by Zoe Ann Wood
Movement in his peripheral vision caught his eye, and he focused on a runner coming up the road. It was a woman in a pale blue windbreaker, her long legs eating the distance between them.
Jade.
His body recognized her on an instinctual level before his mind made the connection. She was slowing down, clearly returning from a long run, and as she neared his house, he noticed things about her he had no business thinking about. Her long brown hair was swept back in a ponytail, exposing the delicate features of her face, and her cheeks were flushed a deep pink. Wispy tendrils of hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, and she was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
Ben snapped his gaze back to her face, then waved to cover his embarrassment. “Hey.”
She stopped ten feet from him and put her hands to her knees. “Hi,” she panted. “Give me a sec.”
Ben found himself grinning at her. “How long was your run?”
She dragged her palm over her forehead and wiped it on her leggings. “Four miles. I’m rusty. I used to run seven, but there’s no way I can manage that now.”
“Four is good,” he said. “Want a drink?”
Jade looked tempted for a moment, then shook her head. “I have to go stretch. And I’m a sweaty mess. I’d stink up your trailer.”
Ben laughed. “You can’t smell any worse than me.” He pointed at his chest.
Then he cringed. Was he really having a stinking contest with a woman? He was way off his game. Not that he wanted to play games with Jade Marshall. No, sir, he’d learned his lesson with this one.
Or he should have. She dropped him like a hot potato a day before their senior prom, yet here he was, trying to charm her for some unknown reason.
Ok, fine, he knew what the reason was. She was beautiful, interesting, and somehow endearingly lost. He wanted to know why she’d returned to Hidden Hollows when she’d been on a fast track to freedom all those years ago. He wanted to invite her over for a drink and just talk to her, see where she was in life, catch up…and maybe find out what had happened their senior year. It wasn’t as though the thought of her had kept him up at night, but it was an unfinished chapter, an unresolved problem from his teenage years. Now that he’d seen her again, he wanted to put his old feelings for her to rest.
But she was slowly edging toward the broken fence between their yards. And he wasn’t enough of a fool to insist on the invitation. Instead, he looked past her.
“Hey, is that fence on your side of the property line or mine?” he asked.
It was an eyesore, and whoever the new owners were, they’d want it fixed. Or maybe he could plant some shrubs there to hide it.
She studied the faded posts. “It’s mine. I keep meaning to fix it, but since it’s not essential, it keeps getting pushed down my list.”
“Your list?”
She pointed a thumb toward her home. “This is an old house. As much as I love it, things need replacing.” Her expression fell. “But I’ll take care of the fence, don’t worry.”
Ben nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself. The house was a single-story bungalow built in the sixties, and it was as ugly and generic as most of the suburban homes built in that era. The windows were small, the house boxy and uninspired, and he thought tearing it down and replacing it with a more modern home would be a much better course of action. It was a money sink, and she wouldn’t be able to fix the underlying issues with small patch-up jobs.
Of course, Jade likely didn’t have the funds for such a decision, and she wouldn’t appreciate his radical opinion on it. Still, if there was something he could do to help, he might as well do it.
“I’ll fix it for you,” he said without thinking it through.
Jade’s eyes went wide. “What? No, you can’t do that. I’ll, um, hire someone. Or…” She half-turned to glare at the fence. “I might get the materials and do it myself. It can’t be that hard.”
Ben cringed at the thought of her tackling the project. It wasn’t a big one, but without proper tools and know-how, she’d do a terrible job and possibly hurt herself in the process.
“Then hire me,” he suggested. “I’m a contractor. I have all the tools you’d need to buy or borrow, and I’m right here.”
She tugged on her sleeves, hiding her hands inside them. “Why?”
“Hm?” Ben cocked his head to the side, unsure of what she meant.
“Why are you offering your help? You have so much to do.” She waved her hand at the house. “I can take care of the fence.”
“I can do it faster.” And better. He knew not to add that, though it was true.
Jade’s forehead creased in adorable wrinkles. “Okay,” she said at last. “What do you charge per hour? And how much do you think the materials will cost?”
He thought fast. With some luck, he could score the right kind of timber cheap, and he could use the white paint he’d be buying to paint the porch railing of the house anyway. That would be a bulk purchase, making it a lot more affordable.
Jade lived alone, and he knew that covering her living expenses in a house like that had to be hard on a single income. She might have inherited some money as well as the house. The thought had occurred to him, but she’d said that she was only fixing essential issues. If she had money to burn, she would have overhauled the entire house at once.
“I’d have to do some calculations on the materials,” he hedged so she wouldn’t think he was taking this on as a charity case.
In truth, that was exactly what he was doing, but he didn’t want to explore his reasons for it too deeply. He was in a position to help her, so he would.
“As for my per-hour rate…” He considered her house. “I’ll do it for one hot shower a day for as long as it takes me to get the fence up.”
“What?” She gaped at him. Her cheeks were already red from her run, but now her blush spread down her neck as well.
