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“On my back.” Spinning away from him, I attempt to lower my towel without fully dropping it. This is no easy task. It isn’t anything he hasn’t seen before. I just hate that it is under these circumstances. You can’t exactly woo someone when you look like a lobster.
I’m reminded of when my grandmother had a massive boil on her inner thigh when Brodie hisses while inspecting my back.
“Is it bad? Will it scar?”
Desperate to check for myself, I pivot toward the mirror. It fans out my towel, leaving my rear end fully exposed, and sees me coming face-to-face with Brodie. He stands a couple of inches taller than me, but several important regions of our bodies line up with perfection. I’m an inch from a pussy grind that would send me toppling into ecstasy.
“It isn’t that bad.” He forces me back around before crowding me against the vanity. His body temperature must be astronomical because the hand he brushes down my back is warmer than my scalded skin. “It also isn’t a blister.”
“Then what is it?”
I hold my breath when his touch sends a thrilling zap down my spine. It also forces goosebumps to rise to the surface of my skin, but I try to act ignorant. He is inspecting my stupidity, not undressing me with his teeth as I’ve dreamed about multiple times the past few nights. However, you wouldn’t believe that with how erratic my pulse is.
I sigh in relief when he holds up his goop-covered finger in front of me. The “blister” is the body gel I was too scared to lather on my skin with a loofa. I used my hand because I was worried the scratchiness of the loofa would cause more damage.
I had no reason to fret. Brodie’s calloused fingers feel divine, and I’d give anything to switch the mess on them to something more sinister.
After washing away the goop in the sink, his body close and hot in the tight confines of the bathroom, Brodie contemplates using my towel to dry his hands before thinking better of it.
He shake-dries them before making a beeline for the door while grumbling, “Night.”
“Before you go,” I push out, stopping him.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his shorts before slowly spinning to face me. The apprehension on his face makes my chest so tight I can hardly breathe, but it won’t stop me from asking, “Would you mind?” I jingle a bottle of aloe vera in the air. “I can’t reach the middle of my back, and it’s even more burned than my ass.”
A victorious grin threatens to stretch across my face when his eyes snap to the vanity mirror for the quickest second before he cusses, adjusts his crotch without removing his hands from his pockets, then returns his eyes to my face. “I…” He stops and then tries again. “I can’t.”
Feeding off the tension that teemed between us during the short ride home, I say, “It’s just a bit of aloe vera. What’s the worst that could happen?”
His blurted confession gives my battered ego a moment of reprieve. “If I touch you again, I won’t be able to stop.”
“And that’s a problem because…?”
“Because you drive me fucking insane.” He thrusts his hand at the bathroom door like the Ashburn mansion is on the other side. “I was at my wife’s childhood home with her damn family, yet all I kept thinking about was how I’d give anything to tan your ass redder than the sun ever could for denying my request for you to cover up.”
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.
“And you’re young. So fucking young.”
I roll my eyes. “Then I guess it’s lucky I have connections with people my own age.”
“Thane—”
We’re interrupted by a likely source, but not in a way anyone would anticipate.
A painful groan closely follows Lucy’s entrance into the bathroom. “I-I don’t feel good.”
As Brodie scoops her up into his arms, I slip on the silk kimono I plucked from my suitcase with the hope its softness will caress my skin more than inflame it, before moving to Lucy to check if she has a temperature.
“I noticed her cheeks were a little red when bathing her, but I was hopeful it was from excitement.” I grimace when her forehead feels as hot as a furnace. “Do you have children’s pain relief?”
Brodie nods. “In the vanity cupboard, third shelf on the right.”
After gathering the Tylenol and wetting a washcloth, I follow Brodie into his bedroom. Like the past several days when we’ve worked side by side, caring for Lucy together, we move in sync naturally—almost as one.
“She often gets heatstroke,” Brodie announces after placing her on one side of his bed and fetching a bucket from the linen closet in the hallway.
Fortunately, he moves fast. A second after placing the bucket under her chin, Lucy brings up everything she ate and drank tonight.
