by Susan Fox
Sally hadn’t been bad. Just irreverent and a little reckless. Maybe, Maura now thought, she shouldn’t have been so quick to go along with Agnes and Timothy when they’d forbidden her to see Sally again. Maybe kids should be allowed to make some mistakes and learn from them, not have to behave perfectly all the time.
The man she was staring at out the window had made a mistake, too, doing whatever had landed him in court. Did he view it that way himself, and intend to learn from it? Hopefully so.
He pulled up the bottom of his T-shirt and used it to fan himself, giving Maura a tantalizing glimpse of a brown six-pack.
She felt like fanning herself, too, and she wasn’t even out in the sun, much less doing hard physical labor.
He got back to work and she kept watching. No, she wasn’t fantasizing, she was supervising. By now she’d figured out his method. He used the edger to cut a curving line, either at random or following some pattern in his head. Then he used the wicked-looking mattock to peel up strips of turf. When that was done, he shoveled soil onto the lawn and broke it up with the fork. Finally he put the turf back, with the grass side down, and piled the soil on top. It was clever and efficient, she had to admit. He was basically swapping soil for grass, with nothing left over to dispose of.
He leaned over to drink out of the hose, letting water splash his face and down his front. She wondered if he would take the T-shirt off. She doubted her blood pressure could take it, yet she was sorry when he didn’t.
Above and behind Jesse, another window opened. Mrs. Rudnicki rested her arms on the sill and gazed down into the garden. Maura would bet a month’s pay that she and Sophie Rudnicki weren’t the only females watching the show.
She forced herself back to work. Across from her, the leather jacket was a constant, disturbing reminder of the new male presence in her life. The purple orchid flowers arched toward it, their full mouths opening in sexy smiles.
Sex. Now even her orchid plant was making her think of sex. This was ridiculous.
By the end of the afternoon, Maura’s shoulders and neck ached from tension. She’d have gone home for a relaxing bath before her birthday dinner if she hadn’t had to supervise Jesse.
Of course, if she hadn’t had to supervise Jesse, she wouldn’t be tense and stressed.
No bath, no change of clothes, but there was one thing she could do to make herself feel better. She pulled open her bottom drawer and took out her hairbrush. She removed the pins that held her hair in its neat knot and let it tumble free, halfway down her back. Rotating her swivel chair to face a bookcase, she leaned back in the chair and lifted her legs to rest her feet on the second shelf.
Maura began to brush. A hundred long, slow strokes. When she was little, before her parents died, her mom brushed Maura’s hair this way. Later, when Agnes and Timothy took her in, no one had brushed her hair for her. She’d done it herself, her small hands growing larger and more deft over the years.
Now, this was still a favorite method of relaxing. She’d even been known to exceed the hundred strokes.
Jesse flipped the last strip of turf back into the new border and shoveled soil on top of it. He stretched aching shoulders, then tidied up his tools and washed up, using the courtyard tap. That was three borders ready to plant. Tomorrow, he and the boss-lady could go shopping for supplies. If she could force herself to get into a car with him.
Probably should check in with her, because she was supposed to keep track of his hours. Besides, she had his jacket.
He locked the courtyard door behind him and saw that there was a different woman at the receptionist’s desk now—a sturdy woman with gray-streaked brown hair. She studied him without warmth. “You’re Jesse Blue. Gracie told me about you.”
When she didn’t go on to give him her name, he flashed her a cocky smile. “Pleased to meet you.”
She hmphed.
“I’m supposed to check in with Ms. Mahoney,” he said. “I know the way.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she said, “Fine.”
Jesse strolled down the hallway. It was past six o’clock, and obviously his boss was still there or the nameless receptionist would have told him. Did Maura Mahoney always work Saturdays, or was she only doing it so she could supervise him? If so, he owed her.
He didn’t like owing people.
When he stepped into the doorway of the office, Jesse froze in place. She was seated behind her desk but had swiveled her chair so she was facing away from him.
