He's A Magic Man (The Children of Merlin) (9 page)

So, she had to stay and help him out.
Just until she could take him back to his car in the morning.
Then she’d leave. She watched resolve grow in the eyes that looked back at her from the mirror. There. She was sure about something again. Maybe not the big stuff, but something.

She opened the bathroom door. Just until morning.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dowser slumped onto a rickety chair at the table as the girl closed the bathroom door. The alcohol was setting in. Yeah. Feeling pretty good. If by good, you meant numb. That’s what he always meant these days. Numb, that is, except for his cock. That wasn’t getting the numb message. He hadn’t been right since she walked into O’Toole’s. What was the big deal? She wasn’t his type. Long, cool, sophisticated. He liked them plumper and blond. She was stupid for coming into a place like that too. Predictably, he’d been forced to bail her out. Well, to be fair, she’d bailed him out too, with that shotgun. She was
plucky,
he’d give her that. She had broken that one asshole’s foot for sure. But she wouldn’t have been in that mess and he wouldn’t be hurting, if she’d just kept to her own world.

He took another swig from the bottle and stared at the bathroom door. She’d come out in a minute. And then she’d go. He’d be back to the way he was before he’d seen her in O’Toole’s.

He frowned. That didn’t feel so good. Didn’t feel good at all. Every time he thought about her leaving his stomach kind
of
turned. Must be the booze finally giving him an ulcer.

Nah.

He took another gulp from the bottle.
And then another.

*****

The first thing that met Drew’s gaze when she emerged from the bathroom was
Dowser,
his big body slouched in one of the dining chairs. Great. If he passed out what would she do?

She glanced around to the several half-empty liquor bottles. On a hunch, she went to the refrigerator and opened it. Nothing. Well, a couple little bottles of colored salmon eggs, the kind they sold at bait stores, and a half loaf of bread that was busy growing penicillin. She checked the freezer.
Chock-full of ice, but nothing else.

So, what did “helping him out” actually mean here? Help him into bed so he could wake up tomorrow and start drinking again? Stay just long enough to buy him some groceries? Take him to a car that he would drive back here while in some advanced state of inebriation?

Drew chewed her lip. Oh, the thoughts that were going through her head were bad. What he really needed was to get sober. And maybe, just maybe, she wanted to see what he was like when the alcohol wasn’t in control.
Her mother woul
d say she couldn’t fix
this, that
she was heading for trouble at a hundred miles an hour.

That thought made her chuckle. She
was
the girl with the Maserati, after all. She didn’t know how to do anything at less than a hundred miles an hour.

So that was it. She’d do what she could for him. And he wouldn’t like what she had in mind.
Danger zone, here.
He was a big guy who really liked his booze. He was at least double her weight and that Bowflex had made him strong.

Time to get creative. She looked around the cabin again from a new viewpoint. She passed over the exercise equipment and then her gaze snapped back. Some dusty weights sat in a pile—the leather kind that bucked around your wrists and ankles. The straps were made of very heavy leather. Yeah. And there was always that old rope in what might loosely be called the “front yard.”

First things first though.

She went over to the nodding Dowser. “Hey.” She shook his shoulder. “Hey. Wake up.”

“What?” His head came up and he looked at her out of the only bleary eye that wasn’t swollen shut.

“Before I go, I’m going to clean up your scrapes.”

“Don’t need that,” he mumbled, reaching for the bottle.

She snatched the bottle. “You can have all the liquor you want when you get out of the shower.”

“Shower?” He looked at her like she was a loon.

“No use cleaning up your scrapes when the rest of you is ... uh ... less than clean.” He glowered at her, but she raised her brows and wiggled the bottle. “Humor me. You’re fairly fragrant.”

“Don’t want a shower. Don’t want any Nancy Nursing either,” he grumbled.

“You want to get rid of me, don’t you?”

“Damn straight.” But the frown that drew his brows together paired itself with a look of uncertainty in his eyes.

“Of course you do. And I’ll leave right after you shower and I clean up your scrapes and put some ice on that eye.”
Lying
a little there, but he’d never remember. She grabbed his biceps, meaning to heave him up. But the shock of that touch drove right down between her legs. The need that had been building there ramped up to some new level.
Down, Drew. You’re not that desperate.
He was staring at her, blinking.

Drew heaved and he stood. Drew had trouble getting her breath. She watched his chest rise and fall. Under his torn shirt a smooth expanse of bronze skin curved over his pectoral to his brown, soft nipple. That was ... well, it was distracting. Thin white lines of scars wound over his chest. What had happened to this guy? He had a little line of dark hair over his sternum, hardly noticeable. But she was noticing everything right now, it seemed. “O... okay. If I get you over to the bathroom, can you stand in the shower by yourself?”

He nodded as though he was dazed.

“Right, then.” When they’d made it across to the bathroom, he sat heavily on the toilet next to the tub. “Lots of soap, right?”

“Want to join me, make sure I do it right?” he leered.

“No.”
Yes.
“That’s the last thing I want.”
Liar, liar.

“I thought so,” he muttered, ignoring her denial and struggling to unbutton his jeans.

She slid past him and turned on the shower. Then she turned around and, without looking at him, headed for the door. Well, except for a little peek, and all she saw was that dark arrow of hair pointing downward to a decided bulge. He wasn’t wearing underwear.

She almost slammed the door as she hurried out.

