“Captain!” Nathan yelled. “I’m having a treehouse for a bedroom.”
Lance’s first words to me were, “You’re not meant to be on your foot, go inside.”
I managed not to scream at him because I’d had coffee, pancakes and my kid was somehow smiling and I didn’t want to scare him by shouting at his favorite hero.
“My house is not meant to look like this either,” I snapped, waving my arm toward the blackened mess. “But that’s life.”
He narrowed his eyes, obviously not happy with my new found snarkiness, or maybe it was the rasp to my voice, edged with hysteria.
Maybe it was everything.
“You bought donuts!” Nathan all but screamed.
I hadn’t looked down to what was in Lance’s hands for the entire interaction, mostly because I was too focused on winning a stare-off with him. When I did move my gaze down, I saw he did indeed have a box of sugar covered crack in his hands.
“We’ve had pancakes already,” I told him, feeling bitchy because I was exhausted, my throat was sore, my foot really did hurt like a bitch, and all I wanted to do was kiss Lance and let him take care of me.
Granted, the man was not looking at me like he wanted to take care of me, he looked like he wanted to murder—or at the very least, torture—me. But he pulled me out of a burning building. He stayed with me all night, he then arrived at seven in the morning with donuts and, looking at his other hand, coffee.
“Well, you can have pancakes and donuts,” he clipped, leaning down so Nathan could snatch the box from him, despite being taught not to snatch. “How about you take those into your aunt’s house, bud?” Lance said in a question that was actually an order, but in a slightly kinder tone than he used with me.
Nathan did not hesitate to heed that order.
I watched him run into the house before I turned to glare at Lance.
He was already glaring at me and spoke before I could scold him like I wanted to.
“Kid’s standin’ in front of his ruined house, he’s havin’ fuckin’ pancakes and donuts, Elena,” he said.
Shit.
He was an asshole who ordered me around and my son—who actually liked it—but he was right. Nathan was being remarkable, beyond remarkable considering what he’d gone through, he frickin’ deserved copious amounts of sugar before eight in the morning. It put a smile on his face.
Lance didn’t wait for me to respond. “He goin’ to school?”
I shook my head. I’d wrestled with whether to make him go through a normal day and not disrupt his life anymore or keep him close, let him watch movies and play at Karen and Eliza’s all day.
I’d decided on the latter. Right now.
“Good,” Lance said. His eyes went up and down my body, I was still wearing the sweats and had morning hair and most likely, morning breath. “You’re not goin’ to work.”
Again, not a question.
I folded my arms. “That’s not your decision to make,” I snapped, even though I totally wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t a total idiot. I couldn’t speak properly, was limping and my freaking house burned down last night.
Having Lance think he could make that decision for me, after disappearing for a week had my hackles up.
He stepped forward, all the way forward so I could smell him, feel his heat pressed up against my clothes.
“It concerns you. Your wellbeing. So yeah, cupcake, it’s my fuckin’ decision to make,” he murmured, breath all minty fresh and delightful.
Cupcake?
I pursed my lips. Not just because my breath was not minty fresh, or delightful.
Because his presence was doing all sorts of things to me, despite my lack of sleep, despite my smoke inhalation, the house behind me.
There was a challenge in his eyes. A dare. A hunger, mischief that hadn’t been there a week ago.
Something had changed.
Really changed.
Before I could inspect this, say anything, or kiss him, morning breath and all, an SUV pulled up, and the Greenstone Security pulled up.
Shortly after that, my landlord arrived.
It was safe to say, he was not happy about the fire. He wasn’t a bad landlord and I had been an excellent tenant, that was until I’d burned the house down.
But the second he started to speak to me with his bushy brows furrowed and splotched cheeks reddened, Lance was there. Duke was pulling me back, telling me that they’d take care of it.
I should have argued him on that. Told him that this was my house, my life, I needed to take care of it. I needed to make an example for my son, myself.
But I didn’t do that.
I let him lead me back into Karen and Eliza’s, where I had two donuts, a shower, and when I came back out, my landlord was gone.