Page 5

CHAPTER FIVE

KIP

Biting my lip to stop myself laughing, I passed her the bag I’d packed and unclipped the little dog who’d been asleep on her bed from its leash. Apparently while I’d been away, she’d realized what sort of stuff I was going to find at hers, and she was now sitting with her hands over her eyes.

Before I could say anything, she squeaked, “Say nothing.”

I tried. I really tried not to, but on my next breath out I started laughing so hard that I almost dropped to the floor.

“Your panties say Ministry of Magic on the back of them,” I wheezed.

“It was a printing mistake. They were meant to put it on the front,” she snapped back, making me laugh even harder.

“And the glittery pig dressed up like Harry Potter with Hairy Porker ones?” I needed to know how and why they existed.

“They were a gift.”

“The Little Hairmaid ?”

“I get a lot of gag gifts,” she mumbled.

She had at least nine pairs of panties like that, and then there were the t-shirts. When she got ready for bed tonight, she’d be sleeping in one that said: Not a basic witch, just a total bitch .

And then there was the other thing…

Seeing that I was still laughing, she sighed. “You found it, didn’t you?”

“I know not of which you speak,” I choked out this time, lying badly.

Yes, in fact I had found what she was talking about, and it was that bad that I knew exactly what she was talking about.

She also knew that I was lying.

Under her panties had been a Tickle Me Elmo vibrator. At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I’d knocked the switch on the bottom of it and it’d started moving violently in my hand scaring the shit out of me. It wasn’t until I’d found the box that went with it that it’d all clicked for me. Apparently, the vibrator had five speeds and it claimed it would ‘ tickle the hell out of your tickle spot ’. Who came up with that, I didn’t know, but as someone who’d loved the character as a kid… it’d been hilarious, but traumatic.

“I’ve never used it,” she whispered, still hiding behind her hands. “I took it out of the box and felt like I’d violated the poor guy.”

I could understand that. I’d only held it and I felt the same way. Still, it was too funny to drop. “If you say so.”

“I haven’t,” she hissed, her hands finally dropping back into her lap.

Biting down on my bottom lip, I hit the screen of my phone to play what I’d found for this moment while I was putting things in her bag. The sounds of Elmo giggling and telling whoever he was with to tickle him played loudly in my living room making the blush on her cheeks deepen.

I only just managed to catch her as she launched herself at me, and fell down onto my back on the ground, making sure she didn’t put any weight on her feet.

She might have been trying to tickle me under my arms and down my sides—something I hated—but she was laughing at me at the same time so I rolled with it.

And that’s when it hit me. This woman was different to any of the ones I’d met before now. She made me laugh, she didn’t get angry when she was embarrassed, I actually looked forward to spending time with her, I never knew what to expect but I knew I’d end up feeling good after it… she was like Craig’s Meg.

Apparently needing ‘open foot surgery’ meant that Ashley needed Pizza to ‘get her strength back’. So, regardless of the fact that I normally followed a strict diet, I was currently sitting on the floor with her, watching Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw with her and getting what she called ‘pizza wasted’.

“I don’t know, if Idris Elba came up to me—bad guy or not—I’d probably just jump him. In fact, if I close my eyes and listen to him and Jason Statham arguing, it’s like soft porn with their accents,” she told me, throwing her crust back into the box.

Normally, that would be a problem for me. I had issues with people touching my food, and that included a half-eaten crust knocking against a piece of pizza. Looking at the slice in question, I waited for the nausea that normally hit me when this happened, but nothing happened.

“Are you okay?” Ashley asked, bringing my attention back onto her.

“Yeah, sorry. I have this thing about things touching my food, and I was waiting for my normal reaction when your crust touched that slice of pizza,” I pointed at the slice, not seeing the point in lying about it.

Following where I was looking, she winced. “Sorry. I didn’t even think.”

Waving my hand and making a point of picking up the piece, I leaned back and took a big bite.

“Normally I’d feel sick, and the fact that a kitchen of people I don’t know touching the food with their hands to make it would hit me, but I’m okay.”

There was silence from her, but then she reached across and picked up a napkin from the stack on the coffee table and discretely spat the food in her mouth out into one. “Gross!”

Seeing what I’d described to her clearly in my mind now, I followed suit and then grabbed my bottle of water and gargled with it.

