Page 4 of Man Glitter
I raised my eyebrows. “Point taken. Maybe next time you could make your point a little less painfully, Doc?”
She had the good manners to blush before dipping her head and continuing to stitch. “Yeah. Um, about that. I’m sorry for my part in your little accident tonight.”
Oh, she was good. She was sorry “for herpart” in my “little” accident? Maybe in her next life she’d be a lawyer, using a lot of words to say literally nothing at all.
A really hot lawyer. I screwed my eyes shut and tried to wipe my brain. Where had that ridiculous thought come from? I mean, shewashot. If you liked alpacas and frowns and a way with needles, which I didn’t. Maybe I’d lost more blood than I thought.
She was back to frowning, that line between her eyebrows as natural as the sawdust that covered every part of my person when I worked out here. The impish side of me that always got me in trouble, but made life worth living roared to life. She’d poked the bear, and I was about to poke back. Quid pro quo and all that nonsense. The only difference is that I poked so softly and repeatedly you didn’t feel it until it was too late.
“About ten years ago, my buddies and I and our girlfriends all got together for a pool party one summer afternoon. Just young kids trying to scrape out a living and have some fun on the weekends. Naturally, we broke out the snacks and one thing led to another.” Her head came up, and she looked at me like a goat might look at a watch. I smothered a smile and kept going with my inane story. “We laid out all kinds of salsas, each more potent than the next. As men do, we got a little competitive and placed bets on who could handle the hottest salsa. Loser had to walk around the apartment complex pool in a thong Speedo. Now you might be asking yourself why any of us even owned a thong Speedo, but I swear it was given to me as a gag gift.”
Finnie was watching me, her stitches halted as she studied me like one would a roach under a microscope.
“I made it to the very end, finally tapping out when my eyes and nose leaked so much I feared I lost my senses for good. Stupid Joe won, probably because he wasn’t lactose intolerant like me and drank a glass of milk after each salsa tasting.”
“Did you wear the Speedo?” Finnie asked, the words looking like they tasted horrible.
I grinned, remembering the wolf whistles. “Hell yes, I did. I rocked that Speedo with a strut a runway model would envy.”
She snorted and got back to stitching up my thumb.
Staring at the top of her tight bun, I finished the story. “But Joe had the runs for a week after, so who’s the real winner here?”
Finnie looked up and grinned, flashing her straight white teeth. The front tooth had a little chip on the bottom edge, a slight imperfection that held my attention more than Hollywood-perfect looks ever could. She clapped her hand to her mouth, eyes swimming with mirth. It was a good look on her.
First poke complete, next poke waiting on deck.
3
Finnie
I couldn’t believe I was laughing inside. I’d been on a roller coaster of emotions from the moment I trudged across to Charlie’s property. First raging anger at his music in the middle of the night, then horror when I saw the damage he’d done to himself because of me, and now a begrudging humor from his insane story. Who doesn’t even flinch when they cut themselves that deeply? Who tells stories about losing salsa eating contests and assless Speedos? I’d met plenty of weirdos in the big city ER, but they didn’t usually look this good in a pair of jeans. Maybe it was just late, and that’s why I couldn’t seem to keep up with this guy.
I tied off after the last suture and started to pack up. “Just need to wrap it and then you can head to bed.” Please Lord, let him go to bed and not play that hideous music again.
Without intending to, I eyed his muscled chest, only catching myself when I drifted down the line of hair to the opening of his jeans. It was hard not to look, what with it all being inches from my face. The man was certifiable and unfairly gorgeous. “Probably need to get that sawdust off you before you go in though.”
Charlie looked down at himself like he’d forgotten his state of undress or the fact that he was coated in a layer of wood particles. I wrapped his hand and taped off the thick gauze, confident it would hold through the night.
Charlie hopped off the stool and started swiping the saw dust from his chest with his good hand. The flakes fell to the ground and reminded me of a homemade sign I saw at this little flea market not long ago.
“They say sawdust is just man glitter,” I said out loud, wishing I could swallow the words the minute they floated out there.
Charlie’s head popped up, and a hint of a smile danced across his face. “I believe that’s what I’ll have to call it from now on. A name that good can’t go to waste.”
A wash of warmth flooded my limbs, and I wished it was because of a job well done on the stitches. Charlie kept batting at his back while twisting around, but missed a lot of the man glitter because he couldn’t use his right hand.
Because of me.
“Here, let me help you.” I moved behind him, intent on assuaging my guilt by giving him a hand. Literally. Doctors have an oath to do no harm, and here I was, responsible for nearly cutting his thumb off.
He gave me his back and stood still. I swiped my hand across his broad back, and I nearly jumped at the warmth of his skin. I swiped again and went a little slower this time. Not to feel his bunched muscles, but to properly get all the sawdust off, of course. How did one man build so many muscles just playing with wood boards all day long? Standing so close, I saw the goosebumps form on Charlie’s arms. Could be that it was just cold out here in the middle of the night with not enough clothes on. Or could it be from my touch? I kept swiping, and the goosebumps kept coming. My face transformed with a feminine smile to know I had that power over him. Over any man, for that matter.
It was short lived as Charlie spun around suddenly, his steady blue-eyed gaze almost even with mine. In heels, I’d be taller than him, a fact that never bothered me, but tended to bother most men who tried to date a five-foot-ten woman. His chest was just an inch away from my outstretched hands. Sawdust remained in patches, the messy remainder making my hands itch to fix it.
I gulped. “You, uh, have some man glitter on your man parts.” I gestured down to where his jeans hung open far below his trim waist in a tantalizing vee. I mean, what were even holding those pants up at this point? Did I even want to know? The flush of my cheeks told me I very much wanted to know.
Charlie just smirked and swiped at the sawdust in some kind of lumberjack version of a Thunder Down Under dance. My temperature soared, and I knew I needed to get out of there before I had a hot flash way too young to be blamed on menopause.
