Getting Lucky (10 page)

“What kind is that?”

“Crazy.”

“Argh.”

He finally gave her a full smile at that. “Okay, let’s go, Looney Tunes.”

The crazy theme was gonna have to go. But TJ seemed more the show-versus-tell type of guy. “Where?”

“To the house. Enough getting your energies all over my dock.”

“Just one more thing,” she said, stepping close.

When he didn’t step away from her, she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She moved to his side. He simply watched her out of the corner of his eye. As if he was sure she was about to do something he wouldn’t like.

That might be true.

His injured shoulder was in front of her, with the four tiny scars that were freshly healed marring the otherwise beautiful tattoo. She reached up and touched one. He flinched, but she didn’t think it was from pain.

She flattened her hand and laid it on his skin. “Scope?” she asked. Clearly whatever he’d had done had been done arthroscopically versus cutting him open.

“Yeah.”

“Rotator cuff?” she asked. He was immobilized with a sling but the muscle tone of the shoulder was really good for a repair like that.

“Bone spur, some arthritis,” he said. His voice was a little rougher now.

So they’d just debrided the area, smoothing the bone and tendon where wear and tear had roughened it, causing increased friction and pain when he moved. She rubbed her hand over the tiny scars. “How long ago?” It had to be at least two weeks based on how healed the incisions were.

“Three weeks.”

She frowned. “You’re still in the sling?”

“Still hurting like a bitch and doc doesn’t know what to do.”

Hope put her other hand on his shoulder too. His skin was so hot. Or maybe she just felt really hot touching him. It was a shoulder. An injured one at that. She was a nurse. She’d seen thousands of shoulders. Touched thousands. Even some attached to really good-looking guys.

Her hands had never shaken and her heart had never pounded while touching those shoulders.

They were now.

“What have you tried for pain?” she asked. She kept her eyes on his shoulder. She could feel him watching her, and for some reason, she didn’t want to meet his gaze.

Hope moved her hands over his shoulder, massaging the muscles, moving the scars.

He cleared his throat. “All the over-the-counter stuff. Ice, heat. Anything and everything.”

“Nothing stronger than ibuprofen?” she asked.

“Can’t do it,” he said. “Makes me goofy.”

She smiled at that. She’d kind of love to see him goofy.

“You think I’m a pain in the ass now?” he asked. “You should see me on morphine.”

She finally looked up. “Pain in the ass and goofy aren’t the same thing.”

He met her gaze. “I lose my inhibitions. It could go either way, depending on the situation and who you are.”

Hope licked her lips subconsciously when his gaze settled on her mouth.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt subconscious. Dang, she didn’t like that. “So you say whatever you really think?” she asked.

“Among other things.”

“Like if you thought someone reminded you of a capuchin monkey, you’d just tell that person?”

Then the most devastating thing happened. TJ Bennett grinned at her. Up close. With her hands on his body.

She almost had an orgasm right then and there.

“Holy crap.”

“What?”

She realized she’d spoken out loud. She shook her head. “I guess I lose a few inhibitions when you smile at me like that.”

His grin faded, but the heat in his eyes flared.

Now when his gaze went to her mouth, all she could think was,
Holy hell, yes, right now
.

He blinked, took a deep breath and asked, “You have inhibitions?”

Okay, so maybe not right now. She chuckled. “Not many.” She’d continued to massage his shoulder as they’d talked. “You need to get out of this sling,” she said.

“Doc says if my pain is still bothering me, I should rest it.”

She nodded. “I’m not saying you should throw hay bales around.” She tipped her head. “Do you actually throw hay bales around?”

He almost smiled again. Almost. “Yes.”

“So you shouldn’t do that right now, but you need to start moving it. That would help.”

“Actually, your hands on me seem to help.”

Her hands stopped rubbing. She didn’t take her hands off him though. “See?” she asked softly. “Maybe having me distracting you isn’t all bad.”

There was that hot flare in his eyes again. “Is that all that is? Distraction from the pain?”

She shook her head. “No. Scar tissues can penetrate deep, even from small incisions. It’s important to move them to heal everything around them.”

She didn’t miss the fact that all of that was a pretty good metaphor for emotional scars and healing too. And she was pretty sure TJ caught it as well.

She put the pad of her finger against one of the marks and moved it side-to-side, sliding the skin and the tissue underneath. “See? Moving it gently a little at a time doesn’t hurt and helps with healing.”

He was watching her when she looked up again.

“Having you move it feels good.”

Maybe he’d let her move him gently toward other healing. Keeping her gaze on his, she leaned in and put her lips against the scar. She resisted licking the letter B. Barely.

He sucked in a quick breath.

“There, that should feel better for a while,” she said.

She stepped back. TJ was a tough guy. Stubborn, sure of what he wanted and what he didn’t, protective, suspicious and wounded. If she was going to help him, she’d have to go slow and gentle. She could do that. Because not doing anything at all, just like with his shoulder, was only going to hurt him in the long-term.

She took another step back before she put her lips on skin in other places. Like those abs. Damn.

Because if she did that, TJ would think she was using sex to get something more from him. She was going to have to tamp down her urges to jump him. Because she wanted to jump him. For no other reason than the jumping.

“I have some other stuff that can help,” Hope heard herself say.

She sighed internally even as she made the offer. But she’d promised herself that she would embrace her mother’s approach to things, and that meant more than her approach to a good time in Sapphire Falls with a hot farmer.

