The Aussie Next Door

by Stefanie London

Jace stood at the door, his hair damp and poking out at all angles. The barest dusting of golden prickles coated his jaw, and a pair of jeans rode low on his hips. So low she could see those incredible V muscles pointing down toward heaven, disappearing into the waistband of his pants like an invitation to sin.

  “Hey. Hello. Good morning!” Smooth, Donovan. Real smooth.

  “Three greetings. Must be a good day.” Jace held the door for her, then disappeared into the bedroom. He reappeared a moment later, stretching a white T-shirt over his head as he walked. “Did you go to a garage sale this morning?”

  She almost wanted to sigh in relief at his easy question. He must have decided to let go of the strange tension from last night, too.

  “No, these came from the retirement home.” Angie began stacking the tapes into a neat pile. They were all in their original cases with the brightly colored spines indicating a wealth of romantic information: Clueless, You’ve Got Mail, She’s All That, Never Been Kissed, and more.

  “And why are they now in your possession?” Jace picked one up, inspecting it like it was a fossil from an archaeological dig. “Also, did they not have a single decent movie?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Grumpypants. Romantic comedies are my personal favorite.” She turned over the cover for There’s Something About Mary. “This is a classic.”

  Jace didn’t look convinced. “I’ll take your word for it. I guess this is the point where you ask me if I have something that will play those things?”

  She grinned. “You’re so smart.”

  “Let me see what I can find. You know this place used to belong to my grandparents, right? There must be fifty years’ worth of useless shit under the house. I’m sure there will be a VHS player.”

  “Not useless. Retro.” Angie began sorting the pile by order of interest. “Oh man, so much Drew Barrymore in this pile. And Meg Ryan…and Alicia Silverstone. Why don’t we see these women in movies anymore?”

  “Misogyny in Hollywood?”

  “Too right. The nineties was a gold mine.”

  Jace headed outside, and Angie followed. There was a small door that led to the crawl space under the house—which Angie would not be going under. But Jace, in true Aussie “bloke” fashion, didn’t seem perturbed by the cobwebs and dust and the very likely outcome of encountering an eight-legged foe.

  A few minutes after he went in, he came out triumphant with a cardboard box. Black Sharpie indicated that this box contained videos and a player. Score!

  “I think we’ve got a winner,” Jace said as he brushed the dust particles from his hair. He had a grimy smudge on his cheek, and Angie’s hand shot out before she had a chance to think.

  Her thumb connected with soft skin over the sharp angle of his cheekbone. The touch wasn’t anything to write home about, and yet it made her body tingle as if someone had poured champagne into her veins. For some reason, Jace made her feel like a giddy teenager who’d never been kissed.

  “You had a smudge,” she said, pulling her hand back and rubbing it against her leg.

  “Tends to happen when you go foraging.” His smile was crooked and the barest hint of sexy. “Shall we open her up?”

  “Yes, let’s do it.”

  They took the box back into the house like two excited treasure hunters. The tape keeping the lid closed was weak and yellowed, and it offered little resistance to the scissors Jace ran over it. When the flaps popped open, they peered eagerly inside.

  “Oh, Liv is going to die when she knows I’ve found these.” Jace grinned, pulling out a homemade VHS tape complete with self-designed cover. “Mum made a compilation of all her dance performances.”

  “My God. That is some serious eye shadow.” Angie ran a fingertip over the cover, which contained a picture of Jace’s little sister at probably about nine years of age. She was all elbows and skinny legs, with an epic sequined outfit and electric-blue eye shadow that went all the way to her eyebrows. Topping it all off was the adorable gap between her front teeth. “She’s too cute.”

  “There is literally nothing more terrifying than an army of little girls in sequins.” Jace continued digging through the box, pulling out other homemade videos labeled with dates and occasions, as well as a few without boxes or labels. An old packet of photos was stuffed inside, and Angie instantly made a grab for it before Jace could stop her.

  The small bundle of photos included some negative strips. “Aw. You guys are so adorable.”

  The photos appeared to have been taken at someone’s birthday, and the Walters kids were all dressed in fashion atrocities of the late nineties. Oversize basketball jerseys, baggy shorts, and chunky sneakers. Like a bunch of NSYNC wannabes.

  Jace looked about ten and distinctly like he did not want to have his photo taken. A younger Trent and Olivia held melting ice creams and the eldest two, Adam and Nick, stood tall and proud in the back.

  “You were serious, even as a kid. And Trent looks like he was the family clown back then, too.” She put the photo to the back of the pile and kept looking through them. Many were out of focus or had someone with their eyes closed, but 100 percent of them were charming.

  Sadness hit Angie in the gut, out of nowhere. Looking through these shiny, happy memories was such a foreign thing to her. She imagined people with real families and proper childhoods did this on the regular—flipping through albums and reminiscing about the good old days.

  Angie had a small collection of photos from her past that she couldn’t bring herself to throw out, despite the fact that they never made her smile. But it almost felt like throwing them out would erase what little childhood she’d had. Never mind the fact that all she saw when she looked at those photos was how poorly her fake smile hid the loneliness in her eyes.

