Free Melt by Cari Quinn Page B

into his eye.
    And everything went black.

Chapter Five
    Kylie paced back and forth between Justin’s living room and
his kitchen, lacing and unlacing her fingers. The police had come and gone, and
both sides had agreed not to press charges. Rob had asked her if she’d lost her
mind to get involved with such a whack job, and at the moment she wasn’t sure
she could argue. The look on Justin’s face when he’d leaped at Rob—
    She shuddered. She’d never seen that much fury before. The
kind of fury that could kill.
    At first, discovering all the new sides and aspects of
Justin had been fun and exciting. Alluring, even. Clearly she hadn’t scratched
the surface of him in college. But this…what the heck had she done? Jumped
right from the fire pit into the bowels of hell?
    She swallowed and pressed her palm against the pain drilling
into her temple. She’d gone from the pinnacle of ecstasy to the depths of
terror with barely a minute to breathe. No wonder a mariachi band had taken up
residence in her skull.
    Her body still hurt from yesterday, though nowhere near as
much as it had last night. She kept flexible from Pilates and yoga, so she’d
bounced back pretty quickly. Not to mention she’d gotten big-time lucky that
her fall hadn’t been worse. But now it seemed like her luck had dried up.
    On her trip back into the living room, she stared at the man
sulking silently on the couch. He was bare-chested, and his sandy hair stuck out
in twenty different directions. Then there were the twin bruises that shadowed
the entire left side of his face. She winced. His cheek must be throbbing.
    “Do you want more ice?” she asked, not coming any closer
than the doorway. She wasn’t afraid of him for herself, not physically. Even in
the midst of freaking hand-to-hand combat, he’d eased her out of the way with
the care of a grizzly cradling a baby bird in his paw.
    “No.” The ice pack sat in his lap, melting all over his
jeans. The splotch of wet ran all the way down one thigh, but he didn’t seem to
care. “I’m fine.”
    She couldn’t take this tense silence between them anymore.
“You sure look fine.” She strode forward until their knees bumped and bent down
to grip his chin, turning his face toward the fireplace. She’d rekindled the
fire, and that was the only thing that chased the gloom out of the gray day.
    He hadn’t wanted lights. Or medical attention. Or for her to
even stay. That pissed her off the most.
    “You look like hell,” she said finally, hoping her voice
wasn’t trembling. She couldn’t be sure of anything at the moment. “You hit the
ground pretty hard.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Justin—”
    “Did I badger you when you went off half-cocked on a
snowmobile you had no clue how to ride and got into an accident? Did I lecture
you? No. I’d appreciate the same courtesy.”
    She slapped her hands on her hips. “I was fully cocked,
thank you very much.” To her surprise, his lips twitched, though he didn’t meet
her gaze. “And I had a clue how to ride. Sort of. I’ve gone out a few times,
just not alone. I wasn’t thinking straight. But you were.”
    “Was I?” His voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear
him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Wiping her suddenly damp palms on her freshly laundered
jeans from last night, she sat next to him. She made a show of tugging the
pretty plaid throw off the back of the couch. Once she’d wrapped herself in
fleece and the comforting scent of his soap and woodsy shampoo, she lifted her
eyebrows. “So tell me.”
    “Just like that?”
    “I told you about me and Rob.”
    His mouth tightened. “He’s not going to leave you alone.
Especially when you call him and give him hope.”
    Ah, so there was the source of some of his anger. She wasn’t
surprised that he didn’t like her phoning her ex. What did surprise her was how
vehement her objection to his displeasure was. “I called to let him know I was
all right.