Page 16 of Call Me Yours (Lodestar Ranch #4)

CHLOE

This week was kicking my ass and it was only Tuesday.

All I wanted to do was change into my comfiest sweats and eat my weight in olives while bingeing a TV show I had already watched a hundred times.

I didn’t care what it was, I just wanted something familiar.

Something that wouldn’t require brain cells—because mine were currently barely operational—but would still make me laugh.

But no, I couldn’t do that because I had to be an adult and go to the grocery store and buy real food like chicken strips and sweet potatoes, which I had planned to do over the weekend but instead I had napped, lazed around, and napped some more.

That had been delightful and exactly what I needed, but now I didn’t have so much as a box of cereal in my house, and Aspen Springs was not the kind of town that had an abundance of takeout options.

I hadn’t felt this tired since I had first started taking on clients.

Back then, it was hard not to carry the weight of their emotions home with me.

Eventually my brain learned to set emotional boundaries and got into a rhythm.

I loved my work. I woke up every morning with a sense of purpose.

This was what I was meant to do. What I wanted to do. What I needed to do.

And yeah, maybe I needed it a little too much, cared a little too much, and that was why I came home bone-tired every day, and the past eighteen months of working 5 a.m. to noon at Jo’s, and 2 to 7 p.m. at the clinic had finally caught up with m.

. But I also suspected I was coming down with something.

I didn’t feel feverish, but every now and then my stomach flipped around a bit.

I drove straight to the grocery store from work because if I went home first and changed out of my “therapist on duty” uniform, as I liked to call my blazer, embroidered Chucks, and nice jeans, then I wouldn’t leave the house again until tomorrow, even if it meant dining on ice cubes for dinner.

Damn, being an adult sucked.

I rattled the shopping carts, trying to pull one free of the line, but it wouldn’t budge. With a pathetic whimper, I folded over the handlebar, resting my cheek on the handlebar of the attached cart.

“For fuck’s sake, Chloe,” a familiar voice growled behind me.

Well, wasn’t that just perfect. Steven and I hadn’t talked since declaring a fragile truce at dinner last week. He hadn’t even sent me a single animal video. And now here he was, once again right on time to see me at my worst.

I stayed where I was. “Everything sucks and I’m dying.”

There was a pause, followed by the kind of gusty sigh most often heard from parents of rambunctious toddlers. “Move, princess.”

Steven nudged me with his body, hip to thigh to knee, and I sort of oozed aside and braced my back braced against the brick wall of the grocery store while he figured out the shopping cart situation with annoying competence.

“Here you—” Maybe it was the way I was glaring at the shopping cart like it had ruined my life, but his sentence died with another sigh. “All right. One cart. Text me your list.”

“What list?” I asked.

“Your shopping list.”

“I don’t have a shopping list. I don’t do that.”

He looked truly aghast, like I had told him I enjoyed swimming in the creek with open wounds. “Then how do you know what to buy?”

I shrugged. “Vibes. I buy what looks good, things that don’t involve cooking, and throw in some fruits and vegetables. Boom, done.” I looked up at him. “Do you have a list?”

The offended look on his face gave me great joy. “Of course I have a list,” he said. “I’m not here to fuck around, princess.” The glass doors slid apart as he pushed the cart forward. “Just keep your vibes to the back half of the cart, all right?”

I opened my mouth to say something hilarious, but instead found myself struggling to hold back a vomitous hiccup as we passed a pungent garbage can and a wave of nausea rolled through my body. I clawed at Steven’s forearm.

“What—” He glanced down at me and his eyes widened. “Shit—” With one arm looped around my waist, he hustled us out of the doorway and over to the citrus display. “Are you okay?”

The glass doors slid closed. I inhaled the sharp, sweet scent of oranges and grapefruit and my stomach settled. “I think…yes?” I said hesitantly.

His brows pinched as he studied me. “Are you hungover again?”

“No, of course not. It’s just been a long week.”

“It’s Tuesday,” he pointed out.

“Well, it’s possible I’m coming down with something. I’ve been tired and feeling off.”

He put the back of his hand to my forehead. “Do you have a fever?”

His hand was warm, dry, and a little rough. I was pretty sure the surface temperature of my skin had increased by another degree or two from his touch and the liquid feeling I wouldn’t let solidify that I might like that feeling against the bare skin of my hips.

My eyebrows arched, pushing against his knuckles. “You’re the one touching my face. You tell me.”

