If I Love You

by Tmonique Stephens

  “Get over it,” she mumbled and pulled into her driveway. She sighed and ignored the pointless frustration. She parked in front of the garage and waited next to her car as he reversed and backed his way next to her Explorer. He climbed out of the truck, and she took the time to appreciate the view as he walked over.

  “I’m sorry for being a pain and coming off as unappreciative. I’m not. You didn’t have to do this, so thanks.” She got out before he opened his mouth and pissed her off, again. She waited for a response, but he just stood there, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.

  “You’re welcome,” he said carefully in a measured tone.

  “I’m not used to people doing stuff for me,” she mumbled, focused on his expression.

  “Me, either.” They stood there, in the cold, breaths fogging the space between them, both awkward as fuck, which was ridiculous considering they were naked, fucking like prisoners released on a day pass a few hours ago. “You have any tools around?”

  “Yeah. In the garage, somewhere.” She hit the remote attached to her visor, waited the required minute for the old door to lurch and grind its gears until it opened, and then waved at him to follow her through her grandmother’s horde of boxes.

  “This stuff is not mine and trust me when I say this is a fourth of the stuff remaining. Every week I drag some stuff to the curb, make a bit more headway.” She defended herself against the silent accusations that had to be flitting through his head. Once it was clean, she’d put it on the market and get the hell out of town. God knows, there wasn’t anything else keeping her here. Though it would be good to have a home base in the states while she was abroad.

  “You selling?” He nodded to the For Sale By Owner sign resting on top of a box.

  “Yeah. I put it away because of the snow.” After the engagement party, packing up and leaving had been her first priority. Her grandmother wanted her to stay and raise the next generation in the house. She couldn’t. Wifedom and kids, that door had closed, in her face no less. Around another stack of things better left on the curb, brought them to the rear wall full of dusty tools. “This is what I have.”

  He frowned and gave everything a skeptical glance and mumbled, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go back to my place, get my tools, and come back.” He headed back to his truck.

  She watched as he pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and cut the twine anchoring the wood. Not sure what to say or do, she approached slowly. “I’m not giving you my keys.”

  In mid-lift, he stopped removing the plywood and cranked his head around to nail her with an ice-cold stare. Eyes that made the twenty-five-degree temperature feel like a sauna. The eyes of a killer.

  “Are you accusing me of being a thief?”

  “Well, no. Of course not.” Even to her ears, that didn’t sound very convincing.

  “Good, because you trusted me last night with a lot more than a house.” He racked her body with a scathing glance.

  She’d never given anyone a set of keys, trustworthy or not, she wasn’t about to start with Noah Kirby. “That was last night. Now, in the light of day—” Her phone rang, cracking the building tension. “Excuse me.” She dragged it out of her pocket, glad for the short reprieve. “Dr. Fitzroy, I just got to the house. I have someone here to repair the window.”

  “Thank God I reached you,” he said, all breathless. “A child fell through the ice at the retention pond on Balsam Drive. An ambulance is on the way. I need you to cover the clinic patients until I get back.” He hung up without waiting for an answer.

  All thoughts of the house and Noah’s trustworthiness vanished. “I have to go.” She hopped in her car and had the engine started when he tapped on the window. She rolled it down, granting him access to lean in. “Leave the plywood or take it with you. I can’t deal with any of that now.”

  “Leave me the remote. I’ll take care of everything here.”

  It would be so easy to hand it over and drive away, but— “I don’t leave men in my house.”

  His brow lowered, and a wealth of words floated in his angry gaze. “Wise decision, but you can trust me. That window needs to be secured before bad weather returns. I’ll fix it, and I won’t screw you over. Everything will be as you left it. I swear.”

  She could always claim it was the sincerity in his eyes, swaying her better judgment. It wouldn’t be a lie. A woman could get lost in his chestnut stare, and she was sure a few had. But that’s not what this was about.

