Chapter Thirteen
“So, what exactly is the deal with Josh and you?” I picked up my pace to keep up with Asher’s large legs and ended up falling forward a few steps, tripping over a small pile of sticks that was hiding under a pile of wet leaves I hadn’t noticed in my efforts to play it smoothly.
Asher reached back without looking and held me up with one hand.
“I’m fine,” I told him, brushing him off and standing on my own feet again. Apparently, walking had become an issue when I was around Asher. Something he found amusing judging from the look on his face.
Asher grabbed an old barrel from the side of the building and dragged it around to the back of the building, slipping it under a large window that was a foot above us.
“What are you doing with that?” I asked even though I suspected.
“What does it look like? We’re going to break the window and crawl through.” He started digging around on the ground for a rock big enough to do the trick. “And by we, I mean you.”
“Me?” I looked up at the window. “What about you?”
He found a perfect size rock and jumped up on the barrel with little effort. “I can’t fit through there. I need you to climb through and then go and open up the side door from the inside to let me in.”
“You need me to WHAT?” I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Of course you can.” He pulled his hand back and let the rock loose quickly, sending it flying through the window and allowing the glass to shatter in every direction.
He jumped down before the glass even hit the ground, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me into him to shield me from the flying pieces. “Careful.” After it was clear any threat was gone he let me go and looked down at me, tilting my chin up to his face.
“I know, I know, I can do this.”
“Of course you can do it.” He grinned. “But you have to do it, for your dad. I’m going to push you through and then once you’re in, you jump down and open the door right away, okay? The whole thing will be over in about thirty seconds.” He turned me around and starting pushing me toward the barrel, keeping his hand linked tightly around my waist.
“What’s the deal with you and josh?” I stopped and turned to him.
Anger and annoyance came across his face. “There is no deal with me and josh.” He tried to move me toward the window again and sighed deeply when I wouldn’t budge. “You don’t need to worry about Josh Parker, all you need to know is that I want you to stay away from him.”
“But why?” I pressed him.
“I don’t need a reason to tell you to do something, Bella, you should just listen to me.” He locked his deep eyes on me to get his point across. “No questions asked.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not asking questions.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
Asher exhaled loudly. “You really think this is the time for a conversation like this, Bella? Come on and get up there, anyone could see us at any time. We can talk about this later.” He started moving my body away from his again.
“Well, I’m sorry,” I told him, allowing myself to be moved a few feet. “But it’s not easy to ignore it when a creep follows you to your car like that and refuses to let you leave…”
My body got swung around fast and hard.
“What are you talking about?” There was a fire in Asher’s eyes I’d only ever seen the first night I came home and he’d had to pull Lance off of me. “What did he do to you?”
“Not much,” I tried to reassure him. “Except creep me out a little.”
“Did he touch you?” He looked like he was going to kill someone.
“No, I’m fine, I’m fine. He just didn’t want to let me leave without letting me know exactly what kind of person you are.” I bit down on my lip and looked up his perfect face.
It had been taken everything inside of me to not bring up what Josh had said. I knew I didn’t have a right to be upset about girls that Asher had sex with before I got to town but I couldn’t help it, I wanted to know if there was any truth to what Josh had said.
Did he really hate Asher so much that he had slept with his wife?
Asher’s eyes softened and he looked down at me, searching my eyelids with his. “Yeah? And what could he possibly tell you about the kind of person I am?”
“Not much,” I confessed. “But he said you slept with his wife.”
“Ah,” Asher nodded. “Well, I guess, if you want to get technical, I did. But she wasn’t his wife at the time, hadn’t been in a really long time.” He took my hand in his. “And it was just one time, didn’t mean anything.”
It was weird to me that he could have sex with someone one time and have it mean nothing since I hadn’t even had sex one time where it meant something.
“Asher…” I trailed off.
“Hey,” he shook his head. “Let me worry about Josh, okay? He won’t bother you anymore, I’ll make sure of it.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine softly before pulling back again.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again the anger from seconds before was erased and replaced with the same look of calmness and determination as before. “You ready to get your fine ass through that window?”
I looked up. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good enough.” He took my hand he still held in his and moved toward the barrel. After he swung his body up with ease he reached down and pulled me up after him just as effortlessly.
I wrapped my arms around his chest and let the butterflies wash over my stomach. “You’re so strong,” I whispered out loud and then I snapped my mouth shut.
You’re so strong? What was wrong with me? I wasn’t a twelve year old! You would think after having a guy’s cock inside of my mouth I could come up with something hotter and less clique to say then ‘you’re so strong’ but apparently I couldn’t.
Would this feeling ever go away?
The notion that he turned me into one big sap?
Asher chuckled and then thrust my body up over his shoulders, proving my point. He let his hands cup the cheeks of my ass extra tight, getting a nice feel in as he jolted me up and through the window.
“Hey, watch your hands,” I called out below.
“Sorry.” He smiled sheepishly as I crawled through the open space.
