Chapter 3
THREE
Phoebe
Wow, he was a jackass.
Hot jackass, but a rude jerk nonetheless.
We shuffled our way up the path from the beach. I could tell he didn’t know where it was, which only added to the weirdness.
Would he have died out there if I didn’t look out the front window? I spent ages in my studio and didn’t pay attention to the world for sometimes twelve hours at a time. The fact that I’d been in cooking mode was the only thing that may have saved him.
Not that he had a whole lot of gratitude for it.
“Okay, there’s a path under here, but it’s like stairs.”
“No wonder I tripped.”
“Yeah, well you picked an interesting time to visit the beach.”
Again, he closed his mouth. His rather nice jaw tensing with either the need to spit out words, or pissed I mentioned it again. Interesting.
I liked puzzles.
We lumbered up the steps to the road and I could hear his labored breath. Based on the muscles flexing under my fingers, it wasn’t because he was out of shape. Probably pain. “Want to stop?”
“No,” he gritted out.
“Okay, then.” I took a little more of his weight, my back screaming at the position but we didn’t have far to go. I wrapped my other arm around him, and he hissed. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
Big baby under the strong silent type?
Or was he more hurt than I thought? When I saw him go down, I just acted. I didn’t even remember running out of my house. Thankfully I still had my boots on or we both would have been in trouble.
I got him to his porch and hooked his arm around the post. “Don’t fall.” I pressed my hands against his chest—to make sure he wasn’t going to crash forward. Okay, so it was very nice and not a hardship. I was a sucker for hair on a guy’s chest.
And it had been a hot minute since I’d been up close to a man even if he was a prickly popsicle. I hurried over to the door and groaned when it was locked. I looked back at him. “Really?”
“I didn’t lock it.” He bowed his head and sagged against the railing.
“Great.” I looked under the mat and inside the little flower pot outside the door. Nada. “C’mon, house, where would you hide a key?” I felt around the door and under the scrollwork of the lantern-style light on either side of the front door.
I was about to go around to find a window to climb through when I spotted a little medallion above the outside faucet. I pounced on it, my fingers clumsy with cold. It flipped open and a key was nestled into a little hiding spot. “Yes!”
“How the hell did you see that?”
I shrugged. “I just see stuff.” He probably didn’t want to know my vibes thing. Sometimes it just meant asking the right question to places and they coughed up the details.
I shoved the key in the lock and the door popped open. The instant rush of heat made my fingers tingle. I really didn’t want to go back out there.
However, the dog galloped up the stairs and right through the door. I snickered and craned my neck around the corner to find him making a spot in front of the fire.
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry about your dog. Let’s get you in here.”
“It’s not my dog.”
“Sure he’s not.”
He was pale, clammy, and about a second from falling over. That jaw was still tightly clenched. Didn’t he have a headache or TMJ from all of that?
I ran down the stairs to him. “You keep swallowing words like that you’re going to get a bellyache.”
He frowned at me.
“What? That’s how ulcers are made.”
“It is not.”
“That’s what my gram used to say. Better out than in, Phoebe Jean.” I grinned at him as I wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Applies to many things.”
I needed a little more leverage to get him up real stairs and grabbed the waistband of his pants, then realized my mistake.
There wasn’t a damn thing on under those gray sweatpants. And the good lord blessed him twice.
Luckily for me, he was in too much pain to notice I copped a feel.
At least I hoped so.
I steered him up the stairs and through the door. I leaned him against the sideboard, hurried back to close the door and wiggled out of my coat. “Okay, let’s get you undressed.”
He arched a brow.
“Looks like you’re thawing out. Even if you’re still chewing on your words.” I peeled my gloves off his hands. They were red and scraped up from the sand. “Ouch.”
He flexed them and a little something flared to life in my belly. First the chest and now the hands. Oof. I shook off my lusty thoughts and helped him out of his parka and hung it on the hook by the door.
I helped him across the living room, my gaze bouncing around the room. “Damn. Lizzie’s place got an upgrade and then some.”
“Lizzie?”
“Henderson. She’s like seventy-eight or something. She was a kick. I think she was sad to leave this place, but the cold was too much for her and Stan.”
“Husband?”
“Dog.”
“Of course it was,” he said through chattering teeth.
