Flushed

by Sally Felt

  “I had a question,” she said. “A plumbing question. I’m thinking now I should call someone else.” Her chest was heaving beneath a pale blue-green blouse that wasn’t like her usual glamorous, old-fashioned wardrobe choices. In fact, she was wearing loose-fitting jeans and loafers as if she’d been working around the house. But her skin was as flushed as it had been last night on the sofa, when she was kissing him like sun on a rock face.

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m sorry to have brought you out here, Mr. Martin. Clearly, you have other,” she waved a hand in the direction of the office, “other interests to occupy you today.” A fake smile. Scathing formality. It suddenly got easier to overlook her otherwise inviting curves.

  Maybe he was projecting—thanks to Kerry, Kim had enough leftover anger to supply them both for a week—or, he realized slowly, maybe she was. Projecting, that is.

  Jules. The bra. Isabelle’s certainty he had a woman in every port.

  “No!” He cursed, unable to contain himself or the dung heap his day had become.

  “I do apologize.” The keys she held snapped against her palm and she turned away from him. She was leaving. He could only explain later if there was a later. First he had to get her attention.

  “I’ve got time for a plumbing question,” he said. “You’re here. You may as well ask.”

  She looked so stiff he could have used her spine to measure pipe. At least she’d stopped walking away.

  “Very well,” she said, though she didn’t turn to face him. “My question is this, Mr. Martin. If an object is flushed down the toilet, is it lost forever?”

  She’d flushed something accidentally? Whatever it was must be important enough to bring her running to him for help dressed only to the fours, rather than her usual nines. He didn’t think she was wearing makeup, either—a plus in his personal book, but a treat he hadn’t expected to see outside bed, not that he had much hope left of that happening.

  “Forever? Not always,” he said, desperate to reassure her. “Given the state of your plumbing, it may be stuck in the works. I’d be happy to come fishing.”

  Her head fell forward as if she’d been defeated. She finally turned toward him and she looked tired. Of course she wouldn’t have slept well, her house had been broken into. And she’d flushed something down the only toilet in the house? Kim wanted to put his arms around her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Maybe you could refer me to someone to do the work.”

  “I’ll just get my t—what? Someone to—what?” Why was he so surprised? No, not surprised. He was hurt. Which was just as stupid.

  “Or I can ask Stacey for another name if you prefer.”

  “Prefer? Isabelle, I’d prefer to help you myself.”

  “I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

  She was talking about Jules again. The misunderstanding with the bra. But it still wasn’t time to talk about that. She wouldn’t believe him, not now. It pissed him off that she was so ready to judge him. She and Kerry. Twice the haughty at half the price.

  “I don’t see the problem,” he said. “It’s not as if we’re dating.”

  Her eyes narrowed at him. He guessed she didn’t like having her words flung back at her. Too bad. And if he’d thought she was cold and stiff before, she was now frosty enough to air-condition a September expedition to Big Bend and act as the tent’s center pole to boot.

  He had her attention. Now to use it. “Or is it that I’m so irresistible you can’t trust yourself around me?”

  * * * * *

  Isabelle barely held her temper in check as Kim hauled his gear into her bathroom for the second time this week. “It’s a ring,” she said. “Big heart-shaped stone. Ugliest ring ever made.”

  He put the big metal toolbox between the toilet and the tub. She’d had to wait while he drove home to get his truck and his tools. Plenty of time to fume about his attitude and the whole “irresistible” thing. He hadn’t even tried to explain breaking furniture with the braless woman. It was maddening.

  It was also true. He was irresistible. Here in the confines of her bathroom, Isabelle could smell him, a warm, healthy man showing plenty of long limb and toned muscle.

  “Heavy, then?” he asked.

  She blinked at him. “I guess. For a ring. But the band isn’t hugely wide. Not like a man’s ring.”

  “And it just went down today?” he asked.

