“Well, hello, boys. You must be Captain McTavis’s friends.” She stopped a few feet away from us. “I’m Tasha O’Hare, his physical therapist.”
All of the guys got to their feet—albeit a little slowly—and introduced themselves. I watched, silent, as Tasha shook hands and greeted each one by name.
“I have to say, this yard looks incredible.” She turned to look out over the lawn. “I mean, I didn’t see what it was like before—”
“Oh, I have pictures.” Jake stepped up, slid his phone from his back pocket, and flipped his thumb over the screen until he found what he wanted. “Check these out.”
Tasha pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head and peered down at the photos. “Oh, wow. Huh.” She finished and handed the phone back to Jake. “Yeah, now I’m even more impressed.”
“It was mostly Derek.” Owen spoke up. “I mean, yeah, we helped out a little, but this has always been his baby. It was cool that he could get back out here. You must be good at your job.”
Her cheeks pinked up a little at the compliment, and I waited for her to look at me ... but she didn’t. She hadn’t acknowledged my presence the entire time she’d been here, and it was starting to piss me off. It was as though she and my friends were talking about me, like I wasn’t even standing among them.
“Captain McTavis is an excellent patient, and he works very hard. He’d had such good care all along that I actually did very little. I just provided some guidelines and ideas.” Finally,finally, her eyes flickered to mine. When she looked at me, I felt like the rest of the world had vanished, and it was hard to remember that it hadn’t, that my friends were still here with me.
“Well.” Shaw coughed a little. “Jake, didn’t you say something about needing to get home? And Dee’s making dinner for Sandra and Colin tonight, so I should be there to give her a hand.”
They began to move as a group, each of them giving me a pat on the back or a punch on the arm as they passed. Owen and Max gathered the empty beer bottles and chucked them into my recycling bin on their way out.
“Well.” Tasha stood with her hands on her hips, angling her body away from me as she watched my friends climb into the two cars. “I sure know how to break up a party.”
“It wasn’t a party.” I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to clarify that. “They just ...” I frowned. “Owen saw what I was doing and stopped to lend me a hand, and I guess he must’ve texted the others and told them, too. They wanted us all to do something together again, like old times. But I worked out here. I really did.”
“Derek.” Tasha stepped closer to me and laid her hand on my arm. “I know. Good Lord, even if I wasn’t inclined to believe you, all I have to do is look at you and see that you did.” She smiled, and my senses went into overdrive. “How do you feel?”
I considered her question, taking a quick assessment of my body. “Uh ... good. I mean, I’m tired, and yeah, I’m a little bit sore, but probably not much more than I would’ve been before.” I raised my left leg experimentally, bending it at the knee, waiting for the same old shot of pain to streak through my hip. But it didn’t come.
“The leg’s all right?” She fell back into her therapist role, watching me critically. “Did you have any problems today at all?”
I opened my mouth to tell her that no, I hadn’t felt any pain beyond what I’d reasonably expected. But before I could, I saw my opening, my chance to say something that had the potential to make clear exactly what I was feeling.
“I did have one persistent problem.” Keeping my eyes steady on hers, I reached for her hand, where it still rested on my arm. “I was afraid you weren’t going to show up.”
She stilled, all of her freezing in place as though she were afraid to even breathe. But she didn’t pull away, and I decided that was a good thing. I plunged ahead.
“All weekend, I was looking forward to the possibility of seeing you ... here, at my house. I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.”
“Derek.” Her voice was filled with a mixture of emotion: worry, trepidation, warning ... and maybe a little tiny thread of regret.
“I already know what you’re going to say, and maybe you’re right.” With my thumb, I drew small circles over the back of her hand. “Maybe I’m just interested in you because you’re my therapist, because we’ve been working so closely together, or maybe there’s even some fancy shit psychological word for what I’m feeling. Maybe if I met you under other circumstances, there wouldn’t have been a click. Maybe if I’d met you before my accident, we never would’ve looked twice at each other.”
She lifted one shoulder in a small shrug, and I saw her throat work as she swallowed. Knowing that she was struggling here, too, gave me the courage to keep talking.
“But the thing is, we did meet when and how we did, and while I get that your job, who you are and who I am might make something between the two of us dicey, I also think we’d be damn fools to let a whole lot of maybes and could-bes keep us from finding out.”
I slipped my fingers underneath the palm of her hand and lifted our two hands, twining our fingers. Tasha didn’t tug away from me, even when I gently pulled her a little closer. The eyes she raised to me were luminous, even if they were a little clouded with uncertainty. I didn’t want to push her if she felt uncomfortable.
Dipping my head until my lips were close to her ear, I whispered, “Should we find out, Tasha?”
For a moment, she didn’t respond. And then with a soft sigh, she laid her free hand alongside my cheek, nudging my face up and standing on her toes to slant her mouth across mine.
As we touched, my heart sped up until I was sure she could feel it pounding against her chest. I’d expected her to be tentative and cautious, but instead, her kiss was hungry, full of need. With a groan that started deep in my abdomen, I slid my hands to her ribcage, pressing her body closer to mine. I could feel her small breasts against me, the nipples hardening through her clothes.
It had been so long since I’d wanted a woman this way, so long since I’d held anyone in my arms. My instinct was to scoop her up and march inside my house, where we wouldn’t come up for air for at least twenty-four hours. But I knew that I was moving too fast and thinking too far ahead. I had to take baby steps, because Tasha was too important to me to rush. I needed her to understand that I wasn’t looking for a one-time hookup. What I needed from her was so much more than that.
Still ... for now, I was holding her. Her arms had snaked around to my back, where she gripped my T-shirt, still damp from the day’s sweaty work. And when I traced the seam of her lips with the tip of my tongue, she opened for me, humming in pleasured approval as I explored the inside of her mouth.
Even though I knew we weren’t going to take this any further today, I couldn’t help letting my thumbs tease the undersides of her boobs, just to give myself the memory of how she felt. With a quick intake of breath, she wriggled against me, and fuck, I was so tempted to cup her sweet tits and play with those hard nipples. I wanted to suck the rosy buds into my mouth and hear the sounds she’d make as I raised her ever higher.
