Page 96 of Property of Bob

“Breakfast,” I announced.

“Sounds good.” Ashland pushed the blankets away, and then I forgot what the hell I was doing.

He was wearing nothing but boxer briefs.

Yesterday I’d seen him in clothes. Hospital clothes. Jeans. T-shirts. Things that covered most of him.

This was different. Very different.

My eyes landed on his chest before I could stop them.

Tattoos covered his skin. Some I recognized as club ink even though I didn’t know what all of it meant. Others disappeared around his ribs and over his shoulders. His body wasn’t what I remembered from twenty years ago.

There was muscle beneath the tattoos, even after however long he’d spent in a hospital bed. His stomach wasn’t carved into some ridiculous set of perfect abs, but it was solid, and the dark hair trailing down from his stomach disappeared beneath the waistband of his boxer briefs.

Oh, shit.

My eyes moved back up too slowly. Ashland was watching me.

Fuck.

His eyebrow lifted and I immediately looked at his face.

He smiled. Not the little half-smile he’d been giving me all morning.

A real one. A knowing one. “You good?” he rasped.

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

His smile grew.

I shook my head like that could somehow erase the last ten seconds from existence. I’d just checked out Ashland Moore. Bob. Whatever the hell I was supposed to call him.

I’d liked what I’d seen. A lot.

I stepped back and pointed toward the door. “Breakfast and some exercising sounds good.”

Ash swung his legs over the side of the bed. His eyes stayed on me. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Sounds real good.”

Chapter Eight

Bob

I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed Piney’s cooking until I was sitting at the table with a plate piled with eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and toast in front of me.

Hospital food had kept me alive. That was about the nicest thing I could say about it.

I took another bite of potatoes and leaned back in my chair.

The common room was loud around me. Not as loud as dinner last night, but enough that it felt normal. Piney was still moving around the kitchen, making more food even though there was already enough on the table to feed twice as many people. Anchor and Skull were talking at the other end while Pearl sat beside Anchor, drinking coffee.

Ramona was beside me. I liked that.

She’d stayed close since I’d come home yesterday, and sometime between falling asleep beside her last night and waking up this morning, I’d stopped wondering why.