Long hair streamed over the back of the chair, gleaming under the overhead light. The length, the color, the shininess stunned him. He tried to find a name for the color, somewhere between blond and red. The best he could come up with was copper-bronze.
Her right hand lifted lazily, holding a hairbrush. She stroked through her hair from crown to ends, tilting her head slightly as she did. He couldn’t see her face, but he’d bet it wore an expression of sheer pleasure.
What she was doing—the simple act of brushing her hair—was one of the most sensual things he’d ever seen. He could imagine her naked in bed: that creamy skin, the vibrant hair flowing over her shoulders and down her chest. Almost hiding her breasts, but not quite. Allowing the slightest glimpse here and there. Perhaps a nipple peeking out, growing hard as she became aware of his scrutiny.
And speaking of growing hard . . . He took a silent step backward, out the doorway, suddenly realizing he had a hard-on.
Grateful no one else was in the corridor, he paced up and down, trying to think of anything but the ice queen with the honey-dripping name. Mahoney. My honey. He wondered how many men had called her that. He guessed not many. She’d be picky about the men she allowed into her life. Lawyers and doctors, probably. No calloused-hand laborers for her.
Ruthlessly, he forced her out of his mind and instead thought about how busy his schedule was going to be for the next few weeks as he juggled his regular job, this community service work, and the kids’ pickup basketball games he coached a couple of nights a week.
His body under control, he strode back down the corridor. His plan was to knock on the door before he took a look at her, but temptation got the better of him. Just one quick glance . . .
He froze with his hand fisted in the air near the door frame. She had stopped brushing and was rotating her neck.
Damn but he wanted to bury his face in that gleaming curtain of hair. Inhale the aroma, burrow through silky strands to her soft, vulnerable nape. Kiss her there, touch his tongue to her skin. She would tremble and he’d kiss his way around to her ear. He’d already seen what fine-shaped, delicate ears she had.
He must have made a sound, because she suddenly spun around.
“Oh!” she gasped, and color flooded her cheeks.
“Sorry.” Hurriedly he jammed his fists into his jeans pockets, stretching the fabric away from his body to hide his physical response.
But maybe she’d already seen. Why else would she be blushing like that?
God, but she looked fine with her hair down. Her face was softer, more approachable. Of course all that rosy color helped, too.
“You startled me.” She dropped the brush like a hot potato and gathered her hair in both hands, pulling it back firmly from her face, twisting it behind her head.
He watched, thinking she looked pretty fine that way, too. She had one of those Hepburn faces. Skinning back the hair only emphasized the strength of the face. Her fine features were more like Audrey’s than Katharine’s, but the set of her jaw reminded him of Katharine playing Rosie in The African Queen. And that glare she’d summoned up was pure Rosie, disapproving of crude old Charlie Allnut.
Not that Jesse and Maura Mahoney were going to end up like Rosie and Charlie, that was for sure. But man, what it would be like to take the pins out of all that hair, to have it tumble down over his hands, his face. To have her lean over his naked body, all those fiery silk strands brushing his—
Whoa! Trying to look casual, he grabbed his jacket off a chair and dra
ped it over his arm to hide his lower body.
“You’re done?” she asked.
More like done in, by her sensuality. “For the day.” His voice rasped low in his throat. “When do you want me tomorrow?”
The hot flush had begun to recede but now came back in a wave.
Want me. Damn, he’d said “want me.” And that’s how she’d heard it. And she was blushing, not glaring.
Nope. Now she was glaring.
If the ice queen really was attracted to him, she hated herself for it. That was good, he told himself. He wasn’t about to hook up with another Sybil, who’d screw him as her dirty little secret.
Fantasies about long hair and taut nipples aside, Jesse knew his boss was out of his league, just as much as she did. Plenty of women found him attractive, liked his company, didn’t play fucked-up games. He never had a problem getting a date if he wanted one.
“Shall we say nine to five tomorrow.” She made it more of a statement than a question. “Unless you go to church on Sundays?” Her arched eyebrows told him she figured there was slight chance of that.