*****

Dowser leaned on the wall and let the steaming water sluice over his body. The sting against his scrapes was getting clearer. He looked down. Damn cock was still more than half-mast. What the hell was this? He didn’t want to have hard-ons any more. He had no right to an erection. His reason for hard-ons was dead. He squeezed his eyes shut even though that hurt like hell. The pain was good.

He couldn’t be getting sober again. Not after what he’d just drunk. He reached for the soap.
Damn, bossy girl.
What right did she have? He lifted one arm. That pulled at his ribs and he winced. He sniffed his underarm. Ugh. She was right about that.
Okay,
he thought angrily.
If that’s what it takes to get rid of her....
But knowing she was out there, in the other room, waiting for him as he rubbed soap over his chest and shoulders, scrubbed at his underarms, and then briskly soaped his genitals, didn’t seem to be helping with the numbness.

*****

While listening to the drum of the shower, Drew took inventory and made a list of what she’d need. She always kept a little leather book with a gold pencil on a chain in her purse. It was a little hard to concentrate, knowing Dowser was naked in there.

Speaking of naked ... she went to the chest of drawers. It looked like the man owned some tee shirts, a couple of pairs of sweats and running shorts, some socks, and a spare pair of jeans. No underwear that she could see. The bottom drawer didn’t even contain clothes, but rather two sets of worn but clean sheets, though it didn’t look like he’d changed the bed in forever. She didn’t see the khakis and the linen shirt. Revise that. There they were, thrown in a corner. A yellow rain jacket hung on a hook by the door. How did anyone live with so few clothes? Next to the chest were a pair of once-white leather Adidas and some boat shoes. Those and his boots looked to be it. Drew could not imagine having only three pairs of shoes. She grabbed a pair of running shorts and marched over to the bathroom door. Steam boiled out
as she cracked it open. She tossed in the shorts without looking.

“Something to put on,” she called. Knowing this guy, he would just have walked out naked to get his clothes. Or maybe he would still have needed help across the room.

Drew could feel
herself
blush. Worse, she was wet between her legs.
Get control,
she commanded. But no part of her seemed to be paying attention. She shook herself mentally.
Back to the chest of drawers.
Be busy. That was the answer.

She changed the bed briskly and dumped the dirty sheets in the corner with the khakis. When the bathroom door opened behind her, she felt a little tremble in her throat. She turned.

His hair was dripping in wet curls. His face was bruised and
battered,
his ribs had nasty looking red and purple marks on them. A couple of water drops hit the planes of his chest and dribbled down across his scars and over his nipples. That made her breath catch. His shorts rode low on his hips, leaving all that chiseled abdomen and oblique abdominal muscles (her favorites) in full view. They matched the muscled thighs. The man looked like those statues in the Louvre pilfered from Greece and Rome. She technically knew there were men who looked like that. But she’d never been this close to one, except maybe her two older brothers, and they didn’t count because she didn’t look at them the way she was looking at Dowser.

Stop that,
she told herself sharply.
Execute the plan.
“You want some help to the bed?”

The shocked look in his eyes said he’d mistaken her meaning.

“Can’t walk?
Knee
injury?”
Don’t you dare think that or I will
too.
She already was.

“Oh,” he said, rubbing his good eye. “Yeah.”

Drew steeled
herself
and went over to him. “Lean on my shoulder.” She grabbed him around the waist and pretended that it didn’t make her pant. “We’ve got to get you some kind of a crutch,” she muttered. He
half-hopped
with her over to the bed and sat heavily.

“Okay,” she said briskly. “Let’s use this alcohol for something positive.” She didn’t want to use the rag in the sink. Yuck. So she rummaged in the take-out Chinese bag on the table and found some unused napkins. Then she took one of his clean tee shirts and filled it with ice from the freezer. “Hold this to your eye.”

He winced as he pressed it to his swollen eye. “I’m fine,” he said, with only a slight slur. He couldn’t be getting sober again, after just glugging that much vodka.

“Right. You’re just dandy.” She grabbed one of the half-empty liquor bottles (this one happened to be rum) and soaked the napkins. Then, leaning over, she pressed them gently to the scrape on his cheekbone.

“Ow!” he yelled, pulling back.

“Big man can’t handle a little disinfectant?” she cooed.

That made him mad, but he was embarrassed too. “You surprised me.”

“Okay, this time it won’t be a surprise.” She doused the napkins again and went for his split lip. To his credit he hissed in a breath, but didn’t move.

“Damn sadist,” he muttered as she finished with his lip.

She worked over him for some time, trying to think about his cuts and her plans, and not how close she was to his body. She tried to ignore the scent of soap and something more uniquely him underneath it. And she touched his actual flesh as little as possible. It was bad enough to feel him through a pad of napkins.

He waited until she was done to grab the rum bottle and upend it. She didn’t object. That was part of the plan.
Enjoy it while you can, guy.
“Why don’t you lie down for a while? I’ll go into town for some food.”

“I thought you were going back to Miami.” The slur was back. He was lying down though. Good. She got fresh ice and laid the tee shirt bundle over his knee.

“I am. As soon as I’m sure you won’t actually starve to death.”

His eyes were closing. “Right. You should put some ice on your cheek....” He trailed off.

She waited. Soon his breath came regularly. She got up and found a trash basket under the sink in the tiny kitchen. She scooped the detritus from the table into it and took it out to the bigger trashcan across the parking pad. On the way back, she picked up the coil of thinner rope from the yard. Was she actually going to do this?

Yeah. For his own good.
Who are you kidding, Drew?
She was getting him sober j
ust to
be sure he wasn’t really the O
ne
. Sobriety wasn’t going to last. She couldn’t fix this overnight.