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“What? What happens?” Her frantic pitch eclipsed all prior worries. “Molly, speak to me. Are you sure you’re not hurt? I’ll take you to a hospital right now.”
“No, I don’t need a hospital,” she whined, despair replacing the anxiety from a breath ago. Her head fell back against the headrest. “I need about a thousand rabbits’ feet, a football field of four-leaf clovers, and a few dozen of those evil eye bracelets my superstitious mother always seems to buy in bulk.”
Brass blinked again, then peered at her over his collar. “I’m sorry?”
Molly let out a weighty sigh. “My whole life, I’ve had the shittiest end of the shit stick when it comes to luck and good fortune.”
Brass shook his head, struggling to see how good luck had anything to do with him almost killing them but unwilling to drag her focus back to the near wreck. “I don’t understand. You’re very fortunate. You’re one of the most sought-after chefs in the region. People would kill to have that kind of prowess in your profession, no?”
“That’s exactly it. Luck had nothing to do with it. Every ladder rung I’ve climbed up has only supported me because I’ve built legs that have had to withstand far more falls than one person should ever have had to endure.” She turned her head to the window again, and Brass immediately hated the dejected look in her eyes.
“Hey, look at me.” With one hand, he reached for her chin, guided it toward him, and was pierced with a desperate sadness he’d give his shooting arm to never see darken her gaze again.
With one hand on the wheel and the other dropping from her chin to snatch up her cold hand, Brass expertly turned into the parking lot of Molly’s apartment complex and killed the engine. Ironically, there was no shortage of other things he’d rather kill at that moment, because looking into her eyes as she blinked back hidden troubles, he knew. Without another word from her or even another exchanged glance, he damn well knew what he was about to hear.
Without meaning to, Brass pulled on that tight tether of his curse. Instead of roaring to the surface, however, his rage simmered, controlled by Brass’s command and tempered by the worried insecurities he read in the chocolate pools of her eyes.
“What was his name?” he growled out.
Chapter 11
Molly took longer than strictly necessary to hang up their coats in the hallway closet. For one thing, the open door gave her the added benefit of a good, sturdy thing to hide behind. And second, it allowed her compulsive urges to funnel some of her nervous energy into ensuring the high collar on Brass’s trench coat popped just right against the hanger. She took another borrowed moment away from the unsettled man down the hall to swipe her finger along the garment’s shoulder seam. Tactile abrasion was one of her preferred avoidance tactics whenever her nerves threatened to flare up, and she currently had the mother of all threats wearing a hole in her linoleum floor down the hall.
After she’d flung forward against Brass’s outstretched arm during their near miss on the road, something more than just fear and adrenaline had been knocked into her. It was almost as if his strength, while keeping her safe, had also rattled something loose. A somber realization of her life’s strikeouts had fallen off the top shelf of her mind and landed with a meteor’s intensity.
Hell if she knew the why and how of it, but in that strange transference, something within her had just snapped, and she’d blurted out the first words her startled body could no longer contain. Why, oh why, did those words have to be a confession, and that confession no less? To him, of all people?
Molly risked one more peek around the door. When she couldn’t see Brass bounding into the hall before pacing back into the kitchen, she took it as a sign that maybe he’d taken a seat on the couch in the living room. That was a good thing, right? Calm people sat on couches, and she desperately needed a calm Brass, especially after what she’d witnessed when they’d pulled up in the parking lot of her building.
When she let her little outburst slip regarding her perpetual bad luck in life, it was almost like a switch had flipped and something ominous arced within the small space between them. Brass had parked under a streetlight that took its job as seriously as an overworked and underpaid employee being asked to pick up another shift. The starved thing threw off more shadows than light patterns. If it wasn’t for that lack of light, however, she’d never have noticed the blazing ochre swirling in Brass’s eyes when his warm fingers cradled her chin and he told her to look at him. By the time she realized what she was seeing, he’d blinked away whatever storm she thought she imagined, exited the car, and walked over to her side to open her door for her.
And because he still had her keys, he’d promptly stormed ahead, unlocked her apartment, and threw off the covers on a world she had managed to navigate just fine in the dark.
Or so she’d thought.
That had been several minutes ago, and he still hadn’t spoken to her, which left his final words reverberating around her nervous system like a poorly weighted pinball.
What was his name?
The way he’d said those words, with each intonation dripping the same dark devotion reserved for vengeful villains, had frozen her to her seat. And the real kicker to her reaction wasn’t that she was terrified of him but oddly thrilled. In the privacy of her car, with no onlookers to judge her save him, and illuminated by the candlepower equivalent of an incandescent night-light, well, was his reaction such a bad thing? The way he looked at her, with shadows carving war paint slashes across his handsome face and eyes that seemed to glow when met with hers, was the kind of thing that, had life turned out differently, she’d have fantasized about for more than a few happy sleeps.
Because up until ten minutes ago, the words man and fantasy had been mutually exclusive.
With one final assessment of the closet’s hiding capacity, the outlook of which was decidedly not so good, Molly slowly closed the door and walked out into the living room. However, when she got there, she was promptly greeted by a very empty sofa and loveseat. Confused, she turned around toward the kitchen, where Brass already had her stockpot and straight-sided sauté pan heating on the stove.
“What are you doing?”
“Feeding you.”
“Oh. You don’t have to do that. I’ll make something later?—”
The soft shhh of salt pouring out of her saltbox masked any further protest. Brass held the stuff high above the pot of boiling water, creating a cascade of little white crystals that settled with a hiss upon impact.
“Wait, how did you already get the water to boil? That stove is about as ancient as the building codes governing the complex. On a good day, it takes about forty-five minutes for any water to come up to speed.”
And that was when she took stock of all the ingredients he’d somehow scouted and set out on the counter. A box of spaghetti, garlic, her good olive oil, crushed red pepper flakes, some past-its-prime parsley, though there were still a few decent leaves if one was an industrious picker, and—she gasped—her last hunk of sell-her-soul-worthy Parmesan cheese. The pieces knitted together faster than a competition Rubik’s cube. “Oh my God, you’re making spaghetti aglio e olio, aren’t you?”
Brass moved to the cutting board but still didn’t look at her. “Chef’s pasta. Figured it was fitting, and you haven’t eaten dinner yet.”
