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I took the brush from him, and found myself standing perhaps just a tad closer than was strictly necessary; I could feel the broad warm sweep of his bicep against my arm, his hip bumping mine.
“Look, try it like this.” I dipped the end of the paintbrush in the paint tray in his hand, dabbed the excess off, and carefully traced a line of paint around the outside of the light switch.
He frowned at me. “You make that look easier than it is.”
“You just need a lighter touch.”
“I don’t have that.”
I laughed. “Clearly.” I watched as Lucas eyed the roller, with something like longing in his eyes. I held out as long as I could, and then I laughed again, enjoying his cranky discomfiture. “You are so easy to bait, you know that?”
He glared, but I could see a hint of humor wanting to creep out from under the grouchy exterior. “Whaddya mean?”
I gestured at the roller. “I meant for you to do the rolling, because I’ve always been better at the fine-tune sort of details, but you just grabbed the brush and started…painting, we’ll call it. So I just let you go with it.”
He looked at the wall where he’d been painting, and then at the area I’d done, and huffed a laugh. “Yeah, you better do that trimming stuff. Gimme that roller.” He limped toward the roller where I’d set it on the floor, rolled it through the tray, and then began applying the pale green paint to the wall, taking up where I’d left off.
His limp seemed to come and go, which confused me. I wanted to know more, but I knew I’d already pushed him into talking during lunch, and wasn’t sure how much farther I could go.
He was just such a puzzle. By turns insightful and obtuse, articulate and nearly incomprehensible, confident nearly to the point of arrogant yet self-effacing. He was simply an enormous human, standing at least six feet four inches tall and weighing well over three hundred pounds—yes, a certain portion of it was carried in his belly, but it was also breathtakingly clear he was a massively powerful man. Or, at least, he had been, and could be again.
He just needed to find the motivation to become a little healthier.
I focused on painting, but mentally I was berating myself for getting sucked into this. I did not have the emotional wherewithal to be his motivation. We barely knew each other. I was a widow still trying to make sense of my life without my husband. I had five daughters who needed me—or at least, I liked to tell myself they needed me, even if they didn’t need me on a daily basis like they once did.
Ugh.
I just couldn’t afford to get hooked into things with Lucas—he was unhealthy, and by his own admission had suffered one nearly fatal heart attack, and yet seemed to show no signs of feeling the need to change anything.
More worrisome yet was his almost throwaway statement that for a long time he hadn’t seen the point in trying to get healthy…meaning, he hadn’t seen the point in trying to stay alive.
“I can almost hear you stewing, over there.” Lucas spoke without pausing in his rhythmic application of roller to wall—he was tireless at this job, methodically covering far more of the wall in less time that I’d been able to. “You got shit on your mind, you may as well spit it out.”
“You know, I don’t know if I’ve heard you make a single statement in the entire time I’ve known you without at least one curse word included,” I said, eyeing him sideways.
“I grew up surrounded by gruff old soldiers and woodsmen. I learned to swear when I learned to talk and walk and hunt and spit.” He dipped, rolled. “Gettin’ me to eat more salad and less cheeseburgers is one thing. Gettin’ me to quit cursing? You got a better chance of puttin’ me in a frilly pink tutu and dancin’ ballet, and you can imagine how likely that shit is.”
“Pick my battles, then, is what you’re saying,” I asked, grinning at him.
He snorted. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that. ’Course, you ain’t gotta pick nothin’, if you know what I mean.” He paused, letting the roller rest in the tray, eyeing me with interest. “So. What’s on your mind, princess?”
“Princess?” I asked, with a wrinkle of my nose.
“No?”
I scoffed. “No.”
“Darlin’?”
I nodded and lifted a shoulder. “I can live with that, if you must use such overly precious language.”
“First I curse too much, now I use…whatever the hell you just said. Startin’ to think maybe you don’t like me for me, Liv.”
I frowned at him, pausing with my brush at the edge of the tray. “Hey, now. I don’t think that’s quite fair. I can like you for you and not like every single element of your personality.”
