Page 5 of Guarded By the Lumberjack
The fact that thinking of another man touching her has jealousy boiling my blood is completely beside the point. Beside the point-- and inappropriate.
I take my frustration with myself out on the second pizza as I attack it with the cutter.
"No." Penny laughs softly, as I take a seat across from her. "I started gardening."
Chapter Three
Penny
Sitting at the chunky, wooden table, I chew on the frozen pizza while I look around at the kitchen. It looks like something out of magazine. Or my vision board. It's not just huge, it's filled with state of the art appliances and enough work space for a team of chefs to prepare a banquet for forty.
Such a shame that the man is subsisting off of frozen entrees with a kitchen like this. The fact that I feel a zing of adrenaline at the thought that he must be single isn't lost on me though. Even if his wife didn't cook either, certainly a woman would fill his freezer with fancy meals from one of those subscription services-- not cheap, frozen pizzas that are barely more than cardboard. Right?
"Gardening."
Calvin repeats my last word like he's testing it to make sure he heard right.
Since the garden is where it started, I figure it's as good a place as any to start the story of why I'm here, wearing a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt that smells like cedar and laundry soap while I eat a pizza that he didn't expect to be sharing.
"One day I just tore up half the back yard. It had been almost a year. I'd gone to grief counseling, I'd connected with othermilitary widows, I'd survived the winter without curling up in a ball and just letting everything end.
"It was spring. The sun came out, the birds were singing, and I was just so angry about it. Like, how dare the world keep turning. So I attacked the fresh grass with a hoe and a shovel. Nine hours later, it was dark outside, I was dirty and tired and sore. My throat was raw from screaming, I was all cried out, and I was standing in a big patch of freshly tilled soil where my yard had been earlier that morning."
I laugh at the memory of it, but Calvin regards me stoically, his thoughts carefully guarded.
"It was cathartic as fuck." I state simply, popping the last bite of my pizza into my mouth and sitting straighter in my chair as if channeling a little of the empowerment I felt that day.
The man across the table from me softens his gaze. Lines at the corners of his eyes deepen with the almost smile that tips up a corner of his mouth behind the gray whiskers of his beard. If I knew him better, I might think I see a trace of blush coloring his cheekbones.
It's been a very long time since I noticed a handsome man.
And Calvin Murdock is averyhandsome man.
I squirm on my chair and give my empty mug a disappointed frown.
"I'm on it. Keep talking." Calvin pops up like he needs an excuse to put space between us, taking my mug and reheating the kettle.
"I woke up the next day feeling good for the first time since Tyler died. I went to the local nursery and bought a lot of plants. Alotof plants." I laugh at that memory too. There had been so many, the nursery had to deliver them because they wouldn't fit in my car.
"Then I learned how to keep them alive. I found working in the garden was so calming, and the plants felt-- I don't know-- life affirming. And then I started making videos."
I don't laugh at that memory. I slump back in my chair and sigh like a deflating balloon.
Calvin notices. His expression grows dark as he sets the new mug of steeping tea on the table in front of me and returns to his seat.
"What happened?"
It's like he senses this is where things started going off track, but unlike everyone else I've turned to for help, the tension that coils through this man's strong body feels protective. He just barely met me, but he's already on my side.
The attraction to him that I'm only just starting to acknowledge for what it is, heats a few more degrees and mixes with something more than mere lust, creating something confusing and uncomfortable. I decide to ignore it and cut the details of my story to how I got here.
"My social media accounts blew up." I blow across the top of my mug to cool the liquid. "I built a following, then a community. Other military widows and widowers at first, more military family members, then it branched out to other people coping through loss.
"I'm not a big influencer or anything. It's only a couple hundred thousand followers across all the platforms. But I get sponsors and make some money off it now..."
I sip.
The tea is a lavender, chamomile blend that seems too delicate for the rugged man keeping it in his cabinet.
