by Dawn Atkins
“Thanks, anyway.” She put the hanger firmly back in place.
“There’s other stuff.” He shoved through the rack of slinky, slithery, see-through, mini, micro, strapless stuff that Gigi had looked natural in. Heidi would look as though she’d dressed as a hooker for Halloween. She was the gingham and rickrack type.
“Shoes, too,” he said, looking down at the floor covered with feather scarves, running shoes and colorful high heels. Definitely Gigi. “This stuff belonged to a friend of mine. Any girl junk she left in the bathroom is yours, too.”
“Thanks, but—”
“If you want cash for fresh stuff, I can give you some.”
“Thanks, anyway. I’ll make do.”
He was probably lucky she’d turned him down. He had little to spare since he’d broken his dad’s number two rule: keep plenty between you and the wolves. That came right after look out for the ones you love. Which his dad had done in spades. All the way through his death. Then Jackson had flushed it right down the rat hole of his dream.
He got that tight knot in his chest, as if someone was punching his ribs from the inside out, but he ignored it, turning to watch Heidi prowl the room. She’d zeroed in on his breast alarm clock, a gag gift from the girls at Moons for his birthday. One nipple set the alarm. The other turned it off.
“That’s a joke,” he said, feeling like a kid whose mother had spotted a Playboy in his bathroom.
“So, you’re a breast man?” The question was direct, as if she’d asked what position he played in football.
“Pretty much.” Yeah, he liked breasts—the way they jiggled when women walked fast in heels, how they felt like flesh pillows in his hands when a woman hung over him in sex, the way the nipples knotted when he touched them. Breasts were miracles.
She crossed her arms tight and spun away from him.
Shit. She thought he didn’t like hers. Hold on, they’re fine. And nice nipples, by the way. Breasts didn’t have to be big to be great. Too late to fix her reaction, though.
She bent over, looking so good that he looked away to be polite, and picked up the framed photo of his dad and the band in 1971, before they went to New York without him.
“This has to be a relative.” She tapped his dad’s picture and turned the time-bleached photo to him, her gaze digging at him. “Your father maybe?”
“Yeah. He played trumpet with Tito Real—the guy beside him. Tito was percussion.” In fact, the poster at her feet was the band after they’d made it big. Wish you were here, man, Tito had signed it. He’d still wanted Jackson’s father to join them. Jackson’s mother had been pregnant with Jackson when opportunity knocked, and his father turned his back. Family tops the charts, chico, he used to say to Jackson whenever the subject came up.
When he was young, the words and the wink that went with them had warmed Jackson like a bonfire on a crisp night. My soul is with you and Mommy. That was his dad’s message.
But as he got older, Jackson was bothered by all his dad had given up for the family. His dad had made a living as a mechanic, but poured his heart into weekend gigs with various bands. Jackson had felt his father’s disappointment like a smoke wreath circling his head, making the man’s eyes water with what might have been.
“Is your family nearby?” Heidi asked.
“My parents are…gone.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She didn’t seem shocked and she didn’t look away. Instead, she searched out his eyes, offering support.
Which made him want to explain. “Car crash two years ago. They were driving out here from Chicago and a snowstorm blew them into a barrier. It was quick. Over like that.” He snapped his finger, the sound sharp and short.
“They were coming to see you?”
“Yeah.” They’d poured all their love and all their hope over him, drenched him in it. And nagged and prodded him until it made him nuts. How about settling down with a wife? What about our grandkids? That pain in his chest started up again, so he turned away from Heidi’s gaze. “I’ll clear out this junk for you.”
“All I need is the bed. And just for a couple of nights. I’ll pay you with housekeeping, like you suggested, if that’s okay.”
“Fair enough,” he said and gathered a stack of records, which he moved to the shelves. She took a pile, too, and they brushed arms in the narrow space between the bed and the shelves.
“Sorry,” she said, her eyes slipping away. Definite heat, which made him uneasy because she was so…sweet. Not a virgin—there definitely was a knowing glint in her eye, plus no one this hot could reach midtwenties without getting laid—but close enough to innocence to make him queasy. Naive and wide-eyed and absolutely hands-off to a guy like him. He looked down at the cleared bed, fighting the fleeting picture of her tight body curled up under the spread.