  Call her insecure, but having him, local hot guy in her home without supervision, set off every alarm bell. All sexual. Not good when she’d sworn off men which last night made a complete sham of. Again, this wasn’t about her. It was about the window.

  Her grandmother always said, sometimes you must take a leap of faith. As far as leaps went, this was a small one. Hell, she trusted him with her body. Too late to not trust him with her home. Besides, if anything came up missing, she knew whose name to give the sheriff.

  Kensley rushed into the house for the spare set of keys and returned to Noah. He held out his hand as if he knew she’d made up her mind. Not much mind to make up when she hadn’t much choice. She couldn’t leave her house open to vandals, and she couldn’t leave Dr. Fitzroy in a lurch, especially when a child needed him. She studied Noah and damn he was a pretty package. He checked all her libido boxes.

  “You’re gonna be okay with your injured leg and bad shoulder?”

  He rotated his arm. “Thanks for the concern. I’ll manage.”

  She wanted to say more but had no idea what and no time to come up with something witty. Thirty seconds later, she’d backed out of her driveway and was doing sixty in a forty-five zone while the image of Noah strolling into her house like he belonged there replayed in her head.

  Eight

  It had been a shitty day. A little girl had drowned. Six years old, all her potential gone. Kensley didn’t know the family. That didn’t lessen the tragedy. Dr. Fitzroy returned to the clinic, haggard. The toll clearly on his drawn face and hunched shoulders. Each life, each death, he took personally. He wasn’t in the prime of life. At seventy, he should be enjoying retirement, but he grew up in the town, left for college and his medical training, and returned to set up his practice in the town he loved. He felt responsible for his patients in ways only a townie would understand.

  She’d stayed later than the usual seven o’clock lock up. The patients kept coming: sprains, broken ankle, fractured tibia, plus the usual aches and pains, flu symptoms, cuts. Then there were those who wanted to gossip, wanted every detail they could wring about the drowning. Dr. Fitzroy turned none away. Instead, he guilted the gossipy busybodies to donate blood at the local hospital. He was good like that, yet there were those stubborn few who were takers. They’d take and take and take, pick the bones clean and look around for more, never satisfied. Those Kensley sent on their way with a sharp word so as not to upset Dr. Fitzroy any more than he already was.

  Kensley hadn’t thought about Noah all day. An empty house could be waiting for her. Hell, he’d be doing her a favor. She chuckled, knowing he wouldn’t do that. Getting all her grandmother’s things out would make it easier to repair the floors, the ceiling, paint the walls and sell it even if memories clung to every brick, every step, every smudge, and scrape on the plaster. It was time to move on, get out of town, and re-start her life. Get a job making real money, perhaps meet someone, fall in love, have a kid.

  She shoved thoughts of the future away. However, the image of him, naked beneath her as she rode him, replayed in her brain as her headlights washed over the object of her fantasies. He was sitting inside her garage on the rocking chair her grandfather had built for the birth of his first child, Kensley’s mother.

  He rose as she parked next to his truck. She stayed put, letting her come to him. He opened her door and took her hand as she climbed out of the warm car. Hunched against the cold, his breath fogged the air as they stood in the weak lighting cast from
the garage.

  “Please tell me you haven’t been here all day.” She didn’t try to hide her surprise. Finding him here, waiting for her, was the last thing she expected. It wasn’t like she needed the remote to park inside. The mountain of boxes and Knickknacks made that impossible. Besides, he could’ve dropped the remote and keys off at the clinic instead of waiting.

  But it was nice, really nice to come home and find someone there, waiting. Well, not just anyone.

  “No. Not all day. I had to take Bear home and get my tools. I came back and worked on the window. I was about to leave when I noticed you had a busted lock on the garage door.” His head tilted toward the door.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s been like that for a while. I’ve meant to get to it.” Among other things.

  “I went back to Shipmann’s and got a new lock and fixed it.”

  There should be a reason for her to be pissed off. She didn’t ask him to fix it and didn’t need him roaming around the house, checking things out. But there wasn’t.

