Chapter One
“Ouch! Fuck! Damn! I’ve got a boo-boo.”
Cole Wimbrush paused in his office and smiled as Elena James’s voice could be heard around the whole of his DIY store. Finishing off the invoice, he placed it in an envelope and handed it to his best friend, Danny.
“Are you sure it was wise hiring her?” Danny asked. “She’s had more accidents, and I’ve seen so many Band-Aids on her, it’s not even funny. You’re going to get sued.”
“Elena won’t sue. She’s too nice to sue. Besides, she thinks she’s accident prone, and with the way she is, I’m not surprised at all.” Cole had watched Elena for several years, actually since they were all kids, and knew without a doubt she was accident prone.
“She’s a walking disaster. My grandma always said to never trust her to carry a cake. She’d more than likely drop it,” Danny said.
Cole laughed and stood up. “I’ll go and check on her. Will you take that to Bob? He needs new pipework at his shop, and I promised I’d get it to him.”
“Will do.”
“Ouch, motherffff … ouch.”
“I’m going to leave you to your cussing sailor out there. Be warned, you’re opening the shop, and some people don’t like Elena as much as you do.” Danny winked at him, and left.
Cole watched one of his best friends leave by the front door, and then went in search of his latest employee. When it came to Elena, he was a sucker. No doubt about that.
Rounding one of the aisles, he found her in the saw section, and this time, he didn’t laugh. Blood was dripping down her palm.
“Hey, everything is A-okay.”
“You’re bleeding.” Any humor died as he rushed toward her, gripping her hand.
“It’s fine. Just a simple flesh wound.”
“Let’s get it cleaned up. What the hell were you doing touching bare saws?” he asked.
“The protective stuff fell off, and then I picked it up, and me being me, it just went everywhere, and there’s blood. I bleed a lot, and I don’t even have to do a lot for it. It’s so gross. When I was a kid I was always cutting myself.”
He remembered. There were many times he’d seen her with blood on her clothing because of some fall or something. When he found out a bunch of guys in her year were bullying her, he and his friends made sure it was clear that Elena wasn’t to be messed with.
There were only three years between him and Elena. Throughout high school, though, those years had felt more like ten seeing as he was the older one. For the longest time, his friends used to call him “chubby chaser”. It was a name he didn’t like, nor did he want, even if it was a name that only his closest friends had used, at least to his face.
Danny, Vincent, and a few others that had faded into the background would taunt him over his obsession with Elena, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t an obsession. She … meant something to him. While she didn’t seem to know he existed, he sure as shit knew about her. He knew she wasn’t close to her sister, and even though college was on the cards for her, she never went. Instead, she’d moved into a house with her friend, Juliet.
He’d gone away to college, and when that didn’t stick, he’d become a qualified plumber, and taken over from the crumbling DIY store. At thirty-one, he’d had his fair share of failed relationships. None of them had stuck because in the back of his mind, there had always been Elena. He wanted her so badly, but everything seemed to get in the way. If it wasn’t their differences at high school with the three years, it was him going away to college, and then there was the training as a plumber and electrician. When work didn’t get in the way, she was dating someone, or he was. Each time there had always been an obstacle that prevented him.#p#分页标题#e#
“I feel like a total loser now. I’m messing everything up,” she said.
He opened the bathroom and pointed at the sink.
“What?” she asked.
“Sit. I want to clean that wound, and make sure you’ve not got anything inside it.”
“I can stand. I’m not squeamish.”
He grabbed her hips and lifted her onto the counter by the sink. She released a cute little squeal, and he held her hand out. “You’d learn to do as you’re told.”
“I can’t believe you lifted me. I think you’re the first guy to even try.”
Cole didn’t say anything, and like so many times before, he found his silence made her talk. This was his way of finding more out about her.
“Of course, there was this one guy that I went to dance with. It was one of those speed date things. Juliet and I organized it after too much wine. We went for a dance, and this guy asked me if someone had tried to lift me up. Just a random question like that. I should have known he was weird. Who asks stuff like that? Anyway, I said no, and he told me it was probably because of my weight. He told me to lose weight and I’d be a lot prettier.”