“Dani—” I started to warn her that what she was doing was very dangerous, but as I stepped into the room, my bare foot came down on one of the broken ornaments. “Ow!”
Dani spun around, letting go of the angel, which also crashed to the ground, splattering into a zillion pieces. For a second, she attempted to balance, but when I realized she was about to plummet from the stool, I dropped the stapler and dashed toward her as she fell right into my arms. For a moment, I held her there, gazing into her big blue-gray eyes. But then, finally, the pain from my foot reached my brain, and I set her down. “Ow!” I said again, hopping over to the couch.
“Let me see.” Dani perched on the coffee table in front of me and reached for my foot.
I hesitated. She didn’t need to touch my dirty, naked, probably stinky trotter. I’d taken my socks off up in my office this morning, because my feet had still been hot from my earlier run.
“Come on.” She patted her lap. “I’m not a doctor, but I am a mother. I’m trained to handle this.”
Reluctantly, I lifted my leg and set my foot in her lap. As her soft fingers touched my sole, pleasurable, feathery sensations cut through the pain. She leaned in close, and I could feel her warm breath on my skin. Forget massages or warm cups of tea, this was now my preferred method of relaxation.
I let out an inadvertent moan.
“I’m sure it hurts,” Dani said, patting my shin.
Yes, “hurts.” That was the sensation I was supposed to be feeling right now.
“Are there any Band-Aids in this house? And I’ll need a pair of tweezers—”
“I think I saw a first aid kit in the powder room down here, but I’m not sure.”
She shot me a new kind of Dani grin, one that wasn’t all shy looks and wrinkly noses. This grin was calm, confident, and reassuring. “I’ll be right back.” She placed the heel of my foot gingerly on the cold, hard marble coffee table.
My skin liked her hands and her lap much better.
As I leaned back to wait for her, the front door opened, and in came Jane carrying a half-consumed iced coffee. She looked from me to the broken glass on the floor. I noticed for the first time that my blood had formed a trail on the white area rug. The rental company would ding us for that, no doubt.
“What the hell?” Jane asked.
“Dani was putting up the Christmas tree…”
She kept staring at me.
“I heard a commotion down here, so I came to help.”
Dani walked in saying, “I sterilized the tweezers using the stove, so they’re going to be hot—” She stopped short when she saw Jane. “He saved me. I almost fell off the stool.”
“Are you both okay?” Jane asked.
“I’m fine, and he will be.” Dani set the first aid kit on the table next to her, and I placed my foot in her lap again.
I tried to keep my own expression neutral as Dani’s feather-light fingers touched my skin again and carefully extracted the bit of glass from my wound with the warm metal tweezers. She placed them and the extracted shard of glass with a clink on the marble table then moistened a cotton ball with hydrogen peroxide and painstakingly disinfected my foot. Her face was so close that her breath heated the cold patch she’d just cleaned.
I might have moaned again accidentally.
“Almost done,” she said. “I promise.”
Her fingers wrapped around the top of my foot now as she dabbed on ointment and placed the bandage. Then she playfully squeezed my big toe, which sent all kinds of thrills up my spine. “That’s it.”
I reluctantly removed my leg from her lap, and she stood up. “I’ll go get the broom,” she told Jane before leaving the room.
I tried to avoid my assistant’s gaze, but it was too strong, too piercing. I couldn’t not look at it. Jane’s eyes were drawing me toward her. When I finally glanced her way, she whispered, “What did I just walk in on?”
My brow furrowed as I feigned ignorance. “What?”
She nodded toward the door. “You and Dani.”
I rolled my eyes to illustrate my disagreement.
She stepped closer to me. “I thought I sensed something when I walked into the kitchen yesterday.”
“You sensed nothing,” I told her. “I was bleeding, and she fixed it.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Jane said. “Change of topic. How’s the writing going today?”
“Pretty well,” I said. “I’m clipping along.”
“Glad to hear it.” She held out a hand. “Let me help you back to your office.”
She wrapped my arm around her shoulders and helped me stand. On the way to the stairs, we passed Dani, who mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
I winked at her and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
Jane helped me into my chair, and when she was about to leave the office, she said, “You know, maybe you and Dani isn’t a terrible idea.”
“Stop.” I opened my laptop and tried to focus on the scene I’d been working on before Dani nearly fell off the stool.
“You’re the one who’s always telling me you’re not a machine, you need to burn off energy with running and exercise.” She paused. “You know what else counts as exercise?”
“Walking?” I said facetiously. “Step aerobics?”
“Sex,” she said. “You’ve cut yourself off from other people ever since the Comic Con incident months ago. Now you have a nice, attractive, available woman in your house every day…”
“Jane,” I said. “Literally none of this is your business, A, and B, I have a book to write, thanks. I have no time to mess around with any sort of interpersonal nonsense.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Jane slowly closed the door behind her.
I turned to the computer, ready to jump right back in where I’d left off: the smiling, laughing Cassya sharing a drink with the brooding, misunderstood Captain Alyster.
“We shouldn’t be meeting like this,” Alyster said. “My first mate…(gotta come up with a name)…Jay (sure, that will work for now)…thinks you’ll distract me from the objective.”
“What’s the objective?” Cassya asked innocently as she sipped her drink.
“To kill your brother,” he said.
Grinning, I glanced up at the closed door to my office. Nice one, Matt. Didn’t see that one coming. I loved it when a manuscript took me on unexpected journeys.