She paused, then nodded once. “Yes. I do.”
I didn’t push. But I filed that away with everything else I’d just learned.
Because for someone who made a living unraveling people, Rose Floris had walls that even I couldn’t scale yet.
And God help me… I wanted to try.
She tossed me a towel. I caught it midair and began wiping myself down as she did the same.
“Do you want something else to put on?” She asked. “I think I have some large t-shirts somewhere, and maybe some sweat pants that might fit.”
“I’m good.”
“Okay. And, yes. I’ve always loved horses. Magical creatures, they are. You?”
“Same here.”
She slipped out of my leather jacket and her oversized rain coat and began wiping down my jacket.
I took the towel from her, nudged her out of the way and picked up where she left off.
She watched me for a moment before saying, “Horses can be very therapeutic, you know.”
I thought of all the times I’d felt a connection to Spirit. Riding her through the woods seemed to be the only moments of contentment, of peace, I’d felt since waking up from the coma.
I glanced over my shoulder where Rose was reaching on her tiptoes for a bottle of wine above the fridge. I pulled it down for her, our bodies brushing against each other.
“Thank you.”
Her demeanor had shifted. The fight was gone, the adrenaline rush from seeing a dead body was beginning to take its toll. Her hand shook as she grabbed the corkscrew.
“Here.” I took the wine, opened it, and poured her a glass.
She leaned against the countertop, sipped.
I leaned next to her.
A heavy silence settled over the room. I’d seen plenty of dead men in my life, but assumed she hadn’t. The first were always jarring. The images tend to replay on a loop in your head. But it fades. Like everything around us, it fades.
Keeping her gaze ahead, her hand drifted to my side and lightly grabbed my T-shirt, the touch like fire through the cotton. We didn’t look at each other, simply stood motionless, with her gripping the end of my shirt like a child.
A terrified little girl.
My hand drifted over hers. I willed my brain to say what any normal man would say in that moment. Something sweet, something profound, something right.
You’re going to be okay.
But the words remained on the tip of my tongue, locked in some caveman-brain that was incapable of rising to an emotional moment of a woman in need.
She dropped her hand.
Dammit.
I failed. I was officially incapable of consoling a woman.
My teeth ground as I pushed off the counter. Growing up in a family of Marines, “consoling” involved a bottle of whiskey, or a swift slap in the jaw. Neither would suit this woman. The old Phoenix could easily sidestep an emotional conversation and hypnotize a woman with a couple of tequila shots and the words “special ops.” Over the years, I’d found that women were predictable, if nothing else.
But not this one.
