by Lauren Layne
Double crap.
I swallow my frustration, my fingers gripping my handbag tightly where Dolly’s poking her little head out, happy and oblivious to the fact that we’re about to be exposed in Home Depot by a nosy woman with mean eyes.
Do I turn and run?
Or grin and bear it?
Before I can make up my mind, Noah’s moved in front of me, his broad shoulders blocking my view of the woman. And hers of me.
“Brace yourself, princess,” he says softly.
I open my mouth to ask For what, but before I can get the words out, Noah bends his head and stamps his lips against mine.
It catches me by surprise. Obviously.
The kiss is all business at first. I can tell by the impersonal press of his lips against mine, the way his hands stay at his sides, his posture tense, as though he’s barely enduring the contact.
But as we stand there, two strangers who don’t even like each other, impatiently waiting for a nosy woman to take her camera phone and be on her way, something shifts.
My breathing quickens a little as I register the feel of his firm lips on mine, and his quickens in response before his lips begin to move.
Slowly. Slowly his lips drag over mine, from one side of my mouth to the other, as the kiss goes from being an immobile, get-it-over-with affair to being gently exploratory.
His lips are just slightly rough, as though he rarely thinks to put on Chapstick, possibly doesn’t own any, and the friction against the minty glossiness of my lips is electric.
Noah’s hands find my hips, nudging me forward slightly as his tongue slips between my lips, confident and unapologetic. I let out a quiet moan as my hand lifts to his chest, fingers clenching at the soft fabric of his T-shirt, wanting him closer.
The guy knows what he’s doing.
I lose track of how long he kisses me, and let’s be clear, he’s kissing me; I can do little more than stand upright, his tongue hot and wet and hungry against mine, his fingers equally greedy against my hips.
It’s not until Dolly lets out a little yip that I remember I have a dog in my bag. Heck, I barely even remember I have a dog.
But her sharp bark’s enough to make him draw back, his eyes lingering on my mouth just for a second, avoiding my eyes.
Noah turns his head slowly, and I realize he’s looking for the woman.
He steps back, and I sneak a peek around his shoulder. The woman and her camera are nowhere to be seen. I feel a little thrill of victory that if she did get a picture, it would have been of a redhead and her boyfriend locking lips in the electrical aisle of Home Depot. Without a clear shot of my face, Jenny Dawson was never here.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He shrugs, seeming a hell of a lot less affected by the kiss than I am, but then again, he’s still avoiding my eyes.
“Figured I owe you,” he says. “For the jerk comment I made in the car earlier about married guys.”
I nod slowly. It was an asshole thing to say, but I can’t deny that the guy just did me a major favor to make up for it.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask, trotting after him as he begins pushing the cart toward the front of the store.
He doesn’t respond, but he also doesn’t tell me to shut up, so I ask the question anyway. “How was it? The kiss, I mean?”
Noah doesn’t look back. “What, you want like a star rating?”
“No, I just…you kiss different from the boys I know.”
“Well, maybe that’s your problem,” he says, still not looking at me. “You’ve been kissing boys.”
I want desperately to shoot back something witty, but he’s right. He just set a new gold standard for kissing in my book, and my pride insists on knowing if it was the same for him.
“Okay, fine,” I say. “Give me a star rating.”
“Jesus,” he mutters as we get in line at the cash register. “No.”
I poke his side. There’s not a bit of give, just firm muscle. “Come on. I can take it.”
He remains silent for a few moments, as though considering my question, as he pulls his wallet out of his back pocket.
Then, “I’ve had better.”
My stomach plummets to my feet.
Of course he’s had better. He kissed the hell out of me, and I more or less just stood there, letting it happen, holding on for dear life.
But even as disappointment settles around me that he wasn’t quite as rocked by the kiss as I was, it occurs to me that he still hasn’t looked at me. Not once.
I smile a little, because even if he’s had better…I’m pretty sure he’s had worse too.
And I’m way more excited about that than I have any right to be.
Noah
I survive the first week of being Jenny Dawson’s bitch.
Oh, I’m sorry, I mean caretaker of her run-down palace.
Although, to be fair…it hasn’t been all bad.
Ranger and I have settled into the little cottage with relative ease now that we’ve figured out that running the coffeepot at the same time as the microwave blows the fuse and that the hot and cold are reversed in the shower, and now that we’ve relocated the squirrel family living in the eaves to a nice tree on the opposite side of the property.
For her part, Jenny seems to be settling in pretty well. I don’t see her all that much, a distance I suspect we’re both taking pains to foster.
To be honest, I had serious doubts that the girl would last two days. No TV, no Internet, no cellphone. I know she’s used the landline a couple times to check in with her parents and some chick named Amber, assuring them that she’s fine and happy.
But the weird thing is, she really does seem fine and happy. As far as I can tell, most all of her time goes toward her music. The guitar plays nonstop from the moment she gets up, around eight, until at least five. It’s weird—I never thought of musicians as having a regular job, but the girl puts in more time with that guitar than I’ve put into anything in my life.
Until now.
