by Tara Wyatt
He blew out a breath and shook his head. “Because I’m an idiot.”
“Finally, something we can agree on.” But she smiled the tiniest hint of a smile as she spoke. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted you to know me without the baggage.”
“I get that. For the record, it wouldn’t have changed anything.” She shuffled her foot, looking down as she spoke.
He nodded, relieved that she hadn’t rejected his apology. “I’ll go get my ladder.”
“I told you, I don’t need your help.” Although she was still being stubborn, her voice had taken on a teasing tone. He ignored her and strode around her house and out to her driveway, unhitching the ladder from his truck. He hefted the ladder over his shoulder and walked back into the backyard, and everything—his skin, his muscles, his jeans—tightened at the fresh sight of Charlie in her faded blue towel and flip-flops. Her toenails were painted a navy blue, and the freckles that dotted her shoulders and arms also trailed down her legs, a light brown constellation against her pale skin.
He swung the ladder down and extended it to its full length, aligning it below the open window, and he found himself wondering how much of her skin those freckles covered. If they trailed across her back, over her small breasts and down her flat stomach. If she’d like it if he kissed them all, a tiny apology for every single one.
Charlie’s arms were crossed in front of her as she watched him, one eyebrow raised. “You don’t listen very well, do you?”
He adjusted the ladder, making sure it was secure, and spoke without looking at her. “No, I heard you. You don’t need my help.”
“Right.”
He leaned against the house, crossing his arms over his chest and tipping his head at the ladder. “So go on then, hot stuff.”
Her cheeks flushed, and goddamn did he like that, the sight of her cheeks going pink because of him. Her mouth opened and shut, firming into a thin line. The buzz of a lawnmower started in a nearby yard, vibrating through the still, humid air.
She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders and then tucked the ends of her towel against her chest. And then she stepped up onto the bottom rung of his ladder.
Immediately, he was behind her, his hands at her waist as he gently lifted her down. “Charlie. God. I was kidding.” He spoke the words into the back of her head, his hands still on her. She was warm and soft through the terrycloth, and she tipped her head forward. Her damp hair fell forward, exposing her delicate nape. She took a shaky breath that he felt through his entire body and she eased back against him, her back flush with his chest. His fingers flexed into her, and she gasped softly. She could probably feel his heart pounding against her shoulder blade.
“Your jokes need work,” she said, her voice breathy, almost snatched away by the lawnmower’s drone.
God. All those freckles. He wanted to taste every single one.
Reluctantly, he stepped away from her and climbed up the ladder before he did something stupid, like put his mouth on her skin.
He reached the top of the ladder and wasn’t surprised to find the window screen missing. It was the same window she’d thrown shoes at him from yesterday, after all. Sticking his head in, he took in the messy room and carefully stepped inside. His foot knocked over a pile of Sports Illustrated magazines from what he assumed was Charlie’s desk. Swinging his other leg over the sill, he turned and bumped into a stack of banker’s boxes piled beside the window. He squeezed around the desk, stumbling when one of his boots snagged in the spaghetti factory of cords snaking across the floor.
Charlie’s desk was piled high with papers, magazines, file folders, and books, all engulfing her laptop in a fortress of clutter. Several dirty plates, a couple of mugs, a glass and a few empty beer bottles occupied any free space between the other items. The rest of the office wasn’t much better. The bookcase was overflowing and leaning slightly to one side, ready to give out under the weight of the books stuffed on its shelves. An old plaid couch sat against the far wall, a full laundry basket, a pizza box and more random crap covering it. Dusty sports memorabilia filled the walls.
He strode back to the window. “Your office is really messy,” he called down to her, and she glared up at him, the scowl firmly back in place. Fuck, but that scowl made him want to tease her even more.
“Would you just get down here and let me in?”
He leaned against the window sill. “You want me to come down there? Why?” He paused, smiling down at her. “So I can help you by letting you in?”