  Isabelle tucked her hair behind her ear. “No. Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” The word was an accusation. He was hardly in a position to be accusing her of anything. Irresistible? Pig. His face was beard-shadowed as if he hadn’t shaved today, his lips seemed pinker by contrast, and damn if she could look away.

  Crap.

  She sniffed. “Can you get it or not?”

  Kim rolled his shoulders and neck. “Let’s find out.” He squatted on the floor by the toilet and looked up at her. “I’ll start simple. Empty the water from the tank. Unbolt the toilet from the floor and have a look underneath. We might get lucky. It could be stuck in the trap right at the floor.” The down view made Kim appear to be all shoulder and leg. And eyes. Those incredible eyes.

  She could break furniture with this man. Definitely. She could swing from the ceiling fan with him. And why shouldn’t she? Sure, he was too good-looking to be trusted, but he’d been matter-of-fact enough about his escapades with Jules, or whatever the gym babe’s name was. That meant he wouldn’t lie to her about his other women the way Steven or Daniel had. That was something.

  “If that doesn’t get it, I’ll run a camera down the line and see what we can see.”

  He was still talking. She didn’t know why. She’d just decided she would revel in the merely physical—go ahead and take the sex that surely wouldn’t disappoint. “Camera?”

  He stood up and she could swear she felt his heat, his energy, brushing hers. She realized her heart was pounding.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It takes crappy pictures.”

  The bathroom became quiet as Isabelle stared at Kim’s lips. He was smiling. Her body throbbed in response. “Kim.”

  “Isabelle?” His voice had lost its professional edge, becoming fuzzy and less sure of itself. She’d always thought she wanted a dominant man. Why was hearing this uncertainty in his voice as big a turn-on as the way he charged to her rescue? This was no time for such thoughts. She didn’t need a man touching her heart, not now, not him. On the other hand, if he wanted to touch anything else—anything at all, she thought, pulse pounding—she was good to go, especially if she went right now.

  His breathing changed. The charge between them was building.

  Then she realized what he’d said. Crappy pictures. She burst out laughing. “That’s awful,” she said. She laughed some more, the stress of the last couple of days making it hard to stop. Kim began laughing too, which only made it worse. Soon she was gasping for breath, falling back against the sink, stomach muscles beginning to ache, helpless. He took her elbow to steady her. She found herself in his arms. Laughing became kissing, which was just as breath-stealing and far more deliciously physical. She couldn’t seem to stop. He didn’t seem to mind.

  She pushed him down—thank goodness she kept the toilet lid closed—and straddled his lap. It brought them close to the same height, making it easier to kiss him. Warmth rose in the narrow space between their chests. It was nothing compared with the warmth in her belly.

  She pulled at the hem of his shirt. The heat of his skin made her want to hurry. He pulled her farther up his lap. There might not be a ceiling fan in the bathroom, but they were certainly on their way to the most purely physical experience of her life.

  And then Kim’s hands left her butt. Some shift in his weight slid her back just far enough to let the temperature between them drop out of the red zone.

  “Isabelle.”

  What was going on? She’d been far enough up his lap to be sure he’d recovered from his tryst on the office desk. Fu
lly recovered.

  He eased her hands away from his shirt with calloused fingertips. “Isabelle, Isabelle.” He kissed her, chaste, tender.

  He was going to refuse her?

  She tried to back off his lap and stand. He held her, one hand at the small of her back, one on her leg. To insist, she’d have to flail, since her feet didn’t touch the floor. This was humiliating enough without flailing.

  “Not like this,” he said, his eyes moving restlessly from hers to her mouth, to her chin to her mouth. His breath seemed unsteady. “Isabelle, I want to take you to bed.” His hand cupped her cheek. She shivered.

  “Okay,” she said. She tried again to get up. He stilled her.

  “I want to take my time. I want to wake up with you.”

  It sounded pretty. It might be the nicest refusal a man ever gave a woman. She wouldn’t know. She’d never been refused. “You’re saying no.”

  That seemed to focus him. “I’m saying wait. Until I’ve found your ring. Until I’ve cleaned up for you. Until I can give you everything you deserve.”

