Hammered

by Jasinda Wilder

  “Um—that sounds amazing. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  After the routine goodbye pleasantries, I hang up.

  And now I have to calm my nerves all over again.

  I drive to the hospital and sit in the parking lot for a moment, still trying to collect myself.

  It can’t really be this easy, can it?

  Apparently it can.

  Dr. Waverley and I spend over an hour together, talking. She’s a wonderful woman: wise, kind, firm, knowledgeable, and personable. I have the feeling she’ll be a dream to work for—authoritative and in charge, but not a micromanager or power tripper. She’ll expect the best, expect results, but will also be reasonable. I have a packet of paperwork, my official scrub color code, and a start date of the following Monday—which gives me a few days off to fill out my paperwork and buy a few sets of ICU color-coded scrubs.

  I drive home, and for once I’m so caught up in excitement about my new job that I momentarily forget how I got the job in the first place.

  Then I get home, and Jesse’s truck is in my driveway, backed in, and full of construction detritus. There’s also another truck parked on my curb. Unlike Jesse’s and James’s, this one is more subdued. It’s silver, with normal tires at the normal height, and one of those body-color-matched bed caps. The tailgate and cap windows are both open, revealing a dizzying array of power tools, bins, containers, toolboxes, ladders of all sizes, tarps…who knows what all. Coming from within the house—the front door of which is propped open—are the sounds of a nail gun and a vacuum.

  I park at the curb behind the truck and approach the front door, eyeing Jesse’s truck and the mess inside it, but I can’t divine what he’s done from the contents.

  I enter hesitantly, unsure of what I’ll find. I pause at the entryway and call in. “Hello? Jesse?”

  The sounds halt, and I hear the clomp of booted feet.

  My jaw literally drops open.

  Hello, fantasy made real.

  Chapter 6

  My gaze travels from floor upward, slowly, twice. He’s wearing his usual boots, stained and scuffed and well-worn, with jeans so faded they’re almost white. Tight, but not too tight. There’s a rip in the left knee, showing tanned skin.

  He’s shirtless, his tool belt slung low around his hips.

  Covered in sawdust and sweat.

  He has a Blackhawks hat on backward, with his Oakleys perched on top.

  God— holy god. He’s so hot it’s mind-boggling.

  His body, though?

  I’m literally speechless.

  His chest is heavy with muscle, thick and tanned and solid. His arms are python-thick, and his waist trim. His jeans hang just below his hips, showing the band of his underwear and a hint of those V-shaped lines. His tattoos cover his chest as well. He has a hint of a belly—not a beer belly, just a slight layer over a rock-hard abdomen. He likes food, and likes working out in equal proportion, and he’s not a twenty-year-old kid anymore either. He’s all man, hard and muscular. His chest isn’t fitness model smooth and hairless, either, but is rather hairy. Not wookie/werewolf hairy, just…masculine and manly.

  And then another pair of boots clomps across my floor. My jaw can’t drop any further, so my voice squeaks in protest of the sudden emptiness of my lungs.

  “Uh—huh? Who?” My voice is a breathless squeak. “Ahem. Who—who are you?”

  The man standing beside Jesse is…well…nearly his equal in terms of sexiness, although his opposite in build and appearance.

  Five-eleven or six feet, lean as a whip, and built like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Blond hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, sunglasses on top of his head. No shirt—all abs and pecs in razor-sharp definition. Shaven jaw, no tattoos or piercings, with icy blue eyes. God, he’s beautiful.

  Jesse grins. “Imogen, this is my buddy, Franco. He works at Dad Bod with me.”

  “Hi—um. Hi.” I’m still a little shell-shocked at the excess of male hotness in my house.

  Jesse pokes Franco in the belly—which doesn’t give even a millimeter. “It’s annoying isn’t it? The bastard is a year older than me, we eat the same and work out the same, and the fucker has an eight-pack while I’m packing on a keg.”

