Something deep within her itched to know the texture of that skin. She gave him a sidelong glance. “We’ll see about that.”
Chapter Six
Bev stood in the entry, a paper grocery bag hanging from one hand, lips puckered and eyebrows drawn together. “Ooh. That looks bad.”
Harper looked to the leg in question. “Could have been worse. Thanks for stopping by. I think the worst part of it—besides the pain—is the boredom.”
“You could use a little break from work. Don’t think boredom. Think time to indulge in diversions.”
“There’s only so much ridiculous TV one can watch.”
However, she’d actually enjoyed the show she’d watched with Jakub yesterday. The survival expert had done his research on the flora and fauna of Costa Rica that one could subsist on in the jungle, not to mention the knowledge of the climate, physiology, and creative engineering he demonstrated to keep himself fed and sheltered.
Jakub had been right that she’d like the show. She’d also enjoyed his company more than she’d expected. Not only because of the proximity of his enticing body. His presence had been a comfort and the offer to make her popcorn to distract her from pain still made her smile.
“That’s why I also brought books.” The sight of Bev hiking up a paper bag scattered the memory of Jakub from Harper’s mind.
Books? Harper had one sitting next to her nightstand about the epidemiology of Ebola. Reading was not exactly synonymous with diversion in her experience.
Bev plopped down on the mattress next to Harper and dumped the contents of the bag out onto the bed. Small, fat books with pages scarcely thicker than newsprint tumbled into a heap. Women in ball gowns, men with torsos bursting through flowing white shirts.
Bev meant well. “Thanks.”
“Don’t look like you swallowed a fly. And don’t judge until you’ve tried them. Sometimes you need some fun. And there can be a lot more to these books than just fun. I’ll spare you my feminist diatribe on how romance novels are a space for women to reimagine the world as it should be.” She held up one with a cover of a woman’s leg bared up to the hip by a man’s hand clutching her red ball gown. “This one is exceptional. Trust me.”
Harper did trust Bev. She was a smart, capable woman. By the time they’d graduated, she’d already started her own website and launched her farm produce subscription service. She’d also graduated top of her class in political science. “Okay, maybe I’ll try one.”
“Good.” She put the DVDs on the entertainment stand next to the TV then brushed off her palms. “Well, I wish I could stay, but I have a trunk full of greens I need to get into refrigeration.”
“Oh, of course. I don’t want you to fuss over me anyway. I’ll be fine. Sorry I can’t see you out.”
“Don’t apologize. Just rest.” Bev stood, one hand hiked onto her hip, a look of pity on her face. “I’m going to check up on you tomorrow, though. Don’t say no.”
“Fine. I appreciate this. I really do.”
After Bev left, Harper sifted through the pile of books. One book featured a man wearing a firefighter hat, naked waist up, the sheen of sweat on his chiseled shoulders and abs marred with soot, presumably from fighting the flames bleeding off the page. A fiery orange font screamed, Blazing Hearts.
Harper found herself imagining what Jakub would look like without a shirt.
Oh, please. She dropped her head back on the pillow with a sigh. After a few interminable minutes staring at the ceiling, a niggling feeling low in her belly made her reach for the fireman book.
What the hell. A little pleasure never hurt anyone. Especially when one needed diversion from pain. She picked up Blazing Hearts and began to read.
The book was kind of awful, but also…kind of good.
The next time she looked up, three hours had passed and she was falling deep in lust with a fake fireman named Joseph McCoy.
Her eyelids growing weary, she set the book down, positioned her leg for minimal discomfort, and settled back into the pillow.
A tense frustration had arisen in her core while reading about delicious fake fireman. She let her hand drop over her PJ shorts. The image of a very non-fiction fireman—one she’d seen at her door not long ago—came to replace that of Joseph McCoy in her mind. A primal yearning arose between her legs.
Her hand moved lower to assuage her discomfort. Lake blue eyes flashed before her. Blond stubble and a commanding baritone voice. A delectable trim waist. Oh, God. She should not be thinking about him this way.
But she thought of him exactly that way. And every other possible way he could relieve her frustration with that lean, strong body of his until she was spent from both pain and pleasure.
Before she turned out the light, she grabbed her phone and reread the text he’d sent after leaving her townhouse last night.
You don’t need to manufacture emergencies to ask for help. Or company.
She hadn’t responded yet. After all his kindness, and the pleasure he’d just given her—no matter he had no idea about that and never would—the man at least deserved a response.
She texted, Good to know. A friend dropped off some books today so I’ll be entertained for a while.
She really shouldn’t continue to engage with him when she had no intention of things going any further between them. He may be kind and ridiculously attractive, but he was not her type.
That didn’t stop her, however, from imagining how it might have felt to cuddle up next to him on her couch.
Chapter Seven
Two days after Jakub had wrangled Harper’s mattress for her, he pulled into the grocery store parking lot thinking about the inside of Harper’s fridge.
When he’d gotten the ice for her knee, he couldn’t help but notice she didn’t have a whole lot of food in there. Not many raw ingredients, which she wouldn’t have much energy or ability to turn into meals right now anyway, nor leftover containers. He should have asked her last night if she needed a grocery run. But shit, he was on the edge of stalker status already. What the hell had gotten into him?
