Chapter 2
TWO
There were a thousand things that Kay Hata could do that other people couldn't.
She'd spent years in school with hours and hours of studying beyond what she had been required to study in Med School.
She was always looking for new skills to acquire.
New methods to use. So if there was someone in the vicinity who was having a heart attack or if there was an injury with a power tool, she could be useful.
Finding the right paint to use on her bedroom wall or how to fix a hole she'd made in the drywall?
A big NOPE.
And the last time she'd been at the store she'd asked a man for help, and he'd spent over a half hour treating her like she couldn't figure out how to tie her own shoes. Sure, in the end he'd helped her, but the time it took to get there?
Excruciating.
So, she decided to start things off with what should be the easiest part.
Picking a color of paint.
Ha!
That was a joke.
Easy?
She'd been standing here, moving back and forth between what was likely maybe forty feet of shelves looking at paint chips from half a dozen companies.
She'd come in looking for a clean, off white. Something simple and then she'd fallen down the rabbit hole of colors.
And then she'd discovered the names of colors could almost be as interesting. Like the sample of Drunk-Tank Pink she was holding in her hands.
"I wonder if this is really a thing."
"If what's a thing?"
" Aiya !" Shocked, Kay leaned away from the voice, her hands reaching up to cover her heart. "Oh my God! Lieutenant! You scared me!"
"Sorry. Sorry." He took a step back and she felt like a proper idiot for jumping.
"You must think I'm a complete basket case."
"No." His tone was deep. Sure of himself. "I should know better than to come out of nowhere like that."
Kay looked around them at the aisle they were standing in and felt even worse. "It's not exactly like you came out of the darkness. There's a good... twenty feet in either direction. It's my fault for getting a bit of tunnel vision."
"You... um, dropped something."
He bent down and picked up the paint chip that she'd dropped, and heaven help her, she reacted. It was a completely innocent gesture.
But crouched down at her feet, she could see the muscles across his back and shoulders, the way his t-shirt pulled across his back, highlighting the amazing trapezius muscles in his back and tilting her head to the side, she had a feeling she could just catch a glimpse of the latissimus dorsi muscles along his side.
Not to mention the way his jeans stretched over the very well-defined muscles of his backside.
No, she corrected herself, his butt. No. Ass?
There just wasn't an adequate word for what she was trying not to stare at.
"Here."
He stood up and his face had to pass by... a certain area that was hot and wet and not from the heat of the hardware store.
She could only hope that he couldn't smell her arousal.
That would be crazy embarrassing.
And her cheeks were already warm, he had to see the blush.
"Doctor?"
She almost winced at the word and realized that he was still holding the card out to her. "Sorry." She took it from him and tried to come up with an excuse for being as scattered as she was. “It’s the heat in here. It makes me a little..."
Kay let the words fade away. She didn't even know what she wanted to say.
Maybe just 'ugh' or 'shit.' That would be normal, right? Jocular? Does that work?
Gibson took the weight off her shoulders a little when he tapped his finger against the card. "I thought I misheard you when you said Drunk-Tank Pink, but there it is."
She shrugged and looked at the card. "I admit, it wasn't exactly the shade I was looking for, but the name is memorable."
"If you're redecorating the holding cells at Station Four, I guess."
She smiled at that. "No, interior decorating isn't my forte."
"Well, it can't be any worse than plain utilitarian white."
Kay turned the card around and pointed at the swatch. "Really?"
Gibson reached a hand up and scratched at the nape of his neck. "Okay so that color might drive me up a wall. It's a lot of... pink."
She turned it back around to look at it. "Clinically they say that this color is supposed to calm people. Pepto Pink is what they called it when I did my peds rotation."
Kay saw his confusion.
"Pediatrics." She clarified. "I had a rotation in pediatrics."
"Oh?"
He sounded happy at that.
And of course she had to say something to ruin it. "Pediatrics wasn't my thing. I'm just... I'm not exactly the most maternal person out there."
His smile floundered and she wanted to bang her head against a door.
Or the paint chip display. That was closer.
"So if you're not redecorating the drunk tank, what are you looking to paint?"
"Uh..." she felt stupid saying it because really, who painted their bedroom the same color as Pepto Bismal. But why stop being stupid now? "My bedroom."