“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have shared that with you,” I admitted. “It’s also why I usually make all of my meals. The only reason I was okay at the charity dinner was because I know for a fact that the catering company are almost religious about wearing gloves and hats when they prepare and serve the food. I’m kind of a mess about it, to be honest. I never know where their hands have been, and all I can picture is bacteria and shit.”

Staring sadly at the leftover pieces of pizza, she muttered, “You’ve ruined my favoritest thing in the world. I don’t think I’ll ever eat pizza again, and it’s a main food group.”

Bursting out laughing at how disappointed she sounded, I got up to go to the kitchen to get her something I knew would make her feel better, and tore one of the crusts up for her dog to eat having been reassured earlier he wouldn’t have the same reaction as he did with cupcakes.

He was as close to a toddler as a pet could get. He got bored with walking easily and would demand to be picked up as soon as it happened, refused to sit on the floor, only drank filtered water, and had issues with boundaries like closed doors while you were going to the bathroom, but I kinda liked the little guy.

Getting the surprise out of the freezer, I nabbed two spoons and went back to where she was engrossed in the movie again. Not saying a word, I sat down beside her and lifted the lid on the box, licking my lips at what was inside it.

While she’d been in the car waiting for me to pick up some stuff from the store, Craig had picked up a Baskin-Robbins birthday cake and dropped it off before we’d gotten back. I knew for a fact they had enough hygiene rules there to appease my phobia, so I was going to make up for the pizza fail.

I’d only just touched the top of the ice cream with my spoon when she gasped. “You dirty little bluebird. If you’ve got the holy grail in your home, you announce it the second someone walks through your door.”

Setting the box between us on the floor, I passed her the other spoon. “Pizza wasted was a fail, but this kind of wasted is a go.”

When she just blinked and looked back down at it, not digging in like I’d expected her to, I explained, “I used to work there when I was in high school. Gloves are a must for everyone, and their hygiene policy is strict, so it’s all good.”

The grin that she gave me left me momentarily stunned, and then she was digging in, getting a huge spoonful and groaning when she bit into it. “Msfo ood!”

“I’ll take that as it’s good,” I snickered, eating the chunk on my spoon.

Going back to watching her movie, we ate the cake in companionable silence, giving me time to think over my Ashley Wilkes epiphany from earlier.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how little I actually knew about her.

“Hey, Ash, how old are you?”

“Twenty-six, why?” she asked, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. Eyes that I only just realized had different shades of blue and green in them. The main color was definitely a mid-blue, but there was a green ring closer to her pupil. They were unusual and gorgeous, and totally perfect for her.

“Just wondering. I’m twenty-nine,” I told her, wondering if she already knew that.

Shrugging, she put her spoon on top of a napkin and leaned back against the couch. “Do you run over kittens?”

Shocked by the random question, it took me a second to answer. “Uh, no?”

“Laugh when someone gets hurt? Think that world famine is amusing?”

“Negative to both.”

“Then what relevance does age have to anything?” she asked, sounding like it was a simple conclusion.

I loved how relaxed she was around me, and the fact that she was in my home now totally didn’t suck.

“You’re definitely a one in a million, Ashley Wilkes.”

Smiling widely at me, she winked. “And don’t you forget it. Plus, you’re not exactly normal yourself, Kip Sutherland.”

She had a good point there.

Deciding now was the best time to address the pink elephant in the room, I asked, “So, where are we going on our date?”

She didn’t know that I’d already paid the charity for her bid. There was no way I’d let her foot that bill, especially after she saved me from the she-devil. I’d also been raised to pay for dates. This was a different situation, but I’d bent the rules and paid anyway.

I had a good idea where I was going to take her, I just wanted to see if she had any ideas herself.

When she just blushed and shrugged, I said, “Leave it with me and I’ll make the plans.”

I knew just where to take her, and as luck would have it, we’d have access to wheelchairs there so she wouldn’t have to walk.

Three days later…

Glancing out of the corner of my eye at the simmering bundle of fury sitting with her arms crossed in the passenger seat, I drove toward the place I was taking her for our date.

Why was she pissed at me? Not because I wouldn’t buy her what she wanted, not because she didn’t want to go out, not because she wasn’t getting her own way or anything Missy-like, but because she’d just found out I’d paid the charity for her. It was the opposite to anything I’d experienced before, but I’d learned Ashley liked to pay her own way.

That said, fifty thousand dollars was a league of its own.

