I just stare at it for a moment, bathing in the cool breeze. My kitchen is utterly transformed, and I’m bizarrely emotional about it.
I try to breathe past it, but I can’t. I’m choked up. My eyes are tearing.
“I know it’s just a stupid window,” I manage, “but you don’t know how long I’ve wanted this. Just a little breeze while I’m in here.” I laugh at my own tears. “Sorry, I’m being emotional.”
“It’s more than just the window, I’m guessing.” He bumps his shoulder against mine, as if he wants to comfort me but isn’t sure how or what’s appropriate.
I laugh, sniffle, and wipe at my eyes. “Yeah, you could say that.” I glance at him, and then opt for some of the truth. “When you first came over, you asked if this was a fixer-upper that got away from me.”
“I sure did.”
“That’s fairly close to the truth.” I tug my shorts a little lower and my top a little higher. “My ex-husband had the brilliant idea of buying an older house that needed a little TLC with the idea we could spend our weekends and summers fixing it up. He’s an associate principal at the high school, so he’s got summers off. He’s not exactly a handyman or construction expert, but his idea was that we’d learn together.”
Jesse snorts. “Yeah, that never works.”
“So I discovered.” I sigh. “I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, myself. It seemed like a lot of work, and I’d always had a hard time even getting Nicholas to change a light bulb or fix the leaky sink. Ripping out the linoleum floor and retiling? New windows? New front porch? Sand and restain the hardwood floors? Yeah, good luck. I knew better, but…” I trail off with a shrug.
“But you let him convince you anyway, because you loved him, and nothing ever got done, and finally you divorced his lazy ass?” Jesse guesses.
I laugh. “Pretty close, yeah. Factor in him banging the science teacher and his secretary, consistently telling me I’ve put on a few pounds since we got married…stuff like that. I wouldn’t divorce him just for being lazy. I mean, he worked a lot, but once he got home he turned into a couch potato.”
Jesse’s glare is scary. “He told you you’ve put on weight? He actually said that to you out loud?”
I shrug. “Yeah. A couple times.”
“Is he, like, a super-fit, health-food, gym-rat sort of a guy?”
I laugh until I have to hold my stomach. “Oh my god. Oh my god.” I get myself under control, and try to speak without laughing. “Yeah, no, Nicholas is…he’s Mr. Belding, but thirty-some pounds overweight.”
“But you’re the one who changed?” He shook his head. “The science teacher and the secretary…were they, like, hard up for sex?”
I laugh again, but it’s strained with old pain. “Nope. That’s the hell of it all. The science teacher, the first person he cheated on me with, is thirty, married, and teaches a spin class on Sunday mornings. She’s fit and pretty and her husband is pretty good-looking himself. She has kids, for shit’s sake.” I shake my head and growl. “The secretary is even harder to understand. She’s not even thirty, is a size two, and she has these enormous fake breasts. She could be a contestant on The Bachelor, is what I’m saying. One of the ones who gets voted out in the first two episodes.”
“Is your ex good-looking despite being overweight?” Jesse asks, sounding genuinely baffled. “Like, what is it?”
My laugh is even more pained and forced. “No, not really. Average in pretty much every way. I mean, he’s not downright ugly, but no, he’s not especially good-looking.” I laugh again. “Really makes me wonder what’s wrong with me, and what I was thinking.”
Shit. Self-pity is not attractive.
Jesse winces. “I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. None of this is my business, and I clearly stepped in a pile of painful crap.”
I touch his bicep. “You’re not an asshole.”
“If you married him, you clearly saw something in him, and I was calling that into question.”
“As well you should. I’ve called it into question myself any number of times.”
“Still, it’s none of my business, and I’ve got no call asking you questions like that.” He gestures at me, a sweep of his hand from head to toe. “I just—I don’t get it. I look at you, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how the hell he justified cheating on you. He’s got all this—” another gesture at me, this time an angry or frustrated stab of his hand, “—waiting for him at home, and he’s banging married women and skanky secretaries?”
