Chapter 6

Six

BHODI

Tam fixed my car.

While I slept.

The first I knew about it was the Evri man’s photo of Tam’s boots, and the newly gentle purr of the Golf’s engine, but I’d been running too late to thank him in person, and I haven’t seen him since. Another pile of night shifts have seen to that, a brutal schedule I volunteered for to make nice with the new team, but by the end of my second week, I’m over it. The senior nurse can’t read my handwriting, the vending machines are shit, and I hate the green scrubs.

I mean, I don’t. I’m just knackered, and covering a day shift on my first rest day doesn’t help, but that’s life— my life, and I’m beginning to regret everything about it, from the bad sandwich I picked for lunch to the scruff I ran out of time to shave from my jaw.

It’s hard to regret Stardust Lane, though. It doesn’t seem to matter what time I come home, day or night, it’s still the prettiest place I’ve ever lived.

Landlord’s not bad either.

True story, and I find myself looking for Tam as I pull up outside his house, but the small van I’ve assumed to be his is gone, and there’s no rabid dog pelting around the garden. He’s out and I curse myself for being disappointed. For the tiny shoot of desire in my belly threatening to bloom into full-blown attraction. I’m sworn to a life of uncomplicated sex, and I don’t think lusting after my landlord counts.

Also, I need to go shopping. My cupboards are still bare and the thought of more noodles and chips is enough to put me off dinner altogether.

I take a shower and rinse the day away, stick a load of washing in the machine, then head out again, committed to adulting for just a couple more hours when all I want to do is sleep, and forget that I spent most of my day nursing a patient who ultimately went back to ICU and died ten minutes before I got off shift.

I’m no stranger to losing patients, but it was my first one here, and it stings. I thought she’d live.

She didn’t.

“Hey.”

I startle, head jerking up seconds before I crash into a lean, tall body that smells of woodsmoke and cinnamon. “Fuck. Hey.”

Tam grins. “Sleepwalking again?”

Denial bubbles up my throat but it’s beaten by a yawn. “Probably. Where’ve you been?”

I notice too late that sounds like I’ve been tracking his comings and goings. That I don’t really care manifests much quicker. I like Tam. It’s not a crime to be interested in his day-to-day life…right?

“Deliveries.” Tam nods to the van. “I needed to clear the decks before I start new orders.”

“Orders? Has this got something to do with the oak you dropped on yourself?”

“I didn’t drop anything—it fell. And no. I don’t do much heavy lifting these days.”

I’m so hungry. I need to blow through Tesco, buy some legitimate food that’s not laden with salt and MSG before I fall asleep where I stand. But curiosity overpowers the weight of a bad shift, and I realise the craving to know more about him is stronger than the need to eat pasta alone and brood over the patient I lost today. “So what do you do?”

Sounds like a come-on. Tam’s brows twitch, like he’s fighting a smirk, and it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day. All week. Possibly ever. “I do lots of things, but if you’re asking about my job, it’s probably easier to show you some time than explain.”

I want him to show me now, but my stomach chooses that moment to growl so loud it probably scares the birds from the trees. “Sorry.” I rub my empty belly. “I need to go food shopping before I expire.”

Tam’s brows knit for real this time. “You have no food?”

“I have food,” I clarify, though his immediate concern is cute. “Just nothing I want to eat after a run of night shifts. I need something hot—like a cuddle on a plate, you know?”

“Like chicken?”

“Maybe.”

“Bacon? ”

“Stop.” Another growl rumbles from my gut. “If I get too hungry, I’ll tap out and buy another Pot Noodle multipack.”

“Nah. Not happening.” Tam moves suddenly and grabs my arm, towing me towards his gate before I find the faculties—or let’s face it, the will —to protest.

I’m at his front door before I know what’s happening. “Are you abducting me?”

“I’m feeding you.” Tam unlocks his door and kicks it open. His crazy dog rockets down the hallway to greet us, and just like that, I’m in his house.

And he’s still holding my arm.

He doesn’t seem to notice as the dog blasts past him and hurls itself at my leg. I scoop him up, laughing as he launches a lick attack to my face. “What kind of ferret dog is this?”

