Page 18

CHAPTER 18

HEL

T he first thing Frost said to Hel when she climbed back into the car, having loaded the shopping into the boot and handed him two takeaway bags, was, “I Googled Creekside Lodge.”

“Okay,” Hel said, distracted as she put her seat belt on.

“Do you know what the top review said?”

Hel shook her head. She didn’t know for sure what it said, but she had a good idea, as the hotel didn’t have the best reputation in the area. But it was cheap and close to work.

“It said I wouldn’t let my dog stay here.” Frost read out from his phone screen.

“Oh.” Hel pulled out of the parking spot, keeping her eyes on the road. If she met his piercing green gaze, she was likely to say something stupid like ‘I’d love to stay in your spare room,’ and ‘If you could walk around in that singlet, that would be great.’ Although she hoped it was a clean one, as the one he was wearing was pretty gross.

Then, she would get time to examine his tattoos. Maybe he would show them to her, like he tried to while high, maybe—Hel put the brakes on her runaway thoughts.

Nope, she would not be examining his tattoos or muscles, as she would not be staying at his house.

“This person said they got fleas, and the one after said it was actually bedbugs.” Frost continued reading, unaware of her internal inappropriate thoughts.

Hel blanched. “Did you say bedbugs?”

“Yeah. Hang on, let me check a few more. Bedbugs, bedbugs and more bedbugs reports.” Frost scrolled through the reviews.

“Bedbugs,” Hel repeated. She wasn’t staying there if they had bedbugs.

Her mind whirled. The other hotel was an hour away. It would be annoying but not a deal breaker, she could do that commute.

“You’re trying to work out what other hotel you can stay at rather than accept my offer. Aren’t you?” Frost sounded amused.

Hel opened her mouth to deny it, then decided to be truthful. “Yeah.”

“You would be doing me a favour if you stayed. I’ve proved I’m a liability alone.” Frost’s voice almost sounded hopeful.

She was a little surprised when she found herself saying, “Yes. Thank you. If you really don’t mind. It would be amazing to stay until Clara’s cottage is free. I hope it won’t be too long. She said it should be before her wedding.”

“It’s fine. You can stay as long as you want.”

“You shouldn’t say that. What if I’m a terrible housemate?” Hel joked.

“You forget I’ve lived with other hockey players.” He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Some of those men are feral. If you don’t chew your toenails when sitting next to me while we watch TV, then you’ll be better than several of my previous roommates.”

Hel shivered involuntarily at the thought of sitting next to him, watching television, eating dinner, and examining his tattoos. Dammit. That derailed fast. She tried to hide her errant thoughts and not let the blush she knew was there out by making vomiting noises instead.

“Ewww. No.” She thought about the toenail chewing for a moment. “Although, I’m impressed by their flexibility.”

“He did a lot of yoga, and to be honest, I was too. It was disgusting, but seeing a six foot four man, who weighed over one hundred kilograms, merrily chew his toenails was weirdly fascinating.”

“What I’m hearing is you don’t mind toenail chewing,” Hel said, her tone serious.

Frost mimicked the vomiting noise she had made, which caused Hel to burst into laughter, giggling as she said, “Okay. Ground rules. I won’t chew my toenails, and you can kick me out any time. No hard feelings.”

“Deal,” Frost said and held his hand out to her.

She took one hand off the steering wheel and shook it, trying to ignore the sparks that flew when her skin contacted his calloused palm.

“Sit down.” Hel pointed at the dining room table.

“I can help.” Frost hopped toward the kitchen.

Hel rolled her eyes. ‘You’re still drunk, and you’ve not long had surgery. Please sit down. I can find the plates and glasses.”

Frost didn’t sit down at the table. Instead, he leaned against a chair so he didn’t have to balance on one leg and began to unload the takeaway bags, laying the food out.

Hel sighed. “You’re very stubborn.”

“I know!” Frost carried on with what he was doing.

When they sat down to eat together, Hel expected it to be awkward. After all, they barely knew each other. But it wasn’t. The conversation flowed easily between them.

“Maggie is my younger sister. She married into money and now insists on being called Margaret.” Hel used her poshest voice when she said Margaret.

“Oh, right,” Frost said, putting on a fancy voice as well.

“The hilarious thing is, it’s not her actual name. Maggie is on her birth certificate, and she hates it. But I always remind her that at least she wasn’t named Ethel. My parents are lovely people, but their taste in children’s names was abysmal. Ken, Ethel and Maggie. What were they thinking?”

