“Ready?” I asked.
Sleepy and his eyes and cheeks puffy, he nodded.
Don’t glance at his crotch, don’t glance at his crotch.
I glanced. Just real quick.
“Eyes up here, Taco.”
I wanted to die. “What?” I slowly looked up to see a smug look on his swollen mouth.
By some miracle, he decided not to embarrass me and say he knew I was full of shit playing dumb. Was I going to take advantage of the pass he was giving me? Hell yeah.
I waved Kulti forward, noticing he’d taken the wrap off his freshly inked tattoo. A hint of dark lines peeked out from his shirtsleeve. “Come on. I’m not going to take it easy on your old knees, so you better keep up.”
* * *
“If you want to go somewhere, you can borrow my car,” I told the German over breakfast a couple hours later.
He leaned back in his seat, polishing off a hardboiled egg. “I don’t.”
“Think about it if you want. I’m going to trim the yard first, and then I want to head to the mall to buy my dad his birthday present. It’ll take me a couple hours until I’m ready to go. “
“You’re mowing the yard?” he asked.
I nodded.
Those green-brown eyes focused in right on my face and a moment later he said, “I’ll help you.”
“You don’t have to—“
“I want to.”
“Rey, you don’t—“
“I’m not lazy,” he cut me off. “I can help.”
I eyed him for a second, the brief image of what I was sure was a good fat eight inches under his boxer briefs filling my head, and then pushed the image back, remembering what the hell we were talking about. “All right, if you really want to.”
Because, seriously? I doubted he cut his own lawn, but he wanted to help me do my dad’s? All right. I was stubborn, but I wasn’t dumb enough to not take help when it was offered.
A few minutes later we were outside, and he was helping me take my dad’s ancient mower out of the garage—he took his good one with him to work—and his back-up edger and weed-eater. “Which would you rather do?” I asked him once all our equipment was on the driveway.
He shrugged, looking at the mower with interest.
I would have bet my life he hadn’t mowed a lawn in a couple of decades, if ever. Hadn’t he just told me the night before how little time he’d spent with his family once he started at the soccer academy? Even then had he ever spent time doing housework when he was so busy being a childhood prodigy?
I was tempted to tell him I could do it all myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
He’d come to San Antonio with me because ‘he had nothing else to do.’ He’d offered to help me probably for the same reason. The poor guy was alone and bored. I had a feeling he didn’t have many friends, he’d admitted to not being close to his family, and all that together made me just sort of sad. It made me want to help him, to include him in things. I wanted him to get his feet wet with life.
What was the best thing to do?
“You mow, and I’ll take care of the edging and weeds,” I told him, making sure I wasn’t giving him a look of pity. “All right?”
His long fingers wrapped around the upper bar of the mower and he nodded.
I handed him a pair of disposable earplugs, safety glasses and a smile that was encouraging but not too encouraging. I said a prayer that we’d make it through this intact.
Reiner Kulti took almost an hour to cut my dad’s front and back lawn. He had to take two passes in the front to get the lines even, and he almost ruined the engine once when he didn’t empty out the bag. It was my fault, I hadn’t told him how. He did it without asking a single question, and I didn’t offer any advice either.
He looked so damn proud of himself, I almost cried. Honestly. I felt like a mom dropping off her baby boy at preschool.
I slapped him on the back and kept the ‘good job, buddy’ to myself before putting up the equipment.
* * *
He had that look in his eye again. The same one he’d had when he’d been looking at the lawn mower.
“Have you ever been to a mall before?” I asked him once we were through the glass doors.
Kulti had his attention on everything around us. His hair was concealed by the baggy beanie he had pulled low on his head, and he’d been thoughtful enough to wear a long-sleeved button-down chambray shirt that I had a feeling cost more than my entire outfit put together. With his hair and tattoo covered, we were pretty confident that he wouldn’t be recognized.
I hoped. I really, really hoped. The idea of a mob lusting after him was something out of my worst nightmares.