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She turned and there was Gideon, sitting in a chair he’d moved in from his bedroom. He looked terrible, like he’d been up all night. For all she knew, he had been.
“Yes,” she said. Her throat was sore, but it didn’t feel swollen, like she couldn’t breathe so she supposed she should be grateful.
“How are you feeling?”
His eyes searched her face as she took inventory of her body. Hmm. Her head ached, her shoulder throbbed, her arms were sore, her stomach felt empty but also like she’d get sick if she tried to eat, and her ankle hurt like fuck.
“Not great.”
“No, I wouldn’t imagine so.”
“Can I take a shower? The smell is…”
It would be bad anyway, but with everything it reminded her of, the caustic odor was downright nauseating.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea because of your cast but I’ll help you take a bath.”
A whole bunch of feelings crashed over her. Gratitude, a deep-cutting want, regret, grief. She’d been missing him so badly, and last night she’d let him take care of her because she couldn’t find the wherewithal to care for herself. But that didn’t fundamentally change anything.
“Gideon,” she started, folding her hands in her lap and looking down at them.
Before she could continue, he interrupted her.
“I understand last night didn’t mean anything. You needed help and I was there. If it had been the rectory that’d caught fire, I know you would’ve done the same for me.”
He gave her a smile, one that tipped up one side of his mouth more than the other. One that said he knew she wouldn’t have been able to physically restrain him from running into a burning building or carry him through a crowd as though he were a damsel in distress. But fundamentally…
“Yes. I would’ve done my best to take care of you.”
Gideon nodded as though that settled things. It didn’t. She felt like she’d been in an avalanche and was buried, couldn’t tell which way was up. What was a person supposed to do when their life had literally been reduced to ashes?
“So if you don’t want what we had before, that’s fine. I won’t take advantage, I promise. But if you were to want to go back—even temporarily because being in that mindset might make it easier to accept help—I’m happy to oblige. Everything I have…”
A line formed between his brows and his mouth flattened into a stern line. If she hadn’t been feeling like a marshmallow dropped into a campfire, her belly would’ve clenched. She loved that look of concentration, devotion.
Gideon was an attentive man, and she’d loved being attended to by him. Ached for it now, in fact, although she didn’t want to fuck. She did want his kindness and his strong body to hold her, his easy dominance to overpower her reluctance to let anyone look after her because she was fine. She was always fine. Brash, bossy Plum who could deal with her own shit, thankyouverymuch.
“Everything I have, everything I am, it’s yours for the taking. You don’t even have to ask. Just give me a sign and I’ll do the rest.”
Plum shouldn’t have been surprised at his selflessness. He was a generous man who loved people harder than they deserved, most of all herself. But it was one thing to devote yourself to the service of God by caring for your community and tending to your congregation. It was an entirely different matter to offer your heart in your hands to the woman who had tossed it back to you a couple weeks before. And yet here he was doing just that. Because he was the best man alive.
She liked to think of herself as a bighearted person, but in this she wanted nothing more than to be selfish. And perhaps she was trying to sell herself on it, but Gideon seemed to be in need of it too. Would it really be so bad then? She could think about the consequences later.
“Please, Daddy.”