I lean against the counter, back to the window, facing Jesse. “Look, I don’t like labeling people. Just because she has fake tits and fucked my husband doesn’t make her a skank. They do seem to actually have a thing, honestly, because they’ve been dating for a while now. Maybe there’s something about her I don’t see—I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve ever tried to get to know her, obviously, I just…I don’t like name-calling or labels, unless I’m talking about Nicholas.”
He shook his head, frowning at me. “You’ve got more grace than I do, if you can say that about the girl who fucked your husband.”
“I just…I’m trying to be the better person. I was loyal. I stayed with him until it was obviously no longer going to work, until it was clear it wasn’t just an indiscretion or two, but an ongoing choice. And yeah, those girls made the choice to sleep with a married man, so they’re not innocent, but the real blame lies with him.” I sigh. “Him, I give a lot less grace to.”
“Don’t blame you there.” He smiles at me. “Not only is he a lazy, stupid, useless son of a bitch who took on a project he didn’t have the skills or balls to see through, he bought a fixer-upper he couldn’t fix up.”
I laugh, but can’t quite meet his eyes. “That’s funny and sweet of you to say. I’m sure I wasn’t innocent in the situation, though.”
He blows a raspberry. “Oh bullshit. I mean sure, none of us is ever totally innocent. There’s always something we could have said or done or been better at, or something we missed, but in situations like you’re describing, there’s just no excuse. There’s nothing you could ever do to justify or excuse the way that deep-fried bull testicle of an ex of yours treated you.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I turn around and look at my new window. “I love my window, Jesse. I can’t thank you enough. Really, it’s…it’s too much.” I laugh. “Now I have to figure out how to fix the rest of my windows to match.”
“You’re welcome.”
We stand in silence, which Jesse eventually breaks. “I, um—your food is getting cold, and it smells pretty good.” At that moment, his stomach rumbles loudly, and he laughs to cover it. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to stop for lunch today, and my stomach is letting me know it doesn’t appreciate it.”
I would like to say I hesitated, that I thought it out, that I asked myself if I was really in a place to be doing this, but…I can’t honestly say that’s the truth.
The moment his tummy rumbled and he murmured his excuse, I was formulating in my head how to ask him to stay.
I gesture at the pan. “I, uh…I have more than I can eat by myself.” It’s true, although I’d done it on purpose out of habit, so I’d have leftovers during the week; I meet his eyes, tendering a hesitant, nervous smile. “Do you want to stay and eat with me?”
He blinks. “I—” he broke off, hesitating.
“If you don’t have other plans, I mean. I, um—I guess you have other plans, huh? A hot single guy like you is probably on a waitlist for dates,” I stammer, fumbling to cover my nerves. “I mean, it’s nothing special, but you’re—you know. You’re more than welcome to eat me. Eat with me! Shit. I mean—I mean eat with me.” Mortification rolls through me. “God, shoot me.”
Jesse is laughing. “Imogen—Jesus. You’re too much. Number one, I would love to stay and eat with you. I don’t have plans, or a waitlist for dates, or a little black book, for that matter. The food you made looks and smells amazing, and it’s special because you made it. Number
…three? Four? Whatever. I would also absolutely eat you, because, Imogen, honey, I have no doubt that you taste fucking delicious. Last, I won’t shoot you, because I like you, and, in the words of The Man in Black, ‘there’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world—it would be a pity to damage yours.’”
“Oh god, you’re quoting Princess Bride.” I hold the back of my hand to my forehead and sway backward. “Swoon.”
He laughs. “The movie quotes really get you, don’t they?”
I laugh and nod. “They really do. I’d drop quotes to my ex all the time, and he’d never get them, and I was always like, what? How do you not know what that’s from? It’s just part of how I communicate.”
“Well that’s something I understand,” Jesse says, reaching for the buckle of his tool belt. “I’m the same way.”
Just as I’m in the process of pulling two plates out of the cabinet, my mind becomes distracted. I’ve become so used to seeing him with that tool belt on that I momentarily forgot it was separate from his actual pants. So, when he reached for that buckle and started loosening it, I maybe sort of panicked a little.
Excited, horny, frantic panic.
The thought of this hot, masculine, sexy, helpful man unbuckling his jeans is just…too much for my poor libido.
