Every Dog Has His Day

by Jenn McKinlay

  She opened the door and blew out the candle, making her way back into the kitchen as quietly as she could. Zach was standing in the kitchen, and Jessie knew in that moment she would never forget the sight of him right there.

  His shaggy blonde hair was in its usual unkempt disarray as if he’d just taken off a hat and the static had made it spring up about his head. The candles on the counter in front of him illuminated his crooked nose, his wide jaw, and the slash of white that was his smile. He was leaning on his fists on the counter, as if trying to push whatever emotion he was feeling into the granite beneath his knuckles, but when he saw her, when his soft brown gaze met hers, he dropped his hands and reached for her.

  Jessie didn’t resist. She let him pull her toward him, knowing full well that if he kissed her again, she was done for.

  But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he hugged her close. He rested his cheek on the top of her hair and then he swayed back and forth with her from side to side, humming, like they were two kids at a middle school dance who liked each other but had no idea what to do about it.

  Jessie let his warmth engulf her. She leaned her head on his chest and put her arms around his waist with his arms over hers, holding her close. It was lovely and soothing and she was pretty sure she could have stayed with him like this all night—except she really wanted him to kiss her again. She really wanted to know if what she’d felt before, that magical electrical spark, happened again.

  He moved one hand up and down her back while the other sifted through her hair from the back of her neck and out to the ends; the gentle tugging gesture was probably supposed to be calming or crazy making. Jessie wasn’t sure which but she was definitely leaning toward the crazy side.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, Zach stilled. He cupped her face and his gaze met hers.

  “So, what did the girls have to say?” he asked.

  Jessie felt her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “I heard your phone going off,” he said. “I figured you freaked out and texted the crew.”

  “I did.” Jessie bit her lip. “Was that bad form? I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m on unfamiliar ground here and I haven’t had anything to text anyone about—”

  Her words trailed off. She really didn’t know what to say and she was afraid something inappropriate was going to fly out, like, Hey, I can’t remember what a man looks like so can I see you naked? Yeah, that wouldn’t go over well, so she shut her mouth and remained silent.

  “It’s fine,” Zach whispered and then he kissed her again.

  Zap. The spark was back. In fact, it was even more potent than before. Jessie clung to Zach, encouraging him to wake up the parts of her that she had assumed were dead and gone.

  The hands that had been gentle now hauled her up against him, one wrapping around her lower back while the other dug into her hair to hold her still for a kiss that was a thorough possession. He kissed her as if he couldn’t get enough of her, the taste of her, the feel of her mouth beneath his, or the way she moaned in the back of her throat. Jessie loved it.

  She loved feeling wanted and desired and she wanted to return the feeling. She moved her hands down his sides to his ass and pulled him in hard. Zach grunted and Jessie smiled against his lips.

  “Wicked woman,” he hissed against her lips in raspy gruff growl, but he looked pleased.

  “Momma?” It took a second for the voice to penetrate the sexy fog that surrounded her brain. “Momma?”

  Zach and Jessie jumped away from each other. Jessie began to fix her hair and shirt while Zach turned away from her. It was Gracie who’d called to her and Jessie hustled over to the living room to see what her daughter needed.

  “What is it, honey?” she asked. Her voice sounded rough and she cleared her throat.

  Zach passed her as he approached the living room, checking on the situation, too. He swiftly clasped her hand in his, giving her fingers a quick squeeze before letting her go. Jessie gave him side-eye and he winked at her.

  “If everything is okay here, I’ll just be outside rolling in the snow,” he said. “Come on, Rufus, you need a walk.”

  The dog pushed up from his spot on the floor and bounded after Zach. Jessie took Rufus’s spot and glanced at her daughter. Gracie’s eyes were fuzzy with sleep, and Jessie was reassured that Gracie wasn’t aware of what had just transpired between her and Zach.

  “What’s the matter, love?” she asked. She smoothed Gracie’s hair back from her forehead.