Tam releases me. “Ferret is the fucking word. I have no idea what he is.”

“What’s his name?”

“Rudolf.”

“Rudolf?”

Tam shucks his coat, hoodie, and boots, revealing his tattooed arms, and the fibreglass cast on his wrist. It’s green—he let the nurse applying it choose the colour and she’d told him it was Christmassy. At the time, he hadn’t seemed to care much, but the shade suits his warm eyes and the dark hair he shakes out. “I found him last December and I was drunk enough that I forgot I’d have to call him that all year round. He’s Rudy these days, but it was a hell of a hangover for a while.”

“Sounds it. If it’s any consolation, the only things I ever find when I’m drunk is bad sex and soggy chips.”

“Maybe you’re doing it wrong.”

“Which part? The sex? ”

Tam smirks. “Doubt it.”

“Why’s that?”

He takes a breath. Then snaps his mouth shut, amusement and something else dancing in his gaze. Something I can’t quantify while I’m holding his wriggly dog and trying to ignore the fact I’m flirting with my landlord.

The dog. Talk about the dog. “Where did you find him?”

It’s the out Tam needs. He comes closer and tickles Rudy’s chin. “Round the back of the dodgy pub in town. He was about to get chucked in the ring as a bait dog.”

Horror tosses my stomach. I’m not hungry anymore. “How did you save him?”

“Punched someone. Probably.” Tam gives me a shadowed grin. “Can’t really remember. Just that I woke up with sore knuckles and a fun-sized tyrant living in my house.”

Rudy squirms to get down. I release him and face Tam again. “That’s a bit different to finding a stray dog on your way home.”

“Is what it is.” Tam gestures for me to take off my coat. “And I can’t complain. He’s the biggest little prick I’ve ever known, but I love him.”

Ugh. Can he get any hotter? I relinquish my coat and leave my shoes on the rustic wood floor of the hallway. It’s warm beneath my feet and that warmth continues throughout the ground floor of the house as I follow him into his living space.

The cosy aesthetic isn’t a world away from the annex, but it’s bigger, and Tam’s scent is strong enough that I want to sniff the air and saturate myself in it.

I settle for padding past his couch and trailing him into the open plan kitchen, where he’s already at the fridge, pulling out a casserole pot. “What’s that? ”

He wraps his deep voice around some French words and I just about die.

Also, I have no idea what he said.

“Chicken,” he translates. “With lardons and cream. I was going to eat it on the couch with a spoon, but I have pastry too.”

Okay. So the answer to my earlier question is a resounding yes . Apparently Tam Dubois gets hotter by the second. A tattooed, dog-rescuing man who can cook. Like, did Mother Nature reach into my head and pluck out my wildest fantasies? It’s the only explanation I can think of.

And he’s not done. Inexplicably, there’s more to come.

Tam cuts pastry into a wide circle and chucks it in the oven with his pot of chicken. Then he points to the stairs. “My studio’s in the spare room. You want to see?”

He has flour on his hands—even the casted one. At this point, I’m leaning in the doorway for support, and my voice, when I find it, is faint. Breathless . “Sure.”

“Let me light the fire and I’ll show you.”

I swear to god, if he starts chopping wood, I’m done. I’m dust on the floor. Sweep me up and chuck me in the wind. But thankfully, Tam makes short work of stuffing logs in the burner and lighting it before…

Leading me upstairs.

To his studio where he makes art out of words with ink, paint, and parchment paper. “You’re a…what’s the word?”

“Calligrapher,” Tam supplies. “Did you think I was a plumber or something?”

Honestly, I’m not sure what I thought. But it wasn’t this. I peer at the work he has scattered around. The ink bottles, the pen nibs, and sheets of thick paper. “You have big hands. ”

Tam laughs. “Okay.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“How what?”

I tear my gaze from a Christmas tree comprised of elegant script. “How do you know what I meant?”

“Because no one can ever get their head around me doing something like this. If I’d asked you to imagine a calligrapher ten minutes ago, would you have pictured me?”

