Devastated (Anger Management, #1)(33)

“I prefer the left side of the bed,” he explained, as he rolled over onto his stomach and closed his eyes.

“That’s the right side,” she pointed out as her gaze shifted between the large man lying next to her and her closed bedroom door and back again before she found herself saying the hell with it. She placed her iPad on the nightstand before she laid down and curled up on her side, deciding to take advantage of him being here and try to get some sleep.

“Does it really matter?” Hunter asked, as she felt him shift on the bed.

“Not if you let me quit,” she said, sounding hopeful as she felt the covers move seconds before she felt his large body curl up behind her as his arm slid around her and pulled her closer.

“You’re not quitting,” Hunter mumbled sleepily as she waited for the panic to hit, only to feel herself relax against his large warm body, and the panic that had been threatening to break her in two since this morning slowly disappeared.

“You know that I’m still mad at you, right?” Kylie asked, because she didn’t want to give him the wrong impression or anything.

“I figured that out with the silent treatment,” he said dryly.

“Good, because I’m still not talking to you,” she said, even as she snuggled back against him.

“And you’re doing an excellent job of it.”

“I know.”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me?”

“I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” she said, simply because it felt wrong to let him have the last word.

---

“She’s playing you,” Ryan said with a pitying shake of his head as they sat by the pool.

“You think so?” Hunter asked absently, as he grabbed one of the beers that Kylie picked up for him this morning from the ice bucket by his chair and handed it to Ryan.

“It’s definitely a possibility,” Ryan said, sighing heavily as he popped the top off his beer, took a sip and immediately spit it out. “Oh, God! What the hell is wrong with this beer?”

“It’s about six months past its expiration date,” Hunter said, chuckling as he picked up his beer and took a sip.

“Then why are you drinking it?” Ryan asked with a look of disgust as he dumped his bottle out onto the lawn.

“Because it seems to make her happy,” he said, shrugging it off.

“Is she trying to kill you?”

“Probably,” Hunter murmured, unable to help but smile because she was fucking adorable when she was pissed.

She’d given up on giving him the silent treatment mostly because she wasn’t very good at it and had settled for slipping back into her minion role. The only difference now was that her smiles had gone from forced to overly sweet and her tone was polite even as she let him know just how pissed she was. Not that he could blame her, because he couldn’t. She’d been so fucking adorable when she’d handed him the beer, he thought with a wistful sigh.

“And is there a reason why she’s suddenly pissed at you?” Ryan asked, plucking the beer out of his hand and dumping it out before dropping it in the bucket with the rest.

“She found the file,” Hunter admitted after a slight pause.

“Oh,” Ryan said, putting a world of meaning into that one word.

“Exactly,” Hunter said, still trying to figure out how he was going to make this up to her.

“Then why is she still here?”

“Because I wouldn’t let her leave.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Hunter said, especially while he was stuck on house arrest and wouldn’t be able to get to her if anything happened.

But once he was off house arrest…

She still wasn’t going anywhere, he decided.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“What’s that?” Ryan absently asked, as he pulled out his phone.

“I want you to look after her when this is all over.”

“Why?” Ryan asked, throwing him a curious glance.

“Because she’s really good at what she does and I plan on keeping her on after this,” Hunter explained, not bothering to point out that knowing that she was safe was the only way that he was going to be able to sleep at night.

“I see,” Ryan murmured thoughtfully before asking, “Now, by ‘really good at what she does,’ are you talking about sex? Because I’d like to get an idea of her qualifications.”

“She’s not my type,” Hunter said, as he hooked his foot behind the leg of Ryan’s chair and-

“Son of a bitch!”

-decided to see what his devious little assistant was up to.





Chapter 19

“This was a stupid idea,” Kylie finally admitted, as she gave up searching under the end table and sat up with a sigh as she glanced around the large office, wondering why she was doing this. She should just focus on doing her job and counting down the days until she could put all this behind her. It shouldn’t matter that he was struggling with this, but it did because she remembered what it felt like to be trapped.

Well, that, and she didn’t actually want to leave.

She liked it here, loved her job, and she even liked Hunter, and that was the problem. If he’d been a jerk after everything that happened, she could have ignored the pained expression on his face when he’d admitted that he was struggling without a second thought, but instead, he’d tried to make it better. He also hadn’t pushed her to forgive him, lost his temper, or tried to blame her for what happened like her ex-husband would have. Instead, he’d quietly accepted her glares, sat outside the bathroom door when her second encounter with alcohol ended like the first, and kept her from falling apart last night.