  Franco snorts derisively. “First, I’m ten months older than you, not a full year. Second, we may eat the same kinds of food, but you eat twice the amount, and third, we may work out at the same time and do the same things, but you lift twice what I do.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s ’cause you’re a twink,” Jesse says, laughing.

  Franco just rolls his eyes and turns away. “Which makes you something that it’d be offensive for me to say out loud and, unlike you, I have manners.” He shoots me a grin. “I should warn you about Jesse. He’s a big ugly roughneck with no manners and less class. Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. He’s like a stray dog, actually. Feed him, and you’ll never be rid of him.”

  Jesse reaches into a pouch of his tool belt, withdraws a nail, and flings it at Franco’s retreating back, pegging him square between the shoulder blades, leaving a red welt.

  “Ow! You asshole!” Franco says, pawing at his back and spinning. “You better watch it, buddy boy. I’ll staple your hand to your dick while you’re sleeping, and don’t think I’m kidding.”

  I can’t help laughing. “You guys are ridiculous.”

  “He’s ridiculous,” Franco says, winking at me as he vanishes into the kitchen. “I’m amazing.”

  I mean, I’d have to agree.

  “I’m amazing,” Jesse echoes in a sarcastic tone of voice. “Get outta here, twink. I don’t need you anymore.”

  “Don’t lie to yourself, Jess,” Franco says, reemerging from the kitchen with a toolbox in one hand and a shirt with the other, “you’ll always need me. For one thing, I can count to twenty without taking off my boots.”

  “Fuck you, pretty boy,” Jesse shoots back, grinning.

  The two men bump fists, and Franco heads for the door, requiring me to move out of the way.

  “Thanks for your help, Franco.”

  “You’re welcome.” He aims this at me. “Meaning you’re welcome. Jess, you owe me a few rounds at the bar.”

  I slide inside so Franco can leave, and I smell him—sweat and man. Makes me dizzy.

  And there’s still Jesse to deal with. I put my back to door post and try to keep my knees from buckling. Why am I so weak right now? Hot guy overload? My poor libido has probably short-circuited.

  “Imogen?” Jesse asks, his voice worried.

  I blink at him, and realize he’s standing in front of me, frowning. “Huh? What?”

  “Are you…okay? You were spacing out, or something. I was talking to you.”

  I’m still all…woo-hoo. So my verbal filter, which isn’t the best around Jesse to begin with, is totally kaput. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Just…a little overwhelmed. You and Franco both in my house with your shirts off is a little much for my poor underserved libido to deal with.”

  Jesse smirks. “Underserved libido?”

  I curse mentally. “Um. You know. I—I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  His smirk widens into a shit-eating grin. “But you did, and now I’m curious as to what that means.” He swaggers a few inches closer to me, so his big frame occludes the house, the whole world, everything. “’Cause I think it means you haven’t had sex for a long time.”

  “You’d be correct in that assumption,” I whisper.

  “How long?” he murmurs, filling my universe with his scent, his masculine aura of dominance and confidence and sexuality and strength. “Couple weeks? Couple months?”

  I laugh bitterly, an unattractive snort/raspberry combination. “Try over a year.”

  “Jesus,” he mutters, wincing. “How are you even alive?”

  “I wonder the same thing sometimes.”

  “How long have you been divorced, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “A little over a month,” I tell him. “
The proceedings took three months, and we’d been having death-knell marriage problems for…oh god, almost a year before that. At least a year. But the warning signs were there long before that, I just—” I stop. “You don’t want to hear about my shitty-ass marriage or my even shittier divorce.”

  “No, not really,” he says, “but I am sorry you went through all that. You deserve better.”

  “Oh? And how do you know that?”

  “I can tell. I’m a good judge of people.”

  “And what does your judgment of people tell you about me?”

  He stares down at me for a long moment before answering. “That you’re an amazing woman who settled for an asshole who wasn’t worth even five minutes of your time.”

  “You got at least half of that right,” I say. “Nicholas…was a mistake.”

  He frowns at me. “You don’t think you’re amazing.”

