Nicole Helm - Too Much to Handle (2 page)

He closed his eyes and headed for his door, and Ellen tramped happily after him. He was so easy sometimes.

She took off her coat and other winter gear, laying it across the back of Henry's threadbare brown couch. The whole living area was all very masculine and Spartan. Plain. Kind of dreary. "You should let me rearrange and decorate. I may not have finished my interior design degree, but I know enough to make this place a little more cheerful."

"No, thank you," he replied, hanging up his coat and carefully taking off his boots and putting them in the closet before heading for the kitchen. Also sparse and dreary and 
brown.

She sighed. Henry's hanging on to dark and dreary was so similar to what her parents did—never changing anything for fear it might make them forget some perfect memory of Ken.

"So, whatcha gonna make me?" Ellen leaned against the counter in the kitchen while Henry pawed through the pantry.

"Soup."

"Canned soup? I can make you some real soup."

"Not necessary."

"Not a crime to let me do something for you."

He sighed. "There's nothing you need to do for me, Ellen, except possibly move."

Ouch. Yeah, that hurt a little. "I'm not so horrible to live next door to."

"It's not about you being horrible. It's about you being too old to be rebelling against your parents." He took a can of soup out of the cabinet, grabbed a can opener.

Again, his words stung. "Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"What else could moving next to me be? Especially if you haven't told them yet."

"Maybe I wanted to be next to someone who likes me. A friend. Someone I know I can trust. Maybe not telling my parents isn't rebellion or revenge but protecting myself from another way they won't care."

He shook his head, dumping the contents of the can in a small, ancient-looking saucepan. "Of course they care."

"No, Henry, their care died with Ken." She didn't like to say this stuff out loud, because it was depressing and decidedly not happy, but Henry needed to understand she wasn't here to enact some childish revenge. She skirted the counter, so unless he kept staring at the soup, he'd have to look at her.

"They've been afraid to touch me for fear I'll disappear, too, and as much as I can't imagine how hard it must have been for them to lose a son, they put more energy into hating you than loving me and that
hurts.
 So don't tell me I'm being childish when I'm just trying to be happy."

He lifted his gaze from the saucepan, brown eyes that were always so much more expressive than the rest of him. All you had to do was look. And, whether he wanted to show it or not, he obviously cared.

"All right." He finally said, and when his gaze dropped to her mouth for the briefest of seconds, her stomach did an excited jittery roll. What would it be like to kiss Henry? It was something she'd fantasized about enough, but usually she didn't get to do the fantasizing with him so close up. She couldn't see the dark blond whiskers of his beard and wonder what they'd feel like against her skin, or how the slightly chapped lips might feel pressed to hers.

"Ellen." His voice was low and raspy. She stepped forward. So they could be close, so he could say whatever he had to say and she could feel his breath across her cheek or he could reach out and touch her.

Kiss her.

"What do you want to drink?"

She blinked at him, then let out a gusty sigh. She should know better than to think Henry was ever going to kiss her of his own volition.

But that didn't mean it was never going to happen.

Henry stepped into the townhouse and immediately scowled. Someone was in here. Cooking. Humming. Filling his apartment with good smells and good company and how the hell was he supposed to be noble in the face of that?

How about she's Ken's sister? You secretly gave money to her parents to fund parts of her life. And she's too. Young.

He jumped when something brushed against his leg. He looked down to find an animal. In his apartment. He was pretty sure it was a cat, but it didn't look to be in the best shape.

Ellen appeared, all brightly painted red smiles. "Hi, honey, you're home!"

"That spare key I gave you was supposed to be for emergencies." Then, because he couldn't let it go, he pointed to the sad little creature at his feet. "That's a cat."

"Yes."

"Why the hell is there a cat in my house?"

"When I went to pick up my car today, I happened to pass the humane society, and, well, I wanted some company for my place and this poor guy was about to get the ax."

"Why is it so…scabby?"

