In Bed with Boone
Шрифт:
As he watched, her eyes fluttered, opened, latched onto his and went wide with terror.
Jayne Barrington, demure Southern belle and his unwilling hostage, sat up, bringing the sheet with her. “Oh, no, it wasn’t a nightmare,” she said breathlessly. “You’re…you’re real.”
“Not the response I usually elicit from women I spend the night with,” Boone grumbled.
She took in the makeshift pallet on the floor, and her frightened expression softened. “You could have slept on the couch in the other room.”
“You could have left room for me on the bed, so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the…darn floor.”
Her lip actually curled. “I don’t think so.”
Annoying as she was, the girl recovered quickly. “So, what’s next?”
“Make me breakfast?”
She looked as horrified as she had at the prospect of sleeping with him. “I don’t cook!”
“Of course you don’t,” he muttered, coming to his feet.
She quickly covered her eyes. “You’re naked!”
“I am not!” Boone glanced down at the underwear he wore, a pair of baggy silk boxers that were, by his standards, modest.
She did not drop the hand from her eyes, protecting herself from the sight of his scantily clad body as she continued in a much calmer voice. “Nearly naked. Don’t you have a pair of pajamas?”
Boone stared at her and shook his head. “No.”
“Maybe you could get some.”
He laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. “I don’t think so.”
Jayne sighed and finally lowered her hand, but she didn’t look at him. Her eyes were turned to the window and the morning light that broke through the sliver of a part in the curtains.
Boone heard a footfall in the hallway outside the bedroom door. When he raised a finger to his lips, Jayne nodded her head and pursed her lips. She was spoiled and rich, a debutante who had no business here, but she was quick, he’d give her that.
He grabbed the corner post of the headboard.
“Not again,” Jayne whispered.
Boone shrugged and began to rock. Jayne lay down on the bed and covered her face with the sheet, squealing softly but appropriately when he reached down to pinch her lightly on one gently curving, sheet-covered shoulder.
Jayne had brushed off Boone’s suggestion that she wear one of his T-shirts and cinch up an old pair of cutoff denims, and dressed in her own clothes. Blouse and skirt, anyway, and shoes. No hose, no jacket, but she had retrieved her pearls from the bedside table and put them on, and she’d brushed her hair. Fortunately one of the hooligans had collected her purse from the Mercedes. Her cell phone was gone, of course, but she had her own brush, as well as a small amount of makeup. Very fortunately the criminal who had reached into the car for her purse hoping for a nice wad of cash hadn’t recognized the name Barrington on her driver’s license, a name her father had made well-known. In truth, she had done nothing on her own accord but to uphold the family name and play hostess for the sociable Senator Barrington when he asked it of her.
She plopped a large plate of bacon and eggs on the kitchen table, and the four men present stared suspiciously at the offering.
“The bacon’s not done,” Marty grumbled.
Doug picked up the strip nearest him, an almost black piece of bacon that had gotten away from her and turned dark before her very eyes. “This one is.”
“Bacon’s not good for you, anyway,” Boone said as he reached for the spoon Jayne had left in the scrambled eggs, took a huge spoonful and dropped it onto his plate.
Darryl grumbled, but he filled his own plate, too, and the four men began to eat. They each took a bite. Three men spit half-chewed eggs back onto their plates.
Boone swallowed, grudgingly. “Sugar, hand me the salt.”
“Salt!” Jayne said, turning around and heading for the kitchen counter. “I forgot all about the salt.”
“We figured that out for ourselves,” Doug said under his breath.
“There’s no need to be rude,” Jayne said as she placed the saltshaker on the table, directly in front of Boone. “I’m not a cook, you know. If you don’t like what I made for breakfast, you can just quietly walk away and either go hungry or make your own breakfast.”
Darryl, the man who had shot Jim, narrowed one eye. He still gave Jayne a major case of the shivers. She didn’t think it was simply his large size that frightened her. He’d shot and intended to kill Jim; he would have shot her without a second thought, without a twinge of conscience. Boone she could handle; the boys who giggled like teenage girls when they thought of sex she could handle. But Darryl…Darryl was much too frightening for her to even consider handling.
“If she’s going to stay here, she’s going to pull her weight,” Darryl said.
“She will,” Boone replied. Without warning, he grabbed her and pulled her onto his knee. “She does,” he added suggestively.
Jayne tried to stand; Boone held her in place. She knew what he was doing and she knew why. That didn’t mean she had to like it. “Not now,” she chided. “I have dishes to do. The kitchen is a mess.” She tried again to stand, and got only a few inches off his knee before he pulled her down again. She landed with a thump on his rock-hard thigh.
“I didn’t bring you here to do dishes,” he said in a voice low enough to be meant for her alone, loud enough to carry to the other three, who ate newly salted eggs and picked at their bacon looking for properly cooked segments. “Doug and Marty can do the damned dishes.”
“Don’t curse,” she said primly.
Boone tightened the arm that encircled her waist and pulled her back. “Don’t tell me what to do.” With that, he nudged aside her hair and pressed his lips to her neck. She couldn’t help it; she let out a squeaky breathless cry.
Doug giggled. “She is a squealer, ain’t she, Becker. Doesn’t that get on your nerves? All that howling?”
“No,” Boone responded, his mouth still against her neck.
“I really should do the…” Something wet trailed across the back of her neck. His mouth…his tongue. “Dishes.”