“It sounds like Maggie got the best of the bunch,” Frost chuckled.

Hel raised an eyebrow but otherwise kept her expression blank. “Are you saying my name is terrible?”

She watched him squirm until he eventually blurted. “You said it was terrible, and you threatened to kneecap me if I used that name.”

Hel stared at him. Had she threatened to kneecap him? It definitely sounded like something she would say.

“In the pub the first day I met you and when you were introduced to all of us in the locker room,” Frost supplied.

“Shit. Yes. I did!” Hel was shocked that he remembered.

“Have you actually kneecapped anyone?” Frost asked innocently.

“No. I haven’t kneecapped anyone. But I did once flush a boy’s head in the toilet.”

“Okay,” Frost said slowly. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“He deserved it. He spent the whole school year calling me ‘old lady Ethel’. He began a trend, and everyone else started doing it,” she growled at the memory, which, even after all these years, still annoyed her.

“And you held his head down the toilet.” Frost’s lips tugged up at the corner, but he managed to keep a straight face.

“Yeah, with a little help from Ken. It was a sneak attack when he wasn’t expecting it.” Hel shrugged nonchalantly but couldn’t stop a slightly evil giggle from escaping. Bradly Harris had deserved to have his head stuck down a toilet.

“And he stopped after that.” Frost bit his lip, clearly to stop the laughter she could see bubbling up inside him.

Hel nearly reached forward to touch his lips, her hand lifted, but instead, she grabbed her glass and took a sip of her water.

Clearing her throat, she continued the story. This time, she avoided looking at his face, instead speaking to her glass.

“Yeah. He’d had a wee and hadn’t flushed. I threatened to tell everyone he drank pee and loved it.”

“You are ruthless.” Frost’s laughter finally escaped.

Hel grinned and raised her eyebrows. “Don’t call me Ethel, and we’ll be great housemates.” A little thrill ran through her when she said the word housemates.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Frost promised.

A massive yawn broke free from Hel. “I am so sorry. It’s been a long week, and I have to get up for work tomorrow. Do you mind if I head to bed now?” It was only nine-thirty, and she was exhausted.

“Sure. That’s no problem. I should too. I need to sleep the last of this booze off.” Frost winced as he moved at the table. “Before you do, can you do me a quick favour?”

“Sure,” Hel agreed.

“My leg is killing me.”

“Right.” Hel frowned. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

“I don’t want to become the idiot I was earlier and turn to booze in the middle of the night if I can’t sleep. Could you possibly take all the alcohol out of the house and lock it in your car so I’m not even tempted.” Frost looked embarrassed.

“Of course.” She nodded.

“Thanks. I know you want to go straight to bed. I’m sorry I have to ask this.”

“That’s not a problem. I needed to go to the car anyway.” Hel was about to stand up when her eyes locked on his, and she froze.

She expected him to look away, but he didn’t. He gazed right back at her. She examined his green eyes. They looked tired, with circles under them and the start of crow’s feet tugging at the corners.

The tension thickened, and Hel’s heart began to race. She couldn’t take enough air into her lungs. She wanted to look at him all night. She wanted to move closer to him. She wanted—. Hel dropped her eyes to her hands, which were twisted in her lap.

“Which room will I be staying in?” she muttered.

“Mine is the master bedroom, it’s first on the left at the top of the stairs. The guest room with the en-suite is opposite.” His gravelly voice didn’t make it any easier for her to breathe, and she resolutely didn’t look at him as he spoke.

“Thanks. I’ll take the grog out to my car and grab my stuff.” Hel leapt to her feet and began to walk toward the kitchen. She needed to take the alcohol and get some air.

“What shift are you on tomorrow?” Frost asked.

She hesitated but still didn’t look back at him. “The early. I’ll need to be in at eight.” Hel groaned. She wasn’t a morning person and hated the early shift.

Frost must have heard her groan as he laughed and said, “You’re not an early bird?”

She huffed and turned back around to face him. It would be rude to keep talking with her back to him. This time, she made sure she didn’t make eye contact. Her gaze locked on his lips—nope, that wasn’t any better. She settled for a point next to his head, which meant she wasn’t tempted to look at the tattoo snaking up his arm and over his left shoulder. Or look at his biceps, which flexed and relaxed in a very appealing way.

