by Nicole Helm
Yeah, she had ample view of his shapes.
She seriously, seriously needed to cool the heck off. “You’re welcome to follow along if you want. Unless four miles is too many for you.”
Again he did the little boob-floor-back-to-face look, and if she wasn’t totally warped, she could swear his cheeks were a pinch pink. As if he was blushing.
Anyone else, she might adjust her sports bra right there and give him something to really blush about. But no cops. Especially not ones with marshmallow centers.
“All right,” he finally said, gesturing toward the door. “After you.”
She forced a sunny smile and sauntered out the door. No, she wasn’t sauntering. She was walking. Like a normal human being.
Swaying those hips like you want him to stare at your ass.
Okay, that, too. She kicked her leg out behind her, pulled her toes up to her butt. “Do you stretch beforehand?”
When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw him still standing in the doorway. Until the door smacked him because he hadn’t been paying attention. You will not bend over and touch your toes. You. Will. Not.
But, oh, it was tempting. A hell of a lot more fun than trying to run her conflicted thoughts about Dad away.
But also way more dangerous. She wasn’t into danger. She was into finding a way to build some kind of stability in her life.
Ha. Ha.
Marc stood to her side, where she couldn’t really watch him stretch. Which was probably by design.
They stretched in silence, and it was hard work to maintain the silence. Just like she couldn’t stand his weird awkwardness, she was no good with his distancing silence.
She was no good with all of it. Maybe you’re just no good.
“Ready?” she asked, eager to run that asshole voice in her head to the ground.
* * *
TESS’S PONYTAIL BOUNCED. She bounced. Every spandex-clad inch of her. This was some circle of hell. Run with the hot woman in spandex who is your FTO and also going through emotional shit you want nothing to do with. Circle five? Had to be higher than that.
Once he’d tried to get ahead of her, but she’d taken it as a challenge and never let him pass.
So he had to run behind her on the narrow path and try to focus on trees and shit. They’d run down the waterfront and up the bluff, and Marc slowed as a familiar house came into view.
“Don’t tell me you’re running out of steam.”
He looked at the big fancy house along the bluff. He’d only been here once, and it had been a weird visit. Christmastime. Mom harassing Leah and him stepping in. One of those rare moments with Leah when he couldn’t hold on to his usual detachment. “That’s where my sister works.”
“Oh, yeah?” She stopped her running, bending to one side and then the other. Spandex. Ass. Breasts. Spandex. Fucking damn it.
“Are you going to stop by and say hi?” she asked, completely unfazed that he was dying.
Saying hi to Leah was the absolute last thing he wanted to do. Scratch that, the last thing he wanted to do was keep jogging with an erection because Tess’s ass in those spandex running pants was not fair.
Life was not fair.
“Yeah, um...” How did he phrase this so he made it clear that even if he did go say hi to Leah, he didn’t want Tess tagging along? Doing it alone was bad enough—adding this woman to the mix had disaster written all over it.
“I’ll go up to the top of the street, turn around. If you’re not done by then, I’m sure you’ll catch up or I’ll just see you later.”
“Yeah. Great.”
She bent backward, fingertips splayed across her back, then bent farther, giving him an ample look down her shirt.
Abruptly, he turned toward MC Restoration’s office. He wouldn’t go to the big house—not all sweaty and...other things he was denying.
He’d knock on Leah’s little workshop door, hope to God she wasn’t there, and be on his merry way. Far away from the sight of Tess in spandex.
He refused to look back at Tess as he strode through the backyard of MC. He was focused on his destination. On safety. He knocked, held his breath and hoped no one answered.
“Marc?” Leah’s eyes were wide as she opened the door. “Hey, is everything o—”
“Yeah, yeah, good. I was just out...running.” He gestured toward the ring of sweat around his shirt collar. “Passed by and thought I should say hi, I guess.”
Leah blinked at him, but then she smiled.
Which was conflicting. A part of him felt as though he should be making bigger strides in the big brother department. Trying to figure out some relationship they could have or maneuver that wouldn’t be all heavy with what came before.
But Leah had spent too long as the driving factor of his life. Spending days on end in hospital waiting rooms, scrimping so Mom and Dad could pay off her medical bills, listening to bickering and arguments, trying to tread the waters of his parents’ separation.
Then, when they got back together, doing everything in his power to be whatever they needed.
Most of that wasn’t Leah’s fault. Her health had been beyond her control, though her rebellious streak had landed her in the hospital more than necessary after her heart transplant. Which had also been the source of Mom and Dad’s discontent and...
This, this was why he didn’t seek out Leah. Even if she was the most wonderful person in the world, she made him think about things he’d much rather not think about.
“You sure everything is okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. I was kind of trying to avoid a weird situation.”
“Weirder than this?”
