Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Bea
Subtlety had never been my strong suit.
Laughing at the incredulous look on Bax’s face, I rooted around inside his kitchen cupboards, looking for the coffee he’d said was in one place, but I found the package of light-roast grounds sitting on the top shelf in the fridge. The guy really was out of his head.
As I had so vehemently stated to my boss yesterday, helping his brother was at the bottom of my list of priorities, but when Bax cried out in pain this morning after trying to put weight on his broken leg and I caught him defenseless on his couch, I kept seeing similarities to my dad after he’d broken his back.
I didn’t think Bax’s titanium-fortified femur was quite as complicated a medical issue as five broken vertebrae, a compressed spinal cord, and fuck-tons of pinched nerves, but he was in pain. That was easy to see.
And the disrepair Bax’s house had fallen into was familiar too.
For a guy who built houses for a living, my dad had certainly let the ball drop on his own home.
It was the reason I’d started teaching myself to fix broken things.
Daddy lay on the couch watching TV most days after his accident, long after the doctor had said he could resume light activity.
He never noticed the world passing him by.
If I wanted something fixed, I had to figure out how to do it myself.
That included infuriating dripping-sink faucets, patching holes in roofs, and replacing old floorboards so they wouldn’t trip him when he shuffled to the fridge for another beer to go with the buzz from his pain pills.
I could’ve called one of twenty guys to fix those things, but Daddy wouldn’t let me.
He was embarrassed he couldn’t do any of it himself and didn’t want any of the men from his crew to know.
Bax didn’t seem quite as pigheaded as my dad had been, but he was definitely stubborn.
And I hadn’t missed how Bax’s cheeks had pinked when I went for his zipper, a dark look flashing in his baby blues.
Unfortunately, sex with my boss’s brother wasn’t the reason I’d come to the middle of bear country.
And besides that, Candy was everywhere in this house.
There were framed pictures of Bax’s dead wife on the fireplace mantel, hanging on the walls, and the way Athena had jumped down my throat when she thought I was dissing her mom’s name told me she wasn’t ready for her dad to be with anybody anyway.
Still though, the desire was there. At least on my part, but I’d gotten pretty good at denying myself things I wanted.
I could do it again. I had to. The alternative would be messy, and anyway, I had no plans to be one of those women who bulldozed their way into a single dad’s life and stomped all over his kid to get what she wanted.
I set the coffee to brew, searched around for clean mugs and a spoon, and when I found them, sat at Bax’s kitchen table and checked emails on my phone while I waited, but it wasn’t long until I heard the bathroom door click open and the rubber feet on the bottom of his crutches squeak on the floor as he made his way to the kitchen.
When he got there, he stopped and looked down at me. “Can I ask you to do me a favor?” The pinched look on his face said he didn’t like asking for help, and the resigned sound of his voice convinced me I was right about it, but whatever the favor was, he needed it.
“Sure.”
“There’s a laundry basket on top of the washer.” He nodded behind us to a closed door, where I assumed his washer and dryer set would be. “Can you throw the clothes from the dryer in there and bring it out here, please? I forgot to ask Athena to do it, but all my clean clothes are in there.”
“Sure.”
I brought the basket into the kitchen and set it on the table, then went to pour two cups of coffee. I heard Bax digging through the basket, and I heard the thunk when he dropped a pair of jeans on the floor.
“Need some more help?” I asked as I poured a little milk into my Spitfire Ranch mug, stirred it slowly, and then turned and leaned against the counter, blowing on and sipping the hot coffee, watching him drop a T-shirt and a sock.
He really needed to keep both hands on his crutch handles. I assumed his left leg hadn’t been injured, but constantly putting all his weight on it had to start to hurt at some point, and I had a sneaking suspicion he’d been trying to hide the amount of pain he was really in from Athena.
“Naw, I’m good. Thanks.”
He dropped a pair of black boxer-briefs, and I rolled my eyes.
“You’ve already asked for my help once. What’s the harm in askin’ again?”
“Uh.” He turned a little, his cheeks reddening in chagrin. “You know, male pride and all that. I’ve been on my own a long time now. It frustrates me to no end not to be able to do the simplest shit for myself. Plus, I didn’t think you’d wanna touch my underwear.”
“Please. They’re clean, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sit down.”
He did it. Didn’t argue this time as he pivoted on his foot and lowered himself into a dining chair. He looked the picture of male pride, but it didn’t make sense to me, because if his wife were still alive, surely he would’ve let her fetch clean laundry.
