Nicole Helm - Too Much to Handle Read Free Page A

be happy. Not even a little.
    Oh, isn't that nice, dear. Have you been to visit your brother? I lay flowers on his grave every day.
    "You okay?"
    She looked up to find Henry studying her. She forced a smile. "Yup. Just thinking about the unpleasant task of cleaning all this up."
    "I can handle it. It was the best dinner I've had in ages. I'll clean everything up."
    That was Henry, always cleaning up messes, even if they didn't belong to him. But she wasn't interested in that. She wanted to give him something. A little something, like he gave her.
    She gathered up her plates and took them to the sink where he was already starting to work. He took them from her, rinsing them in a quick, methodical manner before placing them into the dishwasher.
    His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and there was a streak of something white across his forearm, a scrape across his knuckles. She wanted to run her fingers over both. Then maybe kiss the scrape better.
    Then maybe kiss everything better.
    She should move. Maybe gather more of the dishes she'd left haphazardly about his counters. But she didn't. She stood next to him as he pretended she wasn't, while he carefully loaded the dishwasher as though his life depended on the proper organization.
    When he got halfway through, he sighed and finally looked at her. She flashed her brightest smile as if it was completely normal to lust after someone loading the dishwasher.
    She knew the exact moment when his gaze changed from frustrated to something else. The frustrated she could recognize. This other look was less familiar. Some kind of study, but it had more consideration in it than his frustration.
    So, she didn't say anything, didn't move, because consideration was something she wanted to encourage, and Henry was like a scared animal. One little flinch and he'd hide.
    "You have…something in your hair." He hesitantly reached out, as if touching her hair might burn him if he handled it the wrong way. Gingerly, he brought the strand of hair clumped together by pasta dough in front of her eyes.
    "Oh, that." She started to pick out the crusted dough while watching him carefully, watching for that consideration to grow. "I always get pasta dough in my hair."
    He was still staring intently at her hair, and her stomach did a little flip. This was not friendship staring. This was pervy hots staring. Mmm.
    "Why don't you pull it back, then?" he finally asked, scowling as he went back to attacking the dirty dishes.
    "My hair looks terrible up. Stupid big ears. Half of why I quit dance. Those awful buns," she joked.
    He looked at her like she was crazy. Yes, she knew that look well, too.
    "You always look beautiful," he said, as if it were some indisputable fact.
    "Beautiful?" Henry had called her beautiful. Even though she had been pretty sure he was attracted to her, those words, that compliment, so easily said, with his eyes on hers…
    Oh, she was sunk. She leaned forward, but he stepped back and cleared his throat.
    "I didn't mean… I just…"
    "I've never been called beautiful before. Gorgeous once. But the guy was trying to get in my pants. Is that what you're trying to do?"  Please, please, please.
    "No!"
    "Hmm."
    "You should head home, Ellen. I'll handle the mess."
    "Nope. You clean, I clean, goose." She was sticking by his side until she could get a more satisfactory answer to the getting into pants question.
 
 
 
 

Chapter Four
     
    Ellen was sitting next to him. He'd lost track of whatever was happening on some movie she'd found on TV that was apparently "so good."
    He couldn't concentrate beyond the fact her leg was pressed against his—no matter how many times he tried to inch it away. She just kept plastering to his side.
    Someone was dancing on screen and Ellen sighed. "Remember when you came to my dance recital at Moore?"
    "Yeah." He did. Vividly. Too vividly. She hadn't visited home much those two years away at her first college. But, when she'd asked him to come to a