House Of Payne: Twist Part 4

"No, no. I think you did."

Ugh. "Honestly, I don't know what I'm saying, so it's probably best that I drop out of this conversation entirely."

"Now where's the fun in that?"

"I can't imagine that it's any fun at all, trying to communicate with a babbling concussion victim."

"You're not babbling. You're straight-up talking to me, which is a refres.h.i.+ng change. Usually you do your d.a.m.nedest to ignore my existence."

"Trust me, you're impossible to ignore." Then she groaned out loud when she heard her confession. Seriously, why wouldn't her mouth shut the h.e.l.l up?

"And you're looking at me," he went on, reaching out a casual hand to brush her hair back behind her shoulder. Every muscle in her body froze, and suddenly he seemed to be a lot closer than he was a second ago. "Gotta say, I like you looking at me instead of through me, little girl. I like it a lot."

Don't say anything stupid. Don't say anything stupid... "Don't call me little girl."

Good. That wasn't stupid. That was normal.

"And don't pretend you're not looking at me right now and liking what you're seeing." He leaned down until he was at her eye level. The unexpected action invaded her s.p.a.ce in such a way that all she could think was that he was now within kissing distance. "Little girl."

"I'm liking what I'm seeing just as much as I'm not liking how you call me little girl."

Oopsie.

Now that was stupid.

His dark eyes lit with a wild, predatory gleam that had her heart bouncing all over the place. Then it froze in shock when his hand reached out to link with hers, his touch surprisingly gentle. "You know that phrase, 'look, but don't touch?'"

She bit both her lips together. Clearly she couldn't be trusted with words today.

"I've always thought that was a lame-a.s.s saying. Touching is way more fun than looking." As he spoke, he brought her unresisting hand up to his chest, flattening it against the shallow valley between his pecs. It was insane, how completely her attention riveted on the smoothness and heat of his skin, and the intimate sensation of his heart beating beneath her palm. If she put her ear to where her hand rested, she'd easily be able to hear Twist's heart...

Twist.

What the h.e.l.l was she doing? For that matter, what was he doing? Had he forgotten that he didn't like her? That, from the first words he'd spoken to her, he'd done nothing but make fun of her?

Maybe that was what he was still doing.

Her hand jerked free. "You really need to put a s.h.i.+rt on, and I really need to go back to bed."

"Eat first, then bed." As if nothing bizarre had just happened-as in her enemy coaxing her to do a quick feel-up job of his truly spectacular chest-he grabbed plates from the gla.s.s-fronted cabinets. "As near as I can figure, you haven't eaten a thing in about twenty-four hours."

"Oh. Food." The brittle defenses she was trying to build crumbled as her stomach roared again, and with uncharacteristic meekness she allowed him to guide her into a stool at the kitchen island. When he slid a plate of hot cheese eggs in front of her and handed her a fork, she almost wept. "Oh, wow. I like food."

"You like c.r.a.p that pretends to be food." A killer smile that he almost never showed suddenly appeared, and it left her blinking as he joined her at the island with his own plate. "I'm hoping I can get you to like real food."

"If I were my normal self, I'd tell you to mind your own business, but I'm too hungry to bother." She shoveled in a huge mouthful, and it tasted so light and good she didn't even mind that she'd burned the roof of her mouth. "Mmm. Food."

He watched her for what seemed like a long time before he shook his head and dug into his eggs. "d.a.m.n."

"What?"

He looked at her again and sighed. "You're terminally cute when you're not in your right mind."

There went her heart again, impersonating a ping pong ball. "I'm cute all the time. Getting my bell rung just emphasizes it."

He gave her a long, measured glance. "I can't argue with that."

"It also emphasizes my inherent blondeness," she confided, hoping that if she kept talking, she would forget that all his glorious sans-s.h.i.+rt perfection was sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with her. "I remember only parts of trying to leave work last night, I barely remember being at the hospital, and I don't know why you're still here or where my alarm clock went. My brains are about as scrambled as these eggs."

