AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I can explain?
I’d heard that line before. “Don’t tiger me.” I walked up to him. “As for explaining? Explain to the hockey pad.” Then I whacked him right in the triple craniectomy.
7
LUKE
* * *
Aspen might throw down like a girl, but whatever she hit me with fucking hurt.
I raised my arms to block my head. “Ow! Shit, what is that?”
“It’s a shin pad. It’s supposed to deflect hockey pucks. It better fucking hurt!” she shouted and whacked me again.
This time, I was ready and stopped the swing with my hand to her wrist, gently grabbing it, then plucked the shin pad from her grip.
“I told you I can explain,” I breathed.
“Shep Barnes?”
I was a little surprised at how pissed she was. I never met someone who had no clue about my role in NYC ER. Even her daughter recognized me.
“A craniectomy?” she snapped. Yeah, seriously pissed. “How the hell has my daughter seen you perform that? And what the hell is a triple one?”
I glanced around. We were on the side of her house, but her neighbors were close. All I needed was to be seen in a fight with a woman. I may have been the one attacked, but it’d be spun into something else entirely. A druggie in rehab was one thing, but a woman having to defend herself from me with a kid’s hockey shin guard was another.
Yet, I wasn’t a drug addict. I wasn’t an ER doctor. I wasn’t Shep Barnes. Nothing anyone accused me of, including Aspen, was actually me.
“Look, if you calm down, we can talk about this,” I said, trying to tone things down a bit. I even had my hands out in a placating gesture.
Her eyes narrowed and it was possible steam came out of her ears. Okay, that was a dumb thing to say because with a strong southpaw, she whacked me with the other shin pad.
“Calm down? Who the hell are you?”
Another bad move on my part, forgetting shin guards came in pairs. Fuck, that stung!
I had to laugh–which was pretty fucking dumb–but the one woman who knew the truth and only the truth was beating the shit out of me? She was furious that I’d been honest?
She stormed past me and to her door. The lock was a number pad and she entered it and threw the door open.
I followed because I had to make this right. “My name is Luke, just as I told you last night.”
We stood in a small vestibule at the bottom of a flight of stairs. It appeared her place was on the second floor, as if the house had been split into two, up and down. The small space had a mirror, a row of hooks below it and a basket on the floor with shoes piled in it. The stairwell was wood with a navy carpet runner. I pulled the door closed behind me so we were alone.
She spun around. Glared. “Right,” she said with every bit of sarcasm possible squeezed into the one word.
Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were a little wild. So was she. There was something wrong with me because I was hot for her even though she was angry. It was a good look on her, this fierce tiger, but there was no way in hell I was going to tell her that.
“Shep Barnes is a character I play on TV,” I explained. “I’m an actor. Haven’t you seen NYC ER?”
“Never heard of it. I don’t have a TV,” she replied.
I stared at her for a moment, trying to process those words. It was as if she said she didn’t have electricity or running water. “You don’t have a TV,” I repeated.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Your daughter recognized me,” I commented, meaning she had to have seen the show somehow. Later, I’d have to think about the fact that she had a daughter, and one who was around ten. While I knew better than to ask any woman her age, I guessed she was around thirty, so she’d had Sierra when she was really young. Where was the dad? If Aspen was at the bar for a blind date, then she was single.
