by Kim Law
If she had, he wanted to see the changes now. He didn’t want to wait.
“I did hear from her, but it wasn’t an updated website that she sent.”
“Then what did she send?”
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she reached around him and picked up a Halloween nurse costume, and when she held it up in front of her, he joined her in checking it out. It wasn’t anywhere close to Halloween, but he could totally see Arsula wearing that. He gulped.
He could also totally see himself taking it off her.
“What did she send?” he asked again, doing his best to keep some of his blood in his head.
“Oh . . . just a mock-up of a book cover.”
“What?” He peered down at her. “For whose book?”
Again with the smile, and at the same time, she dug her phone out of her back pocket. “For my book,” she announced, and passed her phone over to him. On the screen was a small image, but one that was big enough for him to see her name stamped boldly across the front—and the nurse’s uniform was temporarily forgotten.
He looked at her. “You wrote a book?”
“I’ve written about three-fourths of one. It covers all the things I’m most passionate about. Intuition and how to learn to trust your own, finding your calm even when standing in the middle of a raging storm, and basically . . . living the best you.”
She’d written a book. He was amazed. “Do you have someone waiting to publish it?”
“No, but if I decide to finish it, I’ll publish it myself. I started it solely for the people I meet or work with on a day-to-day basis, but if I decide to do the website . . .” She trailed off, and his belief in her began to grow even more. He didn’t know why the knowledge that she was working on a book helped in that regard, but over the last few days, he’d finally begun to see her as the highly intelligent, über-capable woman that she was.
So if she’d written a book, then it was bound to be excellent.
“Let’s get this.” She held the uniform up in front of her again. “I have very specific ideas about me wearing this, and you receiving a sponge bath, that I’d like to try out.”
Thoughts of the book evaporated. “I do recall mentioning a sponge bath at some point.”
“Oh, you mentioned it all right.” She handed money for her purchase over to the vendor. “And you’re lucky I didn’t wake you up in the middle of every night that first week, sponge and warm soapy water in hand. Because I considered it, you know? Just for that one crack alone. And it would have served you right, too.”
He suddenly felt as if he’d swallowed a frog. He couldn’t get enough of this woman. “I’m quite certain I would have enjoyed it if you had.”
“Not the kind of bath I had in mind.” She cast a look up at him, and as usual, she had him laughing like a kid.
“I guess that’s one thing we’ll never know.”
She slipped her arms through his. “Never say never, Jaden.”
Chapter Twenty
The nurse’s uniform from the day before lay in a heap on the bedroom floor, and Arsula had determined it was money well spent. Now they just needed a stethoscope and tongue depressor, and the picture would be complete.
They hadn’t actually gotten around to the sponge bath, though. But it was early yet.
“This is a really nice way to wake up.” She lifted her head and peered down at Jaden. He was still in his cast, and he was currently on his knees on the floor beside the bed. With her legs wrapped around his shoulders.
Somehow, he’d managed to get her into that position before she’d ever opened her eyes.
“Why are you talking?” His words were muffled by what he was doing with his mouth.
“I’m just saying—”
One hand reached up and closed over her mouth, and she nipped at his fingers. He upped his game then, and she fell back to the bed, and a few minutes later, as she lay in a postorgasmic glow, her cell phone began to ring.
“Don’t answer it,” Jaden muttered. He’d climbed into the bed and now lay with his nose buried against her neck. “We’re sleeping in, remember?”
“Then I guess you shouldn’t have woken me up.”
She reached over for her phone as Jaden harrumphed about the lack of appreciation of some women, and when she saw that it was her youngest brother calling via video call, she jerked upright.
“It’s Boyd,” she announced. “He could be calling to tell me the baby is on the way.”
Jaden eyed the screen before pushing up. “Then I guess you have to take it.”
He kissed the tip of her nose and mumbled about finding them something to eat while she talked to her brother, and she tapped the button to connect the call.
“Is it time?” she asked. Whitney wasn’t due for two more weeks, but deliveries happened early all the time.
“Good morning to you, too.” Her brother’s face appeared on the screen. She could see a very pregnant Whitney moving around easily behind him, so her initial euphoria waned.
“I just thought it might be time.”
“I thought you wanted me to hold off a couple of weeks,” Whitney said from behind her husband, and Arsula grinned.
“That would be ideal. Could you do that for me?”
She held up a mug, lifting it as if in toast to Arsula, then her easygoing demeanor vanished. “Not on your life, Arsula Moretti. I’m on a countdown to eviction here, and I intend to make the process a short one.”
Arsula chuckled, anxious for that eviction process to finish up herself, then after Whitney left the room, Arsula gave her full attention to her brother.
“Good morning,” she offered, since she hadn’t done so before. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“Drop the bull. I called to tell you that Mom is going crazy down here.”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Just you.” He smiled his thanks off camera as a mug of coffee appeared in front of him, and Arsula glanced through the open bedroom door to where she could hear Jaden in the kitchen. She hoped he remembered to make coffee.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked absentmindedly. Because Jaden had just come into view, and as had happened so often over the past week, she caught her breath at the sight of him.
