Our eyes were still locked, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he could read my mind. Maybe he knew where my thoughts were going, because his gaze fell to my lips and stayed there a beat too long.
Ty cleared his throat. “Let me go get some firewood for you. Here’s your phone.”
He stood. For a moment I forgot all about the pain in my tailbone and focused on the pain in my chest instead.
“Thank you,” I whispered as I took the phone from him. The moment he shut the front door, I called Lincoln. The ice was already helping to dull the pain.
“Wow, that was fast. You really are getting good at doing things on your own,” Lincoln said.
“Well, apparently your husband doesn’t think so,” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t dying, or Lincoln would be sending Brock over here next.
“What do you mean?”
I sighed and tried to adjust some, and gasped.
“Kaylee, what’s wrong?” Concern laced Lincoln’s voice.
“Hold on, give me a second.” I let the moment of jarring pain slip away before I spoke again. “Brock sent Ty over here to check and make sure I had enough firewood. Ty scared me, I nearly fell, then I pushed him, and then I really did fall on the steps. He thinks I bruised my tailbone.”
“Oh, no! Do you need me to come over?”
“No, I’m on the sofa, and Ty gave me some medicine and put ice on it. Apparently he’s bruised his tailbone a time or two.”
“Oh, Kaylee, I’m so sorry.”
I felt the tears burn against the back of my eyes, but I refused to let them spill. Keeping it together, I said, “It’s okay.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine. I just need to rest here for a bit, and then I’ll be back to normal.”
“Brock is asking what’s wrong . . . give me a second and let me fill him in.”
Lincoln relayed everything to Brock as I hit mute on my phone, closed my eyes, and focused on a happy place. A warm beach with a good book, a hot guy rubbing suntan oil on my back. Yes . . . yes, that’s where I wanted to be.
“Mmm, yes, that feels good,” I softly said.
“Did you dial 1-800-We’ve-Got-Porn?”
My eyes snapped open to see Ty standing there with an armful of wood. How had he done that so fast?
“No, asshole, I was trying to picture myself on a warm beach. A happy place, by myself . . . where you’re not there.”
He winked again, and I paused what I was about to say. As a matter of fact, I think I forgot how to breathe.
“Kaylee? Hey, are you there?”
I unmuted the phone and said, “I’m here.”
“Um, Brock just said he didn’t tell Ty to go over there.”
“What? Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. He said he hasn’t even talked to Ty since earlier this morning.”
I raised a brow and looked at Ty, who was currently putting the wood on the little iron wood rack I had bought in one of the cute little stores in downtown Hamilton. Ty had bitched and moaned the entire time he was in the store with me, because we had been sent there originally to find a cute birthday present for his mother. A task I had willingly agreed to help him with until I realized Ty was not a fun shopper. At all.
“Okay.”
“Okay? Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Yep.”
“He’s right there, isn’t he?”
“Yep.”
“Well, isn’t this interesting.”
“Yep.”
“Make sure he gets you all settled before he leaves. I’ll be over in the morning when the snow clears.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
I hit end and studied Ty as he piled up the wood. He had taken off his jacket and was in a long-sleeved black T-shirt that showed every muscle in his arms and back as he stacked the wood. Each time he leaned over, I got an ass shot. I bit my lip and looked away.
Why, dear God above, could Channing not make me feel this way? Why did you have to make my body desire this man? Why!
“Why, what?” Ty asked, making me glance his way.
“Huh?”
“You said, ‘Why?’”
“Oh . . . I, um . . . I mean, why did I have to fall? It’s a terrible time to get hurt. I was going to help Mrs. Kennedy plan her daughter’s baby shower.”
He grinned. “Ever since you planned Lincoln’s wedding, you’ve become sort of the hot party planner in Hamilton.”
I laughed, but I stopped when it made my tailbone ache. “Well, I don’t do it often, but when I do, it’s a lot of fun.”
“Have you ever thought about opening up your own event-planning business?”
I just stared at him. When I once mentioned the same thing to my parents, they both had the same negative reaction—that I wouldn’t be able to run my own business.
It never occurred to them that I actually did own a business, my editing business. I worked on some of today’s hottest-selling romance and historical writers’ manuscripts, yet, in their eyes, they had paid for me to go to college to read books all day. In my father’s voice, I heard, “What a waste of a college education with a degree in journalism. Why you couldn’t get a business degree is beyond me.”
Looking down at my phone, I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s really just for fun.”
Ty went back to the wood, but this time he was building a fire in the fireplace. “You should really think about it, Kaylee. You’ve got the eye for it. I mean, look at Brock and Lincoln’s wedding: it was beautiful, and everything went smoothly.”
I felt my cheeks heat. “Are you actually giving me a compliment, Ty Shaw? I figured you would have some smartass remark about me being better suited to planning funerals and such.”
He chuckled as he lit the fire starters. “That would have been a good one—too bad I didn’t think of it first.”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to smile.
Soon a large fire was going, and I could feel the warmth. It balanced out the cold ice pack on my lower back and tailbone and helped take my mind off the pain I was still in.
Ty stood and dusted off his hands as he looked at me. “Do you want me to make you anything to eat? Some soup or something?”
“Soup?”
“Yeah, do you have any?”
I shook my head. “I don’t.”
“Okay, well, do you have any veggies? Some broth?”
The way he was behaving was throwing me for a loop. “Ty, why are you doing this?” I asked, looking at him and trying to read every emotion that passed over his face. The damn man was good at hiding his feelings. Very good. I was also very intrigued about why he’d said he was sent here instead of fessing up that he had come over on his own.
“Why am I doing what?”
“Being so nice to me?”
He laughed. “As much as you want to think I don’t like you, Kaylee, we are friends. I feel guilty that it was my fault you just got hurt.”
And there it was. He felt guilty because he thought I’d fallen because of him.
I sighed. “It’s not your fault, and you don’t have to stay. I think I can get up now.”
Trying to prove my point, I went to move—and froze when the pain hit me.