Page 26 of Call Me Yours (Lodestar Ranch #4)
CHLOE
Olives were amazing. Take out a tooth-chipping pit, replace it with a perfectly uniform red pepper, and boom. Fucking genius.
“What are you doing up?” came a sleep-roughened voice behind me.
I yelped in surprise and banged my elbow on the open refrigerator door as I whirled around.
The jar of olives slid from my fingers, bounced once against the linoleum tile but thank god did not shatter, olives and briny juice erupting from its open mouth like a volcano before it spiraled across the floor, rolling to a stop at Steven’s slippered toes.
He looked at it for a long moment, so I looked at it, too. It was kind of pretty, actually, the way the pale green liquid glistened in the refrigerator light. I did not like the cold, sticky feeling of the juice on my bare feet, however.
“Did you eat half a block of cheese last night?” he asked, still staring at the jar, as though one thing had everything to do with the other.
“Which cheese?” I hedged.
“The cheddar.”
“Yes.” I had also eaten the feta, but he hadn’t asked specifically about the feta, so it seemed unnecessary to share that information. “It turns out that the only time of day I do not have morning sickness is three a.m. My body has traded anxiety for hunger, apparently.”
He looked up. “You’re hungry?”
“Starving.”
The olives mocked me from the floor, plump and green and shiny, their adorable red pimentos winking at me like a dare.
I had only eaten two. I bit my lower lip.
Steven kept a pretty tidy house. Sure, Junior had free rein of the place, but how dirty could the floor really be? It looked fine from here.
“Chloe.” Steven’s voice sliced through my thoughts. “You’re not actually thinking about eating olives off the floor, are you?”
I huffed. “Until you find yourself famished and nauseous at the same time, twenty-three hours a day for six weeks, don’t you dare judge me.”
“For fuck’s sake, princess,” he growled.
My hand was inches from an olive, but I paused.
It was the damnedest thing, the way my heart bounded hopefully at those words, like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the ring of a bell.
Because I knew . Whatever stupid, inconsequential problem I had, if Steven grunted those words at me, it meant he was going to fix it. And hell yeah, I was going to let him.
Maybe he thought he needed to run to my rescue because I was incompetent, but I knew I wasn’t.
My whole life, I had taken care of other people.
My brothers, my mom, even my stepdad. Between mom’s lupus diagnosis and the financial strain of medical bills on top of farm bills, and the emotional upheaval from losing my dad and then my grandfather, all of us had to give one hundred percent. And we did, every last one of us.
But I had learned early on that my hundred percent went a little further. I was older than my brothers, healthier than my mother, and had more time than my stepfather. I could give more.
And so I did.
I wasn’t incompetent. Not even now, when exhaustion had settled so deeply into my bones that I couldn’t remember what it felt like not to be tired.
I took my prenatal vitamin every single day.
I hadn’t had a sip of caffeine or alcohol since the positive pregnancy test. I might not have six months of savings socked away like those finance dudes were always yapping about, but I paid my bills on time.
I gave every client my full attention and only puked between sessions.
I could take care of myself, and—mostly—I did.
But sometimes, I really didn’t want to. Sometimes I just wanted to be coddled.
My parents took care of me, truly they did, but they never babied me.
If there was something I could do for myself, I was expected to get on with it and not waste time fussing.
They would never have gotten me an iced mocha when I was hungover or pushed the cart around the grocery store when I was tired.
And if they saw me standing in a puddle of olive juice, contemplating eating food straight off the floor, they’d hand me a rag and expect me to use it. That’s what my parents would do.
But not Steven.
Because Steven growled “For fuck’s sake, Chloe,” and the next thing I knew he wrapped his arms around my bare thighs, the curve of my butt resting on his forearm, and hoisted me out of the mess and onto the clean countertop.
It felt symbolic somehow, like it meant something bigger than the act itself, and maybe I should pay attention to that. But pregnancy hormones had a way of making everything seem more vital than it really was. Steven wanted me out of the way and didn’t trust me to get there myself, that was all.
I shifted my weight from one butt cheek to the other, tugging my minuscule sleeping shorts back into place. “You want some help?” I offered half-heartedly. I didn’t really want to help. I wanted to sit there on the pristine countertop and watch shirtless Steven clean up my mess.
He shook his head as he tossed the empty olive jar into the trash can. “You’re barefoot.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m already sticky.”
He frowned at my feet and shook his head again, his annoyance clear in the tick of his jaw. “I’ve got it.”
But he didn’t start in on the floor right away.
Instead, he unlocked the fridge and pulled things out of it.
Steak, butter, green beans. My stomach clenched and rumbled.
After setting a pot of water on the stove to boil and placing a cast-iron pan on the burner next to it with a fat slab of yellow butter in the center, he finally grabbed a handful of paper towels and went to work sopping up the olive juice.
Hot damn. Steven multitasking cooking and cleaning might be the sexiest thing I had ever seen.
After dumping the mess in the garbage, he ripped off one more paper towel, dampened it under the faucet and wrung out the excess, and pivoted toward me.
“Foot,” he grunted.
I kicked out my right foot. He caught it, encircling my whole ankle with his large hand, and held it up to his abdomen while he wiped the stickiness from my foot. My whole body flushed. I could feel heat rising off me like steam.
He let go of my ankle and tapped my left knee. “Other foot.”
I gave him my left foot and he wiped it clean, his forehead furrowed like the task required his full concentration. The damp towel was a cold shock against my heated skin. I wondered if I felt hot to his touch, if he knew I couldn’t catch my breath.
I wondered what it would feel like to touch him, too.
So I put my hands on his shoulders to find out. He sucked in an audible breath and froze, not moving a muscle as I slowly, lightly, skated my hands over the boulder-like bulge of his shoulders, across the ridgeline of his traps, and settled them in the crook of his neck.
Wonderful .
That was how it felt to touch him. Soft and hard and wonderful.
His eyes dipped to my mouth and dilated slightly when I licked my lower lip before rising to meet my gaze.
“Chloe,” he said quietly, my name half-plea, half-warning. He exhaled a long, shuddering breath and then captured my wrists with his hands, gently but firmly prying them from his body. “I don’t want to be something you regret.”
I wanted to reach for him when he stepped away, pull him back to me, whisper lies in his ear. I won’t regret this. I forgive you. It’s all right . But we both knew the truth.
“You have to stop being so nice to me,” I teased lightly, a pathetic attempt to regain the equilibrium between us. “It confuses my brain. Sometimes I forget I hate you.”
“I don’t,” he said in a voice like barbed wire.
His back was to me as he seasoned the steak and placed it in the sizzling pan. I was glad for that, glad I couldn’t see his face when those words spiked out of him, and glad he couldn’t see mine when they cut me.
He cooked the steak to a perfect medium rare. The green beans were crisp and tender. He sat with me at the table while I ate every bite. We talked about Stevie and the other pigs, and the weather, and whatever else crossed our minds.
And the next night he made me chicken and sweet potatoes.
The night after that it was pizza.
I wondered what it said about him that he got up at 3 a.m. to make me dinner, with that jagged barbed wire between us, ready to cut the person who dared to cross it.
I wondered what it said about me that I let him.