All of that porn fodder made working around him a bit hard, but I lived for it. In fact, it was my incentive for getting out of bed every morning, no matter what the weather was. We could be hit by a tornado and if I heard that he was in work, I’d crawl through that twister using my nails in the mud to get in just to see him. At least, that was until he moved in next door to me. Now all I had to do was take the trash out, open my door, go to my car, walk Duke, decide the noise I heard was a yellow jacket so I had motive to run out the front door, and things like that – not that I did that seeing as how I had a horse dog to walk now, but hey.
Seeing the time, I picked up the keys for the BMW that was ready to be collected, and took them down to the man in question with Duke following behind me. As soon as I opened the door I heard him singing something that I didn’t recognize, and it pained me to interrupt him, but the guy would be here in two minutes.
Hearing something about a Witcher and tossing coins, I got closer to him and called, “Jarrod?”
His head appeared over the top of the vehicle he was working on and his beautiful eyes focused on me. “You good, Katy?”
Shifting from one foot to the other slightly, I held up the keys. “Mr. Warren is coming in to collect the BMW in a second, so I figured I’d give you his keys. The paperwork’s on the passenger seat so you can go through it with him.”
Straightening to his full height, he walked around the back of the vehicle and reached his hand out for them. “Cool, I’ll deal with it.”
Deciding it was all best left at that, I dropped the keys and turned to go back to my safe place in the office, forgetting somehow about the pain in my ankle. On the first twist it felt like someone had shot me in it, so I compensated as subtly as I could by putting most of my weight on my good foot and reaching out to hold onto Duke.
I’d only taken one step like that when I was swept off my feet, screaming as my legs lifted into the air.
“You’re good, honey,” Jarrod mumbled next to my ear. “I’ll carry you up. If you need to come back down, shout out or text me and I can do that, too.”
Being carried around by Jarrod? Freaking sign me up! Is what I thought, but what I said out loud was, “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”
I didn’t mean one word of it, though. I was all for being carried around by him.
“I’m doing it,” he insisted, tightening his arm that was around my back. “Now put your arm around my neck and hold on.”
Doing as I was told, I uttered a little something to the big man above. God, if you can hear me – thank you! I am now a believer. Love, Katarianne Crew.
As he got to the stairs, I asked what I figured was a pertinent question. “What’s a Witcher and why would I toss a coin to it?”
Hearing a chuckle from him, I turned my head and realized just how close our faces were. Seeing Jarrod smile or laugh from a distance was far from shabby, but up close while I was being carried by him? Whole different ball game.
“It’s from the Netflix series called The Witcher, you haven’t seen it?”
“I’ve played a game called The Witcher, but I haven’t seen the series.”
Taking the steps like he wasn’t carrying around an extra one hundred and twenty-eight pounds of human, he explained, “That’s what it’s based on. I’ve never played the game but I love the series, and that song’s stuck in my head.”
“I love the game, I used to play it all the time. The character Geralt of Rivia in it is hot, and there’s this part where he gets in a tiny wooden tub and…” I broke off when I saw he was grinning even wider.
“Does that in the TV series, too.”
Well shit! “Who plays the character?”
Bending to open the door of the office, he walked in and lowered me gently into my chair. Holy shit that was a nice move.
“You know the dude who was Superman, Henry Cavill?”
Picking my phone up off the desk, I opened the IMDB app on it and looked it up. When I saw the guy looking just like the character in the game and some of the shots from the series I about died. That’s what I was going to blame what I said next on, the shock.