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Noah grins and stands. He opens the bottom pull-out drawer on the fridge and takes out an ice pack. "I'm giving Asher an ice pack for you, Clover," Noah yells back into the living room. "Fifteen minutes and two acetaminophen. I'll be in to look at the knee in half an hour."
Noah hands me the ice pack and grabs a plastic bottle of pills from a kitchen cabinet. While Noah goes back to cleaning, I find a glass and fill it with water.
The fact that Clover takes the pills without protest is a good indication of just how bad her knee hurts.
"I'll check out your room and clean up the worst of the mess, okay?"
She looks up at me and yawns. "Okay. Thank you."
She gives me directions to her room and I head that way. The ballroom is clean and there's no sign of goat damage in the halls, but the spiral staircase is littered with little bits of fluff, like maybe Barley dragged a pillow or something down the stairs and the stuffing fell out along the way.
I pick up the fluff as I go, but my arms are full by the time I get to the top of the stairs. I leave the pile of fluff there and go back to find a few trash bags.
Clover is asleep in the living room, her mouth pressed tight, her face revealing more pain in sleep than she allowed to show while she was awake.
I stroke her smooth skin, trying to ease the tension. She sighs in her sleep and snuggles into my palm. She must have been far more exhausted than she let on to fall this deeply asleep in the time it took me to walk across the house and back. I set an alarm on my watch to come back and take off the ice pack, cover her with a blanket, and head to the kitchen.
Honey gives me three trash bags and I head back upstairs. I stuff all the fluff into one bag and continue to fill it as I walk down the hall, picking up more as I go. Whatever Barley dragged must have been huge.
The door to the room that should be Clover's is wide open and the light is on inside. It looks like a fluff bomb went off. Barley must have had a party, ripping up pillows and… I notice a fluffy brown head on the floor… teddy bears. Books have been knocked to the floor and a lamp is shattered, but there are no other signs of permanent damage.
I only make a dent in the fluff before the alarm I set goes off. I carry down the one trash bag I filled.
When I lift the blanket and take off the ice pack, Clover stirs and her eyes flutter open. "How bad is it?"
"It looks like you're going to have to go pillow shopping. And one lamp is done for, but it's not too bad otherwise. Your laptopis still in one piece." I swallow. "There's at least one teddy bear that didn't make it."
She frowns. "He ate my teddy bears?"
"Looks like it. I'm sorry."
"They're gifts from clients. One of my first clients gave me one and I posted a picture of it. It sort of became a thing and several clients over the years have given me bears." She shrugs. "I'm sorry to lose them, but they aren't family heirlooms or anything."
"If I find any that can be saved, I'll make sure they're taken care of."
She smiles and starts to push up to sit. "I'll help you."
I push her back down. "It won't take me any time at all. You just rest and I'll come get you when there's a bed for you to sleep on."
She scrunches her nose like she's considering arguing, but she must see something in my expression, because she settles back down on the couch. "Thank you, Asher. I owe you one."
"You don't owe me a damn thing, baby."
I'm not sure if she heard me, her eyes are already drifting shut again.
After taking the full bag to the cans outside the back door, I head back upstairs. It takes me about an hour, but I get her room clean. She's got no pillows on her bed and only one of what appear to be seven teddy bears is still intact. Ordinarily, finding the room of a grown woman full of stuffed teddy bears would give me pause, but in Clover's case, it's just plain adorable that she kept these mementos from her clients.
Everything about her is adorable. And sexy.
Especially since each of the bears has a different t-shirt with sayings on them like, 'No Pain, No Gain,' and 'Stubbornness is just misdiagnosed persistence.'
Downstairs, Clover is still fast asleep on the couch and the kitchen is dark. It looks like Honey and Noah have finished cleaning in there. Clover barely stirs when I pick her up and carry her upstairs. I set her on the bed and pull the covers up over her. Breathing in her scent, I press a kiss to her forehead.
When I turn to leave, she grabs my wrist. "Please stay."
I was planning on crashing on a couch downstairs, but I don't hesitate to accept her offer. I strip down to my boxers and crawl into bed with her. I pull her right into my arms and she makes a contented sigh in her sleep.
Breathing in her scent, her body warm next to mine, I drift off.
