Chapter Five
She didn’t expect or even imagine that he would carry her again.
It seemed absurd enough that he’d done it the first time, let alone a second, and so much so that she started to get out of the truck herself.
She opened the door and gingerly stretched the toe of her sneaker to the step down.
Slid forward when she couldn’t quite get there, and turned and tried to ease herself down on her front.
She didn’t even notice he’d gotten out and come round to her side until he spoke.
“Are you kidding me with this, short ass? Come on, now,” he said, as he made a beckoning gesture with both hands, then tapped his shoulder.
Obvious in intention, yet still she couldn’t help hesitating.
She thought of that heat, of how solid he had felt, of how funny it had made her feel, and her hand just hovered there.
He had to gesture again.
Softer this time.
And his face looked that way, too. It sort of opened, in a way she understood even without any accompanying words. Oh, I made a mistake , it said. I was too brutish that time , it said. I made her nervous , it said. All of which added up to her not wanting to be nervous at all.
She put her hand down firmly.
She even let it slide around his back, and leaned toward him.
But now he seemed like the anxious one. He kind of stiffened—enough that she was sure she’d made a mistake.
Only then he simply went ahead and scooped her into his arms again.
All in one businesslike motion, before he moved straight to the front door of her shop.
She didn’t even have time to think about that strength, the fever burn of him, that struck-match scent.
“Keys,” he said, and she had to fumble them out of her pocket for him.
And then it was just him and her in the dim quiet before opening.
No fairy lights lit. No customers about to come in.
No soothing burble from the coffee machine.
The door clattered shut, the bells at the top finished jangling, and they were alone together.
Really alone together, too—he didn’t put her down right away.
He just stood there, holding her.
As if he’d realized he was now in an even more uncomfortable position than he’d been in the car, and in his house, and in her shop yesterday, and had frozen in place.
But before she could say something or nudge him, he seemed to get it back together.
“Just gonna set you down here,” he said as he carefully levered her into the nearest comfy chair.
The squishy one, by the books he’d perused the other day.
She saw him eye all the self-help type of stuff as he drew back.
Before he remembered the task he was supposed to be focusing on.
“Okay, kid, where’s your first aid kit?” he asked, and she pointed behind the counter.
But it was only when he started rummaging and came up with the tin that she realized: he actually did intend to do this.
He was going to touch her bare leg. He was going to touch it a lot. With his whole big hands.
Even though she’d barely recovered from being carried.
She could still feel her heart thrumming. Her palms were sweaty. You really don’t need to do this , she almost said, just as he crossed back over to her, and set the kit on the cute round table next to the seat she was on, and then crouched down .
Not even crouched, really. He knelt at her feet.
He looked like he was about to propose marriage.
And in a way she’d always dreamt of, but long since packed away as not for her.
She just wasn’t the sort of girl who got swept off her feet and wined and dined and given heartfelt proposals.
She was the sort of girl who got asked out for practical reasons.
Like she was the only one left to dance with, or a single dad thought she’d make a great nanny/cook/maid.
A nice and helpful girl.
Not a passionate obsession.
Honestly she had no idea why her cheeks heated, seeing him there.
Then even more so when he looked up at her.
Those wild blue eyes caught and held hers, and a great wave of warmth just seemed to go through her.
Very visible at this point, she was sure.
But if he noticed her flushed face and flushed chest and flushed fricking elbows, he didn’t say.
Instead he asked a question.
“Is it okay if I touch you?”
And she wanted to laugh in response. She wanted to say, You’ve just touched me a ton, you held my whole body in your arms, what do you mean? But even as she thought it, she could feel it just wasn’t the same. One touch had been brusque, efficient, necessary. All brute strength and tough orders.
This had him almost whispering.
Asking for permission.
Blatantly unsure that he should. Or even that he could , with those enormous hands. She looked down between their bodies and saw them there, hovering close but not closing the gap, and marveled at how soft and vulnerable they made her legs look.