"You were mugged about a second after you went outside, and that's on Payne because his building's security sucks. The doc who examined you said you'd probably have problems with memory, decision-making and problem-solving for seventy-two hours past your last official concussion symptom, which explains why I'm still here. You can't be trusted not to pull stupid s.h.i.+t, like putting your slippers in the oven to warm them up, or whatever."

"I wouldn't do that." Though toasty slippers did sound almost as nice as getting a Pomapoo...

"Why not? I did this." He got up, went to the fridge she'd decorated with the words "Off with his head!" and a silhouette of the Mad Hatter, whose head was placed on the upper freezer section. Twist pulled the freezer door open and fished out her missing alarm clock as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. She gaped at him as he sat back down and handed her the ice-cold clock.

"What in the world?" She stared at it for a long moment before her fingers got too cold, and she set it aside. "What were you trying to do, freeze time?"

"Huh. The doc didn't say your sense of humor would veer into the realm of bad Dad jokes. Though I guess that could be covered by the poor decision-making thing."

"You put my alarm clock in the freezer for no good reason. What else am I supposed to think?"

"I put it in there for a very good reason."

"Which is?"

"It's loud."

She stared at him. "It's an alarm clock. It's supposed to be loud."

"Its ticking drove me f.u.c.king nuts. I swear to G.o.d, it got louder every time I closed my eyes."

"So naturally you put it in the freezer."

"I figured you'd get p.i.s.sed off if I threw it out the window. Burying it under a load of s.h.i.+t inside the freezer was the next best thing." He finished up his eggs and pushed his plate away. "I saw some pretty interesting things in your freezer while I was digging around, by the way."

"More interesting than an alarm clock?"

"Pig skins."

She stared at him blankly. "My practice skins? What's so interesting about them? Wait," she said before he could open his mouth. "Is this about having no real food in my house? Because I have an entire cabinet filled with Pop Tarts, and Pop Tarts are real food."

"No they're not, but that's not even close to what I'm talking about." He turned on his seat to face her fully, one of his knees touching her hip, the other just brus.h.i.+ng the side of her thigh. "I know your work just about as well as I know my own, but I've never seen anything like those tats, Angel. I mean, they're f.u.c.king fantastic. What you have in that freezer doesn't yet exist-at least like that-in the world of ink as far as I know."

"They're pretty good." Absurdly pleased that she'd finally gotten a hint of praise from a man who lived to trash her work, she also pushed her plate aside. "I love pastels and the softer hues of watercolor, but I wasn't sure how to get that kind of art accurately translated into tattooing until I studied what they were doing over in Europe. No black outlines to weigh the color down, just like watercolors on paper. But I thought something else was needed, so I tried something a little unusual. I borrowed another technique, this time from the comic book world, and tried to see if it translated into tattooing. So far, my experiments of blending these two art forms are turning out better than I had expected."

"What do you mean, the comic book world?"

"I let a ghost of skin show through by using a pattern that's very much like the dot matrix you see in comic book shading. This new technique takes forever, not to mention a light touch and a lot of patience. But the effects I've come up with so far are pretty cool, especially that swirly, smoky look of dye being dropped into water. That's my favorite so far."

"It's incredible. You're going to blow Payne's mind when you show him what you've been cooking up."

"He's never going to see it." She shook her head, then put a hand to the side of it where a throb of pain told her exactly where her concussion had come from. "I quit, remember? At least I think I did."

He went still. "You quit? When did you quit?"

"You mean you don't remember? Oh, that's not good." Her brow puckered while she kept her hand cupped gingerly over the goose egg on her head. "I didn't dream that I told Payne and Scout that I was done, did I? Because I totally am, after being cut out of the concierge service."

"You've got to be f.u.c.king kidding me." His voice dropped to a growl, and his face hardened into the scowl she knew all too well. "You're quitting over that?"

