dress from the library, the gleaming umber skin, the bright pink of her toes, the way it had felt to touch her, even if it had just been on her ankle.
He wanted it.
Wanted to take it from her hand and shove it in his pocket and to never, ever give it back.
But . . . he wasn’t about to steal from senior citizens.
“There. You see?” she asked, her hand closing around the rock and tugging the door open. “I did a mediocre job throwing a few examples together so that Rebecca wouldn’t have to.” A smile as she waited for him to pass her. “I get my gold—no pun intended—star for the day.”
“I didn’t think techies liked arts and crafts time.”
“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed. “We love arts and crafts time, or at least this techie does.” A shrug. “Anyway, it was nice to do something that wasn’t screen-related, at least for a little bit.”
“It’s beautiful,” he told her truthfully.
Her stare came to his, held. “I don’t know about beautiful,” she said. “But I like drawing anyway.”
“You’re beautiful.” Despite the bags, he managed to brush her fingers with his.
“Eth—”
He stepped closer, ignoring the fact they were standing in the doorway, blocking the entrance that any number of people needed to use, a doorway in which any number of those people could stumble upon them, all of whom would certainly spread the news about how they’d seen him mooning over Dani right where anyone could see.
But he found he didn’t care.
Not with the scent of strawberries on her skin wafting up to tease his nose. Not with her eyes on his. Not with her adorable nose and kissable lips and the heat of her body very close to his.
The only thing he didn’t care for was that his hands were full.
He couldn’t touch her properly, couldn’t tug her close, couldn’t stroke them over her body, couldn’t—
“What are we talking about?” Max.
Ethan held back a groan, shifting forward so he was out of the doorway, even as Dani all but jumped out of her skin in order to dart out of Max’s path. “We’re just delivering supplies for PR-Rebecca’s Miner’s Club project,” he said calmly before she could sprint down the hall. “She’s the brain. I’m the brawn.”
Max chuckled, patted him on the arm. “Every once in a while, you can be amusing.”
“And you try so hard but never actually succeed at it.”
Dani chuckled.
Max clamped his hand over his chest. “I’m wounded.”
“You’d have to have a heart for that,” Ethan grumbled.
“Oof,” Max said. “I’m doubly wounded.”
“Liar.”
“True.” A beat. “Except about the heart stuff. Mine is huge, some might even say big and juicy, like someone’s”—he took advantage of Ethan’s full hands to scrub one of his over the top of Ethan’s head and mess up his hair—“big, ole juicy brain.”
Ethan managed to whack him in the kidney with one of the bags, which he considered a successful response to all the big and juicy stuff.
“Oof,” Max groaned, hand pressing against his back. “You wound me.”
“I can wound you,” Ethan muttered.
“Children,” Mandy warned. “What are you arguing about?”
“Ethan’s trying to hurt himself,” Max whined, “by carrying heavy stuff before game time.”
Mandy glanced at the bags then at Dani, who at that moment stopped trying to melt into the wall and instead jumped into action by trying to snag the load from him. He held onto the bags, ignoring her efforts even as Mandy snorted. “Seriously?” the trainer asked. “That’s what you’re coming at me with?” She tapped her finger to her chin. “I think it’s a thigh massage for you.”
Max paled, and Ethan didn’t blame the man. For one, Mandy’s thigh massages were strictly for medical purposes and weren’t what most of the populace would consider relaxing. Rather, they were beyond firm, beyond deep tissue, and more than a little painful—she called them physical therapy with a purpose, and that purpose seemed to be torturing. For another, the person who actually gave them—the team’s masseuse, Darby—was tiny but with freakishly strong hands.
Hence the talk of torturing.
At that moment, however, Mandy was doing less torturing and more snooping. She moved toward him, peeked into the bags. “Oh, is this for the rock activity?” She released them, walking next to him as they continued down the hall. “Madeline”—her daughter—“is all about the need to get paint everywhere.”
Dani’s throat worked, but Ethan didn’t rush her—and to their credit, neither did Mandy or Max—each just waited as they strode through the hallways winding through the underbelly of