3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
GRIFF
I take my time sipping my coffee and enjoying the feeling of the morning sun on my bare skin. If I glance at the house behind mine a little too often, it’s only because it’s directly in my line of sight. It has nothing to do with wondering whether Ledger’s guest stayed overnight or if he’s going to come barreling out in his underwear again and assault me with small talk.
I manage to get through my whole cup uninterrupted though. Good. That’s what I wanted.
I tilt my empty mug to my mouth, shaking loose the last few drops at the bottom before licking my lips. I linger for a few more minutes and then finally shuffle into the house to get dressed for work.
By the time I’m dressed I’m running a few minutes late. Luckily, my bosses are far from hard-asses. Annoying friendliness aside, they’re pretty good guys to work for. I step out my front door and nearly trip over a vase of colorful daisies sitting right on my porch. I grunt in surprise and stare at the flowers for a second, trying to work out what the hell they’re doing there.
I look at the house to my right, then the one on the left. Maybe the flowers were meant to go to one of them? I really don’t know a damn thing about any of my neighbors, so I can’t even guess. Maybe there’s a card with a name or address on it to let me know who these were actually meant for?
I stoop down to pick up the vase. The flowers are actually kind of nice, bursting with bright shades of pink and orange and blue. I find a card tied around the neck of the vase and I open it. There’s no name and no address, just three typed words, all in caps.
THAT ASS THOUGH.
A surprised laugh bursts from my throat. It sounds rusty as hell, like a screen door that hasn’t been used in ages. A warm feeling floods my veins, and I chuckle again, a little more restrained this time. These can’t be for me. I turn the card over just to be sure that I’m not missing any delivery or sender info, but there’s nothing other than the name of the flower shop—Little Shop of Flowers.
I look up again and glance around, half expecting someone holding a camera to step out of the bushes to tell me I’ve been pranked. The only person I spot is Ledger though, walking down the sidewalk, fully dressed this time, with a raccoon on a leash. I frown and blink, making sure I’m seeing that right.
He catches my eye and slows to a stop right in front of my house.
“Morning,” he calls cheerfully.
“Is that a raccoon?” If you’d asked me if I thought a raccoon would tolerate a leash, I would have asked what the hell you were talking about, but my answer would have been ‘no.’ The adorably chubby little rodent with Ledger doesn’t seem to mind though. It rolls around in the grass and then scampers around him in circles, wrapping the leash around his legs. He’s apparently used to it, artfully unwrapping himself just as quickly.
“Yeah. I’m not technically supposed to have her though, so if anyone asks, she’s just a cat with really distinctive markings.” He winks conspiratorially. I rumble an amused sound in my throat. Ledger’s eyes drop to the vase of flowers clutched in my hands and his smile widens. “Did someone send you flowers?”
“I guess so.” I shrug. “There’s no name on them though, so I’m not sure they’re actually meant for me… or who sent them.”
“Sounds like you have a secret admirer.” He waggles his eyebrows.
The thought is so absurd that I actually full-on laugh again. Rusty and wheezy, the sound rumbles in my chest and makes my throat ache from years of disuse. That warm feeling pulses in my chest again and I smile for a few more seconds, enjoying the fantasy as long as I can. Then I clear my throat, and my face falls back into my usual resting frown.
“I doubt it,” I say gruffly before turning and heading inside to put the flowers in the kitchen. By the time I step back out, Ledger and his raccoon are gone.
LEDGER
I’m still thinking about the cute-as-fuck smile Griff got when I suggested he might have a secret admirer. I thought about it all day. I pictured it while Jericho and I were clearing a fallen tree from the middle of a hiking trail and all through my afternoon manning the education center at the park. Eight-plus hours later, I still have butterflies about it. I wonder what else I could do to make him smile like that. Maybe I’ll just send him flowers every day for the rest of my life.
I sigh happily at the thought and unlock my front door. As soon as I swing it open, TP comes bounding out with an extremely concerned expression on her little bandit face. I didn’t even know raccoons could look concerned.