Hel hoped her voice sounded normal to him when she answered, although she detected a slight squeak. “No. It’s my weakness. I make plans to wake up and have plenty of time to eat breakfast and mainline coffee. But then I start to snooze the alarm and inevitably don’t have time to eat.”

“Is there food at work?”

Why was he asking her all these questions? She needed to go outside to settle her racing heart and let the flush she could feel building fade.

Taking a slow, deep breath, she replied, “Not that I have time to buy. I’ve eaten an embarrassingly large number of chocolate bars from the vending machine for breakfast. I imagine it’s a little different to the morning routine of a professional athlete?”

Oh my god, why couldn’t she stop talking? She needed to get away from him, and instead, she was admitting to a chocolate addiction and asking about his diet, which she was sure was a lot better than hers. Sometimes, her mouth ran away from her.

Frost chuckled comfortably, seemingly unaware of her inner turmoil, “You’re not wrong. I have a nutritionist, and the team I played for had catering we could access whenever we wanted. You burn so many calories training and playing, it’s very necessary. You eat the wrong food, and you flake out.”

“Yeah. I can imagine. Slightly less of a performance environment in the Emergency Department. If you took our sugar and caffeine off us, the whole place would fall apart.” A massive yawn split her face. “And now, I really do have to stash your booze and go to bed.”

“Okay,” Frost replied.

Hel gathered all the bottles of booze and ferried them out to the car. She would drop them over to Clara’s and put them in their wine cellar for safekeeping.

When she was done, she walked back through the house and said goodnight to Frost without even looking at him.

His reply of, ‘Goodnight,’ echoed after her as she climbed the stairs.

At the top, Hel forced herself not to even look at his room. She entered the guest suite, dropped her bag onto the floor and firmly closed the door.

Hel groaned when her alarm went off, and she reached out for her phone. Nope, nope, nope, nope. It was not time to wake up. It couldn’t be time to wake up.

She had spent far too much of the night tossing and turning, listening to every little creak in the house and imagining it was Frost.

She hit the snooze button on her phone and fell back asleep.

The alarm rang through the air again, and she groaned, “Nooooooo.” And hit the snooze button.

When it went off the next time, she threw her covers back and again fell instantly asleep.

The fourth time the alarm went off, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat there groggily. Running her hand through her wild curls, she checked the time on her phone.

“Shit,” she grumbled loudly. It was seven fifteen, which left her twenty minutes to get ready for work and leave the house.

Hustling, she dashed into the bathroom, had a quick shower and got dressed into her hunter-green coloured scrubs. When she checked her phone again, she had five minutes to get out of the house and still be on time for work.

She grabbed her work bag—which was currently a reusable shopping bag, as her nice one was now ash from the fire—and tiptoed out of her room, closing the door gently and creeping down the stairs.

“Morning,” Frost called from the kitchen.

Hel screamed in surprise and dropped her bag. Her plastic water bottle—again, her nice one was gone—rolled out and across the floor, disappearing under the sofa.

“Shit,” Frost swore. “Are you okay?”

Hel breathed deeply, clutching at her chest. For some reason, she hadn’t imagined she would see him in his own kitchen in his own house, which was ridiculous as he obviously lived here. And for a second, when she had heard his voice, she thought all the imagining of him she did in the night had somehow manifested him, and it scared the crap out of her.

“Yeah. Sorry. That was a total overreaction.” Hel risked a glance over at him, unsure if she was relieved or disappointed to see him dressed in a short-sleeved t-shirt and track pants.

In her imagination, during the night—while she should have been sleeping—she walked in on him without his shirt on. He strolled over to her, looked down at her, and said—. She put the brakes on the thought but couldn’t control the slight flush rising on her cheeks.

Crouching down on the floor, she peered under the sofa and tried to reach her water bottle, but it was too far away. Huffing in annoyance, she got back to her feet. She would have to buy a new one at work, which was irritating when she needed to save her money to replace all the things she had lost that insurance didn’t cover.

“What went under the sofa?” Frost hopped over to her, much steadier on his crutches than he had been the previous day. In fact, without alcohol in his system, he made it look easy.

Hel averted her gaze from the way his muscles bunched and stretched with every step. “My water bottle.” She shrugged, no point in getting upset. “I’ll have to grab another one at work.”

“Hang on. I have a spare one.” He turned his back on her and hopped back into the kitchen.

