He let the screen door slap shut behind him, still careful to keep the wriggling ball of cotton well away from his body. And thought maybe it was fitting, in a way. They were both outcasts, after all. Stuck in a limbo not entirely of their own choosing.
He stepped into the kitchen and discovered Kirby at the sink, her hoodie gone and her long-sleeve shirt hiked up as she carefully dabbed at the bloody welts on her abdomen.
He winced at the damage done to such tender, pale skin…but at the same time found himself thinking that if they had to be stuck, perhaps both he and the cat could have done far worse.
Chapter 3
The instant Kirby caught sight of Brett from the corner of her eye, entering the kitchen, she clumsily shut off the water with one hand and tugged her shirt back down with the other, wincing slightly as the cotton fabric rubbed over her raw, scratched flesh.
“Flesh” being the key word flashing through her head. And the fact that Brett Hennessey was sporting quite a lot of it at the moment. Not, perhaps, as much as the eyeful she’d gotten when she’d looked up at his bedroom window. Holy crap. She’d be picturing all that masculine perfection in her dreams—waking and sleeping—for weeks. Who was she kidding? Months. Possibly longer. It wasn’t likely anything else would come along to top it anytime soon. It was a miracle she hadn’t dropped like a stone from the tree the instant she laid eyes on him. So…so much of him.
She averted her gaze and gathered up the clutter of first aid supplies she’d pulled out of the little kit she kept under the sink for kitchen emergencies. It was silly to feel so self-conscious. After all, he was exposing a lot more than she’d been, and she seriously doubted he’d be as moved by the sight of her pale, scratched-up stomach as she’d been by his oh-so-perfectly-golden skin. So, so much skin…
“I—uh, I have some milk. In the fridge. For the cat. They drink milk, right?”
“I haven’t any idea.” He was just standing there, half naked. In her kitchen. The very same kitchen she’d fallen in love with for its roomy interior, high ceilings, and huge bay windows. Sunny, bright, and spacious. Suddenly it felt tiny, airless, and crowded. Very crowded. In fact, the only way to make a graceful exit was past his very big, very mostly naked body. At least she couldn’t seem to look anywhere but at the naked part. And given she’d seen the parts that were currently covered by his jeans, it was just as dangerous to look there. So, she simply wouldn’t look at him at all.
She shoved the first aid kit under the sink and swung around to the cupboards over the opposite counter. “I have bowls in here.” She put one on the counter and then dragged the antique bread keeper over and rolled up the top. “Bread in here.” She scooted over to the pantry. “I think I have tuna.”
Kirby knew she was babbling. Realized she was acting like an idiot teenager who was stumbling over her words in the face of the school stud. Unfortunately, acknowledging the ridiculousness of it didn’t seem to make it stop.
After assembling her cluster of kitten-feeding amenities, she floundered for a moment. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”
When he didn’t reply right away, she was finally forced to turn and look at him. Still packed a punch. Jeans, broad, beautifully muscled shoulders, a six-pack that wouldn’t quit…and green eyes. Seriously? Didn’t seem fair, really. All that and killer eyes, too? Which were twinkling a little at the moment, despite the wriggling ball of black T-shirt dangling from his fist. So, he thought this was funny. That she was funny. Or, at least, pathetically amusing.
Also fair. Because she was certainly behaving pathetically at the moment.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I think I’ll just grab a few things and take them upstairs. I’m not thinking it would be a good idea to let my, uh, roommate here, out, until we’re behind closed doors.”
Heaven help her, that was the last image she really needed at that moment. Behind closed doors with Brett Hennessey. Oh, yes indeedy, that visual would be guaranteed a starring role in those dreams she’d be having, no doubt. “Here, let me,” she said, more to have something to do than because she’d really thought it through.
That came later, after she was trudging up the stairs behind him and the very annoyed kitten bundle, admiring yet another fine view and deciding that she really, truly, had to reconsider trying to develop some kind of social life here in Pennydash, and not just with the Friday-night ladies auxiliary bingo league.
Of course, any fantasy she might have harbored about possibly developing a nice, safe, temporary dalliance with one of the resort ski instructors, or emergency patrol guys, was, at the very least, going to have to wait a year, as most of them had either been let go or quit and headed west or overseas to find steady work where there was actually snow on the ground. Any other time, she’d have been okay with that. Or would have talked herself into being okay with it. After all, what were her alternatives, really? At the moment, however, staring at Brett’s insanely perfect ass, she was thinking a year sounded like an impossible eternity. But cheered herself by acknowledging that possible alternatives could, potentially, turn up at any time. Just as he had.
Not that he qualified as such. He, her much younger, incredibly hot guest. But he had at least opened her up to the idea that something could happen. With someone else. At some point. Possibly.
She should thank him for that.
At the moment she was sort of caught up staring at the back of his 501’s and wondering how that bit looked uncovered, as she’d pretty much seen everything else. Probably just as good. Or better, she thought with a long, mental sigh.
Naturally, this was when he topped the stairs at his third-floor landing and turned back, so that she was now staring directly at a part of his body she had, actually, seen unclothed, and immediately pictured again. She gulped, and might have wobbled back and fallen down all three flights of stairs, thereby ruining all of his best efforts at saving her from herself after all.
But he snagged her elbow as her tray full of goodies wobbled, and eased her up onto the landing next to him. He opened his door with his free hand, bumped it open wider with his hip, and motioned her inside with a tip of his head. “Trying to keep this one from being anywhere close,” he said, still juggling the kitty bundle, which said kitty was trying to climb out of, as one claws-extended paw made it out of one of the gaps at the top where he was holding the T-shirt bundle mostly closed. “You can just set it on the bed. Or the dresser. Wherever.”
She arranged the items on his dresser top, trying not to look at the mussed-up duvet that covered the sea of bed. The sea of bed that made his airy, sunshiny room feel suddenly just as small as her airy and sunshiny kitchen had a few moments ago. Yeah, she definitely needed a life. “Okay, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” The kitten chose that moment to give a particularly plaintive howl. “Good luck with that,” she added, with a dubious glance at the kitten.
“We’ll be fine,” he said, but the quick glance he gave the still-squirmy bundle wasn’t quite as convincing.
Which, somehow, was what restored her confidence. Big man leveled by a little kitten. Yeah, it might be small of her, but it helped her scrape at least a little of her self-esteem up off the floor.
“If you need anything else—”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“Okay.” She tried to find her calm, easygoing, polite innkeeper
