After the Ashes(22)
“Are you hungry?” she said softly, careful not to startle him if he was sleeping.
He sat up slowly and winced. His alert gaze told her he hadn’t been sleeping. “That felt good.” He drew the bowl closer to him and started eating.
She slid into the chair next to him and concentrated on her stew, hiding her pleasure at his response. Her brothers had claimed she had the healing touch, though she suspected it was just so she’d rub out their kinks.
Her gaze shot to Braddock.
The least she could do to repay him for all his hard work was to rub liniment over his tired muscles. That was exactly what she would have done for her brothers. The idea of touching so much of him tightened her stomach and stole her appetite.
She pushed a cloth covered ceramic bowl toward him. “Biscuit?”
“Thanks,” he mumbled in between bites. He dipped his bread in his bowl and went back to focusing on his food.
She stirred her stew. Suddenly giving him a rubdown meant more to her than it ever could to him. She longed for the bits of closeness they’d shared, laughing in the garden, exchanging a satisfied grin when they had completed the rock border leading to the front porch. Those moments were as rare as Braddock’s smiles. But the connection between them slipped away as quickly as it came, leaving Lorelei wondering if it had happened at all. She would wait, tense muscled, trying to find the right thing to say or do to make the closeness return. Maybe she was so lonely that she imagined a bond that wasn’t there.
“I’m going to rub you down with liniment,” she said as casually as possible.
He raised his bowed head, alert and wary, as though he had just smelled danger.
Lorelei returned to stirring her stew. She’d never get a bite past her tight throat. “It’s going to smart a little, but you’ll feel better tomorrow.”
She felt his gaze on her but she didn’t dare face him. She forced a sip of the stew’s rich juice past her lips just to pretend everything was normal. If she acted as if rubbing her hands over his body were nothing to be flustered about, maybe he would believe it, too.
“All right,” he said, as if accepting a challenge he’d been expecting.
Lorelei continued to lift her spoon to her lips, then returned it to her bowl almost as full. She play-acted her way through the rest of the meal. Everything had changed, and she was no longer sure how to behave, even how to hold her spoon. She kept up her part until he stood and took his bowl to the dry sink under the window.
She jumped when his arm brushed her sleeve.
“Finished?”
Though she had managed to swallow only a quarter of its contents, neither of them had the stomach to put off the rubdown any longer. She nodded and he took her bowl, dumping the rest of her stew back into the pot on the stove.
She came up behind him and took the bowl from his grasp. “I’ll just set these to soak. You can take off your shirt and lie on the bed.”
He raised an eyebrow at her suggestion. “I’d rather sit at the table.”
She shrugged, admitting only to herself that she was relieved. “Suit yourself.”
She poured water into their dinner bowls, then dried her damp palms on a towel. The moisture sprang from nerves, not the dishwater. Finally, at the cupboard that held the liniment, she had to press her traitorous hands together to keep them from shaking. The plain mason jar she’d seen earlier sat on the top shelf all by itself. The ointment seemed to be the only thing Corey never ran out of. It had been her father’s recipe, and the men in her family swore by it. When she opened the cupboard, the greenish white balm glinted back at her with a conspiratorial wink. She grabbed the jar, convincing herself she was being silly. It was just plain ointment. She’d made it herself hundred times. Of course, she added extra eucalyptus and a touch of lavender. Luckily this jar wasn’t made by her.
Even the thought of that smell tightened her throat. The scent had filled her mother’s room those last months, but no matter how often she had gently tried to massage the congestion from her mother’s chest, Lorelei couldn’t reach her mother’s broken heart.
She carried the jar, which seemed to radiate heat through her palms, to the table. Braddock had removed his shirt and straddled the chair backward. He buried his face in the folded arms he rested on the table.
She removed the lid and winced. Braddock lifted his head. The strong medicinal smell of camphor filled the room. He glanced at her over his shoulder.
“It might not smell good, but it works.” Lorelei struggled to keep a nervous bubble of laughter contained. There was nothing unseemly about rubbing her hands over a good portion of his naked body, even if they weren’t related. The pungent smell burning her nostrils proved there wasn’t anything romantic going on. She just wished the idea of touching him didn’t make her stomach flutter.