It was also the only bedroom on the first floor, which made it feel like a safe refuge from him. “I’ll be happy to make up one of the other beds for you,” she said.

“And if I object?”

“Then I’ll move, and you can sleep on my dirty sheets.”

He gave her his badass sneer. “Let me think about it.”

She countered with cool formality. “I’d appreciate it if you’d think quickly. I’ve had a long day, and I want to turn in.”

His sneer turned to a shrug. “Sleep wherever you like. I don’t care. And I’ll make up my own bed.” He turned to the door, then stopped himself. “One more thing. Leave the house alone. Everything stays the way it is.”

She’d see about that.

But he wasn’t done giving her a hard time. Not long after she’d turned out the bedroom light, she heard a knock. “I forgot my toothbrush,” he said through the door.

She got out of bed, retrieved his toothbrush from the medicine cabinet, unlocked the bedroom door, and pushed it through the crack.

From the angry way his jaw locked, she might as well have been holding a switchblade. “You locked the door?” he said in a voice that smoked like dry ice.

“Habit,” she replied uneasily.

“You locked the door?”

She’d come off like a kid if she mentioned how spooky the house was at night, so she shrugged.

His brows slammed together, and the corner of his mouth cocked with contempt. “Babe, if I wanted to get in that room, no lock would keep me out. But why would I bother? You weren’t that good anyway.”

She sucked in her breath and slammed the door in his face.

PANDA WANTED TO PUNCH SOMETHING. Himself. How many times was he going to blow it with her? But she got him so pissed off.

Bitch deserved it. If she hadn’t made me so mad, I wouldn’t have hit her.

He’d heard exactly those words during hundreds of domestic violence calls where some asshole tried to justify beating the shit out of a woman with the same excuse. The fact that he’d used words instead of his fists didn’t make him any better than they were.

He shoved his fingers into his hair. Be the best at what you’re good at. But everything connected with Lucy Jorik had been one big screwup after another, right from the beginning. As soon as he picked her up in that alley, he should have taken her back to her family. All those games he’d played trying to scare her off had done nothing more than make him feel like a colossal jerk. One mistake after another, each leading to the biggest mistake of all. That last night.