And rude.
I watch as he dumps the remainder of the bag around one of our newly planted trees, and I give myself something else to do.
If I go down as the woman who just stared at him all day, I’m going to throw myself into oncoming traffic.
“Holdon,” I hear him protest as I reach down to grab another mulch bag. “You’re too important to be buried under thirty-pound bags of wood chips.”
The one I was about to grab is suddenly swooped up underneath bulging muscles, and my body swoons.
Itswoonsfor Christ’s sake.
“I’m perfectly capable of lifting a bag,” I argue lightly as he tosses it over one broad shoulder. “I was doing fine before you arrived.”
“Then, let me mention that you’re too pretty to be throwin’ mulch around, and I wanted an excuse.”
I never imagined that my face could get redder, but it has.
It did.
It’sdoingit, as my newly-appointed, makeshift mulch guy strides off to dump another bag and immediately comes back for another.
“You’re making me look bad,” I lightly accuse, even though I’m unable to help the small smile that graces my lips.
“Not sure if that’s possible.” He tilts his head to something behind me. “There’s a group of three guys over there looking at your ass, and honestly, I’m doing you a favor. Wouldn’t want one of them to come over and use a bad pick-up line so you’d have to think of a way to turn them down, would you?”
I smirk. “Who said I’d turn them down?”
“I would,” he says confidently with one smallstep forward. “Besides, what did you think my true intentions were over here? I was given the task of planting begonias…on my ass.”
An instantaneous laugh bursts through my lips as I try to stifle it by using my hand to cover it up.
Meanwhile, my mystery mulch guy smiles. “You’re welcome.”
I watch him go back to work as he moves fifteen more bags of mulch, sending me short little smoldering glances that have me beaming like a light bulb.
I could’ve gone and found something else to do, but…I really don’t want to fall out of orbit with the guy who’s making me feel pretty at a volunteer event I created, of all places. I’m not sure how he managed to find it or why he’s doing it, but I’m not going to ask.
Yet.
When my mystery mulch guy is finally all done, he strides back over to me, brushing the dirt off his palms and onto his dark jeans.
I thoughtfully have a water waiting for him because, you know, I’m sweet like that.
“Here you go,” I offer, holding out the ice-cold beverage to him.
“I’m good.”
I frown. “This is for safety reasons. I can’t afford a passed-out body and all the women nearby leaving their posts to come fawn over you. The landscaping will never get done.”
He pushes his bottom lip out with his tongue, as if thinking about it, but I see the ghost of the smirk he’s trying not to register on his face. “Is this your way of saying you don’t want to share me?”
“Not if you’re going to lift the heavy stuff.”
Without another need or reason on why he should stay hydrated, he plucks the bottle from my grasp, twists the cap, and gulps half the thing down.
He tilts his head while doing it, giving me the perfect view of his thick neck and tanned skin.
Muscled.