I’ve pictured him in my dreams, I’m sure of it. But he has a point. I don’t know what a stereotypical calligrapher looks like, but I’m willing to bet it isn’t a six-foot beefcake with skulls tattooed on his knuckles. “All right,” I concede. “I might’ve made an assumption about you based on your appearance. Can’t lie, you look like a biker.”

The teasing glint in Tam’s gaze fades. “I was once.”

That gets my attention—as if he didn’t already have it. Skylar has lots of biker friends who dress like Tam. Men most people would cross the road to avoid, but I happen to know are some of the nicest people on earth, once you get past the gangster vibe. “What happened to change that? I mean, if you want to share. It’s okay if you don’t.”

I shift my focus to a sheet of recycled cardboard with Christmas greetings etched on it in chalk-white ink. It’s gorgeous in its simplicity and so very Tam that I can’t believe I didn’t see this in him. That I saw ink staining his hands and took him for a carpenter. “How do you get the letters like that? I can barely write my own name.”

For a long moment, Tam is still—too still. He’s marble in whatever dark place my nosiness has forced him back to. Then I feel him move and he fills the space beside me. “You write like a drunk doctor.”

“It’s way worse than that, trust me. I get told all the time.”

“By who?”

“Colleagues, bosses. My mum when I send her postcards.”

“Postcards?”

“My parents live in Tasmania.”

Tam frowns, placing it. “Australia?”

“They emigrated when I joined the Navy.” It’s his turn to be surprised—I see it in his high brows and widened gaze. “What? I don’t look a military man?”

“It’s not that.” Tam rotates a little. It brings him so close we’re almost touching, shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh. “I just see you more as a healer than a fighter.”

“Well, you’re right. I was a critical care nurse in the Navy too, and it’s a non-combatant role. I was never deployed to a conflict. All my overseas tours were on hospital ships managing natural disasters.”

“No guns for you?”

“It’s not as cut and dry as that, but no. Shooting people wasn’t my main occupation.” Tam’s nearness starts to dizzy me. I put a little distance between us and study a piece of work that seems more complex than the rest. “What’s this?”

“Bible shit.”

Looking closer, I can see that. “What’s it for?”

“The big church near the hospital in the city. They have me write out their Christmas lesson every year, then I let them mass-produce it as greeting cards to sell in their shop to help fund their food bank.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’m more grateful than nice.” Tam’s gaze hazes again. “My brother went off the rails about ten years ago. They helped him get his life back on track when he wouldn’t let me anywhere near him.”

“The brother you hung up on last week?”

“Sab? Yeah. These days he’s on the rails so damn hard he makes me look bad.”

I doubt anything could make Tam look bad, and I’m enchanted by the piece he’s done for the church. The religious words mean nothing to me, but the intricacy of each letter is mesmerising. “How long does something like this take?”

Tam narrows the gap between us and glances over my shoulder. “Couple of days, but you see these smaller cards? I can rattle loads of them out if I get in the zone and nothing distracts me.”

I wonder if I’m distracting him. If he’s supposed to be working right now instead of being the master of the savoury aroma coming from downstairs. What I’d do if I asked him and he said yes. Because leaving feels impossible and I’m as sucked into his vortex as I was the first night I laid eyes on him. “How did you get into this?”

Tam takes a breath slow enough to make me glance at him. His expression hasn’t changed, but the shift in him is hard to miss. “It was therapy, and I turned out to be good at it, so I carried on, and here I am.”

Here he is, so close to me again that it takes every ounce of restraint not to lean in and just feel him. Brace my weight against his, that rangy warmth, that strength. I want to sniff his neck too, so much it alarms me, but I can’t make myself move, except to skim my hand down his un-casted forearm. “Every cloud, eh?”

Tam hums, low and deep, not agreeing or disagreeing. I want to say more—I need to say more, but the oven timer beeps and the moment breaks.

We go downstairs. Tam sits me on a stool and finishes dinner, and that feeling of perfection returns.

“I haven’t had a vol-au-vent since the nineties and I’m pretty sure it was tiny and came from the back of my nan’s freezer.”

Tam laughs and dumps the tray with the giant pastry case on the counter. It’s oozing with creamy chicken and bacon and smells almost as edible as he does. “I can cook six things. This is one of them.”

