Kitabı oku: «Perfectly Saucy», sayfa 2

2

THE THOUGHT OF SEEING Alex again made Jessica’s stomach twist into nervous knots.

At least, that’s what she told herself. Those knots in her stomach were knots of dread, not excitement. And the jittery feeling she got at the thought of seeing him again had nothing to do with the way he’d kissed her. The way his roughened palms had made the bare skin of her arms tingle. The way he’d smelled unlike any other man she’d ever known—an appealing mix of sunshine, dust and sweat.

She blew out a long, slow breath.

Yep. Just nerves. That was it.

She’d armed herself with his business card and an outfit less likely to attract snide “princess” comments—black capri pants and a black, boat-necked T-shirt. It was as good an outfit as any to grovel in.

According to the card she’d salvaged from the portfolio he’d given her, Moreno Construction operated out of his home, which turned out to be a small bungalow-style house on the outskirts of town. Finding the house was not nearly as difficult as finding the courage to walk up the overgrown path to the door. But, she conceded, owning up to mistakes was not supposed to be easy.

She rang the doorbell, waited a full minute then rang it again. The front door was open, and through the screen door, she caught glimpses of the darkened interior. But no sign of Alex himself.

Then from deep within, she heard a male voice shout, “Come in.”

She opened the screen door, stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind her. The entry opened straight into the living room, which ran the width of the house. A collection of standard-issue bachelor furniture sat clumped in the center of the room. Moving boxes flanked the walls in stacks three or four high. From where she stood, she caught a clear view of the dining room and the kitchen beyond. More bland furniture, more boxes. Only the kitchen looked lived in, with a couple of cereal bowls on the counter and a pizza box wedged into a trash can.

From somewhere at the back of the house, a power tool roared to life, so she followed the sound down the hall to a back bedroom.

And sure enough, there was Alex. He stood on an A-frame ladder, straddling the peak. The stance accentuated the muscles of his long legs. With one hand, he held up a sheet of drywall, with the other, he used a cordless drill to drive screws into the sheet.

With the exception of the spot where Alex worked, the walls had been stripped down to the studs. Chalky dust from the drywall hung in the air, making her cough.

He turned at the sound and stared at her for a second. Disbelief and then suspicion registered in his eyes before he turned back to the drywall and drove in three more screws.

Watching him move, Jessica found herself fascinated by the way his broad shoulders shifted under the threadbare cotton of his white T-shirt. By the hole in his jeans that bared his knee and the worn patches of denim along the length of his thighs and down his zipper.

She was used to seeing men dressed in Dockers and button-down Oxford shirts. Three-piece suits and tuxedoes. Clothes designed to advertise a man’s wealth and social position. Funny how none of those clothes spoke of a man’s strength—a man’s ability to work with his hands—the way Alex’s worn jeans and grimy T-shirt did.

Funny how she now noticed how appealing those qualities were. How they made her skin tingle with excitement.

When he swung one leg over the peak of the ladder and climbed down, she averted her eyes, trying not to gawk. After all, he’d made it clear he just wasn’t interested. As he nodded in greeting, he dusted off his hands, then wedged them into his back pockets. Not the warmest reception, but about the best she could hope for under the circumstances.

“I wanted to apologize for yesterday. And to explain.”

At her words, the suspicion in his gaze seemed to flicker and go out, but his eyes were dark and mysterious regardless, so she couldn’t be sure.

Stepping to her side, he stopped just short of touching her and instead gestured toward the door.

“It’ll be less dusty outside.”

As with most houses in Palo Verde, the backyard sloped away from the house, up toward the foothills. A patch of overgrown fruit trees lined the far fence and crowded against the detached garage. A picnic table sat proudly in the center of a lawn of close-cropped weeds. It was a far cry from her own neatly manicured, obsessively maintained backyard.

When she turned her gaze to Alex, she found him watching her carefully, as if gauging her reaction. Once again she found his inscrutable dark gaze unsettling.

“It’s nice,” she said, carefully lowering herself to the bench seat of the picnic table.

He stared at her in blank disbelief.

“Come fall, you’ll really enjoy the apples from those trees.”

“My parents have worked in the apple orchards for over thirty years. I hate apples,” he said flatly as he sat opposite her.

Wow. Could this go any worse?

He crossed his arms over his chest and eyed her speculatively. And though she felt her pulse leap at his perusal, there was little flattering in his expression. “So, did you come here to talk about my landscaping or did you just think it’d be fun to waste another of my afternoons?”

