Breathe the Sky

by Michelle Hazen

  All that hiking must be dang good exercise.

  He cleared his throat, wanting to ask her to repeat herself because no way had she just asked if she could come in. To his room.

  Except she was holding two long-necked beers hooked through her agile fingers, and she didn’t seem like the kind of woman to double-fist her drinks. He stepped back, figuring if this was some alternate universe, it wasn’t a half-bad one.

  “Yeah, sure. Course. You can, uh . . .”

  He glanced back at the room, and all the things he hadn’t noticed before were glaring at him. His open suitcase, vomiting boxers out onto the floor. A take-out container from last night perched on top of the microwave. His French press sitting prissily by the sink, making him look like a city boy who couldn’t even drink plain coffee without whining about the brand.

  Something cold pressed against his chest and he took the beer automatically. Mari breezed past him and hopped onto the bed, nodding at the TV.

  “You ever notice how the guy on this show uses the same three things to describe all his favorite houses?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “Expansive.”

  “Sunny.”

  “Feels like home,” they finished together, and Mari laughed.

  Distracted by looking at her, he tried to crack off the beer cap and nearly ripped his palm open when it wasn’t a twist-off. Fishing his keys out of his pocket, he used the opener on his keychain to pop his cap. He threw away the take-out container and kicked the lid of his suitcase closed on his way over to open Mari’s beer for her. Once he did that, he was already mostly onto the bed, and it seemed like it’d be weird for him to sit in one of the chairs by the tiny table. Especially since they were tucked into the wrong corner to see the TV and had preacher-straight uncomfortable backs.

  He let his weight settle gingerly on the bed, one leg still slung over the side and his bare foot brushing the hard carpet, waiting to see if she’d protest.

  She didn’t.

  “You think they always pick the third house they look at,” she asked, “or do you think they edit it to look that way?”

  He took a sip of the beer. Good. A solid porter, none of that pretentious, fruit-infused shit he’d seen the bios drink sometimes.

  “Edited,” he said. “Leroy dated a girl one time who sold houses. She said people’d look at every damn house in their price range, then ‘just peek’ at the more expensive ones, then end up offering on one of those. She’d have loved if it only took three houses to get them to buy.”

  Great. Put a girl in his room for five seconds and he suddenly couldn’t stop running his mouth. Telling her the life story of a girl Leroy had fucked a grand total of maybe twice, and she didn’t even know Leroy.

  “Sounds about right. Is Leroy that mustache guy on the crew, the one who thinks he’s a smooth talker?”

  “Nah, that’s Kipp. Leroy’s my brother. Back home. Well, I think he’s still back home. Haven’t heard from him in a while, so I ain’t sure.”

  Why had he added that? It wasn’t like she cared where Leroy lived, or that he wasn’t exactly the kind of family that remembered to send birthday cards, or even text messages, really. Jack changed the subject.

  “Figured you’d know Kipp by now. Practically have to put him on a leash to keep him on the job site instead of off talking to you.”

  “He does a lot of talking.” She cut her eyes his way as she took a slow sip of beer. “Doesn’t mean I’m listening.”

  Jack snorted out a laugh. “That’s the best way to be when it comes to Kipp. Not listening.”

  She held up her beer without looking over, and he clinked the neck of his to hers.

  A surge of something weird and unfamiliar swept through him. Like pride, or . . . something. He wasn’t that good at talking to women, usually. Too rough, so they took everything he said the wrong way. Or he didn’t have anything to say because he spent most of his time working.

  Then again, Mari spent every day out on the job site with him. She wasn’t working steel, no, but she was in the same dust and ruthless sun as the rest of them. Sweating through her shirt just the same. Maybe it made a difference.

  He sat a little more squarely on the bed. Tried leaning back against the wall next to Mari but keeping her in the corner of his eye so he could read if he was crowding her. She didn’t budge, just pointed the neck of her beer at the screen. “Oh my gosh, the porch on this one? I could live on a porch like that. Forget the house.”

  Jack did not know what to do with a woman on his bed, watching his television.

  However, she didn’t seem to be unhappy, so he figured it was easy enough to sit and throw out a comment or two on the show they were watching. He started to fidget when the credits rolled, but Mari stayed put like she didn’t mind watching the next one, too. Besides, the next show was a fix-it-up, which were his favorites. Quickly, it became apparent that the snarkier comments that slipped out were the ones most likely to get a laugh out of her.

  He didn’t quite relax, not really. He got her a second beer from his own fridge when hers went dry, but he never got past the neck of his own, too nervous that he’d catch a buzz and say something to make her tense up, the way she had that day at the fox burrow with Ricky.

  Besides, he could already feel every inch of his skin that was on the Mari side of his body, ripples and tingles running up him that he couldn’t seem to squash. So he was plenty busy trying to keep his hard-on from growing to noticeable levels.

  After the third show, she set down her empty beer and swung her legs off the bed. He jumped up to walk her out, even though it was only a few steps. His mama hadn’t lived long, but long enough to teach him a manner or two.

  Also, something was bothering him, and he hadn’t had enough time to figure out how to phrase it the right way. She reached to open the door and he was out of time.

