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“Yeah? Well I’m about to rain on your parade, buddy. What the hell are you doing here? Should I be calling the cops?” For some stupid reason, it now irked her even more to think that this…this darkly handsome guy might be linked to Juliet.
“I’m here to meet someone. Arrived early.”
Hah. So he was linked to Juliet. And didn’t that just show how shallow the other woman was? She was a widow, for God’s sake, and she had no business hooking up with a man as gorgeous as this. Sex appeal clung to him as closely as that T-shirt hugged his ripped chest.
Not that she’d noticed.
“Are you sure you have the right house?” she asked, freeze-drying the edges of her voice.
He shrugged, then craned his neck to glance at the address marker posted on the wall behind him. “This is the number my friend gave me when I called him last night. Noah lives here with a lady. Is that lady you?”
Marlys bristled. She couldn’t help it. Everything about this man, his lazy posture, his cool eyes, his hot body, the whole package rubbed her the wrong way, as if she was a cat being petted from tail to ears. “Noah doesn’t ‘live’ with my…my stepmother.” She never referred to Juliet in that manner, she’d never thought of her as a maternal figure, but she kind of liked the idea of giving the leggy blonde an older, not to mention evil, image.
Bad Marlys.
The Hells Angel’s eyebrows rose. “Ah. That explains the brat part.”
“Brat?” Marlys echoed, offended. She’d been called a lot of things in her time, but nothing so childish as brat. What a jerk. She straightened her spine and threw out her A-and-a half cups. “I might be the size of a kid, but I’ll have you know I’m twenty-five years old.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply you needed a babysitter. But if Juliet Weston is your stepmama, then you’ve got to be the general’s daughter. I meant Army brat.”
“Oh.” Army brat. A soft sense of nostalgia bloomed in her chest. That’s what she’d been a long time ago. Until she was twelve years old and her mother had tired of military life and divorced her dad.
The motorcycle man was looking at her like he could see every thought in her head. Marlys prided herself on her tough exterior, so the idea he found her transparent incensed her all over again. “Did you say you had business here?”
“I have some time off. Thought I’d find myself a fairy whose wings could use a tug or two.”
She rolled her eyes. “You tug the tail of a puppy. You strip the wings off a butterfly.”
His smile was as lazy and slow as every other move he’d made. “Strip? When I get you naked, I promise I’ll leave the wings just as they are.”
Strip. Naked. Marlys’s insides heated again. But it wasn’t that bitter burn she’d become familiar with. Not that she’d let him see that his flirtation was getting to her, not when, dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of old jeans, it had to be a knee-jerk reaction he had to women, any woman, not particularly her. She slammed her hand on her hip. “Give me a break. That kind of line might work in a biker bar, but around here—”
She yelped as her feet were swept from beneath her. She found herself up in the air—and, no fairy wings, damn it—then down, painfully, on her ass. Blackie—selfish, unrepentant, and wiggling with doggy delight—breezed up the steps, then back down, stepping on her hair as he circled her prone, breathless form.
“Sit.” The rough order from the man on the porch had Marlys struggling to obey. “Stay.”
Blackie plopped down. Froze.
In the same position, she and the dog looked at each other with astonishment. It’s why she didn’t see the biker guy move down the stairs. He was quick for a lazy man.
“Are you all right?” He lifted her to her feet with big palms beneath her elbows. His hands ran down the cotton knit of her shirt to her wrists, then transferred to her waist to cop a feel along the denim covering her hips.
“Hey!” she snapped, stepping back.
“Just checking for injuries,” he said, giving her an unrepentant smile.
She scowled, because every inch he’d touched was tingling, even through 100 percent cotton fibers. “You should be checking the dog,” she said, glaring at Blackie, who, miracle of miracles, was still down on his haunches. “Because there’s a rolled-up newspaper with his name on it.”
“Jesus.” The stranger frowned. “Don’t hit the dog.”
A flush shot over Marlys’s face. She wasn’t perfect by any means, she knew that, but she’d never actually strike Blackie. It mortified her that the man would think it. It mortified her that she cared what the man would think.
