“You made a lot of questionable decisions this evening.” Ugh, was that a hint of smugness in that neutral tone?
No. Just no. She couldn’t deal right now. And if she’d had the energy, she would have objected, when he followed that statement up with, “Some of which we will discuss in the morning.”
Aah, God! She hated it when he systematically highlighted all the ways she had apparently recklessly endangered her life during whatever mundane activities or events she participated in through the course of a normal day. She then had to sit through half an hour of him mansplaining everything she could have done better.
She muffled a groan and dragged a pillow over her head to block out the rosy glow of the ugly frosted pink chandelier hanging from an ornate plaster ceiling rose.
It was so tacky.
She didn’t want to think about that now. She didn’t want to think about anything right now. Tyler was right, as always, she needed sleep. She allowed herself to relax, secure in the knowledge that she was safe, cared for…and that he wouldn’t leave her.
Not Tyler.
He was a rock.
And while she had never given him the satisfaction of stating it out loud, she trusted him implicitly.
It was bright out when next Vicki opened her eyes. She swallowed down a surge of nausea as the room spun around her. The hideous pink of her room made her feel even worse, and she shut her puffy eyelids for a second in an attempt to block it out. But all that ghastly pink was burned onto her retinas, thanks to the bright sunlight bouncing off the surfaces.
She sat up and glanced down automatically when the warm covers slid to her lap. Her brow furrowed—even though the tiny movement hurt like hell—as she tried to figure out what she was looking at.
It wasn’t the fifty shades of pink patchwork quilt that she expected to see. Instead, it was a man’s suit jacket. Charcoal gray. Armani, if she wasn’t mistaken. And it smelled like a crisp winter morning. No wonder her sleep had been filled with unsettlingly erotic dreams about being wrapped in Tyler’s arms.
She shoved the garment aside and glared at it. She did not want to have raunchy dreams about Tyler Chambers.
He was like a perfect Ken doll…No wait, that was wrong—a pinstripe suited GI Joe figurine in mint condition. Confined to the box and for display purposes only. Fine to look at but not to touch, or play with, or…or strip naked for sexy times with her Barbie.
Okay, this analogy was getting away from her fast. He was attractive. She’d have to be a nun not to notice that. And she was pretty sure that even if she were a nun, she’d notice. He was very, very good looking in a rugged, manly, untouchable way.
Nothing in his cool, professional demeanor encouraged anything further. And that was fine. He wasn’t her type anyway.
Or more likely, she wasn’t his type. And that was fine too. Dangerous, sexy men like Tyler Chambers didn’t find vertically challenged, curly haired, bespectacled, freckled, girl-next-door types like her attractive anyway. He found them vaguely boring. Something which she knew as an empirical fact.
He thought she was a snooze fest.
Every damned day, once he knew that she wasn’t in immediate danger of being assassinated, or whatever, he went into this neutral mode. He kind of spaced out, aware…but not quite there. It was one of the reasons she had pushed back so often in the beginning. To see how much he truly noticed.
More fool her because he soon proved himself to notice everything. But those first few weeks of spoiled brat behavior from Vicki had set his opinion of her in stone.
She shook herself, and then clamped a hand over her mouth when the movement gave her a serious case of the gags.
She shifted to the edge of the bed, her actions slow and measured, and paused for a moment before swinging her legs over the side. The absurd bed was so high, her feet didn’t reach the floor, and she scooted forward until her butt was braced at the very edge of the mattress.
A perfunctory knock sounded on her door, and it swung inward without further warning. Tyler stepped inside with a breakfast tray resting on his left forearm and palm, his right hand still on the door handle. His head was down, he appeared focused on balancing the tray, and he didn’t immediately spot her sitting there with her naked legs dangling over the side of the bed. Worse, her skirt had ridden almost all the way up to her waist, leaving her underwear exposed. His head lifted before she could react or cover herself, and his eyes went straight to her crotch.
Her face flamed and she hastily dropped her hands into her lap. Why was this damned skirt so short? She kept telling herself she would never wear it again. But she loved how sparkly it was, and until she found an equally dazzling replacement for it, she wouldn’t part with it.