“Because you haven’t called in over a week.”
Silence fell in the kitchen as Arsula turned back to the phone. “Oh, crap,” she muttered.
She had called the week before that, though. She’d called Tuesday night, catching both of her parents at home, and she and her dad had actually had a good conversation. It hadn’t been about anything in particular. Just catching up. But he hadn’t pushed for information on her decision, and she hadn’t brought it up.
She enjoyed talking to her dad like that, but it happened far too rarely these days.
“So what should I tell her about the man in your life?”
Arsula scowled at her brother. “What makes you think I have one?”
“You have sex hair, Arsula Jane.”
“I . . .” She lifted a hand to her hair, mortified that he’d noticed. Then when she realized that by lifting her arm he might figure out she was also still naked, she dropped her hand to the bed.
Busted.
“So what’s he like?” Boyd asked. He was her champion for all that she did, but he was also her protector.
“He’s . . .” She could still see Jaden from where she sat. “I don’t know. Kind of like Dad, I guess.”
“How so?”
She shrugged before she remembered that her brother couldn’t see her shoulders, then she attempted to explain. “Education is important to him. Making something of himself, equally so. He’s . . . struggled with who I am, but I think we’re getting past it.”
“Are we going to get to meet this man anytime soon?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He won’t be coming down for the baby’s birth, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Why not? Can he not get away for
a weekend?”
“I . . . haven’t asked him to.” But now that Boyd had put it out there, she realized that she’d love to take Jaden home and introduce him to her family. And wasn’t that a kicker. Not that she hadn’t introduced boyfriends before. But usually only after they’d been dating for a few months.
With Jaden, though, one week seemed to be the magic number. She wouldn’t bring it up, though. At least not yet. He was busy finishing his degree, and given that they had only been together for a week, she wasn’t sure either of them was ready for that.
But if Whitney went the full two weeks before delivering . . .
“This one is different, isn’t he?” Boyd’s question pulled her back. “I can see it on your face.”
“He’s just a guy, Boyd. No big deal.”
“Who is like your hero-worship father.”
“Who’s like my obstinate, opinionated father.”
“Who I sometimes worry you would do anything in the world for.” Boyd was referring to the school thing now. They’d had more than one discussion on the subject since she’d moved out of town.
She didn’t bother to respond. She wasn’t in the mood to talk about their dad.
“Fine. We won’t talk about that today. But this man—whom I’m apparently not going to get to meet anytime soon—had better be good enough for you.” Boyd offered his words in his big-brother tone of warning. “Don’t make me have to come up there.”
“Oh, he’s definitely good enough for me.” She waggled her brows teasingly, until her brother groaned in disgust.
“Behave, or I’m calling Mom next and telling her you have a boyfriend.”
“Don’t you dare.”
She loved all her brothers. They each carried a protective streak for her a mile wide. But she loved her youngest brother just a little bit more. Boyd had been closer in age to her, and while the others had been off doing their thing in college, Boyd had been home chauffeuring his eleven-year-old sister wherever she wanted to go.
“I mean it,” she said. “Don’t tell Mom anything. I don’t want to listen to it.”
She also didn’t want to share her feelings about Jaden yet. Things were too new, and she was too hopeful.
Boyd laughed at her request as if she’d just told the funniest joke. “Please,” he choked out. “You know she’s going to take one look at me and instantly know.”
Arsula did know that. “But how? I don’t get it how she always just knows these types of things.”
“This question coming from you? The queen of trusting your intuition?”
“I know, but . . .” She shook her head as her words trickled off. “Try not to let her know yet? I really like him, and I’m not ready for an interrogation.”
“I know you do, Lula. And that makes me very happy. So yes, I promise. I’ll do my best to dodge interrogation from the all-knowing woman who bore us. Before I have to go, though, fill me in on the book. Is it still on hiatus?”
Her mother woes were forgotten as she immediately lit up.
“You’ve been working on it?” Boyd’s surprised tone was edged out only by happiness.
“I haven’t yet. I still don’t know if I even want to do anything with it. But I have been thinking about it.”
She’d actually printed it out earlier in the week, but it had been sitting on the top of her refrigerator since. She wanted to read back through it at some point. To try to see it with an unbiased eye.
Then maybe her decision would come to her.
“Tell him about the cover,” Jaden called out from the kitchen, and at the sound of his voice, her brother’s interest was piqued.
“Your mystery man is still there?”
“Well”—she pointed to the frizz on her head—“you did point out my hair. If he’d left already, I’d probably have combed it.”
Boyd laughed again, and this time as the noise died down, he turned serious. “You had a cover made for it? Tell me about it,” he said, and she grabbed the piece of paper from the bedside table. The one where she’d printed the cover. Then, tucking a blanket under each arm to provide herself a modicum of modesty, she held the paper up and pulled the phone back for Boyd to see.