"Being shut out of the idea that I came up with, admittedly while being a smarta.s.s to you, was just the final straw." Her eyes narrowed as she tried to remember everything that had gone down the night before, and only in the back of her mind did she wonder if she was imagining Twist's suddenly dangerous vibe. "I'm so sick of that place, I don't even want to go back and collect whatever personal stuff I left in my booth. They can throw it out, for all I care."

"You didn't quit House Of Payne."

"As far as I'm concerned, they quit me a while ago. It just finally sank in that I needed to make it mutual."

"Okay, you're not reading me, so let me put it another way." Without warning he came to his feet, and it ate up the meager distance that separated them as he cupped her chin in his hand and forced her gaze to tangle with his. "You can't quit House Of Payne. No f.u.c.king way am I going to let that happen."

She stared up at him, amazed at how her skin burned under his touch. "Let go."

"Not until you tell me you understand you're not quitting."

She took matters into her own hands and jerked free, then held onto the island's lip when the world swam alarmingly. "Man, you're a real piece of work. Why do you believe that my quitting is up to you? In fact, why do you think anything about my life is up to you? You wouldn't put up with anyone telling you how to live, so I don't get why you think I should put up with that kind of c.r.a.p from you."

"This isn't about you and me. House Of Payne is the best body art studio in the world, Angel. Any other place on the planet is one big-a.s.s step down and nothing but a waste of your time and talent. Where the h.e.l.l else are you going to go?"

"I don't know yet, but I've been thinking about this for a while. Those practice skins sitting in my freezer prove that."

If anything, his scowl grew darker. "What do you mean?"

"We're under a copyright contract, remember? Anything we come up with while we're on the clock becomes exclusive art of the House."

"Right. So?"

"So, I'm getting my portfolio ready to market my wares somewhere other than House Of Payne. I didn't know I was doing that, stockpiling new ideas and techniques and not sharing what I've been working on," she went on, surprising herself. "But all this holding back I've been doing... it's because something in me knew I couldn't keep going at the House. Not with the way things are."

"The way things are?"

"It's become enemy territory, and you're the biggest enemy I've got." She c.o.c.ked her head when she heard a faint noise, then slid off her stool when she identified the sound. "Ugh, I left my phone in my purse all this time. How much you wanna bet it barely has any charge left?"

With that, she hurried to answer her phone, leaving him sitting like a statue.

Chapter Five.

"I'm not liking this bulls.h.i.+t. At all."

Beside him in the Mustang's pa.s.senger seat, Angel stirred to life. "If you didn't want to be my ride, why did you volunteer to drive me?"

"Let me set you straight on that, little girl. I'm not b.i.t.c.hing about being your ride. I'm b.i.t.c.hing about you handling your parents' s.h.i.+t. You should be in bed, and they should be handling their s.h.i.+t."

"They were in the process of packing up their house here for their permanent move to Scottsdale when a spot opened up for them in this fantasy golf camp thingy. Since they were first on the waiting list, they jumped at the chance and just sort of left everything hanging here. This is simply a matter of bad timing, coupled with my mother's legendary inability to think more than three steps ahead." She s.h.i.+fted in her seat to offer him a water-weak version of her glare. "And don't call me little girl."

"Like I said, they should be here handling their own s.h.i.+t instead of saddling you with their responsibilities. For f.u.c.k's sake, you haven't even lived in that house for five years, but now they're using you to pack it up for them? With a concussion, no less?"

"I can't remember if I told them about that."

"You didn't."

"Really?" Her head wobbled a bit as she turned to stare at him. "Are you sure? How do you know?"

"Because I was listening." He'd heard one h.e.l.l of a lot, and he hadn't liked one f.u.c.king bit of it. From the time he'd met Angel-then a fresh-faced teenager of nineteen, while he'd been a used-up, system-hardened sonofab.i.t.c.h newly released from prison -he'd known she'd been on her own since before leaving high school. At first he'd thought there was a rough story lurking somewhere in her background. Then she'd shared she'd grown up on Lakeview Drive and was a product of the British International School of Chicago, one of the most exclusive private schools around, and his image of her had changed. She was Mommy and Daddy's pampered little princess, floating along on a dreamy cloud made up of rainbows, glitter and unicorns. And there was nothing wrong with that. h.e.l.l, if he had a daughter, he'd be proud to spoil the s.h.i.+t out of her and make sure she knew that she was the undisputed princess of his personal kingdom. So thinking of Angel as a princess wasn't an insult, no matter what she might think.

