Page 30 of Fighting for Irish
Chapter Eight
It was times like these when Kat wished she was a part of the technologically obsessed world. She’d give anything to have her cell phone so she could call Irish and see if he was okay.
Ever since he’d left more than an hour earlier, she’d paced, rocked, and drove herself mad with worry. She didn’t even have Xander to try and reassure her, since he was still at work. At last she heard the faint whine of his bike grow louder. She would have run out to meet him in the shed, but Ally had been playing Guard the Castle on the porch all night. After what seemed like forever, he jogged up the steps and walked through the door. Kat froze in her pacing and did a quick scan to make sure no appendages were broken or missing.
“Thank God you’re all right,” she said. “I kept imagining the worst.”
“I’m fine.” He pulled off his gloves and riding jacket and set them on the back of the couch.
She winced at the sight of his split lower lip. Hopefully that was the worst they’d given him. “What happened? What did they say?”
“I gotta get out of these clothes and shower. We’ll talk after.”
Aiden strode across the room without another word. His terse demeanor stunned her, to say the least, but she told herself it might be normal for him. She didn’t know him that well, after all. “Do you want me to make you coffee or anything?”
He emerged from his bedroom holding a pair of boxer briefs and jersey shorts with a towel wrapped around his waist. “No. I’ll be out in a minute,” he said on his way into the bathroom, then closed the door behind him.
She heard the water in the shower go on as she started to pace. She could try to justify it, but the truth was that she knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t be so cold to her for no reason. He’d never treated her with anything other than care and consideration from the day they met. Something was wrong.
Steeling herself before she lost her nerve, Kat strode across the room and opened the door wide. “Hey—”
The vinyl curtain ripped back to show a very soapy, very colorful, and—holy shit—very well-hung Irish braced for attack mode. “Jesus Christ, Kat, what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, rising to his full height. “I almost jumped you, for fuck’s sake!”
He whipped the curtain back to its closed position and snapped her back to the present. For a second there, she’d been entertaining images of his slick body “jumping” hers. She needed to stay focused on the more important issue at hand. Like whether or not she needed a new identity and a crash course in speaking Spanish.
“You’re freaking me out, Irish. I can tell something’s wrong. You can’t expect me to wait until you’re through showering to—”
The water turned off as the curtain slid to the side, yet again derailing her thoughts. He ran his hands forward over his head, squeezing out excess water from his longer hair on top. Droplets of water randomly trailed down his body, highlighting the bright colors in his skin, winking over the silver bars in his nipples, and sliding between the valley of his abs.
Irish grabbed the towel off the bar and wrapped it around his waist again as he stepped out of the tub onto the shower mat. “To what, Kat?”
“Hmm?” What did he say? Snap out of it! “Oh, to hear what happened.”
Royal blue eyes considered her for several long moments. Professor Xavier’s telepathy powers would come in handy right about now. Then, not only would she know what had happened at her apartment, but she’d know the thoughts running rampant in his head at her ogling his assets.
“Look, coffee this late will keep me up,” he finally said, “but if you don’t mind grabbing me a juice, I’ll be right out.”
“Yeah, sure, of course. I’m sorry.”
She gave him a weak smile and left the bathroom. Something was definitely wrong. He was acting different. And not in a good way. It must be bad news, she thought as she took a bottle of juice out of the fridge and cracked open the lid. As she wracked her brain as to what the bad news could be, Kat tipped the plastic bottle to her lips, sipped…and spit it into the sink.
“Blech!” She held it up and shuddered just reading the label. “Cranberry.”
“Good for the kidneys,” he said, coming up behind her and relieving her of his juice.
“Cranberry juice is so…” She turned to face him, her sentence trailing off at the sight of him as he killed the whole bottle, his throat stretched, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each swallow. “…delicious.”
His black shorts rode so low on his hips as to almost have no point in being worn at all. It didn’t matter that she’d seen him naked twice no more than five minutes earlier. Somehow this was sexier, with the deep V-cut of his obliques disappearing beneath the elastic waistband, torturing her with thoughts of where those muscles would lead her fingers if she traced them to their ends.
Irish tossed the bottle in the garbage and leaned back on the counter. “If it’s so delicious, why’d you spit it out?”
“Hmm?” Oh my God, you’re like a broken idiotic record around him unless he’s fully clothed. Smooth, Kat, real smooth. “Oh, no, I meant disgusting. Too tart for my taste, I guess.” Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “We still talking about juice?”
She shook her head, the errant sections of hair that had fallen from her messy up-do over the harrowing evening swaying on her cheeks and neck. “The news.”
“Not at all,” he said. “They backed off. They’re gonna wait until Marx gets out and take it up with him.”
