I rolled my eyes and told her I would call her later.
I had no clue what I was going to do about the hot cop, but I needed to figure it out fast because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself when he showed up for his therapy session on Monday. I’d already mauled him with my mouth; if I didn’t get a handle on my reaction to him there was a very good chance I could be inspired to attack him with the rest of my body as well. Something told me Dom wouldn’t complain about being ravaged, but my mom was right. There was something more there, something that hadn’t been there for a very long time and I owed it to myself and to Dominic to be man enough to face it and find out what that something was, if only I could reach around the walls of fear to get at it.
Chapter 5
Dominic
Lando was angry at me and doing a piss-poor job of hiding it. Not that I could blame him.
I had apparently undone all the positive improvement he had put into my body over the previous week by not knowing when enough was enough. I wanted to pretend like I was still the guy that could do everything, could still be the one everyone counted on when they needed a strong back and some good old-fashioned sweat, but I wasn’t. After helping my youngest sister, Ari, move into her very first apartment on Saturday, I should have told Royal no when she asked if I wanted to go hiking with her on Sunday. As a result of the overuse my thigh felt like it was made of Jell-O and I was pretty sure that there was a torn muscle or strained tendon somewhere in my shoulder. I was back to hurting like everything inside of me was on fire and even the simplest of movements made me wince.
Lando was watching me with a furious scowl on his handsome face. I wanted to tell him the fierce expression was ruined by his freckles, but I didn’t think he was in the mood to flirt. He looked like he wanted to knock me around and yell at me.
“Come on. It was my little sister. I couldn’t exactly tell her no when she asked for my help. I practically raised her when my dad died when we were younger. I’ve always been her go-to guy. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.”
His pale eyes narrowed just a fraction at me. “You were wrong. There isn’t any point in trying to put you through your set routine today. You can’t even lift that twenty-pound dumbbell up past your waist.”
I went to heft the weight up to show him that he was wrong and ended up yelping in pain and dropping the heavy metal back on the floor with a loud thud. He had to jump back a step to avoid getting his toes crushed as I let out a litany of swear words and reached up to cradle my screaming shoulder. I swore again as he gave me an “I told you so” look and bent to pick up the weight I couldn’t lift like it was a feather. He walked over to put it on the rack and came back with his arms crossed over his chest.
I thought there might be a level of awkwardness between us after his kiss-and-run, but he was so overly irritated that I had overworked myself that there didn’t seem to but much room for anything else to work between us at the moment.
“Hey, I’m sorry, okay. This whole ‘being half of what I used to be’ is taking some getting used to, and I really never have told Ari no before.”