He tilted his head to one side. “I guess that makes sense.” He went back to paint rolling. “So? What are you thinking about?”
“How likely I am to get you to tell me how you hurt your leg.”
He didn’t answer right away. “Told you, car accident.”
I snorted. “Yeah, but I can’t help thinking there’s more to the story.”
“Ain’t there always?” he asked. “Nothing worth talking about.”
I looked at him for a moment, and then nodded. “If you say so.”
He was focused on the wall, on the paint, on anything but me. “It’s really not a very interesting story. Pullin’ a trailer behind my truck. Lost control, rolled it into a ditch. Totaled the truck, the trailer, and damn near myself. Broke my left leg and right arm—arm healed fine, leg hasn’t.”
I still sensed there was something he wasn’t saying. But I could tell by his stiff posture and the way he avoided my eyes that whatever it was he wasn’t saying, I wasn’t getting it out of him just yet.
And really, how much did I want to know? Why did I feel such a strange, powerful compulsion to know more about him? He was bad news. Bluff, coarse, and unhealthy. Everything I didn’t want or need in my life.
Yet here I am, in his house, helping him paint. Unable to stop thinking about him, or wondering what he is hiding.
“Eight nephews, huh?” I asked instead.
He sighed. “You are a curious woman, ain’tcha?”
I laughed. “I sure am.”
“Yeah. Eight nephews. I was estranged from my brother. We, uh…well, we had a falling out and he died before we could patch things. He and his wife had eight boys—Sebastian, Zane, Brock, Baxter, Canaan and Corin, identical twins, Lucian, and Xavier.”
I blinked, frowning. “Those names sound familiar, for some reason.”
He chuckled. “I imagine so. They’ve become what you might call local celebrities. They own a bar here in town, and co-own another with one of my boys, Roman. My other son has a tattoo parlor he runs with his fiancée and her cousin.”
“And the third triplet? What does he do?”
“He’s a wilderness guide. Runs hikes, hunts, fishing expeditions, shit like that, except he guides people interested in going way out where you gotta really know your wilderness survival to get in and out. The kinds of hunts where you get flown by seaplane into a remote lake, hike out into the forest, pitch a tent, and hike out to hunt, and then hike back to camp with your kill.”
“Wow.” I made a surprised face. “That’s…very manly.”
He cackled. “Yeah, my boys don’t exactly lack in testosterone, that’s for sure.”
I paused in my painting. “What’s that mean?”
He gestured at himself. “Picture me, thirty years younger, without the decades of bad food and…other stuff, and a serious dedication to fitness and weight lifting and such, plus just plain ol’ good genetics. Their ma was a fine-lookin' woman, just didn’t have a fuckin’ soul to go with it. And, believe it or not, I didn’t use to be s’damn soft and fat myself. You’ve had the misfortune of meetin’ me well past my prime, you might say.”
I snorted. “You need to be nicer to yourself, Lucas.” I went back to painting, focusing now on going around the baseboard molding. “Your sons sound impressive.”
“They are. Spent over ten years fighting wil
dfires, first as forest service regulars, then as Hotshots, and then as Smokejumpers. Then they…retired, and moved up here to try their hands at other stuff.”
“From what I hear, those wildfire fighters have to be in peak physical condition all the time.”
“Absolutely. My boys could hike eighty-pound backpacks up a mountain at damn near a run, get into their gear, fight a fire, and hike back out. Then they became Smokejumpers, which means they jumped out of an airplane as close to a wildfire as they could get, hike into it, and fight it without any hope of backup, using only the equipment they jumped in with.”
“Sounds frightening.”
“They like livin’ on the edge.” He sighed. “Comes from the way they grew up, though.”
“And how’s that?”