Ben put his hands up. “I’m not trying to be creepy. But the plumber isn’t coming until next week, and it’ll be another week after that before I can get a water heater installed in there. I’ll tidy up after myself, but I’d kill for some hot water.” At her shocked expression, he added, “Not literally. I mean—a hot shower is worth more to me right now than money.”
He shut his mouth to keep himself from blurting out anything more. Jade was already watching him as though he was a wild, unpredictable animal. He wanted to smack himself in the face—and would have if it didn’t mean Jade’s opinion of him would sink even lower. What on earth had he been thinking? Letting a stranger into her house, into her bathroom, was too intimate.
“Fine,” she said.
Ben blinked. “Fine?”
Jade’s color returned to normal. “You fix the fence, and you can have all the showers you want.” She paused, then said, “Just text me before you want to come over.”
“Okay.” Ben’s shock slowly subsided, and he thought of a problem. “I don’t have your number.”
Jade fiddled with her sleeves again as she rattled off her number, too quickly for him to catch, so he had to ask her to repeat it. Man, this was worse than high school—and he wasn’t even asking her out on a date, just arranging things so he could clean himself off. Not that he was ever going to ask Jade out. That would complicate this business exchange, and he didn’t need more complications in his life.
“Thanks,” he said finally. “If it’s all right with you, can I come by in an hour?”
He wanted to give her time before barging in on her private space. A niggle of guilt—the emotion of the day, it seemed—wormed its way into his head over this arrangement, but he really did need hot water to wash off. This also meant he’d be able to avoid another visit to his father’s house.
Until his dad was ready to change his lifestyle, Ben didn’t think he could talk to him again without blowing up. That a man would rather slowly kill himself than change his habits was incomprehensible to him. It seemed even more unfair that his father was using his
illness to tie Ben to Hidden Hollows. If he’d had just explained to Ben that he missed him…
“Are you okay?”
Jade put a hand on his arm, her touch gentle. Ben looked down at her fingers resting on his sleeve, then up at her big brown eyes.
“What?”
“I told you that you’re welcome to come shower tonight,” she replied, concern coloring her voice. “But you sort of blanked out for a moment.”
She let go of his arm, and he felt the absence of her keenly. How long had it been since someone had been worried for him, cared about him? The sensation sparked a need in him, a hole he hadn’t been aware of until then.
“I’m fine,” Ben said, his voice gruff.
He retreated a step to keep himself from doing anything stupid, like pulling her in for a hug because he was starved of human contact.
Maybe he should get a dog to keep him company.
Jade left, glancing over her shoulder as she walked away. Ben thought she looked a little hurt—she’d reached out to him, and he pushed her away. He stared after her, wishing for once that he was different. That he knew how to interact with people without coming across as a complete weirdo.
That change wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. But at least he’d be getting a hot shower tonight.
10
Jade
Ben Charles was about to have a shower at her house.
Jade had managed to walk home instead of sprinting, but now, she skipped her stretches in favor of tidying up. She wasn’t a slob by any measure—she’d vacuumed just the day before—but the everyday clutter lying on various surfaces betrayed that she lived alone and rarely had visitors.
She showered in record time, wiped down the bath, and checked that no dirty towels were lying around. Hurrying through the rooms, she tucked away her bra that she had left out to dry, put the papers strewn across her dining table in a neat pile, and tidied up Felix’s litter box. Not that she expected Ben to snoop through her house, but it was somehow important that she put her best foot forward. She didn’t want him to think poorly of her, no matter their history.
Her kitchen counter was clear at last, and she closed all the cabinet doors, then looked around to see if anything else was out of place. The open-plan dining room extended into the living area, and she studied it, trying to imagine what it looked like to a stranger. She was so used to it, had spent afternoons and weekends here as a child, then lived here alone for the past two years. Now, she barely noticed how worn-down some of the pieces were, how faded the curtains, how scuffed the rug beneath the coffee table. She kept all the furniture clean, but it was old.
Her chest tightened at the sight of it all. How much money would she sink into this house? Was it even worth it if she wasn’t going to stay in Hidden Hollows long-term?
It didn’t make sense to do repairs on this place if she was eventually going to sell it and move to a bigger city. But Jade wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. Her situation here wasn’t perfect, but in this house, she’d found peace. She’d found safety after leaving Nashville a frightened, injured woman.
And she was just beginning to make friends. She could ask Millie to have coffee with her, see if their recent chat at the bakery could serve as a basis for a stronger relationship. She’d never had many friends, and Leah Yin, her bestie from high school, had gone to Stanford and remained in California, where she had a thriving career as a bioengineer. In college, Jade had roomed with several different girls, and she’d had some casual friends who were happy enough to have drinks with her or visit a concert, but after she’d left Nashville, none had kept in touch.
Neither had she, for that matter. Now, shame tightened her throat at the memory. Her injury had changed her life so much. She’d closed herself off from the world and refused to let anyone in. If people spoke to her, trying to find out more about her, she rebuffed them, believing they only wanted juicy news about her injury to spread her misfortune.
Maybe she’d gone too far in trying to avoid becoming like her mother. Her parents, happily retired in Florida, had been thrilled to have a successful daughter. With her job at the opera house in Nashville, she’d been the perfect child—her mother boasted endlessly to her friends how the director herself had invited Jade to audition for the orchestra after hearing her play in a college production.