“Not much of a churchgoer. Don’t let me hold you up, if you want to go.”
She shook her head. “I don’t attend church.” She didn’t meet his eyes; her gaze was higher and quite intent. “You have . . .”
“What?”
“In your hair. The cherry tree . . .”
Quickly he shook his head and a pale pink flower, one perfect cherry blossom, fell to her desk. Damn, he’d been walking around with a flower in his hair. That must have given her a laugh.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said abruptly, and strode out of her office and down the hall.
“Wait!” Her heels clacked behind him. Probably wanted to make sure he didn’t make any stops along the way to the exit. She’d made it clear she didn’t trust him with her precious old folks.
He stopped and swung around, so abruptly she almost crashed into him. “What?” he demanded.
Her nostrils flared and her whole body quivered a little. “I just . . . I, uh . . .”
She was so close, if he reached out he could tug her into his arms. So close, he could see the slight tremble of her full bottom lip. A lip that begged to be kissed.
“Jesse, you’re working late.” A male voice made Jesse start, and swing around.
Fred Dykstra was walking from the elevator together with an attractive woman who had brown skin and short, very curly gray hair. Fred wore tailored khakis and a blazer, and the woman had on one of those dresses that buttoned down the front, patterned with swirly pink flowers.
“Just finished for the day,” Jesse said. Needing to get away from Maura and that irresistible urge to kiss her, he went to meet them.
Heel clacks told him Maura was following.
“I’d like you to meet Lizzie Gilmore,” Fred said. “Lizzie, this is Jesse Blue, the young man I was telling you about. I’ll show you his bike when we go out.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said, extending a hand.
It was sturdier than his gardening pal Virginia’s, so he gave it a firm squeeze. “Me, too.”
“You two are going out?” Maura asked, sounding surprised.
The older woman nodded, her brown eyes bright. “We’re going across the street to a movie. They’re showing Eat Pray Love and I’ve never seen it.”
Jesse knew the movie complex across the street. It was an independent, run by a billionaire who loved movies and didn’t care about making a profit. The five cinemas, each a different size, showed everything from old classics to the latest blockbusters. He guessed it came in handy for the Cherry Lane folks, and bet the owner had great rates for seniors.
“Eat Pray Love, huh?” Not his favorite, but he guessed it made a good date movie.
“We must be off,” Fred said, kinking his elbow toward his lady friend. She slipped her hand through it and they moved away.
Maura shook her head bemusedly. “He’s been yearning after her for months now,” she murmured. “How did he get up the courage to ask her out?”
He sensed it wasn’t a question directed to him. In fact, he figured she’d pretty much forgotten he was around. “I’ll be going.”
“Oh!” She turned toward him, and he could tell he’d been right from the way the color rose to her cheeks. She was sure a blusher, this lady, but he still hadn’t worked out whether it was sexy thoughts or annoyance that triggered her. Mostly, he figured it was annoyance.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Jesse,” she said in a polite, society-woman voice. The kind of voice that made his skin crawl. “At nine, as we agreed. Please be prompt.”
Just to be wicked, he flashed her his best lady-killer grin and put on a husky drawl. “Tomorrow,” he said with promise in his voice. Unlike everyone else in this place, she hadn’t told him to use her first name, and so he didn’t. Instead, when he said, “I’ll be looking forward to that, Ms. Mahoney,” he let his voice linger caressingly over every syllable of her name, just the way his hands longed to twine themselves in that silky hair and never come out again.
Her cheeks flamed brighter and she turned back into the building, banging her shoulder against the door frame before she strode off.
He chuckled softly, then, whistling, strolled toward his bike. It had been one hell of a day. And this was only the first one of his three-month community service gig.