“I don’t know.” He lifted his other hand to his own forehead to compare. “We’re both warm.”

“Like…feverish warm? Or mammal warm?”

“Huh,” he said, looking perplexed.

I laughed.

He grinned and dropped his hands. “My mom always knew. She’s like a human thermometer.”

“Mine, too. Maybe it comes from practice.”

“That makes sense. I don’t think I’ve touched a lot of sick people. Not on purpose, anyway.”

I shuddered at the thought. “Ew.”

He shrugged. “It’s no worse than a diseased hoof. I’ve seen some nasty shit. I just go into robot mode and do what needs to be done.”

“Having four younger brothers, I, too, have seen some nasty shit. I was never good at robot mode. I did it anyway, but with a lot of internal screaming, and a lot of external screaming, too.” I grabbed a five-pound bag of clementines and dropped them in the cart.

“The vibes want oranges?” he asked. His dark eyes sparked with amusement.

“The vibes don’t want ,” I corrected him. “The vibes are .”

One corner of his mouth hitched up and he chuckled. “I’m not sure any of that was English.” But he grabbed another bag of clementines and placed it in the opposite end of the cart.

I arched a brow. “Is that on your list?” I teased.

He smirked. “The vibes are too strong to resist.”

Maybe he was referring to just the oranges, but the words felt like they were about us, too. Or about me, anyway. Because suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore. His touch on my forehead had jolted me awake like a shot of espresso and I was buzzing head to toe from it.

And that was bad. That was very, very bad.

Because these vibes? These were first-date-I-want-to-get-to-know-you vibes.

I felt giggly . I had no business feeling giggly for Steven.

I had no business laughing and joking around with him, grocery shopping together like a couple.

This was Steven . Yes, I knew he wasn’t the same guy he was a year ago, but so what?

The enemy of my friend was my enemy. That was how friendship worked, right?

Between 3 a.m. texts and grocery store vibes, I had forgotten that.

Steven liked to shop the perimeter, focusing on fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats.

The smell of seafood made me gag again, so he tossed bulk packages of chicken thighs and cuts of steak, and we hustled through to the breakfast aisle, which was where I sourced most of my meals anyway.

I grabbed three different kinds of cereal and a package of apples and cinnamon instant oatmeal.

He didn’t say anything, but I saw him look from his side of the cart to mine and shake his head, so I threw in a box of strawberry frosted toaster pastries as well. He blanched and I grinned.

“I should have known you were a health nut,” I said, laughing.

He gave me a quizzical look as he reached for the round canister of plain, non-instant oats. The tasteless kind. “Why would you have known that?”

“You don’t get abs like that eating strawberry frosted toaster pastries,” I said without thinking, doing an air circle around his abdomen with my index finger. “You get abs like that by working out in the gym for two hours every day and eating nothing but chicken and carrot sticks.”

He looked genuinely flummoxed as he looked down at his midsection. “How do you—You were checking me out.” His head jerked up. “That night in the rain. You were ogling me while I was wet and shirtless.”

“I was not!” I protested. My face felt hot and tingly. Maybe because I was imagining it all over again. Steven, shirtless. The rain literally streaming down the indents between his muscles. “I saw you. I did not ogle.”

His full lips tilted in a sexy smirk that made my belly flutter with something that definitely was not nausea. He reached for the powdered donuts behind me, leaning in so close that his warm breath brushed my cheek.

“You’ve got me all wrong, princess. I have a sweet tooth, and I don’t spend hours at the gym,” he murmured into my ear. Goosebumps broke out on my neck. “I don’t work out. I work .”

Oh, fuck.

I was so wet between my legs that all my feminism slid right out of my pussy.

“That’s, um…” I cleared my throat. “Nice.”

He tossed the donuts on his side of the cart. His lips quirked. “I’m glad you think so.”

God, he was so… smug . Self-satisfied.

“Haven’t you ever heard it’s what’s on the inside that counts?” I scoffed.

All the laughter drained from his face. Shit, I felt like I had kicked a puppy. He turned away, the muscle in his jaw popping. “Yeah, I might have heard that a time or two.”

“Steven—” I tried but stopped. What could I really say? That I forgave him for what happened with James? I didn’t. I wouldn’t hit him with my car, but we were still a long way from forgiveness. And what did it matter, anyway? Even if I forgave him, James never could, and I didn’t blame her.

He steered the cart past me, refusing to look me in the eyes. “Let’s go, princess. It’s getting late.”