“Is that part of being a multitasker?” she asked wryly.
If Morgan thought that she was doubting him, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he left his answer deliberately vague.
“Something like that,” he told Krys. “What are you staring at?” he asked, noticing the way she was looking at him.
“Your nose,” she answered.
His brow furrowed. “My nose? Why?”
“To see if it grows all at once or just by small increments,” she answered and then frowned at him. Just how dumb did he think she was? “Everyone needs to sleep.”
“No argument,” Morgan agreed. “But it just so happens that I don’t need much. And, FYI, if there’s something going on, I can stay awake around the clock without any problem.”
She wasn’t buying into this superhuman image he was trying to portray. “Until you collapse altogether. You won’t be any good to me in that state.”
His eyes swept over her almost intimately. She found herself trying not to react, but it wasn’t easy. There was something about the way he looked at her that unsettled her.
“I promise you won’t have any complaints,” he told her, his voice low and sexy.
It was hard for her to remain detached and distant. Why did she get the feeling that he wasn’t talking about being her bodyguard?
“We’ll see about that,” she answered, her lips feeling oddly dry as she formed the words. Added to that, her heart seemed to suddenly slam against her chest when she heard the doorbell ring.
“That must be Dugan,” Morgan told her.
“Dugan?” she echoed, totally unfamiliar with the name. “Another cousin?”
“No, another brother,” Morgan corrected her. “Remember? I said I’d have my brother pick up the pizza. That way I don’t have to frisk a stranger,” he reminded her, crossing to the door.
“Must have slipped my mind,” she murmured as she watched him look through the peephole. When he flipped open the lock on the door, Krys made a natural assumption. “I take it that that’s Dugan with our dinner.”
He pulled open the door. “If he hasn’t eaten it himself.” The comment was half intended for Dugan as Morgan recalled his brother’s rather fierce, endless appetite.
Dugan caught the tail end of his brother’s response to the attractive woman standing just behind him. “You kidding?” he asked, referring to Morgan’s assumption that he’d had some of the meal he was charged with delivering. “Toni’s got dinner waiting at home,” he told his brother, referring to his wife, adding, “She’d skin me alive if I filled up on pizza.”
Handing the pizza box to his younger brother, Dugan smiled broadly at the woman who had asked to have the pizza delivered in the first place. “Hi, I’m Morgan’s older, better looking brother,” he told her, extending his hand to Krys. “And I take it you’re not-Nik.”
Shaking his hand, Krys smiled at Dugan’s greeting. “I take it that Morgan warned you about mistaking me for my twin.”
“No,” Dugan responded, “he warned me not to call you Nik. I figured the rest is self-explanatory. But he was right,” he said, carefully scrutinizing her, “you do look just like her.”
Krys inclined her head as she flashed Dugan a smile. “Hence the word ‘identical,’” she said. And then she noted as she indicated both of the brothers, “You know, you two look rather alike, too.”
“She’s being kind to you, Morgan,” Dugan told his younger brother, and then he turned his eyes on Krys. “He knows I’m the good-looking brother.”
“Ha!” Morgan declared. “I think even Sully and Campbell might have a different opinion on that.”
“When did you say you were going in for your eye exam?” Dugan asked his brother. He looked back to Krys and informed her with a straight face, “His vision is really going. You know,” he said, leaning a little bit closer to Krys, “you might want to think about getting someone else to guard you while this guy’s out there, stalking you.”
Morgan cupped his ear. “I think I hear Toni calling you. You’d better get home before she realizes that she can really do so much better than you.”
Dugan smiled broadly as he looked at Krys. “It was nice meeting you.” With that, he put his hand on the doorknob, turned it and began to leave.
“Dugan, hang on,” Morgan called after his brother as the latter started to cross the threshold. “What do I owe you?”
“More than you could ever possibly repay me,” Dugan deadpanned.
“No, seriously,” Morgan insisted as he took out his wallet and slipped out several bills. “What do I owe you for the pizza?”
Dugan glanced over at Krys and smiled. “Just keep the lady safe and we’ll call it even. Remember, we’ve got a reputation to maintain. We don’t lose people on our watch.” And then he patted Morgan’s shoulder. “Now I’d better go. I’ve got a warm meal and a hot wife waiting for me and I want to get home before either of them cools off.”
Dugan went out and closed the door behind him.
Morgan flipped both locks closed and then tested the door to make sure that it remained secure. It did.
“How many brothers did you say you had?” she asked, putting out two plates for their dinner.
“Three brothers,” he told her. “I’ve got three sisters, too,” Morgan added, anticipating Krys’s next question.
“Did you guys all get along when you were growing up?” she asked, wondering what a full house like that had been like.
“Define ‘get along,’” Morgan told her. And then, before she could answer, he laughed, getting her off the hook. “I guess you could say that we got along. At least we don’t draw blood—anymore.” An amused smile curved the corners of his generous mouth.
“You’re kidding, right?” Krys asked him, taking a slice out of the pizza box and putting it on Morgan’s plate, then taking one for herself.
“Sure, why don’t we say that?” he agreed in a nebulous tone.
Krys shook her head. Morgan was proving to be rather hard to