  He was saying no. He was saying it nicely, but he was saying no. Maybe his code of honor only allowed him one woman a day or something and she’d have to wait until midnight.

  Bastard.

  She backed off, slowly enough this time that he let her. What kind of man refused sex? Well, two could play that game. “I see,” she lied. “Feel free to clean up right here—the shower, whatever you like. As for the rest, I imagine you’ll be plenty resistible later. Good luck with the toilet.”

  “Isabelle.”

  She left him there.

  When he came out of the bathroom, more than an hour later, he wore his canvas coveralls and a respirator mask on an elastic cord around his neck. “Gotta get the vacuum,” he said. “Be right back.” He went out the front door into the gathering dusk to his heavy-duty pickup truck, parked at the curb.

  Vacuum?

  He returned with a shop vac. Too intrigued to continue nursing her anger the way she ought, Isabelle followed him to the bathroom. On the way there, she was distracted by the sight of a toilet bowl lying upside down on her bedroom floor atop a large number of shop towels.

  Soon after, she saw the toilet’s tank in the bathtub. She’d had no idea the fixture came apart in pieces like that. There was a rectangular area on the floor where the toilet used to sit. A rag had been stuffed into the large drainpipe in the floor, but a thin cable snaked up from it to a small video monitor sitting atop Kim’s toolbox by the bathtub. The shop vac squatted between the exposed drainpipe and the wall. Kim was watching her with those amazing eyes.

  “Looks worse than it is,” he said, smiling.

  It was so tempting to smile back. Bastard, bastard, bastard. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve found the ring,” he said. “Look.” He pointed at an area on the video monitor. She couldn’t make anything of the dark image and didn’t want to think too hard about what she was looking at. Crappy photographs, indeed. How mortifying. “It’s close enough that I’m hoping to be able to just vacuum it out.”

  She noticed the chilly air in the bathroom. He’d opened the window. He must have opened a window somewhere else in the house as well for there to be such a strong breeze. Isabelle looked at the heavy-duty rubber gloves next to Kim’s toolbox, the rag stuffed into the drainpipe on the floor and the respirator mask hanging around his neck and thought about the toxins his job exposed him to. How could he face it, day after day? She shivered.

  “I’d never have thought of using a vacuum.”

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  She smiled in spite of herself.

  “Yes,” she said, “it does.”

  Chapter Eight

  Kim scraped the old wax gasket in preparation for reinstalling Isabelle’s toilet, glad to have found the ring for her and tucked it safely away in a plastic bag in the pocket of his coveralls, and that plumbing was a straightforward proposition—something he did well. It beat wondering where he had gone wrong with Isabelle.

  He installed a new wax gasket on the bowl’s bottom and puttied the edges before placing it over the drainpipe. A firm press and a bit of a twist and it was down. He leveled it and tightened the washers and nuts onto the bolts.

  Some of it was obvious, of course. He hadn’t had a chance to explain about Jules. He’d been waiting until she wasn’t so mad. He’d gotten her to laugh, which was a great start, but then there was lots of kissing and it all got out of hand. He liked kissing Isabelle, maybe more than he should, though that was a problem for another day. The point was, she was not a bathroom quickie kind of woman. He was proud not to have made her one.

  But in giving her that compliment, he’d sure managed to hurt her feelings.

  He sealed the toilet bowl’s base to the floor. Then it was a simple matter of hooking up the water supply and opening the shutoff valve. The tank immediately started filling with water.

  The tank lid had cracked during the break-in. Isabelle definitely needed a new toilet. What the hell had thieves cared about in the bathroom? Did they think Isabelle was hiding something in the tank? Drugs maybe? It was ridiculous.

  Maybe she hadn’t been in the house long and the whole thing had to do with previous owners. It was possible.

  He flushed the toilet and checked all his seals. Seemed tight. He put his tools away and wiped down her fixtures while the tank filled again. He flushed again. Everything looked good.

