Accidentally in Love with…a God?(Accidentally Yours #1)(30)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

I was being buttered up for Guy’s return? I felt deflated that Tommaso had been told to be kind to me. But why? Tommaso wasn’t my friend. He was just some drop-dead gorgeous, lethal über-assistant. So why the hell would I care if he was kind to me voluntarily or not?

“Well, tell Guy he can—”

“Let me guess—kiss your ass? You’ve got quite a mouth, you know that? Were you raised by truck drivers or sailors?”

“No, by doc—” Suddenly, my heart sank.

Tommaso’s face turned from a glowing olive to a pallid taupe as he guessed my thoughts. “I’m sorry, Miss Keane. That was inappropriate. I shouldn’t have reminded you.” He squeezed my arm.

I jerked it away and turned back to toward the house. “I’d rather rot in that room, than fraternize with Guy’s little whipping boy. You pathetic f**k.”

I felt him stalking closely behind. I half hoped he’d say something to retaliate because I needed a good verbal sparring to throw off some tension. Years of living with Guy had made that my instinctual method of release since I wasn’t allowed any others.

I marched up the stairs and made it to the door of my room before I felt a firm grasp on my shoulder. I reached for the handle, paused, but I didn’t turn it. Somehow, I knew he was very, very angry. Could it be because I called him a “pathetic f**k?”

The air was charged with resentment, and the voices were buzzing in my head like a giant electromagnetic generator. Did they get louder when my adrenaline was turned up? I pushed the noise to the background and, instead, focused on the angry man behind me.

Several moments passed while we both teetered, waiting for the other to pull the trigger, to push the other over that razor sharp edge between control and turbulent unchecked emotion.

Okay. I’ll bite. Maybe literally. “Let go, loser—”

He spun me around, pressing me to the door with the weight of his solid body, his golden eyes flickered with anger. “I am many things, Miss Keane, but I’m no one’s whipping boy. Best remember that.” He pressed his lips hard to mine, and I froze in shock. His lips felt…amazing. I hadn’t been kissed in—well, I was too busy enjoying the feel of a man’s body pressed to mine to count the years, but it had been a really, really long time, and Tommaso’s touch felt like a tall glass of water for my thirsty body. My core fluttered, my toes curled, and ni**les hardened.

Wait! What’s wrong with me? I’m letting another man bully me? I was a man-handle-magnet, even in my sleep.

Well, dammit, I was getting pretty effing tired of being groped, kissed, flung, bossed, poked, and smacked. “My turn,” I snarled.

I backhanded Tommaso clean across the face and punched him squarely in his washboard stomach. He let out a loud groan and doubled over, and when he did, I pushed him back with my foot. He fell over just as I slammed the door shut.

Damn that felt good. But how had I done it? In any case, it felt earthshattering! I threw my body against the door and pushed, bracing for him to burst into the room and finish the fight. I almost wanted him to because I was beginning to feel like I could actually kick his ass despite his extra hundred pounds of muscle and eleven inches of height. Okay, maybe I was feeling overly confident because of the adrenaline, but for the love of all things big and small, there’s only so much one girl can take.

But I waited, and waited, until I heard the bolt slide on the opposite side of door. I guess he didn’t want a second helping of Emma.

Chapter TWENTY

Later that afternoon, after coming off my girl-power high, my mind began flooding with thoughts about my little predicament. They weren’t good. They were filled with self-pity and worry. The thoughts of a weak person. Pathetic. I needed a distraction, not to wallow. And since there was no television or computer, exploring the bookshelves was the only way to kill time.

Carefully standing on a small wooden step stool, I picked through each shelf. The place felt more like a hotel—well furnished, but impersonal—so it never occurred to me that these objects might be Guy’s possessions.

There was the autobiography of Julius Caesar—someone had comically autographed the front page—the Mayan Popul Vuh; the complete works of Kurt Vonnegut, all the Russian classics—Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Pushkin—in Russian; and the history of the world in four volumes—hand written. Strange. Very strange.

Then there were the cookbooks. Shelf after shelf, all dedicated exclusively to desserts.

My kind of books.

I plucked out the thickest one, a gray cloth-bound book over a hundred years old, and thumbed the pages.

Simply put, I didn’t know what to make of it. Dozens of recipes had large, greasy fingerprints and notations in the margins: add extra 1/8 cup butter, too crunchy; replace currants with raisins; bake for additional 5 minutes at three eighty. But only the cookie recipes had them.

How odd. Were these Guy’s notes? I tried to visualize him with his massive height, shoulders the width of a side-by-side refrigerator, smooth, deep golden skin, ripped muscles—which cascaded down his chest into what had to be the only ten-pack abs I’d ever seen—shiny thick waves of long jet-black hair, his exquisitely sculpted cheekbones, angular jaw, fierce turquoise eyes, full, strong lips, and warrior-hands the size of Frisbees. Oh, not to mention his extremely firm ass, and sinfully large penis that promised to take a girl places only found in the steamiest corners of her sex-starved mind.

Ay-yai-yai. I fanned myself with my hand and imagined all-that-man, wearing nothing but a tiny, white apron, baking chocolate chip cookies. I mentally slapped myself. “Jeez, Emma. You’ve really lost it. Why don’t you just cue the cheesy disco music while you’re at it?”

A hard knock at the door pulled me away from fantasy land. Maybe it was Tommaso coming to make peace. My stomach did a little twist-and-shout at the thought of seeing him. “Come in,” I said loudly, still perched on my step stool.

The door slowly creaked opened, and in stepped a petite redhead with bright turquoise eyes, wearing tight black leather pants, a pink angora sweater with a giant glittery heart across the chest, and black leather boots. Her flame-colored hair, straight and flat, was cut in a Cleopatra style bob and she wore several jeweled bobby pins at her temples. Stripper meets girl next door?

The room instantly flooded with her presence, and from the look on her determined face, she wasn’t here for that double-chocolate fudge brownie recipe I was just drooling over.