Page 84 of Reeves

I set my things down on the small bench outside of theshower. Benjy’s voice carries from somewhere inside the house. “Mom! Where’s my helicopter book?”

Charli glances toward the back door and laughs softly.

“I’ll go find that before he tears the place apart. Just throw them out. I'll be right back.”

Then she leaves me there with the bamboo walls rattling lightly in the breeze.

I step into the enclosure and turn the knob. Cold water hits my shoulders, and I bite back a curse. The paint immediately starts running off in pale blue rivulets, pooling around my feet before slipping through the gaps in the wooden platform.

The cold tightens the muscles across my shoulder, and I roll it once out of habit. Bad idea. A dull ache shoots down my arm, reminding me the injury didn’t magically disappear overnight.

My shirt is already half glued to my skin from the paint drying in the sun. I grab the hem and try to peel it upward, but the fabric sticks stubbornly across my chest and shoulder.

I hear the back door close and then footsteps.

“Everything okay over there?” Charli calls from somewhere around the corner of the house.

“Yeah,” I say, working the shirt loose a few inches at a time. “Just wrestling with modern art.”

Getting it over my head takes longer than it should. My shoulder protests when I lift my arm too high, so I end up twisting sideways under the spray and dragging the sleeve down my arm instead.

The shirt finally comes free with a wet slap.

I aim over the bamboo wall and toss it out. A second later, I hear the hose kick on.

“That’s impressive,” Charli says from the other side. “You managed to paint the inside of the collar.”

“Talent,” I tell her.

I reach for my shorts next, working them down my legs andstepping out of them carefully so I don’t smear paint on the wood floor.

I drop them over the top of the wall. I really don't want her to bother with them, but she seems intent and it's easier to go along than to argue.

The water runs steadily over my shoulders while Charli blasts the paint out of my clothes on the other side of the wall. I tilt my head under the stream, letting it rinse the last of the paint from my hair.

Working out the remaining streaks from my forearms, I glance through the narrow gaps between the slats and catch glimpses of Charli around the corner of the house. Her sleeves are rolled to her elbows, the garden hose angled with focused precision as she works the paint out of the fabric.

The sight stops me cold.

She’s methodical but not rushed, turning the shirt inside out to check the seams before hitting it again. When she finishes, she wrings the shorts out with both hands, leaning into a stubborn patch near the pocket.

I keep watching, because she can't see me.

Water runs down my back while she works twenty feet away, completely absorbed. It shouldn’t be anything. Just a woman rinsing paint out of a shirt.

But it is.

My gaze drops without thinking.

That’s when I realize I’m standing here naked and my body has decided to weigh in on the situation. My dick is standing straight up.

Jesus.

I scrub a hand over my face and step deeper under the spray, turning the water colder.

It doesn't help.

She's twenty feet away, wringing paint out of my clothes,completely unaware that I'm standing here with nothing between us but bamboo slats and whatever is left of my self-control. Which, apparently, is considerably less than I thought.