“What are the other five?”

He speaks French again.

I nod like I have a clue what he’s saying, and he laughs some more.

“I’ll show you number two next time you come over.”

Next time . I try not to let my grin split my face, and I get lucky as Tam turns away to find plates and cutlery. Really lucky as I get to watch him stretch and reach over his head, lifting his shirt enough that I get a glimpse at more tattooed skin and…

The tail end of a brutal scar.

My mouth dries up. I reach for the beer he put in front of me when we came downstairs. French beer, obviously, but it tastes like ash as I swig it and try not to join the dots in my racing mind.

Ex-biker.

Therapy.

Scars.

It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that at some point before I met Tam, something terrible happened to him .

“Earth to Bhodi?” Tam waves a hand in front of my face. “Still with me?”

I force a smile. “Where else would I be?”

“Anywhere you want.”

I want to be here . But Tam doesn’t seem to be the kind of bloke who needs that reassurance. He lets me get my bearings in my own time and flicks on the radio, letting cheesy Christmas music fill the silence. Slade, of course, growling out the tune I’ve already heard a thousand times in the hospital lifts and it’s still November.

“Eat up, son.”

Tam slides a plate in front of me. He’s added bread. And a salad of green leaves and walnuts I hadn’t noticed him pulling together.

“Wow.” I reach for the cutlery. “This is the best dinner I’ve seen in months—probably years.”

“What do you usually eat?”

My answer is delayed by me stuffing my face with food as amazing as it looks. “Fuck me, that’s good.”

Tam slides his fork out of his mouth, lips twitching. “How do you make everything sound like sex?”

“It’s a skill. An unintentional one.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah?”

Tam makes a low sound and reaches for his beer. “Don’t encourage me.”

He grins a little, but the quip feels loaded in a way I’m not prepared for. That maybe he’s not either. So I rewind and answer his question. “I eat terrible things when I’m at work. I try to put it right on my rest days, but I’ve had a lot going on recently. ”

A yawn punctuates my words. I eat more, feeling the comforting benefits of real food swamp my system, and I know if I let myself, I could sleep right here with my head on Tam’s kitchen counter.

“Do you cook?”

“Me?” I chew a mouthful of salad and nuts, appreciating a combination I’d never have thought of. “Yeah…I mean, I can. Doesn’t mean I do. The dude I was seeing—eating wasn’t really his thing, and I can’t be arsed much when I’m on my own.”

It’s more than I mean to say, but Tam takes it all in. He asks me more questions and I tell him no lies. We clear our plates, drink beer, and wash up. I learn that his parents live in the south of France, where they moved after he grew up in Solihull, and that his brother—Sab—has a baby girl who Tam adores.

In turn I tell him more about serving overseas, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don’t mind sharing, and I’m greedy for every nugget he gives up about himself in return. But he doesn’t say any more about his biker past, the scar on his back, or what unnerves him about the hospital, and midnight rolls around before I know what’s happening.

Tam walks me to the door. He has sugar on his lips from the Mr Kipling stash he broke out after the washing up, but he licks it off with a swipe of his tongue too fast for me to fall into thinking about doing it for him.

But I think about it anyway, as we say goodnight and I walk away, and I imagine his gaze on me as I round the fence he repaired a few days ago and let myself into the annex. Then I find myself annoyed that the small space smells of me instead of him. Of the pine-scented detergent I washed my bedsheets in when I couldn’t wind down after working all night.

Yesterday, I liked it. I hate it now, and the cosy space feels cold, reminding me that I need to google how to use a log-burner without setting the place on fire, and hang out at home long enough to appreciate my efforts.

I need to go shopping.

But thanks to Tam, that can wait, and I swap my clothes for soft joggers and flop onto my bed, letting my thoughts drift and spin until they inevitably return to him. To his dark hair and simmering gaze potent enough to keep the death I brought home from work locked up where it belongs. His concentration as he’d cooked like a boss. The faint shyness when he’d shown me his work, and the gentle flirtation he’d tossed my way all night as if he had no idea how healing it was to the wound Skylar’s indifference left behind—a wound that reopens as I lie alone in bed without the balm of Tam’s easy company, the gaping hole in my self-esteem widening as insecurities creep in, egged on by the nasty git living on my shoulder.