But then Jade’s career had been cut short by one mindless incident, and she’d returned to Hidden Hollows. Suddenly, her mother had nothing to brag about, at least not regarding Jade. It had been a slow process, but their weekly phone calls had tapered off, and Jade now spoke to her parents once a month, if that.
It hurt. It hurt horribly that her worth as a daughter was tied to her success as a musician, at least in her mother’s eyes. Her father had never had much interest in Jade’s music, but then he hadn’t been a very present father in general. It had been Jade’s mom who’d driven her to music practice several times a week. She’d come to every recital and show, and Jade had tried extra hard to make her mom proud, however, now that she was a high school teacher, her mother felt all her hard work and sacrifice was being wasted.
And maybe it was. Maybe her mom was right.
Jade pulled the piece of paper with the telephone number out of her pocket. Her mother would be so happy to hear that Jade was considering the job. She fought the impulse to call her. She hadn’t gotten the position yet, so there was no use in getting her hopes up. But she’d call the director the next morning to arrange a meeting in Asheville.
She glanced out the kitchen window toward the Williams house. Ben strode over the lawn, a rolled-up towel under one arm. He passed the spot where he’d dug out the rosebush from beside the metal hatch that hid the main water pipe. She’d noticed that the rosebush was now planted exactly where they agreed, neatly trimmed for the winter.
Jade stared at him, confusion rising inside her. The fact was, her attraction to him hadn’t dimmed over the years. He was still as handsome as he’d been as an eighteen-year-old, and every time he spoke to her, she felt that tug in her belly pulling her to him. She supposed the feeling was butterflies, but it was worse than that. Butterflies implied pleasant anticipation, a sense of possibility. Her own sensation went deeper than that, a visceral twist to her gut that left her grasping for words.
She jumped when Ben knocked at the back door. Mustering all her self-control, Jade straightened her shoulders and opened the door for him.
“Hi,” she said, her voice a touch too bright.
“Hey,” he replied, stepping past her into the kitchen.
He’d cleaned off his boots on the back porch and now stood in front of her, looking slightly awkward.
“Um, the bathroom is through here,” Jade blurted finally. “You didn’t need to bring your own towel.”
“Yeah.” Ben cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to bother you any more than necessary.”
“Okay.”
They stared at each other, the tension rising in the air between them. Jade felt locked into place and couldn’t look away from his gray eyes. He had such beautiful eyes, almost silvery with the tiniest hint of green around the pupil.
He glanced away from her first, and Jade blinked, then flushed in embarrassment. What was she doing? This was worse than she’d anticipated. Having him inside her home was horrible—especially since she wanted nothing more than to have him stay.
“Jade,” he said, “if this is too uncomfortable for you, I don’t have to…”
She looked at him again, found him frowning at her. She was uncomfortable, but not because she was afraid of him or anything like that. It was her own reservations, her own past issues, that bothered her, and Ben wasn’t to blame.
“No, it’s okay,” she replied. “I’m just— I don’t get many visitors.”
She closed her eyes for a beat and stifled a groan. Could she sound any more uncool? Ben’s low chuckle had her glowering at him. He got under her skin in the worst way, and she needed to get herself under control.
/>
“So, I’ll just…” Ben pointed down the hall.
“Oh, yeah.” Jade jumped to the side to let him pass. “I’ll be, uh, here.”
With another smile, Ben disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Jade sagged against the wall, clutching at her chest. How was she going to survive him showering here every day?
Then she straightened and gave herself a stern talking-to. She’d just have to get over it. He was kind enough to have offered to fix her fence, and this was the least she could do.
The water turned on in the shower.
Jade groaned out loud and flopped down on the couch. Then she turned on the TV and found a news channel to drown out the sounds coming from the bathroom, because this was just too much. Maybe she should stick her head under the kitchen tap to cool off.
Ben was just behind that door, without a stitch of clothing on, and Jade simultaneously wanted him to stay and also to teleport herself to the Moon.
Excruciating minutes later, the shower turned off, and Jade sunk lower into the couch, keeping her gaze firmly on the TV host, even though she didn’t process a word of what the woman was saying.
Then the door to the bathroom opened a crack, and a billow of steam escaped, carrying with it the amazing scent of Ben’s shower gel—something masculine that she’d noticed before on an instinctual level. Now it was permeating through her living room, and she knew she was in trouble.
“Hey, want me to fix this tap for you?” Ben called from the bathroom. “It’s dripping.”
She was the worst human ever. She was lusting over him while he was trying to repair her house. Ugh.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” she called back, trying to keep her voice normal.
“Okay, cool.” He stuck his head out of the bathroom and asked, “Can I use your hairdryer?”
Jade nodded mutely, too busy trying not to stare to form words. Ben disappeared again, the hairdryer turned on, and Jade sprung to her feet. She couldn’t stay here. It was painfully clear that she was about to do something stupid if she remained in this close proximity while he smelled good enough to eat and looked so hot with his damp hair in curls.