Just when she was starting to hope someone would come by and shoot her with a tranquilizer gun just to put her out of her misery, she noticed his lips twitching.

He was enjoying this. Not out of cruelty, she was fairly certain, but he seemed to like having her at a disadvantage. That should have annoyed her, but it didn’t. Something in his smile short-circuited her synapses. “As I said, I came here to apologize,” she said again, trying to be blunt. Get this over with as quickly as possible. After all, he may enjoy flustering her, but she didn’t enjoy being flustered. “I think you got the wrong impression yesterday.”

He arched an eyebrow in speculation. “You mean you do want me to remodel your kitchen?”

“No. But you seemed to think I invited you over just to…sleep with you. But that’s not why I called you.”

“So you don’t want to sleep with me?”

“No!” A second too late, she saw the teasing glint in his gaze. He was toying with her.

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Tell me anyway,” he coaxed.

And, oddly enough, she wanted to. It’d been like that when they were in school, too. Something about Alex Moreno made her believe she could trust him implicitly. That she could tell him anything. And he’d never hurt her. Of course, it didn’t help matters that he seemed so much less angry than he had yesterday. Even less than he had when she’d arrived. Her apology had gone a long way toward softening him up. Score one for Saucy magazine.

“It all started with this list.” No, that wasn’t right. “Actually it all started with my trip to Sweden.”

“Sweden?” he asked, his mouth set in an inexplicably grim line.

“For business. I write software for PalmPilots. Companies hire us to write programs for them. Software that tracks sales, shipping, delivery, that kind of thing. So I went to Sweden to install it and train them to use it. I went with the understanding that when I came home, I’d have this big promotion.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t get the promotion.”

“Three days before I came home, they gave it to someone else. You know the really ironic thing? The whole time I was in Sweden, everyone kept talking about how hard I worked. That I did the work of three people. Everyone was amazed. But you know what? I didn’t work any harder there than I do here. But that’s when I saw The List.”

“The List’?”

“In a magazine I was reading on the flight home. ‘10 Things Every Woman Should Do.’ I decided right then and there that I was going to do everything on that list. I know it sounds silly, thinking that some list from a magazine will change your life, but I’m tired of settling for doing the work without the recognition. I’m tired of putting my life on hold while I wait for some promotion that may never come.”

She studied his face, looking for some sign that he found this as silly as she did, now that she heard herself saying it out loud. But his expression was carefully blank, so she said with a shrug, “I know it’s just a list, but it’s a start.”

“So how do I fit into all this? What exactly is on this list that you think I can help you do?”

The question she’d been dreading. But he certainly deserved her honesty, if nothing else. She swallowed hard, embarrassment burning her cheeks. The idea of discussing sex with Alex made other less visible parts of her burn, as well. “Number one on the list is ‘Find Your Fling.’”

He nodded and for a second she thought he wasn’t going to respond, but then he asked, “And you thought I’d be a good candidate?”

She shrugged, wishing desperately he wasn’t so blasé about this whole thing, as if women propositioned him all the time. Though, for all she knew, they did. For all she knew, she was just one in a long line of lonely women who wanted to have a passionate fling with Alex.

And if that was the case, no wonder he’d been so annoyed with her yesterday. Of course, she still hadn’t owned up to her mistake, not completely. So she sucked in a deep breath and said, “Yes, I thought you’d be a good candidate. And not because I wanted to fool around with the hired help.”

Something in his eyes caught and held her attention. Once again she felt the gut-level tug of attraction. Passion, yes. But something more. Something more unsettling than that.

She waited a moment, hoping he’d say something. When he didn’t, she moved to leave. “I should go.”

But he grabbed her arm to stop her. “Wait—”

For a moment they simply sat there, his palm warm against her arm, the delicate skin at the crook of her elbow sensitized to the touch of his work-roughened fingers.

In that instant she knew—she hadn’t come here to apologize. She didn’t want him to forgive her. She’d come here hoping…Hoping what?

That he wanted her as much as she wanted him?

That the kiss they’d shared yesterday had been more than just a kiss?

That it had kept him up all night—hot and wanting—as it had her?

Yes, yes and yes. What she’d really wanted was for him to touch her again. After a lifetime of being coddled and cosseted by men with soft hands, she wanted this rough man—these hands—to touch her. Just once she wanted to know how that felt.

Too bad he didn’t seem to want the same thing.

Okay, maybe he was a little interested. After all, that kiss in the kitchen had been pretty hot. But she wanted more. She wanted the kind of passion he couldn’t walk away from.

She never again wanted to settle for less than that.

