Soft Spot: A Hale Street Novella

by Amy Knupp

  Home sweet home.

  "Kennedy and Hunter will be here in a few," Jackson said. "Oh…" He opened the door of the truck and reached in, grabbed something. "I stopped and picked up some bagels."

  "Grown-up food. Just your style," Vegas said with a knowing grin to Asia. "Come on up and we can eat while we wait for the others."

  Asia took a fortifying breath, seeing no way out of letting this man — this beautiful, successful, smart, perfect man — into her less-than-impressive personal space. Apparently he'd see it later, anyway, if he was going to help them haul up Vegas's belongings.

  Bright side: the more he knew about her, the less he'd want to go out with her.

  oOo

  Jackson followed Asia and her sister up three flights of stairs, one half of his mind taking in the narrowness of the stairwell and envisioning how they'd get any large pieces of furniture up and the other half pretending not to notice Asia's heart-shaped butt in fitted hot pink yoga pants at his eye level. He hadn't expected her to be overjoyed to see him again so soon, but it was obvious she did not want him there. It didn't match the looks he'd caught from her at the party or the chemistry that had pulsed between them at her car last night even as she'd turned him down.

  In a twisted way, he became more curious about her. More intrigued. As early as middle school, he'd had plenty of attention from girls, and he'd never had a hard time getting a date back in the days before he'd let his career take over his life. He strained his mind to come up with a woman who'd told him no, and he couldn't do it. Asia was it.

  As it turned out, he didn't deal with rejection well.

  Today, he could spend a little more time with her as they loaded and unloaded her sister, and maybe he'd figure out why she seemed to be bothered by him in spite of what he could swear was a mutual attraction. It didn't make sense to him. And more than anything, Jackson liked things to make sense.

  Besides, he'd dreamed about her last night. He hadn't had that kind of dream in ages. He wasn't sure what it was about her that struck him. He'd taken out prettier women on a regular basis. Women who wore stilettos and gemstones as if they'd been born in them. Asia was sporting a pair of slip-on bright blue sneakers and a mesh band in her hair.

  She stopped in front of door number twenty-four and unlocked both locks. The door was flimsy enough that a person would be able to get in if he wanted to, locks or not. That bothered him.

  He followed the two women inside, unsure what to expect, but what he saw was definitely not it.

  Colors. Everywhere.

  It was like a Crayola box had thrown up in her living room.

  The couch was white, with a rainbow of solid-colored pillows stacked two deep. The rug in front of it, under the old, wooden-crate coffee table, was striped to match, hiding what looked like scraped-up, seen-better-days wood floors. But it was the wall on the opposite side of the room that drew him.

  It was covered with photographs in mismatched but simple white frames. The photos were black and white — mostly. As he got closer, he noticed full-color details in each shot. A cracked, uneven sidewalk with a vivid green scraggly weed shooting up between two pieces of concrete. A crumbling, lopsided house with a little girl dressed in a no-frills pink dress sitting in front of it, playing in a pile of dirt. The interior of an abandoned decrepit building with a bright red spiral staircase winding through the center. Scattered among the two dozen or so frames were single-color items — a blue cutout of scripted letters that spelled L-I-F-E, a purple decorative arrow, a single orange silk flower.

  "This is eye-catching," he said as he took a closer look at some of the photos.

  "All my sister's work," Vegas announced, pride evident in her voice. "She takes the pictures, doctors them up on her computer, frames them, hangs them. It keeps growing."

  "It's pretty incredible. Each photo itself as well as the overall effect." He turned to seek out the artist with his eyes. Located her on the other side of the kitchen bar. "You've got a gift."

  Asia shrugged, busied herself with setting out the bagels and the tubs of cream cheese. "I sell a few online, but mostly it's just what I do when I get some spare time. Are you going to eat?" She held out a plate, white with a bright yellow band around the rim.

