by Brea Brown
But that doesn’t mean I’m heartless or that I’ll never want to settle down. I’m simply not in a hurry to do so. I haven’t found someone who seems worth the trouble. Until now.
Maybe.
Who knows?
It seems ridiculous to contemplate something long-term with Jet Knox. We’ve been on one date. We’ve never kissed. Not even a friendly peck “hello” or “goodbye” on the cheek. Other than that, we’ve talked on the phone a few times and have traded texts. Hardly hearing wedding bells.
But yeah, I’m a real man-eater.
Sometimes Rae’s flair for the dramatic grates on my nerves.
“Tom McGown’s not my boyfriend!” I proclaim, panicked, after sitting straight up in bed, where I fell asleep, fully clothed, on top of the covers. The lights blaze. My phone says it’s a few minutes past three a.m. But something other than the strange dream about the former college football phenom (random!) startled me awake. What was it? A sound? A tapping?
There it is again!
Definitely tapping. More like knocking. Then the doorbell rings.
“Really?” I grouse, rubbing my face.
I live in a nice neighborhood, on a quiet cul-de-sac, but I still don’t make it a habit to answer the door in the middle of the night. I’m so tired that I’m tempted to skip seeing who it is. They can call me or stop by tomorrow at a decent time.
But what if it’s a cop, checking up on me after getting a call from a neighbor about someone snooping around? Or a firefighter, telling me the unit next door is on fire, and I need to evacuate? Or a neighbor, needing help with an emergency? Civic duty demands I at least look through the peephole to see who’s there.
Growling, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and heave myself down the hall toward the front door. The knocking intensifies.
“Coming!” I bellow, glad the other half of the duplex is currently vacant. The person on my front stoop needs to cool it.
When I look through the peephole and see who it is, I almost turn around and go back to bed without another word. But I’m awake now, and I’ll lie in bed feeling guilty—and other things—if I send him away.
The locks click under my fingers, and I swing the door open.
Jet’s serious face relaxes into a disarming grin. “Maura! Oh, did I wake you up?”
“It’s three in the morning. Yes.”
“Your lights were on, so I thought you were awake,” he says. “Or I never would have bothered you.”
He keeps edging closer to me, so I step aside to let him in. “Did you just get back to town?” I ask as he crosses the threshold and looks around. I close the door and automatically redo the locks before realizing it looks like I’m locking him in and inviting him for a lengthy visit. Oh, well. He’ll find out soon enough that’s not the case.
“Yeah. I haven’t been home yet.”
“You should have gone home,” I say bluntly, then backtrack when I see the hurt in his eyes. “I mean, you didn’t have to come see me right away.”
“I wanted to,” he says, as if I’m the one looking for reassurance. “I’ve wanted to see you since the day after our first date. Now that I can, I couldn’t wait. I was so relieved when I drove by and saw your lights on.” He points to my Bourne posters. “Bad-ass.” Advancing into the house, he whistles. “Whoa. This is…” He spins to face me again. “It’s official. You’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.”
I’d have to be dead for that not to excite me. After all, he knows a butt-load of cool people. “I don’t know about that…” I hem, standing directly in front of him, looking up into his twinkling eyes.
Gently, smiling affectionately, he reaches out and runs his finger along my face. “You have pillow creases on your cheek. You must have been out of it. In all your clothes.”
I weaken a bit at his tender gesture. “Yeah. I guess I was.” I lead him toward the kitchen, but he pauses several times along the way to look at posters, then stops at the locked, glass-fronted cabinet that straddles the threshold between my living room and dining room.
“What’s in here?”
“My collection of official screenplays,” I answer, trying to sound casual about my pride and joy, nearly one hundred leather-bound scripts in alphabetical order by title.
“No way. Like, the ones the actual actors used?”
“Or directors. In some cases. Supposedly.”
“Are any of them signed?”
“A few.”
“That’s why you have them locked up, huh?” He drops to a crouch in front of the cabinet, balancing on his haunches. “Shakespeare in Love, Gladiator, All About Eve, Terms of Endearment… Wait. These are Oscar winners!”
I kneel next to him, hanging onto the top of the cabinet for balance. “Yeah. I’ve concentrated my efforts—and funds—on purchasing the majority of the Best Picture winners. Of course, some of them are impossible to find or way out of my price range, but whatever.”
“So cool. Ooh, The Departed. I loved that movie!” He straightens his legs and stands at his full height, then offers me a hand up. “Do you, like, wear gloves when you read them?”
Shaking my head, I laugh. “I don’t touch them much after I put them in there.”
“That’s a seriously impressive collection.”
“It’s relatively puny by most standards. Now, my film library… That’s another story.”
He searches the living room, as if expecting to find it housed somewhere out here.
“Oh, no. It has its own room.” Grabbing his hand, I drag him down the hallway and into the spare room.
When I flip on the light, his eyes bulge, and his jaw drops. “Holy crap.”
“Yep.”
“How do you— Oh, my gosh, there’s more than one row on every shelf? There must be a million movies in here!” He walks to the nearest shelf and runs his fingers along the spines of the cases. “Dude! You have Caddyshack on VHS? That’s old school.”