  Let a man be a man. The words of her grandmother returned to her. Especially when one wanted to help and not hinder. He didn’t have to return to Shipmann’s for a new lock. It was completely unexpected and nice. It had been a while since any male, and under sixty had been nice to her without any other expectation.

  Don’t think about sex.

  Of course, her dirty mind went all the way there, back to twenty-four hours ago. Him and her, locked in lust on her sofa. She couldn’t go there again. Why not? One time, that was it. But you did it more than once. More than twice too. Was it three or four orgasms? One lost night she could file it away in the back of her brain and pretend it didn’t happen. Liar! No way are you going to file last night away. No. Damn. Way.

  The headlights of a car turned into her driveway. Her pizza and wings had arrived. She’d called before locking up the clinic for delivery of her weekly standing order. Large half bacon, half pepperoni, extra cheese, and Buffalo wings. It took her three days to eat everything. Three days of not having to cook.

  Dave climbed out of his Toyota Celica with her order. His gaze ping-ponged between her and Noah. More gossip for the mill. “Hey, Ms. Jacobs. I have your delivery.”

  “Thanks, Dave.” She took the receipt from him and motioned for Noah to turn around and used his back as a clipboard to leave a tip and scribble her signature. Dave handed off the two cardboard boxes and said goodnight. The warmth of the pizza seeped through to her hand. It wouldn’t remain warm for long in the cold.

  Noah took the food from her as Dave drove away.

  She could’ve protested. Instead, she trudged down the newly shoveled path to her front door. “Did you shovel too?” She glanced over her shoulder at him.

  Sheepish, he ducked his head. “Yeah. I did and then your neighbor, the Hughes, and a few others. They offered to pay me to shovel. I did it for free. Do you know you have several old people living on your street?”

  She laughed, knowing where this was heading. “Yep. They were all friends of my grandmother.”

  “Mrs. Hughes was kind enough to give me the addresses of all her friends who could use ‘a bit of shoveling.’”

  Wow. The sweet version of Noah was strange and unexpected. She wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

  He snorted. “I needed the exercise.”

  Yeah, because he was so out of shape. She held the door open for him. Her tiny entryway shrunk around his breadth and height. The house seemed smaller. She seemed smaller. Funny how she didn’t notice it last night, in the dark, especially when they were naked.

  Edging around him, she took the food out of his hands and dropped it on the breakfast bar. She made her way to her grandmother’s bedroom. With the plywood over the windows, the room was a dark cave, the only light filtering from the hallway. She flicked on the overhead light.

  He’d done a great job, had even cleaned up the remaining debris and glass from the floor. Outside, the wind howled, but the plywood remained intact. She turned to him. “Thank you for doing this. You didn’t have to and…” Her thoughts got tangled under his steady perusal. A microscope had less focus. The way he stood there watching her, listening to her ramble, giving her attention she hadn’t known she craved until now. Remember, last night was a one night fling.

  With those thoughts firmly in mind, she did the neighborly thing. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  He nodded, but then his eyes narrowed. “Depends on the toppings.”

  Picky bastard. “Bacon and pepperoni.”

  “Good choices. I don’t do pineapples or vegetables on pizza. It’s wrong.” He scowled.

  She filed the knowledge away and led the way back to the living room. “Sorry about the place. I need to get it cleaned out and fixed up.”

  He looked around the room, at the worn furniture with the faded upholstery, the peeling plaster, the threadbare carpet, at everything that was hidden in the power outage last night. The lingering scent of mildew and past meals filled the air. She hid her embarrassment with a flurry of activity, putting away her coat, scooping up the mail and magazines on the coffee table, and the lone wine glass in front of the sofa. All of this was hidden last night.

  “The place reminds me of my great grandmother’s home in Montana. It’s homey,” he murmured.

  Kensley figured he was being polite and appreciated the effort. She took his coat and tossed it on top of hers on the bench at the front door. “Make yourself comfortable.” Not as comfortable as he made himself last night. It was one time. We are not having sex again!