She raised her eyes to his and caught his look. Her cheeks went pink and she grew flustered. “Anyway, thanks for letting me stay.”
“My pleasure.” Don’t say pleasure like that, you ass.
Luckily, her cell phone tinkled, changing the subject. She scrounged around in a pocket for it and put it to her ear.
“Hello?” she said. After the caller spoke, her face tightened. “Oh, yes, I’m here and everything’s great.” Her voice cracked with tension. She glanced at him, asking for privacy, so he left the room but remained in the hall, shamelessly eavesdropping.
“Just getting situated…I’m excited. Sure…I’m tired, that’s all. I start work on Monday…. Everything’s great, Mike.”
Everything’s great? Why was she lying? Someone back home she wanted to not worry about her.
“Tina and I will have a great time. Tell Mark…. Yes, I heard every word. I can use MapQuest as well as the next person…. What?…No. I don’t need money. I saved up what I need…. What?…Oh, I forgot about the self-help books. I promised them to Celia. She’s going to loan them out to the customers…. Yeah, the time will fly. It’ll be Thanksgiving before you know it…. Okay, maybe I’ll come for Halloween.”
He grinned. She’d lied about Tina, turned down money she needed and was fighting off a visit home. There was a story there.
“Sure. Great…I know you do…. I worry about you, too.” She said the last as though she was teasing the caller, but her voice shook. “Gotta go,” she said brightly. “Tina wants to…um…talk. Bye. Give my love to the Lesser Worrywart…. Bye…. Bye…. I’m fine. Really.”
She whispered, “God,” as if to herself, so he knew she’d hung up. He slipped down the hall, not wanting her to know he’d listened in. In the kitchen, he looked for something to bring her, settling for a glass of water and the candy sack.
He found her sitting on the floor, braced against the side of the bed, legs out, staring down at her cell phone.
When she noticed him, she quickly brushed at her cheeks. Shit, she’d been crying.
“So, who was that?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t noticed the tears.
“My big brothers. Worrying about me, as usual.”
He sat beside her, legs parallel, and thrust the open sack at her direction.
“Thanks.” She smiled, pawed around inside the bag, tickling his palm through the plastic, then pulled out two red rectangles covered in sugar crystals. “The signature jellies. Try one.”
He took one from her, the brush of her skin giving him a tiny shock, like the tart fruit at the back of his throat a second later. “Good,” he said as he munched, placing the sack on the floor between them.
She stared at the jelly she’d bit into.
From here, he could easily catch her perfume, mixed with the light scent of clean sweat and whatever tropical stuff she used on her hair, which was straight and thick and brushed her neck, light brown with gold streaks. The freckles made her look youthful, but he figured she was twenty-five. At least five years younger than he was. Not that it mattered how old she was….
“You tell them what happened?” he asked her.
She turned, her hair swis
hing back, revealing her neck and the soft pulse at her throat. “Heck, no. They’d be doing the big-brothers-in-shining-armor bit. Our parents died when I was young, but my brothers think it’s their duty to carry me around piggyback as long as they can.”
“They’re just looking out for you.” He would do the same thing in their place.
“With handcuffs,” she said.
“That’s love.”
“That’s not trusting someone with her own life, her own decisions, and mistakes and—” She stopped, then forced a smile. “I bet if someone constantly told you what to do, you wouldn’t put up with it for a minute.”
“Depends on what she was wearing at the time.” He waggled his brow, trying to cheer her up with humor.
“Oh. Right.” She blushed, then laughed, a sexy sound in her rough Kirstie Alley voice. “What a mess I’ve made out of my great escape.” She huffed air through her bangs, which flew every which way. “If I’d just grabbed my purse I’d at least still have tuition money. The check’s been cashed. Washed and written over or forged. Happens all the time, the bank manager said.” She swallowed hard and pulled her feet close to her body, bracing her forehead on her knees, wrapping her arms around her shins.
