Author: Roni Loren
She washed and dried her hands, then took a deep breath. Time to get back to Wyatt. She didn’t know what else he had planned for tonight, but she wasn’t sure she could survive another round with him. The experience in the shower had flayed her. Her emotions felt raw and exposed, like shredded power lines writhing and sparking with danger. She’d managed to keep things relaxed and light during dinner, but beneath her smiles and jokes, she’d been trying to piece herself back together, slapping duct tape on broken shit and hoping it held together.
She needed to figure out how to hold on to some shred of control in all of this. Otherwise, she wouldn’t survive him. She knew how she could be. In the past, she’d fallen too hard and too fast. And always for the wrong men. Her heart was entirely untrustworthy. She needed to keep that part of her out of this. Sex she could do. To endure those three days with Davis, she’d figured out how to shut off her emotions and just exist as something to be used. She didn’t need to go that far with Wyatt, but if she’d learned anything over the years, it was how men wouldn’t look too far past that physical stuff. She could play the vixen, the seductress, and that was enough for a guy. And someone like Wyatt, a man who treated his interactions with women like neat business arrangements, would probably be more than happy to keep it at that level, too. She could let the other stuff stay tucked away out of sight.
She turned off the light in the kitchen. Wyatt had told her he had a few phone calls to make, but when she walked into the living room, she found him frowning at the flatscreen TV that was perched above the massive stone fireplace. The weather radar filled the screen, complete with a lot of green blotches and an ominous swath of red. The television was on mute, but words ran across the bottom of the screen at a rapid pace.
“Everything okay?” she asked, stopping behind the cream-toned leather couch.
He glanced her way, then back to the screen. “They’ve just issued a tornado warning. A wall cloud was spotted a few miles west of here. You see that little dot of blue over there.” He pointed. “That’s the lake not far from here.”
“Well, shit.”
As if on cue, the slow-building whine of the county tornado sirens started up outside—faint at first and then blaring as the siren rotated in their direction. Kelsey hugged her elbows, the sound familiar but no less eerie every time. She’d lived in Texas all her life and had gone through this ritual many a time, but those sirens never failed to ratchet fear right through her. “Where’s the best closet to hide in?”
Wyatt got to his feet and held out a hand to her. “Come on. I’ve got a better place.”
The rain turned from a pattering to the plink of tiny hail stones against the windows as Wyatt led her down an interior hallway and past a number of doors. At the final door on the left, he stopped and turned the knob. “Watch your step. The stairs are a little narrow.”
“You have a basement?” she asked in disbelief. That was about as rare as having a snow blower in this part of the world.
“Sort of,” he said, leading her down the narrow staircase and shutting the door behind them. The steps were carpeted and as they went lower, the sounds from above faded, leaving a thick silence behind.
When they reached the bottom, he turned a knob on a panel of controls on the right side wall, bringing the dark room into view. Recessed lights slowly came to full strength from above and illuminated the posh leather couch and chairs in the center of the room. On the far left, there was a wall of dark wood shelving packed from floor to ceiling. But what drew her attention was the large screen gracing the main wall. It was a movie lover’s dream come true. “Wow.”
He let go of her hand, shifting his stance and looking a little uncomfortable all of a sudden. “We’re below ground level in here. So we should be fine if anything comes through.”
“This is some personal theater,” she said, crossing the thick red carpet and walking over to the wall of shelves. Rows and rows of DVDs filled the spaces. More than she’d ever seen in one place before. She scanned some of the titles, running her finger along the spines. “Wow. Did you buy out Blockbuster?”
He cleared his throat. “I have a bit of a thing for film.”
She peeked over her shoulder, amused at the faint edge of embarrassment in his tone. Wyatt Austin could be sheepish about something? Who knew? She’d never seen even a chink in his collected facade, but she found the little glimpse more than a bit endearing. “I would say so.”
She went back to scanning. There was obviously some prescribed order to the collection, but it definitely wasn’t alphabetical. Her finger ran over a group of foreign films, then what looked to be Academy Award winners, and the last of the row was a group of eighties teen movies: Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dirty Dancing.
She grabbed the last one and spun around, smiling. “Dirty Dancing? Tell the truth. You only have this one to woo women when they come over, right? No straight man voluntarily owns this movie.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “For the record, I’ve never taken a date down here. But truth be told, I got that one for when my sister, Leila, comes over. It’s her favorite movie.”
She grinned. “She and my sister would probably get along. Brynn used to be obsessed with this movie when we were growing up. Always the hopeless romantic.”
“And you’re not?” He sat down on the couch, propping an elbow on the back cushion.
Not anymore. Life had beaten that ridiculous notion out of her.
“Hardly.” She turned and slid the movie back in its place. “My favorite movie growing up was Terminator 2.”
“Good choice. Amazing effects. Four Oscars.”
