Page 55 of The Backtrack
“You can still smell it, huh?”
“What can I say, it’s a gift.” He placed the nail slightly away from the last one and hammered again.
Damon rubbed his arm across his forehead to remove a thin sheen of sweat. With the rain came thick and dense air as the sun was swallowed up by gray clouds. “Not to be rude, but Pearl promised a cold beverage in exchange for my services.”
“Oh.” Sam wiped her palms against her shorts and made for the front door. “Lemonade? It’s not homemade, but itisfilled with sugar and other terrible things.”
“I love terrible things,” Damon said as he casually rolled up his shirtsleeves so that his biceps were fully exposed.
And frankly, Sam was surprised. His arms were the kind of chiseled that didn’t just happen from helping people lift wooden panels up to a window. No, Damon clearly put some effort into himself, and Sam felt compelled to acknowledge those efforts.
“You have muscles, Damon.” Her hands rested on her hips as she admired him. “When the hell did that happen?”
He dramatically stretched his arms over his head and leaned from one side to the other, just showing off. “I’m not a piece of meat, Sam. Please don’t harass me in the workplace.”
“You’re right. Of course you’re right.” She turned to go into the house but looked back, maybe lingering for a beat too long.
“My lemonade, with ice, please!” He mimicked her hands on hips pose and she swore he flexed his arms just to tease her.
When Sam walked into the house, Pearl was perched at a window that hadn’t been sealed yet. She watched Damon with a blissed-out expression.
“It’s okay, Grandma.” Sam placed her hands on Pearl’s shoulders and squeezed. “The calm before the storm stirs something up in all of us, doesn’t it?”
“Close this window last,” Pearl suggested. Sam stifled a laugh as she went into the kitchen to grab two glasses of icy lemonade.
There were twelve windows to cover, and while each window became easier the more they fell into a routine, the work was tiring. Sam’s arms ached from the strain of holding the wood in place, and then swinging the hammer. She’d tied her hair up into a messy ponytail, and Damon’s arms gleamed with sweat.
As they picked up the last piece of wood paneling, a fat rain drop landed on her forearm, then another on her nose. “You sniffed out the rain, all right.”
“I felt them, too.” Damon squinted as he glanced up at the gray-black rain cloud above them. “We just need to get this last one up and we’re done.”
“Right.” Sam hoisted the panel higher and lined it up with the window. She handed Damon a nail and the hammer, and he got to work nailing down his side.
The rain started to come down harder, less of a dribble and more of a steady pour. Sam’s shirt clung to her, and the wisps of her hair tangled in soaked strands around her face. Damon handed the hammer back. She grabbed a nail with her wet fingers and lined it up with the wood. She nailed it in fine, but decided to give it one last swing for good measure. Maybe the sudden downpour made her sloppy, but as the hammer swung toward the nail, she knew even before it made contact that her aim was off.
The hammer landed on her thumb, and she instinctively sucked the tip of it into her mouth to try to stop the overwhelming pain. “Shit!” she exclaimed. When Sam looked up, there was Damon—hovering with concern.
“Let me see.” He took her finger and rotated it. Rain ran down his hands and onto hers in cool rivers. He stroked his thumb across the top of hers. “Can you bend it?”
She bent the finger but felt a surge of pain.
“It’s not broken,” he said. “At least there’s that.”
And then, as unexpected as the biceps, he brought her finger to his mouth and placed a soft kiss over the throbbing red part of it. He held her hand in his, his mouth on her skin, and neither of them moved.
Sam blinked rain out of her eyes and looked at him. He stared back and a kind of heat flashed through her. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and she heard him suck in a breath.
“Damon,” she said so low she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her.
“Sam,” he replied.
He held her fingers inches from his lips, the lips that had just brushed against her skin.
“What is this?” Her voice was cautious, not wanting to break the spell of them.
“I don’t know.” He took her hand and placed it on his chest. His heart thudded wildly and she flexed her fingers against him.
He rested his forehead against hers and his free hand traced up her rain-soaked arm, then back down again. Sam wanted nothing more than to keep going; she really did. But she couldn’t do that to Damon or Marissa—not again anyway. She wasn’t going to be the other woman, no matter how badly she wanted him.
