Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale)(17)
His jaw clenched as he stared down at her, but otherwise his face was inscrutable, hard and still as stone.
Finally he nodded once—a curt jerk of his neck—and said, “Don’t forget to lock up,” before stalking back into the house and letting the screen door bang shut behind him.
CHAPTER 5
Colt looked to his right, where Verity sat beside him on the way to work, wearing dark jeans and a yellow V-neck T-shirt, the tan seatbelt strap cutting through the small mounds of her breasts.
He’d slept like shit last night.
Staying out longer than he’d needed to, he hadn’t gotten home until ten o’clock, to find the house dark and quiet and the front and back doors locked, as he’d requested. The kitchen was clean and smelled of the lemon-scented counter spray that Verity must have used to clean up before bed. The kitchen table was set for three with the pink-flowered china plates that had barely been used since Aunt Jane passed, and Verity had left a note that read: Thank you for supper. I’ll take care of breakfast. V. He’d stared at the table for a long while, feeling his aunt’s gentle spirit in the room where she’d spent so much of her life cooking for her small family.
Aunt Jane, with her cheerful, uneven smile and sparkling, light brown eyes, would have approved of Verity. She would have respected the way Verity was trying to care for her disabled brother against the odds, the thought a sharp jab at Colton’s heart even as it comforted him.
He sighed, walking past the table and heading to his bedroom, which had been built as an addition on the other side of the kitchen. Down a short hallway, he passed two linen closets, a bathroom, and a walk-in closet, and finally entered the large master bedroom, which had a massive skylight, a king-size bed, a flat-screen TV, a treadmill, and a rack of free weights and a lifting bench.
He grabbed two sixty-pound dumbbells and lay back on the bench, reviewing the day in his head as Verity’s words—This morning I woke up with one life, and tonight I go to sleep with a different one—whispered in his ears. He didn’t want to care about her and Ryan, but he did. He had, from the moment he’d set eyes on them. Trying to stop himself from giving a shit about the foundling duo would be a losing battle, but understanding that they were, as she’d repeated two or three times at dinner last night, temporary guests, would help him not feel their loss as sharply when they moved on.
After a hundred presses, which soaked his body with sweat and made his biceps burn, he replaced the weights, took a shower, and headed to bed. But sleep had been elusive. Verity’s room wasn’t directly above his, but close enough, and he found himself wondering what she slept in . . . if she wore a nightgown, like Aunt Jane, or shorts and a T-shirt, like Melody, or nothing at all, like Sandy, the waitress from TLOC he’d dated for a few months before she’d taken a job in Vegas. And once his brain had fixed on “nothing at all,” he was ruined for sleep, his cock semierect for more than an hour before he took care of it himself, Verity’s face front and center in his mind as he jerked off. After that? Yeah. He slept. But he felt like a dirtbag.
He woke up to the smell of frying eggs and toasting bread, and found Verity and her brother waiting for him in the kitchen, sunny-side-up eggs steamy and buttered toast cut into triangles on each plate. And it was nice. Fuck, it was so nice.
And it was nice having her next to him right now, smelling like soap and baby powder in the passenger seat on the way to work. He could get used to having her around—her sunny smiles and sunny eggs, and even her brother, who mumbled “stallion” when Colton walked into the kitchen and gave him a goofy smile over a messy mouthful of toast. He liked them, no matter how stupid it was for him to get attached.
“So,” said Verity, turning to him in the car, “any advice for the first day of work?”
Ignore what the waitresses say about me.
Tell your brother to stick close to Joe and keep his head down.
Don’t ask for breaks.
And stay the f*ck away from Artie Kingston.
He glanced at her. “Not really.”
“Ryan and I are watching the show tonight.”
“Won’t you be working?”
She shook her head. “Lynette said we’re just in training this week. I’m supposed to meet someone named Beverly in the gift shop and shadow her from twelve to five, then watch the show. Ryan’s with . . .” She reached into her purse for a notepad and flipped a page back. “. . . here it is: Joe Sterns, uh, from twelve to five. Next week we start full-time.”
Monday was the slowest day at the castle, as there was only a five o’clock show. The entire cast had a weekly meeting at twelve, then for the remainder of the afternoon Colt would be practicing the battle scenes, warming up Thor, and working out. Around four o’clock he changed into his costume and makeup, and the show started promptly at five.
A regular Monday night show.
Except that Verity would be in the audience tonight, which made his chest swell with stupid pride.
“There’s a cast meeting at noon,” he said.
“Yes. Lynette mentioned that.”
“You’ll meet everyone.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Six knights, six in training, twelve squires, stable staff, maintenance, King Arthur, Princess Guinevere, Merlin, two falconers . . . uh, merchants, barkeeps, serving wenches, and swains . . . kitchen staff, call center staff, ticket takers, admin and support.”