  Damn it! Why did she have to keep reminding herself?

  She returned to the kitchen, flicked on the oven to three-fifty, and slid the pie onto a stoneware specially made for pizza. When she turned, Noah was working on the fireplace again. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  She crossed the living room and headed to her bedroom, trading her shoes for a pair of fuzzy slippers and her scrubs for a pair of sweats, she peeled away the dregs of the day. Entertaining wasn’t her thing because she sucked at it. Especially when she had to entertain a man whom she’d seen naked and erect. No. As a nurse, there were quite a few men in town she’d seen wholly or partially undressed, none of whom she would have a meal with and none who made her so horny she couldn’t think straight. A few slices of pizza, a few beers, then he’d be on the other side of her front door, and she’d be putting fresh batteries in her vibrator.

  She washed her face, took her hair out of the tight bun, and fluffed the messy tresses. It was the best she could do on short notice.

  He was at the fireplace. With nothing else to do, she wandered near him. Flames licked the logs and heat warmed her face. Once again, he stared at the pictures on the mantle, this time the ones of her and Kevin at various ages, infant, five years old, ten years old at summer camp. His official military photo. The last picture on the mantle Kevin was overseas, in some desert, his four friends next to him dressed to the nines in all their gear, almost every inch of skin protected from the sun and sand. With Noah’s beard and shaggy hair, it was kind of hard imagining him as a clean-cut Marine. Kevin was always so neat and precise with his attire and how he presented himself. She couldn’t imagine her brother with a beard and hair touching his collar. The oven timer dinged.

  He turned to her, and his gaze traveled from her head to her toes and back up. Nothing asked, but a question flared in the depths of his eyes. “I always change asap when I get home. Twelve hours in scrubs is long enough.” She didn’t mean to sound defensive, yet that’s exactly how it came out.

  She hadn’t changed last night. Not until he stripped her.

  Voice raspy, “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since noon.” Kensley headed for the kitchen and flicked off the oven. She took the time to wash her hands and scooted over when he joined her at the sink. Scabs covered his knuckles. His hands were strong, palms calloused, fingers long and thick, nails clean. Capable hands. Hands that handled her body. Do. Not. Think. About. That.


  She got some paper plates out of the pantry and two beers out of the fridge while Noah slipped on a mitt and pulled the pizza out of the oven.

  “Nothing like the smell of warm bread, sauce, and melted cheese,” he murmured. He slid a slice onto her plate and grabbed two for himself.

  She couldn’t agree more. Her mouth watered at the first whiff. The first bite sent her taste buds into overdrive. She moaned, didn’t mean to, but lunch was nine hours ago.

  She glanced up and found him watching her with a hunger on his face she couldn’t ignore but would do her damnedest. Her hollow core turned liquid.

  Ignore it.

  “Nothing wrong with appreciating your food,” he murmured.

  “Damn right,” she said a bit too chipper and decided to play ‘Ignore the Obvious and Let’s Pretend He Wasn’t Balls Deep Inside Her twenty-four hours ago.’

  A little elbow grease popped open her beer. Few swigs, another bite of pizza, Kensley grabbed the box of wings, pushed off from the breakfast bar, and headed back to ground zero—aka—the sofa. She plopped her ass down, and propped her feet up on the coffee table, something never allowed when her grandmother was alive. Noah joined her, his beer in one hand, the pizza in the other. He sat next to her, right next to her. Hips touching. He placed the pizza on the coffee table after snagging another slice.

  “This is a good house.”

  It was… is… She grew up in this house, and it was filled with joy and laughter and love.

  “All it needs is a little love,” he said through a mouthful of food.

  “A lot of love,” she corrected and felt a bit of nostalgia. The house had love when her grandparents were alive. It would have it again once she sold it. “It needs some work.” A lot of work, if she were truthful.

  “I used to work construction for my uncle’s company before the military. I’ve seen worse. There’s history here.”