Page 30 of Hand Picked
Mother trucker. That was really not something I should have been noticing at that juncture.
Keep it together, Williams!
“Are you okay? Did you… are you injured? Speak to me.” I pushed Webb flat on his back and knelt in the snow, running my hands over his hard, hard chest and equally hard abdomen.
Focus, Luke.
I couldn’t feel a wound through his jacket, which was good. But when I gripped his wrist, I couldn’t find his pulse, which wasbad.
“Oh, God, don’t die!” I glanced toward the house and the camper beyond it, where my phone was. It felt miles away. “Should I do CPR?”
I studied Webb’s lips for a second. They were good lips. Plush and firm. Kissable.
Not the point! Sweet caramel corn, Luke, think!
I moved my hand over his nose to check if he was breathing—
“Planning to finish me off?” Webb asked, clearly teasing.
I glanced up in horror and found his green eyes wide open… and locked on me.
“No!” I snatched my hand back. “I…”
“Because I have to say, I might have been unkind earlier, but I didn’t actively try to kill you.”
“I’m not trying to—! Wait, were you just pretending—?”
He did some kind of full-body curl that let him stand without using his hands and began brushing the snow off himself. “I’m sorry for earlier,” he said sincerely, “but now you’re sharing the ice cream.”
I forced myself to look away when he dusted both hands over his sculpted rear and got to my own feet less gracefully.
“Son of a bunion,” I muttered, knocking the worst of the snow off my knees. “Should’ve seen that coming.”
“Let’s get inside.” He clomped up the stairs to the front door, swinging his ice cream bag. “We can go over the—”
“Wait!” I cried a second too late.
Webb pushed the front door open… and just like last summer, the entire frame collapsed into the front hall. This time, I saw particles of wood splinter off, and I winced.
“What… the fuck… just happened,” Webb growled, eyes wide as he stared down at his hand, which had been clenched around a doorknob until seconds before.
“There’s a slight problem with the door,” I said apologetically. “I should have warned you, but no one actually comes in this door, because no one ever actually comes out here, and I—”
“This is ahugesafety issue!” Webb exploded, turning on the top stoop to look at me, his teasing, lighthearted demeanor utterly evaporated. “If you’d been behind that door when someone tried to open it, you could have been crushed. Jesus Christ, Luke. I was trying not to bite your head off about climbing up on your portico without making sure the ground around your ladder was stable, but this—”
“Hey! The ladder was perfectly stable when I climbed onto theportico.” I set my hands on my hips. “And it’s none of your—”
“Facts are facts,” he insisted, talking over me. “You were up on the portico, and the ladder was down on the ground, so clearly—”
“Because I had the ladder balanced on top of the portico so I could reach the roof, jerkface!”
I clapped both hands over my mouth and stared at him with wide eyes. “I’m so sorry. Name-calling is never okay. Please accept my—” I babbled in horror.
At the same time, Webb exploded, “Are you fucking serious? The fucking roof? Are you fuckinginsane?”
Okay, so clearly Webb didn’t share my concerns about insulting language.
“I wasn’t doing it forfunsies, Webb Sunday!” I said defensively. “I was trying to get a tarp up there before it snowed again and caused even more damage. I had no choice.”