  Jackson crossed the small dining area and took it from her, continuing to take in his surroundings. He'd been intrigued with her last night. Inexplicably challenged when she'd turned him down. And now, after being exposed to a more personal side of her, he wanted — maybe even needed — to know more about Asia Knowles.

  Chapter Five

  Asia had known agreeing to this was a bad idea from the second it'd been suggested. But they'd been desperate. Hot, sweaty, exhausted, and pressed for time.

  Vegas, it turned out, had an absurd amount of furniture, all of it secondhand — or third or fourth. She collected it the way some people collected bottle caps or matchbooks.

  Though the top floor of Bruno and Sylvia's house was all one room, it was big. Bigger than Asia had realized. So when they'd shown up at Asia's apartment with truckload number two, there'd been nowhere to put it. They'd already added a love seat and two easy chairs to the living area — lucky thing Asia's decor was multicolored — and her books… Vegas had boxes and boxes of books that they'd piled from floor to ceiling in the bedroom. They'd talked about storing Vegas's queen-sized mattress up against the wall of the short hallway until they'd realized that was solving only one of more than a dozen problems. A storage unit was the obvious solution, but instead, Jackson, who Asia was starting to believe was superhuman, insisted they stash it in a section of his garage he wasn't using.

  She should've said no.

  Why would she agree to storing her sister's belongings with a man who openly admitted he was in hard pursuit of Asia? One who tempted her but would never work out?

  Sure, there was a part of her who was flattered by — okay, reveled in — his attention. Who wouldn't be? But it was dumb. Because now here she was, in his garage — a four-car garage with a storage loft, no less — watching Jackson above her on a fold-down, narrow-stepped staircase that was more like a glorified wobbly ladder. Vegas, Kennedy, and Hunter had already taken off because Vegas had an appointment to give one of her regulars a tattoo at two o'clock. Asia and Jackson had been about to leave, too, when they'd discovered a forgotten mirror up against the side of the truck bed. Now Jackson was fighting with the thing, trying to wedge it in between a coffee table and a dresser.

  The view from below, as she held on to the rickety stairs with the hope of somehow making them sturdier for him, was inspirational.

  Athletic shorts molded to his well-toned butt, and if that wasn't scenic enough, the biceps and triceps a couple feet higher were magnificent as they flexed and shifted. His calves, which were at eye level… She'd never really noticed a guy's lower legs before, but she was rapidly developing a fascination with his, with their athletic tone and light masculine covering of golden-brown hair.

  As she stared at them, he ascended the rest of the way, climbed up on the platform, and readjusted things in order to fit the mirror all the way in, swearing a couple times, which renewed her hope that he might be mere human. When he started down, facing outward, she took a step back and reluctantly let go of the side rails to give him space. His feet were longer than the steps were deep, so with each step, his toes hung over the edge, and Asia shook away the saying about what big feet meant.

  To avoid staring at him, she allowed herself to take in the other three bays of the garage — and the three vehicles housed in them. There was the silver Mercedes she'd admired last night, parked in the far bay, closest to the sprawling, ungodly large house. In the middle was a wine-colored SUV, and closest to them was a classic Mustang, blue with black racing stripes down the hood. How any one person drove three cars was—

  A foot in front of her, Jackson came sliding down the wooden stairs with a clatter and more swearing, and she automatically reached out and tried to slow his fall. He came t
o a stop on his feet, her hands on his upper arms — yeah, those biceps. God, they were solid.

  When she felt his hand at her waist, she flicked her gaze up at his eyes and meant to remove her hands, because obviously he was steady now. But their gazes locked, and for a second or two, she didn't breathe, didn't move, as awareness pulsed between them and her body reacted in private places that were nowhere near touching him.

  She wanted to touch him more. Wanted him to pull her close and dull the intense ache deep inside of her. When she realized her traitorous eyes had dipped to his soft, tempting lips, she lowered her hands and tore her gaze away. His grip on her side went from a touch to a light squeeze.

  "That's twice," he said. "Two times you've rescued me."

  She laughed nervously. "You rescued yourself that time. Are you okay?"

