by Linda Seed
“All right.” She sighed, and her shoulders fell in defeat. “I’ll call TJ.”
TJ didn’t generally look forward to after-hours jobs, but he was looking forward to this one as he drove across town toward Happy Hill. Owen was at home watching a movie with Gary by his side. At twelve, he was old enough to stay home by himself for a couple of hours; he had TJ’s cell number, of course, and he also had Mrs. Willits, the grandmotherly woman next door who was always willing—no, eager—to take Owen into her kitchen and feed him every chance she got. He’d be fine.
TJ had been trying to devise some non-awkward way to talk to Bianca again, and tonight, a solution had dropped into his lap as if by magic. Thank God for the crappy wiring in older homes. Without it, his life would have been so much less rich, in more ways than one.
He hoped the problem would be complicated, something that would require a lot of work and a healthy display of his expertise. Then he could impress her, and he could magnanimously wave off any offer of payment.
You can pay me back by taking me to dinner.
He imagined that gambit happily as he drove up to the Russo house and parked his truck. He could think of a few other ways she could show her gratitude, if she was amenable, some of them involving nudity.…
He climbed the front porch steps, and the door opened before he had the chance to knock. Martina stood in the doorway, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb, a mischievous grin on her face.
“Good, you’re here,” she said. “We’re just sitting around in the dark. Come on in.”
TJ’s attempt to showcase his stunning expertise on all things electrical was cut tragically short when he discovered that the main breaker was off. He flipped it back on, and presto—let there be light.
He went back into the house unsure how to tell them. He certainly didn’t want to patronize Bianca—the big, competent man has solved your silly little problem—but there was no way around the fact that the breaker was a simple thing they should have known how to check themselves.
“Well … looks like you’re back in business.” He walked back into the living room, scratching his head and trying to look modest.
“That quick? What did you do?” Bianca asked.
“Your main breaker was off. I just … you know … turned it back on.”
Bianca, Sofia, and Benny were sitting around the coffee table, their candles still burning.
“I thought you two checked the breaker!” Bianca glared at Benny and Sofia.
“We did.” Benny batted her eyelashes a few times. “I swear it was on.”
“Me too. It was on.” Sofia crossed her heart with her index finger.
“Huh. That’s funny. Well, it’s all good now, so …”
Even as he spoke, the lights went out again, and everything went dark except for the flickering glow of the candles.
“Huh,” he said.
Martina appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “What, again?”
“Okay, I guess you do have an issue.” TJ rubbed the back of his neck. “Let me see what I can do.”
TJ went outside to the breaker box, a jacket wrapped around him against the evening chill, turned on his flashlight, and took a good look. The first thing he had to do was determine the location of the problem by testing each individual circuit. Once he’d isolated the problem, he could diagnose the specific issue.
He was just starting to do that when he became aware that Bianca was behind him wearing a puffy coat and peering over his shoulder anxiously.
“What’s going on? We don’t have some kind of big problem, do we? We don’t have a short that’s going to set the house on fire? Or something?” She’d gone up on her toes to see over his shoulder, and she was so close he could smell whatever girly products she used on her hair. It was a nice smell—feminine and soothing—and he wanted to lean into it and take a deep breath.
“If you have a problem, I’ll find it,” he told her. “And it’s not likely to set the house on fire. That’s what the breaker’s for.”
“Okay. Well.”
He turned off all of the breaker switches, turned on the main breaker, then turned on power to one part of the house to see if it worked. “Could you … uh … ask your sisters if the lights are on in the kitchen?” He hated like hell for her to step away from him, but at least it would make it easier for him to think.
She checked, then came back and told him the kitchen lights were on. She’d clearly settled in to relax for the evening before he’d gotten there. Under the coat, she was wearing a big T-shirt and some kind of stretchy black pants that made her ass look shapely and touchable. Her hair was up in a ponytail that left stray strands of hair framing her face. He wanted to reach out and hold one between his fingers, but he restrained himself.
He should have gotten back to the breaker box by now, but instead of working, he seemed to be standing there looking at her.
“Um … I’m sorry we bothered you so late,” she said. “I didn’t want to, because … well … you’re obviously busy right now, with Owen and everything, which I’m sure is why you haven’t called. Not that you had any obligation. To call, I mean. Obviously, you have an obligation to Owen. That’s not what I—”
“It’s no bother,” he told her. “I was glad to come.”
“You were?”
“Yeah.” She was standing very close to him on the grass beside the house. The night had only a sliver of a moon, and he could barely see her in the pale light coming from the kitchen window. He could feel her, though. The warmth of her, even though they weren’t touching. The energy of her.
TJ figured he had three choices: He could act like he was only there to do a favor for a friend, get the job finished, and go home. He could explain the reasons he hadn’t called her—that first he’d been busy with Owen, and then he hadn’t known what to say. Or he could bypass the conversation entirely by kissing her.
He chose option number three.
Out there in the dark, cool night, he leaned forward and let his lips touch hers, and she let out a sigh that undid him. That sigh held everything—her hopes and fears, her needs, and the tender relief she felt at his touch.