When Maura heard the bike roar to life, she looked out the window by the door. Jesse, in helmet and jacket, cruised down the block under a canopy of pink blossoms. James Dean and cherry blossoms. Something was wrong with this picture. And something was wrong with her. Had turning thirty transformed her normally sensible body into a mess of raging hormones? She growled with annoyance and turned, to see Nedda, the evening receptionist, watching her curiously.
“What’s he doing here?” the older woman asked brusquely. “Why did we hire him? I asked Gracie, and she just said Louise had done it. Mostly, she was gushing like a teenager.”
Maura had never liked Nedda diFazio, who was one of those sour women who derived her greatest pleasure from tattling on others. Still, in the interests of working on her own people skills—not to mention the fact that Nedda’s sister was the chairman of the board’s wife—she tried to be pleasant. “Gracie’s right. Louise made the decision, and I’m sure she had good reasons.” Gracie, as Louise’s assistant, knew about HR matters, but they were none of Nedda’s business.
Earlier, Maura had made a spur-of-the-moment decision, when Virginia Canfield had assumed Jesse was a gardener, and hadn’t corrected her. After, Maura had thought it through. Without being able to read Jesse’s file, she couldn’t know whether the terms of his community service included confidentiality.
“I bet Louise didn’t see him,” Nedda said darkly. “He looks like trouble.”
It was exactly what Maura had first thought—and still believed—but for some reason she found herself saying, “He’s a hard worker, and we’re going to get a nice garden for the residents.”
“Huh.” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t buying in.
Maura headed back to her office. On her desk lay the blossom that had been in Jesse’s hair. She picked it up gently and lifted it to her nose. The scent was amazingly powerful for such a small, delicate thing. It contrasted with the rich musk she’d smelled when she had almost bumped into Jesse. Male sweat, earthy and not at all unpleasant. A foreign smell. The men in her life hadn’t been known for sweating. Yet, in her afternoon dream, she’d got the scent amazingly right.
That was the reason she hadn’t been able to move, after almost plowing into him. She’d been analyzing the scent. Not fighting the urge to touch his dark skin, to tug his head down to hers, touch her tongue to his lips, and—
Aagh! There she went again. Sexual fantasies? Why, she rarely even read the sex scenes in novels, just skimmed over them the way she did other scenes that she couldn’t relate to. What a bizarre day this had been.
Unable to resis
t, she sniffed the blossom one more time, then tossed it into the wastepaper basket.
She consulted her watch and realized she’d be late for dinner if she didn’t leave right now. Fortunately, her adoptive parents’ philosophy about clothing was to buy good quality, neutral items, and not fancy, dress-up clothes. They wouldn’t criticize her for wearing her office clothes to dinner.
Of course if today’s streak of bad luck held, they’d be grilling her about how little she’d achieved by the ripe old age of thirty. On the career front, she’d update them on her efforts to win the promotion, but on the personal, single-at-thirty front, she had nothing to offer.
Oh, drat! She’d never gotten around to calling Agnes to make sure it would be just the three of them.
Chapter 5
When Maura walked into the dining room at her parents’ club and saw three heads at their table, she groaned. This was Jesse’s fault. If he hadn’t kept distracting her, she’d have remembered to phone.
The host who was leading her across the room paused. “Is something wrong, ma’am?”
Great, now she was getting “ma’am” rather than “miss.”
“Nothing you can fix,” she muttered, forcing a smile and waving to her mother, who had seen her coming.
As Maura reached the table, she was confronted by two men in gray suits, standing.
“Hello, Timothy,” she said, giving the portly bald one a quick, formal hug and ignoring the younger man. Maybe if she pretended he wasn’t there, he’d go away. She leaned down and touched her cheek to her mother’s. “Hello, Agnes.” Their family had never been much for physical demonstrations of affection. Or verbal ones, for that matter.
“Happy birthday, Maura.” Her mother smiled at her from a face that would have persuaded anyone in their right mind to never go out without sunscreen. “Your gift’s out in the car. Don’t forget to take it when you leave.”
Far be it from her parents to create a public display as Maura squealed in delight over some dry textbook or pottery shard.