Free Embraced by Carolyn Faulkner Page A

bed, lots of burgundy, chocolate brown, and cream, as well as heavy oak furniture. Pointing to a tall closet, he said, “Band aids, antiseptic, cotton balls, et cetera,” as he stripped off his tattered shirt.

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    Meagan drew a breath when she turned back around and there he was, bare chested. She could barely breath, much less fumble with band aid packaging. Biting her lip, she tried to stay as business-like as possible. Some of the cuts, no matter how he tried to downplay them, were nasty and deep. “Some of these cuts really need stitches.” Barrett snorted in response, and she guessed that thought was out. First things first, she dampened a cloth and washed off the broad expanse of his shoulders, upper arms, and chest, down to his waistband in the front and back. He sat stock-still and quiet, not even saying anything risqué, which she readily expected.

    Dousing large bunches of cotton balls with antiseptic; she applied it liberally to each of the cuts, flinching for him because he apparently wouldn’t do it himself. To distract the both of them, she asked, “Was this your parents’ room?”

    “Yes. I stayed in my own room for years after they died.
    Couldn’t quite make that jump to really taking their place in the house, you know?” Meg nodded, listening intently while placing band-aids over the worst of the cuts. “Long about the time I turned 25 and came into the my inheritance, I decided to talk to the boys and Mandy about it, and they all thought I should use it. It took me another little while after I got their ok to finally realize that Momma and Daddy would have wanted me to use it. It’s my room now; I let Mandy redecorate it, bought all new furniture, everything, but I kept everything that was theirs. It’s in the spare bedroom. Just couldn’t part with it all the way, I guess.”

    Ever a bundle of raw emotion, there were tears in Meg’s eyes when he finished. For a man who tried to be all things to all people, who had been forced to grow up well before his time, built several growing businesses, and managed to keep a young family together when he wasn’t much more than a kid himself, he was still
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    sometimes achingly human. He missed his parents; that’s why he couldn’t be callous enough to just chuck their things. She’d been in the spare bedroom a time or two, and everything there was kept pristine.

    Blinking back the tears, she kidded, “I wondered why you needed a vanity.”

    He cleared his throat gruffly. “Yeah, it’s where I keep all my Mary Kay cosmetics,” he said with a completely straight face.

    Meg giggled at the idea of Barrett bending in front of the vanity mirror to apply Day-glo orange lipstick. She’d pay a bundle for that picture!

    “Are you done, Mother hen?” he asked.

    She surveyed her handiwork, and pronounced him fit for duty, kissing him lightly on the top of his head. “Wow. I like you sitting down. It makes you short!! So that’s what the top of your head looks like – oh, my, the dandruff!” She quipped and was smart enough to run out of the room before he could grab her and exact retribution.

    Barrett stayed put, looking at the multitude of pink bandages that he would have to rip off as he rode back out to work.
    He was going to have to endure enough ribbing about her bringing him lunch; he didn’t need the extra helping of insults these plastic strips would get him. He could just see Rich, his foreman, asking if Meg had kissed it all better. Actually, she had. If she wanted to mother him some, that was fine with him. It was novel for him to have someone looking out for him, when all his life, it seemed, he had been looking out for everyone else. It felt damned good, he admitted, scrunching the hat back onto his head. Even if the mother hen was a stubborn little redheaded brat with more

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    backbone and intelligence than