Chapter 9
Lila Mae kept an eye on Trap from where she sat at her tiny dining room table.
Two people would fit, one on either side, but Lila Mae would have to pull down the bench seat attached to the wall if Trap wanted to come and eat.
She took another bite of her delicious one-pot hamburger Spanish rice dish, getting a sweet pop of corn with the tangier, hotter spices of the rice, and watched as Trap slowly lifted another segment of orange to his mouth.
He’d eaten two triangles of watermelon already, and when that had gone well, he’d peeled the orange and started to eat that. He’d drank the two glasses of water as well as a complete sports drink now, and had already opened the second.
Lila Mae’s panic had subsided, and her adrenaline had spurred her to read several articles about heat exhaustion and the care for it.
Yes, she had undressed Trap and put cool, wet towels on his chest and abdomen and blown a fan on them.
She had taken off his jeans, because they’d gotten wet when she’d doused him with water, and the internet had said to remove restrictive clothing.
She’d put ice packs on his neck and armpits and the backs of his knees, where all the biggest blood vessels were, and when she’d really checked the time, she’d realized he’d only been passed out on her couch for fifteen minutes before he’d awakened.
He really did not want to go to the hospital, and Lila Mae simply wanted him to be okay.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
Trap looked over to her and nodded. He swallowed his bite of orange. “I feel really good.”
“Do you think you want to try eating dinner?”
He nodded and swung his legs over the side of the couch, which was a full-size, three-person couch with an air bed in it. She’d been lucky to get him in the house at all, so she hadn’t pulled it out and made up the bed before letting him collapse onto it and fall back asleep.
“I can bring it to you.” Lila Mae jumped to her feet. She didn’t want Trap to get up yet, but she wasn’t sure why. He’d been awake for almost an hour now, and surely she would’ve noticed more signs of a serious medical condition, as she hadn’t looked away from him for longer than ten seconds.
“I want to get up,” he said, and he stood, the full grandeur of his body on display. The man had muscles everywhere, and Lila Mae thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have room for a dryer in her house.
“I’m sure your clothes are done,” she said, finally tearing her eyes away from his spectacular chest. “You can sit where I am,” she said. “I’ll pull the bench seat down when I come back in. There’s plenty of casserole right there on the stove.”
With that, she left him alone in the house again, stepping outside to the still-heated evening, which sure didn’t help the massive flush already working through her.
Trap’s shirt was for sure dry, and she pulled it off the clothesline, which he’d attached to the side of her house and then a tree forty feet away.
She fisted his jeans in her hands, and they were hot and dry too, and she took them down and headed back inside.
“They’re dry,” she announced, and she found him standing at the stove, still dishing himself a bowl of rice.
“Great.” He turned and set the bowl on the table and then took his clothes from her. He moved out of the kitchen and dining space and back over in front of the couch, where he quickly pulled on his shirt and then his pants, while Lila Mae stood there and watched him button up and tuck in.
A light laugh came out of his mouth. “I feel way better now that I’m not naked.”
Lila Mae could only imagine. She wanted to apologize, but at the same time, she didn’t. She’d done what she’d had to do to help him, and if that meant she had to take off his clothes and wet him down, so that his core body temperature could be lowered, then she would do it all again in a heartbeat.
He took a step toward her and arrived in front of her, as the tiny house didn’t really have a lot of extra space. “Listen, I hope that didn’t come out as ungrateful,” he said. “I really appreciate you and what you’ve done for me tonight.”
Lila Mae looked up at him, trying to see something in his eyes and hear something in his tone that would indicate that perhaps they could be more than friends.
He had reached up and cradled her face right before the delivery guy had arrived, and this moment felt very much like that: tense and drawn out, and yet also soft and good.
“I was thinking about you earlier today,” he said, his voice not actually very loud, but resounding in the small space between them.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He ground his voice through his throat. “I was trying to be brave enough to ask you to dinner, and I couldn’t do it. And yet, here we are, having dinner together.”
Lila Mae’s hopes filled with helium and soared into the sky. “You were thinking about asking me out?”
“I want to ask you out,” he said. “But I wasn’t brave enough.”
“Well, you’re brave enough to tell me now,” she said.
He swallowed. “I haven’t had the best luck with dating,” he said. “And I don’t want anything to be weird while I’m out here working on your ranch.”