“Hennessy, I swear to God,” she threatened, her face flushing again.
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. He also knew he shouldn’t push it and hurried downstairs to let her inside. Flipping the deadbolt on the kitchen door, he flung it open and held out his hand to her. Because the deck was gone, there was now an awkward step up from the backyard into the house.
She stared at his hand for at least three heartbeats before shuffling forward. With a heavy sigh, she placed her hand in his. At the contact, his entire body warmed, his gut tightening. Her hand curled into his, impossibly soft and small against his work-roughened skin. She stepped up into the house, her eyes glued to where her hand disappeared into his. The edge of her flip-flop caught on the door sill, and she stumbled forward. Acting on instinct, his arms shot out to catch her, and she tumbled into him, her towel slipping and falling to the floor.
“Close your eyes!” she shouted, her voice high-pitched and panicked as she crashed into his chest. He screwed his eyes shut tight and wrapped his arms around her, steadying her against him. His hands splayed across her bare back, and he couldn’t stop the low groan from escaping his throat. Her skin was warm and smooth beneath his palms, and fuck, she smelled so good. Hot and sweet, like sunshine and honey.
She sucked in a breath, and her bare breasts pressed against his chest. He could feel her hardened nipples through his T-shirt, and he pressed his eyes closed even tighter. He wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, with his arms around her, her naked body pressed against his, neither of them speaking.
“Adam?” she said, and it took everything he had to keep his eyes closed.
“Yeah.” He dipped his head, just a little.
“Let go of me.”
Immediately, he dropped his hands to his sides and turned away from her. He heard the rustle of the towel as she picked it up off the floor and wrapped it around herself.
“You kept your eyes closed,” she said, and he didn’t miss the note of disbelief in her voice.
He glanced over his shoulder, and seeing that the towel was back in place, turned around to face her. “Yeah. You asked me to.”
She swallowed, her throat working, and her eyes met his. Something impossible to read flickered across her face before she cleared her throat. “I’m not paying you to fix the deck or the fence.”
He nodded, unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face. “I know.” And it was fine with him, because he didn’t want money. No, he wanted something better.
A second chance.
Charlie cranked up the dial on her small desk fan, not caring about the papers the mechanical breeze sent fluttering to the floor. The air in her office was stifling. A trickle of sweat slid down between her breasts, and she blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. Her feet propped up on the tiny bit of available real estate on her desk, she returned her attention to the research file in her lap.
The high-pitched whine of a saw cut through the afternoon’s silence, and her gaze slid back to the window. Again.
After the towel incident two days ago, she’d barely been able to look at Adam. She just kept replaying it in her mind over and over again. And the worst part was that it wasn’t humiliation she felt. No, that’d be way too sensible.
Every time she replayed it, she felt pure, unadulterated lust, her stomach dipping and swirling as though she were on the world’s tallest, steepest roller coaster, abou
t to rocket down that first hill.
She squirmed in her seat as she remembered the feel of his hard body against hers, his huge hands on her back. They were so big, so strong and rough, and she’d wanted more of them. Wanted to know what they’d feel like in her hair, cupping her face, on her breasts.
Inside her.
She squirmed again, clenching her thighs together in an effort to stifle the warm, heavy throb settling there. She knew, given their history, that she shouldn’t want him, and yet…he’d kept his eyes closed. And he was fixing the damage his friend had done, free of charge.
And he’d apologized. More than once.
And unless he’d had a long, thick tool of some kind stashed in his jeans pocket, he’d reacted to having her pressed naked against him.
It was that last idea that she couldn’t seem to shake, and she pushed out of her chair, tossing the folder on her desk.
She shouldn’t want him. She shouldn’t want anything to do with him. Not only had he proven himself untrustworthy, but she knew—better than most, probably—that even a man as hot as Adam Hennessy wasn’t worth the risk.