I drop the plates.
They smash on the floor with a deafening crash, shards and chunks flying in every direction. A shard of ceramic slices the outside of my calf, drawing a long but shallow gash.
“Shit!” I glance down at my leg, which is already welling with blood. Damn it. “Okay, hold on. Let me get the broom.”
Jesse finishes removing his tool belt, sets it on the counter, and reaches for me, stopping me from moving. “Just stay where you are. You’re bleeding and you’re barefoot, and there are pieces everywhere. You take a step in any direction and you’ll cut your feet all up.” He keeps hold of my arms with both hands, smiling reassuringly at me. “Just tell me where the broom is and I’ll handle it.”
I point at the little closet between the stove and the far wall. “In there.”
He retrieves the broom and dustpan. “Paper bag?”
I point at the sink. “Under there.”
He finds a paper grocery bag, opens it, tosses the largest chunks into it, and then makes swift, efficient work of sweeping the floor from side to side, corner to corner. After dumping the shards into the bag, he sweeps again, just to be sure, and then sets the bag aside and puts the broom away.
He turns to me. “Now you.”
I frown in confusion. “Now me, what?”
He gestures at my leg. “Gotta tend to your war wound.”
I laugh. “You mean my utterly insignificant little cut I received from my own clumsiness?”
He shrugs. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“Nobody, not even an English person, says po-tah-to,” I point out.
He indicates the counter beside the sink. “Hop up there.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine, really. I just need to wet a paper towel. It doesn’t even hurt.” That was a lie—it stung like a bitch, but I didn’t want to seem weak or squeamish on top of all the other dumb shit I’d done around this guy.
I’m moving toward the sink as I say this, but I only get a few steps. And then I feel a pair of big, strong hands on my waist. He spins me around and backs me up to the counter. Before I have any clue what he’s intending to do, he dips down, wraps those powerful, huge, callused hands around the backs of my thighs—and with only the slightest hint of effort, he lifts me up and deposits me on the countertop. I gasp, a shrill in-breath of surprise, and then my lungs squeeze and my heart slams in my chest and my core tightens and heats, and my thighs clench, and heat pools and desire seeps through me. Jesse is inches away from me, standing between my thighs, his hard, broad chest and massive shoulders a wall in front of me, his trim hips wedging my legs apart. His hands are on my waist again, just above my hips, and his eyes are warm and Labrador puppy brown and twinkling with humor and sparking with what I desperately want to believe is desire.
“I—okay. I guess I’m sitting on the counter,” I say, trying not to sound breathless.
“Yeah, guess you are.” He backs up, leaving the enclosure of my legs—I’m sorely tempted to hook my feet together around his back to keep him there, but I don’t. “You have any first aid stuff?”
“I don’t need first aid, Jesse,” I breathe. “It’s barely even bleeding.”
He cradles my foot in his hand and lifts my leg to take a look at the cut. I’m not breathing. I’m shaking all over. The gusset of my shorts has nowhere near enough fabric to provide any decent modesty, not with my leg lifted like this. Oh god. If he looks, he’ll see my hoo-ha. When was the last time I shaved? Oh yeah, just a few minutes ago, upstairs. I keep my eyes on his, watching him, watching where his eyes go.
I try to swallow but my throat is dry, unlike certain other areas.
Will he see that? Will he smell it? Oh fuck, he probably smells me.
And holy mother of all hells, am I aroused right now.
Jesse’s eyes start at my face. Watching for demurral or any hint that I’m upset—which he won’t find. Then, seeing nothing but my lip caught between my teeth and my eyes wide, he drags his eyes downward. I’m sporting a serious pair of headlights—my nipples are, shall we say, not small, and have a tendency to react aggressively to the slightest provocation or drop in temperature. And this shirt is, as I’ve said, so thin from age and wear and washings that it’s nearly sheer. With Jesse’s touch and attention and my own arousal, my nipples are the hardest they’ve ever been, standing out so thick and long and hard that I could cut twin holes in a pane of glass.
He groans again. It’s a growl, a low, almost inaudible rumble, so deep on the register that I feel it more than hear it. “Have mercy,” he murmurs to himself rather than to me.