I latched my hands onto the side of the wall and pulled myself down, just barely landing on my feet with a wobble. I could feel the glass crunch under my feet and I took a few large steps to bypass any further damage before heading toward the side door.
With any luck, the owner would think the damage was a few drunk teenagers getting their kicks by throwing rocks into a few business’s windows after dark.
Asher pulled the door the rest of the way open as soon as I inched it forward and he pushed his way inside the small opening, grabbing my hands and turning them over in his hands. “You’re okay? You didn’t cut yourself or anything? Or trip when you jumped down?”
“Of course I didn’t trip!” I pulled my hands away. “Besides, I’m the nurse here, remember?” I inched around him and pulled the side door closed. “Let me worry about my hands.”
He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips, sticking it in his mouth slowly and kissing it. “I can worry about any part of you that I want.” He took his other hand and pushed it between my legs. “Especially this part.” He gripped the center of me tightly.
I closed my eyes and turned to mush and wetness.
But Asher released me quickly and turned away, heading toward the back of the garage. “If there’s a car here that they’re trying to hide it’s probably going to be toward the back and covered up. It’s only been a few days so I doubt they would have made much progress.” He started lifting tarps up quickly and surveying the vehicles underneath. “A few more days though and we might be having a different conversation.”
I glanced under the tarp closest to me and pushed it back down when I saw a white jeep with a taillight out. “What do you mean a different conversation?” I moved closer to him, looking at another car only to find no luck, just like the one before.
“Well, if the car was already fixed up we would have no way of knowing how much damage it actually started with, you know what I mean?” He moved down to the second row of raised cars.
“Right,” I told him. “So we’re here just in time.”
“Something like that.” He flashed me a smile and pulled back a dark black sheet, revealing an old red Ford with a dented in front end. The passenger side door was completely torn off, sitting in the back of the truck bed.
Asher let out a low whistle. “Looks like we have a winner.”
It took me a second to realize what he was talking about because I was so caught up in his smile. It was the first time I’d seen it since I got back. Sure, he’d smiled before but it was more of a sexy brooding look or a grown up sure of himself one. It was only in that moment that I saw the same goofy go lucky toothy grin he used to get what we were kids. And it was gone just as quick as it had come.
I snapped out of it and jolted over to him, surveying the outside of the truck. It definitely looked like it could have crashed into my dad and sent him flying into the dashboard.
I ran my fingers back and forth over the dented hood and took in the chipped green paint that was stuck to the outside. “Green paint,” I said slowly. “The same color of my dad’s truck.”
Asher ran his hand up and down my shoulder slowly.
Seeing the car right in front of me that could have been responsible for what happened to my dad made me emotional and light headed. I could barely contain the emotion from my voice as I turned back to him. “Do you recognize it?”
Asher shook his head and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out his cell phone. “Nope, but I will soon enough.” He leaned down and snapped a bunch of photos of the car, sure to get the license plate included in a few of them.
“What are you going to do with them?” I asked, looking back at the specs of paint again. My dad must have been so scared, seeing the hood of that huge truck coming flying at him before his vision faded off into the darkness. I felt tears spring up in the back of my throat but I pushed them down. “Will you send them to me?”
Asher turned me away from the car and shook his head. “Listen to me, I’m going to find out who the driver of this truck is, okay? And then me and you are going to make them pay for what happened.”
I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in and then nodded into his chest. I just hoped that he was right, that somehow this car would lead us back to the driver and it would be enough for an open and shut case because the truth was I wasn’t sure Asher really got how far I was willing to go to get justice.
But he was about to find out.
And so was the rest of the world.
***
One day of work and the barn already looked a million times better. I had been at the hospital all day yesterday and then been too busy playing detective to come out and check on their progress much the day before. But looking at it now, I hadn’t had to worry; Asher’s men clearly knew what they were doing.
The inside of the barn was completely clear, even though I had told them I would take care of the clean up myself. Boards and old wood had been taken down and had started to be replaced with fresh pieces, old pieces of cages had been taken out and new ones leaned against the back wall.
The amount of work they had done must have taken them far into the night and they were already here this morning, working away bright and early. When I woke up and looked outside they were just there, almost like they had never left.
I’d showered, made a huge pot of coffee and a fresh thing of cinnamon rolls and brought them out to them. It was the least I could do considering all they were doing for me. I suspected Asher had something to do with how fast and hard they were working.
“You guys must have literally never left to get all this done in a 24 hour time period.” I took a cup of my coffee and looked around the barn for about the tenth time since I walked in a few minutes earlier.
It was already starting to look beautiful again.
I pulled my sweater tighter around my body and watched the sun peak up over the horizon in the distance through the large back window, the way I used to when I was a kid. If I closed my eyes I could almost feel the same calmness I used to get when my dad and I would come out here on early weekend mornings.
Ralph glanced at the group of five other guys standing around a few feet away from us, talking and laughing while they drank their coffee and chowed down on the food I had run out to them.
“It didn’t take us that long,” he lied.
