Out of This World Read online

  I’d have let her head hit the table. “Oh, Axel,” I said sweetly but loudly, aiming for the front door. “How lovely to see you this morning.”

  Marilee bolted upright in Kellan’s arms, her gaze darting to the front door.

  Which was open, and empty.

  My eyebrows shot straight up as I sent Marilee a top-that-beeyotch look.

  She lifted a shoulder as if to say she’d had to try, then she slid down Kellan’s body. With a touch to his jaw, she smiled once more. “I’m okay now, thanks. I feel all better.”

  Uh-huh. I’ll bet.

  “You sure?” Kel asked, clearly still concerned.

  Unbelievable.

  “Oh yes. Really.” Marilee smiled. “I’ll be in the big house making breakfast.”

  “Uh…” Kel said, clearly remembering her sauce. “Yes.”

  “Give me about half an hour.”

  And then she was gone.

  “Huh.” He scratched his head and turned back to face me, looking like that rumpled, bemused professor again. A rumpled, bemused professor with no shirt and loose sweats slipping down his narrow hips, a gap between the string tie and his flat, firm stomach wide enough to dip a hand in—

  My brain was out of control. “That was a fake faint.”

  “Rach, she was shaking.”

  “I’m shaking.”

  “You are not.”

  “Well, I could be.”

  When he shot me an even, patient look, I lifted my fingers and made then tremor. “See? And oh…” With dramatic flair courtesy of freshman high school drama class, I laid the back of my hand across my forehead. “I feel funny…”

  Kellan’s eyes narrowed. “Stop it.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Rach.”

  “I’m going to faint, Kel. You’d better catch me.” I staggered backwards.

  He crossed his arms. “That’s not funny.”

  Damn it, why couldn’t he look at me with all worry, catching me up against himself, as he had last night?

  I wanted more of last night!

  Trying for it, I let my momentum take me backwards, confident that he’d catch me.

  Only I went down like a ton of bricks, smacking my head on the corner of the coffee table and seeing stars.

  Kellan swore sharply and dove for me, firmly scooping me up against his deliriously warm chest, stroking a hand over my face to scoop back my hair, and everything was as I’d wanted before I’d found out that exactly nothing was as I’d thought.

  Now he’d say how sorry he was. How much more beautiful and smart and wonderful than Marilee I was. And then he’d kiss me…

  “You idiot,” he murmured, and kissed my jaw.

  You’d think I’d be happy with one out of three, but no. “You lied to me, Kel.”

  He didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about. “Didn’t lie.”

  “You omitted.”

  “Okay, yes. I omitted. How’s the head?” He slipped his fingers into my hair, cradling my head in the palm of his hand. “Hurt?”

  “A lot. And for the record, omitting is as bad as lying.”

  He sighed and pulled back, denying me those arms. His hair was all over the place, and now he wore an unreadable expression, one that made me want to turn the clock back to last night, when he’d held me and made everything okay.

  He rose to his feet and went straight to the window. He put his hands on the ledge, the muscles in his back and arms going taut as he pulled.

  The paint gluing the window to the ledge cracked, and the window opened with ease.

  Kellan stood there, utterly still, hands on the window, which was now lifted above his head. With the early morning sun slanting in over his gilded body, he made quite the picture, but that wasn’t what had me walking towards him, gently putting my hands on his back.

  “Kel.”

  Head bowed, he was breathing hard, as if he’d run a five-mile race uphill. Beneath my fingers, his body felt overheated and damp from exertion. I examined his hand.

  “How bad is it? Are you hurt?”

  “It was just a door.”

  “I meant from yesterday.”

  “I’m as okay as you are, I suppose.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “Last night.” He shook his head. “I’m just not quite used to it.”

  “Which begs the next question,” I managed shakily. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He held still for another beat, then turned to face me. “You were a little wigged-out last night.”

  “So you were what? Trying to protect the little lady?”

  “Rach—”

  “No, you listen to me. You want me to freak out? Keep stuff like this to yourself. I mean, I can see through stuff, Kel.” I let out a disbelieving laugh. “And you…you’ve gone from some mild-mannered and easygoing guy to…to Superman, for God’s sake. I mean, what the hell?”

  He winced at the Superman comment, as I knew he would.

  And I could have added that his new strength came with an animalistic sexiness the likes of which I’d never seen before, but that seemed a little too revealing, so I kept that part to myself.

  As if he could read my thoughts, he narrowed his eyes and said, “You know, I’m the same guy.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes! The same Kellan McInty. Nothing inside has changed.”

  “Okay.” I went into the bedroom and grabbed my duffle bag.

  Kellan followed me. “I haven’t.”

  I pulled out fresh clothes and headed into the bathroom.

  “We need to talk about this,” he said to me as I shut the door.

  In his face. Childish, I know, but how could he have kept this from me?

  He knocked. “Rach?”

  I turned away, and cranked on the shower. There. Could hardly hear a thing now, which suited me.

  “Rach?” he called through the door. “I know you can hear me.”

  When I didn’t answer, he turned the door handle.

  Crap.

  Leaping toward the door, I quickly locked it, not that that would stop Superman.

  Satisfied at his silence, I eyed myself in the mirror. Huh. I looked the same as I had before coming into the Twilight Zone. Same brown wavy hair that always vaguely resembled a squirrel’s tail when the air was dry, and it was very dry at the moment. Same eyes that needed mascara to look halfway good, but the mascara right now was somewhere in one of my two bags and not on my eyes.

  I’d been told I had an okay mouth, but I didn’t see it, mostly because it was down-turned at the moment.

  Finally I gave up trying to see anything different, and I dropped both Kel’s shirt and my towel to the floor and, naked, stepped toward the steaming shower—

  Just as Kellan broke the lock on the door.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Hey!”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, sporting a new and oddly arousing bad attitude as he eyed me up and down, reminding me that I stood there in my birthday suit and all its glory. “Voyeurism is your specialty.”

  Oh boy.

  Apparently, this was going to be a hell of a long few days.

  Chapter 10

  W ith some dramatic flair, I whipped the shower curtain closed. There. Now I could see him standing there, projecting a toughness that I had to admit was giving me a vicarious thrill, but he couldn’t see me.

  Fix that, Superman.

  I did my business with the soap, enjoying the fact that Kellan was on the other side of the curtain imagining what I was doing.

  Which didn’t make any sense, because I was mad at him.

  Wasn’t I?

  Hell, I didn’t really know anything anymore except that I’d never been more exhausted, confused or frightened in all my life. Fact was, even though I was an artist, I still enjoyed logic.

  And there was nothing logical about anything that had happened since the moment I had stepped onto that plane heading out of L.A.

&nbs