“Just don’t wreck my bar,” Nate says, looking up from his phone. “Are we doing this?”
“Yeah, before someone yells for Boone to get back to work,” I say, glancing at the phone.
He’s frowning, looking over the wall of the stable through the bars, checking if the coast is still clear. It makes a slice of guilt churn in my gut for being late for our meeting, but if Boone knew,he’d understand. I’ve already filled him in on the arsonist, but not this newest development. One that is going to plague me for the foreseeable future.
We all get up and head to the dance floor where I set the phone up on the closest table where Boone will be able to see all of us.
“When Wyatt asked me to help you with this, it got me thinking… how do you guys feel about hobbyhorses?” he asks, a grin that looks just like mine spreading across his face. It falls a second later, his head cocking to the side. “Are those tutus?”
For the next hour, hobbyhorses, dancing, and tutus are all my brothers, blood and fire, allow me to think about.
Chapter 30
Bryn
“So,whatdoyoudo for fun?” the man on my massage table asks.
I’m thankful he’s face down so he doesn’t see me cringe as my forearm glides over his calf. He’s a new client I met working my last shift at 10-42. Edgar. Or Eddie, as he prefers to be called. A couple of years younger than me, nice enough while he was sitting alone at a table. During our brief chats while serving him, it came out that I do massage, and he asked for my card.
“Puzzles, mostly,” I tell him, trying to sound as boring as possible.
From the second he walked through the door of the clinic, he’s given me a weird feeling. He wouldn’t stop staring at me as we walked through what he wanted worked on today, which isn’t necessarily cause for the hairs on my neck to stand up.
It was the way he never broke eye contact as he ran his hand over his hip, down his thigh, crossed back to his hamstring, and then travelled up his glute that made me uncomfortable. The way his eyes flicked down to my chest, then back up just as quickly, like he thought I wouldn’t notice. Or the way I could feel him watch my ass when I turned to leave the room for him to get changed. If he’d given me this feeling when I was working at 10-42, I wouldn’t have said a thing when he mentioned being stiff after a run earlier in the day. Then again, I was rather distracted by a certain cowboy.
“That’s cool,” he says, nodding in the face cradle. “I like puzzles. You play on your phone?”
Glancing at the clock, I pull in a deep, silent breath. Twenty-five more minutes that need to speed the hell up.
“No. Real puzzles on a table,” I explain, hands sliding up his leg to his thigh. The one that he said was bothering him.
“Wow, a real puzzle. Cool.”
Fighting against the inner need to respond to him because he’s a client, I work into his hamstring, first with my hands, then with my forearms and elbow. He groans a few times, making me wonder if maybe he was telling the truth, and his leg did hurt. Part of me thought it was all a rouse just so I would touch him there. Then again, his leg isn’t thick with muscle. It’s thin. The polar opposite of Wyatt.
Wyatt. The thought of him brings a small smile to my face and makes working on the man a little easier. I haven’t seen the cowboy for a couple of days because he was on shift, and then I worked here and at 10-42, but I heard all about him from Gran. She took him to a greenhouse to pick out some new plants for the backyard, and then they had lunch at her favorite spot on the pier.
She’s done her best to integrate him into our lives. Into my life.
My eyes dart to the clock. Twenty more minutes. Which has me coming to the part of his massage that I’ve been dreading most. Flipping him onto his back. A position that will make it much easier for him to stare at me again.
Pulling the sheet out from where I’ve got it tucked beneath his leg, I cover him properly so only his head is undraped.
“Okay, Eddie, I’m going to lift the sheet on one side in just a second, and I want you to flip over to your back and scoot down a bit.”
“Oh, uh, sure, okay.”
Standing beside the bed, I reach over him and grab the sheet on the far side of the table, lifting it enough that he can turn beneath it while staying covered. Lifting my eyes toward the ceiling as he moves, I wait until he’s slid himself down the table to release the sheet over his body again.
He’s lying there, arm propped under his head, eyes open and locked on me. Forcing a smile onto my face, I nod, and then adjust the sheet, willing the hair on the back of my neck to lie flat.
This isn’t like the creeps at 10-42. There I’m surrounded by other people. I can handle myself because I know I’ve got backup if I need it. Here, I’m alone in a room with a man who is naked besides his underwear. There’s another therapist a couple of rooms down, and then the receptionist, but the three of us are the only ones working.
I’ve never felt so uncomfortable at work before. A feeling that grows when I realize the sheet is tented over Eddie’s groin area in a way that suggests he has an erection.
Shit.
It wasn’t a bullshit line when I told Wyatt that this kind of thing happens and it’s nothing to worry about, but normally a guy is embarrassed by it. Eddie looks happy he’s got an erection, and I don’t want to know what he thinks I might do with it. The answer is absolutely nothing.
