Page 9 of Her Braun
TWO
There werea thousand things that Kay Hata could do that other people couldn't.
She'd spent years in school with hours and hours of studying beyond what she had been required to study in Med School. She was always looking for new skills to acquire. New methods to use. So if there was someone in the vicinity who was having a heart attack or if there was an injury with a power tool, she could be useful.
Finding the right paint to use on her bedroom wall or how to fix a hole she'd made in the drywall?
A big NOPE.
And the last time she'd been at the store she'd asked a man for help, and he'd spent over a half hour treating her like she couldn't figure out how to tie her own shoes. Sure, in the end he'd helped her, but the time it took to get there?
Excruciating.
So, she decided to start things off with what should be the easiest part.
Picking a color of paint.
Ha!
That was a joke.
Easy?
She'd been standing here, moving back and forth between what was likely maybe forty feet of shelves looking at paint chips from half a dozen companies.
She'd come in looking for a clean, off white. Something simple and then she'd fallen down the rabbit hole of colors.
And then she'd discovered the names of colors could almost be as interesting. Like the sample of Drunk-Tank Pink she was holding in her hands.
"I wonder if this is really a thing."
"If what's a thing?"
"Aiya!" Shocked, Kay leaned away from the voice, her hands reaching up to cover her heart. "Oh my God! Lieutenant! You scared me!"
"Sorry. Sorry." He took a step back and she felt like a proper idiot for jumping.
"You must think I'm a complete basket case."
"No." His tone was deep. Sure of himself. "I should know better than to come out of nowhere like that."
Kay looked around them at the aisle they were standing in and felt even worse. "It's not exactly like you came out of the darkness. There's a good... twenty feet in either direction. It's my fault for getting a bit of tunnel vision."
"You... um, dropped something."
He bent down and picked up the paint chip that she'd dropped, and heaven help her, she reacted. It was a completely innocent gesture.
But crouched down at her feet, she could see the muscles across his back and shoulders, the way his t-shirt pulled across his back, highlighting the amazing trapezius muscles in his backand tilting her head to the side, she had a feeling she could just catch a glimpse of the latissimus dorsi muscles along his side.
Not to mention the way his jeans stretched over the very well-defined muscles of his backside.
No, she corrected herself, his butt. No. Ass?
There just wasn't an adequate word for what she was trying not to stare at.
"Here."
He stood up and his face had to pass by... a certain area that was hot and wet and not from the heat of the hardware store.
