Fight for Her

by Kelly Favor

  “Go on and sit down,” he said, turning on a lamp. Then he walked to the refrigerator. The kitchen was almost nonexistent—just the small fridge next to a tiny stove and a sink. Above the sink were some cabinets with a few dishes and glasses.

  “It’s a very simple life here, isn’t it?” she said, sinking into the couch. It was warm and cozy.

  “Yeah.” He began rustling around in the freezer’s icebox, and she could hear him scraping her ice pack together. “You know, I could’ve bought the five million dollar house with acres of farmland and the enormous state-of-the-art kitchen. But I already had that life back in Vegas…minus the farmland. It’s not for me,” he said.

  “Did you sell your home in Vegas already?”

  “Not yet, but I plan to,” he replied.

  She noticed that he seemed more at ease now, and she wondered if it was because he was caretaking. It was almost as though he preferred this role—helping her, taking care of her, and he was less guarded, more willing to discuss his life.

  He brought the bag of ice over and set it on her neck. “Hold that in place.”

  She flinched. “It’s so cold!”

  “That’s kind of the point, Krista. We need to make sure to get the swelling down now. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “I trust you.”

  “Good. Now just give me a minute. I’m going to call my buddy, Ryder—he’s the town mechanic.”

  “Do you know everyone around here?”

  “It’s a small town, so everyone knows everyone. Just a second,” he said.

  He walked into the bedroom and shut the door. She wondered why he needed privacy to call his friend to tow her car. Was he going to badmouth her or something?

  Krista supposed she couldn’t blame him if he did just that. She’d shown up unannounced and unwanted for the second day in a row and now she’d crashed her car and become stuck at his house.

  It was mortifying, just thinking about it.

  However nice Gunner was acting to her face, it was probably because he’d decided that she was truly off her rocker and that he needed to handle her with kid gloves until he got her out of his home.

  She was humiliated. This had to be the low point of her relatively short life. At least, she hoped it was the low point, because Krista didn’t intend on sinking lower anytime soon.

  A short while later, Gunner came out of his room again. He was wearing a long sleeve shirt that clung tightly to his chiseled torso. The sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, revealing well-muscled forearms.

  He looked at her curiously. “How’s your neck? Is the ice helping yet?”

  “It’s pretty much numb,” she told him, which was true.

  He walked around the couch and sat down beside her, his leg touching hers, as he adjusted the ice pack on her neck. “Let me just have a look at what’s going on,” he said, and she could actually feel his warm breath against the side of her face. If she turned her head, she’d be inches from his lips. But she didn’t turn her head—she just kept looking forward.

  Meanwhile, Gunner brushed her hair to the side, and his fingertips caressed the back of her neck. “No bruising or obvious contusions,” he said.

  “Are you a doctor?” she asked.

  “I know more about neck injuries than most of them.”

  “I’m sure I’m fine, and I don’t want to put you out anymore than I already have,”

  she insisted, even though the shivers she got as his hands touched her bare skin had nothing to do with the ice pack on her neck.

  “You’re not putting me out, Krista.” He sighed, turning his body toward her.

  “I’m so sorry I came here again today. It was a big mistake. I apologize, Gunner.”

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She couldn’t look at him, though. To meet his gaze when they were so close to one another…she didn’t know that she could honestly take it.

  “Krista,” he said, softly.

  She turned her head and their eyes met. This close together, the shock effect was magnified tenfold. His eyes were still and calm and completely focused on her in a way that she’d never felt before from anybody in her life.

  He’s going to kiss me, she thought. Everything in her wanted that, more than she even realized.

  Her lips parted, opening, waiting for his lips to touch hers—finally giving her what she’d been waiting for since the moment they’d met.

  But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he smiled. “I gave you a really hard time,” he said. “And it was never my intention to hurt you.”

  “I’m the one who showed up on your doorstep and tried to force you to talk about things that you didn’t want to discuss. I had no right to do that.”

  “I’m a big boy, Krista. I don’t think you forced me to do anything. The truth is, I wanted to talk to you. Maybe I didn’t want to do an interview, though.”

  She put a hand up to keep the ice pack steady on her neck. “If you didn’t want to do an interview,” she said, “then what did you want?”

  He looked down for a moment. And then his eyes met hers. “I wanted to…”

  Suddenly, from outside the cabin, a horn honked twice, startling her. She jumped a little in her seat.

  “Who’s that?”

  “That must be Ryder,” he said, getting up from the couch.

  “Wow, that was fast.”

  “He’s only just down the road from here.” Gunner got up and went to the door.

  “Yup, that’s Ryder.” He laughed and shook his head, then opened the door and yelled outside. “What the hell are you doing out there?”

  Krista stood up, walking hesitantly toward the front door.

  “What are you, scared of me?” someone yelled back.

  “Hardly,” Gunner said, chuckling. “Don’t…don’t you dare knock my wood pile over.” Suddenly, he was sprinting out the door.

