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Marcus walks back over to the wood pile and kneels beside it.
I blink. Just where the hell did he get that toolbelt from, and more importantly, what am I doing ogling him in it?
With a thin sheen of sweat covering his forearms and triceps, he lines each plank against the two-by-four skeleton of the first stall. And all the while, handyman stripper scenes flicker through my mind like one of those cheesy scripted pornos.
Only, Marcus would deliver his lines with that same stoic perfection the public adores him for. A dull heat thumps at the apex of my thighs as I clearly envision him unraveling the same rope from earlier to bind my wrists and ankles. Then, just as he unclips his toolbelt to reveal a raging—
Yennifer grunts, dragging a cordless nail gun with both hands past my line of sight and toward the very man I was fantasizing about.
“Whoa-ho there, matey.” I snag the heavy tool from her hands while trying to get a hold of myself. “This here be for captains only.”
She ducks her chin bashfully when I give her a wink, then scampers off to help the older boys paint over a hole they just finished patching.
“Terrible with chickens, yet fluent in pirate.” Marcus shifts his weight onto the balls of his feets. “I think that counts as your unnormal thing.”
There’s something charming in the humor gracing his lips, and in a moment of temporary psychosis, I’ll admit he’s tempting. If I hadn’t already sworn off players and actors alike, I might say, in those dirty jeans and an equally filthy shirt, he’s downright sexy.
I add dragging him into his lavish bathroom and leisurely washing the grime from his body to the porn scene which follows the first, then lock the abomination inside a steel box in the darkest recess of my mind.
“The only unnormal one around here is you.” Careful not to let my fingers touch his, I offer him the next plank in the stack.
He nods at the nail gun in my opposite hand, doubtfully. “You know how to work that thing?”
“Um, duh.”
It’s obvious he doesn’t believe me, and that’s fair because I have no fucking clue how to use this thing. But he doesn’t push. Instead, he says with authority, “Get down here then.”
Okay, maybe it’s me, but that sounded dipped, flipped, and whipped in a whole lot of sexual.
I gulp, suddenly nervous to be so close to the man I was just starring in an adult film with. Not that he knows that.
“Knows what?”
Baby Jesus in a manger.
Embarrassment blazes a trail up my neck at my audible rambling as my knees fall to the packed dirt. “Nothing. Scoot over.”
I ignore his low chuckle while I carefully aim toward the bottom of the wood between his hands. The first nail hammers straight through and to the side of the beam behind it.
“Dammit,” I hiss before sucking the tip of the finger that got pinched in the trigger.
He tsks, but the gentleness in his voice rattles my inner ice fortress. “It’s okay to need help once in a while, you know.”
“Easy for you to say. When you’ve been on your own as long as I have, you get used to relying on yourself for everything, even the small stuff.” Without meeting his gaze, I reposition. “If I can’t take care of myself, then who will?”
I squeeze the trigger and miss, again.
“You’re not the only one who’s had to rely on themselves to get through the tough shit life throws us,” he says. “It’s not easy being a loner. I get it.”
A disbelieving laugh escapes before I have a chance to stop it. “And what would you know about being alone? You’re surrounded by hundreds of friends and adoring fans at any given moment, any day of the week.”
“And besides Penelope, where are all those people now?” Marcus glares at me as if the rest of what he wants to say is on the tip of his tongue. Deciding better of it, he huffs through his nose. “I know more than you think.”
Bile rises in the back of my throat at my cattiness. Keeping people at a safe distance has always been my first line of defense, but right now, it feels more like I’m kicking a tortured man while he’s down.
“All right, you win,” I mutter, limply handing him the nail gun. “Show me how to do it.”
My pulse flutters when instead of taking the tool, he shuffles behind me—his front only an inch or two from my shoulders.