ALEX WATCHED HER as she scooted off the bench and stood. She made it about three steps down the driveway toward her car before he stopped her. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want her to leave like this.

“Wait, Jessica.”

She swung back to face him, her spine unnaturally stiff, her chin a notch higher. Outwardly she seemed so together. Cool and in control. But there was vulnerability there, too. That was what he couldn’t walk away from.

“Why me? When you decided you wanted to have a passionate fling, why’d you pick me?”

He was an idiot for asking. But he wanted to spend more time with her almost as much as he wanted to take her to bed and do all kinds of sinful things to her body.

Jessica didn’t answer right away. For a long moment she just studied him, her head tilted at an angle that let a lock of her hair fall across her cheek. Her expression was cautious, as if she were trying to decide whether or not to tell him the truth.

Finally she said, “I had a crush on you in high school. I was a junior, and you were a senior. It all started one day when—” Her gaze darted away from his and the barest hint of a blush crept into her cheeks. “You probably don’t even remember it.”

“Try me.”

But he did remember. He knew exactly which day she meant.

“I was walking home from school alone one day. A couple of boys cornered me by the old Dawson house, where I used to cut across the creek. One of them was that Morse boy. Ronald, I think. His brother had been picked up for drunk driving. This was back when my father was still a judge and he’d just sentenced Ronald’s brother. He was a repeat offender. My father had no choice. But Ronald was looking for someone to blame. I guess I was an easy target.”

The way she said it—so simply, with no resentment or anger in her voice—made him wonder how often that kind of thing had happened. How many of her fellow students had resented her, hated her even, because of the power her father yielded?

“So there I was, all alone with these three guys, when you came along and—”

“Saved you.” He finished the sentence for her because he couldn’t stand to hear the hero worship in her voice.

Her gaze snapped back to his. “You do remember.”

As if it were yesterday. In vivid detail. And he remembered all the things she was leaving out and skimming over. Her “a couple of boys” had been three huge guys. Football players, if he remembered right. Big, dumb and just looking for an excuse to pin Jessica Sumners up against a tree.

Which was exactly where they’d had her when he’d come along. She must have been terrified, but there hadn’t even been a glimmer of emotion in her eyes. She hadn’t begged or cried out or even fought them, as if she’d instinctively known that would only incite their rage. Instead she’d stood there, her gaze as calm and steady as her voice as she’d talked to Ronald.

Her tone so soft, Alex hadn’t caught much of what she’d said. Something about how this would be for the best. How his brother could get the help he needed.

Alex had stood there, half hidden by the fence, his blood pounding, waiting to see what would happen. Unable to leave her to fend for herself, if the guys didn’t walk away, he’d have to do something. But jeez, they were huge. And he’d been in enough fights to know he hadn’t stood a chance, not against all three.

“It all happened so fast,” she mused. “One minute I was all alone, the next I was surrounded.” She looked up now, her eyes finding his. “And then you were there.”

When he’d seen Morse lean in toward her, he’d acted instinctively. He’d called out her name. Not Jessica. Not Sumners, which was what Morse had been calling her. But “Jess.”

“You called out to me,” she said, still studying him with that pensive expression that made him so uncomfortable. “It must have surprised them, because they all three turned around and I was able to get away.”

She’d run straight to his side. Without thinking, he’d put his arm around her shoulder. Together, they’d walked through the Dawson’s yard to the street. At the sidewalk, he’d dropped his arm, but kept walking beside her, not wanting to let her out of his sight. Especially when he’d glanced over his shoulder to see all three guys standing in front of the Dawson house, watching them.

After they’d turned the corner and were out of sight of the football players, she’d slipped her hand into his. He’d felt her palm damp against his and her fingers trembling, and only then had he known how scared she’d been.

When they’d reached her block, he’d stopped and tried to pull his hand away, but she’d held tight. All he could think at the time was that he’d never imagined he’d ever find himself holding Jessica Sumners’s hand. And he sure as hell had never imagined it would feel that good.

Then she’d looked up at him, her eyes bluer than any he’d ever seen, her expression so serious. Not distant and reserved, as it had been the few times their eyes had met while passing in the halls, but warm and filled with emotion. Gratitude, sure, but something else, as well.

An awareness of him. As if she was seeing him for the very first time. Hell, maybe she was. Girls like Jessica—good girls—didn’t notice him. And for all he knew, she’d never really looked at him until that moment.

She’d stood so close to him that when the breeze picked up, a long strand of her hair fluttered close to his face and he’d caught the scent of her. She’d even smelled rich. Clean and fresh. Not like strong perfume, the way his sisters did.

