Chapter 10
10
I only just climb into bed and settle into my book after Town Hall when my front door sounds like a hurricane is pounding it down.
The hell? I flip over my cell to check if there are any texts from my family. Nothing… not from them or the guards or the stable hands, land maintenance. Nobody.
I throw off the covers and rush to grab some boxer briefs from my walk-in closet and slip them on, then take the Maglite flashlight I keep next to my bed to go downstairs. I don’t know how an intruder would slip past guards, why they would knock on my door to let them in or how I’d fare with a flashlight, even heavy as it is. The frantic pounding has me racing down my staircase then slowing my steps, and eventually peeking through the window.
Ava?
I unlock the door.
Ava’s eyebrows are pinched together, and she leans on the doorjamb. “I don’t feel right.”
I push the door open further. “Come in.”
She enters my foyer. She’s not standing tall, and her voice is strained.
"Are you okay?”
“Not really. I think it could be bad. My throat is really tight.”
I take her by the arm and pull her deeper into the living room, shutting the door with my foot. “Do you need a doctor?
“I don’t have health insurance.”
I overlook the obvious reason she hasn’t gotten on the company policy. It’s not the time, her face is twisted in pain.
“Insurance isn’t an issue, Ava. If you need medical attention I’ll make it happen.”
“I just… my throat is kind of tight and itchy, and my back… it’s burning and so sore.”
I help her down gently on my couch and kneel next to her. Fuck, her cheeks are really flushed, and I know the woman has luscious lips, but they’re puffier than usual.
“I’m sorry I came. But I just don’t feel normal. I’m kind of dizzy.”
“What do you think it is?” I wipe hair that’s stuck to her forehead.
“Will you check my back, please? That’s the worst of all. It’s just…” She writhes her shoulders, and the sunshine has well and truly drained from her face.
“Do you want me to get my dad? ”
“Enzo… I came here…” There’s a sort of plea in her eyes and something else in her gaze.
My heart hits the terracotta tiles. She trusts me.
She lies down on her stomach, facing down. Her swan-like neck is elegant, enticing. Ready for a set of teeth.
I have to remind myself she was right to trust me when she wiggles up her shirt to expose her mid-back without flashing me completely. The problem is right where her bra strap would have been. The side of her full breast spills out and presses into the cushion of my couch.
“Is there something there? In the middle of my back it really burns. There weren’t the right mirrors in the house to see for myself.”
There’s an angry-looking raised set of hives right in the middle of her spine.
“Shit. Did something bite you?” I ask, my fingers wanting desperately to soothe her.
“Wait. What is it?” Her voice is muffled into the pillows.
“You have a pretty mean rash.”
She groans. “Oh no. Is it gross?”
I know how women can be about these things. My sister hated even the smallest blemishes, so I try to make her comfortable.
“I’m a farm boy. Nothing much fazes me. And the hives don’t ruin the view.”
I tease to lighten the mood, but my gut knows how much I mean it. And how much I shouldn’t have said it.
“I still don’t want you seeing it.” She starts to tug her shirt down an inch.
I push her back down on the sofa, because if she needs help, I’m going to give it to her. “You’re not going anywhere, Scottie. You said your throat is tight?”
“Yeah. ”
“Did you eat anything different tonight?” My brother, Gabriel, has a peanut allergy, and I remember him getting hives a few times as a kid.
“A few snacks at Town Hall. Since getting home I’ve been snacking on that chocolate spread thing I bought at the grocery store.”
“That has hazelnuts in it.” I know because… Gabriel. We weren’t allowed any nut products in the house growing up, and that was one of them. “You’re not allergic to nuts, are you?”
“I don’t know.” She sucks her teeth. “Geez… It feels like my skin is going to burst.”
She tries to reach back to touch the spot where she’s hurt but can’t reach it. “Now that I think of it, I guess I never really ate peanut butter or anything like that growing up.”
Crap. I hope this doesn’t get serious. “I think I should get you to a doctor. Just in case.”
“No. Please… no… just… do you have anything that could help?”
“I’ll go to my brother’s house. He’ll have things.”
When I rise from the couch she tugs at my boxers, nearly pulling them off and I fall back down on the sofa.
“Please don’t leave me. I’m lightheaded. Do you have something here? Anything? I just need to cool my back off. It’s like there are lit matches sitting on me. Ice? Anything?”
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I bound over to the kitchen and speed dial my dad’s cell.
He picks up, and speaks with the voice of a man who’s been stirred from sleep. “Zo?”
“I think Ava might be having an allergic reaction. Nuts maybe. She says her throat is tight. Has hives on her back.”
His sheets rustle, and his feet hit the floor so quickly they make a thud right through the phone. “Crap. What can I do?”