After spending a moment blatantly ogling the protruding nubs of my hardened nipples, and the round weight of my breasts straining the fabric of my tank top, Jesse’s gaze rakes downward. Pauses at my navel, my belly. His gaze there is a brief blast of cold water on my libido as self-consciousness slices through me—I’ve always been weird about my stomach, and never more so than this stage of my life, when stress makes me eat more than usual, busyness keeps me out of the gym and into the unhealthy aisles of the store. My belly used to be flat and toned. I never had visible abs or anything, but I could rock the hell out of a midriff-baring crop top back in the day. Nowadays? Not so much.
I squirm, hating his gaze on what is, to me, my ugliest and least beautiful area. I’m good with my cleavage—having big tits has its drawbacks for sure—running hurts, jumping is dangerous, stairs are my enemy, and button-down shirts are a joke—but they also are weapons I can and have used to my benefit. I’m also fine with having a juicy booty. It’s maybe a little juicier these days than it used to be for the aforementioned reasons, but for the most part, possessing a curvy, jiggly butt is more of an asset than a problem. I’m just not cool with my belly.
Stop looking at it. God, please stop looking at my belly. Look at my thighs, look at my hips, look at my tits—anywhere but there.
“Stop it,” Jesse growls.
I gulp. “Stop what?”
“Doubting yourself.”
I stare hard at him. “How did you—ummmm, I mean—what?”
His eyes fix on mine. “You just…shut down. I felt it. Don’t do that. Don’t ever doubt yourself.”
I snort. “Yeah, because it’s just that easy.”
“No, it’s probably not, but you’re a beautiful woman, Imogen. You have no reason to doubt yourself, or to be self-conscious about any part of your body.”
I’m deeply uncomfortable with the abrupt turn of events, and try to pull my foot away. “Jesse, I just—”
He holds on to my foot, refusing to relinquish it. “I get it, though,” he says.
He leans over me, his weight against my leg as he reaches for a strip of pap
er towel, wets it, folds it, and then straightens. As he does so, I feel his eyes on me again—this time sliding sensuously up my leg, from my calf to my thigh. I tense all over, fighting the urge to clamp my thighs together. It’s what I’d normally do, how I’ve always reacted in situations like this, even with someone I’ve been intimate with. It’s not that I’m shy or that I lack adventurousness sexually—it’s just…well, it’s complicated, and Jesse’s gaze is moving upward, destroying my train of thought.
Oh god.
I force myself to remain still—stock-still, not even breathing—as his eyes trail and traipse and dance up my thighs, my skin pebbling under his gaze. I swallow loudly, feeling faint, shaking all over.
Look at me.
Don’t look at me.
Touch me.
Don’t touch me.
I’m terrified and mortified.
I’m excited and thrilled and horny as hell.
His eyes halt at my core. I look where he’s looking—and yeah, there’s not a lot left to the imagination. I can’t breathe. Shit, I actually can’t breathe. Am I having an asthma attack? I don’t have asthma, but my lungs aren’t working.
I hear a deep, low snarl, and I realize it’s coming from him, from Jesse, as he stares at my core. He has no qualms about what he’s doing—there’s no apology or attempt to hide it or cover it up. I’m not pulling away or stopping him, so I can’t be mad about it, and honestly, his open, daring, greedy gaze is a hell of a turn-on.
I don’t know what that says about who I am, or rather who I’ve become.
And I don’t care.
It feels so naughty and almost dirty to let him stare at me like this. I barely know him—less than barely. We don’t even know each other’s last names. And here I am, sitting on my counter in an outfit a Hooter’s waitress wouldn’t wear, letting a man I literally just met stare at my lady parts. And I like it.
I really do.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I watch him carefully. His eyes widen, and his jaw clenches. His hands curl into claws and then into fists, and his forearms and biceps bunch and flex as he squeezes his fists tight. And then, with a ragged huff, he loosens his fists and wiggles his fingers. Using the wet paper towel, he wipes gently at the long, shallow cut to the outside of my calf. His touch is so gentle, so careful, I barely feel it as he dabs and wipes the cut clean.
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