Hitched by Ruthie Knox Page A

T-shirt clammy and her head weirdly elephantine, perched on top of her spindly little neck.
    And while she was wishing, she went ahead and wished he hadn’t brought her to the office, too. She’d been avoiding it ever since she opened a file drawer and found it empty.
    Everything was empty that was supposed to be full. The files, her grandma’s apartment, the storage area—nearly all of Susan Bowman’s personal effects had been swept off the face of the earth, leaving behind her furniture, the Airstream, and inside it a stack of boxes with Ashley’s name on them.
    She’d opened only one and found in it nothing but a few folders labeled “Finances.” Tax records from the past decade. Title transfer documents that had taken Ashley half an hour to understand the gist of. A stack of quarterly rent receipts that went back two years.
    Flipping through papers on the floor of the trailer, she had felt the pain of utter betrayal grow inside her until it was a pressure so intense that she’d been sure she couldn’t draw another breath without choking on the tears she was trying to repress.
    She hadn’t been back in the office, Grandma’s apartment, or the Airstream since. Instead, she’d stuck to the little gardener’s cottage that had been her bedroom since Grandma converted it as a sixteenth birthday present.
    She didn’t want to be here now—to be feeling the familiar nap of the couch under her legs or smelling ancient nicotine and Grandma’s phantom mint tea with every breath she took. It was all a little much at the moment, and Roman made it worse. Maybe it was the dream, or maybe it was the fact that he’d caught her and carried her inside, but he looked good. Not plastic-good, but wet-haired, dark-stubbled, frowning forehead messy good.
    “You look awful,” he said, in that rich, vowel-tumbling voice of his. That voice that reminded her of the way he’d groaned in her dream, low and harsh and animal.
    She closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.
    Then she took another one, just in case the first one hadn’t been deep and cleansing enough to get her through this conversation.
    “I could use a shower and a sandwich,” she said. “And some clean clothes. And about three days to sleep.”
    “But considering there’s a hurricane on the way and we’ve got to hook up your trailer and pack your stuff and get out of here …”
    “Yeah.” She braced a hand against the back of the couch and sat up the rest of the way, irritated with herself for about seven different reasons. For passing out. For being tired andhungry. For being swollen and slippery between her legs, and for failing to shut down her insanely inappropriate arousal now that she was awake.
    For being unequal to the situation. As always.
    She lifted her hand and felt the ends of her hair. Still damp, but not dripping, and clumped into thick locks the way it did when it dried on its own.
    She’d been out over a half hour, surely.
    On the table behind her grandmother’s desk, a green ceramic mug steamed peppermint fumes into the air. Not phantom tea, then. Real tea that he must have made for her. The snack basket held microwave popcorn, chips, candy, and gum. Grandma had a weakness for junk food.
    “I can get by with that tea and some popcorn, for starters.”
    “Good.”
    When she stood up, the throw fell off her legs, and the floor buckled. Or possibly her knees. She reached out a hand to brace herself against nothing at all and somehow ended up jamming her palm into his chest so hard, her wrist shrieked.
    “Whoa,” he said. “Slow down.”
    He had his hands on her. His bare hands. One at her waist, the other spreading over her ribs. Her shirt had rucked up when she fell, and the only thing keeping her off the floor was Roman’s hands.
    She glanced down at her legs, traitorously intertwined with his. “This looks bad.”
    “You were falling.”
    “I know, but you caught me.” Twice. Inside of an hour.
    “I’m a