“Plus Sarah Connor was badass. I like movies that make me laugh or scare the crap out of me. That one did a little of both.” She lifted her head to peek at the row above her. Documentaries. Horror. Sci-Fi. And enough Hitchcock to require its own section. “You’ve got so many. Have you actually seen all of these?”
“Every one of them. Many more than once.” He shifted on the couch to fully face her. “I got kind of obsessed with movies when I was a kid.”
She walked over and sat on the opposite side of the couch, pulling her knees to her chest. “How come?”
His shrug was near imperceptible. “The whole genius IQ thing has its perks now, but wasn’t so much fun when I was young. Academic stuff made sense to me, but I was a disaster on the social front. I couldn’t read other people at all. It was like they were using a different language—saying one thing but really meaning another. And my father had no tolerance for that deficit, so he was always pushing me into social situations.”
She sat her chin on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. She’d already figured Wyatt’s father wasn’t dad of the year based on how he’d disowned Jace. But the guy sounded like an unsympathetic asshole. “That must’ve been a nightmare.”
“Looking back, I’m glad he didn’t let me get away with hiding from it. This world isn’t built for introverts. But it felt like sink or swim back then. So, I started to watch movies and TV shows as a way to study people, to teach myself to read expressions and subtext and subtle shifts in body language. Actors are more deliberate about it than everyday people. I had to learn that when someone’s lip curled, they were usually being sarcastic. Or that laughter didn’t always signal something was funny. Picking up those cues didn’t come naturally to me.”
“And like everything else, you became the master at it,” she guessed.
“I was determined to. I also became a fount of useless movie trivia.”
“So why don’t you ever bring girls down to your secret movie lair? It’s pretty cozy down here.” And probably soundproof. For someone who hadn’t practiced BDSM in a long time, Wyatt had a near perfect setup for a private dungeon. Maybe he wasn’t telling the whole truth about his supposed hiatus.
He lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t believe me?”
She blinked, disconcerted by his spot-on assessment. “What?”
“Doubt just crossed your face,” he said, laying his arm across the back of the couch. “I assure you, you’re the first woman I’ve brought down here who’s not family. I don’t make a habit of exposing my geeky pastimes to others.”
She smiled. “It’s not that geeky. And I actually had a little bit of weird TV thing myself as a kid. I was obsessed with all those old shows from the fifties and sixties. Donna Reed, The Patty Duke Show, Dennis the Menace. Other kids were into cartoons and I just wanted to watch black-and-white sitcoms on Nick at Nite and dress like I belonged in Grease.”
“Huh,” he said, tilting his head as if intrigued by her revelation. “Why do you think you were so drawn to that?”
She shrugged. “My childhood wasn’t exactly conventional, so I guess I was fascinated by these families where dads came home every day and moms cooked casseroles and everybody seemed so damned happy. Looking back, that’s probably what drew me to cooking in the first place. A home-cooked meal represented some piece of that fantasy world. So when my sister started college, I bought this stack of old Betty Crocker cookbooks at a garage sale and started trying the recipes. Brynn probably never wants to eat anything made with Cream of Mushroom soup again.”
He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes; compassion rested there instead. “Why didn’t you go to culinary school after high school?”
She combed her fingers through her hair, not wanting to have this conversation. “I wasn’t in a good place back then. Partying and my boyfriend became much bigger priorities than casseroles.”
“Ah,” he said, those watchful eyes still on her.
“So were you into TV as much as movies?” she asked, desperate to get the topic back to something safe.
“Not as much, but I can recite entire episodes of Family Ties and The Cosby Show. Not pretty.”
“I never saw either of those.”
A brief look of horror crossed his face, then he shook his head. “Man, I keep forgetting how young you are. I think I’m in denial.”
She smirked and stretched her legs out, pressing her feet against his thigh. “I’m old enough in the ways that count. And truth be told, there are days I feel like I’ve lived three lifetimes already.”
He slipped a hand around her ankle, rubbing a thumb along the delicate bones as he watched her. “An old soul.”
A wounded one at least. But she didn’t say that part out loud. They weren’t here to dig into her ugly, good-girl-gone-bad life. That was off limits. She allowed her other foot to slide up and over his thigh, her toes tracking closer to his crotch. Maybe if she could get the focus redirected back to the reason they were here, he’d stop looking at her like he wanted to scoop all her secrets out of her.
He locked his other hand around the ankle of her roaming foot, his grip firm. “I don’t remember giving you permission to touch me there, love.”
She wet her lips and lowered her lashes, going into her safe zone—temptress mode. “Are you complaining? We’ve got nothing better to do while we wait out the storm.”
His gaze narrowed as he held both her ankles and moved them away from his lap. “That’s not going to work on me, Kelsey.”
She frowned, her spine stiffening. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you’re used to controlling the situation. And not many men could resist that come-hither look you just threw my way. But you need to know, it’s not a wise tactic to take with me. Topping from the bottom won’t be acceptable.”
“I wasn’t—”
He let go of her ankles. “Stand up.”