  "Other than embarrassing myself in front of a pretty girl, I think I'll recover fully."

  The tension in the air seemed to tighten even more, and before Asia could fully savor that he'd called her pretty, he was leaning closer, his eyes on her mouth, her heart about to pound out of her chest, and her legs unable to move. She didn't want to move.

  At the first touch of his lips, she grabbed on to his T-shirt because her knees went weak. His lips were warm, soft, very human. Gentle for a heartbeat, and then his hand was at her nape, pulling her closer, from lips to thighs, and she was dizzied by his heat and his scent and his intensity. The roughness of his skin against hers, the hardness of his body compared to hers, the insistence of his tongue… It all brought her up on her toes, trying to get closer to him, opening to him. There was no conscious decision, only reaction. Any warning in her mind that this was ill-advised was overpowered by desire like she'd never felt before. Fully clothed, nothing but kissing, and she was on fire. Aching inside.

  A quiet, sexy growl came from Jackson's throat, and then his palms were cupping her face as he gentled the kiss again, peppering her lips with light, short touches, as if he was trying to end the kiss but couldn't quite get enough of her.

  Her.

  That this beautiful, sexy man seemed into her was empowering. Intoxicating. Her insides were liquid, and her brain had turned to mush.

  Long seconds later, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and exhaled, giving her the impression he was as blown away as she was.

  Then it started to sink in how blown away she'd been, how reckless, how completely unconcerned she'd been to let her guard down. Two minutes — or, for all she knew, it might've been ten — of locking lips with this man and she lost her mind and all semblance of common sense.

  Asia stepped back from him.

  "If I asked you on a date right now," he said, his voice rough, "would you say no again?"

  Asia silently scolded herself for letting that kiss occur. She wasn't a fan of mixed signals, either sending or receiving, and she'd just sent them big-time.

  They'd been fine, worked well together all morning when it'd been all about the task of moving Vegas's stuff. Not a mention of going out. As soon as they were alone though…

  Could she say no to him again after that kiss?

  Was there any way she could she say yes?

  She closed her eyes, and an image of bringing Jackson Lowell "home" to Mom flashed in her mind. Brought with it a full-body shudder.

  Disaster.

  Her ears burned with embarrassment just from imagining it.

  "No." Her eyes popped open. "I mean yes. I'd say no."

  Jackson nodded once, looking off toward the pickup in the driveway, which, he'd told her, belonged to a friend of his. His lips were pressed together, and Asia was on the verge of apologizing when he spoke first.

  "Was that my imagination just now? Did I read the signals wrong? Because that… It felt like there was some serious chemistry between us. Two-way. Did I make that up?"

  He sounded genuinely confused, and with that came a hint of vulnerability she hadn't seen in him before. It tugged at her, and God knew the last thing Asia needed was something else about this man that tugged at her. He deserved more of an explanation, an honest one, than she'd given him last night. Though she couldn't fathom going into detail, she could try to make him understand.

  "There's chemistry," she said on a shaky exhale. "You didn't make it up. But…" She shook her head, searching for words. "That would only take us so far, and then one of us would get hurt. Maybe both."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "We're too different," Asia said without hesitation. "Look at this." She swept her arm around, encompassing the massive garage. "You could fit ten of my apartments in your garage. It's taken me two years of saving, plus a promotion to assistant manager, to be able to 'move up' to a place on Hale Street, where there's no graffiti on the buildings. And my car—"

  "Your car has personality," he said generously.

  "And a big, fat dent in the passenger side. And something leaking from the engine."

  "Let me see if I've got this straight. You can't go on a date with me because your car has a dent?"

  When he said it like that… She battled a grin. "We come from totally different backgrounds, Jackson. Different lives. Anything more than a casual date would never work between us."

