by Jewel E. Ann
“Let’s head down,” Jason said as he nodded toward the stairs.
I held the bottle out to him.
“Keep it. I’ll get another from my cooler.”
“I don’t need it.”
He chuckled, descending the stairs. “Nobody does, but it’s a party, Reese.”
My grip on the bottleneck tightened as I followed him down the stairs. Most of the other women were wearing nicer sun dresses or sexy shorts and cute sandals. I wore shorts that nearly hit my knees and a T-shirt that I was pretty sure was a unisex shirt with a big smiley face on it.
Minimal makeup.
No nail polish.
And my hair looked like I’d done nothing more than comb it and let it air dry after a shower … because that’s what I did.
Straight brown hair doing nothing special. No body. No highlights. No funky pink streaks. Could I have been more basic?
“Yo, Bossman,” Jason said.
Fisher and his date turned around. He smiled at Jason, but his smile faded a fraction when he saw me standing a few feet back, clutching a beer bottle to my chest. “Having…” he eyed the bottle for a little too long before lifting his gaze to mine “…a good time?” That look, it was too parental.
Too challenging.
Too condescending.
Long-armed, tiny-boobed, fake-adult Reese.
Lifting the bottle to my lips, I nodded. “I believe I am.”
Fisher shifted his focus from me to Jason. “Did you give her the beer?”
Jason shrugged. “Maybe.”
Fisher nodded slowly. “She’s eighteen, which means she’s officially your responsibility.”
No he didn’t. He didn’t just call me out like a child.
Jason turned and gave me a sad smile. “Sorry. I’m not in the mood to babysit tonight.” He plucked the bottle of beer from my hand.
I was so embarrassed; I wanted to kill Fisher. Then I wanted to cry because it sucked being an adult, only not really a full adult. Jason disappeared, leaving me with an empty hand in front of Satan’s awful son and his girlfriend.
“Reese, this is Teagan. Teagan, this is Reese. She and her mom rent out my basement.”
I didn’t rent squat. But it was so generous of him to make me look grown up in front of her after calling out my age and apparent need for a babysitter.
“Nice to meet you.” She smiled instead of offering to shake my hand, probably because one of her hands held a beer and the other was still around Fisher’s waist.
The ugly jealousy felt terrible. How did I get such an extreme crush on a guy ten years older than me in a matter of weeks? It just added to all the other reasons I wasn’t a mature adult yet. I felt certain Teagan didn’t get stupid crushes on guys who were out of her league. Then again, she was a beautiful doctor with a great job, great hair, and great boobs. No guy was out of her league.
“Nice to meet you too.”
Fisher took a swig of his beer, and I wanted to knock it out of his hand.
“Well, have fun. I’m going to grab something to eat.” I wasn’t hungry. It was code for “I’m leaving.”
“You too,” Teagan said. She sounded nice. She worked with a lot of kids, giving them great smiles. Of course she was nice. He deserved her.
I sulked my way through the crowd in the house, but not rushing anything to avoid looking like I was leaving. A few people were just outside the front door vaping—and probably smoking pot too—but they ignored me when I held my phone up to my ear, pretending to talk to someone.
When I got home, I opened a bag of cheese curls and ate half the bag. Then I downloaded some new music to my phone.
Matt Maeson.
After listening to several songs, I settled on “Tribulation.” It was fitting in some ways. Tortured love.
Twenty minutes later, I knew every word.
Thirty minutes later, I ascended the stairs. And not surprisingly, he didn’t lock his side of the door. I opened it slowly, even though I knew he wasn’t home. I stole a banana and ate it. Then I opened the fridge door and frowned at all the peanut butter he had in the door. At least four jars. He must have been scared of a shortage. On the bottom shelf, there was beer. Lots of beer.
Biting my lips together for a few seconds while tapping my nails on the door, I contemplated borrowing … taking just one beer.
One beer led to two beers, and I was buzzed. And it was good. I bobbed around his house holding my phone with music blaring while looking at photos of people I imagined were his family. Then I stumbled upon his bedroom.
“Oh, Fisher …” I giggled, swaying a bit while I sauntered into his bedroom. “You make your bed like a good boy.” I laughed some more and plopped onto my tummy, burying my nose in his pillow. “You smell sooo good.” When I was convinced I’d sucked all of his scent from his pillow, I rolled to the side and right onto the floor. “Ouch …”
More laughter.
More swaying as I lumbered to my feet and continued my self-guided tour, which led me to his bathroom. “There you are … you big, beautiful tub.”
I sighed. His bathroom was ginormous. And he had a wall of switches, at least twenty switches for all kinds of lighting around the sink, the shower, his wall of wardrobe cabinets, by my feet, even under the toilet.
“Too much.” I pushed all the bottom buttons which turned off all the lights, leaving only natural moonlight coming from the big window by the tub and the two skylights. “That’s better.” I stripped, stepped into the soaker tub, and started the water, easing onto my butt with no grace. When the water reached an inch below my neck, I shut it off. “Where’s my music?” I realized I’d left my phone on the bed or maybe on the floor, but the music had stopped anyway.