  “Nothing.” Gracie’s voice was already groggy with sleep. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

  “Always, baby,” Jessie said.

  She put her head on Gracie’s pillow, and continued to rub her daughter’s back. Gracie let out a soft sigh and fell back to sleep. Jessie gazed into the fire. The flames were low but the heat that poured out of the grate was exquisite.

  After kissing Zach, she was sure she was too keyed up to fall asleep. All she could think about was what might have happened between them if Gracie hadn’t woken up. The crew said Zach was perfect fling material. Was she ready for a fling? Did she want to have one with Zach? Hell yeah!

  Her eyelids felt heavy and she knew she should get up, but it was so warm in this spot, wedged between her girls. She decided to rest her eyes for just a moment. She dreamed of kissing Zach. It was a good dream.

  She felt his arms around her and she twined her arms around his neck. The temperature dropped and she shivered. He kissed her head and tucked her into bed. With a kiss on her lips, he pulled her covers up to her chin before he pulled away. Jessie wanted to protest. She wanted to lure him back but sleep beckoned and she couldn’t seem to fight it. She felt herself falling, falling, falling into a deep slumber.

  • • •

  When Jessie awoke the next morning, she was on her side of the couch, tucked under her blanket. She glanced over to see a thick thatch of honey blonde hair on the pillow next to hers. Zach was stretched out on the other side of the couch.

  She frowned. She didn’t remember going to bed the night before. In fact, the last thing she did recall was comforting Gracie after a bad dream. She distinctly remembered lying down on the floor with her daughter, and that was it.

  Oh, wait, she’d had a dream about kissing Zach. Had it been a dream? She didn’t think so. She suspected he’d picked her up off the floor and tucked her in on the couch. Darn, she wished she could remember more.

  She leaned up on her elbow and noted that her girls were still sound asleep. Zach, too, seemed to have been knocked out by yesterday’s events. She wondered if things would be awkward between them now.

  Would he feel weird about kissing her? Did she feel weird about it? Should she say anything or just let it lie? In the cold gray light of a winter morning, her instinct to protect herself told her to pretend it never happened. Would he go along with that?

  “Good morning, my gorgeous girl,” he said. He rubbed a big callused paw over his face, pausing to scratch at the golden stubble on his chin.

  So, she figured she could take that as a no. Zach was not going to pretend that they hadn’t crossed over the friendship line and kissed yesterday. She would have to do some serious damage control to get them back in the friend zone.

  “Good morning, Zach,” she said.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. He pushed up onto his elbows. He glanced at the girls and noted that they were still sleeping and then he whispered, “Are you about to give me ‘the talk’?”

  “You mean the one outlining the reasons why yesterday shouldn’t have happened and how it isn’t going to happen again?” she asked hopefully.

  “Yep, that’s the one,” he said. “But I’m confused. I thought you polled your girlfriends on the phone last night and they were thumbs-up about us.”

  “There is no us,” Jessie said. “And they were thumbs-up o
nly because I told them all I wanted was a fling.”

  “A fling?” Zach asked. He rested his chin in his hand and regarded her with his warm, velvet brown gaze. “Well, you really are the perfect woman, aren’t you?”

  A flash of heat hit Jessie low and fast. She wasn’t perfect, not even close, but Zach sure made her feel special. For the first time in a long stretch, she had the warm fuzzies and she liked it.

  The feeling was rare and special and she cherished it. She decided to hug the words close to her chest and when she was feeling blue, she’d bring the memory out and be warmed by it. In the meantime, she had to shut this down.

  “Flattery will not get me to change my mind,” she said.

  She was pleased that she sounded firm. Unfortunately, Zach looked singularly unimpressed.

  “Okay.” He shrugged.

  He shoved off his covers and rose to standing. He stretched his muscular arms up over his head and the hem of his thermal shirt rode up, giving Jessie a glimpse of his taut abs. Was it wrong that she wanted to lick him right there—okay, maybe a little lower? She knew that it was and yet . . . No! She forced herself to look away.

