shredded something irreplaceable.”
“I’ll be back up in a few minutes with a cardboard box and whatever I can dig up.”
“Okay.” But he lingered a moment longer, so she paused, but then he finally turned back to his door. “Thanks again.”
“Sure,” she said, then headed back down the stairs once his door was shut behind him again. So, had that just been her? Or had things suddenly gotten awkward there at the end? Awkward in that way where you weren’t ready to end a conversation, but weren’t sure how to prolong it without seeming dorky.
Except the dork in that situation had clearly been her. And yet, he’d been the one to prolong the moment past its natural comfort zone. You’re really stretching if you think he was somehow flirting, or wanting to keep your company.
Besides, who knew why he was there, or how long he’d been on the road. Maybe he was just starved for any human interaction. He certainly had been nothing if not polite, not coming onto her in any discernible way. And he’d saved her life, or at the very least saved her an extended hospital stay. So…maybe it was just that. Not knowing what to say to someone you’d kept from breaking her own fool neck.
Didn’t keep her from thinking about what it would mean if he really was coming onto her. Except a guy who looked like him, and was confident enough to spring into action and play white knight like he had…probably had very few awkward moments with members of the opposite sex. As polite and gentlemanly as he’d been since his arrival, she didn’t doubt that if he wanted to spend more time with her, he wouldn’t have been at all awkward about making her aware of it.
She went about gathering whatever she could find to make a decent litter box for the wee beast, making a mental note to give Pete a call later. She’d given her guest a hard time about finding a home for the critter, but she’d been bloody and a little annoyed at that moment. She actually thought it was pretty sweet that he’d cared one way or the other what happened to the kitten. Which, so did she, or she wouldn’t have climbed, literally, out on a limb to save its sorry little fuzzy butt.
But she also knew Pete was a softy who’d have kept it at the animal control compound until he found a home for it; so turning the kitten over to him wasn’t the heartless action it had come off as, either. She layered a stack of newspapers on top of the stuff she’d already put in the empty cardboard box and headed back up the stairs.
She knocked on his door with her elbow. “Room service.”
He opened the door an instant later and essentially tugged her into the room by her elbow, then shut the door immediately behind her. Startled by the action, and thinking she normally didn’t go for brutish kind of guys, but that he could manhandle her all he wanted…she stutter-stepped to a stop when he immediately let her go as soon as the door was shut behind her. Still staggering a little, she watched as he turned and dropped to his hands and knees to look under the wide opening beneath the sleigh bed.
Yeah, not exactly the next part she’d pictured in her fantasy scenario, right there. Although it did give her a great excuse to stare at his mighty fine backside once again. Which she did. Openly. It was like she’d reverted to some primordial version of herself that was merely a slave to her inner, baser instincts.
“Come on,” he was crooning. “You really don’t want to make a bed out of…” He trailed off on a sigh and then levered himself back up to stand. “Sorry for yanking you in there like that, but she’s been tearing around the room like some kind of Tasmanian devil and I didn’t want her ripping out the door.”
“We could still call Pete, you know,” Kirby said.
The quelling look he gave her was rather comical when you thought about it.
“She just needs some time to calm down. I just sort of wish she hadn’t picked my sweater to do that in,” he said, glancing back toward the area under the bed. “But…there are other sweaters.”
He wore sweaters. He struck her as a faded, beat-up-sweat-shirt kind of guy. Well, the guy who’d rolled in wearing dusty leather certainly had. This guy was…she really wasn’t sure yet. But it was certainly a more interesting puzzle to worry over than, oh, say, how she was going to pay the bills this month. At least his being here was also making that part a bit less daunting. So, it was only natural, really, that she spent so much time thinking about him.
“You know, Pete isn’t a bad guy,” she said, fessing up. “He’s not like the proverbial dog catcher. He’ll find her a home.”
Brett turned back toward her. “Which you knew, earlier.”
“Possibly.”
“Why did you let me haul her up here?”
“Post-traumatic stress from my tree ordeal?”
His lips twitched.
“Plus, you seemed pretty bent on playing white knight-which, if I didn’t take the time to thank you profusely for that, by the way, I’m very sorry. I really can’t thank you enough for being so quick on your feet.” His bare feet, she recalled. Bare lots of things, in fact. She forced her mind away from that. Standing next to him, right beside a perfectly great bed, was enough of a test of her conversational skills at the moment.
“Anybody would have done the same thing,” he responded easily, not even looking at the bed. Or her. In that way. Totally not distracted. “I’m just glad the ladder crashing woke me up.”
She winced a little. “Not such a great stay in the inn so far. Again, my apologies. Why don’t you let me get the kitten out of your hair, so to speak, so you can get the rest you checked in here for.” She bustled into motion, setting the stack of litter box stuff on his bed to free her hands up for kitten wrangling. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I really am a better hostess than this, I promise.”
“It wasn’t like you purposely tried to fall out of a tree.”
She had knelt on the floor on the far side of the bed to look beneath it, but his comment had her stretching back up to look at him across the other side of the bed. “True, but I’m sorry all the same.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. And, to be honest, I think we should just leave the cat where it is at the moment. She’s been through enough today without being taken somewhere else. We’ll be fine.”
Kirby ducked back down and peeked under the bed. The tiny ball of fluff was curled up in the middle of what appeared to be a very nice, very expensive cashmere sweater. She frowned. Cashmere? This guy? Then she remembered the manicured hands, the roll of money, and, well…he was an enigma wrapped up in a mystery, he was. The kitten was sacked out, and he was probably right about disturbing the poor thing again. She pushed up to a stand just as he was scooping up the box of stuff she’d put on the bed.
He rooted through it. “What is all this stuff?”
“Uh, just things I thought would make a good litter box.”
He spread out the papers, a small, shallow plastic tray, a box of baking soda, several old towels, and an old blanket.
“And some bedding,” she said, lifting one shoulder. “Which, honestly, I’d have picked the cashmere, too. Sorry. I’ll pay to have it cleaned, or…whatever else might need done to it. Replace it. Once she gets up, just put that stuff under there instead.”
“Don’t worry about it. Thanks,” he said, carrying the box into the bathroom.
She realized she was just standing there, watching him again, and snapped back to attention. “No, thank you. I-the least I can do is fix you dinner. For, you know, saving me. Earlier.”
He paused in the bathroom doorway, his hands empty now. He looked remarkably…domesticated. All well worn blue T-shirt and faded jeans. Bare feet, tousled hair. He also looked worn out.
“I’ll-let me get out of here so you can rest. Just say the word later and I’ll bring a tray up for you. Pot roast. It’s not much, but-”
“That would be great, actually,” he said, surprising her. “What time?”
“Uh, anytime you’d like. Just ring down and I’ll-”
“I mean, what time are you eating? Unless you’d rather eat alone.”
“No,” she blurted, even more surprised. “That would be fine. Usually a bit later for me, around six thirty.”
“Sounds good. If I don’t come down, if you wouldn’t mind, just ring the room and wake me up.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather sleep?”
He shoved his hands in his front pockets, the picture of laid back and relaxed. Or would have been if it wasn’t for the tired lines creasing the corners of his mouth and eyes. “I’d have thought so, yes. But the distraction is proving to be kind of nice, too.”
