“My car was knocked off a bridge,” I muttered, still half asleep. “Bummer.”
“Yeah, I can see where it would be.” He had his own technique of comforting, and it involved tucking me under him. I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled him close.
“Do you feel okay enough for this?” he murmured, but he was a tad late with the question because he was already sliding inside me.
“Yes,” I answered anyway.
He was careful, or tried to be. He kept his weight braced on his forearms and his strokes were slow and even-until the very end, when there was nothing slow or even about it. But he didn’t hurt me, or if he did, I was too turned on to notice.
The next day was sort of a repeat of the one before, except I did more stretching and yoga and felt lots better. My left arm still hurt if I tried to pick up anything and put strain on the muscle, but I had pretty much full use of it if I kept the motions slow and didn’t do any jerking around.
The bush Wyatt had bought for me was going to live, I thought, though it needed a full week of TLC before it would be able to stand the shock of being planted in the yard. Wyatt might not understand the concept of houseplants, but he had bought it for me and I treasured the poor thing. I was getting cabin fever from my enforced inactivity, so I walked around outside and selected the spot where I wanted the bush planted. Because of the age of the house, the landscaping around it was mature and lush, but it was all shrubbery and no flowers, so it would benefit from some color. It was too late in the season now to plant flowers. Next year, though…
The heat and sun felt good on my skin. I was bored with being an invalid and craved the high of a good workout. I wanted to go to work so much I ached, and it made me angry that I couldn’t.
The dream from the night before kept nagging at me. Not the part about going over the bridge, but the fact that it was the red Mercedes, which I had traded over two years ago. If you believe in the prophetic nature of dreams, that probably meant something, but I didn’t have a clue what it could be. That I regretted not getting another red car, maybe? That I thought white was too boring? I don’t, and anyway white was more practical in the south because of the heat.
In terms of coolness-the quality, not the temperature-I would even rank red third, with white second, and black first. There’s just something about a black car that makes a statement of power. Red was sporty, white was sexy and elegant, and black was powerful. Maybe my new car would be black, if I ever got a chance to shop for one.
Because I was bored, I rearranged the furniture in the family room, pushing the furniture around with my legs and my right arm, and just for the hell of it moved Wyatt’s recliner from its place of honor in front of the television. There was nothing wrong with the way he’d had it arranged and I didn’t care if his recliner took the prime spot, but like I said, I was bored.
Since I’d opened Great Bods, I seldom had the time to watch much television, except for maybe the eleven o’clock news at night, so I’d gotten out of the habit. Wyatt didn’t know that, though. I might be able to have some fun whining about missing my favorite shows, which of course would be on the channels like Lifetime, Home and Garden, and Oxygen. The bad part about that was, if I won the battle for the remote, I’d have to watch the shows, too. There’s always a catch.
I went out to the road and fetched the newspaper from the box, and then sat down in the kitchen and read every item. I needed some books. I needed to go shopping and buy some makeup or shoes. New makeup and shoes always lift my spirits. I needed to find out what Britney was doing these days, because that girl’s life was such a mess she made getting shot at look downright sane.
Wyatt didn’t even have any flavored coffee. All in all, his house was woefully ill-equipped to keep me satisfied.
By the time he came home that afternoon, I was ready to climb the walls. Out of sheer frustration I had even started another list of his transgressions, and the number one item was his lack of my favorite coffee. If I was going to stay there for the duration, I wanted to be comfortable. I also needed more of my clothes, and my favorite bath gel, and my scented shampoo, and all sorts of things.
He kissed me hello, then said he was going upstairs to change clothes. To get to the stairs, you have to go through the family room. I stayed in the kitchen, and listened to his footsteps come to a dead stop as he registered the change in his living environment.
He raised his voice and called, “What’s with the furniture?”
“I was bored,” I called back.
He muttered something that I couldn’t understand, and I heard him continue upstairs.
I’m not a helpless decoration. I had also gone through the contents of his refrigerator and found some hamburger meat in the freezer section. I’d browned the meat and made spaghetti sauce. Because he never came home at the same time two days in a row, I hadn’t put on the spaghetti to boil, so I did that now. He didn’t have rolls, but he did have loaf bread, and I buttered the slices and sprinkled them with garlic powder and cheese. Something else he didn’t have was the makings for a green salad. This was not what I considered a healthy meal, but considering the contents of his pantry and refrigerator, it was either that or beans from a can.
He came downstairs wearing only a pair of jeans, and my mouth watered when I saw him, with those tight abs and that muscled, hairy chest. To keep from drooling and embarrassing myself, I turned away and slid the baking sheet with the slices of bread on it into the oven. By the time they were nicely browned, the spaghetti would be done.
“This smells good,” he said as he set the table.
“Thank you. But unless we go grocery shopping, there’s nothing else to cook. What do you usually eat for supper?”
“I usually eat out. Breakfast here, supper out. It’s easier that way, because by the end of the day I’m tired and don’t want to fool with cooking.”
“I can’t eat out,” I said grumpily.
“Well, you could, if we go to another town. Want to do that tomorrow? That would count as a date, right?”
“No, it won’t.” I thought we’d covered that ground at the beach. “You eat anyway. A date would be if we did something you don’t normally do, like go to a play or a ballroom dancing exhibition.”
“How about a ball game?” he countered.
“There’s nothing going on now except baseball, and it’s stupid. There aren’t any cheerleaders. When it’s football season, then we’ll talk.”
He let my insult to baseball pass and instead filled our glasses with ice, then poured tea into them. “Forensics found something today,” he said abruptly.
I turned off the heat under the spaghetti. He sounded puzzled, as if he didn’t know what to make of whatever it was forensics had found. “What?”
“A couple of hairs, caught in the underside of your car. It’s a miracle they’re still there, considering the shape your car is in.”
“What can a couple of hairs tell you?” I asked. “If you had a suspect you could test for DNA, they would come in handy, but you don’t.”