“Lennox?” Bennett asked, interrupting my nervous chatter.

I blinked and turned to see him still sitting on the gurney, arm placed in his lap palm up.

“What?” I asked, ripping a few paper towels from the dispenser and turning to survey him.

He looked so good.

His brown hair was a little scragglier today, with the ends going every which way. His eyes were alight with humor at what I guessed was my annoying diatribe.

I really had a problem giving away too much information.

Like really.

“Nothing. I just wanted you to slow down so I could thank you and ask you what time and day would be good for me to come by,” he said laughingly.

I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face.

“Since today is Tuesday, next Friday or Saturday would be good. Although, I’ll be at Truman Smith for their annual walk-a-thon on Saturday morning, so Friday would probably work better for me,” I rambled.

“Do you work there?” He asked, standing to his full height and walking next to me to stand by the sink.

When he started to put his hand under the water, I caught his wrist and stopped him from getting it wet. “What part of don’t get your hands wet did you not understand?”

He snorted. “The part where I have blood caked all over my hands, and I can’t very well get it without washing my hands.”

I narrowed my eyes up at his laughing ones and turned around to grab an alcohol pad. Then got to work removing the caked blood from his hand.

Jesus, the man had huge hands. I’m talking massive. He could probably engulf my entire face with his one hand!

I could feel his eyes on me while I held the one close to my breast and scrubbed carefully.

Once I had it as good as it was going to get, I grabbed his other hand, and held it under the water where I quickly washed his hand clean with both of my own.

It was an intimate gesture, and just by touching him somewhere so simple, I was damn close to asking him to come home with me tonight, but I was saved.

By him and whomever chose to call his phone.

“’Scuse me while I get this,” he said, grabbing a paper towel and turning the faucet off before he reached into his pocket. With his bad hand.

Men.

Shaking my head, I started to clean up my mess while I pretended to be busy.

I wasn’t.

I was really just listening.

“Hello?” Bennett answered his phone.

“Hey,” I heard said rather loudly. It sounded like a woman’s voice, one that was all sultry and feminine. Something I was not.

“Hey, whatcha’ need?” He asked, drying his hand off as well as he could before tossing it into the trash.

Something was said between the two of them, and I threw the trash into the trashcan a little harder than I needed to.

“I’m free tonight if you want me to stop by. Do you want me to bring anything for dinner, Meg?” He asked.

Not wanting to hear any more about the man I was starting to have an irrational appreciation of, I walked out of the room and straight to Melissa.

“Okay,” I said as cheerfully as I could muster. “Mr. Alvarez is ready to go. He needs to have his stitches out in ten to fourteen days. No water on his hand for the first forty eight hours. And he needs a prescription antibiotic as well as a pain med.”

I rambled off the exact dosage I wanted her to give, wrote out the prescription on my pad, and handed it all over to her. “I’ll be going to lunch now, okay?”

Melissa nodded. “Got it.”

With that I left, and felt Bennett’s eyes on me the entire way down the hall.

Chapter 4

Do you want to know what I got for Christmas? Fat. I got fat.

-T-shirt

Bennett

It was Friday, a week and a half after I’d gotten the stitches in my hand, and I was about to knock on Lennox’s front door.

I contemplated having my sister do it, knowing she had every capability to do so, but I sort of liked having the excuse to go see her.

Plus, my sister had just taken the ones out of my face. It was someone else’s turn.

She’d been on my mind a lot in the last week and a half, and I found that I sort of liked the idea of her being there.

She was cute, funny, and I liked that she didn’t lay down and roll over when it came to me.

I wanted…and needed, someone who could go toe to toe with me. I didn’t want some simpering woman that was intimidated by my size and personality.

Plus, they’d never make it past round two with my family.

We were all loud, obnoxious and found it more fun to laugh rather than cry.

Which made me think Lennox would fit in perfectly.

Knocking on her front door, I turned until I could see the street behind me.

The neighborhood was nice. Something I could never afford to live in on my salary.

I made plenty of money when I wasn’t having to shell out a whack to pay for a home loan, but I was afraid with one, I wouldn’t be able to buy that new truck I needed, or the fifty dollar pair of jeans Reagan was already insistent upon having.

My truck was the same one I had in high school, and since it was still running good, I had no reason to get a new one. Yet, it would be better to have a little nicer of a vehicle that I could rely on in the middle of winter.

“Oh, hey!” Lennox said, opening the door. “I thought you’d call!”

I raised my brow at her. “And how would I have called you?”

“Well…you called me the other day just fine…you know, to get your phone back?” She asked, opening the door wide to allow me in.

Her eyes were happy to see me, and I liked that.

Although I was afraid she was a little too blonde.

“You do realize, right, that I called my phone?” I asked.

Her mouth dropped open, and then she blushed from the roots of her hair all the way down her chest.

“Oh,” she breathed.

I snorted, then ruffled her hair. “You’ll do, Lennox. You’ll do.”

She gave me a sour face, and then motioned me into her kitchen.

It wasn’t opulent, but it was pretty freakin’ awesome.

The countertops were stainless steel, as were all her appliances.

It was a man’s kitchen, with a woman’s flare.

She had Coca-Cola decorations all over the walls, and the windowsill was decorated in rich red fabric. She had a red bowl of fruit set up in the middle of the island that separated her kitchen from her dining room, and I wondered why she even bothered to put it there when the fruit itself was fake.

“I have a suture kit around here somewhere. Let me wash my hands real quick. Go ahead and sit at my table,” she said, gesturing to the table with her free hand.

It was piled high with…shit.

That’s all it was. Letters. Newspapers. Magazines. Change. You name it, it was on the table.

“Sorry for the mess, but I’m allergic to cleaning,” she laughed.

My eyes followed her movements as she walked to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. She had a massive glass with a stopper on it that held the soap, and she upended it, pouring a gargantuan amount of soap onto her hands before she washed all the way up to her elbows.

“This isn’t surgery,” I said once she turned the water off.

She smiled. “I know. I just had my hands in the soil outside, though. Soil’s a breeding ground for bacteria. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

I silently agreed, eyes moving down to her paper, and immediately alighting on a stack that was directly on top.

My eyes scanned it, and then widened at what I read.

“Why do you have a restraining order?” I asked in alarm.

She gave me an admonishing glance as she said, “You really shouldn’t be reading other people’s mail. Isn’t that illegal?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s illegal to open other people’s mail. It says nothing against reading it once it’s already opened.”

Walking back to me, she grabbed a package off the counter between the kitchen and dining room table, and tossed it to the top before getting a pair of gloves out of a box on top of her table. Something I hadn’t seen because it’d been buried under a hefty pile of newspaper.