  Zach strode to the kitchen. He plugged the coffeepot into the electrical cord brought to them courtesy of his generator and set about making coffee. Jessie stared after him. He seemed to be taking her refusal to pursue anything more than friendship perfectly in stride. Maybe he didn’t get it. Maybe she needed to be clearer with him.

  She wrapped herself up in her blanket and followed him into the kitchen. He was using the bottled water to fill the coffeepot and she marveled that in a matter of hours, he’d become so familiar with her house, where she kept things, how she liked things done—honestly, in almost seven years of marriage, Seth had never, not once, brewed a pot of coffee.

  She shook her head. That was not the point, so not the point. She needed to focus.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Zach glanced up from filling the filter. “No problem.”

  “Not just for the coffee,” she said. She slid onto one of the stools at the counter. She pushed passed her embarrassment and said, “Thanks for being cool about us not . . . you know.”

  Zach closed the lid and hit the switch on the coffeepot. He leaned on his elbows so that his face was level with hers.

  “No, I don’t know. Us not what?” he asked.

  “You know, us not pursuing a fling,” she said. She glanced at the coffeepot, willing it to brew faster.

  “Oh, that,” he said. He nodded but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just smiled at her as if he found her amusing.

  Jessie studied him. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Was he in agreement? Did he not want a fling either? Why did that thought fill her with disappointment? He had called her gorgeous; huh, maybe that was his way of letting her down easy. She didn’t like that at all. Now she felt conflicted. It was unsettling.

  “I mean, you knew that’s what was happening between us last night, right?” she asked.

  “Was it?” he asked. He continued to smile at her.

  “Yes, last night I was entertaining the thought of having a fling with you, but—”

  “But after a good night’s sleep, you changed your mind,” he finished her sentence for her.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She looked at him.

  He waited.

  “Oh, well, I . . .” she stammered.

  Zach studied her with infinite patience. This time he didn’t try to finish her sentence. Instead, he waited for her to think it out for herself.

  She watched as he got two mugs and poured the coffee. He pushed hers across the counter to her, black, just the way she liked it, and then doctored his own with a little sugar and milk. They’d continued putting bags of snow in the refrigerator to keep everything cold; still, he paused to smell the milk before adding it to his mug.

  He took a sip and watched her over the rim of his mug. She got the feeling he could wait all day for her answer. She suddenly felt pressured to make it a very good answer, one that wouldn’t be dismissed or questioned.

  “I just think that since we’re neighbors, we should probably avoid doing anything that might damage our relationship—by relationship, of course, I mean our neighborly association. I wouldn’t want it to get uncomfortable and then feel weird if one of us needed to borrow some eggs or sugar or something. Plus, there are the girls. I wouldn’t want them to suffer any awkwardness if we discovered we couldn’t get on after . . . well, after . . .”

  Jessie stopped talking and lifted her mug to her lips. Surely, she did not need to spell it out for him in any greater detail than that.

  “A night of triple-orgasm, smoking-hot sex?” Zach offered.

  Jessie choked on her coffee. He’d caught her on a swallow and she inhaled coffee into her lungs. She choked it back up, coughing so hard that tears sprang from her eyes and a little snot dribbled out of her nose. Gah!

  She hastily grabbed a paper napkin out of the holder and dabbed her nose with one end and her eyes with the other. She frowned at him but he blinked at her in complete innocence. Jessie narrowed her eyes. She was not buying it.

  “Very funny,” she said. “Let’s be serious.”

  “You’re right,” he said. He lowered his head and peered at her from beneath his bangs. “Three orgasms would never be enough with you.”

  Jessie slapped her palm to her forehead. “Stop with the orgasm talk.” She glanced across the room at the girls, who were still asleep, and then back at Zach. “You are impossible.”