“It’s one of my favorites. I have a digital copy, too. But I got that tape when I was a teenager. Eventually, I’d like to replace all of my VHS copies with updated formats, but it’s a slow process.”
“Do you still have a working VCR?”
“Yeah, but it’s about to die, and some of my tapes have been watched so many times, they’ve degraded.”
“Bummer.”
I shrug. “Most of my favorites have already been updated. I can’t quite force myself to throw out the originals, though.”
“Don’t! Ever!” Still surveying the room, he says in almost an awed whisper, “This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in a normal person’s house.”
“Can you really say I’m ‘normal’ after seeing this?”
“You know what I mean. A lot of the guys on the team collect stuff—mostly sports memorabilia—but most of them have more money than they know what to do with. You…”
“Well, I haven’t bought all of this. Some things were gifts. I scour garage sales and flea markets, bargain bins at stores…” I point to the “Be Kind, Rewind” sign above the door. “Going out of business sales.” I stifle a yawn. “What else do I have to spend my money on?”
He follows me from the room and back down the hall to the living area. I continue into the kitchen, feeling like I should offer him something, although I’m not sure the usual hostess rules apply at this hour.
Without asking if he wants it, I grab a beer from the fridge and turn to give it to him. But he’s right behind me.
“Hi,” I say stupidly into his chest, offering him the bottle.
He takes it from me but sets it on the counter behind him without opening it.
I look up into his face and instantly regret it. I know that face. It’s his heading-for-the-end-zone face. It makes me squirm.
“So, anyway… I’m sorry about the game,” I say, cringing at my inability to scramble in the proverbial pocket.
“What game?”
I can tell by the set of his jaw that it’s
an effort not to think about it and worry it was a mistake to bring it up. However, I need to distract him from me. “You know what game. Less than twelve hours ago, you were on the football field, in all your gear, hoping to make it to the Conference Championship.” I take a step back. He moves with me.
“There are more important things in life than football.”
“Oh, you don’t have to be brave for me.” I chuckle nervously. “You didn’t get where you are today by shrugging off losses. You’re a competitor. You must be hurting.”
“My shoulder’s sore, but other than that…”
I cross to the other side of the galley kitchen. It places about two feet of space between us, but that’s two feet more than before.
“Where are you going?” he asks, clearly amused.
“I feel like I’m about to be sacked.”
He raises an eyebrow, his eyes sparkling. “For the first time today, I like the sound of that.”
My guts jump pleasantly as my body betrays my brain. “I dunno. I’m tired,” I supply lamely.
He sobers quickly. In one stride, he’s directly in front of me again, his hands on my shoulders like a set of oversized pads. “I just want to kiss you, Maura. I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”
“Uh, okay,” I murmur helplessly as he lowers his mouth to mine.
The kiss is soft but not at all hesitant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s damn good at it. When it’s obvious I’m not going to resist, he pulls me closer to him and presses his lips harder on mine. When my mouth drops open as I lose what little control I may have had over my muscles, he runs with the invitation.
My roaming hands on his chest, shoulders, and neck provide more encouragement. He transfers his hands to my butt and lifts me tighter against his body. Oh gosh. Only denim and a tiny scrap of cotton separate his fingers from the most intimate of my body parts. I hope he’s not as aware of that as I am. I can’t think of anything else.
Somehow, I manage to pull my lips away from his. He opens his heavy-lidded eyes and gazes into my face. A slow, lazy smile spreads across his glistening mouth. Without thinking, I rub my thumb across his bottom lip to blot away the moisture, but he grabs it lightly between his teeth and grins.
Letting go, he says, “That’s definitely the best thing I’ve done all day.”
Flattered, I nevertheless feel the need to check, “Better than that slant pass to Busch for a touchdown?”
“Keaton’s never made me feel anything close to that.”
I duck my head, wishing I could say the same. It suddenly seems super-awkward that I’ve fantasized about one of his co-workers.
Reluctantly, Jet steps away and runs his hand through his hair. “Well, I guess— I don’t know. You probably want to get to bed for real, huh?”
If he’s angling for a sleepover invitation, he’s going to be disappointed. I try to let him down easy, though. “Yeah. But thanks for stopping by.”
“Thanks for showing me your movie stuff. I’m sorry I woke you up.” He smirks. “Actually, I’m glad I did. But it wasn’t on purpose.”
“It’s fine.”
More than fine. My body is screaming for more. That’s why he needs to leave right now. If he touches me again, I may explode.
Since his smirk is still firmly in place, I assume he knows it, too. He shows me mercy, though, and says, “I’ll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can meet up and do something?”
I long to do something, but I try not to nod too eagerly while I walk him to the door.
As I’m showing him out, he turns in the open doorway. “I’ll try to wait until late morning to call. But I can’t make any promises.”
Saucily, I bluff, “You can call whenever you want. I’m silencing my phone as soon as you leave.”
“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” he requests sweetly, bending down to barely brush his lips against mine. “It’s not nice to play hard-to-get.”