  “My house is falling apart and I can’t afford to fix what’s broken much less improve it, my car is a piece of shit with no A/C and no radio, and I haven’t so much as kissed a man in almost a year and a half.”

  I laugh again, more bitterly than ever.

  “So, no,” I say. “I don’t really feel all that amazing, most days.”

  He closes in even further. “I can help with some of that.”

  “You can?”

  “You are…absolutely perfect in every conceivable way. The whole package that is you…you’re stunning.”

  I swallow hard and blink harder. “Thank you, Jesse.”

  He smiles at me. “I know hearing that from me once isn’t going to undo the months and years of shit your ex put on you, but it’s a start, right?”

  I sniff. “Right.” I try a smile back at him, and it’s easier than I expected it to summon a genuine smile for Jesse. “Once from you actually does do a lot to erase all that. So, you know, don’t be shy with the flattery. In my case, it’ll probably get you pretty far.”

  He laughs. “It’s not flattery, it’s truth.” He sidles closer, and his hips nudge mine and his chest brushes against the tips of my breasts. “I can turn this place into a beautiful, cozy, attractive home for you—we’ll just take it one step at a time. Like what I did in here today, which you haven’t even seen yet.”

  “I’m basically broke, Jesse.”

  He does the smirk again. “Yeah, but you just got a new job, didn’t you?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because Dr. Waverley called me to tell me thanks for sending you her way.”

  “Yes, I did get a new job, and I’ll be making double what I was. So I owe you a big thanks, too.”

  He smiles. “You’re welcome.” His smile widens, heats, turns mischievous, almost wicked. “There’s one other way I might be able to help you out.”

  “With my underserved libido?” I breathe.

  His laugh is an amused, aroused rumble. “That wasn’t what I was going to say, but yes, I’d love to help rectify your underserved libido.” He lifts his hands and cups my cheeks. “What I was going to say was that it’s a sin a perfect pair of lips like yours haven’t been kissed in so long, and I volunteer my services.”

  “Oh…you mean…” I begin, my voice breathy.

  “Meaning I’m going to kiss the hell out of you right now, unless you stop me.”

  “I’m not stopping you,” I say, a little too quickly.

  His laugh is knowing. His palms are warm and rough against my cheeks, and his thumbs scrape over my cheekbones, and I’m not breathing, and he’s everything in front of me, all around me, blocking me in with his big body. And then his lips brush mine, a slow, hesitant, questing touch—a warning. I barely have time to register this is happening—that he’s kissing me—and then the kiss is changing, and I’m struggling to keep up. His mouth firms against mine, and his tongue flicks against my lips—my mouth opens at that request, and then his lips are pliant and demanding and hungry and—

  I’ve never been kissed like this. Not ever.

  I can’t breathe, but I don’t need to. He’s all the oxygen I need. I’m dizzy, spinning. Leaning against him. My hands are flat on his chest, and now my fingers claw into his pecs, and I’m lifting up on my toes going for more, tasting his tongue and twining mine with his and exploring his mouth and hungering for him.

  My thighs clench and my core heats, weeps. God I need this. I need him. I need more.

  Holy shit.

  He’s still kissing me, like he can’t get enough, like he’s carried away by this as much as I am. Oh god, I can feel the weight of more towering behind this kiss, laced through it. There’s so much more than just this kiss and I want it all, but right now, this kiss is all I can handle.

  All too soon he’s pulling away, and he’s breathing hard.

  “Oh god,” I whimper. “Why’d you stop?”

  “Because I want to show you what Franco and I did in here today.” He backs away, raking a hand through his unruly hair. “And because if I didn’t stop, I wouldn’t be able to stop at all.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  “If we go there together, Imogen, it won’t be quick or sudden or unexpected, and it won’t be up against your front door.” His eyes burn, bright hot intense brown. “If we go there together, Imogen, it’ll be goddamned magical. It’ll be something you’ll never forget as long as you fucking live.”

  I close my eyes and breathe carefully. “Show me what you did, Jesse,” I say, after I’ve opened my eyes and can function something close to normal.

