The Dangerous Thief (Stolen Hearts #3)(26)
Was this how it was going to be? Whenever home, she was going to retreat into her bedroom and stay there until she needed to leave again?
She would have to find some way to make this work. How, she had no idea, but staying in her room and hiding wasn’t going to be sustainable. The new her was strong enough to work with James and not jump his bones the first chance she had. Probably. Maybe.
When she opened the door, she didn’t see him standing outside waiting for her, which was a plus. She half wondered whether he had been there all day, just waiting to pounce. She passed the open door to the second bedroom, but he wasn’t there and the den was empty too. Which meant he had to be in the living room. When she reached the living room, she saw his feet, in black socks, sticking off the side of her couch. He was a tad too big to fit comfortably. She smiled as she rounded the corner to see him sprawled out with one arm behind his head and his eyes closed. She’d never seen him sleeping before.
He had that rather angelic quality most creatures had when unconscious, but it was impossible to forget exactly what he was capable of. Maybe it was because he was much too big for the sofa. Maybe it was because the way his arm was bent, his bicep pushed against the soft material of his black button-down shirt.
She was still admiring the view when his gruff voice said, “I’d get up, but I think you’re enjoying yourself too much.”
Willa stiffened. “You’re awake. Of course you’re awake. Robots don’t sleep.”
His eyes opened and he sat up. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
When he stood, Willa took a step back. He met her eyes and she knew they were both replaying the scene earlier when he’d pinned her against the wall. She turned away and blinked a few times to clear her mind. “We don’t have a lot of time to waste.” She grabbed a water bottle, something she carried with her out of habit, and took a painkiller because she already knew this was going to be a headache-inducing evening.
“What was that?” asked James, who had crossed over to the island.
She took out the bottle and handed it over. “Something for headaches. Want one?”
He shook his head and set it down.
“You thought I was taking something heavier than over-the-counter, didn’t you?”
“It’s not unheard of for someone in your...circles.”
Oh, that was something she knew all too well. Willa leaned against her side of the island. “Sometimes I forget just how little we know about each other.”
“Here I thought you thought the mysterious thing was sexy.”
If only he knew how true that was. “My mother had a big issue with prescription drugs. Ended up OD’ing a bunch of times.”
James didn’t change his expression. No pity or remorse about her past. Just a slow nod. “Is she still around?”
“Still alive and ticking, but not around. It was a messy divorce with her and my father, so her problems got even worse. He offered her an option. She could have full custody of me or a massive one-time payment.” She didn’t say what Susan Belli chose. She didn’t have to.
“She chose wrong,” said James.
Willa shrugged. She tended to think the same, but other times.... “I don’t know. Am I really a great catch? I’m selfish. Hedonistic. Lazy. You know I’ve never had a job? Ever? Who does that?”
“Someone who doesn’t need to work,” said James plainly.
She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Was she trying to talk him out of liking her? Maybe she just wanted him to understand what he was getting. “I went to university for a few years too. I had all As in boarding school. Did decent in college too.”
“But you didn’t stay.”
That still stung. “I failed a test. It was stupid, but I had partied the night before. One failure wasn’t a deal breaker. I could’ve survived. But the professor came to me after class and told me he could make the F disappear if I helped finance his upcoming trip to the Caribbean.”
James’s stone eyes studied her as she continued. “And I don’t play like that. I wasn’t exactly a good girl, but I didn’t need to lie, cheat, and steal to get what I wanted. And I told him exactly where he could go shove it. That’s when he told me that no matter how good my grades were, it was the massive donation my father made to the university my senior year that got me in. So I left. What’s the point? I don’t need school to get a job. I just tell someone my name and who I know and I’ll get hired. And it doesn’t matter how I do at that job. They’ll keep me on just to get to know my father, right?”
She motioned around at the apartment. “So now I just live off him. He doesn’t seem to mind. And I guess since I now know that he’s getting his money by being a dirty rotten son of a bitch, I understand why. It’s not like he’s working hard for it.” She rolled her eyes and tried not to think about the mess her life was in at the moment. “But no, I don’t take prescription drugs for anything other than exactly what they’re prescribed for. Thanks to my personal history and tendency to overdo things,” she forced herself not to look at James as she mentioned her tenuous self-control, “I stay away from those.”
“That’s smart.”
She gave him a fake smile as she tried to get back in the mindset she needed for tonight. “I’m a very smart person.” She left the kitchen to collect her purse and made a quick call to have a car come and pick them up. When she came back, James was sliding on his jacket and buttoned it to hide the shoulder holster he’d also put on. She tilted her head to admire the view. Why were guns sexy? Had she always found guns sexy? Or was it just a James thing? Hell if she knew why her brain liked to go all haywire around him.