  “Mr. Serious. That’s me.” Jace dug out the VHS player from the bottom of the box and frowned. “I have no idea if this will work. It’s probably clogged with dust.”

  “Only one way to find out.” Angie held her hands up, but Jace carried the player to his TV unit.

  Funny, she’d expected him to hand it over and send her on her way. When she’d first moved in, Jace had been very firm that he kept a tight schedule with his work, and she’d tried to respect that.

  “Which one do you want to test?” Jace was on all fours, digging behind his entertainment unit for somewhere to plug in the VHS player. From here, Angie had to stop herself from drooling over the way his jeans stretched tightly across his butt.

  Dammit. She had to stop putting herself in a position where she was looking at his backside.

  “How about Never Been Kissed?” She plucked the tape from the top of the pile. “But I don’t want to keep you from your day. If it’s working, I can take it back to my place.”

  “It’s fine. I’d scheduled some time off this morning to do my washing and cleaning.”

  Angie stifled a smile. Who scheduled time to do their washing? And he could very easily have given her what she asked for and sent her packing. Was it possible he wanted to spend time with her?

  He opened the video cover and pulled out the tape, slotting it into the VHS player. When it played, the end of the movie was rolling, where Drew Barrymore kissed the leading man to the tune of “Don’t Worry Baby” by the Beach Boys.

  “Spoiler alert: The girl gets the guy.” Angie grinned and settled onto the couch.

  “Whatever happened to be kind, rewind, huh? Kids these days don’t know the torture.” He set the video to rewind itself and stretched up from his crouched position. His jeans were worn and soft and had the kind of lines in them that highlighted his muscular thighs. “Hell, you probably didn’t have to do that.”

  “I’m only five years behind you,” she reminded him. “And actually, the homes I grew up in were not exactly very technologically advanced.”

  “So tell me,” he said. “What’s this one about?”


  “Oh, it’s a classic. Josie is a twenty-five-year-old reporter who goes undercover as a seventeen-year-old high school student—”

  “And nobody notices?” He raised a brow.

  “Well, it was the late nineties. Everyone playing a high school kid in movies back then was at least mid-twenties,” she replied. “And anyway, 21 Jump Street had already done it a decade before. So it’s got precedent.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway,” she said, ignoring his disbelieving tone. “Josie was called ‘Josie Grossie’ in high school because she was the class nerd, and now she gets a second chance to try to be cool.”

  “Even though she’s moved on and presumably has a successful reporting career and shouldn’t be giving a crap what some high schoolers think?”

  “Doesn’t everyone wish they could prove people from high school wrong? But then she falls in love with her teacher and gets to have the high school experience she wished she could have had the first time around. Only, by the end, she understands what’s truly important.”

  “That teachers shouldn’t be hitting on their students?” This time Jace’s tone was betrayed by a small quirk of his lips. He was pushing her buttons on purpose. “Even the fake ones.”

  “Are you going to watch the damn movie or not?” Angie asked, folding her arms over her chest.

  Jace grinned his adorable, crooked grin, which always made her pulse flutter. At that moment, the VHS player made a sound, and the whirring stopped, so he pressed Play and then joined her on the couch. Truffle came from out of nowhere and leaped up between them, rolling onto his back and exposing his splotchy pink belly to the world. Jace reached down to scratch the dog, like this was a routine they’d created. There was total trust. Total comfort. The dog had a blissed-out expression on his face, and for the first time in her life, Angie found herself being a little jealous of an animal.

  “Why do you like these movies?” he asked as the video started. It looked like it had been watched over and over, giving the screen a slightly fuzzy quality.

  “Rom-coms?”

  “Yeah.”

  Angie shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess there’s something comforting about knowing that everyone deserves a happily ever after. It’s a universal thing, right? We all want the comfort of thinking our lives will turn out well even if we don’t always feel like good things will happen to us.”

  That was far more insightful than she’d intended, but it was true. The first time she’d sat down to watch a rom-com with her foster mom was after she’d moved houses for the fourth time in as many years. It was right around the time a boy at school had told her that she was a loser because her family hadn’t wanted to keep her.

  Yet watching that silly, funny movie about the girl who everyone thought was odd had made Angie wonder if perhaps she could have that moment of coming down the stairs, dressed up and transformed and suddenly noticed. Suddenly important. That maybe one day she would be loved and accepted.

  “Don’t tell me this is part of your grand fall-in-love-instantly plan?” Jace frowned. “Does this quantify as research? You’re not planning to go undercover at the local high school, right?”

  She reached across Truffle’s stretched-out body to give Jace a gentle shove. “To quote another classic rom-com, as if! And if you shut up for five seconds and watch the darn thing, you might learn something, too.”

  “Doubtful.” His lips were doing that sexy quirking thing again.

  As the movie continued, Angie found herself unable to stop stealing glances at her landlord’s profile. The strong nose and hard jaw, the thick eyelashes that most women would kill for. The way his hair curled stubbornly around his ears, the place where a cowlick always made it look like he’d just rolled out of bed.

  Maybe Angie watched these movies because she needed hope—hope that someone with a good heart, someone who made her feel that exciting flutter, would fall for her. Hope that even though her family hadn’t wanted her, maybe that didn’t mean she wasn’t lovable.

