“Well, I bet that woman is glad you were there and decided to do the right thing,” I said softly, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze.
He winced slightly as I applied another dab of antiseptic to a cut on his arm. “Yeah, I guess,” he replied. “Shit, that stuff stings.”
“I know,” I said. “Funny how you can take a hundred punches from some random guy in an alleyway, but the Betadine gets you in the end.”
He grinned. “No shit, huh?”
I wet another clean cloth and wiped his chest down, and a spark jolted through my veins as more and more heat blossomed between my legs. God, this was inappropriate. I was helping patch up my stepbrother after he’d beaten the shit out of a guy, and all I could think of was how much I wanted to jump his bones.
Pushing the intrusive thoughts aside, I frowned as I dabbed more antiseptic on another cut.
“You know, like I was saying earlier, most people wouldn’t even bother trying to defend a woman being attacked,” I said. “They’d just think, ‘oh it’s none of my business, and I might get hurt if I try to help,’ and then they’d walk away. I guess I can understand that, but you’re different. You’re brave.”
“Not as brave as some people,” he said, his face darkening.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my forehead creasing inquisitively.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, are you hungry? We could go grab a burger at Clancy’s. You know, finish off that shitty first date of ours…in a platonic way, of course.”
I wasn’t an idiot; I could tell when someone was trying to change the subject, so I didn’t pursue it anymore. Clearly, there was something he didn’t want to discuss, and I wasn’t going to force it out of him.
“Sure,” I replied with a smile. “Food sounds great.”
It really did. Even if I couldn’t be anything more than a friend and a sister to the guy, that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy whatever time I managed to spend with him.#p#分页标题#e#
“Oh, by the way…” he said. He reached into his pocket, which was bulging slightly. “You forgot this.”
“Huh?”
I looked down to see him holding my scarf in his hands.
“I figured that’s why you came into the alley in the first place,” he said. “Fucking thing blew right into my face and I almost missed landing a punch. I picked it up just before we left.”
He handed it to me, and as I grabbed it, my fingertips touched his and another jolt of electricity streamed through me.
Scratch what I said about being friends. No matter how much I lied to myself and others, he was never really going to be ‘just a friend’ to me, and as I considered that fact, one glaring thought stood out in the forefront of my mind.
Finn Grayson was the sexiest man I’d ever seen, and if I kept thinking this way, he was damn well going to be the end of me.
So how the hell was I supposed to stop?
Chapter Thirteen
Finn
The Crown was always crazily busy in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and if anyone wanted to have dinner in one of our restaurants or book a room for a conference, they would’ve had to have made a reservation months ago. By now, I knew the round-up of every event we had by heart, and today, I didn’t even need my clipboard to see what was happening. We had an Italian dinner special for room service customers tonight, and all the biggest hotel conference rooms had been booked—one for a meeting for some culinary magazine, the second for a photo shoot and the last one for a pharmaceutical company.
I was just heading downstairs to make sure everything was okay when I had a wicked idea. It was technically my day off, and even though he was generally an incompetent fool, I figured Elijah could handle one damn day of work without me. I was sick of being married to my job when there were other things on my mind.
Well, not things…people.
One person in particular. Yeah, you know who.
As I locked my door, my gaze floated towards Rory’s room, and I pictured her in there, probably all snuggled up in bed reading a book. Right now, I didn’t want to supervise the hotel or do someone else’s job. All I wanted to do was spend time with her. Our little bonding session after my fight in the alley the other night had been nice, and I was quite sure that I’d officially gained her trust and respect once she’d realized that I’d only beaten the shit out of the guy out of a need to defend the girl he’d attacked.
The whole thing had well and truly solidified our new friendship, but honestly, any moment I could get with Rory got my head spinning, and not in a platonic way…