Page 45 of Warrior Security
“In about forty minutes, she’ll have hot water again, finally,” I said. “Thanks for your help, man.”
Beckett wiped his hands on his jeans and packed his toolbox, and we both headed to the kitchen. At the door, he stopped.
“Don’t let Lark brush stuff off. The propane, the rest of it, because I’m sure there’s more. She’ll make a joke and change the subject and convince you everything’s fine.”
“I know.”
“Somehow we’ve got to convince her that helping people goes both ways.”
“Trust me, I’m working on it.”
“Are you now?” He studied me for a long moment, obviously torn about whether to push or not. But he let it go. “Good. I’m glad you’re here. See you around, Stroud.”
He grabbed his toolbox and walked out. A minute later, his truck pulled out of the lot and the kitchen went still. The fiddle music had stopped at some point, and the only sound was the faint tick of the water heater, doing its job for the first time in weeks.
In less than an hour, the tank would be hot. Tonight, she’d walk into her own bathroom and turn the handle and have hot water for the first time since before I got here.
I cleaned up the utility closet. Put the old parts in the trash, wiped down the floor, put the tools back in order. Then I walked back to the kitchen.
Through the window, I could see Lark near the east paddock, leaning against the fence rail while Duchess nosed at her jacket pockets. One of the dogs sat in the grass a few feet away, watching them both. Lark pressed her forehead against Duchess’s nose, and even from here, I could see her shoulders drop, the tension leaving her body the way it only did when she thought nobody was looking.
I’d had her against the wall six feet from where I was standing. I could still feel her fingers in my hair and hear that sound she’d made when I pulled her in. If Beckett’s truck had shown up five minutes later, we wouldn’t have made it out of this hallway and he would’ve walked in on quite a show.
I was going to make sure he didn’t get the chance to interrupt twice.
Chapter 14
Lark
I’d been avoiding Logan since yesterday’s kiss, and my system had been flawless right up until the moment it required me to be in the same building as him.
Morning feed rounds: I took the outdoor animals, while he handled the barn. Paddock check: I went east, sent him west. Lunch: I ate a granola bar behind the equipment shed like a fugitive on my own property.
When he came into the barn at ten to work on the kennel latches, I remembered urgent paperwork at the house. When he left for the fence line at noon, I suddenly needed to be in the barn.
The flaw in the system was that the medication log lived on a clipboard in the feed room, and the afternoon med check couldn’t be done from forty acres away.
So here I was. Midafternoon, standing over the clipboard, pen in hand, acutely aware that Logan was fifteen feet behind me replacing a latch on Duke’s kennel. I could hear the metal-on-metal clink of the latch he was fitting, and I was very definitely not looking at his forearms.
I was looking at the medication log. Right. Yes. Medication log.
Tova: heartworm prevention, administered. Atlas: joint supplement, administered. Frank: senior multivitamin?—
The clinking stopped. Logan shifted his weight, and every nerve ending in my body tracked exactly where he was without my eyes leaving the page.
This was absurd. I was a grown woman hiding behind a clipboard because a man had kissed me in my utility closet yesterday and I’d liked it so much I’d been actively avoiding him every hour since.
Yesterday’s kiss had been so much different from what had happened in the storm. The overhang, I could handle. I’d spent the last two days building a box around that memory, lining it with context and justification. Humiliating extraordinary circumstances. A woman in crisis who needed somewhere to put the wreckage, and a man who’d let her.
Mortifying, but it was explainable, and I could surviveexplainable.
But the utility closet yesterday had no box. Logan had put his hand on my face and pulled me in because he’d wanted to. No crisis behind it, no adrenaline, no excuse. And I’d fisted his shirt and pulled him closer because I’d wanted to, and if Beckett’s truck hadn’t pulled into my driveway, we both knew exactly where that kiss was heading.
I’d had sex since my divorce. Twice, and both times with men I’d met outside of Garnet Bend who didn’t know my last name and were gone before morning. I’d been fine with that.
Pawsitive was where my everything went, not men. Every dollar, every hour, every scrap of energy I could wring out of a day. And that was exactly where I wanted it.
But being around Logan didn’t pull anything away from Pawsitive. He’d become part of it, showing up, doing the next thing without being asked, fitting into the rhythm of the place as if he’d always been there. With him around, I had more of myself at the end of the day, not less.