  “Hey, uh, Mari? Don’t do this with the other guys from the crew, okay? Might not be a good idea, you tapping on their door with a couple of beers.”

  Her face fell. “My ex always said I was too much of a flirt, and it’s been a long time since I had any neighbors. I’m probably going about this all wrong. I’m sorry, if I—”

  “Hey, no. Not what I meant. All the guys on the crew would be happy as pigs in shit if you wanted to spend time with them. Probably even the married ones. Just ain’t sure if you were alone with them, if they’d mind their manners. Is all.”

  She looked at him oddly. “But not you?”

  He shoved his fists into his pockets. “Hell, I know you didn’t mean it that way.”

  She just kept gazing at him, like she wasn’t sure what to think.

  He was pretty sure he had messed this all up and made her feel bad, so he swallowed down a big gulp of nerves and pride and said, “Was nice. Having the company. Even if you were wrong about the tiles on that countertop.”

  “They looked pretty!”

  “Wouldn’t look so pretty after the first time you got hot sauce in the grout and it stained for good.”

  “That’s what Comet is for.”

  “What’s a comet? That a housecleaning service?”

  She laughed. “And that’s why you can’t get the hot sauce out of your grout.” She turned back to her room. “See you in the morning.”

  “Yup.” He kept leaning against his doorframe after she was gone, and it wasn’t until his cheeks started to ache in an unfamiliar way that he realized he was smiling.

  12

  An Issue of an Adult Nature

  Jack had a problem with his erection.

  He’d seen the commercials for those pills, sure, but he was having the “other” kind of trouble. Namely that the sumbitch wouldn’t lie down when Mari was nearby. Something about the warmth of her presence and how it settled over him like the soft touch of hands. And his dick, dumb handle that it was, didn�
�t know the difference between that and actual hands.

  Probably because it had been too long since it felt the touch of anything but his own rough palm.

  He’d been watching a lot more porn to combat it, but at this point, he wasn’t sure if that was part of the solution, or part of the problem.

  He always watched on his laptop with headphones on; everything else felt too exposed. The best were the videos with locker rooms. Something about the idea of walking in on an undressed girl and have her not be disgusted or shrieking for him to get out, but excited and happy to see him. Welcoming. It turned his crank something fierce.

  That and cars.

  He loved everything about sex in cars. And, lately, trucks.

  Me and Mari alone on the worksite, in my foreman’s truck. Laying her across that big bench seat . . .

  He tried not to fantasize about her that way. Knew it wasn’t right. It felt invasive. Like he could see right through the wall between his motel room and hers.

  When he heard her shower turn on, sometimes he had to leave the whole damn motel to keep from thinking about her undressing so near to him. And once—a shameful, exciting once—he got in his shower at the same time and let his imagination run wild.

  He came so hard he hit the shower wall with his response. Afterward, blushing, he’d cleaned it up with his own rags that he then threw out. Driven to the store and found that Comet stuff to make sure he got it all out of the grout. Not because he was really worried the half-hearted cleaning staff at the motel would be able to tell what he’d been doing in there. But more because he didn’t want to be the kind of guy who didn’t know about cleaning products.

  Mari had laughed off his lack of knowledge at grout-cleaning methods, but she hadn’t been surprised, either. Jack had an idea that the ex who’d called her a flirt probably had left most of the cleaning to Mari. He didn’t want to be like that.

  Hell, he didn’t want to be like this. Horny as holy fuck, just, all the time. His eyes straying to Mari’s ass when they were at work. Her hips, the little inward nip of her waist. The line of her throat and the shining silver threads in her chocolate-dark hair. It was getting so bad that even her small footprints in the dirt could get him excited.

  He was disgusting.

  She’d visited his room once. Once, and probably only sat on his bed because the chairs were less comfortable than a sidewalk. She’d casually watched a little TV with him and he was returning the favor by imagining her in every steamy locker-room or classic-car fantasy he’d ever had. Mari deserved better than that.

  She was so effortlessly elegant. Despite his utter lack of social graces, she might somehow even be willing to be friendly with him, if he could keep the situation in his pants under control for five frigging minutes.

  Even then, he knew she’d never be on his bed for anything more than sitting to watch TV.

  There were 86,400 seconds in a day, and he was spending about 85,000 of those thinking of her. But Jack was not so stupid as to believe that Mari was spending any of those seconds thinking of him.

  * * *

  —

  Mari had a problem. And the problem was Jack’s arms.

  It had gotten very hot that week, topping 105 more often than not. Most of the guys wore long sleeves to protect their skin, but once it hit the triple digits, Jack didn’t seem to be able to stand those and went back to short sleeves. The arms thus revealed were shiny and sweat slicked, the sharp muscles soon slashed with burns from where he brushed against the metal of the tower. And it was probably really twisted of her to find that sexy, but the sheer manliness of it, the way he just didn’t even bother about the pain . . . well, she’d probably stepped on four endangered species just that morning, watching his naked biceps.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d gone to Jack’s room, bold as anything, and he hadn’t thrown her out. She’d had to clench her hands around her beer to hide their trembling, making the silliest small talk about the TV show so she could appear confident and casual. It had been a risk, just a guess, and if she guessed his feelings wrong, she would have been crushed. Instead, she’d dispelled the awkwardness of both of them feeling unwanted.

