5
Dave
I spread a thick layer of peanut butter on two slices of bread and said, “I’d make you a hot toddy if I had any idea what the hell that was.”
“Oh, I know what it is,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. The light from the pantry was on and one of the under-cabinet lights as well. She really was just fucking beautiful, even swallowed up by my pants and with my hoodie hanging on her like a tent. “Got some bourbon, honey, and a lemon?” she asked.
“Copy that.” I set down the peanut-buttery knife and got all the fixings for her.
“Can I?” She looked up at the rectangular pot rack over the huge island in the middle of the kitchen. She reached up and put one finger on a small saucepan.
“All yours.”
Coming up on her tiptoes and reaching up for the pan, she gave me a perfect view of her belly button and the soft, bare skin of her stomach. Man, oh fucking man. “And I need two mugs.”
I got those for her, too, but I grabbed the good ones—the ones that matched, the ones Grandma told probably-bullshit stories about. As much as I liked the idea of her lips on a Royal Mattress mug, that mouth of hers was way more suited to fine china than the sort of promo shit people got for free with an extended warranty.
I could tell that having something to do made her feel less awkward, which I totally understood. The situation was pretty much once in a lifetime—I was certain it wasn’t every Sunday night that a stranger stripped her naked and got under the covers with her.
Fuck me.
But she’d rolled with it like a champ, totally graceful under fire. She took a knife from the block and a cutting board from a hook. She sliced the lemon in half and squeezed it into the mugs, followed by bourbon and a drizzle of honey. Then she filled the saucepan halfway with water and turned on the stove. She was mesmerizing—the way she moved, the curve of her throat, the thought that underneath my hoodie were her bare breasts. To stop myself from standing there with my mouth hanging open, I went back to the sandwiches, covering the empty halves with grape jelly.
Then I heard her hiss with pain, and I glanced at her. She was holding her hand to her forehead. “Lemon juice on my fingers. Shit.”
I grabbed a washcloth, dampened it under the faucet, and then turned on a second light to get a better look. “You’re lucky this wasn’t worse,” I told her as I tried to clean away the lemon juice on the small but angry red line, crusted with blood. “Normally, head wounds bleed a lot.”
“I think I was already freezing to death when it happened, so there’s that,” she said, wincing as I dabbed.
“I’ve never had anybody faint into my arms before,” I told her, just to break the ice a bit.
“Gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever fainted. Maybe once when I was a kid, but not since.”
Small smudges of her blood soaked into the washcloth, but I was careful not to push too hard. “That okay? Still stinging?”
She shook her head a little. “That’s much better. Thanks,” she said, almost shy now. Like she didn’t like all this fussing over her.
But I liked it. A whole fucking lot. “So, what happened?” I asked as I arranged the sandwiches on two plates.
“Stupid Lola!” she said, pointing at the storm. She was so animated, it kind of took my breath away. I’d gotten so used to women who were poised and controlled and whose every movement seemed like it was practiced in the mirror. But not her. She was just…her. Lisa, with her makeup smudged and her hair a mess. Cute as a button. “Totally hoodwinked me. I had no idea it would be this bad.” Lisa glanced out of the kitchen window. “Bombogeneroisis or whatever.”
I looked out the window, too. One of the pine trees in the distance was damn near bent double. “You drive off the road?”
She nodded as she took a huge bite of her sandwich. And when I say huge, I mean, huge. Stuffed her face with it. Not a delicate nibble, hell no. A huge, glad-to-be-alive bite. So goddamned awesome. Then she pointed toward the front of the house and said something that sounded like, “Hecked my beep.”
I took an equally big bite of my sandwich and watched her carefully as she chewed. I studied her every fucking move, every shift of her dimples, every shy blink. She was laughing and trying hard to swallow so she could talk, but she was jumping the gun. She’d just have to wait it out, and in that long, silent moment, I found myself standing slightly closer to her than was totally polite. But I couldn’t help it. She was like a magnet, and I liked watching her suffer—watching her be a good girl and not talk with her mouth full. Thanks to the peanut butter and white bread, clearly stuck to the roof of her mouth, I got a chance to really study her. Her freckles, the curls around her face from where she’d gotten hot under the covers with me before. Christ.
“Wrecked my Jeep!” she clarified, when she’d gotten free of the vise grip of the Jif.
“Seemed like you walked quite a ways. You were caked with snow.” I tucked a quarter of my sandwich into my mouth.
She nodded hard and turned off the simmering water. She poured half into each mug. “I went to your neighbor’s first…”
“Big, white place? Spanish tile roof? Looks like a gigantic Taco Bell?” I asked, wiping my mouth with my palm.
Lisa giggled softly. “That’s the spot!”
“He’s in the Bahamas.”
“Clearly,” she said, stirring the toddies. “It was confusing because I could see the light from your porch, but then I lost it behind the hill, so I just assumed it was coming from his place. Which it wasn’t. So then I had to go back down his driveway and up the hill, and that’s how I found you.”
The thing was, in spite of the fact that she called it a driveway, I knew how far that meant. I jogged my own “driveway” all the time. It was at least two miles, all by itself. So then double that and add whatever she had to walk on the road. “Fuck. That’s a hell of a hike.”
Lisa nodded. She handed me a steaming mug, and the sharp bourbon and lemon scent filled the air. A sudden yawn snuck up on her, and she shielded her mouth with her hand. When she opened her eyes, they sparkled by the light of the hood over the range. “I really am sorry about this. I don’t want to impose. I’m sure the storm will be over soon. I’ll be gone before you know it.”
Two thoughts ran through my head at the same damned time: I’m not so sure about that, and I fucking hope not. The snow was piling up, and the idea of her getting stuck at my house? Sounded pretty damned great to me. I looked her up and down, and I made sure to make a thing of it. I allowed her to feel my eyes on her, just long enough to let her know how she was making me feel already. “You’re welcome for as long as you want to stay,” I told her, and clink went our mugs.