“Would she already be in anaphylaxis if it’s bad?”
“Most likely. Do you have an EpiPen and some antihistamine? Cream for the hives? I can head over to Gabriel’s and see what he has.”
I’m already bounding to my bathroom to grab things, pills, cream, a glass of water.
“It’s fine. I don’t have an EpiPen but I have supplies.” Dad knows that. Gabriel’s allergy is life-threatening, so we all keep things on hand.
“Put some cream on her back. Give her antihistamine and keep an eye on her. Don’t let her go home. If she has a delayed reaction…”
“I got it.”
I look at Ava’s long body stretched out on my sofa. Her bare back nips in at the waist. Her butt is peachy, and her long legs are bare. Am I really going to touch her? I have to help, but if merely gazing at her causes my pulse to race, what will happen when my fingers actually come into contact with that smooth skin of hers?
My dad’s instructions come through the phone. “Just be gentle if the hives are raised. They can be really sensitive, but equally it might feel good for you to rub them carefully. Gabriel used to like that.”
I scrub my hand down my face. She’s on my land, under my duty of care. “I gotta go, Dad. Thanks.”
A soft groan hits my ears when I return to the living room and kneel at her side. She’s still belly down, midriff exposed, womanly… enticing, even with the red blistery bumps.
She pushes herself up slightly to face me, securing her shirt to her breasts, but so much skin hangs out of the side my mouth goes dry. Her hair cascades down around her shoulders, wild and coppery and I’m close enough to get a whiff of her cedarwood scent. Jesus, she’s beautiful.
“Here.” I hand her a pill. “Take this.”
She gazes at the pill hesitantly.
“It’s for allergies. An antihistamine.”
She nods and barely manages that nipple not falling out when she takes a tiny sip of water along with the pill.
I tip the cream toward her. “You can put this on, too, for more immediate relief.”
“I can’t reach.”
My heart flatlines as her honey gaze dives deep into mine.
“Will you do it?”
I swallow thickly. “Sure. Of course…”
She lies back down, silky mane everywhere, freckles teasing me from her shoulders, lithe shoulder blades so vulnerable right here, laid out in front of me. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. I really shouldn’t.
I snatch a blanket off the back of an armchair and head for the couch again.
I unfold the blanket and cover her long, bare legs, as if somehow putting some of her skin away makes this more professional.
How could a woman be her age and not know if she has a food allergy? She said her uncle did all the cooking. Still, surely he would have told her to be careful when she went off with friends or went to a sleepover or went off on her own even to a restaurant or something? Gabriel can’t have peanuts, and I think my mom reminded him of that twenty times a day until it was drilled into his head and everyone else he came into contact with .
I put a little cream on my index finger and start on the edges of one of the three big hives.
She inhales sharply.
“Sorry…” I barely make contact with her skin, trying hard to have a featherlight touch, to offer relief instead of a new pain.
“Thank you, Enzo…”
Her words are so sweet they touch me somewhere deep. I run another circle of cream around a second hive, and she writhes a bit, her torso undulating underneath my touch. Try as I might, it comes off seductive, especially with the mound of flesh bursting out from under her rib cage and her low-cut pajama shorts giving me a view of the top of her curvy ass.
I’m worried about the heat around my collar and what it means. I haven’t touched a woman in a long time. I know she’s unwell and I’m caring for her but I can’t help but want to draw my finger down her spine until it reaches the darkness under the blanket. The shape of her is sexy. The smell of her is sexy. The way she moans with relief is really goddamn sexy.
These thoughts shouldn’t be crossing my mind with an employee. My neighbor. A much younger woman who’s trusting me. And definitely not one who I need a distance from in order to have perspective.
I still think Ava’s keeping secrets.
“That’s really starting to feel better. It’s not burning so much.”
This is medical treatment to her. Nothing else. Same for me. I’m just doing the right thing.
But as my fingers draw circles on her soft, warm flesh, sparks fly up my arm. “This is helping?”
“Mmm. ”
Her back is really smooth, and my touch easily glides over the surface.
“If it’s the nuts in that spread,” I reassure her, “you should hopefully feel better when the antihistamine kicks in.”
She winces, gazing at the back of the couch. “I hope you don’t think I’m a big baby. The hives are so sore it’s like I have a burn back there or something. And then I felt lightheaded. I bet it’s really ugly back there…”
“You couldn’t be ugly if you tried, Scottie.”
I mean it to cheer her up. But when she turns her head on the sofa in my direction, our gazes connect as if I meant a lot more. The room stills. My heart swells. Maybe I did mean more. Because damn is this woman ravishing.