He wasn’t flirting .

Course he wasn’t. Why would he? I’m the calamity neighbour who can’t get it together enough to cook a meal or fix my own car. He invited me in because I’m pathetic and perhaps I wear my craving for affection all over my stupid face.

Stop .

I try, but I’m not good at regulating negative thoughts when I’m this tired and my brain is searching for something—anything—to avoid processing the work-related disquiet Tam distracted me from with his sexy tats and French cooking. Before Skylar, I’d have picked up my phone and found a hookup. But it’s been months since I had anything but my hand for company, and I’m not in the mood for the comedown of a lonely wank.

So, even though I know—I know —it’s a bad idea, I think about Tam some more. About his unshaven jaw and olive skin. His rough, tattooed hands that somehow produce the most delicate written art I’ve ever seen. And the boyish grin he’d dazzled me with as he’d dumped a box of apple pies on the kitchen counter.

“I have a sweet tooth.”

Shouldn’t be sexy. It is, though, and I feel that reality creep through me, warming my blood and pooling south in my groin.

My dick hardens. It’s a reflex to reach for it—to palm myself through my sweats before my hand dips lower. It’s masochism to stop myself and groan at the ceiling. Denying myself release is a bad idea, which leads to bad decisions. To reckless decisions when I’ve made a vow to be kinder to my soft heart.

Fuck it.

I give in and wrap my fist around my cock, arching into the sensation even though there’s a bruised part of me that wants it over with. My eyes fall shut and I fixate on the slow build of friction and pleasure, jaw clenched, muscles contracting. I know how to make this fast. How to white out my mind with a quickening pace, losing myself in detached ecstasy.

Tonight, though, the harder I chase it, the more out of reach it feels.

Come.

Get it done and go to sleep.

But my dick doesn’t get the memo and a frustrated grunt snarls in my throat, neck straining as I grit my teeth, desperate for a blank release, all the while a deeper part of me knows it’s not enough. That even if I make it to the end, the gnarly itch in my belly will still be there.

An image invades my brain, unbidden and beautiful. I’m so bowled over by it that it takes me a moment to recognise Tam and his tattooed skin, ink staining his fingers as I pin his wrists over his head and steal a harsh kiss from his lips.

He tastes of sugar and cinnamon. He groans, and it’s the spark to the fire that I need. To shove me to that peak as a powerful release steams through me.

Wow. I draw it out a little, blinking through stunned and laboured breaths, as two things occur to me in rapid succession. One, that I’m pretty sure my Tam-themed fantasy was about to take me somewhere I rarely go with men. Two, it didn’t get that far because the mere thought of kissing him catapulted me off the edge.

I don’t know what to make of it, so I try not to make anything of it at all. I clean up and crawl back into bed, my heart still pounding like a runaway train. I like sex. When I’m not caught in my feelings, it’s freeing, and I don’t have many boundaries or hang-ups. But it’s been a while since I’ve come that hard, since an orgasm left me shaking, and it sends my mind into a spin all over again.

Idiot. Since when did knocking one out over someone dull their appeal?

Some time around never, and I roll onto my belly with a tortured groan, screwing my eyes shut as the fantasy I’ve just come to threatens to boil over again, tempered only by the kind of emotional flagellation that leaves scars on your soul.

You think he’s lying awake with you on his mind?

It feels as likely as the notion that Tam was flirting with me earlier, and it’s enough to smother the fire my misguided self-love has stoked in my blood.

Tam’s not thinking about me, so I need to stop thinking about him. Tam Dubois. My landlord and a man I’ve known for less than two weeks and I’m already? —

Nope.

Not doing it.

I force myself to sleep and wake up with an iron curtain around my mind.

Get up.

Run.

Eat.

Find a new hobby.

Great advice and I heed every scrap of it, until I exit the annex in my long-neglected workout clothes to find a bag of groceries on the doorstep, complete with a work-of-art note that melts the barrier I’ve imagined into a puddle at my feet.

Bhodi Jones,

You need to eat. Don’t let life stop you.

Tam x