Looking at his shirt, I noticed wrinkles, and was that dog hair clinging to it? Cow hair? I knew the cattle were close. I smelled the dirty buggers, but I hadn’t seen a dog anywhere.
But male pride aside, I remembered how it felt to be thirteen and depended on like I had been thirty. It wasn’t fun, and that made the decision for me. I called into the living room and up the stairs. “Athena, are you in the shower?”
“About to be,” she yelled back. “Why?”
“Don’t come downstairs for a few minutes. I’m gonna help your dad change his clothes, okay?”
“Umm… Yeah, okay, I think?”
“Good. Thank you!” Bending in front of him, I grabbed the jeans Bax had been failing to pick up off the floor, but there was no way the thick cast on his right leg would allow itself to be covered by denim, not even boot-cut denim.
“How did you plan to get these over your cast, and how the hell did you manage the ones you’re wearin’? ”
“Aw, shit. I forgot. My sister’s future mother-in-law fixed the jeans I have on.
She sewed these wide panels in the leg so they’d fit over the cast.” He touched the side of his leg, and I finally noticed what he was talking about.
“But I’ve only got the one pair, and they’re dirty as fuck. I’ve been wearin’ ’em for two days.”
“Yeah, your T-shirt ain’t much better. Got sweats?”
“Uh, yeah. There should be some in the basket.” He watched as I dug through the pile of clothes until I found a pair of heather-gray sweatpants. They looked roomy enough to fit over his cast, and I lifted the boxers he’d dropped in my other hand.
“Strip.”
“Okay.” He puffed out his cheeks and released the breath slowly. “Guess we’re really doin’ this.”
“Please. You think I’ve never seen a pee-pee before?” I rolled my eyes. “But I won’t look. I know you can do this on your own, but how long would it take you, and can you promise me you won’t fall over in the process? Your daughter might kill me if you break your arm too.”
More color rushed into his cheeks. He smirked, and in a low, rasping voice that reminded me of the night we’d met, he said, “Probably not.”
I set the boxers and sweats on the kitchen table as he unzipped his zipper and popped open his fly, then shoved the denim as far down his thighs as the chair would allow, and I whipped my head away.
Just that one little motion, the sound of the fabric snapping open, and the way he looked right in my eyes when he’d pushed it down his legs— Oh, Bea.
You’re in trouble. The small glimpse I’d gotten of his strong, uncasted and hair-dusted thigh was enough to make me salivate.
I hadn’t seen a man’s thighs in two years, since my last deeply disappointing one-night stand before I landed in Sheridan. The sex had been adequate, but the happy ending I’d had to give myself when I got home let the sting of disappointment linger. Girls got blue balls too.
Blue ovaries?
Bax cleared his throat. “What’d you say?”
“Nothin’. You ready?”
His chair creaked, and out of the corner of my eye, I watched as he slid his boxers down with his jeans. He made no move to cover himself with the many articles of clothing at his disposal.
He coughed awkwardly. “Yeah. Help?” he said, but there was teasing in his voice.
I took a deep breath, turned back to him, and crouched in front of him, refusing to allow my eyes to focus on bare skin.
I tugged at the leg of his jeans, working it over his cast. It took a minute, but I finally managed to get it almost down to his ankle, and then I slipped the other leg down, catching his boxers with the jeans.
He grabbed a clean tee from the laundry basket, set it in his lap, and lifted the dirty one he’d been wearing and pulled it over his head. It messed up his hair, and I wanted to run my hand over it to calm it down, and maybe feel it slide between my fingers. It looked downy and soft.
He tossed the dirty shirt next to the basket and lifted the clean one, working his arms through the arm holes so that the rest of the fabric stretched tightly across his chest.
And then this man was essentially naked in front of me for a hot second.
You are denying yourself right now, Beatrice. Do not look. Don’t look. This is your boss’s brother. Do not look at his abs, and don’t you dare look at his wooly wally!
Shit. I totally looked. How could I not? And of course he was big. And hard. My head cocked to the side just a little as I considered his sizeable girth. Would it fit?
Oh God, but wouldn’t it be fun to try?
He said nothing, but the smirk at the edges of his lips let me know he wasn’t too embarrassed about popping a boner in the middle of his kitchen at five in the morning while his kid was upstairs.