  He backs away a little further, staring at me hard. “Yeah.”

  He turns away, but not before I see the bulge against his zipper is very large, and very prominent evidence that he’s as affected by the kiss as I am. Which doesn’t do much for my resolve. I tighten my jaw and clench my fists, making a concerted effort to not stare at his ass as he leads me out of the front hallway into the living room.

  “Take a look,” he says, gesturing at the front window.

  I stop in my tracks, halfway into the living room. “What? How? Why?”

  There were a total of four windows in my living room, two facing the front, two facing the back. These four windows and the amount of natural light they let in were one of the selling points of this house for me. But those had been small, narrow and short, with thick glass panes and lots of heavy lead crosses. Even so, they’d let in a lot of light…they’d also let in a lot of drafts in the winter.

  Jesse had replaced all four windows with ones to match the brand new window in the kitchen, so now my walls on both sides of the living room were entirely glass. The room felt like it had been expanded several dozen square feet, and with them cranked open like they were, there was a beautiful cross-breeze—enough wind to not just ruffle my hair a little, but to actually cool the room off considerably.

  Tears sprang into my eyes unbidden. “Jesse, you—I—”

  “Before you say a word, you’re not paying a cent for these windows.” He was behind me so I couldn’t see him, but I heard the grin and the pride in his voice. “Nobody else at the Waverley job wanted them, so I snagged all the windows.”

  “All of them? How many were there?” I ask.

  He didn’t answer right away, and I turned around to face him, and saw his grin spread. “Well…how many windows do you have in your house?”

  I blinked. “Um. Four here, three in the kitchen, two in the master bedroom, and two in the spare bedroom.” I have to count. “Eleven?”

  He grinned even wider. “There were a total of twelve windows.”

  I was incredulous. “And she just ate the cost of them? That’s…”

  He waves a hand with a snort. “Don’t even try to imagine how much. A fucking lot. When we explained how long the return and refund process would take and how long it would delay the project, she was just like, I’m not waiting, order the doors and be done. We’re already so far over budget it’s ridiculous, but I guess they don’t care. I don’t know. I don’t get rich people som
etimes, man.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” I frown at him. “But Jesse…you’re not saying you replaced all of my windows, are you?”

  He nods solemnly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I replaced all of your windows…plus one.”

  “What do you mean, plus one?” I asked, warily.

  “You’ll see. For now, check out the kitchen.” I circle out of the hallway toward the kitchen, Jesse following behind me. “You ever think about taking those walls down? I checked it out, and the one wall is load bearing, but it’s not a huge space to cross, so you could pretty easily put a beam up across it. It’d feel like a whole different home.”

  I stop in the hallway, trying to picture it. “All the walls? Like this whole floor would be open plan?”

  He nods, grinning. “I can’t say it’d be a cheap project, but if I was gonna remodel this house, that’d be the first thing I’d do. The floors are in good shape, the kitchen is cute. You’ll need a new roof eventually, and central A/C, fresh paint all around…some new sinks and vanities and other details like that, but on the whole, this place isn’t actually that bad. New tile or marble in the kitchen, new countertops, that’s pretty big ticket stuff, obviously. But opening the floor plan would be first.”

  “You’re talking thousands of dollars, though,” I point out. “I can’t even afford to fix the A/C on my damn car at the moment.”

  “Couple grand sounds about right to knock down the walls and put load-bearing beams up.” He shrugs. “Just a thought.”

  “It sounds lovely, Jesse,” I say, sighing. “I’d love to. And as soon as I have a few extra thousand dollars just sitting around, you’ll be the first person I call.”

  “Just don’t wait until then to call me. There’s lots of little, relatively inexpensive stuff we can do that’ll improve things around here.” He pushes past me, grabs me by the hand, and pulls me into the kitchen. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, take a look.”

  Once again, I’m left speechless. Two more new windows—facing the front yard and the backyard. Huge casement windows replace the old tiny ones, and the room feels enormous now, breathing and full of sunlight.