Idol (VIP 1)

However, my charity does not extend to him following me. Which he does. I see him rise in my peripheral vision. He wobbles, then steadies before peeling off his shirt and slapping it to the ground.

A strip show. Great.

I pick up my pace, cursing that my driveway is so long—at least two hundred feet from curb to doormat.

Another movement and he’s flung a boot my way. I glance back, slightly alarmed. And there go his pants. Six-feet-something of sinewy, pissed off, naked male starts stalking up behind me. There are the tattoos I’d guessed at. Or rather, one massive one of swooping, intersecting lines that covers his upper left arm and torso.

I concentrate on that instead of the heavy length of his dick hanging between his legs, swaying like a pendulum with each step he takes toward me.

I glare over my shoulder. “You come any farther up my drive and I’ll shoot you.”

“You would have a shotgun, wouldn’t you, Elly May,” he snaps back. “Talk about a cliché. All you need is a pair of overalls and a piece of straw to chew on.”

I can’t help myself, I spin around. “Are you calling me a country bumpkin?”

He halts too. Hands low on his hips, utterly unashamed of his nakedness, my lawn bum stands there, glaring at me like he owns the world. “Are you saying you aren’t, Huckleberry Pie?”

Heat swims over my skin. I stride right up to him—well, not too near; I’m still afraid of the stench. Up close, I can admit that he isn’t bad looking. Past all the scruff, bloodshot onyx eyes, and pasty morning-after complexion, he has blunt but even features, and lashes long enough to make a girl envious. This just makes me angrier.

“Listen, buddy, stalking a woman while naked can be construed as an act of sexual intimidation.”

He snorts. “That speaks volumes for your sex life, Elly May. But don’t you worry. Even if I had the slightest interest in doing you, I have a nice case of whisky dick working, so nothing’s getting up right now.”

“Happens a lot, does it?” I wrinkle my nose, refusing to look down. “And you talk about my sexual deficiencies.”

A glint comes into his eyes, and I could swear he wants to laugh. But he smirks instead, his lip curling in annoyance. “Give me an hour and some coffee, and then we can talk about it all you want.”

“Next thing you know, you’ll be demanding breakfast too.”

A cheeky smile lights him up. “Well, now that you mention it…”

“You know what pisses me off the most?” I snap.

His thick, dark brows scrunch up as if he’s confused. “What?”

He actually says it like he hasn’t heard me right, not as a response to my question. But I answer him anyway.

“You could have hurt someone else. You could have hurt me, or some poor soul along the way, with your drunk-ass driving.” Grief sinks its fingers into my heart. “You could have destroyed lives, left people behind to pick up the pieces.”

He blanches, those ridiculous lashes of his sweeping his cheeks as he blinks.

“You want to kill yourself?” I snap. “Do it some other way—”

My voice dies as a snarl leaves him, and he honest-to-God bares his teeth at me. He takes a hard step in my direction as though he might actually come at me, but he halts himself. “Don’t you dare…You have no fucking clue what I’ve… ” His face goes gray as he glares down from his great height.

We stare at each other while he kind of just sways there, all pasty and trembling, his anger so near the surface that his eyes shine with it.

It’s that pain-filled rage that snares me, distracts me from the warning signs.

“You don’t know…” He swallows convulsively.

Only then does it occur to me that I’m in trouble. I leap back, but it’s too late. My lawn bum hunches over and hurls. All down my front.

Shock roots me to the spot for an agonizing moment. Then the smell hits me anew. I force myself to look up, face my tormentor. A thousand curses race through my head but only one sentence gets past my clenched teeth.

“I hate you.”

Killian

Usually when a woman tells you she hates you with a cold, dead look in her eye, she makes an effort to avoid all further contact.

Not so with Elly May, she of the water hose from hell.

Okay, I did just yack all over her, so she might have reason to hate me. Very good reason.

I haven’t apologized to anyone in years. A small voice in my head is telling me I should do it now. But the whisky still sloshing around in my head is drowning that voice out. Shit, everything is sloshing right now—the ground, my brain, my blood. My ears are ringing.

I’m going down. I know I am. Vague surprise registers as my tormentor steps forward, not away, and wraps her arms around me. Holding me up.