“Ha. Maybe. I don’t know.” This was pretty weird, after all. He didn’t know much about how to start conversations with Leah. Conversations that wouldn’t irritate him or make him feel like crap, anyway.
“Well, come on in.” Leah moved out of the doorway and into her little shed of a work area. It was a mess. Tools and light fixtures and wires everywhere. Not much room to move around, either.
“What exactly were you avoiding?” she asked, picking up a few wires and studying them.
“Just avoiding someone, and there your place was. So I said I needed to come say hi to you.”
“Wow, you must have really wanted to avoid them. They trying to sell you something?”
“Oh, no, we live in the same apartment complex and were going for a run at the same time and she’s nice, really, I just...it was...I’m not good with small talk.”
Leah put the wires down, eyebrows raised. “She?”
Shit. “Well, yes. I work with her, actually. She’s my field training officer.” He didn’t like the way Leah was looking at him, all considering, and he really didn’t like the way he was fidgeting and the way his face was getting hot.
“What does field training officer mean?”
“Basically she’s observing while I learn the ropes of a new department.” Marc backed toward the door. Hopefully Tess would be out of sight by now and he could slip out and—
“Ah.”
He scowled. “What does that ah mean?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Good.”
But then Leah grinned. “Must be a Santino trait.”
“What?”
“Lusting after the boss.”
“She’s not my boss.” Shit. “And I’m not lusting. Also, please don’t ever use that word in my presence again.”
Leah chuckled. “Fair enough.” She studied him for a second before returning to a workbench scattered with tools and debris and a bunch of things he wouldn’t even begin to know how to make sense of. “You can hide out here as long as you want.”
“Thanks.”
“And, you know, that’s an open invitation sort of thing
. Not just for hiding out, either.”
“Thanks.” Even though he didn’t feel thankful. He felt guilty. Guilty for not being the kind of brother he should be. Guilty for moving here but not making any overtures toward Leah.
Guilty because even knowing he should make an effort—he didn’t want to. His hand grasped the doorknob. “I should head back.”
Leah’s smile was small, not much of a smile at all, really. “Sure thing.”
“I’ll, uh, see you soon.”
“Sure.” She focused on her wires and, well, he was a dick. Plain and simple.
“Um, you know, I work all weekend, but maybe we could go out to lunch...or something sometime next week.”
She stopped fiddling with her wires, surprise written all over her face as she looked at him. “Well, sure.”
“Great. I’ll call you.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “That’s a brush-off in dating code, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt in sibling code.”
“I will call you.”
“Yeah, you’re a stand-up kind of guy, Officer Santino. That field training lady doesn’t stand a chance.”
He scowled. “Not happening.”
She made a considering noise and stood, crossing over to him before hesitating. “I was going to go for a hug but...not my forte.”
“Yeah, not mine, either.” Though hadn’t he done an admirable impression of it last night? With a woman not related to him. A woman he barely knew.
A woman who was an adult and basically still abused by her father.
“We should try,” he said, his voice uncomfortably rough. His family had its issues, deep uncomfortable ones, but they certainly didn’t physically or purposefully hurt each other.
“Really? Because—”
It was awkward, and ridiculous, but it felt necessary. He reached around Leah and gave her an uncomfortable one-armed squeeze. “There.”
“Please. I’m begging you. Never again.”
“No promises.”
She groaned. “Ah, so this is the brother torture everyone else complains about.”
Thirty years, and she was just now experiencing some stupid little thing normal brothers and sisters did all the time. It wasn’t anything near as bad as Tess’s father’s treatment of her, but he felt guilty all the same. As if he’d failed.
“Don’t get all...whatever. You can’t exactly torture the little sister when she spends all her time in the hospital or running away. It is what it is.”
“No, I know.” But Leah had been healthy for a lot of years now, and she’d been talking to the family regularly for the past year and a half. He had been the one to not make any overtures.
Changing that filled him with dread, but ignoring the fact it was his duty wasn’t an option. “I should get back, but I will call you about lunch next week.”
“All right, but if there’s hugging involved, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“Noted.” Marc turned the knob. He’d save the dread and discomfort for later. For right now. Right now he was just doing the right thing, and that was all that mattered.
He stepped outside, grimacing when he saw Tess’s form jogging up on the path. Not quite long enough.
“That her?”
“Yeah.”
Leah laughed and gave him a shove. “Go get ’em, tiger.”
“I’m not—”
But Leah shut the door before he could argue. He wasn’t going to go get Tess. He wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
TESS WAS SURPRISED to see Marc trudging across the expansive yard he’d disappeared toward. He hadn’t been subtle about wanting to get rid of her.
She had a hard time blaming him for that. Where she’d spent years upon years successfully keeping friends and coworkers firmly in the dark about what a mess she was, she’d known Marc a week and he knew. He’d seen.