“So what are you studying?” he said to keep her from sinking too low.
She turned her face to rest her cheek on her knees. “Psychology.”
That explained the steady stare—part curiosity, part support. Perfect for picking people’s brains apart. He shifted slightly away. “You want to be a shrink?”
“It’s not contagious.” She smiled slightly. “Counseling scares you?”
“Who wants to be under a microscope?”
“You’d be surprised. I was sort of the amateur therapist for the town. People got a cut, a style and free advice at Celia’s Cut ’n’ Curl.”
“So you worked over their hair and their lives. Sounds like pure hell.”
“Lots of people value neutral help sorting out their troubles.”
“I’d rather have bypass surgery.” Kelli had always quoted Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura or the latest pop psych book she’d inhaled. You’re repressing, blocking, deflecting. Hell, she’d made his quietness sound like a martial art. Now here he sat with Dr. Heidi in the making. His roommate. And she was looking him over again, trying to figure him out. Damn.
“So what’s wrong with being a hairdresser?” he said to distract her.
“Nothing. I’ll be doing hair part-time still. But if I want to be a therapist, I’ve got to do internships, get at least a master’s degree.” She lifted her head from her knees and looked at him more closely, eyes narrowed. Jeez, now she was reading his mind? He tried to clear any stray horny thoughts, just in case.
Then she reached for a strand of his hair and rubbed it between her finger and thumb. “You could use a hot oil treatment.”
“A what?”
Her lips had wrapped around those words like they were pure sex. She seemed to realize it. And liked it, judging by the way her fingers slowed on his hair and her next words were soft and low and deliberate. “For your hair…It’s dry…. The ends are…damaged. I’d be glad to…do it…for you.”
A couple of words dropped out in his head until he heard I’d be glad to do you. A charge shot through him like touching a live battery cable. Innocence was sexy, he realized. A million schoolgirl strip routines couldn’t be wrong.
“You have such nice texture.” Now her voice was huskier. She was flirting with him. Damn.
He imagined her fingers on his scalp, the snip-snip of her scissors near his ear, the tickle of hair sliding down his neck. Maybe he’d have his shirt off and it would cascade across his chest to his thighs like the brush of eyelashes. He pictured her lifting his chin, turning it to the angle she wanted, maybe with a little yank. He’d be eye level with those gentle mounds of breasts with their berry nipples that had tightened against her snug top as they talked.
“Men neglect their hair because it doesn’t seem masculine,” she continued, blinking her big eyes, sending waves of lust through him. “You like engines, right? Think of your hair as an engine. You want it all shiny and tuned up, don’t you?”
The woman was hitting on him. Great. Heidi was the kind of woman who saw sex as a first step to forever and the last thing he wanted after a hot night was to wake up to eyes like hers demanding wedding rings and babies and 401Ks. God, no.
“So, a hair tune-up, huh?” he said to joke her away. “I’ll think about it.”
She blinked. “Uh. Sure.” He’d made her feel foolish. He’d like to tell her she was plenty sexy, but he couldn’t figure out how to do so without screwing up the moment. He was off the hook. Leave it be.
“Well, I guess I’d better start earning my keep.” She shook her head, her hair swishing back and forth, a thick curtain that would feel great against his…
“Huh?”
“I’m your housekeeper, remember?” She jumped to her feet so fast he missed the chance to help her up. “You just do what you’d normally do, Jackson, and I’ll turn this place spic-and-span.”
She bounced out the door, a perky little cheerleader, who bobbed through life on the balls of her feet, wagging her pom-poms in everyone’s faces.
That could be exhausting. How long would she be here? A couple of days probably until she worked something out with her boss. He could handle that, right? Even with the attraction?
He tried to act normal, starting in on Gran Turismo, his favorite racing video game, but she kept zipping in front of him like some Tasmanian devil of a virgin French maid. Then she got out the vacuum—he didn’t know he even had one—and the roar got on his nerves.
