Page 15 of This Wild Heart

What a fucking liar I was. This whole thing was a giant storm cloud of worry, and I didn’t see it disappearing any time soon.

“You have a whole list of why you wanted to do this,” he continued, and I speared my hands into my hair and tugged, but the bite of pain did not wake me up from any possible nightmare.

“Did I?” I asked weakly.

He started ticking points off on his fingers. “Money, first and foremost, because you want to partner with Vida in this. Have a job that’s yours, that you believe in, and not just a paycheck or something your family built. Second, since you got fired, you and Vida will have the time to write the children’s book you’ve been toying with for the past year.” As he spoke, I started rubbing the side of my throat because I could still breathe, right? His eyes lingered on the action. “Want me to keep going?”

My head felt like it was on a string, floating a hundred feet above my shoulders, but I managed a tight nod.

“Third, you know your family is worried, and you hate that,” he said evenly, but his eyes were so bright, so intense, I couldn’t look away. “You and I have that in common.That’swhat I get out of this.”

I saw it. Every time they looked at me, I saw their worry. And it was on display constantly, given that I’d moved back home and was picking up shifts at my parents' gym to make some money. My family’s worry might look different from Parker’s because they came from different places. But a thread of awareness slipped almost unnoticed through my mind, taking root somewhere deep.

Maybe Parker was made of glass too, no matter how stunning his armor might be.

“Anything else?”

Lord, I tried to ask it flippantly because that had to be it, but there was a spark buried in his eyes that a pit bloomed in my stomach and only grew the longer it took him to answer.

“One more,” he said in a dangerous rumble that I felt dead center in my chest.

I licked my lips. “What else is there?”

Parker reached forward and gently picked up my hand, toying with the tips of my fingers like he had all the time in the world. My spine tingled like someone dragged an exposed wire straight up to the back of my neck. A memory plucked at the back of my mind, and when he brought my hand up to his mouth and lightly dragged my fingers over his firm lips, I had a sudden, vivid memory of him doing that when he first joined us at our table.

It made me breathless then too.

“We get to make Max Bridges absolutely miserable,” he said. “He’ll hate this, won’t he? You and me, a passionate, whirlwind marriage that shows him exactly how much he fucked up by not taking care of you the way he should have.”

The hammering of my heart drowned out all my racing thoughts except one.

Good.

It was petty. It was brutal. And it held a visceral edge that reminded me of landing a good punch. Inside, the glass trembled but held.

I was up off the chair in the next breath. “I need clean clothes. Where’s my suitcase?”

“By the door,” he answered, easing up off the floor to watch me pace.

“You need clothes on too,” I snapped. “Don’t you have pants? Or a shirt?”

Like he had all the time in the fucking world, Parker scratched at his abs, and damn, damn, damn him, my eyes darted down to the insane squares of muscle stacked on top of each other. His obliques shifted with his unhurried movements, and I tried not to stare at the thin line of golden brown hair that disappeared into those black boxer briefs. And I swear on all that’s holy, I tried even harder than that to ignore the impressive bulge underneath.

My lips rolled together when he let out a quiet chuckle, but the man took pity on me and snagged a pair of gray joggers out of his duffel bag and slipped them up over his long legs.

Yeah, because gray sweatpants made him look so much less obnoxiously attractive.

“Better?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes so hard I almost snapped my retina.

“Is that a no?” he called to my retreating back while I walked briskly to the front door of his suite to grab my suitcase.

I heaved it onto the coffee table and unzipped it, tearing out a pair of cotton shorts. His jersey hung so far down on my legs that the shorts weren’t even visible.

“Keep your back turned,” I told him.

Parker quirked an eyebrow but did as I asked, turning in a slow half circle with his hands raised.

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