“Sorta the way I grew up—half wild. Or, maybe more wild than not. Their mom left and I didn’t have a single damn clue what the fuck to do with three maniac boys, and I don’t think I did a very good job of what I did do. They spent more time running wild than they did at home or in school. They were the terrors of the county, I’ll tell you. They weren’t bullies as far as I know, just…hellions. Trouble with a big ol’ capital T.” He sighed. “I think they joined the forest service to get away from me and from Oklahoma, if you want the truth.”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself. All children seem desperate to get away from their parents, I think. They feel the drive to figure life out for themselves, do things their way, on their own.”
He was silent a long time. “Yeah, you may be right.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
He shrugged, and then set the roller down to stand in the middle of the living room, examining our handiwork: we’d managed to get his whole living room and kitchen done. “I like it.”
I smiled. “You do?”
He turned in a slow circle, pivoting on his good leg. “Yeah, I do. It’s peaceful. Quieting.” He glanced at me with a grin. “But not girly.”
I grinned back. “Well, good. I’m glad to know I haven’t lost my touch.”
His gaze sharpened, grin going wolfish. “No risk of that, I don’t think.”
I blushed, hearing the sly innuendo in his tone and the look on his face. “Lucas.”
He chuckled. “What? I’m saying you’ve got a good eye for color.”
I snorted. “Yeah, that’s exactly what you were saying.”
“If you heard somethin’ else, well…that’s on you—your interpretation of it.”
Ohhh, is that how it was going to be? Two could play at that game.
I pretended to feel an ache in my back, setting my brush and tray down, intentionally facing away from him as I bent over. Then, slowly, luxuriously, I stretched, bringing my arms over my head, palms up in a basic yoga stretch, leaning backward and then forward again, this time bending at the waist.
I heard Lucas cough, then I straightened and turned to see him suddenly and busily rolling the excess paint off the roller.
“What?” I asked. “Something wrong? Tickle in your throat?” I had to fight back a grin at the discomfited expression on his face.
He glared at me. “You did that on purpose.”
“Did what on purpose?”
“That business.” He waved a paint-splattered hand at me. “You know what I mean.”
I endeavored to look clueless. “I do not.”
He snorted, dropped the handle of the paint roller. And then bent over at the waist to retrieve it, sticking his butt out. “Ohh, well, excuse me,” he said in a high-pitched, breathy voice. “I just…dropped this. Let me just pick it up.”
I couldn’t help cackling at him. “I have never in my life said or done anything even remotely like that. Nor do I sound like that.”
“You’re tellin’ me that’s just how you stretch.”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
“It is not!” I protested, lying through my teeth. “I was just innocently stretching the…kinks…out of my back. If you saw something else, that’s on you.”
His turn to laugh, then. “Oh, I see. Payback, is it?”
I put on an arch, haughty expression. “I have no idea what you mean.”
He had the paint tray in his hands and was crouched, somewhat stiffly and awkwardly, prying the lid off the paint can. With only the briefest pause, he glanced up at me, smirked, and then dipped his fingers in the paint and flicked them at me. Since I was standing only a few feet away, I got splattered all over the face with paint.
“Lucas Badd! I do not think so!” I snapped, irate since I now had paint in my hair.
“Oops.” He grinned at me, taunting me to retaliate.
I still had my paintbrush in hand—I whipped it in his direction, sending paint splattering him. He roared a laugh, staggering to his feet as I chased him, flicking paint at him until he was even more splattered with droplets and gobs of pale green than I was. Abruptly, he stopped trying to get away from me, pivoted, and his mammoth hand closed around my small, delicate wrist—and just like that I was face to face with all those inches of brawny, bearish brute strength, his deep brown eyes piercing, his scent enveloping me. His hand was warm and rough and implacable around mine, unbreakable and brutally strong, yet still gentle. He firmly and easily plucked the paintbrush from me, and with a hot slow grin, dabbed me on the nose with it. The bristles were rough and ticklish and wet, the paint cold and sticky.
I grabbed his hand and tried to stop him, but it was like trying to stop a hydraulic machine. “Lucas, do not get so much as another speck of paint on me, I swear—”
He just grinned, and brought the brush straight down my chin, my throat, and my breastbone to where the coveralls zipped up. “Oops.”