“What do you think?” She glanced at it again herself before adding, “I’ll text it to you when we get off the phone so you can get a better look. But I’m kind of in love with it.”
“Your name needs to be bigger,” Boyd told her. “The world needs to know your name.”
Any reply she might have given got stuck in her throat. She could always count on Boyd.
“There’s a website, too,” she said when she managed to speak again. “It’s not live. Just an idea I’m playing around with. It would need some work if I ever wanted to do anything with it.”
“Send the link along with the cover. I can’t wait to see it.”
She nodded. She’d send both as soon as they hung up. She’d do it from her laptop, though, and would include the typewritten notes she’d already passed off to Megan.
“Anything I should report in to Dad?” Boyd asked as Whitney returned and sat beside him.
Just that I want to be seen as valuable for myself.
She didn’t say the words out loud, though. Nor did she express that she’d like her brother to relay that she didn’t want to have to be just like her dad in order to make him proud.
She just wanted to be herself.
“Tell him I’ll see him in a couple of weeks.” That would sum up her thoughts better than trying to express them. “And that I miss him. I miss everyone.”
“Will do.”
“And Boyd”—she stopped him before his finger could connect with the “Off” button—“I’m glad you called.”
“I’m glad, too. And all of us miss you as well.”
They hung up, and when she looked back toward the kitchen, she found Jaden propped against her bedroom door, now wearing nothing but navy sweats that dipped low on his hips and holding a steaming mug of coffee. He took a sip, his blue eyes twinkling behind his sexy professor glasses, and a renewed feeling of contentment bloomed.
She could so fall in love with this man.
She was already falling in love with this man. And that scared her to death.
“My intuition tells me I’d like your brother, too.”
Her intuition told her that she’d better not declare her thoughts out loud. She and Jaden may be having a good time, but there’d been no mention of love yet, nor even anything long-lasting.
She hoped for both of those things, though. The more time she spent around him, the more she liked him.
“You can trust your intuition on that for sure.” She tucked her feelings back behind the covers for the time being. “Boyd’s always been my biggest supporter.”
“I gathered as much.”
He turned and set down his coffee cup, then, using a rickety metal rolling cart they’d found at the flea market, he rolled their breakfast into the room. She grinned as he pushed the cart out in front of him a few feet, then hobbled up behind it, and then pushed it again. The cart squeaked with every move, and the sound made the moment all the more endearing. They’d had to take the thing apart in order to fit it into her car, but he’d insisted it come home with them for moments like this.
“You think you’ll get out of the cast tomorrow?”
Push. Thump-thump. “I sure hope so.”
The cart made it to her before he did, and she rolled it out of the way so he could lower to the bed beside her. “You still won’t be able to put weight on it, though, right?”
“That’s the theory.” The bed dipped as he sat. “But I’m hoping my bones have healed faster than the doctor expects. I’m ready to walk on two feet again.”
She sipped the coffee he’d included for her. “Got plenty of running around to do, do you?”
He shook his head and leaned over to meld his mouth to hers. “I’ve only got plans to do you up against a wall.”
His words sent a shiver rac
ing over her, and her chest flushed at the thought. She could get down with that.
When he pulled back, he fed her a bite of bacon. “What’s going to happen when you go home in a couple of weeks? Are you going to let your dad talk you into moving home and going to school?”
She took another drink of her coffee. “I could go to school up here if I wanted to. Montana has universities.”
“It certainly does.” He fed her another bite. “But the real question is, do you want to go to school?”
Picking up the printout of the book cover she’d just shown to her brother, Jaden held it up for her to see. As she looked back at it—and as she caught the gleam of pride shining in his eyes—she knew one thing to be true.
“What I want is to finish my book.”
He kissed her again, this time a light tap on her mouth. “Then I say that should be priority number one.”
Jaden kept his eyes on the woman sitting across the table from him and did his best to listen to whatever it was she was telling him . . . and not to let her see his impatience to be out of there. It had been two and a half weeks since he’d cooked that first dinner for Arsula, and the more he’d gotten to know her, the more he wanted. She was pretty terrific.
She was also sexy as hell.
His gaze drifted to the deep V of her dress. They were just finishing dinner at the Italian restaurant in the hotel where Gabe and Erica’s reception had been held, and though he loved taking her on real dates, he’d found that he also appreciated the quiet times they spent together. The evenings he cooked for her.
Those moments made him picture more. A house . . . kids . . .
But then again, every time those types of images floated to mind, he squelched them. He’d been going out with her for less than three weeks. He couldn’t be falling for her that fast. Just as he doubted she was falling for him.
“You about ready to go?” he asked during a break in her story about the mother of two she’d helped three years ago.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not listening to me tonight?”
His gaze dipped to the expanse of cleavage he’d been staring at for the past hour and a half. It was somewhat more plumped and pronounced tonight. “I don’t know what could possibly have captured my attention,” he claimed drily. “Too bad you don’t put out any effort when a guy takes you out for the evening.”