I looked at him skeptically. “Come on, Ralph, I may have been gone for a long time but I’m not stupid. I really appreciate you guys putting in all the extra hours.”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
“It is, though.”
“Well,” he said, looking back at his crew. “It’s an important job and we don’t get too many of those anymore.” He took a huge sip of the hot liquid in his hand, draining the rest of the cup dry.
“Well, if it counts for anything… my dad is going to lose his mind when he sees it.” I moved the toe of my boot back and forth in the dirt, kicking at the small pieces of rock scraps around me. “Oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to lose my mind when I get to show it to him.”
Ralph laughed. “Yeah, I mean no. I mean… of course, it’s important to you and your dad but that’s not what I meant.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “It’s really important to Asher, too, you know?”
“Oh.” I looked at him, surprised. “How can you tell?”
He didn’t say anything, looking down at his empty coffee cup.
“Did he say something to you?”
“Na,” he shook his head. “I just know him, that’s all.”
I opened my mouth to press him further, curiosity taking over but the front door of the barn swung open and the subject of our desire himself came strolling through. He was clothed in a pair of dark tan pants, black boots, and a long-sleeved gray shirt. Why did he always look like his work clothes cost more than I made in a month?
And why did his arms look so good in that shirt?
I clapped my legs together; paranoid that somehow someone would be able to tell just the sight of Asher made my flower weak. The nasty things we did last night came rushing back as soon as he met my eyes and I forced myself to look away.
Asher glanced at his guys. “Are you force feeding my men sugary treats?” He raised his eyebrows at me in question and then winked. “Without offering me any?”
“Maybe they’ll share?” I suggested.
“I’ll share with you, boss, but you have to take it out of my mouth.” One of his crew called out, puckering his lips up and starting to make kissing noises, sending the rest of the guys around him into a bunch of hysterics.
“Alright, alright.” Asher nodded. “Let’s get back to work, hey? I’m not paying you to stand around and stuff your faces while you stare at a pretty lady.”
The guys tossed their paper cups into the trash on the side wall and went back to their various posts, starting to pick up trash or tools to get back to what they were doing before I came out.
Asher looked around the farm with his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s coming along nice, Ralph. How are we on our schedule for the end of day?” His cell phone went off and he hit the silence button without bothering to look at the screen.
Ralph picked up a clipboard and started fumbling with a bunch of papers. “Right on schedule, sir, might even finish in time to get home for dinner.”
“Doubt it,” Asher said, grabbing the papers and starting to look down at them while he compared the notes to the work that had started to get done. “Looks good,” he said after a few minutes. “And you have someone set to get the new shipment of wood coming in this afternoon?”
“Sure am, boss, all set, boss.”
“Good.” Asher turned to me for the first time. “Good morning, Ms. Reynolds, you look exhausted. Late night last night?” He said it with a completely straight face, no trace of deeper meaning in his tone. To everyone else around he was just a contractor on a job making polite conversation with the woman who had hired him.
“I’m pretty well rested, actually.” I shook my head, trying not to laugh. “Nothing memorable or exciting happened to me at all last night.” I bit down on my lip as he studied me.
In my mind was a flash of us throwing rocks through windows and breaking into garages. Followed by another flash of me sucking his cock while he shoved his fingers inside of my pussy forcefully a few minutes later.
Good thing people couldn’t read minds.
Ralph looked up from his hammer. “Are you okay?”
Clearly, I wasn’t as smooth as Asher.
“She’s fine,” Asher smirked and then put his hand on my shoulder, guiding me toward the door. “Come with me for a second, Ms. Reynolds, I want to show you something out front you might be interested in.”
He didn’t have to push very hard since I would follow Asher anywhere.
As soon as the door slammed closed behind us Asher took me by the waist and shoved me into the outside of the barn, slamming my back up against the hard wood and overwhelming his mouth on top of mine as he pulled my hair into the palms of his hands.
I clung to his neck, not wanting him to break our embrace but eventually he did, leaving me all short of breath and turned on even in the coldness of the outside air.
He took one of his hands and pushed my sweater open at the sides and then slipped his fingers inside of my t-shirt and up to my bra, finding my hard nipples through the laciness and starting to rub back and forth over one and then the other. “Nothing exciting happened last night, huh?”
I moaned as he rubbed back and forth over my sensitive nipples and bit down on my lip hard so I wouldn’t get too loud where someone would hear. “Okay… so maybe I wasn’t completely honest.”
Asher laughed and pulled his hands out from under my shirt. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He took my sweater and zipped it all the way up to the top. “Pretty sure my guys were looking at your chest more than their work.” He ran his hand over my chin. “Also pretty sure it belongs to me.”
I grinned. “Is that so?”
He looked down at me seriously. “Definitely.”
“Well then…” I took his hand and placed it back inside my sweater. “Where are you going?” I massaged his hands into my breasts, moving them back and forth aggressively.
He smirked and pulled back, kissing me on the cheek. “As tempting as that is…” He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me after his body toward the driveway. “We have work to do.”