  Brad had not been right about her.

  Her instinct for years had been to keep to herself and spare others her company. Brad loved her, and even he could barely put up with her. He was, he’d told her time and again, the only one who would ever want her.

  Jack had jarred her out of that mode of thinking because she could see him feeling unwanted in exactly the same way. And he was wrong. She knew it even if he didn’t. Even when he was shouting or in a towering rage, it was because he had integrity and wanted to do the right thing, in his work and for his men. And when they were off the job site, out of his element, he was quiet. Always hesitant to speak or impose himself on anyone, even though she could tell his men idolized him and were bowled over and terribly nervous the one time he’d deigned to have lunch with them. Maybe that lunch had helped, too, because he didn’t seem upset with them as often as when she first started.

  She glanced over to where they were all standing around the tower plans, Jack’s shoulders wide under his plaid work shirt. He flipped a hammer absently in his hands while he talked.

  He hadn’t thought she was too forward to come to his room. Hell, he hadn’t even thought she was flirting. I know you didn’t mean it that way. The problem was, when he’d brought it up, she felt an odd little pang and she couldn’t have said whether she wanted him to interpret her visit “that way.” She hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  Then again, if he wanted her that way, it seems like he automatically would have assumed she was flirting. So many men did, if she so much as smiled at them. Her head began to hurt trying to decode it all, and she winced as she wandered a little farther from the site.

  She chewed on the inside of her lip, sneaking glances back toward him. He was moving across the site now, his muscular strides gobbling up ground. His nervousness around her, the way his eyes would catch on her and then flick away . . . she’d thought maybe he was interested in her. Sexually, at least, if not in her personality. But perhaps that was just her libido’s wishful thinking.

  She tugged at her sleeves, squaring her shoulders as she resolved not to lose the thread of her good mood. He’d welcomed her into his room, and platonic or not, he hadn’t been aggravated by her company. That was the main thing. A solitary life was the safest choice for her, she knew that.

  But it didn’t mean she didn’t wish she could have more sometimes. Didn’t mean that every HGTV show featuring a house with a porch didn’t fill her with longing. Didn’t mean she wasn’t curious to try to determine what those looks meant.

  And in the meantime, she’d just have to try to ignore the spark of heat deep in her belly every time her eyes strayed back to his bare, glistening biceps.

  13

  Ground Squirrel Orgy

  Mari stepped up into the weekly bio meeting circle, humming a little Josh Ritter song under her breath. Most of the bios’ assignments got swapped around by the week, but she had to admit, it was kind of nice to know where she was headed. No one else wanted Wyatt’s crew, and so Marcus had fallen into the habit of just glancing at her for her nod, then assigning her to him.

  This week, Marcus glanced up from his clipboard with his faux serious face, his cheeks hollowing slightly beneath his beard as he squinted to hold back a smile. “The apprentice from Wyatt’s crew stopped by last night. Apparently the crew took up a collection to bribe me to keep putting Mari with them. Seems she has an effect on the boss’s mood that they’re in favor of.”

  Snickers broke out around the circle. She flushed, avoiding meeting anybody’s eyes. It didn’t have anything to do with her; it was most likely that he wasn’t as awkward around his crew now that he’d had lunch with them once. Which was probably nice for them since Jack covered his ne
rvousness with ferocious shouting.

  “Pretty healthy bribe, too, and we all know what that means . . .” He pulled out an envelope and started around the circle. “Trader Joe’s gift cards for everyone.”

  The snickers turned into cheers and even Mari laughed now. Trader Joe’s was the universal drug of choice for biologists, who were all obsessed with healthy snack food.

  Hotaka grinned. “It was her solar-oven brownies, right? I swear those brownies made me find religion.”

  “Nirvana,” Lisa agreed. “One step above heaven, those brownies.”

  Rajni poked Hotaka. “Mari doesn’t need brownies to charm anyone. Girl’s plenty sweet on her own.”

  Mari rubbed at her arm, uncomfortable with the other woman trying to make her feel better. “You guys . . .”

  Fortunately, Marcus stopped in front of her at that moment and gave her a reason to look away.

  “I needed to speak with you about something else,” he said. “Wyatt’s boss, Rod, stopped by to lodge a complaint. Said you were being too hard-assed about enforcing the rules.”

  Her blood clamped to a stop in her veins. “I can explain—”

  “No need.” Marcus passed her not one but two Trader Joe’s gift cards. “Keep up the good work.”

  And slowly, cautiously, a smile began to creep onto her face.

  * * *

  —

  A low hum of conversation welled up from the coffee shop around Mari, the air-conditioning a blessed relief. She sipped her chai and half groaned at the explosion of spicy, creamy flavors on her tongue.

  Lisa laughed at her reaction. “They make it from scratch here. Better than sex, am I right?”

  About a thousand times better, in Mari’s experience, though she would have expected the other woman’s experience to be a bit more positive. “I’m telling Marcus you said that.”