“Thanks. That would be great.” Hel followed him, sniffing the air, and her stomach grumbled when an amazing smell of cooking bacon wafted over her.

She was instantly jealous. He would be sitting down to a nice breakfast, and she would have to buy a chocolate bar from the vending machine.

“No problem.” He threw a grin over his shoulder at her. “Although I hope you don’t mind the Burra Wombat’s logo, as it’s all over everything I have.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Hel tried to keep her eyes away from where his t-shirt rode up when he reached into the cupboard above the kitchen bench.

Tried being the operative word, as she failed dismally and stared at him from behind, okay, she ogled him. She totally ogled him.

“Here.”

Hel jumped in surprise when Frost spun around, holding a navy drink bottle out to her, which, as promised, had the Burra Wombat’s logo on. She attempted to hide her embarrassment at having been caught staring by making a joke.

“It’s weird, isn’t it, for the team to be ‘The Kookaburra Creek Wombats’? They should have stuck with one or the other and not had both a bird and an animal. It’s a bit weird, it’s—.” Hel bit her tongue and reminded herself to stop talking.

‘Yeah,“ he said. “To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about it. Team names make very little sense usually, so I nod and smile.”

Hel gazed at him. She wanted to stand and talk to him longer but needed to go to work.

“Thanks for this.” She reached out and took the bottle, being careful not to touch his hand, as she didn’t think her already overtaxed nerves could handle it.

She glanced at her watch and swore. She needed to leave now, or she would be late.

“I really appreciate it.” Hel filled the bottle quickly from the tap and strode out of the kitchen to grab her work bag.

“Wait a second. You haven’t got your breakfast or coffee.”

Hel stopped and turned back to face him. She was sure he said he made breakfast.

“You said you weren’t a morning person, and I am. I figured I’d make you breakfast as I wasn’t doing anything else.” Frost smiled tentatively at her.

Hel blinked at him a few times without saying anything.

“You don’t have to take it if you don’t want it.” Frost’s smile faltered, and he sounded unsure.

Hel blurted, “No, I want it.” She stepped back into the kitchen. “What is it?”

“It’s not exciting, sorry. It’s just a bacon sandwich.” Frost shrugged apologetically.

“You made me a bacon sandwich?” No one, apart from her mum, had ever made breakfast for her.

“Yeah. I made one for myself too. I don’t know how you take your coffee, so I’ve left room for milk and sugar.” He gestured to the reusable mug sitting next to the wrapped sandwich. “And you’re free to say no thanks, but I’ve made up a big cous cous salad to have later. It’s cooling in the fridge. Did you want to take some for your lunch?”

Hel answered immediately, “Yes. Please!”

She had also had far too many lunches, which were something out of the vending machine. Okay, it was a chocolate bar too. Thank goodness she enjoyed running, or she would be the size of a tank. Actually, that reminded her she needed to go and buy some new running shoes, or she would go insane from no exercise.

“Great.” Frost swivelled around to a different cupboard, balancing on one leg, grabbed a Tupperware container, and then hopped across to the fridge without bothering with his crutches.

“You’re a lot steadier today,” Hel observed.

“Yeah. I balance on thin blades for a living. I’m usually pretty steady on my feet when I’m not drunk.” A frown crossed his face. “I guess I should say I used to skate for a living. Man, this is going to be difficult to get used to.”

“I’m sorry.” Hel checked her phone and frowned, she wished she could stay and talk about it, but she needed to go to work.

Frost noticed the direction of her gaze. “Anyway, you don’t have time for me to complain this morning. You need to leave for work.”

He took a delicious-looking bowl of food out of the fridge and put a very generous helping into the plastic container.

“Oh, no. That’s way too much. You won’t have enough for yourself.” Hel stepped across to him and peered down into the bowl to check how much he had left.

“It’s fine,” Frost reassured her.

Hel wasn’t convinced and tried to put some back. “No really, this is so generous of you. I can’t take all your food.”

Frost placed his hand over hers, gently pried the spoon out of it, and put the lid onto the Tupperware. “Hel, it’s for you. I’m going to be home all day. I can have something else with the salad. You don’t have that luxury.”

They gazed at each other for a long moment before Hel whispered, “I’m going to be late.”

Frost murmured back, “Yes.”

They held eye contact until Hel broke it and stepped away from him. “See you tonight.”