Almost Just Friends (Wildstone #4)(13)

“How about letting me look at your secret secret bucket list instead?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How about we stop talking now?”

“Wait.” He cocked his head. “Does this mean you also have a secret bucket list? And possibly a not-so-secret bucket list?”

She had hands on hips; a fresh, clean gauze in one hand, antibiotic ointment in the other, her expression dialed to Not Feeling Playful.

With a rough laugh, he stood and took the gauze and ointment from her. “I got this one, Doc.” And then he gestured for her to turn around.

She did with a smirk, and then spoke over her shoulder. “Didn’t peg you for the shy type.”

“Oh, I’m not shy.” He shoved his icy, muddy, wet cargoes to his thighs, and yeah, the cat had come within two inches of de-manning him. “Just didn’t want to have to fight you off.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I always get verbal consent first. And I bet you didn’t want me to see your tighty-whities.”

He gritted his teeth as he cleaned out the cut. Son of a bitch, that cat had gone deep. “They’re not tight and they’re not white.”

“Batman undies?”

“Commando,” he said, and that shut her up. When he’d finished and pulled his pants back up, he lifted his head and found her facing him. His brows went up. “See anything you like?”

Instead of answering, she blushed. And he grinned because, yeah. She’d definitely seen something she liked.

Snatching the gauze and tube of ointment from his hands, she vanished into the kitchen.

A minute later, a burst of lightning lit up the living room like daylight, immediately followed by a thundering boom that shook the house and rattled the windows and actually changed the rhythm of his heartbeat.

From the kitchen came a cry and a crash, and he went running.

Piper was at the sink staring out the window, both hands on her mouth, a broken glass at her feet, eyes wide and unseeing on the storm outside. There was a tree branch brushing against the window and he moved toward her, intending to pull her away in case it broke. But the moment he set his hands on her shoulders, she jerked and whipped around, catching him with a surprise roundhouse kick to the gut.

“Oh my God,” he heard her gasp as he straightened gingerly. “I’m so sorry!”

“No problem,” he said on a rough exhale, rubbing his abs as he eyed her. “And here I was worried about not sparring with my team while I was here. Maybe we should hit the mats together sometime.”

She didn’t smile. Her eyes were still huge and haunted, hollow in a way he understood better than he wanted to.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. You didn’t hurt me.”

Closing her eyes, she nodded and turned away again, only to jump at the next flash of lightning and the immediate, earsplitting boom of thunder.

She was terrified of the storm. “Piper.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know,” he murmured, gently turning her to face him. Slowly she opened those slay-me eyes of hers and leveled him with all the emotion swimming in them. “Bad memory?”

She hesitated and then gave a barely there shoulder lift. “The thunder gets me. Reminds me of the bombs.”

Bombs? She was shaking almost violently now, and he ran his hands up and down her arms, realizing she wasn’t all the way back with him, but somewhere else, somewhere far away. “You’re cold and wet. Let’s—”

“If you say get naked so we don’t die of hypothermia, I might kick you again.”

Feisty, even when she was down. He liked that, very much. “Actually, it’d be only fair since you’ve already seen me naked.”

“Keep dreaming.”

She said this utterly without heat, and he got even more worried. “Piper. What can I do to help?”

“I’m—”

“Fine. Yeah, yeah, I know. But maybe I’m not.”

She stared at him, and then slowly stepped into him so that their bodies brushed together. Offering him comfort, he realized, going still at the shock of human contact. He’d been burying emotions for so long, he’d almost forgotten how to access them. Or how much he loved the feel of a woman. Almost. He closed his arms around her, remembering he hadn’t put his shirt back on only when her chilled hands clutched his bare back. Allowing himself this, the contact he’d mostly shut himself off from, he let himself get lost in it.

When her phone buzzed between them, she pulled away and tugged the thing from her pocket, breaking eye contact to read her text. “Your dad says that according to the police radio, there’s been a mudslide that wiped out access to our street, and that the creek is now a raging river of mud. He doesn’t think you should try to get back until daylight.”

That had better be true and not some misguided sense of matchmaking.

Clearly on the same page, Piper looked at him. “If he’s playing Cupid, I’ll kick his diabetic ass.”

“I’ll help.”

“Good. So we’re in agreement.”

Cam knew he could get back to his dad’s with no problem. He could get just about anywhere under any conditions. It was what he did. But, even though Piper was clearly capable of handling herself, he hesitated to leave her alone.