To say that the old house is keeping me busy is an understatement. So far I’ve cleaned the gutters, replaced the sink in the downstairs bathroom, torn up the fraying, mildewing carpet on the main staircase, and replaced the broken window in what I suspect was once the dining room.
The good news is that I haven’t thought about Yvonne once. Not that I needed confirmation that ending our engagement was the right thing for both of us, but the fact that I don’t miss her makes me feel as relieved as it does guilty.
The bad news is that while Yvonne’s barely crossed my mind, a certain blond country singer won’t leave my mind.
That fucking kiss was a mistake.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. One second I was in complete control, doing the girl a favor and saving her from some glory-seeking bitch out for her one moment of fame at someone else’s expense, and the next I’m losing my mind over the taste of her mouth, the soft give of her hips, the way she kissed me back a little bit shy and a whole lot desperate.
For a girl who has a reputation for getting plenty of horizontal action, she tasted a hell of a lot like innocence. And sweetness.
And want.
Shit.
No matter how much I pretend it didn’t happen, no matter how hard I try to avoid her, it’s there.
The taste of her lips, the sound of those frantic little breaths…
I wipe sweat from my forehead. Summer hasn’t even really kicked off yet, but it’s hotter than usual for June.
And Jenny Dawson only makes it a hell of a lot hotter.
I’m working outside today, and as I survey the rotten wood that is the back porch, I wonder if I should rip up the whole thing or just replace the rotten boards before someone breaks their neck.
I hear Ranger’s frantic happy bark through an upstairs open window followed by the cotton ball’s pissy one, then Jenny’s indulgent, “Ranger, honey, we talked about this. No hump!”
I smile a little. Good l
uck with that, honey.
Ranger sleeps with me in the cottage, but the second I let him out in the morning, he shoots off to see Jenny and Dolly. I know, because I’ve started to use his horny barks as my gauge for when it’s time for my second cup of coffee.
I keep waiting for Jenny to lose her diva mind, but other than the time she came to tell me that Ranger’d deposited a dead duck in the kitchen and could I please remove it, she’s been pretty cool.
I guess.
I turn my attention back to the work at hand, deciding that if I’m going to fix the porch, I might as well do it all the way.
The supplies I’d gotten at Home Depot weren’t nearly enough to make a dent in this old place, so I’d had a shit-ton of wood and other renovation materials delivered courtesy of “Mr. Walcott.”
If you’re wondering if I’m feeling bad about that little lie…
Not really.
It’s freeing to be just a regular guy.
I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed people not kissing my ass, and Jenny Dawson certainly isn’t kissing my ass.
The other day she called me “boy” when asking me to fix the freezer’s icemaker.
It’s also occurred to me, though, that this idiotic “information diet” of hers is working in my favor. A thorough Google search on her part and my charade would be over in a second, but her avoiding gossip about herself means she also avoids gossip about me.
My lie is safe. For now.
I’ve gathered everything I need to get started on the porch, and I’ve just started to tear up the first board when I hear the door above me open.
The back of the house has an old antebellum-style balcony, and the soft hum of female singing tells me Jenny’s about to make use of it.
I step off the porch, walking backward. Looking up, I can see her, and I’m ready to suggest that she go somewhere else for the day because my venture is going to be a noisy one.
The words never make it out.
Jenny Dawson is wearing a bikini.
She’s still humming as she drags some ugly-looking chaise thing onto the balcony before fluttering a fluffy white towel onto it and sliding sunglasses onto her face. She’s planning to sunbathe. No way in hell am I going to get any work done.
“The balcony might not be stable, you know,” I call, loud enough for her to hear.
Her head whips around, and she smiles when she sees me. She walks to the railing and leans over it, giving me a full view of her body.
Fuck.
Fuck me.
She’s perfect. She’s got the perfect lean curves of a twenty-two-year-old who takes care of herself. I’m sweating bullets now, and not from the heat.
Correction—not from the heat of the sun.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” she says, ignoring my warning about the balcony.
Last time she asked me that, she asked if she was a good kisser. I lied.
“Which do you like better?” she asks, even though I don’t respond.
Then she opens her mouth and sings, “I like sweet like candy, hot like whisky, but all I crave now is the flavor of revenge.”
Her voice is amazing.
I know this from the radio, as well as from the fact that her voice sometimes fills the whole house while I’m working.
But seeing her sing is something else entirely. I get now why she hasn’t gotten bored with just her and her music. She is her music.
She repeats the same line again, then looks at me expectantly. “Well?”
“Well what?”
I’m pretty sure she rolls her eyes behind the sunglasses. “The second time I went up on the last note. More upbeat, less scary. But I think I want the song to be scary, you know?”
She chews on the end of a pencil, jotting something in a notebook she seems to carry with her everywhere.
“Whatever,” I mutter.
She looks back at me. “You don’t like music?”
I like music. I just don’t know music. That was more Caleb’s thing. The brother I didn’t know I had. The one who died before I even knew of his existence was some sort of virtuoso. Violin, piano, voice.
I, the backup son, can’t carry a tune in a bucket.
But right now I don’t care about any of that. Not with Jenny Dawson’s perfect tits on display in a tiny pink bikini.
