Page 16 of Hiding for the Holidays
He stops what he’s doing to look up at me again. “No, Clara. I’m upset you’re hurt.” He pauses a moment, his warm green eyes watching me closing. “You swear this was an accident.”
“I promise. I flicked it open, and my hands were too close together.” He nods, seeming to accept my answer as he finishes wrapping my wound.
“I don’t like seeing you hurt,” he whispers. I want to ask why, but decide that I would feel the same way if I saw him injured. I’ve only just met him, but I quickly realize that there is something about him that draws me close. All three of them have the same quality. Although each of them made me feel something different, something that made me feel seen. And for once I didn’t hate it.
“Alright, all done.” He lifts my hand and kisses my fingertips, giving me a smile as he grabs my hips and lifts me down, just as easily as Asher lifted me up there.
“I don’t suppose you like coffee, do you?” he asks, moving to the tray of drinks.
My eyes widen, and I try to stop myself from drooling as I stare at the pretty Christmas-themed cups.
He laughs and points to each as he names them. “Peppermint mocha, regular coffee, hazelnut latte, and a dark chocolate coffee.”
I lick my lips in anticipation. “Are you sure I can have one? I don’t want to take someone else’s drink.”
“I got four so there would be one for you. I wasn’t sure what you'd like though. I surprise the guys with different drinks most days; we like to change it up.”
“Really? So do I! I thought I was the only crazy one!” I say, overly excited about the fact that I wasn’t the only person who liked to try different flavors every day.
“I don’t know how people drink the same thing all the time,” he says, shaking his head. “Now, which one do you want?”
“I don’t know. I can’t decide,” I tell him, eyeing all the cups eagerly.
“Alright, I’ll pick for you. Here, try the hazelnut.”
“Thank you, Leo.”
“You’re welcome, shortcake.”
I give him a mocking glare as I open the spout and take a small sip. My glare fading away to utter bliss. “Mmm, that’s so good, thank you!”
I open my eyes to find him smiling at me. “Come on, you can help me deliver these to the other two.”
I take another sip and follow him out into the gym.
So far this morning, I haven’t spent a dime; I got to ride on a motorcycle with Asher, my hand has been properly bandaged, I got to have coffee for the first time in over three weeks and it wasn’t even nine a.m. Maybe working here wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Chapter 7
Asher
“What exactly am I looking at?” I ask, my head tilting as I look at the page again, trying to figure out where she’s going with this.
“These aren’t the actual materials; I just quickly sketched this out to give you an idea of where I’m going with this. It’s a proposal.” Clara says from where she stands nervously in front of us. The three of us are sitting on random pieces of gym equipment as she said the office was too small and she wanted us in the center of our space when she gave us the proposal.
“And, just to be clear,” Grant says, pointing at the page in his copy, “these three stick figures are supposed to represent the three of us?”
“That’s right,” she says with a nod.
“You really think having the three of us on a flyer is going to help market this place?” I ask, trying not to let my doubt show. She obviously worked hard on this proposal.
“Let me explain it a different way,” she says as she paces in front of us. “The three of you are ex-military. That has a lot ofdraw, especially in a small rural town like this. Men admire you and want to look like you, and women, they’ll desire you and want to be near you.”
“I don’t think I want a bunch of gym bunnies around,” I say skeptically.
“Yeah, I’m not sure we want women in here drooling over us.”
I look up and see her listening to us intently, her head nodding slowly. “Okay, that might actually make things easier.”