She offers a gentle smile, swollen lips puffy and pressed into the cushion. “Will you keep rubbing? It’s really a relief. It feels amazing,” she says, referring to my touch.
My heartbeat quickens, because the last time I heard those words, I was rubbing another part of a woman. And it was a long, long time ago.
A strand of that fiery red mane of hers falls over her eyes. I’ve always loved red hair. It’s rare. Exotic. Only two percent of the world’s population has red hair. Hers is shiny… and I bet it’s soft like her skin.
My next swallow is more like a gulp. Her smooth skin is divine under my fingertips. I’m wondering how much longer I should do this before it feels like I’m doing it for me and not her. Truth be told, that moment has already come.
It’s impossible to ignore how gorgeous she is. Not when I’m this close. Not when this perfect skin is laid out before me and her shirt is bunched so high another inch would expose a nipple and I’d be having a problem in my boxer shorts .
“Enzo?”
I wish she wouldn’t say my name the way she does.
“You know how we said it would be hard to get to know each other?”
“Yes.”
“Now is a good time to talk. It will take my mind off this, maybe?”
I don’t answer. It’s not that making conversation is hard for me exactly. A little. I don’t trust what comes out of anyone’s mouth, so what’s the point in asking leading questions, in making conversation? But the more I’ve watched Ava these past few days, the more I’m intrigued. With everyone but me, she has so much to say.
She taps my forearm just in case I’m not listening. “If you had three wishes, what would they be?”
As usual, you never know what will come out of this woman’s mouth. I never really thought about three wishes before. I suppose I’d want to have my sister and her family here, safety… redemption for my mistakes. But I’m not going to talk about all that now as night envelops us slowly, softly… my eyelids telling me it’s getting late and in the wee small hours is when resolve slips. My answers are too deep for this hour, and I’m not ready, maybe I’ll never be, to sincerely talk about what I’d wish for.
Her words sound sleepy, like she might drift off. Maybe the massage is working. Good. I need sleep. And to stop touching her because my body and mind are feeling very differently about this so-called treatment.
“Mine have changed since getting here,” she says. “I think I’d actually use a wish just to stay here in Echo Valley.”
“It’s your kind of place, is it?” I’ll keep her talking if it keeps her mind off her pain .
“My second wish would be to prove I belong at GhostEye. I love what you’re doing. I really respect it. I know you’re wary of me but…”
She opens her light-brown eyes, and I use the backs of my fingers to brush off that rogue strand of hair so I can see them better.
The corner of her mouth twitches. “I want GhostEye in the world as much as you do.”
Her words are so genuine they crack my heart. But I need to be more careful. I’m being pulled into a world where I want to ignore that I still don’t know who the hell she is.
Though the circumstances around Ava are suspicious, all I see is a pretty damn sincere woman. The carrots, wanting the breeze on her face, including my father socially… And this admission about GhostEye, well, she might just be decent on the inside, too.
I can count on one hand what’s important to me. GhostEye is among the small treasures I value. GhostEye means more to me than work. It means more to me than even bringing justice into the world. It means more to me than Ava will ever know. Hell, than I’ve ever even articulated to my brothers. Not that I needed to. They understand where my hunger and drive come from.
Redemption for my fatal error.
I was the one who led to all that pain in my family. I was the one who let danger walk right in and take my cousin. And now, I hope to prevent that pain reaching the hearts of anyone else through GhostEye.
Staring into Ava’s eyes, I believe her. She gazes at me like this company means as much to her as it does to me, which is impossible, of course, but it still touches me. It’s enough to shift my suspicions and makes me want to root for her instead.
Ava’s softness in this moment is like a balm I didn’t know could feel so good. In fact, her whole aura is soothing to be around. She’s curious but not pushy. She’s enthusiastic but bright enough not to chase pavement. She’s kind… the way she pulled my dad in tonight warmed me to her for sure, but also, I saw the way she made people smile. How easily people take to her. She’s effortless sunshine.
I don’t need to know her to work with her. Yet it’s touching me somehow to know she would spend a wish just to stay here in my town, at my company. When my mind returns to my fingers, I notice they have absentmindedly run dangerously close to the edge of her breasts and that goosebumps have sprouted underneath them.
Dangerous. Me warming to her is dangerous. Me being attracted to her is dangerous. Me touching her is dangerous.
I stop rubbing the cream on and pull down her shirt, and hope covering her perfect skin makes me feel more decent again. “What’s your third wish?”
“Well…” she says breathily, a glint returning to her eye, “that you give me something else to prove my worth here.” She crinkles her nose, awaiting my reaction.
It almost makes me smile. Damn, she has a way about her.
Maybe Santi was right. Maybe I have to give before I take.