Collateral Damage by Jenna Bennett

Author:Jenna Bennett [Bennett, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Magpie Ink

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Due to the late night, Carrie made it all the way past six before she woke up hungry and squalling. I left Rafe asleep—deducing as I did it that he must be in pain, because he normally needs less sleep than I do—and shrugged on a robe before I padded down the hallway and into Carrie’s nursery. After changing her diaper, I sat down in the rocking chair and started feeding her.

I was still sitting there fifteen minutes later, when there was a key in the lock downstairs and then footsteps on the floor of the foyer. “Hello?”

The voice wasn’t familiar. “Hi,” I called back, feeling a little… let’s call it exposed. “What’s going on?”

“That was gonna be my question.” I heard steps coming toward the stairs.

“Stay down there,” I told him, and my voice might have been a little shrill. At any rate, it was enough to wake Rafe, because I heard rustling from the bedroom down the hall, and then a curse when he obviously came up against his own inability to get out of bed.

“Victor?” his voice called out. “That you?”

“Yeah, man,” the guy downstairs answered. “Rafe?”

“Yeah. Hang on a minute. I broke a couple ribs yesterday. It’s gonna take me a minute to get down there.”

“No problem,” the man called Victor said. “I’ll just get the coffee going.”

OK, then. He was clearly familiar with the place, and Rafe was familiar with him, so I didn’t have to worry about being attacked. And since he was staying downstairs, I didn’t have to worry about him walking in on me nursing my baby, either.

None of this had distracted Carrie, of course, so I stayed where I was and finished what I was doing while I listened to the sounds from downstairs and from down the hall.

On the first floor, Victor’s footsteps faded as he headed down the hallway toward the kitchen. Closer to hand, there was more rustling from the bedsheets and squeaking from the mattress, and some grunts and muttered curses as Rafe figured out how to get upright and dressed, not necessarily in that order. After a minute or two, I heard his footsteps come down the hall toward me.

He stopped in the doorway, still barefoot and with jeans hanging low on his hips. “You OK?”

“Fine,” I said. “I just didn’t expect anyone to show up at six-thirty in the morning.”

“That’s Victor. He’s in charge of the renovations.”

Good to know. My eyes zeroed in on his side. “That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there.”

It was the size of a salad plate and the color of eggplant, blooming across his ribcage on the left side. He put a hand to it and winced. “Yeah.”

“Are you sure some bandages wouldn’t help?”

“It’ll be fine, darlin’.” He sauntered into the room, bent just far enough to be able to drop a kiss on my lips—he tasted minty fresh, unlike me, who hadn’t taken the time to brush my teeth before taking care of the baby; I kept my lips closed—and pushed himself upright again with a grunt.

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