he yelled, grabbing his flattened foot and hopping on the other.
Her beautiful green eyes saucered as she realized what she’d done. With a strangled sound, she reached for him, but he leaped out of striking range and leaned back against the wall.
“Stay back. Please. Just stay away from me.” His entire body throbbing, he added, “Jeez, lady, you ought to come with a warning label.”
She threw her hand over her mouth in dismay, and bent over at the waist. Sounds like tiny sobs were bursting from her lips and her body trembled.
Great. Just great. Tears.
He quickly shoved away his instinctive reaction, realizing she’d had a hell of a night. Obviously she’d raced up here from Southern California to be with her injured grandfather. She’d been high on fear and adrenaline even before she’d thought she was about to be attacked by a shirtless stranger wielding a rake. Anyone would be a little overwrought.
Realizing she was really mortified, Oliver dropped his foot, praying there were no broken bones, and tried not to wince as he tested his weight on it. “It’s okay…I’m all right. Accidents happen.”
She straightened and peered at him, those green eyes assessing. But she didn’t lower her hand, and her shoulders were now shaking as she made muffled sounds. Funny, her eyes weren’t glossy, as if filled with tears. In fact, if he had to guess, he’d say they were almost twinkling instead.
A sneaking suspicion entered his mind. He reached out, yanked her hand away from her mouth and realized the truth.
She wasn’t crying. She was giggling almost uncontrollably.
“WAIT, YOU’RE LAUGHING?”
Oliver couldn’t contain his indignation, not sure whether to retaliate by dropping a pan on her foot or shaking the laughter off her oh-so-kissable lips. She was damned lucky he was not the violent sort, because the shaking thing was definitely winning the internal battle in his mind.
She was also lucky he wasn’t the ax-murdering-maniac sort because wringing her neck was a close second.
Then his gaze landed on those kissable lips, and he thought of something else he’d like to do with them. A few somethings, in fact.
She sucked them into her mouth, obviously trying to control herself. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her laughter deepening and sounding a little frenzied. “That was just so…so Three Stooges!”
“You break my arm, smash a few ribs, crush my shoulder, pulverize my toes and you think it’s hilarious?” His voice was tight with anger. Maybe tomorrow he’d look back and think the situation was funny, but right now he was too concerned about a punctured lung to join in the hilarity.
“I really am sorry,” she murmured.
“Yeah, I can tell.”
Her laughter fading to the occasional little snort, she explained. “I laugh when I’m stressed. It’s awful, I know.”
“Awfully strange, anyway,” he snapped.
“It’s just been such a long day. I was in the middle of a surreal moment even before I got the call about my grandfather. I have been so afraid for him.” She swept a shaking hand through her hair, which looked like it had been swept through a lot recently. “The flight up here was a jam-packed nightmare. The kid beside me spent an hour flinging Cheerios and boogers at my head.”
Eww.
“The cab ride to the house was an exercise in nausea. I needed a drink, but Grandpa appears to have hidden his stash the way he did when I was a kid. And to top it all off, you skulked into the kitchen, looking all big and bad and scared the shit out of me.”
Okay. At some point in that litany of woes, between the boogers, the liquor and the big-n-bad, he got the picture.
She was hysterical.
He understood the reaction. He’d worked with witnesses whose terror had revealed itself via uncontrollable laughter and knew that deep inside, she was churning with anxiety. The laughter had held a tinge of frenzy, her fear and reaction to his presence had been a bit extreme, and now she looked like she was going to…“Oh, hell, please don’t,” he muttered.
But she did. She segued from snickers to sobs in the drawing of a breath. Before he could even take a second to remind himself how utterly useless he felt around crying women, he saw big fat tears roll from her eyes and drip down those soft cheeks.
“Is my grandfather okay?” Sniff. “And are you?” Sniff sniff. “Do I need to take you to the hospital? I can’t believe I attacked you. Believe me, it was my first assault and battery.”
She literally wrung her hands in front of her, clenching and gripping them, as if needing something to hold on to. He had to imagine she was running on empty emotionally and was imagining the worst.
He knew of only two ways to calm her down, to make her stop trying to maim him with kitchen utensils, snort herself to death laughing or sob until she had no tears left.
He started with option one. Reason.
“Buddy is going to be fine, I promise. His doctor said he’ll need surgery and then rehab, but when I left the hospital he was high as a kite on pain meds and pinching the nurses.”
Her lips twitched, and she managed to lift them a tiny bit at the corners.
“And I’ll be fine, too.” He eyed the kitchen sink and tried for humor, hoping to coax another laugh, or even a tiny snort out of her. “Just don’t ever flash a pot at me or I’ll go into post-traumatic shock and instinctively dive for the floor.”
The lips curled a wee bit more. But he didn’t get his hopes up yet.
“How did it happen? My mother didn’t give me any details, just that he’d broken his hip.”
He hesitated, before admitting, “He fell down the front steps off the porch.”
Another sniff. “Such a short fall and so much damage.”
“It happens,” he said, knowing brittle bones could easily be broken. “But he’s going to get a brand-new hip and come home better than ever. Before you know it, he’ll be running marathons.”
“Oh, great, then it’ll be his other hip or his knees.”
He wished he’d quit while he was ahead. She was obviously now picturing her grandfather’s much-loved arms and skull being shattered. Sure enough, to prove it, the bottom lip began to stick out the tiniest bit and she welled up again. Those churning emotions just weren’t going to let her go without a fight.
“C’mere,” he said with a sigh, knowing he had to move on to option two.
Not giving her a warning or a chance to get away, he gently took hold of her shoulders and pulled her closer. She resisted for the briefest moment, as if unsure of his motives.
