CHAPTER THREE #2
He turned around and his eyes moved over me once, top to bottom, the same brief assessing look he’d given me after he’d pulled me from the river.
Except this time it snagged. On the bare shoulder where his flannel had slipped.
On my legs in his cut-off sweats. He shut it down fast — but not fast enough, and my whole body logged the win.
“Sit,” he said, and nodded at the couch.
“You know most people say things like please or make yourself comfor—”
“Sit, Amy.”
I sat. No hesitation. Apparently, my body took orders from this man without routing them through me first, which was going to require some serious reflection. Later. When his voice wasn’t doing that.
He crossed to the couch with a first-aid kit I hadn’t noticed on the counter and went down on one knee in front of me.
He didn’t say anything. He pushed the hem of my shorts up to reveal the cut. As he had on the tailgate of the ambulance, his hand wrapped around my thigh from underneath.
“I took the bandage off.” That was the only thing I could come up with to say. The feel of his hand on my thigh chased away all other coherent thoughts. I stared at the top of his bent head and the next fantasy reel got the go ahead. His head. Bent. Between my...
He dug out another bandage and tape. Right. He was touching me for medical reasons.
He laid the new bandage flat, smoothed the tape down with his thumb, once, twice.
Then again. I couldn’t help the shiver and hoped it put it do to the trauma.
Instead of standing, he reached over and picked up a pair of socks I hadn’t noticed.
He took one bare foot in his hand, propping it against his thick thigh.
“Oh — you don’t have to—”
He put the sock on my foot. Then the other one.
Like it was nothing. Like it was simply the next thing that needed to be done.
Once he was done, he wrapped his big hands around both my ankles.
That part of my body had never been an area I’d thought to ask a man to touch me, but here we were, learning things.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a while,” I said. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It came out much more honest than I’d intended. Again, I’d blame the concussion for my behavior. And conversation.
He stood up and took the kit back to the kitchen. “Don’t read into it.”
“Too late,” I said to his back. “I’m barely reading into it,” I amended. He didn’t answer that. Smart man.
He came back with a mug and set it on the coffee table in front of me. “What’s that?”
“Ginger tea. It will help with the nausea and warm you up.”
I looked up at him. “I know another way you could warm me up.”
I literally had no idea where that had come from. I was not the type of woman who propositioned a man, which, honestly, I hadn’t been doing. Flirting? Maybe. In my awkward way.
He stood there, looking down at me from a long, long way. I got dizzy, and it wasn’t the concussion.
He didn’t move. But his eyes did — down to my mouth, down the open collar of his flannel, and back up. Slow. Taking the scenic route.
“Amy.” Low. A warning with my name attached to it.
“Present,” I whispered.
His weight came forward. An inch. Maybe two. His hand flexed once at his side, and I watched him decide — actually watched it happen, the want and the leash he put on the wan. If he’d reached for me. I would have gone up like dry tinder. I think he knew it. I think that was the point of the leash.
“Drink your tea.”
He walked back into the kitchen, and I sat there vibrating like a struck bell.
“I was going to ask for coffee,” I said, picking up the tea and taking a drink.
Hot ginger tea in July should have been a crime, but it was citrusy with a kick and he’d sugared it with a generous hand.
A man after my own heart. Almost as good as the sweet iced tea I drank at home — and I did not hand that compliment out lightly.
“No caffeine with a concussion.”
“You know concussion protocol.”
“I know a lot of protocols.” He turned back to the stove. I knew there was a story in that sentence, in the flat way he said it, but I didn’t ask. I sipped my tea and added it to the pile of things I was going to figure out about this man.
“I’m going to figure you out,” I told him. Apparently out loud. The concussion was really doing a number on my filter.
“You’re not going to figure me out,” he said, cracking eggs into a pan.
“I figured out the smile already.”
He went still. Which, I’d already learned was something in itself. “Amy.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m not reading into it.” A pause. “Barely.”
He put a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of me and stood there like a wall.
“Eat.”
“You’re unbLawsonevably bossy.”
“Eat all of it.”
I ate. It was good — eggs done soft, toast done dark, the cooking of a man who’d made ten thousand quiet meals for one — and I was hungrier than I’d known, which he’d clearly known before I did, which was becoming a theme.
Also becoming a theme? Being ordered around by a man built like a barn and liking it.
Somewhere in my body a committee had formed to discuss that development.
The findings were unanimous and unprintable.
He took the chair across from me. DLawsonberately across. The full width of the coffee table between us. Like the furniture had been assigned to a security detail.
I set my fork down on an empty plate and looked at him. “So now what?”
“You need to rest.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to rest.”
“No. You weren’t supposed to rest without someone watching over you.”
I looked at him. Big and still in a chair he barely fit in, watching me right back like there wasn’t anywhere else he needed to be.
“Are you going to watch over me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”