Page 63 of Hello Stranger

“Let me help you,” I said, my voice much softer now. “You wouldn’t be scraped up like this if I hadn’t landed on you.”

“You wouldn’t have landed on me if I hadn’t come up here.”

“You wouldn’t have come up here if the lock had been working properly.”

Joe nodded. “So this is all Mr. Kim’s fault.”

“One hundred percent Mr. Kim,” I agreed, taking Joe’s hand and pulling him toward my place like a tugboat. “But I’m all you’ve got.”

INSIDE, JOE COULDN’Tstop looking around at all my paintings, and I couldn’t stop looking at Joe.

He was taking in my painting supplies, and my decor, and my hovel in general—but his expression was so different from what Lucinda’s had been. She’d been judging me, and he was, too—but, from his body language, he was judging mepositively.

Like he liked it.

Which was a little bit spellbinding.

Or was it the torso? Tough call.

I mean… all this time I’d been disliking him, he’d been walking around with that endlessly appealing situation under his shirt? I wondered if I might have assessed him differently if I’d known.

God. Was I that shallow?

An hour ago, I’d have said no—but now I wasn’t so sure.

But what choice did I have—as an artist—to let a visual situation like that go unadmired? It was practically my professional duty.

Even now, the thought of it makes me want to let out a low whistle. I mean, that chest might even have been better than a face. If I had to choose.

I made Joe lean shirtlessly over my kitchen sink while I poured hydrogen peroxide over the scrapes. He sucked in tight breaths as the cold bubbly liquid ran down his flanks.

“Ticklish?” I asked, watching his muscles contract.

He shook his head. “Only my ears.”

I dried the uninjured parts of his back with a paper towel, and then I offered to wash his shirt for him.

He shook his head. “I got it. I’ll just head home.”

But at the words, I suddenly pictured him walking down the top-floor hallway all shirtless and someone else happening upon him—and I got the weirdest, most indescribable feeling.

If I didn’t know better, I’d have called it jealousy.

“Let me put some ointment on you,” I said.

“I’m really okay.”

“That roof,” I said, giving him atrust melook, “is super filthy. Birds poop on it all the time. Not to mention acid rain, nuclear waste—”

“Nuclear waste?”

“The point is, you don’t want an infection.”

Joe considered that, and then nodded and sat backward on one of the kitchen chairs.

I pulled up a chair behind him and used a Q-tip to dab him with ointment. The scratches weren’t deep, but they covered a lot of territory.

With any luck, we’d be here a while.

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