Waking Up to You: Overexposed Read Free Page A

exploding into a volcano of tiny slivers, splashing water on her pants. Spinning around, her eyes wide and her mouth falling open, she saw him standing there and let out a strangled cry of alarm.
    “Whoa, whoa,” he said, realizing what he must look like, shirtless, wearing dirty jeans and, he suddenly realized, still holding a sharp, threatening-looking rake. The woman, who was beyond sexy, with a pair of blazing green eyes and a beautiful face surrounded by that thick, honey-colored tangle of hair, was eyeing him like he’d popped up in front of her in a back alley.
    “I’m not going to...”
    He was going to say hurt you. But before he could say a word, a pot flew toward his head. He threw up an arm to deflect it, groaning as the metal thunked his elbow, sending him stumbling back into the hallway. He barely managed to stay upright. If not for the rake on which he suddenly leaned, he might have fallen flat on the floor.
    But the rake couldn’t help him when the frying pan followed the pot.
    One second later, he was flat on the floor, rubbing the middle of his chest. He focused on trying to catch his breath, which had been knocked out of him as if he’d been KO’d by the love child of Ali and Tyson. That skillet must have been made of cast iron, and she’d flung it like a discus wielded by an Olympic champion.
    He held his hands up in surrender, trying to form words, though his body had forgotten how to breathe and his ribs were screaming for her head on a platter. Meanwhile, the rake, which he’d been clutching as he fell, toppled forward. Just to add a little insult to the injury, it landed on his shoulder, then clanged to the floor beside him.
    Pain, meet agony, pull up a chair why don’t you?
    “Get out, I’m calling the police!” she ordered as she scrambled to grab another pot out of the sink.
    “Whoa, lady, cool it,” he finally gasped. “I’m not...going to...hurt you.”
    “That’s what any sick, raping, ax-murdering psycho would say.”
    If his chest didn’t hurt so damned much, and if he wasn’t afraid she would reach for the knife block next, he would have mulled that one over, wondering which she thought him to be: sick, raping, ax-murderer or psycho. All of the above?
    Active imagination on that one.
    “I’m the...groundskeeper,” he said with a groan as the ache in his chest receded, only to remind him of the ache in his elbow. Funny bone, my ass. “I work here.”
    She froze, another pot in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and stared at him from a few feet away. “You work here?”
    “Yeah, for Buddy. My name’s Oliver McKean. I saw the lights and was afraid somebody had broken in.”
    She eyed him, her stare zoning in on the blood he could feel trickling down the side of his arm. Obviously she’d broken skin, if not bone, with her mad pot-slinging skills.
    Nibbling on the corner of a succulent lip, she whispered, “Oh, dear.”
    “Yeah. Oh, dear. That’s some swing you’ve got there.”
    “I’m so sorry. I’m Candace Reid.”
    “Oliver McKean.”
    “You said that.”
    “I know,” he mumbled, realizing he wasn’t making any sense. The one place she hadn’t hit him was his head, but his thoughts were still a whirl as he tried to figure out why on earth he was reacting so strongly to a woman who’d just tried to kill him.
    “Are you Irish?” she asked with a deep frown, sounding more concerned than when she’d thought him a maniacal ax-killing rapist.
    “My father is. We lived in Cork for a few years when I was a kid,” he admitted, wondering if his voice still held a hint of an accent. Also wondering why it mattered.
    Not seeing the need to discuss his ethnicity, he staggered to his feet. He was none too steady on them, and his lungs still burned. She’d practically knocked him senseless. Dizzy or not, he was incredibly lucky neither of those flying missiles had hit him in the head. They really could have done some damage. But worries about what might have