Waiting for Wyatt (Red Dirt #1) (10 page)

Kicking it up a notch, I kept going faster and faster, stumbling along the uneven ground. The air felt hot in my lungs. It was too early in the afternoon for a run, but I didn’t care. I kept going, farther and farther away from the kennel.

The pain gripped tighter around my calf. It rolled over my knee and into my thigh. I kicked my leg forward, and then I went down. I face-planted, leaving a trail of scrapes on my arms and legs.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered to myself. Grabbing the leashes, I held tight to the dogs. I tried to get up, but it was too much. It hurt. It hurt
really
bad this time.

The words of the doctor haunted me as I rolled over on my back, staring up at the sun as it beat down from the sky. Ricky Bobby licked my nose. Charlie licked my hand. I stretched my leg up into the air, flexing the muscles.

“Are you happy now?”

I jumped at the sound of his voice. “Do you have to keep doing that? Don’t sneak up on people.”

“You okay?”

I glared at Wyatt. “I’m fine.”

“Come on. Let’s go back and look at the damage. ” He reached down, scooping me up in his arms.

“What are you doing!” I struggled to get free. “Put me down.”

“Just relax, Emma.” My name flowed softly off his tongue. “Let go of the leashes. They’ll follow us back.”

Wyatt carried me across the meadow with one arm under my legs and the other around my back. I felt small against his large body as he touched me in a hundred different places. His smell came from everywhere.

I relaxed into his chest, feeling the firm muscles under his shirt. My eyes followed the curve of his neck to his face to his lips. They were soft and full today.
Wyatt’s a good kisser.
I contemplated the thought. I could only imagine how those lips would feel against mine—all angry and soft.

He glanced down at me, then quickly looked away. “Don’t go there, Emma,” he muttered.

“What?”

“You know what.” The edge of his jaw grew tight like he’d read those thoughts I’d had about kissing him.

We reached the kennel, but he kept on walking until the trailer door came into view. With little effort, Wyatt opened the door and balanced me at the same time. I scrambled to look at everything in his trailer as he placed me on the couch. I was finally inside his cave.

“I’ll take them back to the kennel. You just sit there a minute.”

He turned around and shut the door. The dark-brown curtains blocked the hot sun from inside the trailer. My eyes scanned the room. Everything screamed simple and organized. The living room was almost bare except for a large bookcase where most people would put an entertainment center.

I looked around, taking in the whole living room and kitchen area. Wyatt had no television, radio, gaming system, or computer. The guy had nothing of the kind in any corner—just a giant bookshelf of paperbacks and a few hardcovers on the top row.

His furniture wasn’t anything fancy. The couch was covered in itchy red burlap, and a worn-out leather chair sat in the corner. Besides the little coffee table, Wyatt had no other furniture in the trailer—not even in the kitchen.

The door opened back up, and Wyatt came through the bright doorway. He studied me for a moment, shoving his hands down inside his jean pockets. He didn’t seem to know what to do with me now that I was inside his trailer.

He finally let out a deep breath and sat down at the end of my feet. “Does it hurt all the time or just today?”

“Sometimes. It’s worse when I run. I’m not really supposed to do that right now.”

“I figured as much.”

“It’s hard, you know. I ran a lot before it happened.” I shrugged. “I was a cross-country runner back in high school.”

“Hmm. Well, sometimes it helps if you work the muscles. Not with those tools they use in therapy. But just with your fingers. Works out the kinks.”

“Like this?” I smashed with my hands as the pain clutched around my knee. “I’ve tried when it gets tight, but I’m not very good. I usually make it worse.”

His conflicted green eyes tilted up to mine, then flashed back down. He did it again before his hand reached forward, touching my leg. The contact burned all the way to the bone. I froze. Just like all the other times he’d surprised me to being speechless.

Wyatt had wanted me to leave and he hated my being within a fifty-yard radius of his presence. But now he held my leg between the palms of his hand. His fingers worked the muscles around my knee and then down under my calf.

“The doctor has me in therapy again.” I concentrated on breathing normal. Wyatt was touching me and everything seemed so surreal. “I’ve skipped it some. I don’t like what they do. It’s all barbaric and painful.”

“You shouldn’t skip,” he muttered.

“I know,” I whispered, staring at Wyatt as he worked down around my ankle. He untied the lace on my shoe and slipped it off, rubbing below the arch of my foot.

I watched completely entranced. My eyes followed up his wrists to the muscles in his arms to the wide shoulders and the hard face. Deep thoughts twisted around in his head. Deep thoughts that intrigued my curiosity and pulled me closer.

His hands made another pass down my leg. They glided softly over my skin, rubbing and touching, inch by inch as I focused on breathing. The warmth flowed along my calf to my knee and across my thighs and settled somewhere around my belly button. The intense sensation shot back down through my stomach.

If Wyatt wanted me to
not
become enamored with him, this was the completely wrong thing to do to me. I wanted to close my eyes and lie back against the cushions. I wanted to melt and disappear into the feel of this complicated guy,
choosing
to touch my skin. His green eyes glanced up to my face before darting quickly away.

“How do you know so much about messed-up knees?” My words slipped out as one of his dreaded personal questions.

“I broke my leg once.” He worked his finger underneath my calf muscles again. “How long ago did you get the cast off?”

“The place with the scar isn’t recent. I broke my leg back in high school. It busted through right there. But my knee has never been quite the same. I’ve got a flimsy meniscus and I’m pretty sure the ACL is going to bust at some point. I fell the day I brought Charlie out here, which caused it all to flare up again. Now the doctor wants to do surgery.”