“Oops?” I wrenched free of him—meaning, he let me. I stomped over to the paint tray, which I hadn’t yet emptied back into the paint can, and before he could stop me, upended it over his head. “Oops.”
Pale green paint glopped thick into his hair, dribbled down his ears and the back of his neck and onto his shoulders.
He just stood for a moment, staring at me in disbelief. “Wow. You really go from zero to a hundred in nothin’ flat, don’t you?”
“I told you not to,” I said, my voice prim and arch.
The paint had glopped down his chest and arms and all over his torso, and when another mischievous grin slid across his paint-coated face, I backed away from him.
“Oh no you don’t!” I snapped. “Lucas, do not—”
He did.
He grabbed me, wrapped me up in his long arms like iron bands, hauled me inexorably toward himself and, ignoring my breathless pleas, smeared pale green paint all over me—rubbing his cheek against mine, his forehead against mine, until I was almost as paint-smeared as he was.
I gasped in shocked disbelief…and something else fluttered low in my belly, indicating that I didn’t at all mind his proximity, or the way his arms enveloped me and his heat pressed against me. I didn’t mind at all. Despite being covered in paint, I was grinning, laughing breathlessly. I dragged a fingertip through the paint coating his cheekbone.
“I think we better call a truce,” I whispered.
“Yeah?” His voice was a deep, quiet rumble that shivered through me. “Not sure who won.”
“Me neither.”
He let me go and backed away, scraping paint away from his eyes. “You oughta rinse off here. I imagine your place is a mite nicer than mine, so getting paint in my bathroom ain’t no big deal.”
I thought of trying to clean off enough to even get into my truck without ruining the upholstery, much less tracking a mess through my nice clean condo with the teak-stained bamboo floors and exposed brick walls. I winced at the very thought.
“I think I agree.” I tried to clean paint away from my eyes and mouth, but really only succeeded in smearing it even worse. “If you don’t mind.”
He harrumphed. “Wouldn’t’a offered if I minded.”
I narrowed my ey
es at him. “You’re not going to make this a…a thing, are you?”
He arched an eyebrow, although it was hard to tell that’s what he was doing through the thick layer of green paint. “I do declare, Miss Goode,” he said in a thick, syrupy exaggeration of his southern accent, making “declare” sound like dih-clayah, “I haven’t the slightest notion what you might mean by that statement.”
I laughed. “Of course you don’t, Mr. Badd. You are the very picture of gentlemanly innocence.”
“In all seriousness, Liv, go ahead and rinse off. I’ll stay right here and clean up this mess.”
I felt my heart thumping like a snare drum. “I’ll be quick.”
He waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I got nowhere else to be and nothing else to do, so take your time.”
“But you’ll need to rinse off too, so I don’t want to use all the hot water.”
His eyes fixed on mine. “Don’t worry about that, Liv.” Under his breath, then: “I might just need a cold shower anyway.”
I almost didn’t hear him say it. And combined with the way his eyes fixed on mine, then flicked down and back up…
I was covered in paint and wearing baggy coveralls, and he couldn’t take his eyes off me.
It felt good.
Too good.
I shouldn’t enjoy the way he looked at me—I didn’t have the heart space for a man larger than life like Lucas Badd.
I smiled at him once more, a little shyly, a little hesitantly, trying to keep my thoughts off my face, and then headed for his bathroom. I closed and locked the door, and then stripped out of my coveralls, turning them inside out as I took them off, to keep the paint on them rather than anywhere else, and then washed the worst of the paint off my hands.
I felt oddly reticent to strip the rest of the way—this wasn’t my bathroom, and Lucas was right outside—I could hear him moving around, humming gruffly under his breath. I knew he couldn’t see me, and that he wouldn’t do anything anyway. But still.
Being naked in the same apartment as him made me feel…odd. Not quite uncomfortable, but…
Gahhh, I don’t know how it made me feel.
A lot of different things.
I swallowed the nerves and stripped out of my clothes, carefully removing my shirt so I didn’t get paint on it.