Not to mention the gasps of horror whenever she found any little distasteful thing. Pork rinds didn’t get good until the third day out…moisture made them chewy.
He crashed his Mazda R-X 7 for the tenth time and looked at her. She’d bent to reach under the sofa, muscles rippling across the backs of her thighs and tightening that fresh peach of a backside. He forced his eyes back to the TV screen, feeling irritable.
“This will be perfect,” she said.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her stand with a wadded cloth. She trotted away, but when he heard spraying he looked over to see her smothering his favorite T-shirt with some dusting spray—where the hell did she find that junk?
“Hey, not that shirt,” he said, jumping up and grabbing the jersey out of her hands.
“Sorry,” she said. “It looked worn out.”
“It’s barely worn in.” He whipped off his tank top and pulled it over his head to prove his point, uneasily aware that she’d stared while he stripped.
“See?” he said.
“It’s full of holes and stained.”
“It’s fine. It’s perfect.” Except the junk she’d doused it in burned his nose, so he’d have to throw it in the hamper.
He hoped to hell Heidi’s boss had a spare room. Something told him the woman could mess up lots more than his favorite T-shirt.
3
HEIDI GRABBED the dish soap from among the cleaning supplies left from Tina’s regime and squirted pink liquid into the rushing hot water. It was all too surreal for words.
Two hours ago, her happy new life had peeled away from the curb and now she was cleaning a stranger’s town house. A handsome stranger, whose bare pecs she’d admired and with whom she’d flirted by fondling his hair. She was losing her mind.
How else could she explain hitting on a guy in the middle of the ruin of her life? Had to be an escape from the tension. When Jackson had whipped off his tank top, she’d stared and blinked like a kid. Oh, what gorgeous abs you have. He was so big and so male. Almost scary. He could crush her in an instant, except for the gentleness in him. She trusted him implicitly.
She scrubbed ketchup off a plate—the man put the red stuff on everything, it seemed—then rinsed it, fighting off what was going on in her mind…the desire to have sex with Jackson McCall.
&n
bsp; She grabbed another plate and scrubbed it hard, pushing down the thought. It bobbed back up. No wonder. Her secret personal goal was to have wild sex with a wild man. And Jackson would be perfect.
She grabbed a really dirty plate and dug at it with the Brillo pad. Sex so far had been fast and fumbling and not all that satisfying. Jackson would be slow and skilled, she’d bet.
Scrub, scrub, scrub. He had hot, knowing eyes and a smart-ass grin that made her go tight in private places. Plus, he looked a little dangerous, so big and rugged, his jaw bristling with whiskers and masculinity. She could see him as a hardboiled detective in an old movie, unfiltered cigarette dangling from a lip, shoving up the edge of his fedora with a thumb to get a load of her.
So, why not have sex with him? Talk about making lemonade from the lemons of this catastrophe. She’d been hyperaware of him sitting beside her on the floor, feeding her a jelly. How about some candy, little lady? Actually, it had made her tooth zing. Getting that molar looked at had been one errand she’d neglected before she left Copper Corners. After the zing passed, though, the tart taste and sweet scent had added pleasurably to the spark and sizzle of being that close to Jackson.
And then she’d wrecked it. Blurted stuff about hot oil, dry hair and shiny engines.
And Jackson had treated it like a joke. As though she was just goofing around. Unfair. She could be as sexy as the next woman, couldn’t she? Well, maybe not in her cute little embroidered top.
She wasn’t getting anything right.
The only good news was that she’d stuck to her plan, not crumpled when Mike called. She hadn’t cried or confessed or asked for help or even sympathy. And she wouldn’t. Her pride was at stake. Her determination. And her future.
At least Black Saturday was nearly over. She’d get through Blue Sunday somehow—maybe the police would find her car, her purse or even her beautician’s kit.
For now, she’d get a small advance from Jackson for basic needs. On Monday, she’d go to Shear Ecstasy and talk to Blythe and at least get more hours. Maybe Blythe had a spare bedroom she could stay in? She hated to ask—it made her seem flaky—but Blythe seemed like a person who rolled with the punches.
