Chapter 6
chapter
six
Griff
Back inside, her house is dark and still with the exception of the constant hammering of rain. I’m standing in the middle of her living room, dripping a lake onto her floor.
“Okay, first,” Hope says, snapping into motion, “you cannot stand there like that.” She disappears down the hall, then reappears with a towel.
All the while she continues talking. “You’re going to catch pneumonia.
I have a lot of skills, but nursemaid isn’t one of them.
” She shoves the towel at me and steers me into the hall. “You need to get out of those clothes.”
“I’m not taking off my clothes.”
“You’re soaked to the bone, Sheriff; this isn’t a proposition, it’s triage.
And truthfully, this wood floor is practically the only thing that doesn’t need work in this house, so I’d prefer if you didn’t ruin it.
” She plants both hands on my back—I could stop her; I outweigh her by a hundred pounds.
But I don’t stop her as she pushes me toward the bathroom like I’m a stubborn cow she’s moving through a gate.
She points. “Shower. Hot. There are more towels. I will find you something dry if it kills me, which, given your dimensions, it might.”
The door shuts. I stand there. I take my hat off and set it on the bathroom counter.
I look at myself in her mirror, water drips from my hair.
I’m a damn grown man and I’ve just been herded into the bathroom by a woman the size of a garden gnome.
She instructed me to take a shower. She’s a bossy little thing.
My first thought is to pull her in here with me. Maybe a night indulging all the fantasies I’ve had about her voluptuous curves would cure my desire.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I am not going to survive this night.
Still, I get in the shower because I know she’s right. And because for one merciful minute the water’s loud enough to drown out my thoughts. The constant thoughts about Hope and her wide smile and even wider hips.
Despite the circumstances of the flood, the potential danger and my being stranded at her house, my body is still very much aware that she’s close by.
My dick grows heavy and thick. I ignore it for a while, letting the hot water beat down on my back. But once I’ve lathered up with her shampoo, I’ve lost the battle. The sweet scent of her fills the space around me, and my balls ache with the need to release.
I acknowledge that it’s better for me to jack off in her shower than to walk around all night with a fucking hard on. So I take myself in hand. I brace my hand on the pink tile wall of the shower. I swallow my groan as I shuttle my hand against my length. Fuck me, that feels good.
I close my eyes and let myself imagine her. Her on her knees, her sweet lips opening wide. Her bent over the arm of the couch, me pounding into her from behind, my hands gripping those plump hips. Her riding my dick, her full tits bouncing with every movement.
“Fuck,” I growl and spray my release on the porcelain tub. I watch it circle, then go down the drain. I lean my face on the cool tile wall, breathing heavy and full, recognizing I’m in far more trouble than I thought with this woman.
I step out and dry myself. There was nothing noble about what I just did. It was nothing more than damage control. Pretty much the only prayer I’ve got so that I can walk back out there and keep my hands to myself.
It helps for approximately ninety seconds.
Then I go to get dressed and discover the flaw in the plan: nothing this woman owns will fit me.
I’m more than a head taller than her and broad enough that I’ve never been able to buy a shirt in the regular men’s section.
She’s left a stack on the counter, apologetic Post-it on top—sorry, it’s this or the towels—and under it is a robe.
Of course it’s not just a bathrobe. Nope. It’s a fluffy white one with yellow rubber ducks all over it. Fuck my life.
I put it on because the alternative is a wet uniform, and I tie it, and I look in the mirror again, and I want to walk directly into the flood. It hits me mid-thigh. The sleeves quit somewhere north of my forearms. I look like a bouncer who lost a bet at a bachelorette party.
I hold the front closed with one fist, and I go out to face her. I’d rather just get it over with.
She takes one look at me and presses her lips together so hard they go white.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I’m not—” A sound escapes her, strangled. “I’m not saying anything.”
“Your face is saying everything.”
“You look so pretty,” she manages, and then she loses it, doubles over the counter laughing, and God help me, the sound goes straight through the middle of my chest and lodges there. I have to look away from her before I do something incredibly stupid.
Like drop down on my knees and ask her to marry me.
Wait… where the fuck did that come from?
That’s the problem with this woman: she’s too damned distracting.
I’ve got a county underwater, and I’m standing in a fucking duck robe stuck in her damned house because I had to come out here to make sure she was okay.
Somewhere out there my deputies are running a flood response without me because I decided, like an amateur, like a green rookie, to drive out here instead of staying in town where I could do my fucking job.
Any humor I might have found with this current situation dies before it can start. The guilt comes up in its place, familiar and cold.
“I need somewhere I can sit. A laptop, if you have one, some paper and a pen.” I look around. “And where the hell is my phone?”
Her eyes widen, and her brows go up, but she doesn’t walk away.
“You can sit at my kitchen table. I’ll get you the rest of the things.
And your phone is charging next to my toaster.
” She turns away then. “Also, it’s very hard to take you seriously when you’re wearing my robe. Even if you are barking orders at me.”
And just like that she’s soothed my inner beast. I don’t know how she does it, why it’s her, specifically, but I know it’s real. I noticed it that first time around her.
I make my way into her kitchen, grab my phone and take a seat against the wall. At least sitting at the table will hide my lower half because her tiny robe is doing a poor job of keeping all of my junk covered.
She brings me a laptop and a spiral notebook with a bright purple pen. “There. Anything else?”
I pick up the purple pen, and I’m about to ask for a basic black one, but she raises a brow at me as if daring me to complain. I’m man enough to write with a purple pen. “This will do for now.”
“I’ll make coffee.”
I don’t even know where to fucking start. At the office, I’d have resources at my fingertips. All the low water crossings in the county. The locations that generally flood so that rescue crews could go out and assist. Surely I’d have a way to get information directly from the NOAA.
Hope appears on the opposite side of the table and sets down a plate of cookies. Her intention is clear. She’s trying to help, but she had no idea what’s at stake. And cookies are not an answer for everything. In that moment, the frustration and guilt that are stretched far too thin just snap.
“I don’t need a fucking cookie, Hope. I need to be at the station.”
She goes still. “Well, you’re not there. You’re here.”
“No shit!” It comes out hard, harder than I mean it. “I’ve got a flood event across the whole east half of the county and I’m sitting in your kitchen in a bathrobe because I couldn’t—” I stop. Start again. “I’m here because I just had to come out here to make sure you were safe.”
“No one asked you to do that. Least of all me,” she says. Her tone is even, unaffected, and for whatever reason that pisses me off even more.
“You’re a goddamn distraction. You’ve been a distraction since the first minute I laid eyes on you.
Every alert that comes in from your watch had me dropping everything and heading out here.
Tonight I came myself when I had four deputies who could’ve come in my place, and now I’m stuck here, useless, because I can’t seem to think straight when it comes to you and it is making me bad at my job. ”
The kitchen is very quiet. The rain hammers.
Her chin comes up. Her eyes are bright—too bright—but her voice is dead level.
“Or,” she says, “maybe you’re bad at your job right now because you think you have to do every single piece of it yourself.
You didn’t have to come tonight, Griff. You chose to, and then you closed both crossings yourself, walking into rushing water like a fool.
When you got a whole department. So don’t stand in my kitchen and put this on me.
” Her voice cracks, just once. “I am not nearly as incompetent as you seem to believe I am. I didn’t ask to be your distraction. I just asked if you wanted a cookie.”
And then she’s gone, down the little hall, and a door shuts, quiet, which is so much worse than a slam.
I sit there in this ridiculous rubber duck robe with the plate of cookies. I feel like the worst man in the entire state of Texas.
I never wanted to make her cry. I’d walk through those floodwaters again if it would keep her from crying.