He was only going to leave the teddy on her doorstep. As a joke.
No—not a joke, exactly. As a nod that he was thinking about her. That she wasn’t alone. Some dark shadow lurked behind the spark of intelligence in her eyes. It was the same infinite blackness he saw in his own eyes when he looked in the mirror.
But then, he heard that scream and something twisted inside him. He couldn’t leave until he knew she was safe.
She’d tried to pretend she hadn’t just woken every nocturnal animal in a one-mile radius with her scream. Despite the control she had over her expression, she couldn’t hide the mist of sweat on her forehead and the flush of her cheeks that betrayed she hadn’t quite recovered from the fall.
Then she’d asked him about TV shows which he mistook for an invitation to come inside.
Although she had invited him back inside. He’d bet his entire money market account that she knew exactly where that remote was the whole time. And when he called her out in a text afterward, she hadn’t even denied it.
Harper Peters, Cranky Doctor, if he was not mistaken, liked him.
He got a cart and floated through the usual laps around the aisles. Five pounds of pasta and five cans of crushed tomatoes for his next shift cooking dinner at the station, home away from home. The guys (and gals—Stacy and Patricia worked the office though he didn’t really think of them as women, just more team members) took turns cooking for each other, tag-teamed movie time and nap time and maintaining the trucks and gear.
In the frozen aisle, he stopped. Samara used to stock frozen cream of broccoli and chicken noodle soups for when one of them was sick or too tired to cook. Exactly Harper’s kind of situation. She could use some quick and easy meals on hand.
But Harper was not his woman, not his problem.
Memories of Samara flooded his brain. That last winter she was alive, they’d gotten the flu at the same time. Their fev
ers hit on the same morning only hours apart and they’d lived off frozen soup for three days. Ever since, he stocked his freezer with enough emergency soup to feed a bunker of zombie apocalypse survivors.
Cart overflowing, he stepped in line at a register near produce and realized he’d forgotten garlic. Spaghetti without garlic was not an option. He left the cart and jogged to the display, grabbed a mesh sock of garlic, but his feet didn’t take him back to his cart. With a mind of their own, they kept right on jogging back to the frozen section.
Damn it. He hadn’t intended to get wrapped up in a lonely woman’s pain. But unless he did something about it, a certain beautiful jogger he wasn’t going to see again for a long time.
He nabbed a few soups then dashed back to his spot in line. The cashier was scanning the last item—two pounds of ground beef—of the woman in front of him. He couldn’t have timed it better if he’d tried.
Once the grocery bags were piled into the passenger side of the Dodge, he dropped his head back on the headrest and rubbed his face with his palms. What are you doing, Wojcik? You aren’t responsible for this woman. She didn’t ask for your help.
When he’d patted the couch for her to join him to watch Man in the Woods together, he’d realized too late he’d just performed a reflex that was left over from being married. Yes, he’d wanted Harper to sit next to him. But that easy intimacy was too much too soon for her. Maybe even for him.
His fingers ignored his brain when they took his phone from the console.
Harper needed help and she wasn’t the type to ask. He shot her a text.
Getting supplies at the grocery store for the station. Got some frozen soup. Should I drop some off for you?
As he headed to his condo his palms became slick on the steering wheel. Jesus. It’s only frozen soup.
The stoplight turned green. He crept the vehicle forward to prepare to make a left onto his street when his phone buzzed.
After turning onto the tree-lined street, he pulled to the curb and read Harper’s text.
Soup sounds lovely.
The frosty plastic containers stung his fingers as he waited for Harper to come to the door.
Friendly. He was just going to be friendly. Just a friendly neighborhood fireman at whose feet a woman happened to fall who now needed some looking after.
The door cracked open, revealing her brown hair flowing around her face, the waves ending just above her breasts. He’d never seen her with her hair down. She was absolutely transformed.
Against his will, his gaze traversed the length of her hair, ended at her chest and lingered there longer than a woman usually cared for a man’s eyes to linger.
Way to make a friendly impression—by gawking at the woman’s cleavage. He dropped his gaze to the ground and thrust the soup at her. “Hey. Here you go.”
She tilted her head as her lips quirked a little. Then in a show of her hands being too busy on crutches to take the soup, she turned her palms up. “Would you mind bringing it inside and putting it in the freezer?”
He glanced past her shoulder, a voice in his mind scolding himself for not having thought this through. He hadn’t intended on going inside. “Yeah, sure.” He strode past her and into the kitchen.
She’d tidied up the mattress on the floor. The teddy bear he’d given her poked out from under the covers, head on the pillow as though she’d tucked him in for a nap. Next to the bear, the corner of a book peeked out.
“What did you end up reading?” He called over his shoulder on his way to the kitchen.
“What?” her voice came from behind him.
He placed the soup containers on the counter and leaned toward the kitchen doorway so his voice would travel easily. “You said a friend brought you books. What did you end up reading?”
The creak and thud of crutches made its way to the kitchen where she parked, leaning against the doorjamb. A blush bloomed over her face.