His flashlight hit the grass, and he put his arms around her, pulling her against his body and deepening the kiss until he felt it all the way in the center of his bones.
He knew he should hold back—this wasn’t the time or the place for a seduction—but at the moment, he didn’t give half a crap about what was appropriate. Before he knew what he was doing, he had a fistful of her hair in one hand, pressing her body to his with the other.
The thing about a great kiss was that it made everything disappear; all of the worries, anxieties, and day-to-day obligations of life seemed to evaporate into the atmosphere. And this was a great kiss. TJ couldn’t remember when he’d last had one of this caliber. He’d loved Penny, yes, but had they ever had this kind of chemistry? Maybe, once. Or maybe he’d only thought so because he’d had so little to compare it with.
He had very little experience with women and dating. There’d been Penny, and then there’d been the divorce. Now, with Bianca in his arms, he began to wonder about the possibilities and about all of the pleasures he’d missed.
When they finally broke away from each other—it might have been minutes later, or it might have been an hour—TJ became aware that they were being watched.
“Hey, you two.” Benny was standing in the grass at the corner of the house, her arms crossed over her chest, a smug smile on her face.
“Oh. I … uh … we were just …”
TJ couldn’t tell for sure in the darkness, but he was pretty sure Bianca was blushing.
“I guess it’s okay to tell you that you can stop now,” Benny went on. “The work, that is. Not the kissing. I think you should go back to doing that.”
“What are you talking about?” Bianca put a hand to her hair where TJ had mussed it, making a futile effort to smooth it and eliminate the evidence.
“The wiring’s fin
e. We turned off the breaker a couple of times to get TJ out here.”
TJ was having trouble making sense of it—maybe because all of the blood had flowed downward from his brain, and he’d lost his facility for critical thinking. “You turned off the breaker? On purpose?”
“You two weren’t talking, and Bianca here was miserable. We all thought it was time for you two to stop screwing around and start … you know. Screwing.” She smirked.
“Oh, God,” Bianca said.
TJ chuckled. Maybe dating a woman with sisters wasn’t going to be half bad.
21
Bianca was mortified—not only by what her sisters had done, but also by the fact that she probably would have let TJ take her against the side of the house if Benny hadn’t come outside when she did.
When had she lost all of her self-control? When had she lost her damned common sense?
She put her hand to her mouth, still feeling the heat of TJ’s kiss.
“I have to go … do a thing.” Benny was grinning as she turned and went back into the house.
“I’m so sorry,” Bianca told TJ. “My sisters are idiots.”
“From where I’m standing, there’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “I ought to thank them.”
Bianca felt heat rise to her cheeks. “I thought …”
“You thought what?” He picked up his flashlight from the grass and hooked it onto his tool belt.
“I thought you weren’t interested. And I thought … God, I thought it was high school all over again. Me mooning over you and you not even noticing.” It felt good to say it out loud.
She knew her hair must be comically mussed from where he’d had his hands in it. Self-consciously, she took the band out, freeing her hair from its ponytail, then ran her hands through it.
“You’re mooning over me?” TJ’s grin pulled at her. It was that same cocky grin that had consumed her thoughts in high school.
“Yes. I’m mooning. I’ve been trying to act like I’m not, but, hell.” Bianca let her shoulders drop. “Yes, I’m mooning.”
He took a step closer to her and gently laid his palm on her cheek. “How about that? You’re mooning.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
“It’s just … if you’re not interested, it’s better to know that now, because—” She didn’t get the rest out, because he was kissing her again, and she’d forgotten what it was she’d even meant to say.
His tongue caressed hers as his thumb, rough from work, stroked her face. She wanted to resist him—it was the smart thing to do, surely; she didn’t want to get hurt again—but how could she resist this? How could she refuse what he was doing to her?
When he broke the kiss, she didn’t open her eyes—she was afraid if she did, it all would end, and she’d discover she’d only imagined it.
“I think your neighbors are watching us,” TJ said.
Bianca’s eyes flew open just in time for her to see a curtain in the neighbor’s window stir. She and TJ needed to stop, but she didn’t want to. Everything in her body was screaming for more.
“Oh.” That was all she could seem to get out. “Oh.”
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” His voice was a low rumble that glided across her skin.
“I … yes.” She hadn’t meant to say yes—she knew it wasn’t the responsible thing, the adult thing—and yet that’s what had come out. And now that it was out there, she didn’t want to take it back.
“Owen’s home. So that’s out. Could we maybe …” He nodded toward the house, where Bianca’s sisters were undoubtedly tittering about what they knew was happening outside.
“God, no.”
“Okay. You want to neck in my truck a little bit?”
His sexy, mischievous smile was something she couldn’t say no to. So she didn’t.
They were both entirely too mature to have sex in a vehicle, so they didn’t do that. Instead, they did some old-fashioned, fully clothed making out, something Bianca hadn’t spent any real time doing since she was in her early twenties. It was damned fun, and she had to wonder why she’d given it up.
