Nothing But This (Broken Pieces 2)

She chewed at her lip while she gently rocked Clara. The baby’s cries were diminishing, and she was starting to drift off, suckling on her tiny fist.

“It’s not like you’d be much protection against a determined evildoer,” she pointed out, giving him a scathing once-over. Or at least she hoped it was scathing, because while he was lean, he was well built and looked capable of taking apart most bad guys with his bare hands, and she couldn’t stop her eyes from lingering on some of the more pleasing aspects of his impressive physique.

“You know I have a black belt in Krav Maga.”

“I did not know that.” She kept her tone even, determined not to be impressed. But damn, from what she knew about the discipline, that was quite an achievement. “One of the very many things I don’t know about you.”

“It probably didn’t come up,” he said, sounding uncomfortable.

“Like the fact that you thought you couldn’t have children?” She couldn’t resist the completely unrelated barb. But it would take a bigger person than Libby to resist the allure of the opening he’d given her.

He didn’t respond to that, his face expressionless and his eyes blank and frigid. Libby sighed before shaking her head impatiently.

“You can sleep on the sofa.” She walked away without further comment, heading for her room.

She placed Clara in her crib and quickly went through her closet for some stuff before going back to the living room. Greyson was on the sofa, toeing off his trainers.

She still couldn’t get over the fact that he was wearing trainers. And jeans.

She dumped clean sheets, a pillow, and a thick comforter on the sofa next to him.

“If you use the toilet, jiggle the handle after you flush, or the cistern won’t fill. Oh, and open the kitchen cold-water faucet really slowly—if you don’t, your shirt will get soaked.”

“Anything else?” he asked. She tilted her head, trying to figure out if she detected sarcasm in the two words. In the end she decided that she didn’t really care and shrugged.

“Lots, but those are probably the things that will affect you most directly tonight.”

“Please let me fix up some stuff around the place. It’s for both you and Clara. You’d be free to focus on her a lot more if you didn’t have to worry about faulty plumbing.” The kitchen light chose that moment to brighten with a loud hum and then flicker. He glanced at it before focusing his gaze on her face. An ironic smile flirting with the edges of that too-beautiful, too-cruel mouth, he added, “And faulty electricity.”

“I may borderline loathe you, Greyson,” she admitted, and he winced at her frankness. “But you are Clara’s father, and I would hate for you to electrocute yourself trying to repair something you have no clue about.”

“Then allow me to hire someone to fix it for you?”

“Sorry, Mr. Moneybags, I refuse to allow you to pay for a single thing in my home.”

“Then let me fix it. I can fix it.”

She shook her head, and a half-amused, half-despairing laugh bubbled from her lips. She should let him, just to watch him fail. It would do him a world of good to be terrible at something for once.

“Good night, Greyson,” she said, hoping she sounded icy enough.

“Sleep tight, Olivia,” he responded in that disturbingly quiet voice of his.

Olivia. Nobody else called her that, which she was grateful for because she didn’t care for her name. Yet whenever Greyson said it in that darkly gentle way of his, it sent a frisson of pleasure shooting up her spine. She had always loved that he called her that. Because he was the only one who did, it felt special. Intimate.

Of course, I don’t feel that way anymore, she reminded herself. She didn’t care what he called her.

Chapter Seven

Greyson woke up with a stiff neck, a sore back, and a surly disposition. To say he had slept badly would be putting it mildly. The sofa was too short and too narrow to adequately house his tall, broad frame, and any movement had had the potential to send him tumbling to the carpeted floor. And he sure as hell didn’t want to wind up on that carpet. It was stained and looked like it hadn’t had a decent steam clean in years.

Greyson would be the first to admit that he was mildly germophobic. Well, it wasn’t so much germophobia as a revulsion to anything less than a clean living space. He knew some people would probably call it snobbery. But if that meant wanting to exist in a clean environment, then okay, he was a snob! Truth be told, this entire little trip to the Garden Route was severely testing his boundaries. The place he shared with Harris was truly revolting, and now Olivia’s house was less than ideal too.