Chapter 6
Lydia’s mouth was dry. She was glad there was nothing to talk about, because she wouldn’t have been able to speak, even if she wanted to.
The way Remy had looked at her . . . Well, also, the way Remy looked.
Shirtless with water dripping down his muscular chest, holding the dog as if he was a precious baby . . . It was too much.
She genuinely couldn’t cope.
Every time her hands skimmed over Hank’s back, she came dangerously close to touching Remy’s chest. The idea filled her with fear and longing, and she genuinely hated the intensity of both.
Because why was it like this, and why was she? Why did she have this . . . thing for him that she couldn’t get rid of?
He was so comfortable with her that he had taken his clothes off and gotten into a bath. That was how little her presence meant to him. While he . . .
He was wrecking her.
This moment was wrecking her.
The dog was also full of lather, and she needed to do something, but she also wanted the moment to just end.
So she did something without thinking. She stood up and turned the shower on.
Hank leapt off Remy’s lap and turned circles in the tub as if he was excited and definitely not afraid.
Remy howled as cold water buffeted his chest and half drowned him where he sat.
But the dog was rinsed.
“Sorry!”
“You brat,” he said, clearly not understanding that she had acted out of a sense of desperation rather than because she was trying to be an annoying younger sister.
But she didn’t have time to say that, because he stood up, Hank leapt out of the tub, and then Remy pulled her in.
Holding her fast, facing the showerhead so that she got drenched, his strong hands gripping her upper arms, heat and desire and freezing cold overtaking her all at once.
It was erotic, confusing, and just far, far too much.
“If you can dish it out,” he growled in her ear, “then you better be sure you can take it.”
His words should’ve been a challenge. They should’ve made her angry. Instead, they made her ache with erotic longing.
She tried to pull away from him and then he ended up gripping her, turning her toward him, and their eyes met.
Just then, his eyes went wide, as if he realized what was happening.
Oh, dear. Remy could see it. He could see her.
The way she felt about him. She felt small, and she felt upset.
It wasn’t fair. To be so plagued by this man.
To not know what to do in this moment, because the truth was she didn’t have any experience with men.
No one could hold a candle to him, so she had just gone flameless instead.
She didn’t know how to be flippant, how to play off a moment of sexual tension.
She didn’t know how to live in it. How to defuse it, or how to progress it.
She felt stupid. Because he could see that she wanted him. And he was probably horrified, because why wouldn’t he be?
Of course.
He had been treating her like a child. Yet to her, this felt erotic.
“Oh no,” he said.
He turned and looked, and her gaze followed his, just in time to see Hank begin to shake, sending water flying all over the bathroom. All the way up to the ceiling.
And then Hank ran happily out of the room.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“Well. That’s going to be . . . a mess.”
He released his hold on her, and she got out of the bath. “I’m soaking wet,” she said.
Their eyes met, and the slow dawning realization of the double entendre embedded in those words filled her with a sense of horror.
“I mean . . . from the shower.”
The fact that she felt the need to clarify didn’t make it any better.
“Yeah. Anyway. I’ve got some clothes you can borrow.”
“No. I should just go home.”
“You’re not driving home soaking wet like that. You’ll get your car all wet, and you’ll be uncomfortable. I’m sorry. You meant well, helping me with the dog. But . . . I just shouldn’t have . . . I shouldn’t have.”
He turned the water off and got out of the bath, then walked down the hall, leaving wet footprints in his wake.
She followed him slowly, hanging back. Then he opened up the drawers in his dresser, pulled out a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, and threw them in her direction.
“You can change. I’ll change. I’m just . . . Sorry about that.”
He walked out of the bedroom, still wet, and left her standing there, holding the clothes.
She closed the door and began to peel the wet fabric away from her body. And ever so slowly, her mortification began to turn into anger.
Because Remy wasn’t treating her like a woman. He was treating her like a child. She wasn’t a child. She was a woman who’d had feelings for him for years and years. It was insulting that he had done that. That he had . . . grabbed her and pulled her into the bath like that.
And that he thought nothing of it. Nothing at all.