She really was committed to giving her mom’s approach to life a try. And she couldn’t argue with a lot of it. Melody had not only been happier than anyone Hope had ever met, she’d also been healthier, physically and mentally, than the majority of the people Hope had run into. Granted, Hope was a nurse, so that meant she spent a lot of time around people with health issues of all kinds, but if she was honest about her mom—and she was really trying to be more honest about her mom—Melody had clearly had some things figured out.

Besides, TJ had been trying Hope’s form of medicine—surgery, heat, cold, rest, medications—and it wasn’t working. He was hurting and she had an intense desire to help him. Almost as intense as the desire to run her tongue over his abs. And that was very intense.

“What kind of stuff?” he asked. Again suspicious.

She rolled her eyes. She was going to get past that what-are-you-up-to wall he’d constructed so high and wide against her gender. “Some teas that can help with inflammation and healing. Some creams that can increase circulation in the tissues and help with the pain.”

If Hope could figure out what to put in the cream.

Melody had always made everything at home from scratch. Hope had her mother’s recipes, but the instructions for her concoctions were mixed into her journal along with poems, song lyrics, notes and thoughts, drawings, people’s names and seemingly random dates. Oh, and the recipes weren’t always labeled.

Still, it was cream. It’s not like she was going to have him eat it. It wouldn’t
hurt
him and could maybe help. She knew very well that the placebo effect was a real thing. If she sold it and he believed it, he might feel better even if she messed up the mixture. And she’d gladly rub it in. At least that would feel good. To TJ too.

Melody would be so happy. She was probably dancing wherever she was, Hope thought. She and her mother had gone round and round about the body and what it took to heal. Melody’s natural methods versus Hope’s Western-medicine approach.

But no matter what, Hope couldn’t deny that she hadn’t been sick much as a kid. And when she was feeling under the weather, her mom’s soup, tea and essential oils did help.

“Do I strike you as the tea type?” TJ asked.

She smiled at him. “Do you really want to know what type you strike me as?”

She was fine with telling him that she found his uptight, distrustful and grumpy outer layer nothing but a challenge, and that she was quite a fan of him without his shirt on.

He started to reply but then apparently thought better of it. He shook his head. “Probably not.”

She chuckled. He was also kind of a chicken. She knew that he knew where her thoughts had gone.

“I’ll get some stuff together when we get back to the house,” she said. “I should have most of the ingredients in the camper.”

Her mother had any number of vials and bottles and jars in a big wooden apothecary chest that had always sat in the corner of their kitchen. It was a handmade, hand-painted box with flowers and trees and butterflies on it. It was done in a myriad of colors and it had been as much a fixture in Hope’s life as the wooden table and chairs she and her mother had used for every meal and every important project or talk in Hope’s life.

Hope hadn’t even considered not taking the box with her. The thing held eighteen small glass bottles, four big glass jars and had eight drawers. Hope was actually excited to open it up and play. She loved the hand cream and mud facial masks she made for herself and the cleaning solution her mother had made for household cleaning. How different could medicinal cream be?

“You have the ingredients in the camper?” TJ repeated, disbelief in his tone.

“Yes. Hopefully. Or I’m hoping I can find what I need here.” Her mother hadn’t traveled with the more common things like lemons or vinegar or honey since those could be fairly easily found wherever she was.

“You’re going to
make
this cream?”

She laughed. For some reason, TJ Bennett and his skepticism amused her. It wasn’t as if he was the first skeptic she’d ever come across. Hell, she’d been one of the skeptics for much of her teenage years. But she enjoyed ruffling him. Something about that felt right. She wanted to ruffle him, make him think of things in a new way, open up his mind.

Like she was opening hers to new things.

Looking at him now, with all of that hot, tanned skin and those glorious muscles, she thought that her mom really had been on to something—new adventures were all around, it was simply a question of if she was going to embark on one or not.

“I’m going to make this cream,” she said. “Nothing like homemade from scratch with plenty of TLC added in.”

His eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’m the crazy one.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m going to let a hippie girl I just met rub some mystery homemade cream all over me.”

Rub. All over.
Those were nice words.

“I can definitely make a cream for that too,” she said, dropping her voice just enough that he would know exactly what she was talking about.

He didn’t look confused, that was for sure. “Massage cream for all over the body, huh?”

“There are several essential oils that act as aphrodisiacs and that can increase sexual pleasure.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Funny, I’ve never felt the need for essential oils to have a good time.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

There was a long, heated moment between them, and for a second, Hope thought he was going to kiss her.

But again, his restraint was remarkable.

That or he was really bad at reading
her
energies. Because they were saying
I’m all yours
.

“Maybe we should stick to my shoulder.”

He didn’t add
for now
but Hope decided to believe it was implied. “Hey, I’m all for rubbing whatever of yours I can get.”

He blinked and she almost regretted her words. She didn’t want to scare him off. She really did want to help him with his shoulder.

The idea that the big, tough farmer with the emotional barricade firmly in place could be scared off was amusing, but Hope definitely sensed it. He was drawn to her, but he was still sure it was a bad idea to do anything about it.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he finally said.

Now it was her turn to blink. Not only was he not scared off, he’d given a sort-of flirtatious comeback. She was making progress.

Progress toward what exactly?
she asked herself. But she wasn’t sure she could, or should, specifically answer that. She wanted to help him. His shoulder hurt—she could do something about that. His heart hurt too, but what was she going to do about that? What did she
want
to do about that? Maybe she wanted to fix that too.