When her now ex-fiancé Jeff had told her the day before their wedding that he wasn’t in love with her, that he was in love with someone else, she’d fallen apart. Suddenly, the future she’d thought she had was gone, and she’d felt lost. Broken. Empty. In hindsight, there’d been red flags. He’d worked late more nights than not, putting space between them. He’d barely been interested in sex as the had wedding approached. Jeff hadn’t wanted anything to do with planning the wedding, and had grown more and more distant as the date had neared. He’d rolled his eyes at her enthusiasm, and she’d chalked it up to dudes just not being into wedding stuff. But it had been a symptom of a much deeper problem—he hadn’t wanted to spend his life with her. The woman he’d chosen over her was prettier, more feminine. More likable, at least according to Jeff. And while Charlie was pretty damn comfortable with who she was, that betrayal, that rejection had hit hard and sunk deep.
Thankfully, she’d had her family and her friends to lean on, and she’d spent months putting herself back together. She was still standing, but she wasn’t the same. It was as though her broken pieces had been reassembled slightly off-center, some of the cracks still visible.
Adam, if she let him, could shatter her, and that was terrifying because she wasn’t sure she had the strength to put herself back together a second time.
But she could want to do him without actually dating him, right? Sex wasn’t love, and the idea of enjoying his gorgeous body while keeping her heart locked away held some appeal. Oh, hell. A lot of appeal.
She sauntered over to the window and rested her chin in her hand as she watched him work, her butt perched on the edge of her desk. He’d spent the first day cleaning up the backyard, hauling away all the broken pieces of wood with two other crew members. Then he’d set about tearing down the old, rickety fence while his crew leveled the ground where her deck had been, pouring concrete and anchoring what she assumed were the main support posts for the new deck.
Now, late in the afternoon, his crew had already finished up, but Adam stood in the middle of the yard, feeding boards of wood through a table saw. He tossed the newly separated halves onto the ground beside the saw and picked up a water bottle. Draining it, he crushed the empty plastic in his hand, his long, thick fingers curling around it.
Goddamn. Those hands.
Adam grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, wiping at his sweaty face with it and exposing a flat, muscular stomach dusted with light brown hair. Even worse, he had those damn cut lines along his hips, with the muscles arrowing down in a V and disappearing into his jeans. The muscles in his arms flexed as he wiped at his brow, and Charlie touched her mouth to make sure she wasn’t drooling.
“Hi, Charlie,” he called without looking up.
“Just checking that you’re not slacking off,” she yelled down, unable to help the smile from stretching across her lips. “Don’t make me get my whip out.”
He turned to face her, pointing up at her. “Hey, I’m not intimidated by you just because you have mean eyebrows and know more about baseball than me.”
She frowned and narrowed her eyes at him. “I have mean eyebrows?”
“Yeah. They’re all…” He angled his index fingers over his own eyebrows, pointing them on a downward tilt toward his nose. And then he smiled and pointed up at her again. “Like that.”
She smiled into her palm, hiding it from him as warmth flooded her at his teasing. “Yeah, well, you have a mean…whatever. Go to hell.”
He laughed and wiped at his brow again with the back of his hand. “Pretty sure I’m already there. It’s gotta be ninety-five fuckin’ degrees out here.”
And then, his eyes holding hers, he reached behind him and yanked his shirt off with a tug, tossing it down beside his crumpled water bottle. Her mouth went dry as she studied his hard, defined body, unable to tear her eyes away from the feast of skin and muscle and man before her. A dusting of light brown hair covered his defined pecs, and…oh, God. He had tattoos.
Charlie had several weaknesses when it came to men. Blue eyes. Killer smiles. Nice beards. Muscles. Tattoos.
Adam checked every single box.
An American flag covered the inside of his right bicep, and an American Classic style anchor sat below word “loyalty” on his left bicep. What looked like a dragon adorned his right pec. He turned, giving her an eyeful of his broad back and she burst out laughing, unable to help herself. A large tattoo about the size of her hand covered his left shoulder blade. And it was ridiculous: a cartoon cupcake with muscled arms, and what appeared to be the words “stud muffin” etched below it in a semi-circle.