When she emerged from the bedroom she was warm and cozy but swimming in his clothes, and she felt completely lowered. Because the sweatpants, with their elastic bands at the ankles, made her feel like a toddler in a bunting, and that was not helping her mood.
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” he asked, standing in the door of his kitchen. The invitation made her feel suspicious. What she wanted to do was leave.
But it wasn’t really a strange thing for him to ask. They shared meals at her parents’ house all the time, and occasionally she ate over here with Matthew. But never by herself. Still, they were practically family.
It was just that she had always had trouble thinking of him that way.
Right now she was just so busy fulminating, she had no idea what she thought about anything.
But Hank was still pacing around, sodden, and she wanted . . . at the moment she couldn’t tell whether she wanted to get past this feeling she was having or burn something to the ground.
One thing she knew: If she went home, nothing would be different. It would all be the same.
And she wasn’t sure she could stomach that either.
“Sure,” she said. “I would thank you for letting me use the clothes, but I’m not very grateful. On account of the fact that you’re the one who got my other clothes wet.”
She was holding them, a damp bundle in her arms.
“I’ll put them in the dryer.”
He took the clothes from her hands, including her underwear, and that made her feel warm, and yet even more spiteful. Because she was thinking about the intimacy of his seeing her bra and panties, but he most definitely wasn’t.
She walked into the living room and sat down, petting Hank’s wet head.
He appeared, arms crossed over his broad chest. “Hamburgers?”
“Of course. What’s not to like about hamburgers?”
He shrugged.
Hank jumped up onto the couch, and she felt secretly pleased that he was going to leave a wet spot that was going to annoy Remy.
She was team “annoy Remy” just at the moment.
He walked back into the kitchen and she stayed on the couch for a while, patting Hank until she couldn’t stand just listening to Remy move around anymore.
She got up and walked to the door of the kitchen, leaning there.
Remy walked to his stove, which had a big flat cast-iron grill over the top of two burners, and turned the heat on. Then he went over to the fridge and took out a couple of preprepared hamburger patties.
“Those are nice looking burgers,” she offered, just to have something to say.
“I do appreciate that, for all you’re a big lover of animals, you don’t seem to be against my profession.”
She was feeling sort of against him in a lot of ways right now, but not because he was a rancher.
“I respect people who care for their animals, even when those animals are part of the food chain. I grew up country enough to understand the difference between what somebody like you does versus a factory farm. And I personally don’t have the fortitude to be a vegetarian. ”
“Well, fair enough.”
He put the meat on the grill, and the sizzling sound made her stomach growl even more fiercely.
She heard the sound of Hank’s tags jingling as he slunk into the room looking baleful, as if Remy had betrayed him by cooking food not intended for him.
“Oh,” he said. “I guess I should throw a third hamburger on.”
“Are you really going to feed the dog hamburger?”
“Unless the pet police tells me that I can’t.” He opened up the fridge and grabbed a third patty.
“You just keep those in there?”
He laughed. “Beef is kind of my thing.”
“Right.”
“And the dog should have something nice.”
She put aside all the confused feelings she had for him and wondered why she didn’t think she deserved anything nice. Or rather, why she didn’t push for more in her life.
Why she let him see her as the little sister, and why she’d always sort of accepted her lot in this town as being the weird girl who was either conspicuous when she didn’t want to be, or cloaked in invisibility when she wished someone would notice her.
She’d thrown herself into taking care of animals, because they didn’t think she was weird. Because they appreciated her, and so, too, did other animal people.
In her experience, animal people were often seen as weirdos. But to her, they were the good ones. The real ones. The ones who took time out to care for creatures that couldn’t care for themselves. Possibly because of the ways in which people judged them and left them behind.
She couldn’t resent her oddness because it had brought her to her passion, but she did resent . . .
That things sometimes still felt like high school.
This whole experience with Remy felt as if it had cemented something that she hadn’t quite put a finger on before. She was waiting, and she had to stop.
She hadn’t even realized it, but it was true.
No other man was Remy, so she’d never even tried to have a romantic relationship. Because one man saw her as a little sister, she’d sort of assumed this sexless identity that she just wasn’t happy with anymore.
Irritation turned to determination.