  She could imagine it, had imagined it. Someone with as much money as him didn't understand what it was like to be conscious of every penny spent. Some of her problems could be solved with a healthy bank account, and she sensed that Jackson was kindhearted enough he'd want to bail her out. That would never sit well with her. And money was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to their differences. He was smart, super smart, she suspected, and she … well, she'd done okay in high school when she'd had time to study, but she'd worked nearly full-time because her mother hadn't. And career? This man owned an uber-successful company. A well-known software company, for God's sake, that he'd started himself. He must go to important events all the time, and what in the name of God would he do with a waitress on his arm?

  "I don't agree." Jackson turned and folded up the stairs to the loft. "But I'm not going to push you today."

  "Um … thanks?" Asia did smile then. He was like no one she knew. But then, she didn't tend to run with the billionaire crowd, or even mere millionaires.

  "I like you, Asia. You intrigue me. You're pretty, but it goes beyond that. You work hard, and you take care of people, whether it's your customers at Clayborne's or your sister, and that appeals to me."

  She tried to take care of her mom, as well, but she hardly thought he'd find that situation appealing.

  "I'd like to get to know you better. Let you get to know me. These things" — he gestured to the cars — "they're just things. They're not who I am. Just like your car isn't who you are."

  "It kind of is who I am," she said, trying to keep her voice light, but the truth was, a broken-down shit-mobile was pretty standard for her existence.

  He did the hand-on-the-small-of-her-back thing as they walked out of the garage toward the wide, basketball-court-sized driveway.

  "I'm flying to LA tomorrow. I'll be gone all week," he said. "While I'm gone, you think about things. Think about that kiss. And when I get back, I'm going to come into Clayborne's to see you." When they reached the front of the truck, he stopped, faced her. "That okay?"

  She couldn't deny there was a little thrill at the thought of him coming in to see her. "Clayborne's is a public place," she said noncommittally. "You can come in whenever you want."

  He seemed about to say more, but he stopped himself. Nodded. "Okay then. Let's get you home."

  Chapter Six

  "This is really nice," Vegas said with an odd hesitation in her voice. "Almost too nice. I've never lived somewhere like this."

  The two-bedroom Hale Street apartment was so much more than nice. Asia tore her eyes from the nearly finished kitchen, where she'd been imagining various backsplash possibilities, and peered at her sister. "You sound like that's a problem."

  Vegas slowly spun in the empty living area, eyeing
the bare walls that screamed to Asia of a blank canvas. "I don't know. It feels confining. Like, if I bump into the wall wrong, it'll leave a mark. Look at these floors. If you scrape a chair back, boom. Floor scratched."

  The floors were gorgeous dark wood planks, the tall walls primed but not yet painted, just waiting for the future resident's color choice. This place was similar to the one-bedroom she'd planned to sign the lease for, had the same updated historical feel, just bigger and a slightly different floor plan. Asia was stunned by Vegas's reluctance to embrace the opportunity to live here.

  "Just look at the view from the balcony," Asia said, heading toward the French doors. She opened one and stepped out into the warm, mid-morning sunshine.

  The apartment was in the center of the block, looking across at the diner, the yet-to-be renovated former recording studio, the soon-to-open interior design and reclaimed furnishings store. The second- and third-floor apartments on both sides were gradually being redone, and each of them had a balcony, giving the old buildings so much character. The old-fashioned streetlights and brick sidewalk enhanced the uniqueness of the street. Made Asia love it even more.

  She checked the time, saw she still had almost an hour before she had to be at the senior center to serve lunch, and lowered herself to the floor of the balcony, leaning her back against the brick building facade. Vegas walked out and went to the ornate white metal railing and surveyed, first to her left, then to the right.

  "It's nice," Vegas said again, this time sounding less tentative.

  "I'll pay the same amount I was planning to for the one-bedroom," Asia said enthusiastically. "That'll leave five hundred a month for you to pay. That's barely more than your last place."

  Her sister didn't respond right away. After getting her fill of the sights, she backed up and lowered herself to the floor next to Asia. "Let me think about it. When do you have to decide?"

  "Thursday. You've got three days."