I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean, you’d rather not?”
He wrapped a hand around my legs—one single hand—lifted them up and placed them on the pillow he had set on a second stool.
“Cameron,” I hissed. “You really have to stop that.”
“Go ahead and tell me why,” he said, ignoring me and coming to my back. I sensed his head closing in, his chin touching my shoulder. “I’m sure there’s some elaborate reason why I can’t help you to a chair,” his words fell on my cheek. Goosebumps erupted. “Feminism? A Taylor Swift song? Your twelve-step plan to drive me to insanity?”
“What—” The stool moved, with me in it, as I was pushed closer to the island. I felt the hem of the jersey ride up with the change. “Because I’m not wearing any underwear,” I blurted out.
Cameron froze.
He did so for a very loud and boisterous instant, if a moment could ever feel like that. “Oh,” he breathed out, the word falling on my neck. “How I wish you wouldn’t have told me that.”
“You asked the reason,” I countered, because he had.
“I’ll bring you a pair of shorts or sweats.” A long exhale left him, moving away. “After.”
“After what?”
“Breakfast.” He went around the island, threw open the fridge, and looked at me over his shoulder. “Sweet or savory?”
I hesitated for just an instant.
An instant long enough for Cameron to start pulling all sorts of things out. An assortment of fruits, milk, juice, butter, eggs, a few jars of jam, something that looked a lot like overnight oats, cheese, and even ham. Prosciutto, if I wasn’t wrong. And once everything was out, he moved along the cabinets and plucked a pack of sliced bread off a shelf and threw it on the now overflowing island.
I blinked at the display. “Are you like a human squirrel or something?”
“I might also have frozen croissants,” he said, nonchalantly, like he wasn’t confirming that he, in fact, had squirrel tendencies. He went to the freezer, giving me a panoramic view of his almost naked backside in those rather tiny shorts as he leaned down, and pulled out what had to be the frozen croissants.
I gawked at everything before me, including him, brain still fuzzy from looking at his ass in those shorts. I shook my head. “Is this… what you usually have?”
I watched him toggle with the oven controls. “I already ate.”
“Are you expecting anyone for breakfast?” The reminder I was in a soccer jersey and commando underneath slammed right back into me. “If someone is coming, I have to change.” I tried to pull myself off the stool, but my legs were up and he’d pushed me too close. “I need to shower. Get dressed. I should probably go see a doctor to get— Oh God, my car. Is it still at the Vasquez farm? Maybe I could call someone to go pick it up. I don’t know where my phone is. I—”
Cameron was suddenly there, by my side. “Ada, darling,” he said with a smile. A big and soft smile. I was dazed silly. “What you need to do is stay where you are. In my kitchen. Hydrate. Eat breakfast. Then, couch or bed, your pick. The doctor will come see you here. I’ve already called.”
I— What? “Don’t—”
“Tell you what to do? Treat you like someone who had a horrible day yesterday and deserves a fucking break?” He gave me a shrug and placed a plate I hadn’t seen him grab in front of me. “First, food. Then, shower. Then, doctor. Then, whatever else you want. Netflix and chill, or nap until lunchtime.” A mug was produced and set in front of me, too. “I left you towels and a bathrobe in your room.”
Towels. A bathrobe.
My room.
My chest felt funny. “Do you even know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means?”
“No.” The smile returned. “But I don’t really care,” he said, returning to the other side of the island. “You didn’t say if you preferred sweet or savory so here’s all I have.”
“Unless you’re planning on feeding the whole town, I’d say that’s a little too much.”
Cameron glanced at everything he’d set on the island. His hand went to his chest, and he absently patted a spot right above a rose that spanned part of his tattooed pec. I decided it was my second-favorite tattoo. His fingers moved, and I wondered how the skin of his chest would feel to the touch with all that ink. Would it have texture? Would it be as soft and smooth as the arm I’d touched what felt like an eternity ago? I wanted to place my hands on him and—
“You need to stop looking at me like that, love.”
My eyes snapped right back to his face.
Ada darling. Love. That smile on his face again.
I couldn’t keep up.
“I was not looking,” I whispered, cheeks flaming.
“You were, and my ego fucking loved it.” He braced his hands on the island and leaned forward. “Other parts of me, too.”
I thought I choked on my own breath. My gaze started to dip but I stopped myself. No more gawking. Specifically, not under his waist.
A chuckle left him, the sound as distracting as the rest of him. “I’ll grab a quick shower while the oven preheats. Then I’ll get breakfast ready for you before I leave.”
And without so much as a nod from my side, he turned around and walked out of the kitchen, leaving me to my thoughts and a set of wildly inappropriate images of him under the water stream.
Sunday came and went in another blur of naps. And Monday wasn’t all that different. So when Cameron returned he found me exactly in the place he’d moved me to before running out to do some errands: on his larger-than-life couch, clad in an indigo blue bathrobe, with my bad ankle up on a pillow and Willow curled by my side.
He appeared in front of me, his arms full of bags. “What did the doctor say?”
Leave it to him to cut straight to the chase. “You shouldn’t have called and asked them to come. I can move just fine. A house call for a sprained ankle is a stretch.”
Cameron carefully placed everything on the coffee table and ignored my complaint. His gaze returned to my face, his expression waiting, patient. Unbothered. He arched his brows.