When She's Bad Read Online Free Page B

the most shapely pair of legs he’d ever seen in his life, quickly followed by a wild-eyed woman who’d dragged him into the elevator. He had the impression of being blown away by a hot Texas wind.
    “Did they punch you in the stomach?” She touched his chest, then her hand fell to his belly, and he instinctively sucked in a sharp breath.
    “What if you’re bleeding internally? You should go to the emergency room. Are you feeling dizzy or nauseated? You could have a concussion.”
    “I-jus-got-back-from—” He swallowed and closed both his eyes.
    “Omigod. Your voice is slurred. You could have a concussion. Your brain may be swelling. We have to—”
    “—dentist,” he said, and pulled gauze from his mouth. “I just got a root canal.”
    “Oh.” She grimaced in sympathy. “Helluva day.”
    He stared at his rescuer with his good eye. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but he couldn’t place it. He watched her brush a dark lock of her hair away from her eyes. She gnawed on her full bottom lip and his gaze traveled downward over curves he suspected had caused many masculine meltdowns. Her top fit her shapely breasts like air and her skirt was too short, too tight. She was the antithesis of every conservative well-bred New England woman he’d dated since he’d entered Harvard Law School.
    The woman looked like sin. With heart.
    The elevator dinged, signaling the end of their ride. His floor, he thought. How convenient. He could collapse on a clear spot in his condo if he could find one. His do-it-yourself renovations were supposed to provide him some sorely needed do-it-yourself therapy. After he collapsed, he planned to knock out a wall.
    “Come with me,” she said. “I can at least get some ice on your eye while we figure out what to do next.”
    “But I’m right down the—”
    “Don’t argue with me. We need to figure out whether to call the police first or take you to the emergency room,” she said, nudging him down the hallway and unlocking the door to her condominium. “Take the sofa. I’ll get the ice.”
    This was his neighbor , he realized. The woman who had shrieked at him last night? The Wicked Witch of the West? Broom Hilda? Surely more than one person lived here. He’d barely sunk down onto her ivory leather sofa before she returned with a frozen bag of peas. She gingerly lifted the bag to his eye.
    He sucked in a quick breath.
    “Sorry, but you’ll thank me in the morning,” she said in a husky voice.
    If his head weren’t splitting in half, he might enjoy a few fantasies about how to spend the kind of night that would make him thank her in the morning. Instead, he met her gaze with his good eye. “I don’t have to wait. Thank you for screaming.”
    “You’re welcome. What about your stomach and ribs? Do you think anything is broken?”
    He slid his hands over his trunk and slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
    “We should call the police,” she said. “And make sure whoever is monitoring security tonight gets fired,” she added in disgust. “You just know that if someone had been having sex on the floor of that garage, those security dodos would have been plastered to the monitor. Heck, they’d probably be making copies of the videos for their friends, but what happens when someone gets mugged and—”
    She broke off as Benjamin clutched his ribs.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked, instinctively reaching out to him.
    “Please don’t make me laugh,” he said in a voice that surprised her with the tinge of sexiness.
    She blinked and took a quick reassessment. A different kind of assessment this time. He was just over six feet tall judging by the way she’d had to look up at him in the elevator. He had nice dark hair, although a bit mussed at the moment. Dark eyebrows framed his brown eyes. Expressive eyes. Well, one of them was expressive. She liked that. Great bones, she thought, taking in his chiseled facial structure, and she was trained to