Page 45 of Sharp Lies

I led him to a chair and pushed him down, not bothering to ask whether he wanted to go. I didn’t know what he’d been doing, but he’d just lost the right to tell me no about anything.

“The other guy better have more than just a black eye,” I noted, bending over him and brushing my fingertips gently across the skin. It was swollen, all right, and it’d be bruised in no time flat.

He didn’t need frozen peas. He needed a steak. And probably some food. I’d seen guys fighting on the road all the time, and they always came out of it hungry, like the adrenaline needed for the fight went through all the calories they’d had on hand, and they needed to recharge.

Warren jerked at even the softest touch and looked up at me balefully. “Don’t touch. It hurts.” Then the corner of his mouth pulled up. “And the other guy does look worse.”

“Are you going to tell me who he is and why you were fighting?”

“No. You’re not my keeper.”

“And yet I ran over here the moment I heard your truck pull in and knew by the way you’d parked and slammed the door that something had happened. And you’re sitting here with a bag of frozen vegetables on your face when what you really need is a steak. And some food.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” he scoffed.

I leaned down and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to his lips, and though I could feel that he didn’t want to, by the end of it he was kissing me back, his fingers wrapped in my hair and his face tilted up to take more of me.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing, and I’ll feed you,” I whispered. “I know you’ve got to be hungry.”

He groaned from somewhere deep in his chest and tightened his fingers in my hair. “Hungrier than you can imagine.”

I pulled away, laughing. “I’m talking about food, cowboy. That eye doesn’t want ice. It wants steak.”

He made a face at me. “Steak won’t do anything but cause a potential infection, girl. It wants something cold. Iced peas does that just as well as anything else.”

Okay, he might have a point there, because I had to admit that I’d never heard exactly how steak was supposed to help a black eye. I’d just figured that people did it and they must know. But still.

“Steak would probably taste awfully good, though,” I murmured. “You might know more than me about whether it’ll help with a black eye, but I do know that men who’ve been fighting want food. And I’m guessing you don’t have much here.”

I stood up, walked to the fridge, and opened it to find mostly empty shelves. When I went to the cupboard, I found much the same. I’d learned in the short time I’d known him that Warren didn’t do much shopping and did even less eating, unless it was in town. The man didn’t seem to believe there was any reason to cook anything.

Even more reason for him to come home with me.

But first.

“Tell me what you were fighting about, and I’ll take you to Mom’s house for dinner,” I said, finished messing around with him.

He glared at me... and then started talking. “I was at the bar having a drink when that cop we met the other night came in. Layton, was it? Walked right up to me and told me flat-out to stay away from you. Said nothing good could come of me getting too close to you and that you were off-limits.”

“What?” I gasped. “That doesn’t... Off-limits according to who?”

Warren shrugged. “I didn’t bother to ask. I was too busy laying into him. Got right up in his face and threw a few punches before he even knew what was going on, and by the time he caught up, his lips were too swollen for him to tell me whose side he was on. Then someone pulled me off him and threw me out of the bar, and it was all over. Had a time talking my way out of getting arrested, but it turns out being a vet means something in this town.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, because what I’d been about to say—what I’d been about to ask—was suddenly swept to the side. I wanted to know why Layton thought he had any right to claim me for anyone, or say Warren didn’t have the right to hang out with me. Who was Layton to interfere with my business? Who was he to try to dictate who I was allowed to be around?

But then I remembered how he’d barely paid attention when Warren and I had gone in to tell him about Tony breaking into my house and threatening me. And I remembered the ER doctor telling me that I’d be better off getting out of town.

Aunt Susan listing the families whose lives had been ruined by the McCarthy men.

And finally, Madison coming around and saying that Tony had been dating a bunch of women who all looked like me, but that he’d never had any of them move into his house. Her assumption that he was still obsessed with me.

“Tony McCarthy,” I said quietly.

Warren looked up, frowning. “No, he wasn’t there.”

“But he might as well have been. After all, Layton is just his stand-in.”

I told him about Madison showing up and everything she’d said, about him hitting her and her not wanting to go for help because she was too impressed with who he was, and then about him leaving her for another woman. And all the women who came afterward and looked like me.