What in the hell was the matter with her? She was ready to strip off her clothes and have sex with the father of one of her clients.
She worked in the health field. And didn’t ever have unprotected sex. Nor did she have any condoms hanging around.
“One hundred and nine inches,” she said from below. If her face was red, he could put the heated look down to her bent position.
“Okay, hold on.” Jon’s voice was easy, granting her a few more seconds to get her bearings. His jeans met the laces of his leather shoes perfectly.
The frame tilted a fraction, changing the angle slightly. “Try it now.”
His thighs were right there, an inch from her face. If she wasn’t careful, her shoulder was going to brush his knee.
Twenty-eight was too young for hot flashes.
She looked down. “One hundred and ten point five.”
“Fine. Now let’s try the other side and make certain that we’re even.”
She was glad that he was thorough. Not the least bit surprised that he’d do the job exactly right. Knew he was conscientious. She just wasn’t sure she had what it took to see this task through.
* * *
“I WAS GOING to have a steak salad for dinner. Would you like to join me?”
Jon was kneeling in front of her newly installed French doors, picking up his tools and returning them to the proper compartments in his toolbox. He reached for the piece of plastic coating that he’d peeled off one of the new doorknobs. So did Lillie.
“I owe you dinner, remember?” she went on. “You paid at the pub.”
Fighting the instinct to snatch his hand back, he remained still. Outwardly calm. Waiting for her hand to drop away. “I’d like dinner,” he said, willing to give up the clandestine fast-food trip he’d promised himself earlier that day if it meant spending more time with her.
“Good.” She held on to the plastic. And licked her lips as she looked over at him. They were both still on their knees. “I’ve got some French bread I can heat up.” The plastic was slipping. Jon held on. She chuckled, sounding more like a schoolgirl than the medical professional he knew her to be. “French bread to celebrate my new French doors. Seems appropriate...”
A shadow passed over her face. And just before he dropped the plastic, he reached for her hand, catching both the plastic and her fingers in his grasp. “French bread is completely appropriate,” he said, the husky tone to his voice barely recognizable to him.
His grasp was loose. She could easily pull away. Jon leaned forward. Without making a conscious choice or giving any thought to the consequences, he moved until his lips were touching hers. Lightly. Gently.
Sitting back on his heels, he looked at her, while taking her other hand in his. “I’ve been needing to do that,” he said.
She squeezed his fingers, let go of the plastic and pulled free from him, running her right hand along the side of his face as she stood.
A brush-off. His emotions froze, sliding quickly and quietly back inside whatever hole they’d sprung from.
Packing up the rest of his tools, he turned around, facing the kitchen where he’d heard the refrigerator open and close, a drawer open and close, the sink go on and off.
“I hope that you won’t let this get in the way of our arrangement,” he said forthrightly because that was the only way he knew how to do things. “Abe needs you. And I can’t accept your help without paying my way.”
The shock on her face as she looked up confused the hell out of him. “I thought you were staying for dinner.”
Jon, never more unsure in his life, set the bucket of tools down at his feet. “I was,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “And then I kissed you.”
She nodded. Expressions chased across her face, and he wasn’t sure what any of them meant. “One kiss scared you off?” she finally said with a chuckle that sounded slightly forced.
The woman was an enigma. And he was drawn to her, compellingly so, in spite of all of the reasons why he shouldn’t be. He had no proof that she wasn’t working for Clara.
He needed her help.
She’d already indicated, the night they went out for burgers, that she didn’t want an intimate relationship with him. And he had no time, or energy, for an intimate relationship.
At least that was what he’d been telling himself over the past two years, that he’d been celibate by choice. And Lillie was definitely not the type of woman a guy took for a one-night stand. Not that he’d been into that, ever. And most definitely wasn’t now that he had an impressionable boy in his life.
Had the one kiss scared him off?
“No, the kiss didn’t scare me.” He took his time to answer, trying to figure out where he stood with her. “I assumed that I offended you.”
Turning back to her salad, she chuckled again. More naturally. But still with little humor. “No, Jon, offending me isn’t the problem.”
So there was a problem. He’d been right.
“What is?”
“I’m too embarrassed to tell you.” Her hands moved quickly, shredding, mixing and chopping. All without missing a beat.
Her head was bent over her task. Hiding her face.
“We’re friends. You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
The assurance earned him a shake of her head. So maybe they weren’t friends now? Or being friends wasn’t enough to grant him access to her personal business.
“You witnessed me standing in a room full of gawking women while my son screamed bloody murder, indicating to everyone there that I had no control over him.” He said the first thing that came to his mind. “It doesn’t get much more embarrassing than that.”
“No one was thinking that you couldn’t control your son. Only that he was experiencing acute distress. You actually had him under control. He wasn’t hitting and kicking and pushing you away or running around throwing magazines all over the floor.”