He’d pushed the driver’s seat as far back as it would go, and Bianca was sitting on his lap, her arms around his neck, loving his kisses, the smell of his skin, and the rumble of his voice. The fact that it wasn’t going to go any further than this—at least, not today—allowed her to let go of her anxiety and her misgivings and simply enjoy the moment.
“I should get back home,” he said after a while, when they both were warm and mussed and thoroughly turned on. “Owen’s going to wonder what happened to me.”
“Right. Owen.” Her voice was dreamy, and her head was foggy with lust.
“He’s going to be with Penny this weekend. Let’s go out. And then, afterward … we’ll see what happens.”
His hands were caressing her back, and she couldn’t think with his hands on her. Was he asking her to have sex with him this weekend? She was pretty sure he was. The thought of saying no didn’t even occur to her.
“We’ll see what happens,” she echoed.
“Yeah.”
She went in for one more kiss to get her through until then. She caught his lower lip in her mouth and savored it, then nipped it lightly with her teeth. He let out a throaty groan in response. Then she climbed off of him and went out the passenger door.
By the time Bianca got back into the house, she looked like exactly what she was—a woman who’d been kissed senseless. Her sisters took one look at her and began hooting with glee.
“Did you have sex in the truck?” Benny demanded to know. “Is your bra on backward? Are you still wearing your panties?”
“No, we did not have sex in the truck,” Bianca said. “I am still wearing my panties, and … my bra is fine.”
Benny’s face fell. “Disappointing. Of course, you’re not the sex-in-a-truck type, but TJ—”
“When are you going to see him again?” Martina asked.
“We … this weekend. Owen will be at Penny’s.”
Sofia rubbed her hands together happily. “Ooh, so it’s a sex date.”
“No, it’s … Okay, yes. It’s a sex date,” Bianca admitted.
Benny stood and did a little victory dance. “Score one for a fake electrical crisis. That was Sofia’s idea, by the way.”
Sofia shrugged. “I’m just glad he’s not a firefighter. I didn’t want to have to torch the place.”
Sometime while Bianca and TJ were in the truck, Patrick had arrived. He was holding a mug of tea in his hands, the paper tag from the tea bag dangling outside of the mug.
“I told Sofia not to interfere,” he said. “But she thought that if it worked, you’d forget to be mad. Was she right?”
Mad? Bianca had, indeed, forgotten that she was supposed to be mad about her sisters’ deception. And now that she remembered, she was too flustered by TJ and his hands and his mouth and his … everything that she couldn’t summon up any leftover anger.
“I’m thinking she was right,” Martina responded when Bianca didn’t.
Bianca raked her hands through her hair, which was already so badly askew it hardly mattered. “I just … God, I don’t want him to hurt me again. I know it was high school, and I know he didn’t mean to, and I know it wasn’t the real TJ who hurt me but a … a fantasy I’d created in my addled teenage brain. But the heartbreak was real! It was real, and it hurt.” To her horror, she felt tears coming to her eyes, and she wiped them away. “I just got out of a relationship, and I’m vulnerable, and … and I just don’t want him to hurt me again. What if he does? What if we sleep together, and it’s great, and then he moves on and leaves me a broken shell of a woman?”
“What if you sleep together, and it’s great, and you both live happily ever after?” Sofia asked. “I mean, why not?”
Bianca dropped into a leather club chair. “Because this is real life, that’s why.”
And when did I decide
that real life inevitably means disappointment? When exactly did that happen? It was a question Bianca hadn’t asked herself before. It seemed to her that she needed to understand the answer if she was ever going to be happy with anyone.
22
In the couple of days leading up to her date with TJ, Bianca second-guessed herself so many times that she was driving herself crazy. More than that, she was driving her sisters crazy.
“Good God, Bianca, why can’t you just enjoy it? Why can’t you just relax and wallow in the anticipation of what’s likely to be some really great sex?” Sofia and Bianca were at Bianca’s office before opening, preparing for the day’s appointments. Bianca had been pacing around, considering options for canceling the date, while Sofia sat at the reception desk getting organized for her day. Finally, Sofia had snapped. “You’re not turning yourself in for a stretch at San Quentin. It’s a date!”
“I know.” Bianca, dressed in her professional outfit of black pants, white button-down shirt, low pumps, and white coat, was wringing her hands. She’d always thought wringing her hands was a silly expression that had nothing to do with reality, but here she was—literally wringing her hands. She forced herself to stop and shoved her fists into the pockets of her coat. “But what if it goes wrong? What if it’s a disappointment? What if I’m not ready?”
Sofia’s tone softened. “If you’re not ready, then when the time comes, you’ll tell him you’re not ready. The point is to do something you both want to do. If you don’t want to …”
“I do want to,” Bianca moaned. “That’s the problem. I want to, so I’m not thinking straight. I’m not being rational.”
“Being rational is highly overrated where men are concerned,” Sofia remarked. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to go with your feelings.”
“Says the woman who almost rejected the love of her life because of feelings,” Bianca shot back.
Sofia sat back in her chair and crossed her impossibly long legs. “Look, Bianca. If you don’t want to sleep with him yet, then don’t. Of course, don’t. But go out with him. Get to know him. Give him a chance. Then just … see what happens.”