This thing…it wasn’t native to Wyoming! It couldn’t be!
After staring down at the deadly thing for a long moment, he turned to Sage. She looked utterly shocked. Good! Arik was relieved he wasn’t the only one!
“Sage, what’s going on?”
She glanced up at him warily. “You mean besides that giant…thing…coming into my house?” she asked, as if the question needed clarification.
“Yeah,” he growled out. He just knew that there was more to the story. “Besides that.”
Sage turned around and Arik had to clench his teeth as he watched her walk into the house, her cute, round bottom filling out those cutoffs like she was some sort of rounder, sexier Daisy Duke!
Following her, he kept his eyes off of her ass. Or tried to. She was just too damn…hot! Arik knew he should think of Sage as if she were his little sister. Hell, she really was his best friend’s little sister. But damn! Sage was just too…cute! And hot!
“Sage, what’s going on? Is someone bothering you?”
“Besides you?” she drawled, leading the way into the kitchen.
“Wow!” he looked around, stunned by the change in this place. “When did all of this happen?”
Sage looked around, a smile forming on her perfect, rosebud lips. “You like it?”
He spun in a slow circle to take it all in. The old oak, nineteen-eighties cabinets had been painted white. The upper cabinets were gone. In their place were warm, wood shelves with industrial style bars holding them onto the walls. She’d put up white ceramic tiles underneath the bottom shelves. The old Formica countertops were gone too. She’d chosen a counter in the same warm wood as the shelves. The effect was a softening of the stark white walls, white cabinets, and white tiles. Hell, she’d even put in a white farm-house style sink with a fancy faucet.
“I’d love the name of your contractor. This is amazing work!” he said, moving his head to look up at the ceiling.
“I didn’t use a contractor,” she told him.
“Who did it?”
She grinned, straightening with obvious pride. “I did all of it!” she replied. She looked around as well. “I like it. Everything looks clean and simple now.”
“I agree,” he laughed. “I like the green and blue plates and bowls.” They added just the right pop of color. “It’s fresh and simple.” He smiled at her. “I thought you didn’t like to cook.”
Sage shrugged. “Well, I don’t. But…well, I’d like to learn to cook. I mean, I figure if I can do all of this,” she gestured around the renovated kitchen, “I figure I can learn to cook too, right?”
Arik stopped himself at the last moment from cringing. She’d already started to teach herself how to cook. So far, she’d failed. Miserably! The casseroles she brought to barbeques at Jade’s house were…well, inedible. If they weren’t burnt to a crisp.
Still, Arik ate a large helping of everything she brought although he couldn’t count the number of times he got sick afterward. He just couldn’t take the tragic look of defeat on her pretty features when she realized how badly one of her efforts came out.
“Why are you here?” she asked, changing the subject.
Arik sighed. “Because Simon and Jade asked me to check on you,” he admitted.
She grumbled slightly, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. “I’m fine!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know why they think that I’m such a baby! I’m fully capable of taking care of myself!”
He eyed her more closely. “Is that why you’re not sleeping at night?” he asked.
She stiffened and peeked worriedly at him through her lashes, her hands dropping to her sides. “I sleep!”
A disbelieving eyebrow lifted with her claim. “You have dark circles under your eyes, Sage. What’s going on?”
Her hand flew to her cheek and that’s when he saw the scrape along the back of her arm. Moving forward, he took her elbow with his hand, examining the cut. “Where did you get this?”
She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t release her arm. The wound looked to be about a day old, but the skin on either side was still an angry red and swollen.
“It’s nothing.”
He frowned. “You haven’t put anything on this, have you?”
Sage tried again to pull her arm away, but he wasn’t relenting. “No. It’s fine.”
“It’s infected,” he countered. “Do you have any iodine or antibiotic ointment?”
“Sure. But I don’t need it for this. It’s just a little cut.”
“Not little. And not just a cut,” he insisted, taking her wrist and tugging her gently but firmly towards the back of her house where he knew her bathroom was located. Along the way, he noticed an old chair that had been taken apart, the pieces laid out over the unfinished floorboards of her family room. “What are you doing here?” he asked. There was bright, pink flowered fabric laid out, as well as black and white zebra print fabric. The old wood of the chair had been taken apart, sanded, and painted a matte black.
“I’m refinishing the chair. It’s going to look amazing!” she gushed, still trying to reclaim her arm.
Arik grunted, then towed her down the short hallway to the bathroom. Once there, he opened the old medicine cabinet. After rummaging around amid the myriad containers of mascaras, lipsticks, cotton balls and…oh hell…birth control pills…he finally found what he was looking for.
“Hold up your arm,” he ordered.
She backed away. “I can do that myself.”
“If you could have, you should have, Sage. Since you didn’t, let me do it for you.”
“No.”
He saw the flicker of fear in her eyes and froze. “You know that I would never hurt you, right?” he asked, stunned that she could possibly think that.
“Of course not!” she replied, quickly. She even stepped closer, but realized what she was doing and stepped