I shrugged. “She took her husband too, but I think it was mostly out of loyalty. Fred was a bit of a crabass. You’d probably have liked him.” At his deadpan stare, I laughed.
He started shuddering and I hustled him onto the couch.
No blankets—shoot. I did a spin and spotted the hallway to the bedrooms. I rushed forward and frowned at a box in the middle of the hall.
Strips of sweatshirts and T-shirts littered the floor and looked like they lost a fight with Edward Scissorhands. What the hell?
Not a single sweatshirt had been left whole.
None of them seemed as if they could belong to a girl. Hmm. Did he break up with his boyfriend or something?
Of course the first guy to make my body hum didn’t even play for my team. Or would that be he did play for my team? Whatever, it was just my luck. Ahh well, that probably made it easier.
I picked up the shrapnel of his sweatshirts and T-shirts and dumped them back in the box and found a SFSU sweatshirt at the very bottom. I grabbed that and another pair of sweats. I went into what was probably his bedroom and practically moaned.
That bed was glorious.
But the important piece was the blanket. I snatched it off the bed and hefted it over my shoulder.
I should probably just put him in his bed, but it was freaking cold in the room.
I shuffled down the hall with my bounty to find him sitting on the end of the couch closest to the fireplace. The glow warmed up the surprisingly neutral room. Everything was a different shade of gray or black. From the bookcases to the couch, everything was austere.
The firelight warmed his tanned skin and turned his dark hair chestnut.
But it was his back that gave me pause.
So many muscles, yes, but it was the ink that stole my breath.
No color—that seemed to be a theme with this one—but the intricate line work urged me closer.
I was a sucker for negative space artwork.
It was a copse of tall trees—Redwoods maybe?
But the deep shadows of it only showed a little bit of detail with a wispy curl of dark fog winding in and out of the branches.
That alone would have been powerful enough, but the oversized star winking out of the darkness gave it a hopeful bent that didn’t exactly line up with the man I met.
He stood and mercy, all those muscles and hair practically glowed in the firelight.
Dutch really was a delicious specimen of male.
He made my fingers itchy for some charcoal and paper, which generally wasn’t my medium of choice.
Then he wobbled on his busted ankle and I dropped the clothes and blanket on the couch to catch him. “Really did a number on that ankle, huh?”
He growled.
“It’s okay. You don’t need to talk to me, just sit down.” I pushed him back down on the couch.
“I’m in the house, you can take the dog and leave.”
“I’ll get you settled first.” I eased his foot onto the coffee table in front of the couch and attacked his laces, which were icy and tangled. His ankle was definitely swelling and the shoe was biting into his bare feet. “So why did you run out of the house like your butt was on fire?”
He said nothing, just pulled the sweatshirt over his head.
“Wait. You’re all dirty.” I stood and did a little rotation, spotting his kitchen. A very unpacked kitchen, save for a stack of towels by his sink. Black and gray of course.
Color me shocked.
He sighed and pulled it back off. “You really don’t need to—”
I gave him a bland stare and he shut up. I wet one of them and took two others to dry him off. “Can you get it?”
“Yeah,” he muttered and took the towel. He swiped it over his chest and the sand and debris from the beach scattered into his lap and on the floor.
The look of dismay on his face made me laugh. “That’s what vacuums are for.”
“When I find it.”
Because watching him wipe himself down gave me ideas, I popped back up and into the kitchen.
Luckily it was a new fridge with an ice maker.
I made a makeshift ice pack with a towel and some tape I found inside the box.
By the time I returned to him, the sweatshirt was back on and I could actually think straight.
It wasn’t the nudity.
I didn’t mind that. Bodies were natural and clothes were a nuisance sometimes when I was working. Unfortunately, his body was a little too delicious.
He was still shivering and I noticed the big dark stains of wet on his sweatpants.
“Okay, let’s see, we should probably get these pants off you.”
“Pardon me?”
“They’re wet.”
He looked down. “I’ll take care of it. I should go take a shower.”
“Can you make it in there and stand?”
His jaw did that clench thing.
“Right, that’s what I thought. Let’s get this shoe off and we’ll get you undressed.”
“Lady, this isn’t your problem.”
“I know. But you need help, so I’ll help.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re my neighbor.” I shrugged. “It’s just skin. It’s no big deal. I should probably find you some boxers or tightie whities or whatever.”
He choked.
