Chapter 6-2
1885 Words
Normally Perrin didn’t give a damn what a guy thought, let him get screwed up by being around her. But she’d never been with a single dad. There’d never been so much at stake.
She clamped down on her lips so hard they hurt and then nodded once. Fiercely. Yes, she was that awful.
Bill laughed.
The goddamn man laughed at her.
She pounded the side of her fist against his chest, which did nothing but bounce off.
“You are far and away the least hazardous woman I’ve ever run into. Whack-a-doodle! Oh yeah! Hazardous, not a chance.”
“I’m f*****g toxic!” she shouted in his face.
Any man with the least common sense would turn tail and run, glad to be shut of her. She’d been through this enough times to know for a fact that even this little bit of the truth worked to drive men away. She also knew that she truly was toxic. Her past was a poison that ran through her whole life and eventually killed every relationship she’d ever attempted. She was just being preemptive this time, for the kids’ sake. She couldn’t risk contaminating them with her past.
“Get the hell out and leave me alone!” she yelled again, the pain raking at her throat as she tried once more to drive him off.
“Perrin!” He got right in her face.
“What!?”she shouted back, pissed that it hadn’t worked.
He moved forward, forcing her backward into the deeper darkness. s**t! She’d pushed too hard. If she screamed would anyone hear her? Raquel had stuck her head in just five minutes ago, but Perrin had nodded it was okay to lock up and leave. She’d been so stupid. Now she was all alone and Bill was far stronger that she was.
She stumbled back and fell into a chair. She prepared to fight. Her scissors were almost in reach if she just—
Bill pulled over another chair, set it in front of her, then sat down in it.
He didn’t attack.
Just sat there.
Perrin fought for a breath. Her heart beat faster than any rabbit’s possibly could. Was she safe? All of the old emotions were pounding her adrenaline right past redline, and she’d never been able to do anything about it. Ever.
He reached out and took one of her hands gone suddenly nerveless.
“Crap! You’re freezing. And your hands are shaking. What the hell? Are you okay?”
She shook her head, it was all she could manage.
“Wait.”
Perrin could see a dawning comprehension in his eyes and knew she’d underestimated him and interpreted it all wrong.
“Wait. You thought I’d… I’d never attack a woman!” His shock appeared genuine.
“Heard that often enough.” Then she flung up her free arm, wrapping it over her mouth and clamping her hand on her opposite shoulder. She had to stop whatever she was going to say next.
Now Bill looked truly shocked.
She’d given him the unanswerable. No protestation of innocence could work against such a statement. She freed her other hand from his and pulled her knees up until she could wrap both arms around them and her heels were on the edge of the chair.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled through her knees. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I told you I was toxic.”
He huffed out a breath. He didn’t leave. He didn’t shout back. He didn’t c**k back an arm to hit her. He just huffed out another breath.
“Well,” his voice a soft rumble. “I’ll buy hurt. I’ll buy that there’s someone on this earth who would be better off dead for whatever they did to you,” he actually sounded pissed on her behalf. Then, impossibly he smiled at her.
She had no idea what to do with a smile. Her childhood taught her to never trust it. Her adulthood merely taught her that the man smiling wanted something, usually s*x, and was being nice enough to ask first, even if non-verbally. But Bill’s smile made no sense. Especially not with what she’d just accused him of. But he still smiled at her nonetheless.
He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched back in the chair as if just getting comfortable. The worklight behind him making him little more than a silhouette. Not quite giving him a halo.
“But if you want the title of toxic, you’re going to have to convince me, because I’m not buying it.”
“I’m not telling you my life’s story.”
“You have something better to do this evening?” He was being Mr. Oh So Amiable.
“No. But I’m still not telling.” Though if he kept it up, Perrin might find she wanted to smile again, not something she’d done in the last three days.
“In that case,” Bill stared up at the pipes on the ceiling as if contemplating the breadth and width of the broadcloth of the universe. “I’ll just have to convince you that you aren’t.”
“Can’t fight reality.” She wished to God he could, but not even the Tragic Prince could do that.
“Hey, I work in opera. You can’t get much further from reality than that. So, here goes. You ready?”
She nodded. Did this man know what he was doing to her? No one had ever been on her side except Jo and Cassidy. Her two college friends loved her and did their best to protect her from herself, and she’d always bless the heavens for the two of them. But no one ever really tried to understand her. To have a man try to protect her from the impossible… That was new and felt amazing inside.
“My first exhibit should be my kids. But I don’t want them in the middle of this any more than you do. So I’ll simply just happen to mention that what you’ve done for them in just the first two days since you met has already changed them, and in a good way. Did you know that Wilson Jervis offered them formal contracts which included Union Scale contributions to their college funds? Do you have any idea how proud that made them to be earning money for the family? How proud that made me? And Tammy is really enjoying her voice lessons.”