Shit. His fault for ogling her at the doorway. With her brown waves all loose and her complexion flushed, his cock stirred.
A demure little smile on her face, she said, “Oh, nothing you’d be interested in.”
“You never know.” He opened the freezer and moved aside a bag of chicken breasts. “Try me.”
She waved her hand in front of her face as her blush deepened to beet hue. “Just a light kind of…beachy read. Not my usual but it did the trick.”
He was glad to know she did have a friend nearby. And what she read was none of his damn business. He placed the soup on the shelf then closed the door.
“Okay. There you go.” He turned, but couldn’t leave until she moved from the doorway.
She didn’t move. She cocked her head to the side. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I just…I thought you…I know how it is to be alone and not up to taking care of a house is all.”
She turned her body so her back lay flat against the doorjamb. This perked up her breasts a little too much to go unnoticed. He snapped his attention back to her face where she was still smiling. Where oh where did Cranky Doctor go?
“What makes you think I’m alone?” She blinked her thick brown lashes.
He should just sneak past her, say a quick goodbye, but her chest was a roadblock he needed to steer around. “Well, you didn’t have anyone to drag a mattress down for you, so…”
Finally, she crutched out of the way, backing into the dining room so he could pass.
She stayed in the dining room while he moved back to the living room. “Can I get you a coffee or something?”
Coffee sounded good. But what he should really be doing is getting out of here. “Okay. Sure. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“I have one of those pod coffee makers so it’s really no trouble.” Her voice sounded farther away now. She must be in the kitchen. Cabinets creaked opened and slapped closed.
He walked to the couch but didn’t feel like stepping over her mattress to sit. She had no loveseat and no other chair. Not alone, my ass.
Her pillow, the teddy, and the book were inches from his foot. That furious blush when he’d asked about the book made him curious. With the toe of his boot, he flipped the corner of the blanket back. Ceramic clinked on the countertop in the kitchen as he caught sight of the book cover, a sweaty, bare-chested fireman all rippling muscles smudged with soot.
Holy shit. He knew chicks dug firemen but never would he have suspected Cranky Doctor to possess such a book.
Crutches squeaked and thudded. Panic sent the hairs behind his neck straight up. Just as she rounded the corner into the living room, he dragged the comforter back over the book with his heel.
“Coffee’s done. But I need you to get it.” She raised her hands palm up again to demonstrate her need for help. “Sugar and cream are on the counter.”
“Black is fine.” He hurried past her toward the kitchen.
After grabbing the mug perched on the platform of the pod coffee maker, he put the cream back in the fridge so she wouldn’t have to do it herself later. When he emerged into the living room, she was sitting on the couch, the leg with the brace extended over the mattress.
“Sorry, the sitting room isn’t ideal here.” Her lips turned downward.
“I’m good.” He planted himself on the corner of her mattress, kitty corner from that book and as far away from her as possible. “Change those bandages yet?”
She sighed and collapsed back into the base of the couch, shaking her head back and forth, her hair tossing a little wildly. “My first aid stuff is in the bathroom upstairs.”
He pointed to the ceiling, grateful for an opportunity to remove himself from her presence for a moment. “I’ll just go get it then.”
She smiled. “That would be great. I hadn’t thought out the logistics of this situation very well.”
“You’ve been through a lot. Shock rattles the brain. Doesn’t matter how smart you are.” And you’ve been busy reading that sex book. With a guy like me on the cover.
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“I’ve seen a lot worse than a fractured patella, trust me.”
Those words shivered through him as he made his way upstairs. She’d seen some awful infections, no doubt, and she must have seen people die how Samara had died.
Upstairs, he found Harper’s first aid kit in the cabinet next to the sink. Clutching the plastic case, he took a deep breath. In and out. He’d walk down there, thank her for the coffee, and leave her to change her bandage. Then he’d go.
But he didn’t want to leave.
He shouldn’t have left Samara.
Changing a bandage for this woman wouldn’t change that fact, but a compulsion to help Harper gripped his chest all the same.
Jakub stood at the bottom of her stairs, the first aid kit dangling from his hand, face frozen like he’d seen a ghost. He hadn’t even taken a sip of his coffee.
“You can just leave it on the bed. I’ll get to it later tonight.”
“I can help you.”
That was true. “That’s really not necessary.”
“Maybe not, but it’ll be a hell of a lot faster.”
The idea of an expert helping her with the task sent a wave of relief through her. The fact the expert was Jakub Wojcik sent a shiver in its wake. “Okay, but don’t forget your coffee.”
He dropped the kit, grabbed the cup and took several long gulps, as if he were drinking a cold beer on a hot day. Either that or he was in a hurry to help her and get out of here.
“Lie down.” He pointed straight at the teddy bear on her pillow.
Damn if the firm rescuer tone didn’t send heat between her legs. Last night when she’d relieved herself of vexation over him, she’d imagined him talking to her in that commanding tone. That had been a surprise. Because controlling men were not on her radar. They were distinctly banished to Siberia.
A Beautiful Fire (Love at Lincolnfield Book 4) Page 5
