I must look like a drowned, sputtering rat or turtle or alien in there. I slip around, trying to cover myself up because I’m wellaware she can seeeverythingthrough the shower glass. It’s not like the windows in the house. It’s not tinted in any way.
“Did you happen to clean the shower?” I groan, groping my way around to the back so I can try and grasp the wall to get the spray turned off. It comes out more likeGlib yoush thappen to bwean bwe showwber?There’s a cough, snort, and a wet blubbery noise as the water continues to cascade straight onto my face.
“Ahh! You’re drowning! Holy fuckshit, did you break anything? Hold on!”
The shower door flings wide open, a towel is thrust on top of me, and then Amalphia steps onto the edge of it. The tiles are so slick that the terrycloth can’t even get traction, but she maneuvers herself carefully toward the controls on the far side and just about manages to get the water turned off.
We both pause. The silence isreal. The only sound in the bathroom is her panting and my slightly waterlogged sighs.
“I…I might have cleaned the shower…yes, I…uh, I did,” she admits, biting down on her bottom lip, but then she realizes she’s literally standing with her legs spread, and my face is pretty much right between them. She’s fully clothed, but still.
She gasps and scrambles back, keeping the towel under her so she can get good traction. Her hands claw behind her, reaching for the shower’s glass, and then she swings her leg over and out. As soon as she’s on safe ground, she covers her mouth with both hands.
“Did you, by chance, clean it withbacongrease?”
Under other circumstances, she might find that funny. She might even shoot something snarky back about it not smelling like breakfast in here, so clearly, she didn’t use anything related to food.
Instead, her face does a crumpling on top of a crumpling thing where her eyes squish together, and her lips tremble. “Oh. Ohmy god. I…I must have used the wrong…the wrong cleaner. I didn’t realize it was going to be slippery.” She forces her eyes open, though they’re filled with tears. I realize she’s looking down her nose, making herself cross-eyed in order to give me some privacy. “Are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?”
I want to ask her how much of my au naturel state she just saw, but instead, I draw the towel up closer around me to hide my bits from the waist down.
Her gaze slams straight to my tattooed chest and continues lower, lingering on my cut abs that happen to be a huge bonus of working out for stress relief. When I’m in the gym or even doing yoga or stretching at home, the hours melt away, and so does everything else. I can forget about all the work and family bullshit.
“I don’t need an ambulance. Maybe just an extra towel so I can get out of here safely.”
Her face goes from pink to scarlet, her eyes jerking back up. “Right. I’m so, so sorry about this, Warrick.”
Okayyyyy, it’s a bad time to start getting excited about the way my name rolls off her tongue. She draws out the syllables like rich, black velvet shimmering in candlelight. Shit, if I’m waxing poetic, waxier than these shower tiles, it’s a slippery slope. No pun intended. I don’t need this towel, which is barely covering my waist as it is, to turn into a tent.
Amalphia rushes out so fast that she almost slips on the floor.
Note to self: Watch your ass out there too.
She’s back with an armload of towels in under a minute, and she practically tosses them all on top of me. If I was near frantic about the boner being a visible thing, I don’t have to worry anymore. Amalphia is at exactly the right angle to my ass, which is splayed out on the floor, that my eyes shoot directly to her chest, where her long-sleeved flowy shirt is now no longer soflowy and more stuck to her body because it’s soaked from the shower.
Thank fuckkkk for the towel mountain.
She sticks her index finger into her mouth and bites nervously at the nail. “I swear I wasn’t trying to kill you. Death by housekeeping. I just…grabbed the wrong stuff. I’ll show it to you downstairs.” I didn’t think it was possible for her face to screw up further, but her frown lines get frown lines on top of frown lines, and her eyes both twitch at the same time. Her jaw pretty much bangs down to her chest. “Fuck! Downstairs! The meatballs!”
She’s gone in a blur of auburn curls, denim, and water droplets.
I drag myself out of the shower with extra care, throw the towels down on the bathroom floor, and get my sore ass into the bedroom. I think I’m going to have bruised butt cheeks, but it could be so much worse. I could have cracked my skull open, broken my wrist or ankle, snapped something, twisted something, or pulled this or that. I’ll take a few bruises over surgery and months in a cast.
I dry off, throw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and hobble downstairs, trying not to wince at the shooting pains from my gluteus maximus becoming a maximus pain in the assimus with every step.
The shower scene upstairs, which was not nearly as sexy as the way that sentence sounds in my head, is nothing compared to the disaster in the kitchen.
Amalphia is standing by the stove and bawling over the blackened, smoking, charred remains of what looks to have been meatballs. There’s a puddle of water on the floor from a pot that’s boiled over, and two of the dish towels are singed. I’m guessing she had to smotherflames.
Her huge, tear-stained eyes and puffy cheeks hit me straight in the gut after she rips her hands away at the sound of my footsteps entering the kitchen.
“I…I…don’t even know w-what t-to s-say,” she sobs. The tears keep coming, washing down her face at an alarming rate.
I didn’t evenknowit was possible to cry that hard.
I hold up a hand, but it just makes her sob harder. The instinct to take her in my arms and comfort her slams into me with brute force, but I can’t do that. Lines. Boundaries. They’re there for a reason.
Her small shoulders wrench up and down, her chest puffs in and out, and the sounds wrenched from her throat are like something close to a dying goose, and they can’t be anything less than painful. When she rubs her hands over her face, she smears tears and snot together.