Jon stared at her. “You’ve witnessed that?”
“More than once. Some kids panic when they’re faced with a medical procedure that frightens them. They lash out. Sometimes uncontrollably.”
Amazing. She always had a way to make him feel like a winner.
She was chopping a cooked steak into small pieces with her delicate hands. And he found himself turned on once again.
“You still haven’t told me why you were embarrassed,” he said. Things had to be set straight between them or he couldn’t stay.
“And your example was not a personal embarrassment.”
He’d damn sure felt personally embarrassed. “What was it, then?”
“A public one.”
Oh. “Well, how about this? My pajama bottoms have Abe’s favorite cartoon character all over them.” Now that was personal. And embarrassing.
Her knife slipped. Luckily onto the cutting board and not her finger. Other than that, Lillie didn’t miss a beat. Sliding the steak into the salad bowl, she mixed the ingredients one more time and, with a professional-looking flip, tossed in the salad dressing. Pulling a half loaf of presliced French bread from the toaster oven, she carried everything over to the table, set out a couple of plates, added silverware and napkins, grabbed a couple of bottles of water and sat down at the table.
“Sit,” she said, indicating the seat across from her—not the one that was perpendicular and might result in their knees bumping. “Eat.”
Jon sat.
But if she thought he was just going to eat, that the conversation was over, she was wrong.
He needed answers.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE COULDN’T STOP thinking about his pajama bottoms. Who was the character?
The thoughts brought another X-rated image to her mind—Jon’s oh-so-manly part pushing at the front fly of thin
cotton pants....
And the knot in her stomach wasn’t leaving a lot of room for her dinner.
Both hands resting on the table on either side of his untouched bowl, Jon said, “I’m sorry that it embarrasses you, but I either need to know what’s going on or I need to get the hell out of Dodge.”
Pushing her salad bowl away, Lillie longed for a glass of the pinot grigio in her fridge.
Get the hell out of Dodge. Jon was a man’s man. No one had ever talked to her like that before.
And it turned her on.
Putting her napkin on her lap, she faced her guest. “I’ll tell you what embarrasses me, but I want your word that it won’t change anything. I still get to help you with Abe.”
“I still get your invaluable assistance with my son’s adjustment issues,” Jon said, nodding.
“And I get my backsplash.”
“We’ve already purchased the tile.” Jon would pick it up in the next day or two.
“So I have your word?”
“Yeah.”
Butterflies swarmed in her stomach. She couldn’t do it. “How can you give me your word when you don’t even know what I’m going to say?”
“Because I know myself. Whatever is going on, as long as you want to help me with my son, I will do whatever it takes to see that Abraham gets the benefit of your services.”
“That kiss was not your fault,” Lillie blurted.
He sat back, his delicious maleness filling her chair. Her kitchen.
“I take full responsibility,” she managed to get out with a fair amount of professional distance.
Crossing his arms, Jon cocked his head. “I kissed you. How can you take responsibility for that?”
Was he laughing at her? His face was straight. Lillie didn’t get flustered anymore. Not since she’d first found out Kirk was having an affair. But she wasn’t entirely sure she could trust herself here.
“I...subconsciously asked for it.”
He tilted his head slightly and studied her. Lillie swore she glimpsed a certain...satisfied?...glint in his eyes.
“If you did it subconsciously, how do you know?”
Resisting the urge to kick him under the table, she told herself she’d brought this on herself. She should never have mentioned a problem. Or created one, either. She had no business being turned on by this man. Or even thinking about him at all.
“You said there’s a problem.” Jon spoke up when she couldn’t. “Until I know what it is, I can’t help you out. Or know how to fix it.”
Just like a man—always wanting to fix the problem. Sometimes there was no fix. Sometimes you just had to let it sit. Learn to live with it. Wait for it to go away.
And then she saw the heat in his eyes when his gaze moved to her lips and quickly back to her face.
And she knew. He was enjoying this. At her expense.
That glint gave her the strength to stand up to him―and turn the tables on him, too. If he was trying to make her squirm, she’d just see how well he could take his own medicine.
“You turn me on.”
She had to hand it to the guy. If there were emotions sizzling inside him, he hid them well.
“And?”
“And? And what?” A note of tension entered her voice in spite of her mental demand that it not.
Frowning, Jon dropped his hands back to the table. “I thought there was more.”
“What more could there be?”
“You could be getting ready to blame me for taking advantage of the situation. Or getting ready to tell me that the problem is that you’re afraid I’m going to take advantage of the situation.”
“I just told you the problem. You turn me on. It’s inappropriate. And embarrassing. We’re working together. Not dating.”
“Oh.” He didn’t quite smile, but there was something there. A slight movement at the corner of his mouth. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you turn me on, too.”