But after listening to her one-sided conversation with her folks, he was less sure about her "princess" status.

When she'd answered the call from her mother, he'd refused to be polite by leaving her alone for the sake of privacy. The reason he'd stuck by her was simple-she needed a babysitter. That became apparent once she'd fished her phone out of her purse, and right before his eyes she seemed to run out of gas. Without a sound she slid down the wall by the front door to sit on the floor, as if huddled on the floor was the most logical place in the world to hold a conversation.

Since it wasn't, he'd scooped her up to deposit her on the couch, then listened in growing irritation as the picture became clear-her mother was in a state of panic. Apparently she'd been a total ditz and had forgotten she had a house inspector slated to come in today, and needed Angel to go over to their house and let the inspector in. Apparently her mother had also decided that since Angel was going to be at the house anyway, she'd put her daughter to work by having Angel pack up the few rooms she and Angel's father had been using until they made their permanent move to Arizona.

Despite the fact that Angel hadn't even lived in that house for half a decade, her parents had seemed cool with dumping their s.h.i.+t on her.

Or at least, her flaky mom had seemed fine with it. As far as Twist could tell from her one-sided conversation, her dad had interrupted the mother-daughter confab by trying to put his foot down. To his surprise, Angel's tone and demeanor had done a complete turnaround. She'd been polite, but coolly distant. She didn't refer to the person she spoke to by any sort of name, like Dad or Pop or even the more formal Father. He'd been nothing. The only way Twist had known she'd even been talking to her father was when she'd been returned to her mother and stated in a flat monotone, "Don't put Dad on the phone again, or I'll hang up, Mother. You know I will."

But as far as Twist was concerned, her dad was okay. At least the man saw a problem with having his daughter do his heavy-lifting for him while he was off playing some stupid game.

"Look, if they can afford to fart around on some Arizona golf course with yesteryear's has-beens, they can afford to fly back into town, box up their s.h.i.+t, and get it ready for the movers themselves." He slowed down as he tried to get his bearings from the Lincoln Park Conservatory they were pa.s.sing, and figured they were almost there. "Even if you weren't laid up with a concussion, you'd still have to get to work, right? So no matter how you slice it, making you drop everything in your life just so you can take care of their s.h.i.+t is not cool."

"My mom knows I don't go into work until four on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the inspector's supposed to be there by noon. She knew I had time for this, so it's okay, Twist. She knows she can rely on me."

"Your mom knows that, huh?" Driving past the William Shakespeare Monument, he took the time to slide her a searching glance before rolling to a stop in front of an Italian Renaissance mini-mansion that had been copied off the famous Victorian-era Theurer-Wrigley House a couple blocks away. "What about your dad? He seemed to have plenty to say about this."

"Did he? I didn't notice." Unbuckling her seatbelt, she lifted a pair of Jackie-O sungla.s.ses off her tiny kid's nose and offered him a smile. That was when he knew she was still suffering from a brain injury; she almost never smiled at him. It was a d.a.m.n shame really, because she was a knockout when she did it. "I'm so sorry you've been stuck playing nursemaid to me all this time, Twist. Talk about dropping your own life in order to take care of someone else, that's exactly what you've done with me."

He lifted a shoulder, much more interested in how her eyes-eyes that had always avoided him until now-looked right into his. "I'm doing what I want to do."

"I can't imagine that taking care of me is what you want to do."

"Then your imagination sucks, because I don't want to be anywhere else but where I am right now."

Her pretty mouth opened, then closed on a confused tilt of her head. "Wow."

"Wow, what?"

"I don't know if I should be happy you're okay with spending your time off with me, or insulted that you think my imagination sucks."