Montana Actually Read Free Page B

board, sending the paint can flying.
    Two seconds later, Josh was wearing lavender paint.

Chapter 2
     
    G ood manners almost made Katrina splutter “I’m so sorry,” but self-preservation generated on the back of fear stopped her. Her heart was hammering so fast she could hear it whooshing in her ears.
There’s a stranger in my house.
A very tall, broad-shouldered man whose height and breadth blocked her only exit. A man with a menacing two-day growth of dark stubble.
    Think!
Boy was too old to protect her, so she plunged her hand into her tool belt, her fingers gripping the plastic handle of the screwdriver. “Don’t move. I’ve got a gun.”
    Boy barked with all the menace of an aging biker.
    “So why the hell did you incapacitate me with paint?” Incredulity dripped from his words as paint dripped off him onto the floor.
    His eyes were scrunched tightly shut, and he frantically tore his shirt off over his head, exposing a chest with well-developed muscles that bunched and rippled with the movement.
    It was poetry in motion.
    First rule of safety: Don’t ogle the house invader.
    He pressed the shirt to his eyes. “God damn it. This stings like a son of a bitch.”
    “Don’t do that.” The nurse in her overrode her fear that he might have arrived with intent to harm her and she jumped down from the ladder. Grabbing the tail of the shirt, she whipped it out of his hands. “You’ll make it worse. Don’t move and I’ll help you.”
    “Yeah, like I’m going anywhere when I can’t damn well see.” His voice rose, edged with pain. “I need water. Get me to water.”
    “The bathroom’s downstairs.”
    “Of course it is,” he muttered as if the bathroom’s location was yet another inconvenience on a very long list of many. “Take me there.” He shot out his arm.
    She stared at his broad hand. A hand that wide should have chunky fingers, but his were long and tapered with neatly cut nails.
    “Hello? Miss? I’m going blind here.” His voice combined a thread of anxiety with absolute, authoritative control. “Let’s go.”
    “Sorry,” she said, snapping to attention. She slid her hand into his and gripped it firmly, reasonably confident he was too distressed to be of any danger to her. His palm wasn’t calloused like a cowboy’s, but it wasn’t soft and smooth, either, and it utterly consumed her smaller hand. “There are ten stairs.”
    He immediately grimaced. “The fourth’s a bastard. We’ve already met once and it wasn’t pretty.”
    “Did you hit your head?” she said, thinking of the barely legal height clearance, which conveniently wasn’t an issue for her but was for most everyone else. “You need to duck.”
    “You think?” His exasperation rolled into her as he stooped down in preparation.
    Ignoring his grumpy rhetorical question, she talked him down the stairs and into the small bathroom where she turned on the water. “It’s probably best if you tilt your head under the shower head.
    Before she could direct him, he’d kicked off his shoes, turned toward the running water and stepped into the shower. “Fuck!” A shudder ripped across his body. “It’s freezing? Are you trying to kill me as well as blind me?”
    “I never told you to get in,” she said, her annoyance with him edging out her guilt about the paint. “It takes a few minutes for the hot water to kick in.”
    “You’re a sympathetic woman, aren’t you?” he muttered sarcastically.
    A retort rose to her lips but she cut it off.
Treat him as a patient. “
Let the water flow over your eyes to rinse out the paint and everything will feel better.”
    To her surprise, he did exactly as she instructed. Water sluiced over his face, around the dimple in his chin and then ran in lavender rivulets across his chest and down his flat abdomen before sliding in under the waistband of his chinos. Within moments, his pants were soaked and clinging to him like a second skin. The wet cotton outlined perfectly his