Luckily for me, he was in too much pain to notice I copped a feel.
At least I hoped so.
I steered him up the stairs and through the door. I leaned him against the sideboard, hurried back to close the door and wiggled out of my coat. “Okay, let’s get you undressed.”
He arched a brow.
“Looks like you’re thawing out. Even if you’re still chewing on your words.” I peeled my gloves off his hands. They were red and scraped up from the sand. “Ouch.”
He flexed them and a little something flared to life in my belly. First the chest and now the hands.Oof. I shook off my lusty thoughts and helped him out of his parka and hung it on the hook by the door.
I helped him across the living room, my gaze bouncing around the room. “Damn. Lizzie’s place got an upgrade and then some.”
“Lizzie?”
“Henderson. She’s like seventy-eight or something. She was a kick. I think she was sad to leave this place, but the cold was too much for her and Stan.”
“Husband?”
“Dog.”
“Of course it was,” he said through chattering teeth.
I shrugged. “She took her husband too, but I think it was mostly out of loyalty. Fred was a bit of a crabass. You’d probably have liked him.” At his deadpan stare, I laughed.
He started shuddering and I hustled him onto the couch. No blankets—shoot. I did a spin and spotted the hallway to the bedrooms. I rushed forward and frowned at a box in the middle of the hall. Strips of sweatshirts and T-shirts littered the floor and looked like they lost a fight with Edward Scissorhands. What the hell?
Not a single sweatshirt had been left whole.
None of them seemed as if they could belong to a girl. Hmm. Did he break up with his boyfriend or something?
Of course the first guy to make my body hum didn’t even play for my team. Or would that be he did play for my team? Whatever, it was just my luck. Ahh well, that probably made it easier.
I picked up the shrapnel of his sweatshirts and T-shirts and dumped them back in the box and found a SFSU sweatshirt at the very bottom. I grabbed that and another pair of sweats. I went into what was probably his bedroom and practically moaned.
That bed was glorious.
But the important piece was the blanket. I snatched it off the bed and hefted it over my shoulder.
I should probably just put him in his bed, but it was freaking cold in the room.
I shuffled down the hall with my bounty to find him sitting on the end of the couch closest to the fireplace. The glow warmed up the surprisingly neutral room. Everything was a different shade of gray or black. From the bookcases to the couch, everything was austere.
The firelight warmed his tanned skin and turned his dark hair chestnut.
But it was his back that gave me pause.
So many muscles, yes, but it was the ink that stole my breath.
No color—that seemed to be a theme with this one—but the intricate line work urged me closer. I was a sucker for negative space artwork. It was a copse of tall trees—Redwoods maybe? But the deep shadows of it only showed a little bit of detail with a wispy curl of dark fog winding in and out of the branches. That alone would have been powerful enough, but the oversized star winking out of the darkness gave it a hopeful bent that didn’t exactly line up with the man I met.
He stood and mercy, all those muscles and hair practically glowed in the firelight.
Dutch really was a delicious specimen of male.
He made my fingers itchy for some charcoal and paper, which generally wasn’t my medium of choice.
Then he wobbled on his busted ankle and I dropped the clothes and blanket on the couch to catch him. “Really did a number on that ankle, huh?”
