Take My Breath Away by Christie Ridgway

Author:Christie Ridgway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN
Published: 2014-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

RYAN HALF EXPECTED his brother to follow him back to his suite, so when the knock came at his door he remained where he was—sitting on a chair, his head in his hands—and told the younger man to go away in a tone that matched his mood. “Fuck off, Linus,” he yelled.

Instead of footsteps receding in the distance, he heard the doorknob turn. Shit.

Squeezing shut his eyes, he tried ignoring the raging tension headache operating as a vise around the top of his head. “Linus—”

“I think he’s left the house,” Poppy said.

Ryan looked up. He’d left off the lights and he could barely make out her figure in the gloom. But her fragrance reached him as the air was stirred by her advance. He breathed in the subtle flower scent and wished like hell she’d go away.

Last night’s bright idea of wireless sex hadn’t lessened her sexual appeal one jot, and he was dangerous to everyone right now, but maybe most especially to delicate, naive little Poppy. In the mood he was in he’d push for more than intercom orgasms if she didn’t get lost quick.

Instead of stopping before him, she walked directly into the bathroom. Moments later she was back, a pair of capsules in one palm, the other wrapped around a glass of water. “Pain reliever,” she said.

“I’m not your kid,” he growled, his voice mean. “I don’t want any pills. I don’t want any water.”

She set the items on the small table by his elbow. “Is there something else I can do?”

“No.”

“Is there something that I’ve done, that Mason—”

“No.” The kid, the blood, his big blue eyes. Duke, am I gonna die? The vise around Ryan’s skull cinched tighter. “Go away, Poppy.”

She kneeled at his feet. “Surely there’s something I can do—”

“Yes. It’s called leaving me alone.” He shut his eyes and started counting off the seconds until she was gone.

At twenty-two, she’d yet to budge a muscle. “Damn it, Poppy,” he said, wincing as his loud voice reverberated in his aching skull. “Aren’t you listening?”

“You’re not talking,” she pointed out. “Clearly you have something on your mind. Why don’t you open up about it?”

“Look. It’s fucking March.”

“All right. What specifically about March?”

He wasn’t going to tell her. Though it struck him, suddenly, that he’d never had to recount the facts to anyone. Everybody he’d ever met besides Poppy already knew the particulars thanks to media outlets such as Celeb! magazine and cable’s Tinsel Town TV. During the past several months—due to last year’s fucking March mistake—the details and all his failings that followed had been hashed and rehashed and rehashed again in a book, on talk shows and at that goddamn, weirdly popular website, PornStarsTellAll.com.

“What specifically about March?” Poppy repeated.

He stared at her, seething in anger and exasperation. Why the hell was she insisting? He was playing the hero, wasn’t he, trying his best to hang onto the role he lived in for eleven months of the year—the archetypal strong-and-silent type. Being Duke, on the job, saving the day, keeping the world safe for women and chil—

Not for children.

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