“Griffin?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you doing this? There are plenty of people in this town. Why me?”
I pulled into the diner parking lot and killed the engine. I didn’t look at her. If I looked at her, I’d tell her the truth—that I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she felt pressed against me. That I was terrified some other man would realize exactly how much she was worth before I figured out how to be the man she deserved.
“Because you’re the only one in this town who talks back to me,” I said, my voice sounding more like a growl than I intended.
I stepped out of the truck before she could respond. I walked around, opened her door, and reached up to help her down. She was soft under my hands in a way that made my grip tighten before I could stop it. Soft and curved and warm and real in a way that cut straight through every argument I’d made to myself about staying away.
Her breath hitched, her hands landing on my shoulders to steady herself. We stood there in the early morning quiet of the parking lot, the tension between us thick enough to choke on.
I cleared my throat and stepped back as she gathered her things. I took the book bag without asking and she let me. I had to push down the need to haul her back into my arms and kiss her the way I was dying to. Instead, I followed her into the diner for a breakfast that I didn’t want.
The only thing I wanted was her. Plain and simple.
CHAPTER FOUR
Keely
A day off in my world didn’t mean spa days and sleeping in. It meant three loads of laundry, catching up on my pharmacology chapters, and trying to ignore the fact that my bank account was screaming for mercy.
Griffin had done what he’d said he would do. He’d fixed my car, putting in a new battery and dropping off the keys during the lunch crowd so I don’t confront him. He knew I’d make a fuss and insist on paying him. Which I would when I saw him again. I didn’t want to admit how his taking care of me made me feel.
I’d caught myself in the bathroom mirror this morning and stood there longer than I should have, wondering if he really did find me attractive. Not that I ever viewed myself as attractive to the opposite sex. I was too focused on what I deemed not pretty by society standards. I was too used to hiding my curves, trying to down play them. Oversized on top. Dark on the bottom. Nothing that asked to be looked at.
And frankly, I’d never had a man make me feel beautiful.
Until him.
I felt beautiful when he looked at me.
It was now midmorning and I was hunched over the kitchen table, nursing a lukewarm coffee and trying to memorize drug interactions, when a low rumble sounded outside. It was aheavy-duty engine idling at the curb. Standing up, I pulled my oversized sweatshirt down over my shorts and peeked through the blinds.
Griffin’s black truck was parked out front.
By the time I opened the front door, he was at the tailgate, hauling out a stack of pressure-treated lumber and a heavy-duty toolbox. He was wearing a t-shirt that was far too tight across his shoulders, and a pair of work boots that looked like they’d actually seen some dirt.
I stood in the doorway and watched. The way his back moved under that t-shirt when he lifted the lumber. The flex of his forearms when he gripped the tailgate. There was something deeply unfair about a man that large moving that efficiently, like his body knew exactly what it was built for and had never wasted a single motion being uncertain about it.
I felt the pull of him low in my belly, that same insistent heat that had been living there since the first night he’d sat in my section. I pressed my palm flat against my stomach
I wanted to know what it felt like to have those hands grip my hips the way they gripped that lumber—firm and certain and completely without hesitation. I wanted to know what his mouth felt like. I wanted things I had no business wanting standing on my front porch with my pharmacology notes still open on the kitchen table.
“What are you doing, Griffin?” I called out, leaning against the doorframe.
He didn’t even look up. He picked up the wood and started walking toward the porch. “Fixing that step before someone goes through it.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“No. you didn’t.” He dropped the wood with a heavy thud near the bottom of the stairs. He finally looked at me, his gaze sweeping over my messy hair and my bare legs before snappingback to my face. His eyes were dark, tracking the way the sweatshirt hung off my shoulder.
I walked down the steps, stopping two from the bottom so I was still above him. “Griffin, you can’t just show up and do this. This lumber costs money.”
“I didn’t ask for payment.” He reached for a crowbar in his belt.
“You fixed my car and now you’re fixing my house? Why?”
