Incredulity glittered in her eyes.
“That’s it?”
“Hank called a couple of hours ago. As long as the weather stays clear, he’ll be back at dawn. He’ll fly you out then. Now do us both a favor and step aside.”
She put her hands on her hips. There she stood, wearing nothing but those tiny lace panties and a look that said he was out of his mind, and she still looked tough and determined and so lovely that she made him want things he no longer had a right to want.
“Lissa. Get out of my way.”
“Dammit,” she said, “what the hell is with you? You think you can—you think you can just—that you can just—”
“Yes. Exactly. I can ‘just.’ I’m Nick Gentry. I can ‘just’ whatever I like.”
Her eyes were filled with questions. And with pity. What else could that be but pity? It made him feel sick. He didn’t need her questions, and he sure as hell didn’t need her pity.
“You don’t mean that.”
Rage, despair, emotions he’d kept at bay for months swamped him. He didn’t need to feel any of them. They were her fault, goddammit, her fault for intruding on his carefully constructed life.
“I always say what I mean, Duchess. Too bad you didn’t get that the first time, when I told you that the only payment I wanted for your room and board was a meal.”
She stared at him, the compassion in her eyes dimming.
Good, he thought, not only good but perfect.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His mouth twisted.
“Much as I appreciate the thought, a pity-fuck wasn’t necessary.”
Her face went white.
He wanted to cut out his tongue. Reach for her. Draw her into his arms. Tell her that he had not meant what he’d just said, that hurting her had been, in some ugly way, his only means of fully punishing himself for dragging her into the mess that was his life, but he stood his ground, kept his face expressionless.
The air between them hummed with tension.
He saw her hand jerk, then fist.
She wanted to hit him, but she wouldn’t. She’d already done that once, and she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d slug a cripple a second time.
“You’re right,” she said. “That’s precisely what it would have been. A pity-fuck, something I could write off on my 1040 as a charitable contribution.”
Any other time, he’d probably have laughed. The lady had some acting talent of her own.
But this wasn’t a time for laughter. Nick had been around Hollywood long enough to know a great exit line when he heard it, even if the line wasn’t his.
She stepped aside.
He hobbled past her.
The door slammed behind him, ha
rd enough to make the house shudder.
He made his way down the hall to his own room, slammed his own door with equal vigor, dumped his crutch against a chair and fell heavily into bed, fully-dressed and wide-awake. There was a half-full bottle of bourbon on the table next to the bed and he reached for it, unscrewed the cap, brought the bottle to his lips and took a long drink.
His poison of choice.