A Needful Heart (5 page)

It was no use. Under their substantial
combined weight, the post snapped.

Matt landed on the stairs hard, with Gina
clutched to his chest. He didn’t even care that he had fallen. His
foremost concern was for her and her recent injury. So, even though
he had stairs digging into his back and a four inch by four inch
post had conked him on the head, he cradled Gina as protectively as
he could.

Gina looked down at him in a daze, her left
hand clutched in his t-shirt and her right held against her chest.
Her eyes were wide with fright and her hair more wild than normal.
Their legs had gotten tangled, and her right leg was over his lap.
Looking down, it was easy enough to imagine another, more intimate
situation, and in spite of the crazy circumstance, his body
responded. Even as he tried to ignore the tempting picture she
made, his dick hardened.

“Uh, wow,” she laughed. She tried to adjust
her leg, and Matt knew the exact second she noticed his erection.
All movement stopped, and a pink tinge colored her cheeks, but she
looked up with a smile, which surprised him. “We, uh, need to quit
meeting like this. Really.” She pressed a quick, hard kiss to his
chin before she scrambled off his lap. She took several steps back
and surveyed the damage.

Matt could see the dismay on her face when
she saw the mess, and he felt his face heat with embarrassment. He
pushed the base post off his shoulder and levered himself up off
the step, then turned back to look.

God, it was bad. These cookie-cutter houses
had been here for a long time, and the age showed in the frailty of
the wood. The old base had snapped at the bottom and ripped up two
of the hardwood floor boards. The post was still attached to the
banister, but six of the spindles had broken as well and were
leaning in over the stairs. The only good thing he could see was
that the long banister itself was not one piece. It was two
sections. In his mind, he had already begun the fix.

Humiliation gnawed at his chest, and his face
felt as red as it had ever been. Sweat broke out on his forehead
and ran down his cheek. “I am so sorry,” he choked out. Disgust
beat at him, and he clenched his jaw so hard his teeth creaked. He
had turned out exactly as Rick had said years ago. Big, stupid,
clumsy ox. The man had been dead for years, but Matt could still
hear his voice as if he stood next to him.
No good for
anything
.

Taking a deep breath he dared to glance at
Gina.

She smiled up at him gently. Her brows were
raised in humor, and her left hand was propped on her hip. The
right was nestled between her breasts. But there was no censure in
her eyes. She shrugged her shoulders and giggled. “We just can’t
seem to have a normal conversation, can we?”

Unable to believe that she wasn’t mad, Matt
shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

Her gaze suddenly zeroed in on something and
she reached up with her left hand to grasp his chin, turning his
head to the right. Gentle fingers lifted his hair off his head, and
Matt realized his hat was on the floor. He hadn’t even noticed it
being gone.

“Oh, Matt. Come on.”

Gina clutched his hand in hers and tugged him
toward the kitchen. Once there, she pulled a chair away from the
table and swung it around in front of the sink. “Sit down, please.
You conked your head pretty good with that post.”

Matt reached up and probed the area. He
pulled back bloody fingers. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been hurt.
Wiping the side of his face with a paper towel she shoved at him,
he realized it was blood running down his face, not sweat. Once he
recognized the blood, the area started to throb in pain.

Gina rummaged in a low cupboard, most of her
body buried inside. It was the first time Matt had ever seen her in
jeans, and he had to admit he liked them much better than scrubs.
They cupped her ass to perfection.

When she backed out and stood up, she had a
square white first-aid box in her hand. Popping the latch
one-handed, she ripped open a square gauze pad and pressed it to
his head. Matt winced at the thought of getting her dirty and tried
to put his hand in her place. “Hold that there a minute,” she told
him.

She rummaged in the box again and ripped open
another gauze square with her teeth. Peering in yet again, she
pulled out several sterile cotton swabs in paper. Matt couldn’t
help but pull away a bit as she ripped them open and reached for
his head. Gina paused and looked down at him. “I’m not going to
hurt you.”