“You said it was unfair to use them, and it is.” Though she loved hearing how they were doing. They’d barely met, yet she’d missed them horribly these last days. It was the closest she’d been to tears in a long time, just hearing about them.
“So, for the official first example, I’ll offer Jo Thompson.”
That startled her enough to sit up and look at him. “You know Jo?”
“Not really. But I called her on her honeymoon while you were passed out on my couch. That one of the most accomplished and powerful women of Seattle loves you so much speaks volumes. By the end of the call, she was ready to get on a plane with or without her new husband. I take it she knows you well?”
Perrin nodded, “No one better, except Cassidy.”
“Who is my second official exhibit. You mentioned she will be coming to the opera with you tomorrow. Yet here you are being miserable and still she’s not here with you. As I happen to know she’s in France, she also must be very attached to you to attend an opera on the same day she flies halfway around the world.”
Perrin had forgotten about the jet-lag when she’d invited Cassidy.
Bill waited for her to accede his point.
“She’s the best.” This man deserved some truth. “Cassidy saved my life.” She managed to say it without getting too choked up.
He took that as a win without asking for details; another point in his favor even if he didn’t know it.
“And third, at lunch, I couldn’t get near you because Melanie and Josh were just so glad to be in your company.”
She hadn’t really thought of it that way, they were just good friends. “How does all this make your point?”
Bill laughed again, but it didn’t make her angry this time.
He reached out and slowly unclamped her hands from around her knees until he was holding both hands, and her feet slipped back to the floor.
“You tell me. Does that sound like someone who’s toxic? Someone who sweeps every person they meet off their feet and they never recover?”
“Maybe not. But… ”
“No! Cut that out. It’s my round. I won it fair and square and you’re not going to spoil it. Hell, I deserve a prize. If I’m stuck being human, you are hereafter going to have to live under the cloud of being ‘not toxic.’ Can you live with that?”
Perrin managed to smile at him. “Guess I’m stuck with it, aren’t I?”
Bill just grinned and stroked his nice warm thumbs on the back of her freezing fingers.
She stood slowly, not releasing his hands. Ever so gently, she lowered herself down until she was sitting in his lap.
“You’re right,” she acknowledged as she settled into place. “You have to get a prize.”
“I wasn’t trying to get you to—”
And she kissed him. Softly, just barely rubbing her lips over his.
“And that,” she deepened the kiss for a delicious moment before pulling back to finish her sentence, “is exactly why you deserve a prize.”
Then she stopped any reply with her lips and tongue.
His hands slid out of hers as she reached up to dig her fingers into the waves of his hair. It was even softer than it looked.
He slid his hands around her, snugging her body more tightly against his. His hands hesitated at her waist.
Perhaps she did know Mr. Too-Decent Bill Cullen better than she thought. Reaching down, she coaxed one of his hands upward. They were good hands, big, strong, and they hadn’t hit her, not even when she’d pushed him to the edge. When she shifted it onto her breast and clamped her hand over his to keep it there, he was still so gentle. How could she have ever doubted that in this man?
He buried his face in her neck and just stopped there, one hand on her breast, the other equally still on her waist.
She wrapped her arms around him. And he seemed content to stop there, to just remain there.
“You miss her that much?” she made a guess.
He nodded without raising his head.
“Have you even touched a woman since then?”
He hesitated, then shook his head.
She held him against her and stared at the lit worktable. How had she ever thought anything but the best of him? He was too damn decent for his own good.
“Okay,” she didn’t know quite what to say, but she knew it was up to her to say it. “Mr. Bill Cullen, you listening?”
He nodded against her neck. He brushed his thumb across her n****e almost absent-mindedly, sending really, really good shivers running down her body.
“Between this non-toxic but whack-a-doodle gal… ”
“You heard that,” he mumbled into her neck.
“I heard that. Between her and this fallible human guy, we’re striking a deal.”
“What?” he nuzzled her collarbone and almost stole her breath away.
“There is never a question of right or wrong. Okay?”
He froze, locked in place against her, his hands almost brutally tight on her for just an instant in his shock. Then he eased off, slowly sitting up until they were face to face just inches apart.
“That’s what Adira always said. She was the wisest woman I’ve ever known.”
Perrin knew she wasn’t wise, but she was smart enough to know when she’d just received the highest compliment of her entire life.
She didn’t try to kiss him again. She simply pulled his head back to her shoulder and cradled him there, until a while later when he finally said he had to go and fetch his daughter.
Just inside the darkened doorway from her shop, he did take a few minutes to show her just how much he appreciated her.
After locking the door behind him and watching him drive off, she thought about how much she appreciated him. The aftermath of his final kiss and caress still heated her body deliciously.
- Writer