Closing my eyes, I enjoyed the silence … and my buzz. The silence was interrupted with voices. I had enough sense to kind of care, but not enough sense to get out of the tub or say anything. Instead, I held still, really still … and listened.
“It’s beautiful, Fisher. You’re incredibly talented. How long did it take you to build it?”
Teagan.
“About a year. I didn’t rush anything, and I had some other jobs I was working on too.” His voice got closer.
My senses … my fight or flight? Yeah, they had the night off.
The lights turned on. All of them. There must have been a master switch. It was a little blinding at the moment. I squinted.
“Jesus … what are you …” Fisher turned his head like a real gentleman. No wonder Teagan liked him.
I liked him too.
“Oh! Reese!” Teagan jumped and turned as well. “Why is she in your tub?” she asked Fisher in a tone that made me think she wasn’t too pleased.
“You said anytime … I could use your tub anytime.” I chuckled, cupping my hands together at the surface of the water and squirting it in different directions. “You didn’t say I could drink your beer, so … oops. I’ll pay ya back.” Another giggle.
“Fisher …” Teagan’s voice wasn’t friendly like her smile, like she worked with kids all day. It was really grumpy. Did he offer his tub to her too?
“I’ll get out in a minute. When my head stops spinning.”
The door shut, and I no longer saw them, but I heard the murmuring of their voices, and it wasn’t good. A few moments later, the door opened again. It was Fisher, but he wasn’t being as much of a gentleman. No hiding his eyes.
“Reese …” he said in a slow and steady tone like I was that deer in the headlights he talked about.
“Fish-er … I like that name. At first … it was weird, like what were your parents thinking? But I like it now. A little too much. Ya know?”
“I don’t know.” He made his way to the tub, plucking my clothes from the floor one piece at a time. He sat on the edge of the tub with his back to me, holding my clothes in his hands as he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly in a sound. My fuzzy head had trouble deciphering it. A grumble or a growl?
“Are you mad a
t me?”
Shaking his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what I am.”
“Is it the beer?”
He didn’t respond.
“The bathtub? Were you just kidding about me using it whenever I wanted to?”
No response.
“I think I need a towel.”
He nodded toward a tall stack of drawers by the sink on the opposite side of the bathroom. “Bottom drawer.”
It might have been his proximity or the shock of him and Teagan showing up so early, but my buzz was quickly wearing off. “Aren’t you going to get it for me?”
His lips twisted and he glanced over his shoulder at me. My hands moved to my breasts, and I crossed my legs as a big fat dose of reality began to register. The naked fisherman had seen me naked. Not briefly. He took his time, picking up my clothes while inching his way to the tub and my fully exposed body.
No bubbles.
No effort to cover myself.
Nothing.
“I’m not,” he said.
“Why not?” My voice shook a bit. Sobriety stole the moment.
“Because I think you need to get it yourself.”
“Are you going to leave now?”
“Nope.” His gaze slid down my body.
My hands gripped my breasts harder as I squeezed my legs together tighter.
It was so wrong. He was so wrong.
Drawing my knees to my chest, I rocked forward and stood, lifting one leg out of the tub followed by the other, inches from Fisher. On a suffocating swallow, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He had an unobstructed view of my naked backside. I didn’t have enough hands to cover everything.
“I thought you were a gentleman,” I mumbled, making the walk of shame to the stack of drawers and hunching down instead of bending over to retrieve a towel.
“Why did you think that?”
Wrapping the towel around my body, I turned toward him. “Because you looked away when you first came into the bathroom.”
“That was for Teagan. A gentleman doesn’t stare at a naked woman in front of his date.”
“So you’re a gentleman for her, but not for me?”
He narrowed his eyes a second before returning a slow nod. “That’s accurate.”
Stupid fu—fudger.
“Because of my age?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re a real butt. Did you know that?”
“I know.”
“So what’s the point of all this?” I marched toward him and snatched my clothes from his hand.
“I need you to know that when you make poor decisions, men will take advantage of you.”
“You said I could use your bathtub.”
“Not drunk.”
Hugging my clothes to my chest while keeping a firm grip on the towel, I frowned. “Well, if you’re done teaching me ridiculous lessons, then I’m going to bed.” Pivoting, I shuffled my feet to the bathroom door.
“I’m not done teaching.”
I stopped, but I didn’t look back at him.
“What now?”
“You need to bring your own towel. That one’s mine. Leave it right where you’re standing.”
“You’re a perv. How do you think Rory will react when she finds out you were being so perverted with her daughter?”
“I don’t know, but make sure you start the story with the part where you stole beer from my fridge.”
Fucker!
It felt so good to scream it in my head; I just wished my body would have cooperated and screamed it to his face. He knew I’d never tell Rory about the night’s events. So he took every opportunity to embarrass me.
“I’m filing a sexual harassment complaint against my boss on Monday.”
“You do that.” He was a steel beam, an immovable boulder. Always one step ahead of me.