Unfortunately, I’m not “playing” anything.
Thirteen
Sweet Enticements
I manage to get a solid five hours of sleep before my doorbell rings again. I ignore it this time. It’s a three-day weekend. I’m sleeping in. He’s going to have to learn to call ahead. Standing on a cold front stoop after driving from wherever he lives to where I live is a good way to learn that lesson.
It was one thing last night, when I was fully clothed and half-asleep and thought he was a public servant or Good Samaritan alerting me to an emergency. But I’m not answering in my tank top and panties with bona fide bed head and morning breath. Uh-uh. For all he knows, I’m a sound sleeper and don’t hear the doorbell that he rings four times.
In silent mode on my bedside table, my phone vibrates.
“Ratchin’ fratchin’ mother scratchin’,” I grouch. However, all it takes is the memory of that kiss in the kitchen a few hours ago for me to weaken considerably and blindly answer the phone with a sultry, “Helloooo.”
“Are you gonna let me in, or what?” Rae asks. “I brought you donuts. Thought you might want to dish about your early morning reunion with Knox.”
Donuts? When my health-conscious friend offers such a nutritionally bankrupt breakfast, I don’t pass it up, so I groan but say, “Use your key. I need to put on some clothes and brush my teeth.”
“Whatever,” she allows, and hangs up.
I toss the phone aside, then think better of it and slip it into my bathrobe pocket after I shrug it on.
By the time I run brushes over my teeth and through my hair, Rae’s all set up in the kitchen, and a cup of coffee steams on the counter next to the brewer she got me for Christmas. Her own cup catches the thin, brown stream of liquid heaven currently trickling from the machine.
“Hasn’t this thing revolutionized your life?” she asks, pointing to the space-aged coffeemaker.
“Absolutely. It’s an awesome gadget.”
“I wish I could take mine on the road with me.”
I sip while perusing my choice of donuts. Oh, she went all out with this morning’s selection, including those powdered sugar jelly-filled ones I love. She’s sucking up, hard-core. But why?
She chooses a plain glazed pastry and dunks it in her freshly brewed cup of joe.
Silence rules as we savor our breakfasts, but after her last bite, she says, “So.”
I dab powdered sugar from the corners of my mouth and repeat, “So.”
“How’d you like Jet’s middle-of-the-night visit?”
“How’d you know about that?” I ask what I’ve been wondering since she called me from my front door.
“He told me his plan on the bus back to the training complex.”
“And how did he know where ‘here’ is?”
She rolls her eyes. “He’s probably had your address programmed into his car’s GPS since he sent you those over-the-top flowers.”
“And he got my address for those… how?”
“You’re listed.”
“Under ‘M. Richards.’ Someone had to have helped him narrow it down.”
Keeping her eyes steadily on mine, she says, “Okay, I did. So, sue me.”
“And this morning, you didn’t think it would be wiser to discourage him when he told you about his plan?”
She smirks into her coffee mug. “I figured it was his funeral if he came by here and woke you up at three a.m. Not my business.”
“You suck,” I say with a smile. “But the joke’s on you, because it turned out to be a nice visit.”
She raises her eyebrows and taps her blunt index fingernail against the ceramic mug handle. “Details.”
“Well, not that nice, if that’s what you’re thinking. But he’s a good kisser.”
“Let me get this straight. He drops in on you at an ungodly hour without calling first, and you reward him? With a makeout session?”
Trying and failing to hide my amusement, I answer, “I showed him my movie collection first.”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“And after the consolation kiss? Nothing? He just went home?” Suddenly pale, she grips the sides of the donut box, as if she’s going to toss the whole thing in the trash, and whispers, “Oh, shit. Is he still here?”
“No! I told you, we only kissed. Anyway, is there an eighty-thousand-dollar car in my driveway? What’s your problem?”
“He can’t know about these donuts.”
I roll my eyes. “Your secret is safe with me. He’s turning out to be quite the gentleman, despite all the things you’ve tried to get me to believe about him.”
“Apparently, he’s digging this hard-to-get act you’re putting on.”
“It’s not an act. I have no clue what I’m doing with him. He scares the crap out of me most of the time, because he’s so intense. But he’s also so effing hot!”
“Does he make you feel all wiggly?”
“Hell, yes! He’s into me. That’s flattering. I’d be an idiot not to enjoy the ride for a while, at least to say I did.” Crude? Maybe. Honest? Yes.
She shakes her head. “He must enjoy the challenge. Lord knows he’s not used to having to work for puss—”
“Hey, hey, hey!” I wag my finger at her. “I hate that word.”
“That’s why I use it.”
A buzzing from my robe pocket gets both of our attentions.
“Speak of the angel,” she cracks.
I pull out my phone and check the display before answering, “I’m already awake, if you can believe it.”
His laugh makes me feel ridiculously fluttery. “Here you thought I’d be interrupting your beauty sleep.”
“You have a habit of doing that.”
“I’d hardly call one time a ‘habit,’ but if exaggerating is one of your faults, I’m glad to finally find one.”
“Does that line actually work on anyone?”