“What happened?” I call as she dives into the bushes next to the door, and then laugh to myself. What did I expect? That she would tell me what exactly freaked her out? I can hear the jingle of the bell on her collar, so I know she’s not taking off, just hiding. “Hello?” I call, cautiously stepping inside.
There’s a weird whooshing sound like running water. That can’t be good. I follow it through the house and into the living room. That water spot I wasn’t sure was new or not is apparently the least of my worries. Either that or I’m a complete dumbass who really should have worried more about it yesterday. Probably that one.
But the past is the past, and the present is a soggy, bulging ceiling with a steady drip of water raining down to pool on my wood floor and soak my furniture.
“Noooo,” I wail, holding my hands up like an absolute moron, as if I’ll be able to catch the indoor rain in my cupped palms before it does any more damage. “Please stop,” I beg, looking around desperately, hoping to spot some magic solution to this problem before…
The bulge bursts and all I have time to do is yowl like a dying cat as plaster and water drench me and flood my living room. Is having your life flash before your eyes a thing that only happens when you’re dying? What about all of your stupidest decisions flashing before your eyes? Like buying a cheap house and lying to myself that I could learn how to fix it up, or refusing swimming lessons as a child because I had an aversion to public pools… or, more accurately, to the idea of other people peeing in public pools. The latter might end up being the bigger of the two mistakes. Oh god, I don’t want to die drowning in my own living room.
I scream again, more out of despair and frustration than anything else as the water just keeps coming. And then, like a mirage in the desert, like an angel appearing right in the middle of a disaster, I blink, and Griff is there. His face is screwed up in a horrified scowl and his white shirt is soaking through with every passing second, clinging to his soft belly and broad chest. I shake my head like a wet dog to clear some of the cold water running down my face, and then I just stare at him.
“Where’s your water shutoff?” he shouts over the roar of the water.
“Um… in the basement?” Water shutoff? Duh. I was standing here thinking it would have to run out eventually, but it makes a lot more sense that it needs to be shut off at the source. In my defense, basic handyman skills are not what flashed before my eyes in my not-quite-dying moments.
My big bear of a guardian angel disappears into the basement, and less than a minute later, the water stops. I breathe a sigh of relief, my shoulders sagging, my sopping wet hair flopping into my face as I hang my head and laugh. What the fuck just happened?
Now that there’s not a constant flow of water, the rising water has the chance to spread out and soak into the floor, leaving me standing in soggy shoes on a squishy wood floor. I groan and all the adrenaline leaves me, making my knees wobble and my whole body feel exhausted. I slump down onto the wet floor and listen to the clomp of Griff’s boots heading back up the stairs.
I bury my face in my hands and start to laugh again. Body-shaking, hysterical laughter because seriously, how else am I supposed to cope with this? I know fuck all about water damage, but I know enough to realize this is going to be a fucking nightmare to fix.
The tentative brush of Griff’s hand against my shoulder startles me out of my laughing fit. I pull my hands away from my face and look up to find him towering over me, his dark nipples visible through his wet shirt, a flicker of concern in his eyes accompanying his ever-present scowl.
“Are you okay?” he asks in a low, gruff voice.
“Fucking great.” I chuckle again. “I was really hoping to come home to a flash flood in my living room. TP took off, so hopefully she’s still hiding in the bushes, otherwise I’m going to be driving around the neighborhood all night approaching strange raccoons, and now I have to include new furniture in my budget too.”
His frown deepens. “The damage will probably be covered by your homeowner’s insurance.”
“Really? Isn’t it, like, a pre-existing condition or something if the pipes were all rusted through?”
Griff makes a rumbly sound in his throat that I think is supposed to be a laugh. It’s cute as fuck, but not as cute as his full-on wheezy, creaky laugh I got to hear this morning.
“I don’t know all the ins and outs, but it doesn’t usually work like that. They’ll usually cover it unless they consider it due to neglect, like if you saw the leak and didn’t report it before it got worse.”
I groan and flop back dramatically. “Well then I’m fucked, because I saw it and figured it wasn’t a big deal.”
He grunts thoughtfully.