If she’s aware of my staring, she doesn’t show it. Just keeps scribbling in that little notebook while humming to herself. “I need my guitar,” she mutters, more to herself than to me. She disappears, and I admit I crane my neck to check out her ass as she enters the house.
Shit. This has to stop. She’s a spoiled kid, for God’s sake.
I all but attack the boards of the porch, hoping it’ll defuse some of the sexual tension rippling through my body. But the strum of her guitar reminds me that she’s there, playing guitar practically naked, and it’s all I can do not to climb up to the balcony and strip her bare while devouring that perfect body.
Even with the boards in as shitty condition as they are, it’s hard, backbreaking work, and my shirt is soaked through in no time at all. I peel off my T-shirt, using it to wipe my forehead when I see her.
Jenny steps out the back door with two glasses of iced tea in hand.
She’s put on shorts, at least, but from the waist up there’s only the little triangles of her bikini top, the sexy curve of her belly.
“Could you please put on some clothes,” I snap, even as I grab for the cold drink she offers.
“Says the guy with no shirt,” she says, lifting her glass in a mocking toast. “It’s ninety-something degrees and higher than that in humidity. We’re both half naked for the same reason.”
How about we get all-the-way naked for a different reason?
I finish the tea in three gulps. It’s sweeter than I like it, but it’s cold, which is all that matters at the moment. I resist the urge to dump the remaining ice on my crotch.
“Where are the dogs?” I ask, since it’s the least sexy topic I can think of at the moment.
“In my room,” she says. “It’s cooler in there with the air-conditioning unit.”
I stare. “You left the AC on. For your dog.”
“And yours,” she points out.
“You left them in there together? Your dog hates mine.”
“Only because he’s ten times her size and has a mad crush. But actually, I think Dolly’s coming around. Playing hard to get, you know?”
“She learned that from you?” I ask.
“Really? Unoriginal insults?” she asks, taking a sip of tea. “That’s what I get for bringing you something to drink?”
“You sure you didn’t just do it so you could prance around like that?” I say, raking my gaze down her body, deliberately condescending.
Jenny rolls her eyes. “Did you go to an all-boys school or something? You’re acting like you’ve never seen a girl in a bikini before.”
She’s right, and it pisses me off not only to be acting like a horny schoolboy but also to be called out on it.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I ask, bending down to pick up my hammer.
Her shoulders slump just the slightest bit, and I feel like an ass. But then her shoulders go back and her chin lifts before she turns on her heel and marches back into the house without so much as a goodbye.
A minute later I’m back at work, and I hear the now familiar strum of her guitar from the balcony above me, but it’s an angrier melody this time, fast and a little discordant.
And then she starts to sing, her voice pitch-perfect. “There once was a guy named Noah, he was as appealing as a boa. Whatever happened, whoa-oh-oh, whatever happened, whoa-oh-oh, to rot his soul?”
I shake my head. There’s more strumming on the guitar, and her Noah-hate song continues.
“His face was average, his eyes were cold. His body flubby, whoa-oh-oh. His kiss was filthy, his flavor bad. He tried to woo me, and it was sad, whoa-oh-oh.”
The song is ri
diculous. A little childish.
And yet as it continues on with a list of all my flaws, I can’t help but smile a little. Not only at her spunk…but at the very satisfying realization that I sure as hell am not the only one haunted by that kiss.
Jenny
Would you believe me if I said I’m not bored?
I’m really, really not, which is incredible, even to me.
Did it take me a little while to detox from my Instagram addiction? Yah. Does it feel weird to talk to my parents and Amber on a phone that’s connected to the wall with a cord? Absolutely.
But apparently even I didn’t realize how desperately I need a reprieve, because I’m feeling more whole, more Jenny out here in the middle of nowhere, with nobody but Dolly and Ranger to keep me regular company, than I did in L.A. Heck, I even feel more me here than I did in Nashville. I love that city to death, but after All of Me hit the lists, I couldn’t even get a Frappuccino without someone wanting to get a selfie with me.
But here in Glory, Louisiana, my mind’s never felt clearer, my music’s never been better.
I was right to come here.
Whether this place triggers some emotional response to that first song I wrote all those years ago or whether there’s something magical about it, it’s working for me.
This spontaneous, get-away-from-it-all isolation is working, except for one teeny-tiny detail.
The damn handyman.
I hope he liked my little song earlier today, because I meant every word.
Except for the part about his face being average.
Oh, and the part where I said his body was flubby.
His.
Body.
Is.
Perfect.
Did I put on my smallest bikini just to torture him? Maybe.
But the joke’s on me, because I had absolutely not been preparing for him to return the “favor,” and now in addition to the memory of his hot kiss, I’ve got visions of his ripped body haunting my every move.
The guy’s not pretty. In fact, just about the only pretty thing about him is those long, curly eyelashes. But his upper body is perfectly sculpted, with just enough meat on him to look real.
And unlike so many of the prissy guys in L.A., Noah’s got chest hair. A light sprinkling of golden brown chest hair I want to feel scraping against my chest as he plunges into me.