Wyatt touched the top of my knee and frowned. His fingers examined my leg with the same meticulous scrutiny he’d given Charlie the first day.

My breath caught, feeling each place he touched on my thigh and ankle. Wyatt moved my leg around in a few positions, watching the kneecap bend in ways it shouldn’t on a person. “You should have the surgery.”

“Maybe I don’t want to have surgery.”

His green eyes looked back over to me with a slew of unasked questions. They swirled around under that hard face. They plagued him, but he didn’t ask, and I didn’t volunteer an answer. Let
Wyatt
have the anxiety of wanting to know more about a person but be denied the chance.

“Emma, I . . . um.” His fingers stopped moving and rested on my leg. “I’m sorry about the other day. All that shit I said to you. I didn’t mean it, you know. I wanted to—”

“Push me away?”

“Yes.”

“You still want to do that?”

“I should, you know. For your own good.” His fingers tightened on my leg. “But I don’t know. Maybe we can try this friend thing.”

The questions swirled around in my head at the meaning behind his words. I smiled back at his rigid face.

“Wyatt?” I whispered. “’I’m sorry. I don’t mean to ask all the questions. But I just see you here and I want to do something. And I don’t know what to do. So I say things and ask things. I know I shouldn’t ask them. But I think if I don’t ask them, who’s going to ask them?”

“I know.”

“You seem so alone. Do you have anyone, Wyatt? Anyone who knows if you even come home at night?”

His hand gripped the skin of my leg. It gripped tight and warm into my flesh as his soft lips dipped into a sad frown. The lines full of pain returned next to his eyes.

“You can tell me.” I smiled at him. “It’s okay. I’m tougher than I look.”

“It’s got nothing to do with you, Emma.”

“You’ve told me that. But it doesn’t change what I see when I look at you.”

“Emma . . .” His words came out quiet with a raspy edge. “I think you always see the good even when you look at the bad.”

“Why do you think you’re so bad?” My eyes pleaded with him to share those tormented thoughts. “Are you dangerous?”

He let out a slow breath. “Some people think so.”

“I don’t believe that about you.”

“You don’t really know me.”

“Then let me,” I whispered.

Our eyes morphed into a tangled stare, mixed with questions, but no answers. He let go of my leg and stood up. My skin went cold. My time with him was over. I felt the hardness seep back into the room. The glimpse into the broken guy came to an end.

“See if you can stand.”

He wanted to get me out of his trailer. I looked up at his tall body towering over me as I sat on the red burlap couch. He frowned, handing back my shoe. This time, Wyatt didn’t touch my leg to place my shoe back on my foot.

I shook my head. “Don’t go back to doing that to me.”

“What?”

I stared at him. “If you want to be friends, you can’t act like that anymore.”

“Emma, just come on.” He reached out one of his large hands, pulling me up from the couch.

“It’s better.” I moved my leg up and down, bending at the knee. “Thank you.”

“The bathroom is right over there. You can wash the dirt off your arms.”

“Okay.”

Limping across the carpet, I went toward the direction of the bathroom. This required going through the kitchen. Nothing sat on the countertop except a coffee pot and a large red container of Folgers. I hobbled along, glancing through the next doorway. Gus lifted his head up from the old blue comforter on the bed. Interesting. The little Jack Russell lived in his trailer.

His bedroom had absolutely nothing on the walls—not a picture or a poster or even a clock. Three pairs of work boots and a pair of old tennis shoes lined the floor next to the bed. A beat-up nightstand was on the other side. I turned back to check Wyatt’s reaction. His jaw clenched tight, but he didn’t stop me from invading his personal space.

I stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. Nothing sat on the small countertop. I peeked around the white shower curtain. The old tub appeared to be scrubbed spotless. Two bottles of some generic shampoo and conditioner occupied the little shelf.

Turning on the sink faucet, I washed the dirt off my arms, feeling the sting of the cuts. I wanted to open his drawers. Smiling to myself, I could only imagine what he stashed inside, but I kept his trust and left his private items alone. Wyatt was sitting in the old chair when I came back into the living room.

“I’m gonna go. I’ll let you get back to work.” I smiled at his uneasy face. He pulled himself up, making the muscles in his thighs work under the dirty jeans. The old boots stepped over to where I stood on the dark-brown carpet.

“You got plans on Saturday, Emma?”

“You mean tomorrow?” I smiled at him again.

“Right.” He was nervous in a twitchy sort of way. “The days get a little mixed up out here. I was thinking you might come early. I mean, if you got nothing going on.”

“I’ve got to do some grocery shopping before I go to work, but I could come out here for a while in the morning.”

“Good. Okay.” His lips curled up in a half smile. “Wear something you can get wet. It’s bath day. I could use some help.”

“Bath day. That should be interesting.”

“You could say that.”

“You . . . um . . .” He stumbled and cleared his throat. “Could you be here by seven thirty?”

“Yes.”

“Not too early for you?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t see you as a morning kind of girl.” My heart picked up, seeing the faint dimples almost slide into place. So close. So very close to getting that layer of Wyatt to surface as he attempted this friend thing with me.

“You don’t really know me either. I might surprise you. You might actually like me.”

Wyatt swallowed hard. He got a little twitchy again. “I’ll see you in the morning, Emma.”

He stepped away and opened the trailer door. I followed, taking it easy down the cement steps. Wyatt didn’t move. Leaning against the door frame, he waited with crossed arms as I made my way to the car.

As I thought about him watching me, my body got a little tingly. I looked back over in his direction, seeing him in the exact same spot with his eyes still fixated on me.