“That’s the worst tattoo I’ve ever seen,” she called down.
He looked up and winked, his eyes crinkling as he smiled, and her stomach flipped over on itself.
Terrible tattoo or not, with his strong body, gorgeously masculine hands and easy confidence, Adam Hennessy looked like a man who’d be fantastic in bed, and Charlie knew she was in deep trouble, because damn did she want to find out.
Chapter 4
The heatwave was killing him.
That was what Adam kept telling himself as he worked, slamming nails into place as he mounted the last of the fencing. Normally, he used a nail gun—it was faster, more efficient—but today, even though the heat was sweltering, he found himself wanting an outlet. He needed to do something with the energy pumping through his veins, hot and fast. His skin felt too tight, as though his bones strained against his muscles.
Rivulets of sweat streaked down his torso, making his T-shirt cling to his skin and he dropped the hammer, trading it for the bottle of water on the ground beside him. He closed his eyes as he swallowed, not caring that the water wasn’t cold, and his mind spun with the image of creamy skin, dotted with freckles. Warm, soft flesh beneath his hands, yielding to the pressure of his touch. Charlie’s naked body pressed against his.
The pressure built, tightening his chest until he could feel every pulse of his heart, and he finished the water. It was a feeling he wasn’t used to, this wanting.
It was the heat, he tried to convince himself.
And the fact that he wanted to fuck Charlie until neither of them could walk.
Yeah, there was that. But mainly, it was the heat. And he needed to believe that, because besides a little light teasing, she’d kept her distance since the towel incident. He wasn’t sure if that was his cue to leave her alone, or flirt with her more.
The truth was, he hadn’t dated much since the divorce. A little, sure, but just enough to know that he had no fucking clue what he was doing. He felt like a car crash victim relearning how to walk after an accident. Unused muscles had atrophied, making for some unsteady steps.
He’d been with Melissa for ten years. He’d met her right when she’d finished college—they’d both been twenty-three. They’d dated for five years before he’d
asked her to marry him. Engaged for a year, then married for four before it had fallen apart over a year ago now.
It wasn’t that either of them had done anything wrong. No one had cheated, or lost all their money, or anything like that. It had been an accumulation of the smallest things—a collection of slights and resentments on both sides—that had festered with time and bad communication. They’d grown apart and fallen out of love. There’d been almost no animosity between them when they’d realized it was over.
Didn’t mean that it hadn’t fucking hurt, though. He’d failed Melissa, because although he’d cared for her, ultimately, he hadn’t been what she’d needed. Slowly, he’d watched what they’d once had die, watched until neither of them could deny that it was over. Even as amicable as things had been, the divorce had been so damn hard. And he knew that part of the reason he’d chickened out on his date with Charlie was because he was fucking scared of the same thing happening again.
“Hey, man. Nice to see she hasn’t killed you.” Jared sauntered up to the newly installed fence separating his yard from Charlie’s, leaning his arms against the white oak.
Adam shot Jared a look, one eyebrow raised. “You know, you’re gonna owe me a couple thou for materials when I’m done here.”
“I thought you were working for free.” Jared frowned, tilting his head.
“I am. Still gotta pay for the materials though, man.”
Jared blew out a breath. “Fine. Yeah. Let me know when you’re done.”
“Don’t worry. I will.” Adam picked the hammer back up, dropping a handful of nails into the pouch of his tool belt.
Jared tipped his head toward Charlie’s house. The windows were open, and David Bowie floated out, the music hanging in the thick, muggy air. She’d been playing his greatest hits for the past hour, and Adam wasn’t complaining. “How’s it going with the dragon lady?”
Adam hammered a nail home. “Her name’s Charlie. Don’t call her that.”
Jared held his hands up defensively. “Hey, you’re the one who gave her the nickname.”