In that instant he’d been distinctly aware of two things. First, he’d wanted to kiss her. Desperately. He’d wanted to press his lips to hers to see if she tasted as rich as she smelled.

Second, he shouldn’t even be touching her.

Jessica Sumners was perfect. She never got into trouble, she never got her hands dirty, and she sure as hell never kissed guys like him. Not in darkened cars late at night when no one could see her and certainly not in the middle of the day forty feet from her front door.

Less than a month before, he had stood in her father’s courtroom and been ordered by Judge Sumners to “keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble.”

He’d suspected making out with the judge’s daughter would get him into a great deal of trouble.

Despite that—or maybe because of it—he’d pulled his hand from hers and shoved it into his pocket. It had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

When she’d opened her mouth to say something, he’d interrupted her. “I’ll stay here and watch until you’re inside.” She’d nodded. “Don’t walk home alone again. Wait to walk home in a group. The bigger the better.”

“I’ll have our maid pick me up at school until this blows over.”

Of course. Her maid. Why hadn’t he thought of that? “Good idea.”

She’d seemed to want to say something else as she’d watched him with those huge blue eyes. Eyes that seemed full of something perilously close to hero worship. Hell, that had been the last thing he’d needed. Jessica Sumners getting a crush on him.

Damn, that’d screw up his life but good.

“Go on.” He’d nodded toward her house. Keeping his tone bored, he’d added, “I got things to do.”

Her gaze had flickered as she’d turned and hurried toward the imposing mansion. She hadn’t looked back. Hadn’t seen that he’d stood on the corner, watching her house for nearly thirty minutes, belying his comment about having things to do.

Now, all these years later, as Jessica stood in his driveway, he thought again about how nothing had changed. She was as out of his reach now as she had been on that long-ago spring afternoon. And she still seemed unaware of how much he wanted her.

“I looked for you the next day at school,” she said. “I guess I wanted—” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She may not have known what she’d wanted all those years ago, but he had. She’d wanted to recapture that connection they’d both felt standing on that street corner, her hand in his and the rush of adrenaline still pounding through their veins.

She looked at him now, her expression unguarded. When she looked at him like that, he felt like a hero. Ironic, given the very unheroic things his libido was urging him to do.

“So that’s why you came to me? Because I saved you from some bullies?”

She frowned, looking very unsure of herself. “Not exactly.”

“Then what?” When she didn’t answer, he leaned forward. “I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t have done.”

Now her eyes met his with a flash of annoyance. As if it irritated her to hear him belittle his actions.

He sighed. “Look, Jess, it sounds to me like all these years you’ve been walking around thinking I’m some kind of a hero. But that’s just not true. I didn’t rescue you. I wasn’t a hero. To tell the truth, I wasn’t even a very nice guy.”

“I don’t believe you,” she snapped. “What you did might not have meant anything to you, but it did to me.”

“A momentary lapse in judgment.”

Shaking her head, she exhaled loudly. “Would it really be so bad?”

“What?”

“Would it really be so bad to let people know that under your rebellious, tough-guy exterior, deep down inside you’re actually a nice, decent human being?”

His heart swelled at her words—but it only reminded him of another body part that tended to swell around her. Not sure how much more hero worship he could take, he purposely lightened the mood.

He reached over and chucked her gently on the chin. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jess. Deep down inside, I’m just like I am on the outside.”

She stiffened. “I don’t believe you. You wanted people to think you’re despicable, but you weren’t.”

“Despicable?” He laughed. “Honey, villains with big mustaches in old silent movies are despicable.”

The irritation flashed in her eyes again but quickly disappeared. However, it wasn’t as easy to hide the blush his teasing had brought to her cheeks. She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Okay. So not despicable.”

Sensing he was close to having her exactly where he wanted her, he pressed his advantage. “No. Not despicable.” And because he just couldn’t resist touching her, he reached for her hand. Instead of taking it in his, he flipped it over, exposing her palm to his touch. “I’m much worse than despicable. You know what I was thinking about the whole way home?” She shook her head. “I was thinking about how I wanted to kiss you.”

“But—”

He didn’t let her finish. “There you were thinking I was some kind of a hero and all I could think about was how to get in your pants.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t take his eyes away from her palm, which he couldn’t seem to stop touching. It was so incredibly soft and warm under his fingertips. “I would have nailed you in a minute if you’d given me the chance.”

She pulled her hand away. “I don’t believe you.”