"He has this disease. I've got medication for him though. I'm going to nurse him back to health." She kneeled next to the cat, which happened to be at his feet, which meant if he looked at her the view was down her shirt.

The freckled tops of her breasts. A flowery bra. He had to move. He had to walk, because Ellen's head was way too close to his uncomfortably hardening dick.

The cooing noises she was making at the damn cat weren't helping. He circumnavigated her, going for the closet and hanging up his coat, putting away his boots. "Did I know you were going to be here?"

"Nope," she said cheerfully. "But I wanted to cook, and I hate cooking for one. Especially pasta."

He stepped into his kitchen and frowned at the mess. "What the hell happened in here?"

"I made it from scratch." She pushed past him, stirring something in one pot, then lifting the lid of another.

It smelled amazing. His place never smelled amazing. The cat brushed his leg again and he grimaced. "Your cat is gross."

"Aww, poor scabby cat. He just needs some love and medicine and he'll be an adorable little fluff ball again."

Henry wasn't so sure.

"Why don't you set the table? I brought over a bottle of wine. Pour that. We're almost ready."

The smells, her, the cat. It all felt so domestic. Cozy. Things he'd always envied about the Simms house growing up. Sure, Dad had been a good father, done the best he could, but he wasn't a home-cooked-meal kind of man. There had been a lot of frozen food, bare walls and backslaps. Laughter and love, too, but it was different than the Simms household.

Much different than the easy way Ellen infused everywhere she went with warmth. Which made it impossible to say no to her, to this. The comfort wrapped around him and turned all his self-preservation into acquiescence.

So, he set the table and poured the wine, and gave in to the fact that Ellen and her cat were probably going to be fixtures of his life until Ellen got bored. Maybe that could be okay. Maybe it could even be nice.

As long as he could remember to keep his hands to himself.

*

A curl of satisfaction wound around Ellen's heart as she looked at Henry's empty plate and empty wineglass. His relaxed, handsome face.

She'd done that, and as tightly wound as Henry held himself sometimes, relaxing him was quite an accomplishment.

What else can you relax out of him?
 Oh, she shouldn't think like that. Shouldn't want more from him. But spending all this time here reminded her of why she'd always had a crush on him.

He was one of those people always trying to do the right thing, and he was always too hard on himself. So self-sufficient he didn't even realize he needed something or someone.

Someone like her to relax him. To remind him to be happy. Would it really be so terrible if she pushed him a bit on the romantic side of things?

She ignored the little voice in her head reminding her she hadn't told her parents about buying this place yet. Hadn't even told them she was home for good. Or home at all.

Because that wouldn't be happy. Not even a little.

Oh, isn't that nice, dear. Have you been to visit your brother? I lay flowers on his grave every day.

"You okay?"

She looked up to find Henry studying her. She forced a smile. "Yup. Just thinking about the unpleasant task of cleaning all this up."

"I can handle it. It was the best dinner I've had in ages. I'll clean everything up."

That was Henry, always cleaning up messes, even if they didn't belong to him. But she wasn't interested in that. She wanted to give him something. A little something, like he gave her.

She gathered up her plates and took them to the sink where he was already starting to work. He took them from her, rinsing them in a quick, methodical manner before placing them into the dishwasher.

His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and there was a streak of something white across his forearm, a scrape across his knuckles. She wanted to run her fingers over both. Then maybe kiss the scrape better.

Then maybe kiss everything better.

She should move. Maybe gather more of the dishes she'd left haphazardly about his counters. But she didn't. She stood next to him as he pretended she wasn't, while he carefully loaded the dishwasher as though his life depended on the proper organization.

When he got halfway through, he sighed and finally looked at her. She flashed her brightest smile as if it was completely normal to lust after someone loading the dishwasher.

She knew the exact moment when his gaze changed from frustrated to something else. The frustrated she could recognize. This other look was less familiar. Some kind of study, but it had more consideration in it than his frustration.

