“I will.” Noah rounded the expensive mess on the floor, the scent of oranges hitting the back of his tongue. Maybe he hadn’t imagined it downstairs.
His mind filled with the absurd image of Wade walking through his house fighting an orange peel.
He knelt at Wade’s knee, sliding closer than he’d intended. He shivered at the proximity and opened his first aid kit.
At least, he tried. To. Open. It.
What was this inexplicable flustering—
“Let me.”
Wade popped open the plastic box. Just like that. He looked rather smug about it.
“Ten points to the intruder.”
A deep laugh startled Noah as he pinched an antiseptic wipe.
“I swear I didn’t mean to break in, I found a key under a rock at the back door. My sister hasn’t stopped gloating about this mini-mansion. I admit I was a little confused at how empty it was, but I figured she was redecorating.”
“The sale hasn’t formally gone through.”
“I see that now.”
Noah clasped Wade’s warm foot and Wade flexed against his palm.
He cleared his throat. “You hadn’t thought of calling your sister when your plans changed?”
“I tried several times today. Her phone must be off.”
Noah procured tweezers and drew a glittering fragment out of Wade’s skin. Another one. He dabbed the blood away as gently as he could but Wade jerked and hissed.
“So you came here and got crafty letting yourself inside.”
“Some point along the way, I even thought it might be a nice surprise.”
“It’d certainly have been a surprise.”
Wade grunted. “I was—am—tired. I just needed somewhere to crash. But now you lay it out . . . not my brightest idea.”
They glanced at the open wardrobe where a large, paint-chipped toolbox had been slotted between boxes, then to the floor.
“Yeah. I suppose the black sack didn’t do me any favours.”
“Not many, no.” Their gazes clashed with quiet humour, and an invisible current bolted through Noah. The tweezers grew slippery and he swiftly returned his focus to the slice under the ball of Wade’s foot. “This might sting. Hold still.”
In a matter of foot-jerking moments, Noah extracted the last offending shard and began to clean and bandage the cuts. Nasty, but not deep enough to require stitches.
“You seem familiar with this. Like it’s happened before.”
Noah raised a sharp brow. “Trust me, this has never happened before.”
“Fixing up wounds, I mean. Not meeting handsome intruders.” Wade straightened and his smile stretched cheekily.
Noah snorted, but his lips twitched. “I work in a bird sanctuary. I’m familiar with cuts and tears, and living things that can’t hold still.” A pointed look.
Wade’s grin turned sheepish.
Noah cocked his head. None of this had gone like he would have expected.
Once more their gazes connected, and Noah’s breath hitched.
Wade’s eyes glittered with a hundred questions.
Noah would satisfy one.
He looked down at his hands, still clasping Wade’s foot. “You can call me Noah.”
Wade Ferrars.
That glitter in his eyes, the hiss of his indrawn breaths . . . He couldn’t get him out of his thoughts. And . . . dreams. This was . . .
Maybe he’d cast a few lingering gazes in Wade’s direction, back then. And there’d been that time that . . . but it’d all been one-sided. And a very, very long time ago. Even then, when Francesca had been ‘Franny’ and at the top of his contact list, Noah had known how barren and windswept a crag that idea was.
Okay. Stop tossing and turning. Up, and a good cup of borage tea to set his mind straight.
There were things to be done. Namely helping the Bertram-Prices clean the backyard, which was the only reason he’d slept at Mansfield.
He swung his bare legs out of bed and stood on something soft.
A guttural groan came from the vicinity of his foot, and Noah plonked back onto the bed. “Zachary? What are you doing on the floor? I thought you headed back with Elliot and Wentworth?”
Zachary pulled the blanket from over his face and pushed into a sitting position. He winced and rubbed his temples, native birds and music motifs moving over his flexing limbs, up one arm and between his shoulder blades.
“I couldn’t leave last night. Not after—” Zach rolled, groaning, onto his knees. “I’m sorry I got so angry. I know you’re doing everything you can. I can be an ungrateful prat sometimes.”
Noah mussed Zach’s nest of hair. “I wish I could give you more.”
“No, no! You give me everything. I promise, I didn’t go home. I took nothing.”
Noah rubbed his nape, glancing out the window. “I know.”
“I went down to the river. Cooled off. I searched for ages trying to find you, after.”
So that’s where he’d run off to.
“Then I see you come up here and crash and I figure, yep, me too.”
Noah found his bag and pulled out a pair of old cargos, worn soft and bearing the scars of his work—roughed up patches where they’d met with scrabbling claws, ingrained dirt and seawater. They were like an old friend, familiar and comforting, as he did them up and smoothed a t-shirt down over top. “Come on, then. Let’s help clean up.”
