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His eyes find mine. “I like order.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well, cool. I'll help.”
He doesn't look at me when he rumbles, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“No.”
“That's not a better explanation.”
He turns to give me his eyes. They’re firm and unyielding, but so am I. “It's cold out there. Visibility is low. Trees are and have fallen. The wind is violent. It's not safe and you have no experience, so, no.”
I might be sitting on the stool, but my hands still find my hips. “It's a snowstorm, Nick, not a hurricane.” There's a twitch to his lips that makes me think he likes it when I throw him sass.
“I've been doing this alone for years, Sunshine. I don't need help.”
“Well, you don’t have to do it alone today.” I flash a determined smile that cuts through the grin twitching on his lips. “I'm here.”
He doesn't seem to know what to say to this. So, I just ask, “Is the coffee done?”
ChapterTwelve
Nick
The wind is stronger today. The force of it reaches into the house like a hand to slam the door shut behind me as I stomp the snow from my boots. Christmas music plays as I kick off my boots, tug off my gloves, toque, and jacket. Next, I strip out of my frozen coveralls. The warmth of the house burns my skin after the hours I spent in the cold, blowing snow. Cutlery rattles and a bowl hits the countertop a little too hard as the woman in my kitchen hums to the jingle of a Christmas beat.
For a moment, I’m frozen by the reality I’m living. There is a woman in my kitchen, humming to Christmas music. It’s surreal. And I like it. I like it a fucking lot.
I also hate that I like it so much. I hate it because before the accident, I’d been ready for this life. For a woman making herself at home in my home. I’d been ready for marriage, kids—a family to call my own.
I’d been ready for all that shit I’d never have now. Not looking like I do.
What woman would want me as I am? Scarred and rough to the touch—angry at the world.
Darkness blooms in my brain and I rub stiff fingers into my temples. I’m pissed that it always comes back to this—to my disfigured fucking self. I hate that I hate myself this way, that the accident clings to me with the ripple and dip of scars that mar the entire left side of my body. It makes me angry that I allow myself to be so ruled by the accident. But my fiancée had left me because the thought of me touching her had left her so shaken with disgust. The woman I thought would love me until I took my dying breath had abandoned me to heal from something most never heal from at all.
And that’s not the worst of it. Because she’d left me in that car to burn. My scars are so severebecause of her.
When I think of that—the true anger comes. It hits me like a wave of red, knocking the breath from my lungs and forcing me to suck in deep breaths of air.
I find my calm quickly, because the woman humming the Christmas tune with her sugary personality and sweet as fuck smile doesn’t deserve my anger.
I don’t know what Mom was thinking when she sent her to me. She had to know she was sending the beauty into the den of a beast.
No, she doesn’t deserve my anger. No one does.
With the anger comes the beast. And he isn’t pretty. Pulling in another deep breath, I inhale the scent of cookies. More fucking cookies. I'm not complaining. Really, I'm not. I love cookies.
I'm a man that likes to eat the shit a woman makes me, but if I keep eating her cookies, I'm going to get fat. Really fat. And I'm already an abomination, adding an unhealthy gut to the scar tissue isn't going to do me any favors.
The yard had been a mess. Two more trees had fallen over the driveway, and I'd been out for hours. I didn't just plow the snow in my drive. I plowed one drive over and two up from that because the couples in both houses are old. They shouldn't be out in the storm. If one of them falls they're likely to break something. If that happens, they're unlikely to get an ambulance up here in the snow. I would never have thought twice about plowing their drives before Sadie arrived. Now, with Sadie here and in my house—in the warmth—I’d had to convince myself to do it.
All I wanted to do from the moment I stepped outside into the storm was turn back around and find her.
I want to be close to her with a fierceness that unsettles me. I don't get it, the drive I have—the itch—to be near this woman. The pull she has on me is intense. It's senseless. More, I really dislike that she's the woman my mother chose for me. She's the woman my mother put an ad out to find for me. What does that say about me? That I can't find my own woman? That my mother has to do it for me.
What does Sadie think it says about me?