  It allowed her to dwell in the fantasy that she’d fall in love…maybe with someone like Jace who had a good heart and a gaze that could burn her up?

  There’s no point fixating on someone who isn’t interested. You’ll waste this opportunity and end up going back home alone and miserable.

  True that. No matter how much he got her hot under the collar and made her giggle in that perfect giddy-schoolgirl way, her plans did not allow for a guy who wasn’t interested. So she had to officially cast him out of her mind and get back to the movie.

  It was time to enter study mode, and Angie was determined to be top of the rom-com class.

  …

  Jace officially did not get women. To be fair, he didn’t really get people, but he especially did not get women. The whole Josie Grossie thing was…confusing. Which made Angie’s plan to fall in love and get married in two months something beyond confusing.

  Hell, Jace took more than two months to make a decision about which pair of sneakers to buy after they discontinued his preferred style. Marriage? That was something that should be entered into with the utmost care. Maybe if he’d taken more care the first time around, it would have ended up differently.

  But after he’d left Angie last night, a bad feeling had eaten him up all night. He could tell she wanted something from him—support, maybe. A hug? Who the hell knew? That whole conversation was smack-bang in the middle of the fuzzy gray, and he was way out of his element. So far out of his element, he would have been more comfortable going undercover in a high school.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Angie pressed a hand to her chest as the couple on-screen kissed.

  Jace still couldn’t get past the fact that the teacher had fallen for one of his students, even if she was legal. How the heck was that romantic?

  Now that he looked closer, Angie had tears in her eyes. They were like shimmering little crystals, glinting and catching the light. They made her lashes stick together in little clumps, and for some reason, that was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

  When Jace was a kid, his mother had had a chart stuck to the refrigerator that had different facial expressions on it. He’d never been too good at deciphering those on his own, so his mum had helped him. There was a smiling face, which meant someone was happy. A frowning face, which meant someone was angry. And a face with tears, which meant someone was sad.

  As he’d gotten older, the expressions had become even more challenging to decipher, because people didn’t always let their face represent exactly what they were feeling. How the heck was he supposed to know that not all frowns were angry?

  Watching Angie closely, the tears continued to glimmer, although she blinked a lot so they wouldn’t fall. And she bit down on her lip. Maybe the movie was having the opposite effect than she’d intended. Whenever Liv was sad, she liked to be hugged. She said it made her feel better.

  So Jace slowly reached his arm along the back of the couch, waiting to see if Angie pulled away. She didn’t. For some reason, this made his heart feel like it was rushing. Now his arm was fully stretched out behind her, and his hand dipped down to touch her shoulder.

  Still, she didn’t move away.

  She had on a top with no sleeves, and the skin on her shoulders was perfectly smooth. Perfectly warm. It felt good against his fingertips. Freckles dusted her skin, like someone had flicked a paintbrush against her, and she had a tiny white scar that looked like a crescent moon. How had he never noticed that before? It was almost like looking at the sky—star specks and moon, a galaxy on her skin.

  Angie inched along the couch toward him, and he let his hand drape over her shoulder. Eventually, she leaned into him, her head coming to rest on his shoulder and her hair trailing over him, like bands of silk.

  It felt so good to have her curled up against him, her gentle curves pressing into his body. And sh
e always smelled good, too. He’d seen her perfume bottle on her bathroom countertop once, a pretty glass thing with a yellow ribbon. It made her smell like lemons and sugar. And that made him hungry.

  God, he was so hungry.

  The movie was totally lost on him now. The television could have been blaring hard-core death metal, and he wouldn’t have even noticed it. All his brain could process was Angie. The feel of her, the smell of her. The sound of her sniffle and the way it wrinkled her nose in the most adorable way.

  Holding her felt so right, as if his body was somehow tense and perfectly relaxed at the same time—like he didn’t dare move a muscle in case it caused her to pull away.

  Stop. Angie is not the girl for you—she talks too much, chaos follows her everywhere, and…she’s leaving.

  But he couldn’t stop. It was like he was committing every part of her to memory, using his eyes. His fingertips. He traced the line of her arm, and she turned to him, tilting her face up to his. The tears were less now, still a faint glimmer but replaced by something…hotter. Her lips were parted and glossy, her cheeks flushed sunset-pink.

  He wanted to kiss her. Need struck him with the force of a hammer, pounding relentlessly in time with his pulse. Filtering through his system in a way he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. Too long.

  It felt like time had ground to a halt, as if someone had hit Pause on his life. Could he kiss her? Would that be so wrong when he knew she was looking for so much more than he could give? Their needs were opposed but…he wanted to. So badly.

  Angie’s eyes fluttered shut, her beautiful spiky lashes still damp. He leaned closer, inching his face toward hers until—

  “Oof!” There was a wet dog nose in his crotch and two giant paws on his thighs. Dammit, Tilly! Truffle raced across the room, barking loudly as if demanding that nobody forget he was here. As if that was even possible.

  Angie immediately pulled away, putting as much distance between her and the bigger dog as possible. Her expression was hard to read, but she laughed in a way that sounded odd. Like it wasn’t a real laugh.