Page 94 of Down Bad

“Didn’t think you even noticed me,” I tease.

“How can I not?” he mumbles.

And doesn’t explain what he means.

Was that a good thing? Or a diss? Did I clomp over the grass or something?

Or does he mean he always notices me?

“Something wrong?” he asks.

It might be the first time he’s ever asked something sensitive about me. How I’m feeling.

I’m pleasantly taken aback.

Then, annoyed, he adds: “You keep rubbing your dang neck.”

Oh. “I was just … well …” I drop my hand. “It’s this lady at the flower shop. Jacky-Ann. Housekeeper-slash-honorary-member of the Strong family. She …” Suddenly I don’t need to chew his ear off about it. “I’m just working out a bad crick is all.”

He comes out from under the hood, wipes his hands off on a rag over his shoulder, then nods. “Lemme see it.”

“Nah, it’s okay, I’m fine.”

“Wyatt.”

“No, really, it’s just a—”

He stands right in front of me. Places his hands firmly on my shoulders. Squeezes deeply.

I stare at him, inches from his face, surprised.

I don’t know why he’s massaging my shoulders from the front like this. Shouldn’t he have turned me around?

But the way his fingers find the strength to dig into me this way. And how, regardless of what I think, he’s totally hitting the spots in the base of my neck and shoulders that were giving me trouble. And the more he kneads my neck, the more I seem to fall toward him, putty in his big hands.

The stresses of my day are gone.

Don’t even remember what Jacky-Ann finally settled on.

No longer wondering what Nadine secretly thinks of me and my “connection” with my former neighbors’ nephew.

Couldn’t care less whether Cash decided to come in to whine about his Nico or the what’s-her-name caught between them.

I just stand here, trying not to let my eyes rock back, staring into Diego’s stern, iron-hard gaze as he works my sore neck and shoulders into a soup. I drown in his intoxicatingly manly aroma, full of grease and irresistible sweat. Even his hands, despite wiping them off, are still gritty with his work, and I can’t explain it, but it’s so fucking hot to feel them pressing against my skin, thumbing into me, like some magic, loving kind of exfoliant.

Extracting all my bad.

Fill me with all his good.

Massaging me into sweet bliss in the process.

“Do you charge by the hour?” I ask.

His face tightens. “You can’t afford me.”

“Probably not. This a trial run, then?”

“Maybe.”