That was extraordinarily difficult to deal with, because someone knowing what a mess she was made it seem more true. Less something she could muscle her way through. He didn’t believe that tough shell she donned every day.
She just wished the seer of her weaknesses wasn’t so hot. Or so sweet, in a weirdly uncomfortable, gruff way.
Shit balls.
Marc fell into step kind of half next to her, half behind her. It was only then she realized she’d purposefully slowed her pace as she’d come close to the giant old house. Because she’d wanted...
It was best if she didn’t think too hard about what she wanted.
“Hey.”
“Said all your hellos?”
“Yeah, she’s working. Didn’t want to take up too much of her time.”
“What exactly is that place? I’m not familiar with it.”
“Restoration company. They fix up old houses for people. She’s an electrician.”
“I do love a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.”
Marc puffed out a chuckle. “Yeah, you two’d probably get along.”
It wasn’t an invitation to meet his family— obviously he didn’t want that—but it made her wonder. Marc already knew so much about her life, and all she knew was he was from Minnesota and had a sister. Electrician for a restoration company sister.
“Do your parents live back in Minnesota?”
“Yes.”
“Did you move here to be closer to your sister?”
He was quiet for a while. So much so, she had to glance back to make sure he was still behind her.
His expression was grim and something she couldn’t read. Maybe as if the superhero let everyone down.
“You could say that.”
Which was such a strange answer, purposefully vague and a little cryptic. Marc definitely had some issues of his own. People weren’t so tight-lipped about their lives if they weren’t hiding something.
Tess would know.
Was it a bad something, like a parental monkey on his back, or was it innocuous? Embarrassing, but not like hers. Not painful and potentially life damaging.
It would be best not to know.
“You said you didn’t have a sister, but any brothers?”
Before yesterday she might have considered that question making progress. He so rarely asked her for more information than she willingly gave. But yesterday had changed things, because today he was asking not out of curiosity or the desire to get to know her better, but because he wondered about her relationship with her father. If there was someone to step in and save the day.
“Nope. Just me.” In more ways than one.
She shouldn’t give him any more than that, should be as terse and tight-lipped as he always was, but there was a too-big part of her that wanted him to understand, or see, or something. This thing with her father, as pathetic as it was, wasn’t something she chose.
“Mom left when I was little, so it’s always been just Dad and me.”
She wouldn’t say more than that, because it was all that needed to be said. Maybe he would understand, and maybe he wouldn’t. But she’d given him enough information to know this wasn’t pathetic. They really were all each other had, and she was the responsible party.
Whether she wanted to be or not.
Marc didn’t say anything, so she focused on running. Hard. So her muscles would be nothing but jelly and hopefully her brain would follow suit.
When they reached the apartment complex, Tess was breathing hard enough talking would be difficult, and she was gratified Marc was in about the same shape.
“Christ, how often do you do that?” He huffed.
Tess grinned, bending to the side to stretch before her Jell-O muscles got tight. “Couple times a week. Depending.” On Dad. A few months ago i
t had been once a week tops. This month? Three to four times per week.
Things were bad.
You need to help him. Fix this. You cannot ignore him. You’re all he has. This is your responsibility.
But she didn’t want it anymore. For once in her life she wanted to make a decision not based on her father’s fragile mental state.
Forgetting the rest of her usual stretches, she pushed inside the building. She felt too raw to have Marc’s scrutinizing eyes around.
“No wonder you’re in such great shape,” he muttered, and she had a feeling she was not meant to hear that, as she was inside when he’d uttered it. Which managed to cheer her a little. Pathetic, yes, but, hey, she deserved a little pathetic.
She glanced back at Marc following her, and though he tried to hide it, he’d very obviously been staring at her ass.
Pathetic isn’t all you deserve.
No. No, no, no cops. Not some arbitrary edict. It was necessary for career survival. So Marc could stare at her ass and be nice and hot and whatever. Her reputation was way more important than some guy.
Regardless of the size of that guy’s shoulders. Or thighs. Or biceps. Mmm. Biceps. Get a grip, Camden.
She reached the top of the stairs, probably only a few feet from her tired legs giving out completely. “Well, thanks for the company. I needed it.” She looked at her door, dreading facing the phone on the other side. Dreading the weakness inside her that would grow, fester, until she’d give up and go over there. Until she’d lose at convincing herself she couldn’t help him.
“I’m buying a chair,” Marc said out of nowhere. “Maybe a table. You...”
She turned to stare at him. “I?”
“If you’re looking for something to do.” He shrugged those big yummy shoulders she really needed to distance herself from. “I could use some help. I’ve never picked out furniture before.”
Tess’s throat got tight, but she swallowed through it. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a marshmallow?”
“No,” he said, so seriously, so disgustedly, she had to laugh despite the warmth of gratitude clogging behind her eyes as tears.
“Well, you are, and I appreciate it. I’ll even buy you lunch.”