Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3)(9)

They drew close to Abby’s building and lucked out with a spot half a block away, on West Seventeenth Street. He gave Abby a look that said stay put, before rounding the car and plucking her off the seat. She tried to stay stiff in his arms, probably in light of his recent condescension, but gave in after about ten feet.

“Did you get ahold of your father?”

He frowned when she stiffened again. “I left a voice mail. He probably didn’t answer because of the unknown number.” That struck Russell as odd. If his loved one were missing, he would answer every single call that came through, hoping for news. “Anyway, our building wasn’t damaged, so my parents have to know I’m fine. I’m more worried about Honey’s experimenting on me when she gets home.”

Over his dead body. “When will that be?”

“Not until tonight. She’s running a Little League practice at her baseball field in Queens,” Abby explained, referring to the city-block-sized gift Ben had bestowed on her as part of the world’s best apology. “And I told Roxy to stay put at Louis’s. There’s no point in their running home when nothing is wrong with me. And you’re here.”

I’m here. He almost laughed over how unthreatening she found him when he spent hours every day picturing her naked. Russell stopped at the front door to her building and waited as she searched through her purse for keys. Good God, the amount of shit these girls carried around in their purses. After he succeeded in getting them all to wear flats, downsized purses would be his next quest. His musings vanished as she turned those hazel eyes on him and moistened her pink lips.

“You probably need to get back to work, too, right?”

“Work,” he rasped. “Right.”

Why was she looking at his neck? The spot she stared at felt hot, and he barely quelled the urge to rub at it. “If you want, you can stay and watch a movie.”

Worst idea in history. “Which movie?”

“The Notebook.” Abby laughed at whatever involuntary expression of distaste he’d made. “I’m kidding. Magic Mike.”

“Abby.”

“Kidding again.” Her smile blinded him. “I could go all day.”

She unlocked the front and second inner door, finding her apartment key on the ring as he carried her toward the third floor. Russell tried his best to ignore the dark, primal satisfaction of returning her home safe, but it thumped inside him, a fist on a drum. He should leave now. No, he would leave now.

That resolution was left in the dust when she wiggled free of his hold, giving him no choice but to set her down . . . and watch helplessly as she limped toward her bedroom. So much for primal. Russell dragged a hand down his face, over the scratchy beard forming on his jaw. He would rather take a sledgehammer to his own ankle than leave her alone with an injury. The next few hours were going to hurt.

Russell went to the freezer and rummaged for a frozen bag of peas, tossing it once in his hand. Then, like a man marching to the gallows, he followed Abby toward her bedroom and hovered just outside her door. “You decent?”

“Fully clothed.” Her yawn reached him. “Your virtue is safe.”

Trying not to choke on the irony of that, Russell entered her room and came to a quick stop. Paperwork everywhere; on the floor, her dresser . . . every flat and semiflat surface. Stacks of it. Three laptops. Two whiteboards were propped against her closet, words and figures written on them that reminded him enough of high-school algebra to send a shiver down his spine. The last time he’d been in her bedroom was to kill a spider, but that had been months ago. He did everything in his power to keep their interactions as far away from a bed as humanly possible. But he remembered every detail of her room, and it definitely hadn’t looked like a NASA command center the last time he’d been there.

He gestured to one of the whiteboards. “What is all this?”

Abby sat on her bed, surveying the mess with what appeared to be detachment, but there was tension around her eyes. Still, she shrugged. “Work stuff.”

Something about her tone, less upbeat than usual, bothered him. “Working some overtime lately?”

“A little.”

Why was she being so vague? A series of flashbacks from the last few weeks hit him one by one. Abby falling asleep beneath the fireworks, Abby not able to make it through a two-hour movie without passing out on his shoulder. Abby showing up late to the Longshoreman, still in her work clothes. “How much overtime are you working, exactly?”

His slightly harsher tone seemed to break her out of a trance. “Russell, I love that you’re always angry with me, but can it wait until tomorrow?”

Too much to process at once. “Always mad at you?” That was not true. Was it? Russell felt the sudden need to sit down. It seemed his life would be flashing before his eyes tonight because he flipped through every memory of Abby and couldn’t recall a single time he hadn’t been harsh with her. Of course, his attitude had only been a way to hide his sexual frustration. He’d never been mad at her, but she didn’t know that. “Why would you love my being angry with you?”

She eased off her work blazer, letting it fall behind her on the bed. Just like that, he was a trapped animal, feeling the equal need to pounce and blow the joint at a full-out sprint. “Everyone is always happy with me.” Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment. “That sounds vain, doesn’t it? It’s true, though. I do what is expected of me. What I’m told. I say the right thing and dress in an appropriate manner for all occasions, despite your opinion of my footwear. I’m predictable. People don’t have any reason to get mad at predictable. But you . . . do. You get mad.”