  “It’s part of my charm, or so I’ve been told,” he said.

  Jessie resisted the urge to fan herself with her hand. Seriously, was it hot in here or what? She couldn’t even look at Zach. He offered up orgasms as if that was so easy for him. She wouldn’t know. She’d never had one. Never. Not one. Not ever.

  It was her secret shame. Seth hadn’t been a good lover. She’d thought that once they were married everything would suddenly get better. It didn’t. In fact, it got a whole lot worse. Before they were married Seth put a token effort into pleasing her but once he put the ring on her finger, he tapped out. When he rolled on top of her at night it was always a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sort of situation and Jessie was relieved because at least she didn’t have to fake it anymore.

  She’d read all the women’s magazines; she knew she could take her situation in hand as it were, but life with two little kids didn’t give a mom a lot of “me” time and even if she’d been motivated, she usually passed out before her head hit the pillow.

  Orgasms just hadn’t been a priority for her. But now here was Zach, standing in her kitchen, making coffee and talking about triples. The mere thought of it made her dizzy and she took a deep scalding sip of her coffee, trying to scorch the lust right out of her soul.

  “Well, let’s just forget about it,” she said. She stared at him. “Okay?”

  “Forget what?” he asked.

  “You know, about—” She frowned. “Oh, I get it. You’ve already forgotten. Very clever.”

  Zach shrugged. She found her gaze wandering to his broad shoulders. He was built strong. She liked that. A wave of indecision hit her. Maybe she shouldn’t be so hasty. Maybe they could have a fling. Maybe it wouldn’t be awkward or weird. She thought about the morning he’d rescued Chaos off his roof.

  Three girls had been in his house and while she understood now that it was completely innocent, it had been awkward at the time and if something like that happened after they slept together—she did a quick self-assessment—no, she didn’t think she would handle it very well. It would be weird. With her ex having slept with most of the single women, and some not-so-single women, in town, she had enough awkward encounters to navigate in her life, thank you very much.

  “Momma,” Maddie appeared at her sid
e. “I’m hungry.”

  And just like that, Jessie shifted back into mom mode.

  “Well, you’re in luck. I was digging around in the cupboard and I found my electric skillet. How about some pancakes?”

  “With chocolate chips?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right!” Maddie said. She turned her big blue gaze on Zach. “Do you like chocolate chip pancakes?”

  “Love ’em,” he said.

  Maddie grinned, showing the gap in her upper teeth where she was missing a tooth. She clearly found comfort in the fact that Zach liked the same pancakes. It made Jessie’s heart hurt a little that the girls hadn’t had any of that with their own father. She knew that it was Seth’s loss, but still she wished it could have been different for them.

  “Come on,” Zach said. “Let’s get your sister moving and straighten up the room. We’re going to have to go outside and sweep the snow away again or we’ll never get out of here.”

  Maddie walked beside him and slipped her tiny hand into his. She glanced up at him with a look of hero worship, and said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Zach gave her a thoughtful look and then he grinned and swooped her up into his arms. Maddie let out a shriek, which woke up Gracie, who wanted in on the fun, too. While Jessie made a small mountain of pancakes, Zach and the girls picked up the living room and got dressed before devouring the stack.

  As if they were his small army of broom-wielding soldiers, Zach got everyone suited up and outside for another morning of snow removal. Since the wind had died and the snow had stopped falling, they played, too, building a family of snow people, including a dog and cat. Zach pulled the girls on an old sled he had in his garage to a small hill at the end of the street where several kids from the neighborhood were sledding. The girls slid down time and again until their eyes sparkled and their cheeks and noses had bloomed with the cold to a bright berry red.

  Once inside, they had soup and sandwiches, and the girls raced up to their room to gather some new things to play with by the heat of the fire. Maddie brought down literally every stuffed animal she owned while Gracie chose her small pink ukulele. She plucked a few notes, looking very shy, and then handed it to Zach.