Before he could react to her, she kept talking explaining why she was there first instead of going to look at the drywall stuff first.
His next few words stunned her into silence "I can explain it all to you, the drywall stuff." He clarified as he folded his arms across his chest.
His words filled her with joy.
The sight of his muscular arms folded across his chest, making his forearms and biceps bulge?
Her mouth went dry, and she had to glance down at her outfit to make sure that he couldn't see that her nipples had tightened under her shirt.
Thank goodness she didn't see anything.
"How..." She knew she had to say something instead of stare at his face. "How do you know about all of this stuff?"
He smiled a little and she mirrored the expression. "I'm a contractor. It's what I do when I'm not on shift at the firehouse."
"Wait, what?" She openly stared at him. "After you walk into fires and pull people out of mangled cars you don't go home and rest? You go and build houses?"
His smile deepened and she found herself swooning a little.
"Well, I haven't built a house from ground to roof yet, because I just don't have the ability to work on a project every day. As it is, I have to schedule things carefully to make sure that I don't keep people waiting."
"Wow." She shook her head. "I'm... I'm impressed."
"Yeah?" He grinned at her and his dark good looks suddenly took on a more boyish air.
Kay's imagination brought up an image of a little boy with Gibson's gorgeous eyes and his broad smile.
And she suddenly understood the idiom of 'her ovaries exploded' because she was sure that it just happened, standing there in the paint chip aisle of Home Mart.
"So you need your drywall fixed? What happened?"
She nodded and wanted to crawl into the crack in the cement under her feet.
"Well, I'm ashamed to admit it. But I was hanging a picture on the wall and there was a dance related accident which ended up with a hammer making a big hole in my wall.
I was considering just hanging the picture higher to cover the hole in the wall, but I don't want to ignore the hole and suddenly I have a bigger problem on my hands, you know? "
Heaven help her. He was smiling, even more.
Forget Thunder from Down Under or Chippendales, did they even have that still? She would empty her bank account for money and wave twenty-dollar bills at him if he just kept smiling at her.
He turned his head slightly to the side and the hair that was as close as he got to having bangs, flopped over and hid part of his forehead.
"How big of a hole are we talking about?"
His nose was really nice looking.
"Doctor H-"
"Kay!" She blurted out and felt her cheeks flare with heat. "I'm sorry. Please, just call me Kay."
His smile deepened. "Okay," his smile deepened, "Kay."
"Now I feel silly."
Gibson shook his head. "Don't be. Drywall can be a bit of an issue when you haven't worked with it before. Do you want me to take a look at it?"
"At my drywall?"
He shrugged. "Too personal?"
She laughed, giggling. And that only made her laugh more, because Kay Hata didn't giggle. Ever.
At least she hadn't before.
"I... I've never invited someone over to my bedroom to look at my drywall before."
Something changed in his expression. She didn't know what it was, but it was there, in his eyes.
"If you wouldn't mind." She hesitated a little. "I know even if you did explain it to me here, I'd be on YouTube looking it up when I'm at home. And I'm good with human anatomy but walls? Joists? Whatever else in my walls? Not so much."
"I'd be happy to look at it. I'll even fix it for you."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. I'd be happy to."
The depth of relief that she felt was tantamount to when she passed the MCAT on her first try.
"This is so much better than the last guy who offered me his help here."
A wry smile touched his lips. "I'm glad you didn't invite him to your bedroom."
"Not a hope in hell," she ground out. "I can only handle so much mansplaining before I threaten someone with my scalpel."
His brows lifted at that. "I never expected you to be so bloodthirsty."
She shrugged. "Stick around. It'll happen sooner or later. I'm a woman. And I'm petite. Men think that means I don't have a brain in my head."
"Not all men," Gibson smiled at her. "I know exactly how smart you are. And I have a great appreciation for intelligent capable women. My sister works for Los Alamos in New Mexico. She tested off the charts in science and math."
Kay looked back at him, and she had to admit her whole estimation of him went up and through the roof. "That has to be daunting."
He shrugged. "She's a lot like you. Crazy intelligent, but you don't lord it over people. I like that. A lot."
He looked at her as if he was seeing her differently, too.
And the heat in the paint aisle rose another few degrees.