So, she didn't say anything, didn't move, because consideration was something she wanted to encourage, and Henry was like a scared animal. One little flinch and he'd hide.

"You have…something in your hair." He hesitantly reached out, as if touching her hair might burn him if he handled it the wrong way. Gingerly, he brought the strand of hair clumped together by pasta dough in front of her eyes.

"Oh, that." She started to pick out the crusted dough while watching him carefully, watching for that consideration to grow. "I always get pasta dough in my hair."

He was still staring intently at her hair, and her stomach did a little flip. This was not friendship staring. This was pervy hots staring. Mmm.

"Why don't you pull it back, then?" he finally asked, scowling as he went back to attacking the dirty dishes.

"My hair looks terrible up. Stupid big ears. Half of why I quit dance. Those awful buns," she joked.

He looked at her like she was crazy. Yes, she knew that look well, too.

"You always look beautiful," he said, as if it were some indisputable fact.

"Beautiful?" Henry had called her beautiful. Even though she had been pretty sure he was attracted to her, those words, that compliment, so easily said, with his eyes on hers…

Oh, she was sunk. She leaned forward, but he stepped back and cleared his throat.

"I didn't mean… I just…"

"I've never been called beautiful before. Gorgeous once. But the guy was trying to get in my pants. Is that what you're trying to do?" 
Please, please, please.

"No!"

"Hmm."

"You should head home, Ellen. I'll handle the mess."

"Nope. You clean, I clean, goose." She was sticking by his side until she could get a more satisfactory answer to the getting into pants question.

Ellen was sitting next to him. He'd lost track of whatever was happening on some movie she'd found on TV that was apparently "so good."

He couldn't concentrate beyond the fact her leg was pressed against his—no matter how many times he tried to inch it away. She just kept plastering to his side.

Someone was dancing on screen and Ellen sighed. "Remember when you came to my dance recital at Moore?"

"Yeah." He did. Vividly. Too vividly. She hadn't visited home much those two years away at her first college. But, when she'd asked him to come to a dance program her parents couldn't attend because it was the anniversary of Ken's death, he'd scrimped and saved to drive to Pennsylvania and see her.

He felt he'd owed it to her, to Ken, to her parents. Then he'd gotten there and she'd been…beautiful. Grown up. It was the first time, really the first time he'd seen her as something other than Ken's little sister.

And he'd hated himself for it. He still hated himself for it, for having an erection over the memory, over her pressed next to him. Everything about wanting her was wrong. She refused to see it, but he couldn't let himself be blinded by Ellen's exuberance for life.

Ken had had the same kind of cheery goodwill. Everything was good. Everything worked out. Until your best friend didn't take your keys away and you drove yourself into a tree and died.

Ellen needed to stay away from him, to preserve that happy goodness about her. Henry would never… He ended things like that.

He scooted again, opened his mouth to tell her to go.

But she smiled and spoke first. "I don't know if I told you at the time, how much that meant. Having someone there." Her hand rested on his thigh.

This was an invitation, and his body wanted to accept, was so ready to accept.

But he always led with his brain when it came to Ellen. He had to, because his body was a lying asshole.

"You should go," he said abruptly, pushing himself off the couch.

She cocked her head and studied him. Her gaze dropped to his crotch and her mouth curved.

Oh, Christ.

Then she unfolded herself from the couch and crossed to him. "I think, I really think I should stay." She reached up and brushed her fingers across his beard.

He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away from his face. It took way too much willpower to let go of her arm. He wanted to feel the pulse pumping through her. Feel her.

But she didn't seem to understand the edge he was on, because she stepped into him, pressing against him. "You don't have to push me away, Henry. I don't want you to push me away."

But he had to, so he did. Took her by the shoulders and moved her back and away from him. "I don't know what you're trying to accomplish. You want me to admit I'm attracted to you? Fine. I admit that. But that doesn't make you any less Ken's sister. Any less the daughter of people who hate me. Nothing like this can happen, Ellen. I don't understand why you're pushing it."