Thank God. No! That wasn’t what she meant to think.
“It doesn’t change anything. We aren’t... You and I can’t be―”
“Agreed,” he interrupted her, nodding. “Completely.”
“Good, then.” She wanted him to kiss her again. And touch her. In intimate, aching places. “So...are we still on for the children’s museum on Sunday?”
“Yep.”
“It’s only open until four so we’ll probably want to leave a little earlier than noon. If that works for you.”
She’d rescheduled breakfast with Papa and Gayle for seven in the morning at a little café by Camelback Mountain where they lived.
“Abe and I are up at dawn. And Sunday’s cleaning day. You won’t get any argument out of either one of us for having to cut that short.”
“We don’t want to overtire him, though, or we risk doing more damage than good with our crowd introduction therapy.”
There, she’d described their activity as “therapy.” Put them right back on professional ground.
“I can pick you up around eleven,” he offered.
“Sounds good. We can leave whenever he starts to wear out and what we don’t see of the museum this week we can get to next time.”
“Okay.”
It was eight-thirty. Still an hour and a half to go before he had to collect his son. So much could happen in that time. People could do things. Lives could change.
Pushing back from the table, he stood. To come closer? Just get the inevitable over with? They’d acknowledged their mutual attraction....
“I’ll stop by to see if the tile’s in on my way home from work tomorrow,” he said, gathering her plate and his, and heading to the sink.
“Great.” She stood, too. Afraid to follow him to the sink. To get any closer. Afraid of herself. “You don’t have to do those,” she said.
“Are you kidding?” Ignoring her protest, he proceeded to locate her scrubber on the inside cupboard door in front of the sink, rinsed the dishes and loaded them with precision into the dishwasher. “I learned early on that if you don’t help prepare the meal, you help with the dishes.”
“You’ve never mentioned your folks,” she said. “Abe’s mom isn’t in his life, but what about his grandparents?”
Good, Lil. Much better. Kinda hard to think about sex when moms and dads were the topic of conversation.
But there was that gorgeous butt again. The opposite side of the groin pressing up against her kitchen sink.
She had never cared much for butts before. Why now? Why his?
Breaking out of her musings, she realized he hadn’t answered her.
He finished the dishes. Wiped the table, rinsed her cloth and hung it back up on the bar inside the cupboard door. Closed the cupboard with what seemed like finality.
“Jon?”
“It’s just Abe and me.” He leaned his sexy backside against the counter and faced her.
“You sound defensive.” He studied her. She wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find.
Eventually, he moved back to the table and dropped into the chair he’d occupied earlier. Joining him, she felt like she’d passed some kind of test.
And was leery to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing.
“I’m sorry.” They weren’t the words she’d expected.
“For what?”
“I just... I know I have an attitude when it comes to...some things. I’m working on it.”
Not sure where they were heading, Lillie just nodded. Did his folks blame him for having a child out of wedlock? In this day and age that was a little hard to believe.
“You want to talk about it?” she finally asked.
“Not really. But if you’re going to help Abe, I suppose you should probably know a little bit mor
e about him.”
“It might help,” she said. “Was there some trauma in his life? Something to do with your folks?”
Maybe his loss was still new...raw. It had taken her a couple of years before she could talk about her parents without breaking into tears.
“I have no folks,” Jon said.
She waited.
His elbows on his knees, he stared at the floor. “As in, I’ve never had folks.”
“Oh.”
“I was born—full-term, amazingly—to a user.”
“Drugs?”
“Yeah.” He nodded, focused on her ceramic tile.
“I was taken away from her at birth by the child welfare people, with the caveat that I would be returned to her as soon as she was clean.”
“And that didn’t happen.”
He shook his head. “But she never gave up hoping, apparently, because she wouldn’t release me for adoption, either.”
Lillie knew how that worked. A lot of her patients during her rotation in the neonatal intensive care unit at the children’s hospital in Phoenix had been drug babies. The ones who didn’t make it to term in their mothers’ wombs. “You grew up in foster care?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“Nope. Not that I remember, at any rate.” He didn’t sound sorry. Or even sad.
Her heart broke for him, anyway.
“Did you suffer any residual effects from the drugs?”
“No. Incredibly, she managed to stay clean during the majority of her pregnancy. I came out completely healthy. She’d just started using again right before I was born. And from what I heard, she never stopped.”
“Do you know if she’s still alive?”
“Nope.”
He could have checked. If he’d wanted to know. Surely he’d know that.
“What about your father?” Lillie hated to ask, but figured they might as well get it all over with at once.
“I have no idea who he is. She listed ‘unknown’ on my birth certificate.”
“What about her family?”
“Again, I have no idea. Just that they weren’t in the picture. No one stepped forward to take me when it was time for me to be released from the hospital. That much I know.”
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