Page 4 of Untamed
For the most part now, we pretended that those kisses had never happened, that he’d never pulled my breast from the cup of its bra and thumbed its nipple while we leaned against the wall in the hallway outside my room. But once in a while, he’d cast me that sexy little smirk again, making me think that he might have felt a bit more of that chemistry than I had.
“Going to see Margot?” The moment passed, and Nolan leaned against the wall.
“Yeah. About the vandalism.” Irritation snaked through me again. I didn’t like that I’d been left in the dark. It must have shown on my face, because he pushed back off the wall.
“Well, I think I’m going to go fill my bathtub with ice and sit in it for about an hour.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts, though I thought I caught a flash of disappointment in his eyes. “See you at the bar later?”
“Maybe.” I smiled tightly. “Enjoy your ice bath, you wild thing.”
He laughed, sauntering back down the hall. I sighed, then knocked on Margot’s door. “It’s unlocked!” The producer of Digging Discoveries with Dr. Dunn had a voice that sounded like she smoked a pack a day, even though she’d quit smoking two years earlier. I pushed into her room—what the motel laughingly called a suite—and found her seated at the desk, dressed in what she considered business attire—a short, tight skirt that wouldn’t cover a thing if she sneezed, and a camisole that she wore with nothing underneath.
In her early forties, with cherry-red lips and long black hair, she looked pretty good. But the combination of the air-conditioning and her thin top meant that I didn’t quite know where to look. Madison would have been speechless. “Someone vandalized my door. Would you happen to know anything about it?”
Margot and I weren’t alone in the room. There was a man standing against the wall, a man so massive I wasn’t sure how my eyes hadn’t immediately been drawn to him. I knew that I’d never seen him before.
He stood with his boots planted shoulder-width apart, hands behind his back, his bearing rigid. He was easily a foot over my own five-three, but it wasn’t his height that made him seem so gigantic. He was just big, a huge mass of rock-solid muscle.
Really hot rock-solid muscle. Simply dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, he had biceps roughly the size of my head. Tawny skin stretched tightly over those muscles, daring my fingers to find out if he was hard or soft to the touch.
His hair was closely cropped and black as night, and the eyes that flicked a steely gaze my way were a pale, ethereal green and surrounded by dark lashes. The eyes seemed at odds with the rest of him, too beautiful to match the solid flesh everywhere else.
“This her?” He barely moved, cocking his head the tiniest bit at Margot, who nodded.
“Sit down, Cari.” With a wave of her hand, she indicated that should I sit on the ratty couch against the wall. I did, watching the man warily.
“Margot, what’s going on?” My producer often played the part of a Southern belle, ratcheting up the drama, especially in the presence of an attractive man. Right now, though, she simply removed her reading glasses and sighed.
“What’s this about paint on your door?”
“Spray paint. Nice and fresh.” I fidgeted, crossing my legs before uncrossing them again. “Apparently someone thinks I’m a bitch. And apparently, this hasn’t been the first time.”
I pursed my lips as I stared her down. No, I didn’t care for confrontation, but I knew Margot better than I knew myself most days. I wasn’t afraid to let her know how unhappy I was to be left out of this.
“Shit.” Margot looked at the man. I don’t think he moved, but something in that exchange seemed to answer her question. “Cari, I haven’t been honest with you. It’s not just your door here at the motel. There have been threats.”
“What are you talking about?” She had my full attention now, dragging it away from the massive man.
“Well. Since someone’s lips have been flapping…this isn’t the first act of vandalism. Someone painted some other choice words on your truck while you were at the site one day.”
“What?” I’d felt a little bit nauseous when I’d first seen the damage done to my door. Now I fought against the bile that wanted to coat my throat. “What words?”
“I believe you were called a slut and a cock tease.” She tapped her glasses on the desk and cast me a sympathetic glance. “Nolan washed the paint off before it could dry.”
“Nolan knew about this?” Temper made the words sound like lashes of a whip. “And no one thought I needed to know?”
“Well, the paint was annoying but not harmful, honey. Given the wording, I thought it was Russ Daly. You know, since you turned down that delightful offer to…what was it? Knock you up and keep you that way?”
Cock tease.Next time I saw him, maybe I’d punch him in the nose after all.
“So why are you telling me now?” I was more than a little pissed that both Margot and Nolan, and hell, probably other members of my team, had known about this and said nothing.
“Yesterday someone sent me one of our promo posters. They’d drawn in some, ah, bodily harm and some more choice names.” Margot rubbed her fingers over her lips. The massive man remained silent. “We’ve notified the local police, but the network decided they’d feel better if you had some protection.”
“Protection?” I echoed, staring dumbly at her. This was surreal. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “I’m not carrying a gun. You know I hate them.”
“You won’t be the one with the gun.” The words were a deep rumble, whiskey and steel. Looking up, I found myself on the receiving end of a stare from those insanely gorgeous eyes set in that badass face.
Something inside of me came alive as he watched me quietly—my skin became sensitized, my flesh felt warm.
“Margot, who the hell is this?” I ran my tongue over suddenly dry lips. I didn’t know how to deal with this…whatever the hell it was. My pulse was thundering, and I felt short of breath.
“Cari, this is Jasper Benjamin.” The man tilted his head, the classic guy nod, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. How could he be so stoic when all of these feelings were racing around inside of me? Didn’t he feel it, too?
“He’s your new bodyguard.”
