Page 71 of After All

“I’m fine.”

“You shouldn’t be driving on those meds.”

“I’m not taking the meds during the day.”

“You could get sleepy or—” She stopped. “You’re not? At all?” She knew that he hadn’t taken much yesterday, but she didn’t realize that had become a regular thing.

He shook his head. “I take them at night because my leg gets really achy by morning, but during the day I’m doing okay. And I didn’t take them last night at all. In fact, I talked to Ed, and I’m going to go in and do some desk work starting next week.”

“Did you ask Kyle?”

Scott sighed. “Not yet.”

“You need to ask him first. And I’ll tell Ed that he can’t—”

“Leave Ed alone,” Scott said.

“But he needs—”

“Peyton,” Scott said, low and firm. “Leave Ed alone. And don’t go talking to Dottie about delivering lunch to me while I’m at the office. And don’t go talking to TJ about how we need to have a backup plan for Ed and me. And don’t ask Kyle or Derek or Hope or anyone else to check in on me at the office.”

She scowled. “You make it sound like I want totake care of youor something.”

He moved to the base of the ladder and gripped one of the rungs. “Tell you what—you want to be sure I eat lunch and that I’m taking it easy?Youcome to the office to check on me.”

She blinked down at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. And if you bring me ham and cheese that you made yourself, I’ll even set you up on my desk and kiss you.”

She felt a little shiver go through her. She had a thing about him and his official police business stuff—his car, his uniform, his desk. His handcuffs. “Promise?”

“Definitely.” His voice had gotten husky.

“Well, in that case, can you go back to work tomorrow?”

He grinned, but his eyes scanned up and down the ladder. “Trouble, what are you doing on my ladder?”

“Cleaning out your gutters.”

He lifted that one brow in that sexy way that said he was pretty sure she was full of shit but he liked her anyway. She loved that look.

“You’re cleaning out my gutters?”

“They’re not actually too bad,” she said. It was April so there weren’t a lot of leaves to worry about, and it was clear that he had kept the gutters cleaned himself. Which made sense because…

“I cleanyourgutters.”

Yeah, he did. “I know.”

“But you thought you needed to clean mine?”

She shrugged. “I needed something to do, and I checked everything else out and there wasn’t really anything to fix or clean so, I climbed up here.”

“What else would you have fixed or cleaned?” he asked.

“Shutters, shingles, shed, lawn mower,” she said, naming off the things she’d checked out in her desperate attempt to stay out of the house.

Sure, herreasonfor getting out of the house was very different than her father’s had been, but she’d learned from the best about how to putter around and find out-of-the-house projects to work on. She’d been debating the wisdom of taking Scott’s lawn mower apart so she could put it back together. She was pretty sure she’d be able to get it back together correctly. Mostly.

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