Ruined (Barnes Brothers #4)(49)

He cut off the call before Dash’s response came through and looked over at Evie.

She stroked a hand up his arm. “So . . . now that you’ve done the nice guy thing, how about we go do something not so . . . nice?”

He came to a stop at a red light and Evie undid her seat belt, leaning over to murmur in his ear. Any red-blooded man worth his salt would have been all over that idea.

“So . . . what do you think?”





Chapter Fourteen




The sound of a fist pounding hard and heavy against the door brought Marin out of a deep, dreamless sleep.

Dazed, she looked around, her eyes landing on the clock on the nightstand, staring at it in confusion.

“What the hell?”

Another knock.

Confused, she stared at the numbers glowing in front of her. It was two in the fricking morning. Why would somebody wake her up at two a.m.?

But the fist pounded on her door again.

So either the building was on fire or somebody wanted to die. That was all she could figure out. Pushing upright, she knuckled at her eyes and when somebody knocked again, she shouted, “If the building ain’t on fire, then you just stop that right now!”

Some might have been appalled at the twang that came out. She didn’t mind the southern drawl that sometimes crept out in her voice when she was worn out. Of course that wasn’t a drawl. That was just pure Tennessee bitch right there and she was so tired, she didn’t care if anybody heard the echoes of her upbringing just then.

Sighing, she got out of bed and grabbed the robe from the foot of it, shuffling toward the dim glow coming from the lavish living room area. She had one of the elegant suites and the place was more like a small apartment than a hotel room, but that meant it was a walk to the door. When the knock came again, she set her jaw.

“If you knock on that door one more time—”

She opened it mid-sentence and stopped when she saw Dash standing there.

And he wasn’t alone.

A tall man stood behind him, one who was almost insanely hot, in a nerve-wracking sort of way. She might have been scared if she wasn’t so tired. Ignoring tall, dark and scary, she focused on Dash. Jabbing him in the chest, she said, “Knock on the door one more time, buddy, and I’ll set you on your ass. The one night I actually managed to get to sleep and I haven’t had heartburn or anything else and you decide you’re going to wake me up at two in the morning?”

She hadn’t had any more “spells” as Sebastien had called them since the last one nearly three weeks before. They were almost halfway done with filming. Marin was just over three months pregnant and according to her OB, she was almost past the rough spots that hit during the first trimester.

True, she wasn’t getting sick at all hours of the day, or even in the mornings all that much. But she was exhausted and nausea still came and went. And the heartburn . . . man.

The exhaustion was the worse, though, and it didn’t help that she was stressed out like never before.

She was still trying to talk to Sebastien, but lately, he was hanging around Evie and she knew for a fact the man was trying to avoid her. Maybe he hadn’t told her outright, but she could read the writing on the wall.

It might as well read:

I’m not talking to you, Marin.

The last time she’d tried to talk to him, it was like he had sensed her presence—or maybe it was just Evie being Evie—the two of them had leaned closer together and when the woman had gone to kiss him, Marin felt like she’d been punched in the throat.

That had been four days earlier and each day of shooting scenes with him had been horrible. Sojo was even getting on her now.

Which might account for her being so pissed off now, although she doubted it. Marin never liked being woken up, even at a decent hour.

Two a.m.? Not decent. Completely not decent.

But Dash didn’t seem perturbed. The guy behind him looked around a little nervously, though. Marin might have been amused by the sight of a guy who stood close to seven feet tall glancing around like he thought somebody might jump out from behind a corner and attack him.

Dash braced his hands on the door jam and leaned in, his eyes half wild. “Know who called me about thirty minutes ago, darling? Again?”

Oh, hell.

Marin shoved a hand through her hair. “I already told you, ignore him!”

“It’s getting kind of hard to do that when I’m this close to getting laid and the phone starts ringing every ten minutes!” he snapped. “This is the third weekend in a row! What happened, did you stub a toe in your last shoot of the day? Why in the hell is he bugging me about a body pillow?”

That startled a laugh out of her, which didn’t impress Dash much. He swore, his eyes widening until she could see the whites all around the loveliness of his irises. “Don’t you dare laugh about this!” he said, pointing a finger toward her nose. “I’m getting blue balls over this mess. Bad enough that he’s got it in his head that . . .”

He stopped, hissing out a breath.

“Hey, Dash . . .” The big guy from behind him shifted from one foot to another. “Look, you ain’t gotta go talking like that.”

“Henry, it’s fine,” he bit off.

Henry didn’t seem to think so. He drew himself up to his full height and Marin blinked, a little impressed. Wow. He really was huge. “Look, I just don’t think you need to go talking to Ms. Lassiter like that. It ain’t her fault that guy kept calling you. I . . . Man, I didn’t know we were coming to see her.” He smiled at her bashfully and added, almost nervously, “I loved you in your last movie—the one with Sebastien Barnes? I hope you do another one with him.”