  Krista didn’t know what on earth was happening. She went quickly to the doorway, just in time to see Gunner racing at breakneck speed down the steps and towards the man out in the front yard.

  Gunner moved faster than anyone she’d ever seen, and Krista had been at enough sporting events to see some very fast people in her life. But Gunner was like a panther.

  She knew it must be Ryder out front because she saw a tow truck parked nearby.

  Ryder was smaller than Gunner, but he was stocky, wearing a sleeveless black shirt and jeans. He met Gunner head on as if to tackle the bigger man.

  But at the last moment, Gunnar scooped Ryder up and actually lifted him straight into the air, above his own head, like he was doing a dumbbell press. Ryder was not a small man. He probably weighed somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred pounds.

  Gunnar was laughing crazily as he spun Ryder in mid-air and then somehow deposited him back onto level ground again without hurting him in the least.

  Ryder was laughing hysterically too, like a kid who’s just gone on a scary but fun rollercoaster ride. “That was so sick!” he said. “Holy shit!”

  “I told you not to mess with my damn woodpile. Do you know how long it took me to stack that wood?” Gunner asked him.

  Ryder was still whooping and hollering. “Oh, man. I almost had you, too.”

  “Sure you did. You were so close.”

  Krista came outside, waving, as Ryder saw her. “You must be the lady with the unfortunate car situation,” he said, catching his breath. “I passed it on my way up.

  Thought I’d come and say hi before towing it back to my shop.”

  “Yeah, that’s my car all right. I’m so sorry you had to come up here on short notice—I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

  Ryder shook his head. He was a very handsome guy himself. Light brown, wavy hair, muscular, with playful eyes and dimples when he grinned, which seemed to be all time. “No inconvenience, ma’am. I’d do anything for this guy right here.” He gave Gunner a playful punch in the arm.

  Gunner made as if to hit him bac
k and Ryder ran a few feet away. “I’m not letting you near me. Last time, you gave me the worst Charlie horse of my life.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp,” Gunner said.

  “Look, I should get going, actually. I’m meeting a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” he laughed. “I’ll tow the car to my shop now,”

  Ryder said. “And if all goes well, I’m guessing I can have it back to you by tomorrow morning.”

  “Sounds good,” Gunner told him.

  Ryder got back in his tow truck and drove back down the road to where her car was. She couldn’t see him as he got deeper into the woods, but she could still hear his truck for a while.

  “Would you mind giving me a ride back to town?” she asked Gunner.

  He was still smiling, watching as Ryder drove away. Now his gaze turned to her.

  “Back to town? Why?”

  “I’ll see if I can get a room at the Inn again tonight. I’m sure they have one open.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Gunner told her. “There’s no reason for you to go all the way back to town and spend money on a room. Ryder’s right down the road from here.

  Tomorrow, I’ll drive you down to his shop so you can pick up your car.”

  “I feel horrible,” she told him. “This is too much of an imposition.”

  “You can sleep in my bed,” he told her, “and I’ll take the couch. It’s no problem.”

  She shook her head. “I won’t take your bed, Gunner.” Still, her heart was beating fast again and she felt butterflies in her stomach at the thought of spending the night with him.

  “Listen, you’re hurt and you’re my guest. I insist.”

  Krista was going to keep arguing, but then she saw the look on his face and knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

  It was only as they went back inside his house that she realized Ryder had taken her car back to his shop, along with her computer and her clothes.

  ***

  The rest of the day passed by like some kind of dream, a fantasy of what it would be like to spend time with Gunner King if she could have mapped it out.

  As she rested on the couch, Gunner went to the store and came back with pasta and vegetables and meat. Then, as the sun began to slowly sink in the sky and the light filtering in through the cabin windows turned dimmer and dimmer, Gunner prepared a fabulous meal.

  He did everything, chopping onions and peppers and fresh garlic.

  Krista had wanted to help, but he refused, insisting that she rest and periodically ice her neck.

  While Gunner made his spaghetti sauce, he talked. “I learned to cook from my grandmother,” he said, as he put the veggies in a pan and sautéed them.

  The smell hit her nostrils almost immediately, causing her mouth to water.

  “I never would have pictured you to be helping your grandmother in the kitchen,”

  she said, her feet tucked into the afghan, as she watched him work.

  He moved gracefully around the stove, tasting the food, adding spices—he seemed totally relaxed in this environment. “Grandma lived with us,” he said, “until she passed when I was about twelve.” He threw more veggies into the pan and they hissed and popped. “The kitchen with her was a safe haven for me. If I wasn’t there, I would be out with my older siblings, and that was like a battlefield all day and night.”

  “You were the youngest of six,” she said.

  He glanced over at her. “You’ve done your research, obviously.”

  She smiled self-consciously, but he didn’t seem annoyed.

  “Was it hard being the youngest? I mean, I’m the youngest of three and it was kind of a battle for me,” she admitted.