Lila Mae knew he was worried about losing the job, even though he said he wasn’t. She reached up and touched the collar of his T-shirt, wishing she’d never threatened to hire someone else.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s say that we go out and it’s weird and awkward and you don’t like me. Or it’s tense, and you talk too much about all the other girls in town who are totally in love with you, and I don’t like you.”
He chuckled. “What if both of those things happen?”
“It can’t be both,” Lila Mae said.
“Why not?”
“Fine,” Lila Mae said. “It could be both. Let’s just say we decide we don’t want to go out again, then we just…won’t. It’s okay. I’ve dated lots of men who don’t want to go out with me again.”
“Yeah, but do you then have to see them the next day on your own property? Do you have to approve projects they’re working on? Do you have to talk to them regularly for the next six months until the project finishes?”
“No,” Lila Mae admitted. “You’re right. I’ve never dated anybody like that.”
“There will come a point when I can just send Jason or Sawyer if I have to,” he said. “But I like this project, and I don’t want to give it to one of them. I just don’t want it to be weird between us.”
“Well, I think it’s a little weird between us right now,” Lila Mae said.
“Maybe a little,” Trap said with a sigh. “Let’s pull the bench out, so I can eat with you.” His gaze switched to the wall behind the table, and Lila Mae turned in that direction.
“It’s just held on with a couple of hooks.
” She pushed the bench further into the wall to give the hooks room to unlatch.
They did that, and she lowered the bench.
“I love this bench. It feels so inventive.” She sat down and smiled at him, hoping he’d take the compliment on his handiwork and the air between them would clear.
Trap took the seat across from her, his dark eyes oh-so-serious. “Thanks for letting me eat here,” he said. “And ordering the fruit and everything.”
“Yeah, of course,” Lila Mae said.
He took a bite of the hamburger rice, his eyes widening.
“Wow, this is really good. Where did you learn to cook?” He stirred his spoon through his rice.
“Wait, you’re from the South. I bet you have got a Southern granny who taught you everything you know.
” He grinned at her, his expression softening and turning a bit flirty.
Lila Mae coughed and shook her head. “Absolutely not. No.”
“My momma tried a few times with me, and I can do basics like scrambled eggs, and spaghetti, and grilled cheese sandwiches.”
“If you can make grilled cheese sandwiches, you can survive for a long time,” Lila Mae said.
Trap’s eyes now danced with a playful glint she’d never seen aimed in her direction before. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose you’re right. I ate a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch today, in fact.”
“I love everything about cheese,” Lila Mae admitted.
“Yeah? What’s your favorite kind?” he asked.
“Brie,” she said. “Melted with pears and honey.” She closed her eyes in bliss. “It is so good.”
“Yeah, fruit and cheese should never go together.”
Lila Mae opened her eyes and glared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“I am not,” he said, and he took another bite of his rice.
“I took a cooking class through an adult education center,” Lila Mae said. “The only time I ever stepped foot in a kitchen before that was to ask our family’s personal chef if she could make me something.”
Trap raised his head and looked at her. “Really?”
“Yes,” Lila Mae said, hoping this wouldn’t be a strike against her. “Sometimes I used to sit at the counter in the kitchen and talk to Dottie, because she’s a good listener, and she always gave me good advice. She still works for my parents.”
“Wow,” Trap said. “I had no idea people had personal chefs.”
“They do,” Lila Mae said. “When you’re stuffy and Southern and think you’re better than everyone else.”
Trap watched her with those serious eyes again. “You don’t like your family much, do you?”
“I love my family,” Lila Mae said. “But no, I wouldn’t choose to spend a lot of my time with them.”
“Is that why you came here?”
“It was an incentive,” Lila Mae said carefully.
“So why did you come?”
Lila Mae sighed, not sure why his question was so hard to answer.
“There are a lot of reasons that combine together,” she finally said.
“But the biggest one was that I was almost thirty years old and living a life that had no meaning. My family has a lot of money, and I wanted to do more than sit in an office and talk a big game about how we helped animals. I wanted to really help them.”
Trap nodded. “And now you’ll be able to do that.”
“Yeah,” she said, her smile growing. “I got two new kittens today, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get them adopted out in the next couple of days.”