Page 31 of Coach
“You’re not asking. I’m offering. Wouldn’t take me long. I could do it today, if you want. I could bring the wood and cement too. Got myself a pick-up a while back to transport all the wood for my projects.”
That would be amazing. If I were being honest, I was dreading this project, knowing how back-breaking it was going to be.
That said, even with money coming in, things were still a little tight for the time being.
“That’s a really nice offer. Right now, though, I can’t really aff—”
“I don’t want you to pay me, Este,” he cut me off. “Just consider it awelcome to towngift.”
“It’s a lot of work for that.”
“I like the work.”
“I can pay you with lunch,” I offered.
“ThatI will gladly accept.”
With that, we gathered the other supplies, and I got to watch the way Saul’s muscles tensed and twisted as he hauled fifty-pound bags of cement and eight-foot fence posts into the back of his truck.
Always being the one involved with the project, I’d really never understood the appeal of watching a man work before. Staring at Saul as he did so, though, made me rethink a lifetime of never appreciating such things before.
I suddenly couldn’t wait to see him using the auger. Possibly shirtless. And sweaty.
“Este?” Saul called, making me snap out of my fantasy that was turning R-rated pretty quickly.
“Yeah?”
“Gonna need to follow you,” he told me as he slammed the bed closed.
“Oh, right. Yeah. Let me just…” I looked to the cart, but he’d even taken the boxes of screws in his truck.
“Just gonna put this back,” Saul said, reaching for the cart.
He was a cart-returner.
Could the guy get any hotter?
“God, get a grip,” I told myself as I climbed into my car and turned it over. I needed to stop thinking about things to like about Saul and start trying to figure out if I had anything in my house to make a decent meal with.
I mean, I could feed myself. It was the only way to stretch my budget. But I literally couldn’t remember the last time I cooked for someone other than myself. Or Trix. But she didn’t exactly have the most discerning of palates. I’d caught her trying to eat bunny droppings just that morning.
On top of that, the onlymanI’d ever cooked for was my grandfather. Even that was only the sides, because he was the master of the grill and I wasn’t let anywhere near it.
What did men eat after a hard day of work?
Meat and potatoes came to mind.
Maybe while Saul was working, I could run to the grocery store real quick to make sure the meal was worth all the manual labor he was going to be doing for me. Even if doing so was going to seriously cut down on my staring at him out the window time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Coach
I honestly forgot there were even any houses on the side street coming off the main drag in town.
Este lived on a dead-end road with only three houses: two ranches and one three-story duplex.
From the look of things, though, the other side wasn’t occupied at the moment.