Matt felt like a heel. It was second nature
to pull away from anybody. “I know. Just habit. Go ahead.”

Gina reached forward again, slower this time,
and Matt just felt plain stupid. It wasn’t her fault he had been
raised to expect being hit.

She pulled away the gauze pad, and he was
startled to see how much blood was on it. Gina must have seen the
look because she pressed the second one to his head gently and
tossed the used square onto the paper it had been originally
wrapped in. “Head wounds always bleed a lot. You probably just have
a tiny cut. We’ll hold this here for a minute and then clean it and
see what we have.”

Matt tipped his head into the pressure,
praying that the thing would stop bleeding sooner. Gina stood so
close, he could smell peaches. It had to be her shampoo or body
lotion. For the first time, he realized his eyes rested on her
breasts, directly in front of him. He slammed his eyes closed, but
he could still see the gentle swell of the purple T-shirt stretched
thin over the heaviest part of them and the shape of her nipples at
the crest. Blood began to head south and it was all he could do not
to pull her to him. He crossed his hands over his lap and the
erection that hadn’t completely gone away, but it did no good. He
was hard as a board as she pulled the second pad away and tossed it
to the counter. She stepped away for a moment to retrieve the
swabs, then came back to stand in front of him again. This time,
though, she leaned forward to look at the wound even closer.

Matt felt his breath stall in his lungs as he
was blasted by the heat of her body and the scent of her skin. Only
this time, her breasts were mere inches from his face. He had no
idea what size they were, but he knew if he shaped his hands to
them, they would fill them perfectly. It was a battle to keep his
hands clenched together.

“Now this may hurt a bit,” she warned as she
reached across with her casted hand to pull the hair away from the
cut.

Good
. It did hurt a little bit, but
not enough to distract his body from what was directly in front of
his face. He closed his eyes again and tried to breathe slowly, but
her scent was all around him, keeping him on edge.

“Well,” she said suddenly, “looks like it’s
just a little spot. It could probably use a stitch, though.”

“No stitches,” he grumbled.

“You may have a scar if we just bandage it,”
she warned.

Shrugging, he pointed to his right eyebrow,
which had a line through the middle of the brow where his father
had tossed him against the coffee table. “I’m used to scars.” He’d
probably shock her if he showed them all to her.

When she pulled back and looked in his face,
Matt wished he had kept his damn mouth shut.

“How did you get that one?” she asked.

Yep, stupid, that’s what you get.
“Coffee table when I was a kid.”

Gina seemed to know there was more to the
story than he was saying, but she didn’t press. Pulling the swabs
from their paper sleeves, she cleaned his head. It was difficult
for her to place the butterfly bandages with the cast on her hand,
so he held his own hair out of the way. With a last swipe of a pad,
she was done and stepped away.

Matt took his first deep breath in several
minutes as she cleaned up the bloody paper mess, and his brain
cleared. He had other things to worry about.

“I’ll fix the banister,” he said.

Gina smiled at him over her shoulder. “I know
you will. I never had any doubt. Honestly, that thing has been
loose for a long time.”

Matt frowned at the lie. She was trying to
make him feel better. The post had been sturdy. Until he’d grabbed
it, that is. “I’ll go get my tools. I’ll shift my jobs around that
I had planned for this weekend. Are you going to be home for a
while?”

Gina nodded and crossed to wash her hand and
the tips of her fingers on her casted hand. She dried them on a
dishtowel that hung from the oven door. “Yep. Oh, wait. I may go
get a few groceries, but I’ll leave the front door open. I’ll be
home by--” she looked at the digital clock on her microwave,
“--eleven o’clock.”

“I’ll be back then.” He turned and walked out
the door before she tried to put him off.

He wasn’t actually work-free, but he would
shuffle everything to get her banister done first. The sooner he
got away and out of her life, the better they both would be.

***

Gina heaved a huge sigh and leaned against
the sink as he walked out the door. Finally, she could breathe. It
had been all she could do to bandage the poor man’s head without
straddling that incredible boner. The entire time she had stood
over him, he had watched her breasts. Looking down, she saw they
were finally beginning to relax. They’d been hard for so long. Her
panties were soaked.