Chapter Eleven
I spent Saturday in shameful regret, not venturing out once.
Sunday morning I bolted to the Outback to go to church and pray … lots of prayers. And when I returned, God had answered at least one of my prayers: Fisher wasn’t outside.
Monday morning, around five-thirty, my luck ran out.
Fisher: You’re with me today. We’ll leave in twenty minutes.
Someone might as well have said, “You’ve been found guilty. We’re executing you in twenty minutes.”
I wore my hair down to hide my face as much as possible. With not a second to spare, I dragged my feet up to the driveway and climbed into the truck, keeping my backpack between my legs on the floor instead of tossing it in the back where I might have accidentally made eye contact with Satan’s son.
“Morning.” I could feel his gloating expression. His amusement.
“Morning,” I mumbled, keeping my head down.
“Listen, there’s no need to drag your weekend to work with you on Monday. What happened, happened. No big deal. We move on.”
My head snapped up, jaw open. “No big deal? You molested me with your eyes! I wouldn’t call that no big deal.”
Fisher’s molesting eyes flared, a new kind of shock I hadn’t seen on him before. I may have spent the whole weekend letting my emotions build into something a little … explosive.
“You know what your problem is?”
My chin tipped up as my eyes narrowed. Yeah, I knew what my problem was … him.
“You need to get laid. And so help me, if you even think of telling Rory I said that, I will tell her everything.”
“I …” My jaw flapped a few times. I couldn’t believe he said it. If I would have had a hundred guesses as to what I imagined he thought my problem was, lack of sex would not have been on that list. “That … you …” My head wouldn’t stop shaking side to side. “I do not need to get laid. You need to stop being so crude. Some people take sex seriously, not like a game to play with anyone willing to have it with them. It’s supposed to be something beautiful between two people who love each other.”
“You’ve clearly never had an orgasm.”
“I have too.” Once, by accident. And it irked me that he had a way of keeping me on the defensive. I wasn’t proud of my accidental orgasm, but I felt the need to own it with him accusing me of needing one.
“Liar.” He smirked.
“You can’t call me a liar about this when you’ve known me for a few weeks. You don’t know anything about me and my past.”
“Did you give it to yourself or did someone else give it to you?”
“This … this is a stupid topic and really inappropriate. You’re my boss, driving me to work.”
“I’ll be your boss when we get there.”
“Then let’s go.” I faced forward and folded my arms over my chest.
At the first job, he inspected the previous day’s work and talked to a few of the workers. The second stop was a meeting with potential clients at an empty lot. I waited in the truck. We grabbed a fast-food lunch (unfortunately not Mickey D’s) and headed to the final stop of the afternoon. It was a staircase he’d been working on for a client, but they weren’t home.
“Did you buy these?” I asked, running my finger over the intricate details of a spindle.
“Nope. I made them.” He slipped on his tool belt.
Although I kinda hated him from our morning conversation, I couldn’t not appreciate how sexy he looked in a tool belt.
The scruff on his face a little longer.
His shirt nice and snug in the chest but loose over his tight abs.
“Are you serious?”
He glanced up, gathering the spindles in his arms to haul them inside the house from the garage. “Why are you constantly doubting my skills?”
Because he was the most amazing man I had ever met, but I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t hand him the last drop of my dignity because I didn’t trust him with it.
“I’m just used to seeing you walk around staring at other people’s work or barking orders. I have yet to see you in action.�
�
“Well, grab the rest of those spindles, and I’ll show you some action.”
I carried the spindles into the house.
I handed him tools.
I ran and grabbed stuff from his truck.
I got him ice water.
I answered his phone when people called for him.
I watched Fisher Mann feed my obsession with him to the point where I knew no other man would compare, which meant I’d die a single and barren virgin. Occasionally, he’d lift the front of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. And on more than one of those occasions, he caught me gawking at his abs while wetting my lips.
“I’m going to start deducting pay from your check if you keep stealing free peeks at my body.”
I cleared my throat and glanced at his phone. “Hailey just texted you. She said Brad’s crew is done. She wants to know if you’re coming by the office before you go home.”
“No.”
I risked a glance up at him. “You want me to just say no?”
Sliding a pencil behind his ear, he lifted his gaze to me from three steps down. “To Hailey, yes, I want you to say no.”
“Who else would I say no to?”
He shrugged. “I’m hoping that’s your last no of the day.”
What did he mean by that?
I replied with a “no.” Then I watched Fisher finish the railing. At some point I started nibbling at my fingernails; I wasn’t a nail chewer.
“Grab the vac and clean the dust that didn’t stay on the drop cloths.”
“Um … okay.” I jumped to attention and did what he asked me to do while he loaded his tools in the trailer parked in their driveway.
“Are you done?” I handed him the vac.
“Almost. I’ll finish up tomorrow afternoon.” He closed the trailer and locked it.
“Think you can teach me something?” I asked with my hands in my pockets.
Fisher closed his tailgate and walked to my side of the truck, standing uncomfortably close to me. “Oh, Reese … I think I can teach you a lot.”