stuffy. Not to mention scary. Who wants to go out with a woman with all this ancient blue sludge clogging her veins? And all the minefields that come with it?”
“Any man would do anything to… date you, even if it would jeopardize his very life.”
Was that a compliment? That doozy? Would “any man” include him? Or was he just saying men would overlook the dangers of associating with her for supposedly unimaginable privileges?
Before she could ask what he meant, he was already asking another question. “You don’t date?”
“No.” Because you exist, and any man compared to you is predictable, disappointing and… well, non-existent. Out loud she qualified her response. “I start nothing I know won’t work.”
“How do you know it won’t work out until you try?”
“One try is enough to tell me it won’t.”
Ugh. She’d made it sound as if her M.O. was a string of one-night stands, ditching guys who didn’t wow her the morning after.
Before she could rectify this massive miscommunication, she found him on his feet.
She blinked up at him. “You gotta teach me how you do that.”
An empty glance answered her as he produced his phone. After he again ordered his right hand man to come over, he turned to her.
“It’s time you went home, princess.”
She found herself on her feet, too, her heart almost uprooting itself in dismay. “But I don’t want to go yet.”
“It’s 1:00 a.m. That woman who seems joined to you at the hip must have already reported you missing.”
“Mira had to fly to Tennessee—her father was taken to the emergency room. That’s why I haven’t called her yet, and why I was going home alone tonight. I was also much later than usual because I had to stay behind and finish things for her.”
“So her father forced her into one E.R., and you forced me into another.”
Her lips quivered on a mixture of humor and rising anxiety. “As if anyone could force you into anything.”
“I once believed no one could. After tonight, I stand corrected. Look what’s happened to me since I let that lowlife nick me. I’ve been dragged to the E.R., pushed into the hands of doctors who had anything but work on their minds, blackmailed back into my car, taken home like a minor, informed how I feel, told to sit and where, and fed and pampered like an invalid. Now I can’t even go to bed because you want to fuss over me some more.”
No longer sure if he was teasing or fed up, she blurted out, “I promise to stop fussing over you, if you let me stay the night.”
And she finally did it. She’d shocked him mute.
When she thought he wouldn’t speak again, he exhaled. “Coming here was inappropriate. ‘Staying the night’ needs new adjectives.”
Still not sure what to make of his mood, she ventured a smile. “Unacceptable? Outrageous? Shocking as hell?”
“How about ‘out of the question’?”
“C’mon, Rashid, this is twenty-first century Chicago.”
The hardness settling in his eyes told her no argument would work this time. He’d send her away then tell himself he shouldn’t see her again. Tonight was all she could have.
She caught his arm, her voice shaking then breaking. “You can’t send me home to an empty condo after what happened tonight.”
The frown furrowing his forehead along the lines inflicted by his harsh life was one of bafflement this time. “You’re that afraid of being alone? You didn’t seem worried before.”
“Just because I’m not a mess doesn’t mean I’m okay.” Which was true. “Only being with you has stopped the whole thing from sinking in and ripping at my insides.” Which was also true.
His eyes widened that fraction that told her something major was going on inside him. This was the moment she had to seize, when he was teetering on the verge of relenting, before he talked himself out of softening.
She did. “Let me stay with you. Please, Rashid.”
Her insides were quivering for his verdict when he suddenly let out a long breath.
Before she could gauge if that was exasperation or capitulation, he turned and walked away.
As she struggled with worry, he threw her a cool glance over his shoulder. “One thing for sure, princess. Your mother and aunt were clueless about you. You could influence the dead.”
She hurried after him, needing confirmation. “And since you’re very much alive, this means I can stay?”
“At your peril, princess.”
Talk about false advertisement.
Despite Rashid’s thrilling warning about her spending the night, nothing had happened.
In fact, what she’d feared most had occurred. He’d treated her like an inapproachable charge in his custody.
This gigantic residence turned out to have separate areas, even though none had any doors since the place was made for one person’s privacy. One area was in the mezzanine, behind a partitioning wall, which was used as his bedroom suite. This was the space he’d given her for the night.
The huge room was even sparser than the rest of the place, with only a skylight, a built-in wardrobe and a nine-by-nine-foot mattress spread in dark sheets on the floor. But to her delight, the connecting bathroom was decadent. It was good to know that although his living and sleeping quarters were a throwback to his life as a survivalist, where hygiene was involved, Rashid had succumbed to state-of-the-art luxury.
He’d offered her some of his clean clothes to wear. But since he had nothing to replace her stilettos, he’d encouraged her to go barefoot, assuring her he kept the floors spotless. Then, without so much as a good-night, he’d left her.
And here she was, sitting on his “bed,” flooded to the knee in his sweatshirt and unable to sleep.
Not because he’d let her stay the night with him, but not really with him at all. But because now that she’d had time to think, she realized the real reason behind her earlier desperation to stay. She’d sensed something was very wrong. With him.
She had felt it, heard it and seen it while he’d been ripping her attackers apart. That volcanic rage that had incinerated his reason. Far beyond anything an ordinary man would feel about scum who preyed on a helpless female. Something uncontrollable, consuming. Damaging. Terrible.
The effort she’d felt him exert to bring his violence under control, the volatility she’d felt him struggle with so he could appear stable under her scrutiny, had singed her with its intensity. This hadn’t been a new reaction ignited by tonight’s events. This was old. And immense. She could not begin to imagine what had spawned it. But she knew whatever it was continued to prey on him. That demon she’d felt possessing him, body and mind, was just beneath the surface.
And even before she’d analyzed all that consciously, she hadn’t been able to let that demon consume the man she loved any further, not when it had manifested in full force this time on her account.
Oh, yes. Love. There was no use calling what she felt for him anything else.
So what if he was no longer the same man she’d had a crush on all her life? He was now far more than anything she’d ever imagined. Darker, larger-than-life, more complex and intriguing than anyone she’d ever met. Even under normal circumstances, she would have been disturbed