it worked for her, it’d work for you, too?”
Alexis’s mouth went tight. “Please. You should listen to that old saying about throwing stones from glass houses. You have ‘runner’ written all over you.” Her eyes dropped to his knee and then rose to his face. “Though I doubt you could outrun a turtle at this point.”
He wanted to shake her until some degree of sense popped into that gorgeous head of hers. His injury had been life-ending, even if he’d kept right on breathing through the worst of it. There were days, dark days he didn’t like to think about, where he wondered if maybe it was all a mistake. If whatever passed for a God in this world had lost interest for the few seconds it took for the doctors to pull him back from the edge and patch him up. Aunt Rose would whup his ass to know he thought like that, so he didn’t tell her. He didn’t tell anyone.
But he sure as hell wasn’t going to open up about that to this woman who seemed to like taking him out at the knees. “I fucked up my knee saving a man’s life. Running marathons might not be in my future, but he gets to go home to his family because I was there.” Saved the patient, but let my brother-in-arms die. A great fucking legacy to have. Not that he was going to tell her that. She didn’t deserve a window into the private pain he lived with.
Luke braced himself for the sympathy or, worse, pity that he got when he told the abbreviated version of how he got hurt. But she surprised him. “Heroic thing to do.” She raised her eyebrows. “But if you’re at peace about it, then why the hell do you stomp around, dragging your knuckles and glaring at everyone? No, I don’t think so. Luke, I do believe your nose is growing by the second.”
Voices raised on the other side of Alexis, two burly men shouting about… He couldn’t quite catch it. But the writing was on the wall when the taller of the two shoved the other. Shit. Luke moved as the short man shoved back, hauling Alexis into his lap and getting an arm up in time to deflect the man’s fall. By that point, several other guys got involved, dragging the original two outside. A heartbeat passed, and another, and then the musicians started up again, a slow, haunting melody that raised the small hairs on the back of his neck.
He started to breathe a sigh of relief that the situation hadn’t gotten truly out of control, when she shifted and he realized that they were seriously up close and personal. Her dark hair was tousled, and her chest rose and fell with each harsh