Chapter Two
Riley
Riley had seen a lot of big men in her chair.None of them looked like this one.
She sat on the rolling stool in her studio, studying Dan.
“Don’t think you have to hide your face from me.”
He reached up with one hand and hesitated for a long moment.She wasn’t sure he’d comply, but then Dan tugged the bandana down.
He had shoulders so broad he’d had to angle sideways to fit between the counters.The Rogue Maniacs cut had come off first, draped carefully over a chair like it was made of gold instead of leather.Then he sat there in a black T-shirt stretched tight across a chest that could have been carved from granite.
She snapped on nitrile gloves as she watched him, mostly so she wouldn’t do something stupid like run her bare hands over all that scarred muscle.
“Let me see the hand.”
Dan extended it without comment.His knuckles of four fingers were shallowly split open, blood already dry.Scars crisscrossed the back of his hand and disappeared under his sleeve.Old burns, surgical lines, shrapnel divots.His was a story written in skin.She wanted to know every inch of him.Jesus, I haven’t wanted anyone like I do this man.
Riley swallowed.“Do you perhaps come with a warning label, Just Dan?”
“Several.”He chuckled, and his voice rumbled like a truck’s diesel engine at idle.
She reached out for her supplies, cleaned the fresh cuts with a gauze square, and he didn’t even flinch.When she dabbed his fingers with antiseptic, his only reaction was a slight tightening of that square jaw.
“You always this stoic or only when pretty girls are pouring stinging stuff on you?”
That earned her the tiniest twitch at one corner of his mouth.Progress.
“Pretty girls don’t usually patch me up,” he said.“Generally, they run the other direction screaming.”
Riley paused, cotton ball dripping.“Their loss.”She smiled at him.“My gain.”
Something flickered in his dark eyes, there and gone before she could name it.She finished cleaning his hand in silence, then peeled the gloves off.
“Those HHMC assholes,” she said.“They’ve been sniffing around for weeks.I honestly thought they were just posturing after their club went tits-up.Guess not.”