The Love Scam - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,51

“It’s all you, baby.” Then she blushed—again! Twice in the last ten minutes. “Rake, I mean.”

“You can call me ‘baby,’” he said, trying not to fall all over himself with how rapidly he put that out there. You can call me anything you like. Baby, sweetie, darling, pet, yummypants, porkmeister, jackhammer, studmuffin, Stan the Rammin’ Man … sky’s the limit!

“Oh, sure.” She found a smile—odd how her mood had shifted so radically with Sofia’s announcement. “Let’s talk tomorrow, see how you feel.”

As it turned out, her fears were more than justified. But the church disaster wasn’t even the most interesting thing to happen that day. The most interesting thing happened before the sun had even come up.

Twenty-nine

It was scary, really, how quickly he adapted to the sofa bed, now on night four—five?—of trying to cripple him. He barely noticed the bar pressing across his shoulders, and was idly on his phone, updating his Amazon wish list

(No, I already read How to Be a Super Villain Without Even Trying.* Fewer books, but more—good Lord, Amazon sells lube by the gallon? How have I not known this? †)

when it happened again: Delaney went from deep, motionless sleep to moving-around sleep. She sat up and, like last time, went straight to the window.

This time he was right behind her. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe.”

“Really?” God, the hope in her tone! Like she wanted to believe but was afraid to.

“Yeah. No question.”

She pulled her gaze from the window and looked through him. “I can leave anytime?”

“Anytime you want. And you can go anywhere you want, too,” he added firmly. “Nobody can stop you. You’re not trapped here.” With me.

“Oh.” She smiled at him in the dark. “That’s a relief. I don’t like it when I can’t leave. Sometimes they won’t let me.”

“Not anymore.” Don’t touch her. Don’t hug her. Don’t wake her up. All of these, he figured, would be bad. Wasn’t there an old wives’ tale about how waking someone up while they were sleepwalking makes them go crazy? Blake would know. He could use some of Blake’s healthy skepticism right about now. “You’ll never be trapped again. And—” Inspiration hit. “And neither will the kids you’re helping. Sofia’s not trapped, either. You saved her from that.” Saved yourself from that. “Okay?”

“I can go back to bed? Nobody will … do anything?”

Why was it so fucking dusty in here? It was a nice hotel, but the dust was making his eyes water. Time to talk to housekeeping; this was unacceptable.

“Course not,” he soothed, steering her back to bed without actually touching her. It worked! (He had no idea how.)

“Okay, then.” She went, docile as he’d never seen her, climbed in knees-first, like a little kid, and then flopped over on her back. He pulled the blankets up

(don’t kiss her)

(God I want to kiss her)

to her chin and in the dim glow from the ambient light, he could see her blinking up at him. Her eyes were already going half-lidded as she started to slip back under.

“There! Now you can go back to sleep. For as long as you want. This is your room. The only people in here are the ones you say can be here.”

“Rake can stay here,” she said, startling the holy hell out of him. “He’s nice. When he wants. You know?”

“Yeah, he’s not a total asshole one hundred percent of the time, it’s true,” he agreed. This, then, was what people meant when they talked about damning with faint praise. “Sweet dreams, Delaney. I mean that literally: only good dreams for you. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and closed her eyes.

He’d never wanted to crawl into bed with someone so badly in his life, and that included the night he’d watched a Jaws marathon when he was ten. Blake’s comfort

(“For God’s sake, we live in a desert! Carcharodon carcharias would have to escape from the ocean, find an airport, fly into McCarron International, and then take a cab to our apartment before consuming you!”)

somehow didn’t get the job done. His mom didn’t yell, or laugh, though. Just scooted over to make room, and read with the light on until he fell asleep.

But this. This thing with Delaney. This was something else. He’d never wanted to comfort and snuggle with someone like this. He never minded when the one-night stands spent the night, but he felt no actual connection with them, and he was fine when they left, which, naturally, they all did at one point, even when the one-night stand took