  He packed away the coveralls. Usually he kept a change of clothing in his gym bag. Just his luck to have already used it this morning when he was hanging around to open Wall Werx so Damon Does-This-Make-My-Butt-Look-Big Franklin could go home and have a shower.

  Truth was, it was high time for Kim That’s-A-Joke-Bro Martin to have a shower, whether he still had any chance with Isabelle or not. She had offered him hers. He decided to take that as hope.

  Her shower wasn’t a shower at all. The antique claw-foot tub had been fitted with a diverter faucet and showerhead assembly. A curtain rod encircled the tub, along with a whole lot of white shower curtain. It worked well enough. A brass tub tray stretched across the faucet end, filled with bath gels and oils and rough sponges and a woman’s razor. An inflatable cushion at the other end suggested Isabelle preferred the tub to the shower, that she spent a fair amount of time here. It was an effort not to imagine her lounging naked at his feet. What a sight that would be. Generous curves, pale flesh and a wicked smile. Damn.

  Not a bathroom quickie kind of woman, he reminded himself. But his imagination came back with suggestions on how to make the bathtub an all-night event.

  Her shampoo was pink and smelled like flowers. He used the green-tea bath gel instead. Even if she tossed him out, he’d feel better clean than grungy. He at least wanted the chance to defend himself about Jules. He couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Isabelle more convinced than ever that men were no better than rutting stags. A woman with that much passion shouldn’t deny herself, even if she denied him.

  He shut off the water and started looking for a towel. There weren’t any. Not so much as a washcloth. And he’d used the last of his shop towels on the job.

  The chill March breeze from the open window made everything that much more cozy. “Isabelle?” he called. No response. He called again. Surely she hadn’t taken the towels to spite him.

  “Are you okay?” It sounded like she was just outside the door.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Do you have any towels?”

  “Crap. I’ll get some. Hang on.”

  As if he were going anywhere. He swiped water off his face with his hand. At least it didn’t sound as if she’d left him towel-less on purpose. In a moment, she knocked on the door and it opened just far enough for a pale hand to come through, fingers gripping a blue-green bath towel.

  The only way he’d be able to get it would be to climb out of the tub and drip all over her floor.

  “Can’t reach,” he said. “Don’t worry, I�
�m decent.” He pinched shut the edges of the voluminous shower curtain around waist height to make it true.

  She slipped through the door, carrying a stack of towels. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I pulled them all this morning to wash. I didn’t even think.”

  “You’re blushing,” he said.

  “Am not,” she said, blushing.

  With one hand, he took the two towels she offered, dropping one over his shoulder before releasing the shower curtain and wrapping the second around his hips. She hugged the remaining towels to her chest while he scrubbed at his hair with the towel he wasn’t using as a garment.

  She wasn’t leaving. If anything she seemed to be trying not to stare and having trouble. She wet her lips without meeting his eyes. He no longer noticed the chill air.

  Her blouse was the color of his towel, the softest color he’d seen her wear, with oval buttons that gleamed like abalone shell. Her feet were bare beneath her jeans. She looked almost fragile. She was also more beautiful than he thought he could stand.

  “Kim?” she asked, her voice thick and throaty. She seemed to be finding a lot of interesting places to look that weren’t his face. It was getting warm in here.

  “Isabelle.” His hands clenched with the need to reach for her.

  Her gaze made it to his face, faltering for endless, aching seconds at his mouth before reaching his eyes. Kim’s endurance was about at an end. Awareness of her pulsed through every inch of his body. She either needed to leave now or accept the inevitable.

  She wet her lips again, her tongue sweetly pink and quick and shy. She wasn’t trying to tease. Didn’t matter. He was gone, lost in looking at that mouth.

  He stepped down, out of the tub. The towel gave. Isabelle grabbed it where he’d tucked it in and held it in place, her fingers warm against his waist. One of them was trembling. He wasn’t sure which. The other towels she held tumbled to the floor as she leaned into him, her head tipping back, those incredible lips…