“Yeah, well you picked an interesting time to visit the beach.”
Again, he closed his mouth. His rather nice jaw tensing with either the need to spit out words, or pissed I mentioned it again. Interesting.
I liked puzzles.
We lumbered up the steps to the road and I could hear his labored breath. Based on the muscles flexing under my fingers,it wasn’t because he was out of shape. Probably pain. “Want to stop?”
“No,” he gritted out.
“Okay, then.” I took a little more of his weight, my back screaming at the position but we didn’t have far to go. I wrapped my other arm around him, and he hissed. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
Big baby under the strong silent type?
Or was he more hurt than I thought? When I saw him go down, I just acted. I didn’t even remember running out of my house. Thankfully I still had my boots on or we both would have been in trouble.
I got him to his porch and hooked his arm around the post. “Don’t fall.” I pressed my hands against his chest—to make sure he wasn’t going to crash forward. Okay, so it was very nice and not a hardship. I was a sucker for hair on a guy’s chest.
And it had been a hot minute since I’d been up close to a man even if he was a prickly popsicle. I hurried over to the door and groaned when it was locked. I looked back at him. “Really?”
“I didn’t lock it.” He bowed his head and sagged against the railing.
“Great.” I looked under the mat and inside the little flower pot outside the door. Nada. “C’mon, house, where would you hide a key?” I felt around the door and under the scrollwork of the lantern-style light on either side of the front door.
I was about to go around to find a window to climb through when I spotted a little medallion above the outside faucet. I pounced on it, my fingers clumsy with cold. It flipped open and a key was nestled into a little hiding spot. “Yes!”
“How the hell did you see that?”
I shrugged. “I just see stuff.” He probably didn’t want to know my vibes thing. Sometimes it just meant asking the right question to places and they coughed up the details.
I shoved the key in the lock and the door popped open. The instant rush of heat made my fingers tingle. I really didn’t want to go back out there.
However, the dog galloped up the stairs and right through the door. I snickered and craned my neck around the corner to find him making a spot in front of the fire.
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry about your dog. Let’s get you in here.”
“It’s notmydog.”
“Sure he’s not.”
He was pale, clammy, and about a second from falling over. That jaw was still tightly clenched. Didn’t he have a headache or TMJ from all of that?
I ran down the stairs to him.“You keep swallowing words like that you’re going to get a bellyache.”
He frowned at me.
“What? That’s how ulcers are made.”
“It is not.”
“That’s what my gram used to say. Better out than in, Phoebe Jean.” I grinned at him as I wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Applies to many things.”
I needed a little more leverage to get him up real stairs and grabbed the waistband of his pants, then realized my mistake.
There wasn’t a damn thing on under those gray sweatpants.And the good lord blessed him twice.