What was it about the quiet man that appealed
to her so strongly? And why so suddenly? Other, better looking,
more eloquent men with a lot less baggage usually appealed to her.
But the longer she was with Matt, the better looking he became. He
seemed to be a gentle soul, even though it was pretty obvious he
hadn’t had a gentle life growing up. He actually reminded her of
little Gabe, worried and solemn, leery of everything. He surveyed
his environment with cool eyes and reacted little. Actually, he
reacted; you just had to watch very carefully for the tightening of
his lips or a slight flinch around his eyes.

Gina wondered for a moment if this was her
mothering trait coming out to try to make things better for him,
but she discounted that quickly. He was too freakin’ hot to mother.
And the way she reacted to him was definitely
not
mother-like.

When the post had broken, he’d been mortified
and angry with himself. Gina felt terrible, because it had actually
been her fault. Again. She was the one who’d made him trip. Her
clumsiness had spread to an innocent bystander.

She headed out of the kitchen. Her new phone
was at the base of the stairs, thankfully unscathed, and another
little thrill went through her. It was exactly the same as what
she’d had before, just without some of the extra bling she’d added.
And her car. She couldn’t believe he’d brought her car home for
her. That consideration floored her, and she promised herself to
make it up to him.

She glanced down and decided she was decent
enough to go out. The grocery store was calling.

Powering through the store, she found herself
buying larger packages of food than she normally would. She stared
in surprise when she realized her cart was heaping full. Was she
secretly hoping Matt was going to stay to dinner? Or more?

Gina got home right at eleven, and Matt was
parked on the street in front of her house. Several pieces of
machinery were on her porch, but he was still sitting in his
vehicle, windows rolled down to let in the fall breeze. The sun was
shining warmer today, but Gina knew it wouldn’t be long before the
weather began to cool. Actually, it had been a warmer October than
normal for Indiana.

Matt got out of his truck when she pulled in
the drive and was waiting for her to pop the trunk by the time she
got out.

“I told you you could go in.”

Matt glanced at her as he grabbed the bulk of
her grocery bags in his big hands. “I know.”

Gina tried to catch his gaze, but he avoided
her look. Gathering the lone bag he didn’t get, she slammed the lid
on the trunk and crossed to the porch. Gina was surprised by how
much stuff was there. Boards and saws, a big carpenter’s bag full
of hammers, pencils and nails, and several cases with equipment.
She smiled to herself as he stepped through her door. Matt was
going to be around for a while.

As soon as he dropped off the grocery bags in
the kitchen, he started on the staircase. A tape measure was
suddenly attached to his hand and whipped this way and that. He
pulled a small notebook from his pocket and began to make notes
with a square carpenter pencil. Gina watched him for a few minutes
before she went into the kitchen to unload the bags. She debated
what to have for dinner. Her freezer was a little overloaded, so
she pulled out a bag of meatballs and a jar of tomato sauce, then
threw the lot into a pan to simmer. They could have subs later.
Quick and easy.

Stashing everything else, she attacked the
dishes. Most of them just went into the dishwasher chunky, because
it was too difficult to clean them off in the sink without getting
her cast wet. Even as she dropped the silverware into the crate,
her ears were super alert to any noise in the entryway. So far, she
had heard a pencil drop, a tape measure snap six times, and several
heavy thunks as something was dropped into a bucket.

Gina called herself a fool when she realized
her movements had stalled as she remembered how soft Matt’s hair
had been under her fingers. She blinked the thought away and looked
up just in time to see a little head disappear below the kitchen
window-sill.

Gabe was already around the corner of the
house by the time she stuck her head out the back door, but he came
running when she whistled. He slid to a stop in front of her. “Hey,
Gina.”

“Hey, Gabe. What are you up to today?”

The boy’s narrow shoulders bounced in a
shrug. “Nothin’, really. I heard noise over here and thought I’d
see what you were doing.”