“You don’t have to hang around.” Please, please stick around . “Thanks for hearing my screams and coming to the rescue.” Like a knight in shining armor. Swoon. “But I’m going to lay here and groan pathetically for a while and I don’t require an audience for that.”
Griff makes another one of those not-quite-a-laugh sounds and shuffles his feet, looking around the living room then back at me. After a minute, he grunts again and walks away. Instead of heading for the back door though, he goes towards the front. I fight the urge to whimper and beg him to come back and watch me groan pathetically on the floor after all. The front door creaks open and I wait to hear it close, but it takes longer than I’m expecting.
Even more surprising, when the door finally does bang closed, it’s followed by the heavy sound of Griff’s footsteps again.
“I’m hoping this is your raccoon and I didn’t just bring a wild animal into the house.” He holds TP up awkwardly with both hands around her chest as she squirms for freedom, her little bell jingling.
“That’s her. Thanks.” I stand up and brush my pants off uselessly, soggy plaster clinging so hard it might as well weave itself right into the denim.
Griff sets TP down and she immediately scurries towards my bedroom where it’s presumably still dry. I’m sure this whole ordeal interrupted her sleep schedule. She’s no doubt going to burrow into my bed and catch up on some sleep so she can spend the night chewing through the drywall in the kitchen like usual.
He rumbles and nods, stuffing his hands into his pockets and looking around again. I don’t even actually know this man, and it’s obvious he’s not the most social person alive, but he came running when he heard me scream and he made sure TP was safely inside instead of just leaving me to deal with it. I’m going to blame the emotional trauma of the flood for the fact that I launch myself at him without warning, wrapping my arms around his waist and burying my face in his soggy shirt.
He makes a startled sound. He smells like sawdust and his body is so warm and sturdy. We’re about the same height, but I feel weirdly safe in his arms as he awkwardly pats my shoulder, holding himself stiffly for a minute, like he’s trying to get away from me without being rude, before relaxing into the hug. His chest vibrates with a sound too low to actually hear, and for just a few seconds he curls himself around me and purrs like a cat.
Oh my god, bury me in this moment because I am fucking dead . I force myself to let go of him before he can decide I’m a total freak, file a restraining order against me, and move far, far away.
“Thanks again.” I drag my hands through my damp hair, no doubt leaving streaks of drywall in it.
He nods, then clears his throat. “If you need help getting this place back in order, I’ve been working construction for twenty years.”
“Seriously?” I grimace and look at the wrecked floors, already starting to swell and warp, and the massive hole in the ceiling. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not.” He shrugs. “As long as you don’t mind that it’ll take a little time, I can come over in the evenings and work on it. I’ll take care of the pipe tomorrow so I can get your water turned back on, and then I can go from there.”
The cost of everything starts running through my head again. I still have a little bit of the money my grandpa left me. Unfortunately, being a park ranger doesn’t exactly pay well, and I was hoping to keep a little bit of a nest egg for emergencies. I guess this is an emergency though.
“I don’t suppose you’d let me pay for your labor with sexual favors, would you?” I’m going for cheeky, but as soon as the words leave my lips, heat rushes through me and I’m sure he can see the flirtation written all over my face. Hey, it works in porn.
Griff makes a strangled sound and then coughs like he’s trying to cover it. “Careful with jokes like that. You have no idea how long it’s been.”
Oh, shit, is this actually going to work? I lick my lips and inch closer again, dragging my index finger over the spot where his wet shirt dips into the cavern of his belly button. He shivers and chokes back a groan but doesn’t move away.
“Is that a yes?” My cock starts to swell as I wait for his answer and my heart thunders wildly.
I figured he would give me a gruff ‘no’ and leave, but if I actually have a shot, I don’t mind tipping the scales a little. I inch my finger lower, trailing it over the soft bulge of his belly until I reach the button of his jeans. I tease and flick it the same way I did with his belly button. His green eyes darken, holding mine as his breathing speeds up and his nostrils flare.
“Okay,” he growls, then he grabs my wrist and moves my hand away, “I’d better go.”
My cock throbs at the touch, and it takes everything in me not to throw myself at him again. I bite my bottom lip and nod.
“See you tomorrow.”