“I mean I helped you up the stairs, Dutch. I know there’s only you and a threadbare pair of sweatpants going on over there.” I pushed up my sleeves.
“You are not undressing me.”
I rolled my eyes and turned around. “Okay, princess. Go ahead and get undressed.”
“Just go.”
“Nope. What if you crash to the floor?”
“Then I’ll get up by myself.” I heard him hiss as he got the shoe off his swollen ankle and it thudded to the floor. Then a rather inventive string of swear words made me laugh.
There was more rustling of material and another string of dark, eyebrow raising curses.
“Kiss your mom with that mouth?”
“My mom is dead.”
My heart sank. “I’m sorry.”
“Happened years ago.”
Then a big thud had me turning around. I got an eyeful of his spectacularly muscled thigh and ass before the sweatpants were hiked over all that golden skin.
I caught a flash of more ink on his thigh before the black sweatpants covered it up. A moth?
Damn, he really was put together well. Too bad I didn’t get a look at the rest of what he had going on. Not that the sweatpants hid anything, really.
Stop looking at him.
He collapsed back on the couch and I grabbed the blanket and tossed it over him. He was shivering now. The shock of the change of temperatures and pain setting in.
“Did you unpack your meds or first aid yet?”
He pulled the heavy blanket over his shoulders and up over his mouth leaving just those silvery eyes and a mess of molasses colored curls sprouting all around his head peeking out.
“Box in the primary bathroom.”
“Got it.” I grabbed a pillow from the corner of the couch and tossed it on the coffee table before gently setting his foot on top.
He hissed and pulled away from me.
“It’s only going to swell more if you don’t put it up.” I firmly set it back on the pillow and put the ice pack over it. I pulled the blanket over his bare foot. Geeze, even his feet were attractive.
What were the odds?
Where was the flaw?
“You’re pushy.”
Oh, right, it was his mouth.
“Yeah, well, I’m used to injuries.”
His eyebrow arched again.
“My brother played hockey. Pretty sure yours is just a sprain but let’s get some Advil in you. Be right back.” I picked my way over the mess we’d made, scooping up his wet clothes and dropping them into the washer I’d spotted in the cutout in the hall.
I appreciated the design and put it in the back of my mind for my house. Space was always a premium, especially since I couldn’t resist thrifting.
I ducked into his bedroom and wound around the boxes to the bathroom. There was a neat pile of boxes labeled by the shower. The air held the scent of ginger and something spicy. Pepper maybe? I rolled my eyes, even his scent was dark and black. Figured.
I ripped open the box labeled first aid and meds. “Jackpot,” I said and grabbed the bottle of gel caps. I noticed the prescriptions bottles at the bottom of the box. “Don’t look, Pheeb.”
But of course I did.
I was nosy as hell.
Xanax.
The bottle seemed full, but that didn’t mean anything.
I put it back and stood up. We all needed help sometimes. I was pretty sure half the world felt anxiety in one form or another these days. I spotted the first aid kit, finding kinetic tape and ace bandages inside.
I took it all back into the living room and paused at the end of the hall.
He was asleep.
Our intrepid pup looked up guiltily. He was laying on the other end of the couch with his nose a few inches away from the lump of Dutch under the blanket.
I set the bottle next to him along with the supplies. I should probably wake him. I really needed to get those pills into him for the inflammation, but he actually looked quite peaceful.
The harsh lines between his eyes had smoothed. And the slash of lips were actually much fuller when he wasn’t smashing them together against whatever he actually wanted to say. Part of me wanted to push the curls out of his face. Since that was just ridiculous, I took a really large step back.
I should probably just go home.
He’d be fine.
I tucked the blanket around his shoulder then noticed the half empty boxes in his kitchen.
I wandered into the large room. It had definitely been upgraded since the last time I’d been to visit Lizzie.
I trailed my fingertips over the concrete countertops.
The color was a deep teal. An actual color—amazing.
It complimented the copper and gold hues in the tile backsplash.
Whoever redid the kitchen actually loved cooking.
The range was induction and made my fingers itch to try it out.
I peeked into one of the boxes and found a few staples for soup.
The deep rust colored Le Creuset Dutch oven sunk my battleship.
I dug through his fridge and found a few more things I could use.
We both needed to eat.
And it was a snowstorm.
Soup only made sense.
I found a bag of little white potatoes and knew exactly what I was going to make.