Page 2 of Cold Foot Komodo

He made his way past her and straight to her Toyota Tacoma with the camper shell. He opened the back, and she called, “What are you doing?”

He pulled a box out of the back, and then strode past her. “What does it look like?” His voice was deep and gravelly, and didn’t sound at all like Mr. Henderson.

“I’m sorry, are you Mr. Henderson’s son? Or coworker?”

“No,” he said gruffly without turning around. He made his way inside, leaving Sasha staring after him with her hands out.

“Okaaay,” she drawled out. There was a strange man in her new house, carrying a box of her bathroom supplies.

She double-timed it toward her truck, pulled her phone out of the cupholder, and connected a call to her sister, Timber. She was alone in a new town and needed some backup.

Timber didn’t answer. Shoot.

The tall bodybuilder guy was back. He pulled a beanie out of his back pocket and slid it over his head, then grabbed another box.

“You really don’t have to do that!” she said, trying to take it from him.

“Yes I do,” he muttered.

“No, you really don’t,” she exclaimed, putting all her strength into trying to wrestle it from his grasp.

He released it, and she yelped and fell over backward. The heavy box landed on top of her.

“Oh…my…hell! That’s heavy!”

He glared at her, one eyebrow arched with his lack of amusement, then turned, grabbed another box easily, and strode past her and into the house. “One of your tires is leaking air.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“From the hissing sound it’s making.”

Oh. Sasha shoved the box off herself and lay in the snow, staring up at the gray sky, her arms and legs spread out like a starfish. This was about right.

“You can carry the light ones,” he gritted out as he returned empty-handed. “Clearly you’re one of those independent, can-do-everything-herself kind of women. Good for you. I still have to help.”

“You don’t!”

“I was ordered to,” he said in an overly-patient tone as he grabbed a pair of boxes this time.

“Ordered by whom?” she asked.

“Wreck.”

Sasha jolted upright, mind racing. “Wreck?”

“Yeah. You know, your sister’s mate?”

“You know me?”

“I don’t know you from Adam, ma’am. I’m just here helping you haul in your boxes of…” He frowned at the list she’d made on top of one of the boxes in his arms. “Pads.”

Well, that shot heat directly into her cheeks. “Um, I probably meant heating pads.”

“Pads, tampons, toilet paper holder, towels, and other girl stuff,” he recited.

If she could’ve rolled over and cooled her cheeks while lying face-down on the snowy, overgrown front yard, she would’ve. But as it stood, she was frozen in place, watching him disappear into the house again.

Being a thorough list-maker had never bitten her in the butt cheek until this very moment.

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