Page 14 of Roads Behind Us
She rolled her eyes, wet my toothbrush under the now lukewarm stream, squeezed a bubble of toothpaste on the bristles, and held it up to my mouth. “Open.”
My mouth popped open before my brain had given its permission, and Bea shoved the toothbrush in. I bit down on the bristles to hold it in place as she gripped my waistband and began to unbutton my jeans.
“What’re you doin!” I garbled. Heat churned in the space between us, and it rose from where her hand hovered over my body. It crawled quickly up to my neck, and I felt my cheeks flush.
“Helpin’.”
“I can do it.”
She speared me with a look, then unzipped my zipper. “That’s all I meant to do. You can whip it out yourself. I’m gonna go find the coffee.”
“O-okay. Thanks. Um, coffee’s in the cupboard closest to the fridge, filters are on top of the machine, and there’s milk in the fridge. Sugar’s in a jar next to?—”
“Don’t need it,” she said before she closed the door behind her. “I don’t do sweet.”
I chuckled, my rapid heart rate decreasing, and my toothbrush almost fell out of my mouth. “’Course you don’t.”
Chapter Five
Bea
Subtlety had never been my strong suit.
Laughing at the incredulous look on Bax’s face, I rooted around inside his kitchen cupboards, looking for the coffee he’d said was in one place, but I found the package of light-roast grounds sitting on the top shelf in the fridge. The guy really was out of his head.
As I had so vehemently stated to my boss yesterday, helping his brother was at the bottom of my list of priorities, but when Bax cried out in pain this morning after trying to put weight on his broken leg and I caught him defenseless on his couch, I kept seeing similarities to my dad after he’d broken his back. I didn’t think Bax’s titanium-fortified femur was quite as complicated a medical issue as five broken vertebrae, a compressed spinal cord, and fuck-tons of pinched nerves, but he was in pain. That was easy to see.
And the disrepair Bax’s house had fallen into was familiar too.
For a guy who built houses for a living, my dad had certainly let the ball drop on his own home. It was the reason I’d started teaching myself to fix broken things. Daddy lay on the couch watching TV most days after his accident, long after the doctor had said he could resume light activity. He never noticed the world passing him by.
If I wanted something fixed, I had to figure out how to do it myself. That included infuriating dripping-sink faucets, patching holes in roofs, and replacing old floorboards so they wouldn’t trip him when he shuffled to the fridge for another beer to go with the buzz from his pain pills. I could’ve called one of twenty guys to fix those things, but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He was embarrassed he couldn’t do any of it himself and didn’t want any of the men from his crew to know.
Bax didn’t seem quite as pigheaded as my dad had been, but he was definitely stubborn.
And I hadn’t missed how Bax’s cheeks had pinked when I went for his zipper, a dark look flashing in his baby blues.
Unfortunately, sex with my boss’s brother wasn’t the reason I’d come to the middle of bear country. And besides that, Candy was everywhere in this house. There were framed pictures of Bax’s dead wife on the fireplace mantel, hanging on the walls, and the way Athena had jumped down my throat when she thought I was dissing her mom’s name told me she wasn’t ready for her dad to be with anybody anyway.
Still though, the desire was there. At least on my part, but I’d gotten pretty good at denying myself things I wanted. I could do it again. I had to. The alternative would be messy, and anyway, I had no plans to be one of those women who bulldozed their way into a single dad’s life and stomped all over his kid to get what she wanted.
I set the coffee to brew, searched around for clean mugs and a spoon, and when I found them, sat at Bax’s kitchen table and checked emails on my phone while I waited, but it wasn’t long until I heard the bathroom door click open and the rubber feet on the bottom of his crutches squeak on the floor as he made his way to the kitchen.
When he got there, he stopped and looked down at me. “Can I ask you to do me a favor?” The pinched look on his face said he didn’t like asking for help, and the resigned sound of his voice convinced me I was right about it, but whatever the favor was, he needed it.
“Sure.”
“There’s a laundry basket on top of the washer.” He nodded behind us to a closed door, where I assumed his washer and dryer set would be. “Can you throw the clothes from the dryer in there and bring it out here, please? I forgot to ask Athena to do it, but all my clean clothes are in there.”
“Sure.”
I brought the basket into the kitchen and set it on the table, then went to pour two cups of coffee. I heard Bax digging through the basket, and I heard the thunk when he dropped a pair of jeans on the floor.
“Need some more help?” I asked as I poured a little milk into my Spitfire Ranch mug, stirred it slowly, and then turned and leaned against the counter, blowing on and sipping the hot coffee, watching him drop a T-shirt and a sock.
He really needed to keep both hands on his crutch handles. I assumed his left leg hadn’t been injured, but constantly putting all his weight on it had to start to hurt at some point, and I had a sneaking suspicion he’d been trying to hide the amount of pain he was really in from Athena.
“Naw, I’m good. Thanks.”