She felt pretty sure she should say no.
But she somehow said yes instead.
Then held her breath as he reached forward.
One agonizing millimeter at a time, until it seemed like he had to be there already.
He had to be touching her. It even seemed like she could feel him, burning his fingerprints into her skin.
And then he actually did make contact, right on the sensitive curve at the back of her ankle, and she almost shot out of her chair.
She gripped the arms to stop it happening.
Tried to focus on her breathing, and being calm.
She had to, because the second he made contact he looked at her. As if he needed to gauge her reaction before he proceeded. And he really scrutinized her, too. His gaze trailed over every curve of her face, in a way that only added to the strange tension running through her.
But she must have hidden it well enough, because he turned back to her ankle.
He slipped his whole hand under that curve, cupping it so tenderly it didn’t seem real.
A man like him, taking such care? She could hardly believe it.
Yet he carried on that way. He lifted her leg like it was made of glass, and turned it with even greater care than that.
She barely felt a thing, despite how sore her ankle was.
And she could see why it was sore now, too.
A hole had been ripped in her woolen pantyhose, and dead in the center was a slashing line of purple and red and black.
A deep bruise and a little blood where something had pressed hard enough to break skin.
Nothing broken, she thought, or even sprained.
But enough to make him suck air over his teeth and shake his head.
“Okay, kid, gonna have to get these stockings off you,” he said.
And of course she knew he didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It was completely obvious in about twelve different ways. But it didn’t matter. Her mind immediately went to him reaching under her skirt. She imagined him ruffling it right up, and getting hold of the elastic, and then yanking them down.
Roughly, too.
Like a man impatient to make her naked.
Ridiculous, she knew. Yet her cheeks flamed all over again. She flamed everywhere . Her chest, under her arms, her forehead. She felt as if she were glowing in the dim light of her store. And over something as small as him just widening that hole, so he could wrap her ankle.
Though it didn’t feel small when he did it.
He ripped the material. Both hands right on it, tearing it open so cleanly and powerfully that the stocking separated into two pieces. Her breath caught at the sound of it, at the sight of his white-knuckled hands. Then again when she saw how much of her leg it had exposed.
Practically up to the knee.
If this had been Victorian times, everyone would have been scandalized.
She felt scandalized anyway—and not just because of what he’d done.
She was also now remembering what he’d said.
That word he’d used. Stockings , he’d said stockings , even though he should have had no way of knowing she was wearing anything of the kind.
My skirt must have flipped up enough to reveal the tops of them when he got me out of the car, she thought, and now her whole body was molten lava.
She felt ten seconds away from melting right off the chair and into a puddle of goo in his lap.
And still there was more to come. Still there was another turn of that tension screw.
Now he had to rub antiseptic on her, and wrap the whole thing up.
A boring thing, under any other circumstances.
But not in this inexplicably thick silence, spinning out endlessly.
Not in this sudden strange heat, as if it were somehow the middle of a stormy summer.
Not when he was so bizarrely good at doing this.
She’d always heard he was oafish, blundering, a beast about things.
And she supposed he still was, in many ways.
Yet at the same time, he had this rich vein of practicality about him.
He handled things. Someone needed getting out of a car, he got them out. If they couldn’t walk, he carried them. And when a bruised ankle required binding, he held said ankle with one hand and expertly bound it with the other. Truly, the whole thing took him no more than thirty seconds.
It just felt longer.
It felt endless.
She watched that roll of bandage wind around her ankle, once, twice, three times.
By the fourth, she was holding her breath.
By the fifth it felt like her lungs were about to burst. Just tell him to stop now , her brain shouted at her.
But he was so intent on the task, so diligent about the whole thing, that it didn’t seem normal to.
Instead, she tried to let out a slow, steady breath.
Only it didn’t come out slow and steady at all. It came out shaky and loud, and of course the moment it was out, his head snapped up. His eyes met hers, so intense for a second that she could almost imagine he was feeling the same thing.