  He paused for a moment, and she thought maybe he wouldn’t answer, but then he did. “Of course it was hard. I had to scrap every day for what I wanted. But that helped when I got older and joined the football and wrestling teams. I was used to fighting, and then I got bigger than my brothers and sisters and just about everyone else. Then it got easy.” He laughed.

  “I couldn’t join any teams,” Krista said. “I was home schooled.”

  “Seriously?” Gunner dumped a can of tomato sauce into a big pot. “I can’t imagine being home schooled. I would’ve gone nuts.”

  “I guess I did,” she laughed. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t really get to socialize the way other kids did.”

  “Was it a religious thing?”

  “No. My mother and father just thought that they could give us a better education that way, and mom was at home, so that’s just what we did.”

  “Wow, I can’t imagine that.” He shook his head. Soon he was dumping ground beef into the pan with the veggies. “Do you wish you’d gone to public school, looking back?”

  She thought about it. “Yeah, I guess I do. I missed out on too much. I never went to prom, I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was eighteen.”

  Gunner stopped cooking for a moment and looked at her. “And what are you now, twenty-two?”

  “Good guess.”

  “That’s a lot of lost time to make up for,” he said, smiling slowly.

  Krista felt her face get red. “I didn’t really look at it that way.”

  He turned back to the stove, and she admired his broad back and his shoulders.

  She wondered what it would feel like to rake her fingers over his back when he was on top of her.

  Sometime later, the meal was finished and the two of them sat across from one another at the table and ate.

  It was some of the most delicious, fresh food she’d ever had. It turned out that Gunner, on top of everything else, was a pretty fantastic cook.

  Their dinner conversation was natural. He seemed totally at ease with her now, making jokes and being playful. They stayed away from heavy topics, and Krista made sure not to push him on anything.

  There was one moment when she’d asked about what his parents did for work, and Gunner got extremely quiet.

  “Mom was a waitress and Dad delivered furniture,” he’d said.

  “Are you still close to them?” she’d asked.

  “No.”

  His whole body had grown tense and still, and his expression turned very cold and guarded in a way that she hadn’t expected.

  Krista had instantly changed topics, bringing up her own dad, and how she’d tormented him for years by constantly using his precious hairbrush and misplacing it afterwards. “He would walk around the house ranting and raving about it,” Krista had said, and Gunner had begun laughing.

  That had been the only really tense moment of the day, and she’d been smart enough to change course before anything got out of control.

  ***

  Gunner cleaned up after dinner, washed the dishes, put everything away.

  Just as he was drying his hands, Krista’s phone went off. He glanced over at her, as she pulled her cell phone out of her purse and looked at it.

  Drew Ellis was calling.

  She debated whether to answer or not, but Gunner was within earshot, so instead she just put it through to voicemail.

  “Don’t feel like talking?” Gunner asked, as he tossed the dishcloth onto the rack beside the sink.

  “I’m getting tired,” she said, which was true. She’d used up her reservoir of adrenaline and was now crashing pretty hard.

  “You don’t have a boyfriend or anything, do you?”

  She looked at him, trying to gauge why he was asking. “No, I don’t.”

  He nodded. “I just thought…I don’t know…if that was your boyfriend calling, you could answer. I don’t mind.”

  “Well, it wasn’t my boyfriend because I don’t have one.” She smiled at him.

  “What about you, Gunner?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend either.”

  “Very funny.”

  He walked slowly back to the couch and sat on the edge of it, looking down at her. “Why don’t you have one?” he said.

  She sigh
ed. She wanted to know why he was asking—was it because he was interested, or was he just digging for more information?

  “I guess things just haven’t really lined up the right way,” Krista answered.

  “That’s kind of vague.” His brown eyes studied her. “I’m betting that guys have pursued you.”

  “Yeah, a few.” She looked at him. A thrill went through her body. She became suddenly aware of just how alone they were, how isolated. And how close he was to her.

  She had the afghan wrapped around her legs and she was curled up on the couch as they talked.

  “But you’re not interested in being in a relationship right now or what?” he pressed.

  She thought about what the truthful answer was. She hated that everything seemed to revolve around lies. He thought that she was a student in grad school, but in reality her life seemed to revolve around this new job and trying to prove herself.

  And basically she wasn’t dating anyone currently because she’d been waiting for someone who actually cared about her, rather than some guy who just wanted to have a good time. In Vegas, that was a pretty tall order.

  “I guess I haven’t found the right one yet,” she shrugged.

  “Lame answer, Krista.”

  “That’s the real answer, Gunner.” She smirked at him.

  “I doubt it.”

  “What about you, huh?” She sat up a little bit and tried to stare him down, but his dark eyes didn’t waver one bit.

  “What about me?”

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  He folded his arms, and each bicep expanded like a python. “No, I’m not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he said, “I found that I couldn’t trust any of the women I met in Las Vegas.”

  That comment hit home like an arrow to her chest. She felt it physically, a blow that nearly knocked her backwards. Her smile faded. “That makes sense,” she muttered softly.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his brow creasing.

  She put a hand to her head. “I just got a bit of a headache.”