Falling for the Marine (McCade Brothers 2)

Her hand settled protectively over his lower back. “Don’t. I’m glad you’re not in pain, but you’ve still got to be careful until the swelling in the disc subsides.”

“Chloe, I appreciate your concern,” and since it was genuine, he shifted off her, then sat up and faced her while he spoke, “but I don’t need you to nurse me. I think the better question to be asking this morning, is, ‘How are you?’”

The muted light from the not-quite-closed curtains didn’t hide the fact that her gray eyes clouded, and she developed a sudden fascination with the wall just behind him. “I’m okay.”

He ran a hand over her hair. She looked so forlorn, he couldn’t help himself. “Did you get fired?”

She blew out a breath and glanced over at him. The corner of her mouth curved up into a phantom smile. “Big time.”

If she’d looked forlorn before, she looked downright devastated now. Normally, he was nobody’s cheerleader, but for some stupid reason he said, “Don’t worry. You’ll find another job. You’re an amazing masseuse.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She ran her hand over her face, blinked a few times, and shook her head. “What’s not a maybe is I have some packing to do.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. She got up from the bed, and he took one moment to appreciate the picture she presented, all tousled and tumbled and gorgeously, unselfconsciously naked. Then he reached out and caught her arm. “Why packing? Where are you going?”

“Michael.” She swung her head around and looked at him.

“Chloe,” he replied.

“This is not your problem.”

“I’ll be the judge. Where are you going?”

She plopped back down on the bed and shrugged. “My employer is a temp agency called Helping Hands. When they booked me for the job at the clinic, they also arranged for things like my rental car and the apartment here at Casa Clemente. Per the terms of my contract, I have to turn in the car and be out of the apartment twenty-four hours following the end of my assignment. Otherwise, they’ll start eviction proceedings and I can kiss good-bye any chance of working with them in the future.”

“Twenty-four hours? That’s a pretty miserly amount of time.”

Chloe shrugged again. “It’s standard in the traveling healthcare industry. Generally, it’s not a problem because I know the assignment end date, I have a new assignment to go to, and I plan accordingly. This time, however…things didn’t go as planned.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’ll go”—her eyes wandered to his fascinating blank wall—“um, home, I guess…until they find me a new assignment.”

A lie if he’d ever heard one. He took her chin and waited until she looked at him. “Where will you go,” he repeated softly.

“I don’t know, okay? But that’s not your problem.” She pulled away and started searching the sheets. “Where in God’s name are my clothes?”

He stayed on mission. “Do you need a loan to get home?”

“No.” Her expression reflected a combination of pride and panic. “I have to get out of here.” She abandoned her search for her clothes and started to stand.

He caught her shoulder and guided her back down onto the bed, then kept his hand on her arm to hold her in place. “Chloe, I can’t let you walk away without some assurance you’re doing it safely.” He bent his head slightly so they were eye to eye. “Your situation is at least half my fault. Let me be at least half the solution.”

The energy seemed to bleed out of her as they stared at each other. Finally, she said, “That’s very gentlemanly of you, but you can’t loan me the money to get home because there is no home. Home is my next job, wherever and whenever that may be.”

Oh, shit. “Hell of a way to live.”

“It worked just fine for the past year,” she shot back, defensiveness in every line of her body. “Sorry I don’t have the recommended six-to-nine months of emergency savings banked, but times have been a little tough here at Chloe Kincaid Enterprises due to factors I like to call NOYB.”

He ignored the sarcasm and kept working toward a solution. “You getting fired and kicked out of your apartment is my business.”

She shook her head, sending tendrils of hair dancing around her bare shoulders.

Stubborn. Fine and dandy. He could be stubborn, too. “What about your folks?”

“No,” she said firmly, and her closed-off expression told him he’d hit a dead end there.

“I could give you the money for a hotel—”