Something else I’d noticed about her—she wasn’t unreasonable with her anger. She might snap or react, but it wasn’t vicious, and she got over it quickly.

Which is what she did right then.

“I’m sorry,” she sighed, dropping her hands down into her lap. “I really appreciate you doing that for me, but it just seems like cheating, you know? Plus, I was meant to pay it for you, not you pay it for me for you.”

Grinning, I stopped at a red light and looked over at her. “I get it, but it was a lot of money. I donate to charities every year, and this one’s a huge deal to Seattle so it’s an honor to pay it.”

Seeing that the light was on green, I pulled away and indicated to turn onto the street that would take us to where our date was starting.

“I was going to ask Hayden to loan me the money,” she snickered.

Laughing, I pulled into the parking lot of the hospital Meg worked at and looked for a spot. “I’ll bet he’d have loved that.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to tell him for a while what the money was for,” she mumbled, realizing where we were. “Do you have an appointment? I can stay in the vehicle if you need me to.”

Pulling into a space that was close to the entrance, I shut the engine off and turned sideways in my seat.

“Nope. This is where the date starts. This is Seattle Children’s Hospital and Meg works on the cancer care floor looking after teens. There was an issue about a year ago where our PR rep received a request for us to visit the kids and ignored it. Craig found out, and five of us came down to meet the kids and hand out stuff. We met a great kid called Nicholas who was a footballer and totally into Meg,” I chuckled, feeling the sadness I always felt when I thought about the young man who’d died way too early. “Anyway, meeting the kids is important to us, so we schedule visits in our free time and alternate floors each time we come. We’re back on Meg’s floor today along with six other players.”

I watched as she pulled her trembling lower lip into her mouth and bit down on it slightly. “I lost a friend to cancer when I was sixteen. She got leukemia and her parents were always away doing things, so she hid how ill she was and wasn’t diagnosed until it was too late,” she swallowed audibly. “I love that you guys do this.”

A knock on the window behind me showed Craig standing there with a huge grin on his face.

“You ready to help us out?” I asked her, hoping she’d say yes.

“You bet your big bad ass I am.” It wasn’t until I was lifting her out of the car, that her predicament occurred to her. “Uh, how am I going to get around the hospital?”

Her right foot had healed quite well, but she still needed to be careful putting weight onto it, and her left foot still had another four days before the stitches came out, so I’d arranged for a wheelchair for her.

Not saying a word, Craig jogged to where he’d stashed it, shook it to open it up, and then wheeled it back. Before she could sit down in it, though, we put a Seahawks blanket over it.

“Hayden would spit nails if he saw this,” she giggled, wiggling to get comfortable.

“Well, he’ll love this even more,” Craig drawled, pulling a jersey over her head before she could stop him. As soon as she had it on, I took a picture on my phone and sent it to him.

His reply came as we were entering the elevator.

I was thinking of getting a puppy. Now I’ve got something to clean his shit up with, thanks!

Bursting out laughing, I showed them both what he’d said.

“You stole my idea. I was going to send him that photo,” Ashley said through her chuckles.

“I like you, Wilkes,” Craig patted her shoulder. “I wasn’t sure I’d get along with someone who’s got Sounders blood in her veins, but I’m making an exception for you.”

“She’s also got Miami Dolphins blood,” I pointed out, referring to her dad.

Miming zipping up his lips and twisting a key in a lock at the side of his mouth, Craig went back to watching the numbers light up in the elevator as we passed floors.

Crouching down beside Ashley, I laid the plan out. “Okay, we never bring PR or press with us to these visits. They’re between us and the kids only. If the kids, their families or the hospital decide to publish photos to their websites or social media that’s cool, but it’s not a press opportunity for us.”

“I love that,” she breathed.

Smiling at how genuine she sounded, I continued, “The other guys brought some merchandise with them. We’ve also got a standing order with a bakery near here that delivers special cupcakes when we visit, and we order sandwiches and chips so that we can sit down and really spend time with them all. Meg’s waiting for us and will direct us to different rooms for kids who can’t get up and spend time in the lounge. After we see them, we’ll head to the lounge and chillax with the rest of them. You okay with that?”

Her grin showed exactly how great with it she was, but her, “Totally,” sealed it.

Glancing up at Craig, I saw his mouth twitch as he looked down at Ash, and then read the look clearly in his eyes when he looked back up at me.

Yeah, she was fucking awesome!